If this were a novel, the subject matter under discussion would be the legacy of World War II. This discussion happens through post-war truth claims.

The narrative begins with ETs living beneath a Tibetan mountain range (The Green Men) making psychic contact with Japanese nationalists.

These Japanese telepaths are the Green Dragon group within the Black Dragon secret society, founded by Ryohei Uchida. Karl Haushofer earns the confidence of the Black Dragons and is allowed to share their privileged access to ET knowledge with Germany. This knowledge allows the Nazis to make contact with ETs based in a cave network on Earth called Patala. These ETs consist of a race of reptilians and the “grays” of modern UFOlogy lore. These ETs (mutual collaborators with the Green Men) supply the Nazis with advanced scientific knowledge. They also swell the numbers of the German infantry with clones.

The Nazis, having been given schematics for flying discs and ET weaponry, begin prototyping. They manage to involve experimental aircrafts in a limited number of dog fights but fail to bring the full force of this new technology to bear in time to prevent their defeat. They do, however, succeed in building an underground laboratory in Antarctica where the research and development of ET technology continues after WWII.

Len Kasten writes that the absence of ET tech during the majority of the war allowed organic human dynamics play out. In his assessment, the Axis method of autocratic control of numbers and firepower was outstripped by the innovation enabled by the diversity and free-thinking of the Allies.

The Allies become aware of the Nazi installation in Antarctica. Britain and America now realize that the Nazis could re-emerge with WMDs that make the nuke look like child’s play. So America jumps at the chance to get their own inside connection with ETs. As far as they know, it may be their only way to fight back in the event of a Nazi resurgence. This is the attitude of the American military and intelligence community when the 1940’s UFO crashes happen.

Before Roswell in 1947, a UFO with a crew of three crashed, leaving two dead and one injured. The survivor is cared for and housed at an isolated, commandeered facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The survivor is designated, by his captors, as EBE1 (EBE being an abbreviation for extraterrestrial biological entity). This surviving crew member comes from the Zeta-Reticuli binary star system and is, in all likelihood, the kind of ET that people mean when they use the word “Zeta-Reticuli” as a race name (elsewhere abbreviated to “Zeta”). Betty and Barney Hill described these same beings, to name one example. Len Kasten writes that the military adopted the generalized phrase “Eben / Ebens” which is used throughout the book. Illustrations and implications suggest that Ebens are separate from the grays and reptilians mentioned earlier.

Communication with EBE1 is a long and experimental process, but eventually he explains how to send messages to his home world with the technology aboard his crashed vessel. With an eye toward leveling the playing field with the Axis bolt hole in Antarctica, the CIA uses EBE1 to negotiate a diplomatic relationship. This leads to an exchange program in which twelve American military representatives are sent to the ET’s home world, Serpo, in the Zeta Reticuli star system. One of them dies en route.

An Eben/Zeta representative is sent to Earth to assist the American military with reverse-engineering their technology. On Serpo, the American soldiers conduct the first off-planet cultural exchange in known history. They attempt to teach the Ebens the science of Earth with limited success. The civilization they encounter is one under the control of their military, which itself is governed by a secretive, elite group of Ebens. This elite limits all technology exclusively to a distinct group of scientific, medical and military professionals.

These elites and technocrats possess scientific knowledge far superior to that of Earth. Therefore only the laity of Serpo are interested in the science lessons of the Americans and most of them are confused by human concepts. Only a single student, from a remote cultural group to the north, manages to understand and appreciate these lessons.

The confusion of the average Eben civilian leads to a few speculations by the Americans: the Ebens in general are technologically superior to humans. Yet most of them either do not understand rudimentary science or are even interested in it. This discrepancy is an early hint of the rigid control of knowledge and culture maintained by the Eben elites.

The Ebens appear to be so extroverted and hardworking that they barely have room for personal pursuits of any kind. This extends to religion (of which there is only one) and career paths (which are assigned by the powers that be). The lone, earnest student is the closest thing the American team encounters to a free-thinker.

Eventually, the Americans ask the Ebens for the body of their crew mate that died on the way to Serpo. They are told that it is gone. After an intense confrontation, the Eben host and an Eben scientist do their best to show the Americans the remains that are left.

The two Ebens lead the American visitors to a genetic laboratory. In one section, there are preserved bodies of beings that the Ebens designate as “animals”- meaning they are alive but lack sentience or a soul. Ebens designate life forms that do possess a soul or sentience as “beings”, and they are experimented on in another section of the laboratory. The only remains of the deceased human have been used to create a cloned Eben-like being, which at the time exists in a somnolent, gestational state.

In the same area, the team is shown another genetic experiment, which is humanoid in appearance with a canine head. In other parts of the book, it is made clear that the four other races that the American secret service had interacted with were all created by the Ebens (not including the grays or reptilians). At other times, it is said that the Ebens “civilized” them. The historical military enemies of the Ebens are also classified as “animals”, without souls or sentience.

In a traditional novel, this would be a significant thematic beat.

Like humans, the Ebens also experienced a Great War that cast a long shadow over their history. This Great War could have created a bottle-neck of survival by conformity that lasted through the generations. Perhaps this has to do with the vast influence of the Eben military. Maybe their military enemies truly are not sentient. Maybe these opponents are self-replicating AI that isn’t sophisticated enough for sentience. With their mastery over genetic engineering, maybe the Ebens artificially resurrected societies that were wiped out.

Or maybe the Ebens are susceptible to all of the same evils that humanity is. Maybe the police state they live under has no better justification than a human police state. Like us, they do not believe that their enemies or chattel have “souls” because it makes them easier to kill and exploit. One of the four other races known to the American secret services, Archquloids, are described as “primitive” and “a form of slave.” Since the Archquloids are one of the races either “created” or “civilized” by the Ebens, those remarks take on a darker tone.

If this book was a novel, the motivations of America would be called into question. America sought a cultural and scientific exchange with ETs to level the playing field with the Nazis in Antarctica. Yet this first exchange with the Ebens (in addition to the actions of the reptilians and grays) raises the possibility that fascism is a universal status quo.

For the sake of clarity: I do not think that Len Kasten is a Nazi sympathizer or a crypto-fascist. His bias runs in the opposite direction. Early in the book, he compares the American exchange team to Christopher Columbus in terms of bravery and exploration. If one were disposed to interpret this comparison charitably, we could dismiss it as hyperbole. Yet the comparison leaves out other historical realities, like Spanish trade routes.

This meditation on democracy versus fascism has interesting corollaries elsewhere in UFOlogy. Barney Hill used words like “red-headed Irishman” and “German Nazi” to describe the aliens he saw. At the time I heard about this, I assumed Barney Hill had not been literal. When asked about the meaning of “red-headed Irishman” he said that most Irish people he meets do not like black people (Barney was black and this was the early sixties in America). However, when he met a “nice Irishman”, Barney said he would think to himself “I will be nice.”

This at least sounds like Barney Hill was talking about how the beings made him feel rather than what they actually were.

Another corollary is an urban legend about President Eisenhower. It is alleged that he met with a group of individuals who urged him to dismantle the United States nuclear arsenal. In some versions, this was an altruistic attempt by planetary outsiders to council us against ruining our planet with nuclear weapons.

In other retellings, one of these human-like aliens bore an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler and referred to himself, simply, as a “man from nowhere.” In these versions, the strangers were hoping to subvert American military might by pressuring Eisenhower to dismantle America’s nukes.

This dialectic is even echoed in the Native American attitudes toward ancient alien theory. In the last few years ancient alien theory has been criticized, by South American political outlets, as racist. This is because advanced engineering in the ancient world is often interpreted as evidence of non-human involvement, which unfortunately dovetails with the colonial presumption of indigenous racial inferiority.

Just as many Native voices espouse the opposite, though. In the theological treatise God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, Vine Deloria Jr. insinuates that Abrahamic religion shares none of the hallmarks of animistic shamanism that were nearly universal before the rise of monotheism. Deloria opines that this could be evidence that monotheism is the legacy of non-human manipulation in the ancient history of humanity.

Other Native American voices, like Robert Morning Sky and the nu metal band Corporate Avenger, have treated the possibility of ancient aliens in America as a distinction rather than a weakness.

In Germany, the Nazi interest in the paranormal has made discussion of UFOs taboo by association.

The temptation to characterize aliens as supreme oppressors or supreme liberators reveals more about ourselves than anything else. The first impulse suggests a fear of cosmic indifference; that if the world is bigger than Earth then who knows what waits in the cosmic wilderness. The work of H.P. Lovecraft channeled this fear. The other impulse runs in the opposite direction; that all human ignorance will disappear under the guidance of benevolent non-human teachers.

The role of religious inheritance is also difficult to overlook. Monotheism has engendered a nearly global attachment to an androcentric worldview. If the monotheistic god is seen as a divine parent to humanity, the loss of the divine parent can be terrifying. Just like the oppressor/liberator dynamic, conjecture about alien life can assuage this fear just as easily as it can confirm it. Whatever else may be true about about ancient alien theory, it also accommodates the hope that scientific progress could bring back and redignify the ancient cosmologies it once refuted.

Before ending this entry I feel like I should clarify a few things. Like many abduction testimonials, the Betty and Barney Hill story relies on recovered memories. Considering the medical consensus that trauma suppression just doesn’t work like that, the Hill story has a credibility problem.

Deloria’s conclusion was reached using the ancient alien theories of Immanuel Velikovsky as a jumping off point. After subsequent criticism, Deloria explained why he applied ancient alien theory to the origins of monotheism. He had intended it as a satirical reflection of how non-Native academics are often trusted more on Native American history than indigenous people themselves.

I do not think you would be able to ascertain this from the tone of that portion of God Is Red. Deloria openly pokes fun a number of times in that book, but the chapter containing his speculations on ancient aliens is played very straight. And there is no subtext or perspective that would lead you to think that the even tone itself might be satirical. If it was meant as satire, I would not have known if I hadn’t learned about his later explanation.

At least in my reading of God Is Red, I don’t see any necessary conflict with anything else in that book (and I want to emphasize it is a very good book for its analysis of the religious climate of America). I do not think he would have compromised anything if he had claimed the title of an ancient alien theorist.

If there was no conceptual reason for him to distance himself from those words, there could have been another. Maybe he understood that the label of a believer in the existence of aliens is a hard one to break. Maybe he thought it would be used to undermine his reputation as a serious scholar. In any event, he did not seem particularly invested in ancient alien theory.

I have skirted a substantive analysis of the facts because my focus here was the psychological mechanism of belief. World War II casts a shadow over the narrative of Len Kasten. Whether this is a fabrication or something Kasten actually has knowledge of, many dynamics portrayed in Secret Journey To Planet Serpo can be traced to World War II. No matter how one reads this book, I think it’s reasonable to wonder about its discussions of fascism and liberty.

But I do not necessarily think the assenting opinions I gave as examples are credible ones. I chose them simply because of how they channeled what I think are interesting, repeating psychological themes.