In a move that eerily resembles George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel 1984, the Nazis attempted their own brand of national mind control using television. More than anything, Adolf Hitler and Nazi propagandists saw how effective televised broadcasts were in controlling the masses. To that end they enlisted the help of Walter Bruch—an engineer who had earlier developed CCTVs to help the military safely monitor experimental rocket launches.

Bruch proposed setting up a broadband cable from Berlin to Nuremberg. Television screens would be installed across the country in various public spots and included a variety of Nazi propaganda that focused mainly on pro-Aryan programs. Ideas for the broadcasts included a reality show called Family Chronicles: An Evening With Hans and Gelli, which showed the ideal lifestyle of an Aryan family. Another, bloodier idea involved showing the films of traitors executed by the Nazis. Fortunately, Germany’s subsequent defeat prevented the Nazis from ever realizing their plan.

While it is general knowledge that some high-ranking Nazis engaged in the occult, more obscure is the fact that they actually believed enough in the power of occultists to have employed them for military purposes, with three of the most well-known examples being Wilhelm Wulff, Ludwig Straniiak, and Wilhelm Gutberlet. Wulff—an astrologer—was tasked by the Nazis to find Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (who was captured and kept in captivity), which he did correctly using his “psychic gifts.” Straniak—an architect by profession—used his “dowsing” abilities to precisely guess the location of the German battleship, the Prince Eugen, which was on a secret mission near Norwegian waters.

Perhaps the most dangerous of the three was Gutberlet, a physician. As one of Hitler’s earliest and closest followers, he allegedly possessed the power to sense the presence of Jews even if they were in a large crowd. Hitler sought him out for his power and even turned him into something of a race consultant.

The idea for the “Sun Gun” originated with famed rocket scientist Hermann Oberth in 1923. A giant mirror, more than 1.5 kilometers (about one mile) wide, would be sent into geosynchronous orbit above the Earth. The Nazis were serious about this plan, hoping it would be able to boil the seas and burn cities to the ground. No official construction details were ever released and the plan was estimated to need nearly 15 years to complete, with a cost of over three million marks. However, it is unlikely the weapon would have worked anyway, because light can’t be brought to a sharp focus with a mirror unless the source is already focused. Oberth wrote that he came up with the idea after schoolchildren would use little hand mirrors to annoy him with light when he was a teacher.