Die Glocke – The Nazi bell that was supposed to destroy enemies with an agonizing death

One of the secret Nazi weapons was to be Die Glocke (the bell). However, like the other „miracle weapons“, they did not influence the course of the Second World War to any significant extent. Moreover, it is widely believed that Die Glocke did not actually exist.

Much has otherwise been written about the „miracle weapons“ of the Third Reich. One thing they have in common, however, is that although the Nazis promised a major reversal of the balance of power on the battlefield, this never happened. One of the lesser-known „Wunderwaffen“ was Die Glocke (The Bell), which Nazi scientists worked on at the Riese base in Poland in 1942.

The discussion about Die Glock came to a head when the writer and journalist Igor Witkowski published a work entitled The Truth About the Miracle Gun in the Year 2000, in which he writes about one of the Nazi weapons that was supposed to be the secret trump card of the Third Reich.

According to Witkowski, Nazi scientists intended, among other things, to create an anti-gravity drive. This theory was supported by the fact that Die Glocke was to be attached to the ground by massive chains. The famous rocket engineer Hermann Oberth and other well-known German physicists also worked on the project.

Die Glocke was to take the form of a massive bell that was 2.7 metres wide
and about 3.7 to 4.6 metres high. However, the development of the somewhat atypical weapon
was to be accompanied by problems when five of the seven scientists working on
the bell during a series of tests.

The entire device contained two counter-rotating cylinders that were
filled with a purple mercury-based substance. This liquid was
called Xerum 525. The bell emitted a powerful radiation, consumed an enormous
of energy and was said to emit deadly rays.

Die Glocke was supposed to have a „lethal“ range of 150 to 200 metres.
was imminent. People would die in agonizing fashion
deaths such as freezing of the blood in the circulatory system or decomposition
of the tissues. But that sounds to the average person rather like something out of the realm of science
of fiction.

Die Glocke was thus a mythologised device, unlike the other „real“ Nazi weapons. We are not sure whether it really existed in the form described by Witkowski. If it did, the Nazis most likely did not deploy it anyway, and its effects were rather exaggerated.