On
Monday, a friend of mine showed me a video explaining the stealth
technology of the B2 bomber- America's current-generation stealth bomber.
At the end of the video, the speaker described how the Nazis had
invented a working version of a stealth plane in 1943-1944. The next day, I did a little research in a few war
encyclopedias I own. As it turns out, the Nazi stealth plane was
genuine, and the stealth components functioned almost perfectly.... just
before it crashed on its test flight. They started to rebuild, but it was never
truly completed.
I
hear a lot of similarly erroneous claims online and in conversation. Many people seem to believe that the Nazis were
vastly more technologically advanced than they really were, and possessed fully-functional weapons of incredible power. To make things worse, the idea of Nazi super-development has been sensationalized by the media: Hitler
clones, Nazi fusion cannons, advanced German computers, and enormous underground complexes in the Sahara (often housing super-weapons) have all been covered by ostensibly serious documentaries. Hollywood spins even more outlandish stories to boost this sentiment- Holy Grails, Arks, Norse technology, and jet-packs are just a few of the technologies that Nazis have employed in fictional films. Let's just leave the Nazi zombies alone.
But why do people believe wild claims about the Third Reich's technology? What makes everyone think that they were so advanced?
