Nazi Super Science: The Third Reich's Plans for Transatlantic Bombers, Atomic Weapons, and Orbital Death Rays

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2020

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fiction abounds with stories of Nazi Superscience: From Captain America's nemesis Red Skull to the B-movie treasure Iron Sky (which suggests the Third Reich established a moon base after the war). But the trope is based in some fact. Nazis did aggressively research cutting edge weapons to turn the tide of a war they were increasingly losing. Some weapons, such as the V2 rocket, did see production and terrorized the Allies. Others were advanced but impractical, such as 1000-ton tanks. Still others existed completely in the realm of science fiction, such as an orbital mirror that could focus enough solar energy to create a laser that could incinerate a city or fry an ocean.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,
0:09.4	Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch.
0:14.2	Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling,
0:20.8	wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders,
0:27.2	environment, and geography.
0:29.5	I invite you to come along for the ride.
0:32.2	In this episode, I'm going to be addressing a topic that manages to combine Captain America,
0:37.2	the fiction of full-naged sci-fi writer Roman Kremlin, and a lot of the movies all along.
0:44.2	That is the history of just a bunch of names and dates and facts.
0:47.5	It's the collection of all the stories, right, human history, and it explains how and why we got.
0:52.1	About Germany had, what were the history of the public's podcast?
0:54.9	So they either re-look at the forgotten, or elected, and to plunge, and even catch
0:58.8	some of the actual stories that made our old footage.
1:01.3	I'm your host, Scott, and all the super-repeats they had in the world.
1:05.9	Whatever reason you run, you close up a little more to the world.
1:09.0	What we use in limited areas at the end of the war is a trope that appears all the time in fiction.
1:15.8	So for example, Marvel's Red Skull in Captain America and Hydra, the secret organization
1:21.6	that is a shadow organization within shield.
1:24.0	You can see in any of the Marvel movies, ideas in Dr. Strange Love.
1:28.6	There's also Robert Heinlein's 1947 novel, Rocket Ship Galileo.
1:32.9	It's a golden age sci-fi, and if you like it, I recommend it, especially if you have,
1:37.4	let's say a brainy middle schooler to read it to.
	...

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