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4: Germany's UFO files
293 Plays1 year ago
I am joined by Andreas Müller, a well-known and highly respected researcher and journalist, to discuss Germany’s UFO files. The epicentre of the Cold War for more than 40 years, Germany provides a historically complex and rather unique example of government involvement with UFOS.
In this episode you will learn about:
- The current media and government attitude towards UFOs in Germany
- The UFO file of the German intelligence service (BND) documenting different types of UFOs
- The documentation of UFOs in the GDR
- How the geopolitical situation of the Cold War may have influenced Germany’s documentation of UFOs
Amazon com link to Andreas Müller’s book on Germany’s UFO files (discussed in this episode): https://www.amazon.com/Deutschlands-UFO-Akten-politischen-UFO-Ph%C3%A4nomen-Betrachtungen/dp/3754306804/ref=sr_1_1?crid=102W9UHD4IAB9&keywords=andreas+M%C3%BCller%2C+deutschlands+ufo+akten&qid=1690037489&sprefix=andreas+m%C3%BCller%2C+deutschlands+ufo+akten%2Caps%2C168&sr=8-1
Amazon de link to Andreas Müller’s new book on Germany’s historical UFO files: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/3757806867/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
Andreas Müller’s news website on anomalous phenomena: https://www.grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de/
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 4: European UFOs
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode number four of European UFOs. I'm your host Sebastian and if you like this episode and please make sure to subscribe and leave a review, it really helps.
Public Interest and Government Declassification
00:00:27
Speaker
Evidence for UFOs comes in many forms of which official government documents are undoubtedly one of the most intriguing ones. For many years now, and in many different countries, private researchers have uncovered a plethora of files showing, unarkably, that there is not only a public but also government interest in UFOs.
00:00:47
Speaker
In recent years, and due to public demand, some governments have declassified at least some of their UFO files. Yet more dramatic developments may be on the horizon. As this episode is being recorded, the US is in the process of preparing the necessary legal steps to declassify government UFO records as required if ratified by the so-called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023.
00:01:16
Speaker
In recent years, the UK has declassified numerous files, including drawings, letters and photos documenting UFO activity.
Germany's Historical UFO Involvement
00:01:25
Speaker
In this episode, we take a closer look if similar developments can be noted for Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany. The episode of the Cold War for more than 40 years, Germany provides a historically complex and rather unique example of government involvement with UFOs.
00:01:43
Speaker
Here with me to discuss Germany's UFO files is Andreas Müller, a well-known and highly respected researcher and journalist who's recently investigated the history of official UFO documentation in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
00:02:00
Speaker
Hi, Andreas. Really great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today? Thanks a lot. Very good. And I'm looking forward because I've experienced your podcast just recently and very much like it. So yeah, I'm looking forward to a nice chat.
00:02:16
Speaker
Excellent. Well, I've been following Grends-Wissenschaft-Nagtuel for several years now, and I've to really admit one of my favorite treats is in the morning to have a coffee and go through Grends-Wissenschaft-Nagtuel.
Andreas Müller's Research Journey
00:02:32
Speaker
And yeah, for our audience, could you perhaps briefly tell them what Grends-Wissenschaft-Nagtuel is, because it also leads into your background in general?
00:02:43
Speaker
Okay, well, the Grand System Shaft Minus Act 12.TE is my portal. It's a news portal about all sorts of the animalistic phenomena and frontiers in science. That's the tradition I see myself in. I want to give all this wide spectrum of
00:03:05
Speaker
what people generally refer to as paranormal phenomena, a serious and science-based platform which was not available, at least not in Germany, before I started that.
00:03:26
Speaker
I cover quite a range of topics. Of course, UFOs or UAPs is one of the main topics, but I also cover typical parapsychological stuff, hound things, ghosts, cryptozoology. But of course, I'm not reporting about, let's say, the newest YouTube video of
00:03:48
Speaker
something, but I cover studies, papers, events and current developments. But I'm fascinated about the phenomena. I also
00:04:04
Speaker
can admit that I, if you will, believe in the possibilities of many of them, but I'm always open and also skeptical, but skeptical as far as I see in a positive way, interested and open-minded into those topics and into the possibilities that there could be something really going on.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, and what I really appreciate both about your website and also your recent research, which we're going to talk about today, is your focus on scientific rigor and that you don't just throw things out there, but you actually check them. And I think in the field of
00:04:51
Speaker
UAP and UFOs, unfortunately, especially online, that doesn't happen a lot. So I think it's a really good resource. So yeah, sorry, as he said, it's really good to check out your site. I can only take this as a compliment. Thanks a lot.
00:05:10
Speaker
But how did you get involved with this field of anomalous phenomena? Was this just something that always interested you? So could you tell us a bit about your background? What got you involved with this?
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah actually as many of us it started when i was not a kid but the youngster and i had my grandfather gave me some books on very popular books on unsolved mysteries and yeah it was summaries of the most prominent cases of all sorts houndings ufos.
Crop Circle Investigations
00:05:51
Speaker
Loch Ness, Monster, and things like this. I always liked those stories, but I always was most fascinated by those phenomena that were kind of tangible. I was spooked by ghosts, but not so much fascinated by ghosts.
00:06:12
Speaker
So I liked UFOs and cryptozoology because I always thought, okay, that is something that in best case could really be studied as a body or a craft or whatever. And so when I was on the Waldorf school and on the Waldorf school in the 12th class, you do what's called a one-year work.
00:06:35
Speaker
You decide the topic on your own and you have to find a mentor out from the from the from the teachers and I wanted to cover the topic of UFOs but even on the well-off school there was a math teacher and a physics teacher and they didn't appreciate the topic they said you cannot cover this objectively and there is no real sources and whatever and of course they had
00:07:00
Speaker
they had no idea about the topic themselves. But by reading about UFOs, when I was a youngster, I also happened to have read stories about these landing sites, which later were referred to as crop circles. And then I said, okay, this is a topic, if you believe in it or not, but crop circles are there, so you can go and visit them, study them, measure them, whatever.
00:07:27
Speaker
And so that was in 1994 when I went for the school project to England to see and investigate crop circles myself. And I said, I would say about myself that I have a quite scientific-based inquisitive mind. And I thought that if I would see only things that are easily to be explained with boys with boards and farmers and pranksters doing it,
00:07:56
Speaker
would be a nice summer holiday but no reason for me to return and it developed completely differently after that. That was the first of more than 30 summers in the British fields because even on this first occasion I experienced things, I've seen things, I've learned things from for example farmers who told me that the crop sucker phenomenon is much older than I ever read somewhere in newspapers or even in the
00:08:22
Speaker
then contemporary literature about it. And so, yeah, I saw strange stuff myself. And so I soon became one of the very focused crop circle researchers for quite some while. And I worked together with laboratories and universities to investigate crop circles. And in 2000,
00:08:54
Speaker
museum exhibition in a proper nature scientific museum, which is the Wiltshire Museum in Wiltshire, about the history and the research into the crop circle phenomenon. And so this was when I learned from the beginning on that what I read, for example, in newspapers or even in some books about crop circles that try to explain everything with asset, boys with boards,
00:09:14
Speaker
In 2014, I created the very first
00:09:21
Speaker
and that this was not the whole story and that there was good scientific work done already on the topic and so I thought this is interesting to see that there is a gap between what you can read in popular literature about it and you can see on television and anything where they claim everything is man-made and a big fun and the facts that you can actually study in the field
00:09:49
Speaker
And so early on, I started to write about it as a journalist. I soon wrote also for, in Germany, for quite respected journals, like the Gail magazine. I think it was the first to place the crop circle article in Gail magazine, even if it's not peer reviewed. So not a scientific journal, but it is
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, it was very hard. It was like a little peer review to get that article placed in GEO and things like that. And so then I worked for a platform like mine, like transmission shaft up to L that I have now. And that platform went down and there was this time when I had to decide, okay,
00:10:36
Speaker
Will I continue to do this work? Because actually, we already had a lot of readers. And so that was, it was not the same as Grant Wissenschaft, Dr. L, but similar. And so in 2007, I decided to take it on, on my own. Yeah, and since then, I'm doing that. I still have an interest in crop circles, not so much as in the past.
00:11:02
Speaker
And then with Kranzgeschaff, Dr. L, I also covered quite extensively international development in ufology and in UFO matters.
UAPs and Political Impact
00:11:13
Speaker
And even before 2017, I realized that there is a development going on in the States. And especially, of course, with the, we all know the
00:11:24
Speaker
New York Times article, things dramatically changed. And I kind of foresaw it that there will be many questions to be answered in the near future. And I asked myself, what is a journalist, unlike me, a journalist who has no idea about UFOs or even the normal
00:11:44
Speaker
normal reader, what are they doing in Germany if they want to find out about German UFO files and the political approach towards the topic. And of course there were some articles, there was also great work has been done by others who sent in inquiries to some ministries and stuff like this before that, but there was no compilation of what
00:12:09
Speaker
was already known and what was still unknown because in 2000, and I think it was also 14 or so, I, for example, discovered myself with the help of Dr. Ralph Bullough, a whole
00:12:31
Speaker
Until then completely unknown file of the german intelligence service bnd, about your photos on the in a german border and so yeah i am from that on i realize there's no,
00:12:49
Speaker
no real proper book on that topic and no good book with source reference and everything and then I decided to write it myself. Excellent. Well, thanks for the serve of you.
00:13:04
Speaker
So normally at this point, I would probably ask you to go into the chronology of the UFO files and your research and what you discovered. However, we live in really exciting and kind of, you know, ontology shattering times. So
00:13:22
Speaker
Could you perhaps as a journalist and as a professional researcher give our audience a flavor of what the current view both in the public and also perhaps from a more official point of view in Germany is towards the UAP phenomenon? Because with David Rush, et cetera, coming forward now, what's the attitude?
00:13:48
Speaker
Unfortunately, the attitude has not changed dramatically here in Germany, at least not from an official point of view. The ministries still claim that they are not interested in it. The government claims, as it does since decades, that there is no real interest in it.
00:14:08
Speaker
Even if I place, of course, on a regular basis, I place inquiries to our Department of Defense and things like that. And I ask specific questions about the developments that we mainly see in the United States, and I always ask
00:14:28
Speaker
things like did, for example, German authorities participate in international meetings that the AARO had with the Five Eyes or Five Eyes Plus, which is this intelligence club, so to say, from the United States and other countries, or if they participate, or if they are some of the
00:14:56
Speaker
many times mentioned international partners of the United States, inquiries of AARO and things like this. And there's always a kind of a null or zero reply, which they normally they try to say, oh, we are not commenting on developments and actions of other states or other parties.
00:15:18
Speaker
And if I explain to them, well, I was not asking you to give a comment on other countries. I asked you about your position or your reaction or your plans to deal about it. And they say, oh, yeah. They give you answers like, well, of course, we are constantly talking with our international partners, but we cannot go into specifics.
00:15:46
Speaker
It's very unfortunate because in my book it has more than 450 pages. I completely show that the opposite is the case that German governments and ministries and the military have always been interested in UFOs or UAPs for whatever reason. They were never hunting aliens or never hunting the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but there were military and intelligence
00:16:15
Speaker
and espionage reasons for, for example, building up these UFO files of the BND, the German Intelligence Service, towards the Soviet Union and the German democratic republic.
00:16:31
Speaker
And within those cases, I'm sure we will talk about it later, there are also very interesting and still unresolved UFO cases. I mean UFO cases which are also interested from our perspective. But still, at the moment, we have no official body like the French do with Japan.
00:16:55
Speaker
or with AARO in the United States and many other countries had. And we also never had a proper UFO project. We had smaller projects like this file of the BND or some ministries were interested in the international development. And in general, there is also the claim or the statement by our government and military
00:17:22
Speaker
that the German military never had detected an object or a phenomena that they were not later unable to explain. Which is of course another big topic of discussion because there are actually reasons for that being very likely true. But I think we also talk about this later.
German Media and Government Stance on UFOs
00:17:48
Speaker
So they are not lying.
00:17:50
Speaker
But the circumstances are created in such a way that they never will detect an unidentified aerial phenomena as long as they do not change their settings of the radar systems, which they, unlike the United States, for example, with the Chinese balloons, Germany never did. So they didn't change their radar systems.
00:18:15
Speaker
I personally think there's no conspiracy going on in Germany.
00:18:21
Speaker
I think literally there is no real interest in it. I have very good context to government sources and military. For my book, I interviewed a lot of them, and it was always very good and fair and open and equal conversation and very open.
00:18:48
Speaker
had become used to the idea that here in Germany, the military and politics are not aware of the consequences that a real UFO phenomenon has for politics, military technology, and society in general.
00:19:11
Speaker
Even if you show them very good cases here from Germany that happen close to an airport, they do not see the consequences such things do have on flight security. This is where you can start if they do not understand the scientific interest.
00:19:27
Speaker
You can show them these cases and say if you do not know what that was, that was a real threat for air security, for flight, for business flights, for whatever. But even this, the awareness is not as present as in the United States.
00:19:46
Speaker
And yeah, they at the moment, I think they try to observe and they hope that the situation will not be like in the United States where the topic is now. I mean, it can't become
00:20:04
Speaker
It can't get to a higher level as we are at the moment with the Schumer initiative. This stuff sits on the desk of the President of the United States now. So how can you dare to say this is the stuff for freaks and cooks?
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, your book is full of your requests to German officials and I was found that, you know, I admire your stamina because I think after, you know, the 10th generic lawyer like message like, oh, there might be something but actually we can't really comment on it or we will not comment on it.
00:20:48
Speaker
You know, in the most kind of lawyer-like, boring, you know, way of saying things and actually not saying things, I think that would really frustrate me. So, well done on, you know, kind of following this up. Well, to be honest, you know, I think the secret is that I always try not to be an oppressing and an annoying
00:21:16
Speaker
partner in communication. Even we have very clear communication about when I got the last zero reply or null reply. I frankly wrote back and I said, listen, the thing is, this is not the real communication that we have here. It's not honest. It's not open.
00:21:44
Speaker
what you're doing, maybe you don't see it, but what you're doing, you're feeding conspirational thinking or narratives. And none of us, not me nor you, have any interest that conspirational narratives take over. So by maybe for next time, you
00:22:09
Speaker
He would be very nice if you think about a more decent answer. Even if the answer would be a clear no, we have no interest in it. Even if the United States do this and that, we see it different.
00:22:27
Speaker
an answer, even of course not an answer that I would be very happy with and that I would understand from content-wise, but it would be an answer. And this other stuff, as I said, I don't know if this is an English expression, but it's a null answer and it creates more
00:22:50
Speaker
conspiracy ideas of, oh, yeah, they are not telling us anything. And this is so unnecessarily, you know, they do this. These answers create this conspirational narrative without any cause.
00:23:04
Speaker
There's no reason for it to do so. I never expected the spokesperson of the German military to tell me Germany's biggest military secrets behind closed doors or off the record. That's not the intention. It's of course also a question of
00:23:28
Speaker
trying to bring awareness to politicians. And I'm also part of IFACS, the Institute at the University of Würzburg, led by Professor Haakan Kajal. And he tries to make IFACS the kind of German Japan, so a kind of an official
00:23:49
Speaker
place where, for example, the police could report the UFO sightings or military or whatever. And so there are contacts into the politics and with politicians. But in many instances, one realizes, okay, they
00:24:09
Speaker
they really do not see the need at the moment. They do not see that Germany gets behind the United States when it comes to these things, and not only on all levels, military-wise, science-wise, everything. That's unfortunate, and again, it's totally unnecessarily. Even if you do not believe in Asians,
00:24:35
Speaker
What about the public? Because I believe that if enough individuals from the public come forward, it could trigger an avalanche and there will have to be some sort of formal statement. So what is the cultural flavour of this topic in Germany in the context of what's currently going on in the States?
00:25:00
Speaker
I mean, as in so many countries with the 2017 report in the New York Times, things have dramatically changed also here in the way that the big medias are covering the topic.
00:25:19
Speaker
where, for example, the magazine their speaker for decades was only able to report about UFO developments with giggling and with jokes made even when the British
00:25:36
Speaker
published their UFO records officially through their National Archives. These were hundreds and thousands of cases. The Spiegel selected the most ridiculous cases that were, of course, also embedded in these archives. For example, a guy who claimed that his dog was abducted by aliens, and when he came back, he was just meowing like a cat.
00:26:00
Speaker
I mean, it's ridiculous. And there were cases embedded in these files from pilot sightings and radar trackings or whatever. But that was the stuff that the speaker was concentrating on. And even the speaker turned around and did a real good, even a cover story where they very seriously covered, for example, Hakan Khayyal, the professor from Wurzburg University,
00:26:28
Speaker
and other international UFO scientists and researchers and developments with all these tic-tac and go fast and gimbal videos. So we observe a change. Even the most popular science reporters from our state television, I mean, it's not really state television, but it's
00:26:54
Speaker
It's not private television. So like the BBC, we have here the RID and the ZDF. Even those guys who were the biggest UFO skeptics on the planet, or at least in Germany for decades, are now reporting relatively open and trying to be as neutral as possible on the UAP developments.
00:27:21
Speaker
So this has changed and of course with that also the public awareness changed. There still is a thing like, there are still some people who smile at you when they hear, oh, you wrote a book on UFOs, German UFO files, does this exist at all? And how funny and stuff, but those are now in the minority. So I think it would be time also here and very,
00:27:49
Speaker
But the public demand is not that big as it is in the United States, and the political pressure is also even less strong, so that we have very few politicians who are, so to say, pushing the topic into the parliament, for example. There's very little movement at the moment.
00:28:12
Speaker
Also, this will change because what we are actually observing, at least in my point of view at the moment in the United States, the question about handling the UAP topic, whatever you believe the UAPs are, that's not the question, but handling the UAP topic.
00:28:31
Speaker
will very likely become a big issue for the next elections in the United States. And I think with all the trouble that Biden administration has at the moment, very low
00:28:50
Speaker
Acceptance rates and everything he is at the moment because he is the current president so he. What is the English expression for it he sits on the longer end now what is it so he is he's in the in the position to be active and to do things.
00:29:09
Speaker
to become more openly open with UAPs or UFOs. So this could be the Joker that he has for the next election. He could be the one to change things.
00:29:27
Speaker
I think this is not only an idea that I make up. With the Schumer Amendment, this has become a serious political issue. It cannot get bigger. In Germany,
00:29:42
Speaker
You know, what I hear many times when I try to speak with politicians or with spokespeople from ministry or military, they say things like, well, at the moment we have other issues referring, of course, to the unfortunate situation in the Ukraine. Others say climate change, whatever. But this can't be a reason for not to dealing with this important topic because we are dealing
00:30:10
Speaker
Even after nights of new attacks from Russia to the Ukraine, there are other stuff that we do and also other important stuff. It can't be the excuse for everything.
00:30:28
Speaker
It was corona, now it's Ukraine. There will be other unfortunate situations and crises in the future. We need to get over this argument over the other topics at the moment. I think the legacy media have really failed all of us.
00:30:49
Speaker
over the last few weeks when the David Grush story came out. I mean, it's really quite appalling and it's a different topic, but I cannot fathom that this story and also the recent developments and also the hearings next week aren't properly being reported.
00:31:07
Speaker
by legacy media. I mean, it is an insane situation. And I would also concur that whatever is going to happen in Germany or in Europe for that matter will largely hinge on the situation in the US. I think they need to be the forerunner, but it has to be a dual approach coming both probably from the government and from the media. And as I said, I think it's really, really sad that the media
00:31:34
Speaker
is refraining from engaging with this. The only possible excuse I could come up with is that they're lacking the language or basic understanding to engaging with this for them, probably a new problem, but then come on, they're journalists. There's a great story there to be grabbed, they just need to do it.
00:31:58
Speaker
I'm in contact with some very high-ranking journalists from big medias like newspaper and outlets here in Germany. Of course, I will not name those, but
00:32:16
Speaker
You're right, it is a bit ridiculous because what I hear, and not only from one, when I approach them and I tell them about very current situation and development in the States, they say, yeah, we heard or our editors, we heard about it, so we are aware about it, but we want to wait and see how it develops.
00:32:39
Speaker
First, this sounds reasonable, but no, it isn't. This is waiting until something develops. It's not journalism. Journalism happens before that. Journalists are the ones to investigate, maybe to even expose things, to find things out, to run stories. It doesn't mean that you have to be always the fastest
00:33:07
Speaker
that is counter-productive from a quality point of view, but saying, we are aware of the grush story and the allegations, but we want to wait and see. To be honest, this is not journalism.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah get the guy do an interview with him check his background and everything that's what journalism is and if you find out what so far what we know about david crush you what you need to say okay we need to run the story.
00:33:40
Speaker
But to be fair, after some days, in one or the other case a week or so, many outlets also here in Germany covered the story or the Schumann Initiative and things like this. So it's not like it was in the past that nothing happens here.
00:33:59
Speaker
And I have to admit, even if this is not my quality paper, but the biggest newspaper in Germany, the Bildzeitung, is doing actually, in most cases, a good job reporting about your piece and UFO developments. Of course, some headlines would not be my headline, but that's the Bildzeitung.
00:34:21
Speaker
But the content, especially one journalist, Matthias Bieder, he is very much into the topic and he writes good stuff. It's well-investigated, even if you're... I mean, people hate it, people love it, people... Most people say they don't read it, strange enough, everybody knows about the Spitz item stories.
00:34:46
Speaker
So, they are not a bad example. Of course, BILT is not the Frankfurter, Algemeine, or the Fertz, or whatever, the Neue zu Richard Zeitung. It would be nice to have them as well covering the topic as decent. Yeah, just in brackets for an international audience, so the exciting is like a tabloid.
00:35:11
Speaker
newspaper comparable to, for instance, The Sun or The Mirror in the UK, just to throw in a few names to a certain degree. Yeah, of course. Great work on investigating, actually, and what is good investigating brings us neatly to your book, German UFO files.
Challenges in Accessing German UFO Files
00:35:33
Speaker
So could you provide a bit of context from crop circles to this? How did this project emerge?
00:35:41
Speaker
Well, to be honest, with doing scientific crop circle research for nearly 30 years, there was a little bit of time of change for me. It's a too big topic now, but also the crop circle situation changed a little bit, and so other stuff became more interesting for me.
00:36:06
Speaker
And of course, my journalistic work with Kranz Wissenschaft back to El with my website gave me a wide insight and many contacts into also other fields. And yeah, as I explained already, when I realized there was no compilation about the
00:36:25
Speaker
about germanufo files and many articles that i have read okay there are no germanufo files or very little files that are not important and no good cases or anything and i realized this was not true.
00:36:44
Speaker
And then I decided to write the book on my own. And I never wanted to write a book that has already been written. I do not want to duplicate other stuff. So I was looking for a way to present the files. But also within the files, sometimes this file reporting is, of course, this is intrinsic. It is a bit dry, so to say. And I also put into the book some of the best
00:37:12
Speaker
cases from sources which are maybe where there is not an official file. But for example, I witness that in their own profession have some sort of official
00:37:28
Speaker
reputation like the like the like the chief pilot the first chief pilot of the Luftdeutsche Lufthansa airline Wernher Utter or even our most famous poet Goethe who had this strange experience and Goethe was not only a poet but he was also a states person you know a politician and so his his
00:37:53
Speaker
There is no file on his observation, but I thought it would be nice to include this as well for the easy reading. And yes, so I also wanted to write a book that I say this sometimes more or less as a joke. I want to write a book that you do not have to hide when there are visitors, when your mother-in-law comes and whatever. So you can leave it on the... Which potentially is never a good situation.
00:38:22
Speaker
In my case, it's a very good situation because I have a very good relationship with my parents-in-law. Actually, they helped me investigating because they both are historians. This is what I wanted to have, a very source-referenced file that
00:38:45
Speaker
that you look through, and even as a sceptic, you cannot say, oh, what is this? And I don't believe this. Then I say, OK, look, look, the source. And he comes to the to the German National Archive, to the to the Bundesliga, which is a good source. You know, it's a scientific and credible source. And the BND is even more credible, if you will.
00:39:09
Speaker
So how did you go about getting the information? So was there a FOIA process that was an archival work? How did you get the information? A kind of mix of everything. I mean, we have the equivalent of the FOIA of the Freedom of Information Act in Germany as well. But it is not as easy accessible as, for example, in the United States, where you can
00:39:38
Speaker
I mean, this is now, of course, the very simplified version, but you can say, please send me everything you have about UAPs written by this or that ministry or department in the timeframe of this and that, or each public communication by email where the phrase UAP appears. This is something that you can do in the United States, and it's amazingly efficient.
00:40:06
Speaker
You know, John Greenwald of the Black World Project, he gets amazing results. This is not the way the German FOIA works, unfortunately. You need to know what you are looking for. So that is a problem if you want to look for files that you do not know if they even exist. So, of course, the first thing is you look in there
00:40:33
Speaker
in the list of content for the most obvious phrases and hitting words. No, that's not the... So for phrases like UFOs or unidentified aerial object, flying object, nominal flying disc, etc. And this is how, for example, my colleague,
00:41:00
Speaker
Dr. Ralph Bullough discovered that there was this file of the German intelligence service BND. There was still a mark on the file that it was not possible to read it until 2022, but no, 21.
00:41:27
Speaker
I was already aware that it does exist, and then I tried to start an opening process even before that 30 years time when it's still classified, and I was able to read into it. In other cases, it is like, for example, I not only covered Germany, I also cover Austria and Switzerland.
00:41:53
Speaker
In Switzerland, it's funny, this was not my work, but work by other researchers that the UFO files were not even listed as UFO files and not under UFO or flying disc or whatever, any words, but you couldn't make that up. You had to search for the term flying plates, so fleeing the teller.
00:42:16
Speaker
which maybe is a swiss thing but no one would have ever looked for that and so it was a fortunate discovery and so and then a whole a whole batch of files was discovered and sometimes it simply is luck or we have the very the very first
00:42:35
Speaker
German officials, so to say, UFO file from 1826, is a local file from local politicians. And this is here where it actually happened in Zabrookan. And this is just where I live. So sometimes it simply is a luck. And then you have, of course, a nice opportunity to search for the original.
00:42:59
Speaker
And yeah, so it's a hunt and it's going through archives and listings and yeah. Yeah, it's way more complicated than in the U.S. from what I can tell. So are these archives, are they already digitized? So can you search a database or is it really that you have to kind of, you know, just by search?
00:43:27
Speaker
You can search databases in most cases. It's not necessarily so that they have everything digitized. This is the other question you sometimes are left with. Is this really everything that they have? Sometimes there are files that are wrongly
00:43:45
Speaker
placed on the wrong names, for example, not with intention, but just because sometimes somebody just brought them back and didn't return them properly, things like that. But you have a lot of digitized content that you can search.
00:44:02
Speaker
And sometimes it's just research. You talk to people and they refer you to something and so it's the good old detective stories. Excellent. You've already mentioned it quite a few times and by that we're jumping chronologically a bit ahead, but I think the
00:44:24
Speaker
BND UFO file is really worth exploring a bit more in detail. Could you give us a brief overview of what it contains and what its significance is? This is a file that's called UFO, an unidentified flying object over the inner German border, which was of course the border between East and West Germany.
00:44:51
Speaker
And the whole file was compiled in the 80s. And with the intention from Western Germany to observe activities on the inner German border and in East Germany, which was of course, at the end, the Soviets.
00:45:12
Speaker
So this whole file was not created with the intention of investigating possible extraterrestrial life. It was similar to the situation we have now in the States, where UIPs are regarded as a potential threat for national security or a military or an intelligence interest.
00:45:38
Speaker
and less than from a scientific point of view. So most of this file, let's again say these 95% which have no specific number for it, but literally most of the described cases describe
00:46:00
Speaker
something that not only I, but everybody would be able to see, okay, this was really a balloon with a camera on it, or with a espionage device, or it was even contemporary drones, which are not the quad or hexocopters of our time, the little ones, so real ballistic drones, they looked like rockets and ballistics.
00:46:25
Speaker
And it's amazing to go through this military history also, how heavy all that stuff was at that time, and expensive and loud. And when they crashed, they had to be recovered and everything. So, yeah, literally, most of the cases are, especially from our perspective now, something like 30 years later,
00:46:54
Speaker
we are very easily able to explain most of the cases very rational.
00:47:01
Speaker
But as it always is, there are also cases within that are left unexplained because of a lack in information and data about it. And so they have this vague, mysterious taste to it. But there's one special case, which is, I think, finally, it is also happened to be one of Germany's most important because best documented
00:47:29
Speaker
Your observations, unfortunately, we have no footage or photo images of the object, but it's very well documented for several reasons, which was an observation on the Isle of Feynman in 1986, where three and finally also a fourth officers of the border control observed
00:47:55
Speaker
this strange object, which was that bright that it was nearly blinding them, just coming from the sea. It's in the Baltic Sea, this island, and coming from the sea and approached the ferry station there and the police station, and it hovered something like 50 meters above them. It was
00:48:19
Speaker
not totally silent, but there was just like a humming sound. I found that really intriguing because it kind of relates to a lot of other UFO cases. I'm familiar with this kind of low buzzing humming sound. Very interesting.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah and so they observed it and so and then finally it departed back over the sea and disappeared and if you if you I mean we could talk about this for hours but if you look into all the circumstances from my point of view and I also contacted military experts in technology
00:48:56
Speaker
There's nothing that you could compare it to what was used at that time. The only thing would have been a kind of an airship or zeppelin. But then again, you would have to explain where the energy would have come from. Because this thing itself was so bright that the witnesses were unable to make out a specific shape of the object.
00:49:25
Speaker
And so this was simply not the technology of that time. I was just able to interview one of the witnesses that I found more or less by chance because I was on German television and he saw it and he
00:49:45
Speaker
call me up and then I finally was able to speak to several of the direct witnesses and he said the sound that this object made is as best to be compared to today's electric cars.
00:50:04
Speaker
you know, when the Tesla or whatever starts, there is this strange... So this was what he said, this is what comes closest to everything that he knows from other motors. And especially it was of course not a helicopter. But even more so,
00:50:31
Speaker
It was even more so of interest was that on the very same day, oh yeah, sorry, but I need to explain this. Of course, there were investigations have been done at the time for nearby radar stations and other military installations. And there was simply no explanation for anything approaching Fehman Island at that time.
00:51:01
Speaker
Then, on the very same day, by chance, something like less than 300 kilometers away, there was an incursion of a Soviet helicopter into West Germany territory. About this event, where we know the object, where we know when it happened,
00:51:21
Speaker
There's also a whole file, not in this UFO file, but in another BND file that I discovered. And we know everything about this helicopter incursion. It was a big political issue at that time. We know that the way it took
00:51:39
Speaker
We know when it entered German territory, when it left Western German territory, and so we know everything. And as I said, there's a whole file about it with even the aftermath where politicians from the East and the West met about this and discussed it and excuses were expressed and everything.
00:52:00
Speaker
And this is the interesting thing. So we have two similar events caused by complete different objects. And in one case, we have literally nothing because it didn't leave any trace, but it was observed and described. And in the other case, we know everything about it. And you can very nicely compare those things against each other. And you see, okay, there's the
00:52:26
Speaker
It's different. Even more so, the guy who wrote the original report, I'm also in contact with him, he said that he also sent out a press release to the local press, which was common for all sorts of things like with this helicopter incursion.
00:52:48
Speaker
But when he sent out the press release, he was called by higher officials who took it back, who said, you're not allowed to report it to the press. And he had to go through some sort of trouble to get it not published by the local press. Almost like Roswell.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah, I know. So it's very interesting to see that the same things happened also here in Germany. And he said that never happened before and afterwards with an event. So this is interesting. But there's also some things that I'll tell you now have not been published yet.
00:53:33
Speaker
because I was talking with this eyewitness. I was just able a few weeks ago and I found this helicopter file also some months ago. This shows you how important it is to follow a story, not to leave it with one file that you discovered or one witnesses to talk to.
00:53:56
Speaker
So this is a very nice example of what needs to be done to do proper investigation.
Importance of Continued UFO Research
00:54:04
Speaker
And you need a long atom. What is this in English? You need a little stamina. I just brought him actually to the train station. A very good friend of mine and colleague,
00:54:22
Speaker
Mike Siphon, he is the one who created the new Society for UAP Research. We talked about it and we realized that in this case, we always have this question about how credible our eyewitness accounts
00:54:44
Speaker
and about the quality of anecdotal evidence compared to factual evidence. And I realized in our discussion that in this case, these four officers of the Border Patrol and the guy who wrote actually the report
00:55:07
Speaker
They are not classical UFO witnesses because what they observed and what they reported in their report, they didn't report a flying source or anything. They just reported their usual duty. They also told me that at that time they were unaware
00:55:27
Speaker
that what they observed was literally an unidentified flying object. They just described as what they usually do an event. They were not reporting it as a UFO and that makes it interesting.
00:55:44
Speaker
Excuse me, this makes the whole story even more so interesting because you cannot say, oh, they tried to describe it to make themselves interesting or anything. They were just technically reporting something that the four of them observed from different vantage points.
00:56:10
Speaker
If we are precise in that discussion, there are no classical UFO witnesses, even if there are, but they became UFO witnesses even later or later when we reviewed the case. So that is a fascinating, completely new facet of this whole event, which is very important, I think.
00:56:38
Speaker
Was there any attempt on the part of the BND apart from
00:56:43
Speaker
giving a report within the file to interpret the phenomenon, what they witnessed, either in terms of military intelligence or just a general comment as to what it might have been? No. The report states that there was no explanation for it because there were no further data, which is of course some skeptics might say, okay, this is the lame part of it.
00:57:10
Speaker
But these four witnesses themselves confirm each other. And if one would doubt this case, you need to doubt also other cases in this file where skeptics are very happy to accept that they are a ballistic drone. So you cannot choose free out of your personal choice here.
00:57:40
Speaker
The interesting thing is that in the report itself the author of which with whom i'm in contact of the report who wrote the report who was not a direct witness but he was he spoke with the direct witness at that time and he was also the guy who made the contact to them.
00:57:58
Speaker
For me, in the report, he demands or he requests to be informed about any further development or any further insight into this. And that never happened. And that was actually also the stuff that made him kind of not angry, but be kind of a bit of annoyed because that he never got a reply about it.
00:58:27
Speaker
And combined with this reduction of the press release, I think it's a fascinating facet that as we see, because we have this comparison with the helicopter incursion at the same day, hours later,
00:58:50
Speaker
there it was not the case. And this was a literal threat because this was not only a simple helicopter, it was a fighting helicopter, an armed helicopter. This was really something. This would have been an event that you
00:59:08
Speaker
In the review of today, you would have understand if they would say, oh, we cannot report about that. This would show our weakness at the border control and everything. But they didn't.
00:59:22
Speaker
It does seem, and this is perhaps a bigger topic we can at least superficially address now, it does seem that the East-West topic plays a big role in all these files to a certain degree. So I think what's also quite interesting for our audience to understand is
00:59:44
Speaker
how in the GDR the entire UAP topic was handled because there's a super interesting chapter in your book dealing with the kind of ontological status of UAPs in the GDR and it's something I wasn't really aware of. I mean I was brought up in a different country anyways but
01:00:07
Speaker
you know so in the west but it's fascinating that this topic was completely scapegoated in a way. Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on that now?
01:00:23
Speaker
To be honest, I'm not the expert in that because that chapter in my book has not been written by myself, but by Dr. Andreas Anton, who I think this was his, I don't know if this was his thesis or anything for his PhD, but he wrote on a whole academic book about the paranormal in the German Democratic Republic. So he is really the guy to talk to and I can strongly recommend
01:00:53
Speaker
him being a next guest for your podcast. But yes, I mean, he shows in this chapter and even more so in his very extensive book that topics like UFOs, but not only UFOs, but the whole range of paranormal phenomena was regarded as something to put it in my simple terms as a non-academic.
01:01:23
Speaker
not a non-academic, but I'm not a, I have no PhD and I'm not, I've not, so yeah, that's a part academic. So in my simple terms, the paranormal issues, of course, they were experienced by the people of the GDR, but it was not very,
01:01:46
Speaker
not something that the government really liked, and they called it, especially they called UFOs, something like the stupidity of the West, you know, and an attempt to undermine
01:02:02
Speaker
the public interest in real serious stuff. So it was like the communists said that religion is the opium for the public.
01:02:18
Speaker
A similar approach, the GDR had a very, I don't know if this is an English word, Andreas Anton would know much better, a scientific way of public life, of politics.
01:02:38
Speaker
a more scientific approach to it. And they thought there were very few books on it, but even those books who were printed in the GDR explained UFOs away as an illness by the sick spirit of the West and of the compromised West and everything.
01:03:03
Speaker
Also, from my crop circle research, I know that crop circles existed in the GDR or were discovered, but there were attempts made. People said, you do not really want to go into these things.
01:03:23
Speaker
Because it was not nice to be even called crazy at that time, so to say. No. So what happened then with UFO sightings in the GDR? I mean, I think probably the most famous one is the Gijswald incident.
01:03:40
Speaker
just as the iron curtain collapsed more or less so was this something that was then kind of taking up in the public awareness and the file on this because it's a quite a big case probably.
01:03:57
Speaker
One of the best known ones. Okay, of course it was not a file of Eastern Germany anymore because Eastern Germany did not exist anymore. There's also a chapter within the book
01:04:13
Speaker
that had been written by Marios Katman, who is an historian, and he tried to find traces in the files, so to say, in Soviet files, because there's this idea that the Greifswald lights or the Greifswald objects, which were filmed by and seen by hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists, because it was seen from the coastline at the Baltic Sea.
01:04:40
Speaker
So it was very visible from cities like Reifswald or from the island of Huygens and things like that. So there are hundreds and maybe thousands of witnesses and we have many photos and even early video footage of it.
01:04:59
Speaker
So very early on, there was the idea that it could be flares, military flares from the Soviets, which is a theory that has been followed by some, but we still cannot prove it because it was, of course, understandably due to the political situation, it was a bit of chaos at that time.
01:05:22
Speaker
no one really knew who was responsible for what and the Soviets were withdrawing but were still present and active. And so we have confronting claims from researchers and it's a matter of who they have talked to if the scenario of flares is legit or not.
01:05:50
Speaker
So this was covered quite extensively, but not anymore by the German Democratic Republic bodies and institutions. But there were other cases beforehand, and we also searched, not only I, I mean, this is very important for me. I'm not the first researcher who
01:06:11
Speaker
who did research into UFO files in Germany. There were others as well who, like Ilo Pan van Ludwig, Robert Fleischer did stuff. So there are many others which I also credit and quote in the book.
01:06:29
Speaker
But there are, for example, cases and files from the intelligence service of the former GDR, the Stasi, the Stadtsichheit, but very little UFO cases, some cases where are in the files and are described, one over Mathebok, for example, but it is not more than just basic, very basic descriptions.
01:06:59
Speaker
In another instance of a UFO file from the Stasi, it is more or less a collection of press clippings from how West German news outlets reported about the event. So there was nothing of no substantial
01:07:22
Speaker
take away from these files. They were more like newspaper clipping collections than anything else. I think this actually brings us to two really important points you make towards the end of the book. One is that
01:07:44
Speaker
is the sample of files we have in germany representative of everything that might have been documented and instead correctly.
01:07:55
Speaker
given the political situation that probably at this moment isn't the case because it might not be in Germany because the East was more or less a satellite state of the Soviet Union and likewise the West was heavily under the influence of the Allies. So the question more or less is, have attempts been made or is there something you would
01:08:25
Speaker
kind of have on your mind in the future to look for German-related UFO cases in what is nowadays Russia, if that's at all possible. I have no idea. It might be possible in the US with Project Blue Book, and I think there is even a reference to that or even a chapter to that in your book where you look for German cases and Project Blue Book.
01:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, as you just mentioned, I also have a chapter on German cases or there's even Swiss cases mentioned in Bluebook. And that shows you that there were these cases not only reported by the public, but also taken serious by the United States.
01:09:08
Speaker
Air Force UFO investigators of that time. And of course, those files do not appear as a German file because, as you said, Germany was in the 60s, in the 50s, 60s, 70s, was under heavy influence and not
01:09:28
Speaker
We were, so to say, in many cases, especially in military and intelligence cases, not a master of our own home. And so we see with the Blue Book files that reports when to Washington, or more likely to Washington than to Berlin, for example, or to Bonn, not talk about Donnet of that time.
01:09:50
Speaker
So it's very likely that important observations and maybe discoveries, maybe even when we now live in the post-Grush era, we talk about wreckage recovery operations.
01:10:11
Speaker
that they were not sent to the Max Planck Institute for material sciences, but they were sent to whatever lab in the United States or even more so to Moscow or something. That is very likely and not only likely, but as shown, sorry to repeat myself, but with the blue book files, it was actually even factually the case.
01:10:39
Speaker
And I also show the very first time in a publication a memorandum from the Bavarian military government in from 1945, I think it is, I have to look it up again, but very early on where Germany was totally under
01:11:02
Speaker
the military and political control of the Allies. And Bavaria was governed by the United States Corps. And this is an inquiry or a demand from the American government to report all your foresighting. Funny enough, it's a quote, especially those of flying disks
01:11:29
Speaker
to back to Washington immediately. So here we have it black and white on official documents that this was actually not only the case but also the duty of the officers and I guess not only of American or English or French and Russian officers
01:11:50
Speaker
but also of those German equivalents in later times to report things of special interest to Washington or Moscow, then to Bonne or Berlin.
01:12:04
Speaker
And just on a slight tangent here, because I'm sure my other listeners are going to ask, have there been rumors or any sort of anecdotes about crash retrieval operations, exotic materials within Germany ever? Or is this something we just can't comment on because there is no evidence?
01:12:28
Speaker
This is something that I have to admit is not covered in the book. Actually, I'm writing on the second part already where this will be covered. There are some rumors about crashes.
01:12:44
Speaker
On German territory, there's one rumor, of course, that something crashed near Amstein, and another thing that something crashed in the northern sea. But as you just mentioned, I was unable so far to find out more about it. It seems not to be more than rumors and fancy reports about it, but it's nothing of substantial quality at the moment.
01:13:12
Speaker
But that may change. There may be some possibilities to do for us in the States, and as John Greenwood is a colleague of mine, so we will see how that develops. But this is, of course, an interesting idea because it is very likely, especially under the political
01:13:35
Speaker
situation in Cold War, that if something crashed and if the Americans had this crash-retriever program, that they would have also brought it to the States. But, as said, there's no substantial evidence to it. The files are silent, so to say. There is this German expression, the Aktenschweigen.
01:13:57
Speaker
Which is of course also the very same case and not only are the files quiet, but they really shut their mouth when it comes to ideas of German Nazi
01:14:15
Speaker
developments as an explanation for the UFO phenomenon. This is an afterwards fantasy where there is really, I mean, I really went into archives. I went to those
01:14:30
Speaker
People that were in charge actually in charge of the of the development of the development program of the nazi regime to build new weapons to build to test new technologies,
01:14:47
Speaker
You can go wherever you like to people. And I mean, Wernher von Braun is only the biggest, most well-known name. There are others who were more important than Wernher von Braun, believe it or not, but who had real insight into everything about all sorts of weapon development departments in the Nazi regime.
01:15:10
Speaker
And no one of them talks about flying discs like the Reiss-Flukschuyten myths. And I was really open to the possibility because who knows? And I would have reported about it, but I could not confirm all these online rumors
01:15:34
Speaker
They show these fabricated images from, in my point of view, and even some photographs of alleged documents. It's something I never really followed because it didn't really interest me that much. But I just remember that a few years ago, the story with Nazi flying disks was huge. I don't know.
01:16:00
Speaker
bad gut feeling about this. I never really followed up on it. But yeah, it's great that you did. I said, you know, this gut feeling should, of course, even if it's understandable, but it should never be the basis for the decision to investigate something or not. And I know there are other authors who claim the opposite. And also, there are also other authors
01:16:26
Speaker
who have researched it even more extensive than I did. Andreas Kramer from the from the GEP, for example, he wrote an own book about it. And there's even a new book that came out, I think, last year about the Reis Fluxchei Mutos, which is this myth about the secret German flying this development.
01:16:50
Speaker
And none of them who were part of them are very good, very professional academic historians who had even more, spend even more time into the archives. And I think as it was with me, you know, I was open for the idea because I never do want to exclude something, even if I, as you, I had my gut feeling by reading all these alleged claims.
01:17:18
Speaker
And it was always this thing like those were these Nazi veterans and they reported after the war. It's always this narrative, oh, if we would have had two more weeks or two more months, then we would have won the war because then we would have had the Wunderwaffe.
01:17:38
Speaker
or the atomic bomb and everything would have been great. This is understandable from their point of view, to live their life that they had and everything. But as said, up until now, all file sources that you can properly investigate are silent. And so I think there's no flesh and bone to this myth.
01:18:05
Speaker
Well, great. Thanks a lot. I'm really glad we went on this little tangent because I'm sure it would have come up in questions later anyway. So thanks a lot. So in concluding, because you've already been very generous with your time, there are two final issues. One, you already addressed actually at the beginning and I just want to kind of zoom in on the future bit. And this is the kind of
01:18:30
Speaker
you know how technology works and are we actually or is the German government military actually looking for UFOs because as we've seen with the you know supposed balloons and in the US they then kind of turn their radar
01:18:46
Speaker
up a notch and all of a sudden they do see things. So do we know anything in Germany? Has there been any sort of adjustment? Has something leaked? Do you know this? Well, I specifically asked this to the German Ministry of Defense and they said they did not adjust their radar.
01:19:08
Speaker
It's even funny enough because in my book, based on the work that has been done by the unfortunately, just recently, this departed or deceased, very important and pioneer of German UFO research, Illo Brand von Ludwiger,
01:19:27
Speaker
We know that our radar, as well as the Americans, and we heard it also from Australia, for many decades they were adjusted in such a way that they could hardly detect any objects that were behaving in, let's say, exotic ways.
01:19:48
Speaker
And so to explain it, I try to do it very fast. If you imagine a radar screen, you see this finger going around like a clock. And if there's a detection, the computerized system creates a space where under all circumstances that we understand and know, so normal planes,
01:20:19
Speaker
helicopters, drones, and everything. We know how fast they can be in the maximum and in the minimum thing, what kind of trajectories they can follow. And so the system creates a foreseeing where this target should appear when the finger goes another round. And if the object does not appear, it creates a wider space.
01:20:44
Speaker
where this object should appear in the next round and after three rounds or four rounds, if the object does not show up in this expected space, the signal will be deleted from screen to keep the screen readable, so to say. And this is not something to cover up your IPs or UFOs, but it has a very technical and very...
01:21:09
Speaker
very, very basic reason to keep the screen readable and manageable, which is of course fine when you want to track objects that you know of. But as soon as there are objects who, for example, suddenly stop,
01:21:27
Speaker
mid-air which a plane cannot do or flies 90 degrees angle zigzagging away or flying or speeding up faster than Mach 3 or maybe 4, 5-ish, whatever, then these objects will be deleted as well.
01:21:47
Speaker
So, if German military claims that they never detected a UAP that they could not later explain, that could be the truth in a way, because they cannot detect them. And they openly admit that, not only the German but also Austrian.
01:22:05
Speaker
The military representative admitted that. Of course, there's nothing to admit because it actually is factual knowledge and science. The Americans changed that in the face of the so-called Chinese balloons.
01:22:25
Speaker
I would really like to stress this because especially in German media, you still hear when they report about it that not only was the first big Chinese balloon, but also that the other shot-down objects were balloons as well.
01:22:44
Speaker
You know, like it or not, this is simply not true. The public, until this day, does not know what these objects were. If there were balloons, which is possible, which I do not want to exclude, but claiming they were all balloons is simply not based on what has been published so far.
01:23:05
Speaker
And so they changed, as you explained, their data settings and suddenly they even admitted that they see more of these strange things. They adjusted their radars to a better extent that they now can track slower and much faster objects flying at a higher altitude
01:23:28
Speaker
and maybe even lower altitude, I'm not sure about that, but with more exotic trajectories than they have been able before. And I said to the German Department of Defense, and they said, well, we did not change our settings and we see no reasons to do so.
01:23:52
Speaker
there's no further explanation why our most power, I mean, military potent and powerful partner of the United States are doing something, detecting objects of national security interest and we don't see a reason for doing so. That's still to me a mystery and I cannot fathom, you know, from
01:24:18
Speaker
Again, not from a scientific point of view, not from a military point of view, not from an intelligence point of view. I mean, what would happen if, for example, let's keep in the current imagery, Russia develops a missile that flies Mach 8.
01:24:40
Speaker
And it hits Berlin. And in the aftermath, they say, well, we couldn't foresee that because our systems are not adjusted for cases that we did not foresee. It's ridiculous. Of course, you need to be prepared, even if it is not from space, even if it is from a foreign country. We need to be prepared.
01:25:09
Speaker
for first contact and again from all sorts of things, from scientific point of view, political, social society point of view, there's no reason for not to be prepared. Completely with you there on speaking of preparation.
01:25:28
Speaker
Do you, because you're involved and you have lots of sources, do you have a suspicion there might be German whistleblowers, because we live in an age of whistleblowing and revelations? Would you make any informed suggestion that this might happen after what might be unfolding in the US, that people here in Germany might be coming forward?
01:25:53
Speaker
I don't think to that extent as we see it in the United States because I really have the feeling that we never had projects like Blue Book or anything.
01:26:04
Speaker
We had, even in German military, a file from the Bundeswehr, which is the German army, a UFO file, but this was more or less a newspaper clipping collection, or other files where they tried to get some sort of an overview and insight into the current state of international events and positions of other countries.
01:26:30
Speaker
I have the feeling there never was a bigger UFO project. Of course, I could be damn wrong. But I think this, as we discussed already due to the political situation that we had until the mid-90s, other countries were in charge for things like this. What I know of is that we had high-ranking officials from
01:26:58
Speaker
from the Department of Defense, the army bodies and also in science or in air traffic who are and who have been
01:27:13
Speaker
very credible ufo witnesses like when i was the very first after the war the very first chief pilot of the german lufthansa as well as the chief pilot of the austrian airlines and in my book i also cover
01:27:31
Speaker
I also cover a case of a near-downing of a German military helicopter. The crew of this helicopter is known to UFO researchers and the guy who wrote the report. He was part of the crew.
01:27:56
Speaker
And at that time, he was, I can say that much, he was a very big figure in German army. So I will not say his name because he has to decide this himself.
01:28:11
Speaker
But yeah, so there are these big names, so to say, who could come forward as, well, maybe not of whistleblowers, because there's no whistle to blow, but with their stories and with their experiences. And then people would wake up and say, wow, that is amazing that people like him or her
01:28:34
Speaker
are going public with their observations, which still would be anecdotal evidence. But I am one of the school out of from that school who do appreciate even anecdotal witnesses and evidence as an important part. Maybe, of course, not as tail-telling as a radar signature, but
01:29:00
Speaker
People and humans are also sensors, sometimes very good sensors. Of course, it is our duty as researchers to find out if credible or not and to what extent. But yeah, so I can tell also from the feedback that I get.
01:29:18
Speaker
that there are sometimes people and the public would wonder who has seen UFOs and is not telling it publicly and I mean this is internationally but also where we now see people like Gary Nolan for example even if he now has become a UFO figure
01:29:41
Speaker
Five years ago, he was no UFO figure. He started to investigate this little mummy and things like this, but everybody only knew him from his very academic profession at Stanford. And already then he told me when we had a conversation,
01:30:06
Speaker
that this experience go back within his family. This is a story that he now publicly tells that he didn't at that time. And when he told me that, he said he's telling this in confidence to me.
01:30:24
Speaker
I really thought, wow, you know, if you're going to tell this to your colleagues, they would go crazy. And now we have people like Avi Löb and even Professor Hakan Kayal, he is a very, very important figure for the development in Germany, for the respect and the
01:30:47
Speaker
and the reputation that the topic got and became not only in the public awareness but also especially in the media here in Germany. So he's doing very important work even if he is relatively
01:31:03
Speaker
I mean, public wise, new to the topic. But his interest, this is something that he also expressed in interviews into the topic was because his father was a direct UFO witness. And he said there's no reason for him to doubt his father telling the truth.
01:31:21
Speaker
So yeah, no real, to make a long saying short, no real whistleblowers. I don't think that this will happen, but yeah, very interesting public figures could come up and admit, okay.
01:31:40
Speaker
We are experiences or whatever you want to call it, witnesses or believers and everything. So that could be interesting. That's a very exciting note to close on. So thanks Andreas. You've been super generous with your time.
01:31:58
Speaker
very much enjoyed this. As someone who worked in academia, I can really only commend you on your work because there's so much rigor and scientific scrutiny behind it. I know how much work it is to put together a book that's actually lined up in historical sources and to vet them and so on. So really bravo, excellent work. Thanks a lot.
01:32:21
Speaker
And so could you perhaps repeat where people can find you and I will definitely also include that in the description so people can click on the links. Well you can of course find my book in all bookstores and Amazon and whatever.
01:32:37
Speaker
Andreas Müller and UFO Akten that should find it, even the new book, which is the prologue to my, to Deutschland's Ufuh Akten, which is Deutschland's Historpische Ufuh Akten, translating to Germany's historic UFO file, starting in the eighth century and dealing with some well-known, but other yet completely unknown cases that were described in documents
01:33:07
Speaker
in the centuries after, until 1900. And of course, you can find my, unfortunately, it's only in German, my news website, which is www. Grainswissenschaft-actual.de. That's hard for English-speaking readers. I will put it in the description, yeah. Great. So that may help. And yeah, I think this is the place to find me.
01:33:34
Speaker
Excellent. Lovely. Thanks a lot Andreas and hopefully talk again soon. Thank you. Okay. Thanks.