A Tongue-in-Cheek Question
by Not Sure
6 August
2023
Who seeded Earth?
Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken
In his blurb, “Tales from the
Croc-Pot” from April 16, 2006, Alan Watt talked about how structures of
ideas are formed in our minds, how we are programmed by drama and fiction, and
by symbols found in architecture and paintings, and how our deepest fears are
pulled from the depths of our subconscious minds and then given a shape that
mystifies and terrifies us. We are
living through the greatest changes the world has experienced since the
Industrial Revolution, but because we’re downloaded with entertainment, we can
no longer discern fact from fiction.
Alan said, “…there are hundreds of emails coming in from people who
are following Annunaki, reptilian people, the UFO’s,
and space aliens behind it…How did we get to a stage where so many adults in
all walks of life and professions and jobs are so confused that they’re chasing
Annunaki and reptilian people? How did this happen?
How long does it take to prepare the peoples' minds to bring them to this
stage?”
Alan talked about how it might take generations to
prepare our minds through drama and fiction to accept radical new ideas. Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries
of the Past was written by Erich von Däniken and
published in 1968. A major hypothesis of
the book is that the technologies and religions of many ancient civilizations
were given to them by ancient astronauts who were seen as gods by the peoples
they visited. Von Däniken’s
assertion was that many artifacts such as the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge
were built by extraterrestrial visitors or by humans who were given the necessary
knowledge by extraterrestrials.
The book was promoted as a work of
non-fiction. Scientists and historians
rejected von Däniken’s work and claimed his
conclusions were based on pseudoscientific evidence, but it was still heavily
promoted. Alan asked “Why would
the major media be promoting this without question? When major books appear across the planet in
major bookstores, the bookstores don’t come looking for the book. It takes big,
big bucks to promote any author out there into the mainstream. PERMISSION IS
GRANTED FROM ABOVE.”
I wanted to answer that question,
but I had to ask a few more questions and come up with unsatisfactory answers
before I made headway. Who is Erich von Däniken? He was born
in Switzerland in 1937, raised Catholic and attended a Jesuit boarding
school. At school, he rejected the
church’s teaching on the Bible and developed an interest in flying
saucers. At the age of 19, he was given
a suspended sentence (no jail time) for theft.
He left the school and apprenticed for a while at a Swiss hotelier
before moving to Egypt, where in 1964, he wrote “Were Our Ancestors Visited
from Space?” for a German-Canadian publication. While in Egypt, he was involved in a
jewelry deal which concluded with him receiving a nine-month conviction for
fraud and embezzlement when he returned to Switzerland.
When he was released from prison at
the end of that sentence, he became a manager of a hotel in Davos, Switzerland,
and there “at night, after the guests went to bed,” he wrote Chariots of the
Gods? The draft of the book was
turned down by several publishers. This
is where the story of Chariots of the Gods? became very interesting to
me.
Econ Verlag, a publishing house
specializing in non-fiction work, (and now owned by Ullstein
Verlag, one of Germany’s largest publishers,) was willing to publish the book
after it received a complete reworking by professional author, Utz Uterman, who used the pseudonym Wilhelm Roggersdorf
for his work on von Däniken’s manuscript. Here’s a bit of Wiki on Utz. “Utermann was a
former editor of the Nazi Party's newspaper Völkischer
Beobachter and had been a Nazi bestselling author.” Okay.
Wow.
Utermann
received a slim Wikipedia entry which described him as a Germany writer,
journalist, screenwriter, and filmmaker.
Wiki makes casual mention that he was a former editor of the Nazi
Party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, and
extensively rewrote Chariots of the Gods? Wiki also mentioned his marriage to
Clementine zu Castell-Rüdenhausen. Who was Clementine? Just curious. Anyone with a mouthful of hyphenated surname
deserves a look-see.
Castell-Rüdenhausen
was a county in northern Bavaria of the Holy Roman Empire, until the regions
were restructured in 1806. It was a
partition of the northern Bavarian Castell County, ruled by the Counts of
Castell. I couldn’t find much else on
Clementine in English, but as it turns out, she has her own entry in the German
version of Wikipedia, so with a bit of translation, here is more about the wife
of Utz Uterman.
Clementine belonged to Franconian high
nobility, the Castell-Rüdenhausen family. On May 1, 1933, Clementine and her mother and
several other high-ranking members of the Castell family joined the Nazi Party,
to which an elder brother already belonged.
In 1933, she became leader of the BDM-Gau of
Lower Franconia; Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), or the
League of German Girls.
Here follows the rise of Clementine,
from the translated German Wiki:
In November 1934, she was promoted to leader of the BDM-Obergau of Franconia.
In February 1938, she was appointed by Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach to the staff of the Reich Youth Leadership and
appointed commissioner for the Reich Youth Leadership on 19 February 1938.
In January 1938, she was appointed to the BDM organization
"Faith and Beauty", whereby a press release in connection with this
appointment emphasized her special merits as Obergauführer
in the organization of "exemplary major sporting events for female
youth". As commissioner, she was subordinate to the BDM Reich Advisor
Jutta Rüdiger (we’re going to return briefly to Frau Rüdiger,) with whom
she also had a personal friendship and for a time lived together in a house in
Berlin-Frohnau. On October 26, 1939, she married Wilhelm Utermann,
known as “Utz”, who was responsible for the youth magazines as chief editor of
the Reich Youth Leadership and became one of the most influential film
producers in the Federal Republic of Germany after the war under the name Utz Utermann.
Women had a special role in National Socialism, and it was
one of the goals of the BDM to lead female youth to marriage and motherhood. BDM leaders had to retire from active service
after marriage to be good role models, so Castell was “relieved” of her duties
as commissioner of the BDM plant in 1939. Reichsjugendführer
Schirach announced: “With effect from September
12, 1939, I relieved the Obergauführer Clementine zu Castell-Rüdenhausen as
commissioner for the BDM work ‘Faith and Beauty’ in the Reich Youth
Leadership. I would like to express my gratitude for her selfless work and my
special appreciation for her successes in building up the BDM work ‘Faith and
Beauty.’ Obergauführer
zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, who
is retiring from active service, will continue to be at the disposal of the
Reich Youth Leadership for special tasks even after her marriage.”
One of these special tasks was apparently the publication of
the illustrated book Faith and Beauty with the subtitle A picture
book of the 17-21-year-old girls, which appeared in print in 1940 with a
foreword by Schirach and is now one of the important
sources for the self-presentation of this BDM work. During her time as
commissioner, she is also said to have been involved in the creation of the
propaganda film Faith and Beauty (1940) by Leni Riefenstahl's
cinematographer Hans Ertl.
___
Leni Riefenstahl was perhaps the most famous producer of Nazi
propaganda, and her cinematographer Hans Ertl was the preferred cameraman of
General Rommel. He would become known as
“Rommel’s photographer.” After the war, Ertl’s
daughter denied that he was a Nazi, and claimed that he served out of
“obligation” and “to survive.” In the
mid-1950’s, Ertl was arrested by the Allies and banned from working in
Germany. He fled to Chile. Utz Uterman, on the
other hand, would remain in West Germany and produce many comedy and drama
films.
Clementine and Utz would have three
sons, divorce in 1954 and then remarry each other in 1967. I don’t know when Clementine died, but Utz
lived until 1991.
Clementine’s old roommate, Jutta
Rüdiger, was a psychologist and would head the League of German Girls from the
time of Clementine’s marriage and departure from the BDM in 1937 until 1945
when all programs such as this were disbanded.
She was arrested at the end of the war, but not charged. She never renounced her belief in National
Socialism or the ideals of the Nazi Party.
One article stated that Jutta was “no candidate for marriage but
lived in life-long partnership with her comrade (sometimes referred to as
cooperator) Hedy Böhmer from 1940 until her death in 1991.”
The Faith and Beauty Society was
initially run by Clementine zu Castell-Rüdenhausen as a tie-in between the work of the League of
German Girls (BDM) and that of the National Socialist Women's League. An interesting observation: The logo of the Faith and Beauty Society
bears a striking resemblance to the NATO logo.
They are both four-pointed stars.
I noticed a book that Wilhelm “Utz” Uterman co-authored is available on Amazon for $199. It was published in 1940 and is entitled Adolf
Hitler’s Reich: A Photographic Record of the Creation of Greater Germany 1933
to 1940. This was produced to be a
Christmas gift to German youth, designed to map out and record the
earth-shaking events of the previous eight years. Important events from each
year are highlighted, focusing on the major social, economic, political, and
territorial reforms which led to the creation of “Greater Germany.”
Alan asked, “Why would the
major media be promoting this without question?” Then he elaborated, “When major books
appear across the planet in major bookstores, the bookstores don’t come looking
for the book. It takes big, big bucks to promote any author out there into the
mainstream. PERMISSION IS GRANTED FROM ABOVE.”
My question is, why would an author
with the clout of Utz Uterman be employed to rewrite Chariots
of the Gods?
The book was printed in March 1968
and became a bestseller. In November of that year, von Däniken
was arrested for fraud, for falsifying hotel records and credit references to
take out a loan to use the money ‘for foreign travel to research’ his
book. Two years later, he was convicted
for ‘repeated and sustained’ embezzlement, fraud, and forgery, with the court
ruling that the writer had been living a ‘playboy’ lifestyle.” He served one
year in prison before being released. “His first book, Chariots of the Gods?
had been published by the time of his trial, and its sales allowed him to repay
his debts and leave the hotel business. Von Däniken
wrote his second book, Gods from Outer Space, while in prison.” All these convictions before the
frauds and forgeries surrounding the book were exposed several years later!
Chariots of the Gods? and
Arthur C. Clarke’s 1956 book, Childhood’s End, were important in seeding
the idea of a superior form of life visiting earth. One book purported to be a work of
non-fiction and was in fact extensively rewritten and shaped into its
publication form by a highly skilled propagandist, and the other was a piece of
fiction by Sir Clarke, whose body of work helped form the foundation of our
collective expectation of how the future unfolds.
A tongue-in-cheek answer: We were seeded by Ancient Nazis.
© Not Sure
Additional
reading:
The League of German Girls, BDM, the Nazi organization for Girls – in Previously Unseen Pictures!
Faith and Beauty Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_Beauty_Society
Adolf Hitler’s Reich: A Photographic Record
https://www.ostarapublications.com/product/adolf-hitlers-reich/