Old disinformation never dies: tracing a misattributed von Braun quote

A quote attributed to rocket engineer Wernher von Braun continues to circulate in UFO communities, most recently in an r/aliens thread this month. The quoted text is authentic in the narrow sense that it was printed in 1959, but it originates from a single esoteric tabloid that was concurrently running a fabricated alien-contact story. No independent source corroborates the attribution. This note traces the citation chain to its origin and assesses what the case shows about how unverified claims acquire the appearance of legitimacy over time.

The claim

The text in circulation reads:

We find ourselves faced by powers which are far stronger than we had hitherto assumed, and whose base is at present unknown to us. More I cannot say at present. We are now engaged in entering into closer contact with those powers, and in six or nine months’ time it may be possible to speak with more precision on the matter.

The accompanying narrative asserts that von Braun made the statement in 1959 in reference to the Juno II rocket being deflected from its course, and that he never elaborated further. The implied conclusion is that a senior figure in the U.S. space program had direct knowledge of a non-human intelligence.

Tracing the citation chain

The Reddit post cited Richard Dolan’s UFOs and the National Security State (2000), but Dolan is not the originator. His source is likely Timothy Good’s Above Top Secret (1988, p. 370), a widely cited work in UFO literature. Good provides a single footnote pointing to a German publication, Neues Europa, issue dated January 1, 1959.

The chain therefore runs:

Neues Europa (1959) → Good (1988) → Dolan (2000) → contemporary forums and video.

Every downstream reference depends on that one reference. So a relevant question is what kind of source Neues Europa was.

The primary source

A scan of the January 1, 1959 issue is available on the Internet Archive. The quoted German text is present and is attributed by name to von Braun, in the form repeated downstream. Translated:

Wernher von Braun: “There are extraterrestrial forces that are stronger than we previously believed” — “We are seeking contact with them.”

The German-American rocket researcher Wernher von Braun, the leading figure behind the launch of the “Juno 2,” declared after its deflection from its course to the moon: “There are extraterrestrial forces, whose location is still unknown to us, but which are far stronger than we have believed up to now. More than that I am not permitted to say at present. In a few months, however, we may be able to speak more precisely. We are currently in the process of entering into closer contact with these extraterrestrial forces.”

The text is genuine to 1959. It was not invented online. That authenticity is a significant part of why the claim has persisted.

The original Article and Quote

Source assessment

Two features of the original issue undermine the attribution.

First, the same page carries a near-identical statement attributed to Hermann Oberth, von Braun’s former mentor: “I believe in the existence of extraterrestrial powers.” The two items are printed side by side, which accounts for the same theme being attributed to both men across different books.

Second, the issue is not a newspaper or scientific publication. Its main content advances the claim that a man named “Michalek” was Earth’s appointed envoy of the “Supreme Command of the Planet Venus,” that Venusian craft were about to land in Berlin, and that a “World Republic of Earth” would shortly be declared there to prevent a third world war. The issue also carries astrology forecasts. Neues Europa was an esoteric tabloid running an active alien-contact narrative, and the von Braun item sits in the same editorial context.

No independent corroboration exists. No mainstream German newspaper carried the statement, and no NASA or U.S. Army record, von Braun biography, or personal correspondence supports it. A plausible mundane explanation is available: Juno II did experience guidance problems in late 1958, and the publication appears to have either embellished a vague technical remark or invented the quote to fit the surrounding material.

Assessment

The quote should be treated as unverified and probably apocryphal. The wording is documented, but the only documentation is a single unreliable 1959 source, repeated downstream without further verification.

The broader pattern is the point of interest. A claim does not need to be well-sourced at origin to survive. It needs one printed instance, a citation chain that passes it through progressively more credible-seeming works, and readers who stop checking once a footnote is present. By the time the quote reaches Reddit in 2026 it carries a date, a named source, a published reference, and a famous name. Each of those markers is real; the underlying reporting is a tabloid alien-contact story.

The practical takeaway for verification is that a citation establishes only that something was printed, not that it was true. For long-circulating claims, the necessary step is to locate the earliest instance and assess the nature of that source directly.

Sources

• Neues Europa, Jan 1, 1959 (scan): https://archive.org/details/von-braun-ocr
• AboveTopSecret thread transcribing Timothy Good’s Above Top Secret, p. 370 and footnote: https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread179403/pg1
• Original Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/1u851f1/we_are_now_engaged_in_entering_into_closer/