Drawing uncovered of 'Nazi nuke' BBC - June 1, 2005
Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb.
Drawing uncovered of 'Nazi nuke' BBC - June 1, 2005
Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have
found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb.
On this day ... Germany announces Hitler is dead BBC - May 1, 2005
Hitler Long Gone But Legacy Still Haunts Germany Wired - May 1, 2005
Scotsman.com - March 2005
On 413 pages of closely written and typed Cyrillic script, the papers were buried along with hundreds of tons of other secret documents on the orders of the NKVD - forerunner to the KGB - in the Institute for History in the Russian capital. They are now to be published as The Hitler Book next Monday.
Many are based on interviews with Hitlerıs adjutant, Otto Günsche, and his personal valet, Heinz Linge. Both captured in Berlin in 1945, they spent the next ten years in Moscow being debriefed almost daily to provide Stalin with a detailed portrait of his nemesis.
In the 1950s the papers, classified under the former Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev as file 462a, were stored in the Communist Party archives. They were eventually discovered by the German historians Matthias Uhl and Henrik Eberle.
Professor Horst Moeller, director of the Historical Institute in Munich, said: "With minute details it provides a fascinating insight into the lives of both dictators. It is a remarkable portrait about the obsessive nature of one dictator over the habits and mores of another."
It contains many of the private thoughts and biting asides that Hitler delivered to his inner circle - a circle that his two top aides moved in.
For example, Hitler was sceptical of Hermann Goering, his bombastic air force chief, and his claims to be able to win the war. Stalin noted an anecdote on page 276 of his paperwork where Hitler allegedly said after the Battle of Britain: "If the Luftwaffe canıt fly anymore then at least we can use his men to fight on the ground."
Gunsche and Linge said that far from being in the background, Hitlerıs mistress Eva Braun was at the epicentre of Nazi politics for most of the 12-year lifespan of the Third Reich.
One passage, concerning 1936, reads: "He was always accompanied by her. As soon as he heard the voice of his lover he became jollier. He would make jokes about her new hats. He would take her for hours on end into his study where there would be champagne cooling in ice, chocolates, cognac and fruit." But when Hitler burned the midnight oil speaking with his Nazi underlings or his generals, "Eva would often be in tears". "She felt a bird in a golden cage, her life unfulfilled as his bed partner," they said.
Linge said that Hitler once ordered a doubling of the police guard on Braunıs Munich villa before the war, after she told the Gestapo that a woman had called her the "Führer-whore". Stalin, who ordered Hitlerıs skull to be brought to Moscow after Red Army troops found his and Braunıs bodies in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery in 1945, was obsessed with the minutiae of Hitlerıs daily life.
He wanted to know in particular about routine at the Berghof, Hitlerıs mountain home in Bavaria. Linge told him: "Hitlerıs conversation there was banal. At the dinner table he would praise the dresses of the female staff, say how difficult they must find it not being able to get their hair done or their nails filed on the mountain.
"Hitler had a weird sense of humor. He would laugh at Evaıs lipstick on a serviette and then say: Soon we will have replacement lipstick made from dead bodies of soldiersı."
The book contains details about how his SS guards were detailed to buy him presents, how his dark moods were uplifted by photos in magazines of the early days of Nazism, and how he sat under the portrait of Frederick the Great, which he carted with him everywhere, believing he would give him divine inspiration to win the war.
Günsche reported how Hitler once flew into a frenzy with his secretary, Martin Bormann, because Braun wanted to hire ten more serving girls over the 30-strong complement laid down by him for the kitchens. "I stamp whole divisions into the dirt!" screamed Hitler. "And I canıt get a few more serving wenches for the Berghof? Organise it now!"
Psychologists and psychiatrists have for years regarded Hitler and Stalin as mirror images of each other, both essentially bourgeois figures with irresistible megalomaniacal tendencies. "It is little wonder that both were fascinated by one another, although both knew that capture by the other would lead to certain death," said Mr Eberle.
March 23, 2005 - Australian
Berlin
The bride wore a dark blue silk dress with a soft grey fur cape. The ashen-faced groom was dressed in the same crumpled jacket he had been wearing for days, his Iron Cross and other military decorations pinned to the lapel.
The ceremony, held in a storeroom in a Berlin bunker as Soviet artillery rained down on the city, lasted only 10 minutes. When the couple emerged, Adolf Hitler kissed Eva Braun's hand. There was speculation among aides that she was carrying the Fuhrer's child.
These accounts of the events of April 1945 by Heinz Linge, the Nazi leader's butler, are contained in a book published at the weekend.
Compiled by the KGB from the interrogations of Linge and Otto Gunsche, Hitler's adjutant, the book was prepared for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who wanted a psychological profile of his defeated enemy.
Sealed for more than six decades in Russian archives, it has been published by German historians Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl.
The account - known simply as The Hitler Book - describes the Nazi leader's career, from his appointment as chancellor in 1933 through World War II to the final days in the bunker.
The portrait that emerges is far more complex than the conventional one-dimensional depiction of a monster.
Hitler, it seems, personally ordered those who crossed him, even over minor matters, to be sent to concentration camps, but also had a wicked sense of humour, frequently mocking the pomposity of Hermann Goering, his second in command.
The book reveals Hitler's interest in the workings of the concentration camps. Linge and Gunsche claimed he had pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers.
Hitler's degeneration during the war is also described. Theodor Morell, Hitler's physician, treated him every second morning with "stimulating injections". Linge used to hand him opium. Hitler's bad right eye was also rubbed with cocaine.
On April 25, 1945, Linge was summoned by Hitler, who informed him that he and Braun were to commit suicide. "Under no circumstances must you allow my corpse to fall into the hands of the Russians. They would love to bring me to Moscow and put me on show," Hitler told him.
February 18, 2005 - AP
Snow covers a new four-star Inter Continental holiday resort in southern Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden. The 138-room resort opened on March 1, 2005 and is located near Adolf Hitler's former Alpine retreat, the Eagles Nest in Obersalzberg.
When Adolf Hitler first encountered the breathtaking mountain scenery and lofty isolation of Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps, he fell instantly in love with the spot. Later as German leader he sealed off the hamlet, creating an exclusive retreat where he and other top Nazis could wine and dine, savor the crisp Alpine air, and plan the most barbarous acts of the Third Reich.
Sixty years on, the owners of a new luxury hotel in Obersalzberg, which opens this week, are hoping the area's serene natural charm can attract a different kind of visitor and open a new chapter in the area's blighted history.
A glossy brochure presents "an oasis of well-being" where guests can indulge in spa treatments, have their ski boots warmed before use and play a round of golf.
The hotel, part of the Intercontinental chain, wants to avoid advertising the fact that it is just a stone's throw from where Hitler's Berghof villa once stood, for fear of attracting the wrong sort of visitors. But nor does it wish to evade Obersalzberg's infamy altogether.
Staff have been specially trained to answer questions on the area's history, and guests will find "Deadly Utopia" in their rooms, a disturbing account of how the seductive Obersalzberg landscape was woven into Nazi myths of German blood and soil and presented as a pilgrimage site to the Fuehrer.
"Obersalzberg is a loaded place ... it was a site linked to the perpetrators, which is a stigma that lingers and will continue to do so," said Bavarian Finance Minister Kurt Faltlhauser, who is behind the development of the resort.
"But Obersalzberg has another side. It was always also a place to recuperate in stunning landscape. The new hotel is part of this tradition."
Despite assurances from the Bavarian state government that it will not tolerate any misuse of the area or "Nazi tourism," Jewish groups have attacked the project as historically insensitive.
"Either people don't know the significance of the Obersalzberg, which is bad enough, or worse -- they know exactly what kind of a place it is, as Hitler's second seat of government, and they are doing this regardless," Jewish writer Ralph Giordano told German television.
In 1952 the American military cleared what remained of Hitler's Berghof, where the dictator received Benito Mussolini, relaxed with his lover Eva Braun and greeted children in lederhosen and dirndl dresses with his dog Blondie at his heels.
The archive footage is familiar the world over, and up to 100,000 tourists flock to the site every year.
"Hitler was shown here as a majestic visionary, as a successful statesman receiving dignitaries, but also as a man of the people -- a friend to nature and children," said Volker Dahm, who runs a documentation center on the Nazi period in Obersalzberg.
"We have to use the 'pull' this place exerts to inform people, and to present them with all aspects of the Nazi regime."
Until the center opened in 1999, neo-Nazi graffiti appeared regularly in Obersalzberg along with impromptu shrines to Hitler with candles and flowers.
But Dahm says now that the evils of Nazi rule are compellingly presented, far-right supporters have been deterred from further pilgrimages. Obersalzberg has been demystified.
Andreas Nachama, who runs a permanent exhibition on the site of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin agrees.
"These people look for sites which haven't been interpreted by historians, where they can let their ideas run wild. The minute a museum appears they can no longer project their fantasies onto a place."
Obersalzberg was in the hands of the American military until 1996, when it returned it to the Bavarian state authorities, who planned the historical center in conjunction with a new hotel to boost tourism to the area.
The small town of Berchtesgaden in the valley below Obersalzberg has seen hotel occupancy rates plummet and high rates of migration in recent years.
Most locals are pragmatic about the past and have long sold picture-books of Hitler at the Berghof, alongside walking sticks, yodeling teddies and other Alpine gifts.
There is also some sense in Berchtesgaden that the new hotel and its guests will be as remote from the town as the Nazi elite. The sleek building with stone floors and enormous panoramic windows eschews Alpine decor in favor of feng shui and offers rooms from 189 euros ($250.6) a night.
by Michael Dalder - 2004
Hitler took over a Berchtesgaden suburb, the hilltop village of Obersalzberg, and exploited the area's simple way of life and picturesque beauty for Nazi propaganda.
Photos of Hitler in the Alps above Berchtesgaden showed a gentle, nature-loving Fuehrer - images that helped him seduce the nation.
They also sealed a terrible legacy for Berchtesgaden that the town and state of Bavaria are only now addressing with the permanent exhibit. Its photos, films, newspaper clippings and interactive computer databases aim to educate tourists and residents by showing the connection between propaganda from Obersalzberg and the Third Reich's crimes during World War II.
Eagle's Nest after intense allied bombing
The leader of Berlin's Jewish community, Andreas Nachama, praised the new exhibit, saying when he visited the area six years ago he was "strongly angered that there was no information -- only souvenirs."
After World War II and until 1995, U.S. military forces occupied Obersalzberg as a ski-and-golf resort. This, organizers and state officials maintain, is the only reason an exhibit was not put up sooner.
Until now, a complete picture of the local history has been hard to come by.
A visitor walks along a spooky tunnel in the almost 2 mile long bunker system in the Obersalzberg mountain in Berchtesgaden, Germany, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1999. (AP Photo/Diether Endlicher) Tourists can take buses up steep, hairpin turns to Hitler's mountaintop house, dubbed the "Eagle's Nest," one of the few Third Reich buildings that survived the war.
The way it used to look - Remains of the chalet windows where Hitler would often stand to overlook the Alps of Austria from Eagle's Nest
Once up there, after admiring the view and eating a snack, visitors can buy books and videotapes about how Hitler and the Nazis drove out Obersalzberg's local residents and turned the village into a seat of Third Reich government.
Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, had a house there, as did Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering. A luxury hotel for Third Reich bigwigs, once used by the American military, still stands. And underneath the whole complex stretches an intricate bunker network where Hitler and his aides planned to hide from the Allies.
It's the spin on this information that has raised concerns and fueled the drive for the new documentation center. While some tourist information in Obersalzberg mentioned the Holocaust, most didn't. Some material even veered toward the neo-Nazi, such as videotapes titled "Hitler: The Unknown Artist," and "He Was Our Boss."
The new center juxtaposes pictures of the war's horrors -- children being led to their deaths -- with idyllic snapshots of Hitler surrounded by laughing children.
Director Horst Moeller said putting the Nazi propaganda on exhibit will help people understand how Hitler was able to come to power.
And tourists who venture to the Eagle's Nest now have a place to go to for information on Hitler's activities in Obersalzberg.
Only history buffs have known exactly what to look for and they include the occasional Nazi devotee, such as the elderly man who comes every year from England to lay a wreath on Hitler's birthday -- or 68-year-old Reinhold Renz, from Stuttgart, who says he hikes to the Eagle's Nest every spring to pay homage.
February 27, 2002 - Salon.com
In the weeks leading up to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reichschancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, there was nothing inevitable about the Austrian corporal's ascension to power. Results of the 1932 November Reichstag elections were disappointing for his National Socialist Party, with the Nazis suffering losses in the German parliament while retaining about a third of the seats there.
Nazi coffers had been drained dry by the campaign. Hitler had endured significant defections from his movement and threatened suicide. Some Nazis began to wonder if he had the right stuff to be their Führer.
It was at this point that Hitler, falling back on his belief in the occult, called the most renowned clairvoyant in the land to his headquarters at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin for a private session. The man Hitler met with that day is the subject of a recent biography (the first in the English language), Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant, by Mel Gordon.
Hanussen, 43 at the time of the Hotel Kaiserdorf session, was a man whose name was synonymous with psychic phenomena in Central Europe. The Vienna-born con man/celebrity seer was known for predicting the future, casting prescient horoscopes and astounding audiences with his feats of hypnotism and mind reading. In Berlin, Hanussen was a rock star before there were rock stars, with a vast business enterprise trading on the voracious German hunger for all things paranormal.
Hitler became a Hanussenite when in March of 1932 the psychic's own weekly newspaper, Erik Jan Hanussen's Berliner Wochenschau, printed the startling prophecy that within one year's time the future Führer would become Reichschancellor. Most Berliners scoffed. For many, Hitler was a megalomaniacal clown.
But if the average Berliner thought Hanussen's prognostication absurd, Hitler certainly didn't. When Hanussen came to him that cold day in January, the Nazi leader was filled with dread anticipation, and kept the meeting secret should the results be negative. Hanussen placed Hitler on a seat in the middle of the room, examined his hands, counted the bumps on his head and sank into a mystical trance. The words he spoke filled the Führer with elation, says Gordon.
"I see victory for you," Hanussen said. "It cannot be stopped."
By the end of the month, Hitler had cut a deal with his enemies and become titular head of a coalition government. Hanussen's vision had given him hope in his hour of uncertainty. One can only wonder the intensity of his rage, if the raving anti-Semite had known at the time that the man he had adopted as his personal soothsayer, the chap nicknamed "the Prophet of the Third Reich," the decadent mystic who had just run his hands through his Aryan locks, was in fact ... a Jew. According to Gordon, a professor of theater arts at the University of California at Berkeley and author of such colorful tomes as "The Grand Guignol: The Theater of Horror and Terror," and "Voluptuous Panic: the Erotic World of Weimar Berlin," Hanussen started life as Hermann Steinschneider, with a birth certificate that read "Hebrew male." An unlikely beginning for one destined to become Hitler's favorite fortuneteller.
Gordon's complicated, fascinating tale is one familiar to many Germans, but completely unknown to Americans, save for some devotees of magic who regard Hanussen's name, acquired while his career was in its infancy, with a reverence second only to that of Harry Houdini's. Despite the 1988 film "Hanussen" by Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (starring Klaus Maria Brandauer in the strangely Aryanized title role), and a number of articles written in English by German émigrés in the 1930s and '40s, Americans have had almost no exposure to this bizarre tale of a Jew who played the part of psychic advisor to Hitler. No wonder the uninitiated roll their eyes when Gordon starts to talk about it.
"It's like saying, 'Hitler's favorite rabbi,' people are waiting for the punch line," confesses Gordon. "But it's not a joke. Hitler and Hanussen did meet about a dozen times between 1932 and 1933. Of course, if Hitler had known that Hanussen was Jewish, he would have disposed of him as fast as he could have. But it's not so much later that he was disposed of. After the Reichstag fire, everything changed."
The burning of the Reichstag on Feb. 27, 1933, for which German communists took the fall, paved the way for the consolidation of power in Hitler's hands and the suspension of all civil liberties. Eerily, the day before, Hanussen had predicted the event through a medium during the opening soiree of his newly minted pagan temple, the Palace of the Occult, a marble and gold-decked Taj Mahal of the black arts in Berlin decorated with astrological signs and religious statues.
There, in the presence of Nazi officials and assorted VIPs, the seer claimed to see a "great house" in flames during a séance in his sanctum sanctorum, the Room of Glass. Hours later, the Reichstag was engulfed in a mysterious conflagration. "The Reichstag fire is such a big story - the first mystery of WWII. It's still not resolved to this day," says Gordon, "sort of like a European Kennedy assassination question. Did Goebbels somehow have a communist patsy, Marinus van der Lubbe, ignite the Reichstag? Did the communists do it, or is there some other story? Something that started leaking out from the Nazi side from the very beginning was that Hanussen was responsible for it or had something to do with it."
Despite his Semitic origins, Hanussen had extremely close ties to the Nazi party, especially since his fateful augury that Hitler would somehow become Reichschancellor. He had lent hundreds of thousands of marks to high-ranking leaders of the Nazis, like Hermann Goering, and held IOUs from them. He had befriended Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, the sadistic, depraved commander of Berlin's SA, and referred to Hitler as "my pal Adolf." Certainly, Hanussen could have had inside information of a Reichstag plot. Or perhaps he was even more directly involved.
Gordon relates that some conspiracy theorists believe Hanussen may have hypnotized the fall guy van der Lubbe to do his bidding, either with or without the help of Nazi conspirators. As far-fetched as the possibility sounds, one suddenly sees how the presence of Hanussen in this story becomes an uncomfortable dilemma for historians. To dwell too much on Hanussen's involvement smacks of indirectly tainting the primary victims of the Holocaust with assisting in Hitler's takeover of Germany and, subsequently, their own destruction.
Perhaps this was the reason Istvan Szabo's cinematic treatment of the Hanussen tale conveniently omits Hanussen's Jewishness. And it could account for the dearth of information on Hanussen in English-language texts. However, Gordon, who is himself Jewish, asserts his belief that Hanussen somehow participated in a plot to set fire to the Reichstag.
There were other reasons why the Nazis wanted Hanussen dead. Goebbels and Goering both saw him as an interloper and a potential rival for the Führer's attentions, and there was the little matter of all those IOUs Hanussen had collected. Hanussen also, supposedly, had film footage of SA members involved in homosexual orgies.
But perhaps more than anything, it was his Jewishness that made him a liability. The communist press had long published reports that Hanussen was Jewish, but it wasn't until the Reichstag fire bequeathed totalitarian powers to the Nazis and allowed them to eliminate the communists as a threat that they had the time to focus on Hanussen's bloodline.
Hanussen's time was up, and he knew it. In a missive written in invisible ink, he informed a colleague, "I always thought that business about the Jews was just an election trick of theirs. It wasn't." On the morning of March 25, 1933, Hanussen was arrested by the SA and summarily executed. His lifeless body was left in a field on the outskirts of Berlin.
So ended Europe's greatest oracle since Nostradamus. But questions endure. For instance, why would any Jew, even an assimilated Jew, collaborate with a pack of power-mad racists filled with hatred for his people? Moreover, is there some possibility that Hanussen possessed a sixth sense that allowed him to correctly predict Hitler's rise and the Reichstag blaze while blinding him to the inevitable consequences of his own dalliance with the fascists?
"One fellow Jewish clairvoyant Fred Marion asked Hanussen if he was afraid that if the Nazis came to power they would kill him if they found out he was a Jew," says Gordon. "Hanussen told him it was a problem, but that he wanted to convince Hitler that there are good Jews like us who aren't communists or capitalists. A vain thought, but he believed Hitler just needed his friendship to learn that there were good people everywhere."
As for Hanussen's purported extrasensory perception, Gordon ascribes Hanussen's psychic home runs to an amazing perspicacity on the part of "the Prophet of the Third Reich," which evidently failed him when it came to foreseeing his own demise. For Gordon, Hanussen also represents the mania for the occult that swept Germany at this time, as well as the dilemma of assimilated Jews when faced with the virulent anti-Semitism of Nazism.
October 19, 1999 - The London Times
Hitler's obsession with the occult and astrology is well known - but evidence that his aerospace and rocket scientists were plundering alien technology to build Nazi UFOs has never gripped the public imagination.
Maurizio Verga's tantalising web pages reveal Werner von Braun and the Luftwaffe design teams could have been guided by extraterrestrials, perhaps looting interstellar components from a crashed spaceship.
Rumours of the Third Reich's underground bases first surfaced in the late Forties, coinciding with the birth of UFO sightings. America's Operation Paperclip was at full throttle, with the FBI smuggling Nazi war criminals into America to take advantage of their scientific expertise.
Former Nazis gave America the space race edge, and von Braun's career followed a smooth flightpath from pilotless V2 rockets to Apollo 11 and the first manned moon landing.
Verga believes the Luftwaffe developed a flying disc, in the classic saucer shape, which flew at Prague on February 14, 1945. His photographic evidence is almost certainly faked by Fifties sci-fi fans. Visit his site to enjoy the artist's impressions, which are a glorious delight. It may not be a coincidence that Americans began sighting flying saucers within three years of the alleged Prague test-flight and von Braun's escape to America.
Countless UFO reports of the early Eighties turned out to be sightings of America's Stealth Bombers. Is it possible that the US Air Force did develop Nazi technology to build a fleet of saucers 50 years ago, producng the first wave of Unidentified Flying Objects?
And if those spacecraft were for real, the chilling question remains: what are the menacing objects reported nightly in Nineties skies?
Hitler painted two small watercolor paintings while in Vienna in 1911 or 1912 when he was in his early 20s at the time, was dreaming of a career as an artist. Hitler is thought to have given the paintings showing Vienna street scenes to the Iranian ambassador to Germany. Iran was sympathetic to Germany during World War II.
This pictures shows a street in one of the older districts of Vienna thronged with people dressed in 18th and 19th century costumes - one of them bearing a curious resemblance to the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.
This painting depicts the old Rotunda building in Vienna, which was used for an international hall at the end of the 19th century. It no longer exists. These paintings became collectors items at the height of his power. They have been found again in a cellar in Iran - July 1999.
Walter Stein, a native of Venice and an British intelligence agent, spent many years studying the occult in Germany during the 1920s and 30s. There he became well acquainted with a fellow student of the arcane arts, Adolph Hitler. Stein followed Hitler's occult involvement very closely, schooled himself from the same texts. Hence, Stein became the world's foremost authority on Nazi Occult activity outside of the party itself.
Stein soon became frantic over developments in Germany. Hitler's rise to power coincided directly with his initiation into The Secret Doctrine, a gathering of the most elite and powerful Mages in the world. Further, the core of the Nazi party leadership w as dominated bypowerful occultists. Stein realized that although they had studied occultism together, Hitler had traveled down the shadowed path of dark magic. Stein knew that Hitler's admission into The Doctrine could be disastrous for all those who oppo sed him. With this power and a cadre of dark mystics, Nazi Germany had a secret weapon the Allied forces would be ill-prepared to meet.
The Nazi mystics sensed Walter Stein's presence, and in 1933 he fled to England, narrowly escaping forced service into Germany's Nazi Occult Bureau. Upon arriving in England, Stein warned Winston Churchill of the impending danger posed by Hitler's indoctr ination. It was clear that action must be taken to either quell Nazi progress in matters Arcane or find a way to match it. Stein had further grim news, however. Stein had uncovered evidence while spying on the Nazis that Hitler's English intelligence netw ork was alarmingly extensive There was little chance of an English counter-occult program remaining hidden from Nazi spies. Churchill had no choice but to contact President Roosevelt and ask the Americans for help. Churchill arranged a meeting between the crippled President and Stein.
Roosevelt was skeptical, but decided to leave no stone unturned in his efforts to defeat the Nazis. Less than a week after Walter Stein's meeting with Roosevelt, one of the President's most trusted advisors was placed at his disposal. Stein was charged wi th the creation of an organization whose purpose was to monitor and analyze Nazi Occult activity. Most importantly, the group was to devise counter-measures in the event that mundane firepower alone could not stop Hitler. This group became known among it's participants as The Watch. The Watch was an eclectic collection of individuals whose only common thread was power and influence. Stein was the group's unofficial leader. Roosevelt's advisor acted as the president's proxy. Eleven other members brought the total to thirteen. Most of the original thirteen were high-ranking Military Intelligence officers or scientists, the most notable exceptio ns being a Catholic Arch bishop and a powerful and respected U.S. Senator. FDR kept the existence of The Watch completely secret, even from the American government and military, to avoid the inevitable public backlash in the event that government-sanction ed occult research ever be uncovered.
Despite the doubts of President Roosevelt, over the next decade the Watch was consistently and horrifyingly successful. Only Stein was unshaken by discoveries that threatened the sanity of the other members of The Watch. The conspirators used their authority and positions to fund and conduct research into the occult, gradually expa nding to all areas of paranormal and psychic investigation. The accomplishments of The Watch's occult and psychic research allowed them to undertake several successful missions that kept the Axis occult power in check. The Watch's wartime operations inclu ded the assassination, by both mundane and arcane means, of several leading Nazi occultists and the recovery of certain artifacts of mystical significance, including the famed Spear of Destiny. By 1945, The Watch had become extremely powerful organization , and yet remained completely hidden from the world.
The end of the World War II was in large part due to the success of The Watch's endeavors in destroying Nazi occult power. That ultimate success also meant the loss of the primary impetus for the Watch's activities. As usual with any powerful and motivate d group, however, The Watch soon found another Focus. From the debriefing of Axis scientists and review of German military records, the conspirators learned that accounts by Allied airmen of mysterious German experimental aircraft, dubbed Foo Fighters, were erroneous. Axis command records revealed that Luftwaffe pilots reported identical craft, and assumed them to be Allied experimental aircraft. This evidence, coupled with similar reports uncovered from accounts during World War I and earlier, convince d the Watch that the phenomena of Unidentified Flying Objects deserved attention and investigation. While continuing its occult and parapyschology research, The Watch redirected a large part of its manpower and resources toward the study of UFOs and their possible source. It would not have long to wait for answers. By 1947, UFO sightings had become more frequent. The U. S. government and military decided to institute new programs todiscretely investigate these strange phenomenon. Monitoring these investigations, unseen, was The Watch.
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