Origins[]
The Universum Project began on June 7, 1953 with the goal of uniting the world around advancing humanity through space exploration and studies of the universe. The project was started by Hitler, hoping to gain allies for his planned conquest of Russia and to establish a larger area of German territory on the moon, which at the time was only the city of New Berlin. The first nation to join the project was Russia on October 2, ironically.
Terraformation Plans[]
The first item on Hitler's agenda was transforming the entire moon into a "mini-Earth" that could sustain life like Earth did. The planning phase of this project began on October 13. What everyone in the project generally agreed upon was that it would be a massive undertaking and could not begin for many years until further technology was available.
Full moon map with blue rings showing the areas of the ice deposits
On October 17, Hitler ordered the Germans on the moon to journey to the north and south poles of the moon to look for any signs of anything that might be useful to the endeavor. 5 days later, Hitler announced that anyone who wanted to could go to New Berlin and help the effort of those on the moon. On November 8, the colonists reported back to Hitler, saying that there were massive amounts of ice underneath the surface of the moon at the poles. This gave a major boost to the project, since once they had a large enough heat source, the moon's oceans would form themselves. On November 15, German scientists discovered large deposits of oxygen and hydrogen in many moon rocks, which threw the whole project off course, as they would need to terraform the moon while sustaining the natural moon rock, in case large amounts of oxygen or hydrogen are required for any further terraforming projects. Not much else was done about the project at this time, although on November 18, a completed map of the moon was sent to Earth with the approximate locations of the large ice deposits, with the northern one being visibly larger than the southern one.
Space Telescope[]
The Milky Way, as photographed by the CPTD
On December 2, 1968 the Universum Project completed a space telescope, named the "Cosmic Photographing Transmission Device" or CPTD, similar to that of NASA, but theirs had the capability of sending pictures and information millions of miles through "cyberteleportation." This device launched on December 9 and began sending pictures a few days later. Among these pictures were a photograph of a new galaxy, which was named the Black Eye Galaxy, and this was discovered on December 17. For the first time on December 21, humans had photos of their native galaxy, the Milky Way. The pictures of the two galaxies perplexed those who saw them, as they did not understand why the galaxies formed, or why they had a large light source in the middle. On January 2, 1969, it was hypothesized that galaxies were larger forms of solar systems, with a supermassive star at the center, although this theory did not account for or explain the constantly accelerating movement detected within the Milky Way galaxy.
At this point, humanity's desire to explore space and the universe had reached new heights, and Hitler was seen as the pioneer of this "human expansionism," due to Germany's being at the forefront of the exploration of space and America's steady spiral into communism.