Inside Story: “Conspiracy Theories”, Volume I
“A conspiracy theory is generally defined as a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event.”
— Dictionary.com (mostly)
All that meets the eye is not always the truth; most engineering graduates are “fortunate” enough to have the first-hand experience with that statement by virtue of the highly relevant exploits in the course — the stuff of everyone’s nightmares — Engineering Graphics (or Drawing, whatever you prefer to call the spawn of Satan). Some things are kept under wraps, hidden from us. Shrouded in this mystery are events which have always been a topic for the so-called wildest of speculations.
The Apollo 11 moon landing photographs being faked, the experiments conducted on aliens who crash-landed on Earth in Area 51 in Nevada, the suspicious deaths and assassinations of certain political leaders such as Adolf Hitler and JFK… these theories extend from topics with potential political ramifications such as those about espionage to something seemingly mundane like the ones advocating for the earth being flat or lizard people invading our planet and controlling our governments and our minds too. Their authenticity is questionable… or is it?
The 30th of April, 1945 will always be shrouded in mystery, much like the Berlin skies clouded with smoke and debris on that fateful day when the Führer killed himself along with his wife Eva Braun. Or did he? The response that historians and theorists give differ extensively when faced with this question.
The first suspicious activity was the announcement of the death of the Nazi leader in his private bunker by the German Radio even though his body was supposedly found by the Allies.
The second off-putting occurrence was that the official report was written by a medieval historian. Not by someone with expertise in war such as people in the military, but a man who had absolutely nothing to do with the ground realities of the era. The report also included eyewitness accounts which only described two bodies coming out of the bunker but none specifically identifying them.
The death of Adolf Hitler was widely accepted even though neither Stalin nor the FBI believed it, continuing their search for him. That is until one day in 1968, 23 years after this news was published, the Russians came forward and stated that they had had the body of Hitler with them all along. Apparently, the jawbone found on the dead body matched with the dental records of Hitler and the hole in the skull definitively confirmed the cause of death as a bullet through the skull.
In 2009, an American doctor ‘borrowed’ the bones to run a DNA test, whose results shocked everyone. They seemed to indicate that the bones had belonged to a woman in her forties. After this confusing and certainly suspicion-arousing revelation, Russians have never given the bones for external examination.
Another interesting theory is that Hitler actually escaped to Argentina, where he aspired to restart his Reich closer to America. This theory owes its existence to instances of the Nazi swastika being discovered in some buildings in the country. Hitler allegedly escaped through an elaborate tunnel network established in Berlin, with an entrance right outside the Berlin airport. This obviously points to the conclusion that Hitler escaped the fate he had in store for him and flew to the New World… perhaps seeking to establish a Fourth Reich.
It is rumoured that Hitler took refuge in then-Fascist Italy under Mussolini, after which he went on an apparent (and very long) submarine journey to Argentina, where he supposedly settled into a nomadic life in a forest, undetected still.
Maybe we’ll never know what actually happened to the Führer. Did he escape his seemingly certain death by blowing sand in our eyes and slipping away to start a colony in Antarctica or Argentina or did the infamous Adolf Hitler meet a rather anticlimactic and underwhelming end that day? We can never know for sure… but we sure can speculate.
For all we know, his descendants could be plotting the end of the world as we know it as you read.
Moving closer to home (disputably so), we examine the death of Indian freedom fighter and an inspiration to millions, Subhash Chandra Bose. The Indian government subscribes to one version of events.
Bose was travelling aboard an overloaded flight over Japanese-ruled Taiwan, which crashed. Bose’s assistant Habibur Rahman slipped out of consciousness, while Bose himself was allegedly doused entirely in gasoline. Once Rahman gained consciousness, the two of them decided to leave by the rear door, whose exit blocked by luggage. Faced with no other options, they chose to run through the fire-engulfed front exit to escape.
Needless to say, Bose’s fuel-soaked clothes caught fire and he sustained severe third-degree burns, to which he succumbed, first falling into a coma, eventually breathing his last that very night. This version of events is also approved by the Japanese government as what actually happened, according to a report it submitted to the Indian government, declassified in September 2016. Clearly, this retelling of the unfortunate death of Bose is the most widely accepted, and seems plausible enough.
However, his relatives and loyalists continue to dismiss this story in favour of other theories, which lie on a spectrum from absolutely incredulous to somewhat believable.
One such theory is that the plane crash was orchestrated by the Japanese in order to allow Bose’s escape to the Soviet Union, where Bose went on to set up an Azad Hind government embassy. He also allegedly went on to reveal his escape to the Soviet Union through multiple radio broadcasts from Siberia, only to be given to the British by the Russians, who interrogated him through torture, eventually killing him.
Netaji’s own lieutenants have claimed never to have seen a body or photographs of him during his treatment or after his death. Multiple so-called sightings of Bose were made across the continent; be it in a Soviet gulag, or in a Chinese army parade, or even within India.
Another bizarre theory that surfaced has to do with Netaji becoming a sanyasi, who allegedly practised traditional herbal medicine and established the Shaulmari Ashram in 1959 adopting the name Srimat Saradanandaji. A similar theory was corroborated by a retired judge, who undertook an enquiry into Netaji’s death, bringing attention to the infamous ‘Gumnami Baba’ from the town of Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, confirming him to indeed be Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose without having any evidence to support the claim.
“Stories persist that Netaji has become a sanyasi and has been seen in the Naga hill country of Assam; that he was a member of a Mongolian trade delegation in Peking; that he lives in Russia; that he is in the Chinese Army.… Pictures have been produced to prove that Netaji is still alive… To date, however, Bose has not reappeared to contradict the evidence that he died in the crash on Taiwan. But the myth lives on.”
— Joyce Chapman Lebra, historian
Whatever be the case, the legacy of this Indian nationalist remains relatively unblemished to this date.
Not even recent events are exempted from what is called the scourge of these professional conspiracy theorists, and the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is a perfect example of the same. While reports from the authorities mostly attribute the fire to accidental causes, the extremely and completely reliable Master of All Truths, InfoWars founder and political pundit, Alex Jones, did not hesitate to uncover the realities hiding under the façade of political correctness and liberal agenda.
He chose to take the unbeaten, perilous path, daring to report on the worrying rise of anti-Christian attacks in the overwhelmingly Christian nation of France, declaring his support for those alleging with complete confidence in the reliability of deleted tweets and reported Twitter accounts, that this fire was possibly the French equivalent of 9/11 terror attacks, despite the glaring absence of any casualties, except for perhaps the well-documented spire of the Notre Dame.
These claims do justice to his vast expanse of wisdom and myriad skills as an expert in investigative journalism. What can we do but marvel in awe at these exploits, as we sip our coffee, tutting disapprovingly at the Parisian skyline with a prominent member missing?
Conspiracy theories are not limited to the confines of serious business. They equally find their presence in the realm of movies (not to claim that they can’t be serious business too!) in the form of film theories — often making completely mind-blowing claims that induce an existential crisis amongst those of us who are already well-acquainted with it, compounding our problems manifold.
While this was an appetiser, a tiny glimpse into the mystical realm of conspiracy theories, if you will, there is much more to see and marvel at. Use this Portkey to introduce yourselves to the world of film theories.
