When the flying saucers appeared in American newspapers in late June 1947,
they were the by-product of many converging elements: media sensationalism,
Cold War fears of Russian intruders, an overwhelming fascination with the
technological breakthroughs of the Second World War, and a widespread belief
that Nazi science had achieved almost magical results.
Especially since 1944, press readers had been exposed for years to the idea
of Nazi super-technologies going beyond the imagination of the ordinary man.
The shock of the atomic bomb in August 1945 made people ready to believe
any further technological wonder — and to doubt what their governments
were telling them.
Flying saucers were the ideal mystery. Nobody knew what they really were.
The idea that they could be a product of the same Nazi super-science that
had supposedly produced foo-fighters and wonder weapons was irresistible —
and far more attractive than the emerging hypothesis that they might be
interplanetary.
This volume reconstructs the earliest phase: from the end of the war
through the early 1950s, when a series of self-proclaimed inventors,
boasters, and opportunists — from Giuseppe Belluzzo to Rudolf Schriever,
from Lino Saglioni to Georg Sautier — stepped forward with their
improbable stories of German disc-shaped aircraft.
Each story is traced to its source. Newspaper articles, patent filings,
personal correspondence, and government records are assembled and
cross-referenced, showing how thin the evidentiary basis always was —
and how eagerly the press amplified it. The result is the first
genuinely documented account of how this modern myth was born.
"The saucers were an excellent chance to show up with a great story,
exploiting two mysteries simultaneously: the flying saucers and the
secret fantasized Nazi super-science."
