Vril Society
The Vril Society was a fictitious secret society that is said to have existed in Germany in the early to mid-twentieth century. A series of conspiracy theories and pseudohistorical texts, starting with The Morning of the Magicians (1960), claim that it was involved in the rise of Nazism and used supernatural energies to develop innovative flying machines during the Nazi era or "Reichsflugscheiben". There is no historical evidence that this was the name of a secret society, nor for the achievements attributed to it; however historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke acknowledged the existence of a small group that actually believed in the so-called vril energy, but he denied it played a significant political role, while Giorgio Galli, although believing the legends surrounding it to be exaggerated, pays close attention to the Vril Society, which he considers historically documented and significant for its occult influences on nazism. The term Vril was coined by the English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) for his novel The Coming Race (1871), and likely derives from the Latin term virilis (manly, powerful).
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