The Antarctic Survival Myth

 

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz:
Last President of a United Germany

For a few brief weeks during late April and May of 1945, a leader of Europe came to power, an honorable man, respected even within the military councils of the Allies. That man was Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander-in-chief of the German Navy, in overall command of German military forces in the north, and at that tense moment engaged in arranging sea and other transportation for the masses of refugees fleeing from the eastern areas. To his overwhelming astonishment, Dönitz had been designated by Hitler as his successor and head of state. In his last political testament executed at 4:00 a.m. on 29 April 1945, and witnessed by Dr. Josef Göbbels, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, and Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Hans Krebs, Adolf Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Dönitz as "President of the Reich and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces ... by virtue of my statement in the Reichstag on September 1st, 1939 ..."

Of all the high-ranking German military leaders, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz is the most often overlooked, and yet he may have been the most crucial for the story of Nazi survival and continued secret weapons research. After all, the secret preparations and voyage of the U-234 to Japan, with its precious cargo of enriched uranium and infrared fuses, could not likely have taken place without his express knowledge, participation, and authorization. Thus, outside Kammler's "think tank", he was perhaps the one military leader of a conventional service arm to know the full extent of Nazi Germany's actual advances in atom bomb and other nuclear research.


Best known for his orchestration of the Nazi U-boat campaign against British, Canadian, and American shipping, his alleged role in the various survival myths is little known outside a small circle of UFOlogy and World War Two researchers. And of all the Nazi military leaders, his selection by Adolf Hitler as the second Führer of the Third Reich is, at best, problematical, unless viewed in the light of these late war technology transfers and escaping Nazis.

 

Why would Hitler have chosen Dönitz, a World War One veteran of the High Seas Fleet of Kaiser Wilhelm, with the Kriegsmarine's well-known imperialist culture and leanings that he represented, to be his successor?

 

A conventional answer is afforded by the circumstances. 

Betrayed on all sides - by Himmler and Göring themselves - a desperate Hitler reached out to what he thought was the most loyal conventional military service arm of the Wehrmacht, the Navy. But the survival mythos contributes a very different perspective from which to view Hitler's possible motivations.


Dönitz himself does nothing to allay those suspicions, either during or immediately after the war. According to Henry Stevens, who has almost single-handedly investigated every lead - no matter how implausible the detail - of the Nazi UFO and survival legends, Dönitz on more than one occasion alluded to the Navy's role in exotic secret weapons research and in the construction of very secret bases far from the Reich homeland.

In 1943, the Grand Admiral is reported to have stated that "the German submarine fleet is proud of having built for the Führer, in another part of the world, a Shangri-La on land, an impregnable fortress." [Henry Stevens, The Last Battalion and German Arctic, Antarctic, and Andean Bases citing Col. Howard A. Buechner and Capt. Wilhelm Bernhardt, Hitler's Ashes.] Strange language for an admiral well-known for cold calculation in military strategy and tactics, and not well-known to be inclined to mystical statements. Then again, in 1944, the Grand Admiral doled out a little more information: "The German Navy will have to accomplish a great task in the future. The German Navy knows all hiding places in the oceans and therefore it will be very easy to bring the Führer to a safe place should the necessity arise and in which he will have the opportunity to work out his final plans." [Ibid. citing Buechner and Bernhardt]. But it was Dönitz's almost insane remarks at Nuremberg that seemed to point clearly to one of the two polar regions as the "site" for these "plans". At Nuremberg he boasted of "an invulnerable fortress, a paradise-like oasis in the middle of eternal ice." [Ibid., citing Willibald Mattern, UFOs Unbekannte Flugobjekt? Letzte Geheimwaffe des Dritten Reiches?]


Whatever the trustworthiness of Steven's sources, these statements, plus the unusual behavior of some U-boats at the end of the war, and the Germans' well-publicized pre-war Antarctic scientific expedition, certainly seemed to spur the United States into a sudden and intense postwar military interest in Antarctica. Again, since the basic facts are well-known to but a small circle of World War Two and UFOlogy researchers, it is worth recalling them in some detail.


U-530 surrendered at Mar del Plata, Argentina, on July 10, 1945, U- 977 surrendered at Mar del Plata, Argentina, on August 17, 1945. U-465 was scuttled off the coast of Patagonia in August 1945. Another U-boat of unknown number surrendered to the Argentine Navy on June 10, 1945.


When the U-530 and U-977 surrendered so late after the European War's end, Allied intelligence was more than a little concerned, and dispatched agents to interrogate the German officers. They certainly did not believe that the German captains had taken their ships on a South Atlantic excursion of three to four months just to surrender to the Argentines, as Captain Schäffer of the U-977 and Captain Wermoutt of the U-530 actually, and apparently in all seriousness, stated. Stevens summarizes the Allies' real concern - Nazi survival in no uncertain terms:

The Allies first believed that these U-Boats had taken persons of special importance, perhaps even Adolf Hitler, from Germany to South America. In light of this possibility both captains were held for questioning. Captain Schäffer, who surrendered last, was taken to America for a month or so then to England for another period of questioning. Both captains maintained that there had been no persons of political importance deposited in South America. Eventually the captains were released although Schäffer found living in Occupied Germany intolerable and relocated to South America. Captain Schäffer even went on to write a book explaining his voyage and actions.

Unfortunately, nobody really believed Schäffer. Bernhardt, who himself was aboard U-530, claims that American and British Intelligence had learned that U-530 and U-977 did visit Antarctica before landing in South America but the exact nature of their mission eluded them.

A glimpse into this extraordinary mission and the high importance afforded by the German Navy High Command (the Oberkommando der KriegsMarine or OKM) to it can perhaps be afforded by a glance of the alleged performance characteristics of the U-530.

 

In the spring of 1945, an old fashioned type U-boat with the number 530 was dry-docked after being damaged by a freighter which had rammed it. As was typical for the Kriegsmarine, a new submarine, probably a type XXI or further development of it, was launched at approximately the same time, and was given the same service number, an obvious ploy to confuse Allied military intelligence. But why was the U-boat that actually sailed to the South Atlantic and that later surrendered to Argentina probably a type XXI or some derivative? Because Captain Wilhelm Bernhardt, a pen name of an actual crew member of Captain Wermoutt's U-530, let out a significant piece of information; he stated that her submerged speed was approximately 30 knots, an unheard of speed for a submerged submarine in that day. The only submarines in service in any navy in the world capable of that performance at that time were the German type XXI U-boats.

 

 

 

The type XXI U-boat, like most U-boats in the German Navy by that time, was fitted with the special schnorkel device that allowed its  main diesel engines to operate while submerged underwater. It is quite possible that these newer Type XXI U-boats also had the newer Schnorkels fitted with special anti-radar coatings. But the Type XXI was also outfitted with the special "Walther" turbine, an underwater jet" device that utilized hydrogen peroxide that allowed great underwater cruising speeds. In effect, these turbines were "silent" engines allowing great underwater speeds for limited durations of time. Thus, the Type XXI had brought submarine technology and warfare to a new and sophisticated level by the war's end. But would even the Type XXI have been able to brave the North and then South Atlantic Oceans, by that point in the war all but Allied lakes?


There is some indication that not only were they successful in doing so, but wildly so.


The Germans had adapted special new guidance systems  to missiles, and torpedoes. These systems included wire-guidance, as well as magnetic proximity fuses. Stevens reports that on May 2, 1945, a flotilla of U-boats, many of them Type XXIs, carefully husbanded by Dönitz at Kristiansand fjord in Norway, departed in a wolf pack for Iceland, making the traditional run through the straits between Iceland and Greenland.


What happened next has been deleted from what passes as history, at least in the countries of the former Allied Powers. What happened was the last great sea battle of the Atlantic. The German U-boat convoy ran straight into an Allied naval battle formation.The result was stunning. Using the new torpedoes... the Allied ships were totally annihilated. Apparently the Allies never quite realized what they had run into. Our only third-party report of the event was an article in a South American newspaper which learned of the event. A quote (sic) from the only survivor of the attack is often quoted by the underground German writers: "May God help me, may I never again encounter such a force" - British destroyer captain.


This was reportedly carried in "El Mercurio Santiago, Chile, and "Der Weg" a paper published by exiled Germans living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 


The British consistently maintained a flotilla of destroyers, accompanied occasionally by heavier units of light and heavy cruisers, on station in these straits throughout the war.


The use of new torpedoes - whether wire-guided, acoustic-seeking, or magnetic proximity-fused - leads once again back to Karnrnler's "think tank" secret weapons empire. These torpedoes, plus the high-submersible speeds and "proto-stealth" capabilities of the Type XXI U-boats would have been more than a match for the British destroyers on station between Iceland and Greenland.

 

The Coler coil came to the quick attention of the Kriegsmarine in the early days of the Third Reich, which immediately classified it at the highest level, and funded further research.

 

It is not hard to understand the Kriegsmarine's interest in the Coler device. It is the perfect generator for submarine use. It produces no exhaust and burns no fuel. It could be linked directly to existing electric-drive vessels and run under water indefinitely. Did the Germans actually accomplish this? The underground German writers say that this indeed happened. This theme runs throughout the writing of Bergmann whose specialty is the link between German submarines and German flying saucers.

 

This is an incredible, if not outlandish, claim. Yet it is worth pondering for a moment. The Coler devices, developed in 1933 [British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, 1946: The Invention of Hans Coler Relating to an Alleged New Source of Power] and their unusual ability to transduce electrical power out of something were known to the Germans fully six years before the war had even started, and were developed in secret for twelve years after that (and then presumably by the British for another twenty three years after that!). We do not know, of course, nor is the British Government saying (if indeed it knows), to what state the Germans brought this device, but whatever the state, they bad fully twelve years in which to do it. But whether perfected or not, notice what else is being implied by the assertion that it was brought to some state of practical use on submarines: the Germans were deliberately after a method of submarine propulsion that would have allowed indefinite submerged cruising, much as a modern nuclear submarine, but by a device much simpler in design and construction, and presumably, much less risky in operation Whether or not the Germans were able to bring it to a state of practical use is thus, in one sense, immaterial, since the classification of the device alone indicates the nature of their interest.

It goes without saying that the high priority that the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee placed on recovering a Coler device and its inventor after the war tends to corroborate the notion that the British had learned the hard way that it had been brought to some state of practical use for submarine propulsion

When the Antarctica mystery is mentioned, Britain is never given more than a footnote. That fact is surprising in itself, especially as British forces were active in Antarctica throughout the war and quite possibly took the initiative in dealing with the Antarctic Nazi threat a whole 12 months before Operation Highjump was initiated.

 

Britain's activities on Antarctica, though less documented and more clandestine, are just as intriguing as the supposed much-vaunted Operation Highjump. Unfortunately for Britain, though victorious in the War, it was bankrupted and humiliated by the two new superpowers. But Britain was in a position to regain some pride and surreptitiously upset its supposed allies with the final, decisive battle against the surviving Nazis: a battle that would never be recorded in the history books…..

 

 

In any case, the odd circumstances of the late-surrendering U- boats, not to mention the alleged naval debacle suffered by the British so late in the war when everything seemed - from a naval and military standpoint - so secure and safe, focused Allied and particularly American eyes quite quickly and forcefully on Antarctica. [It goes without saying that the high priority that the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee placed on recovering a Coler device and its inventor after the war tends to corroborate the notion that the British had learned the hard way that it had been brought to some state of practical use for submarine propulsion.]

 

Whatever the Allies learned, there was a sudden, intense interest in Antarctica. This interest was so strong that in 1946, as Allied troop were returning home from the War and all thoughts were turned to peacetime pursuits, the United States Government, under President Harry Truman, found it absolutely imperative that a full military expedition be mounted against Antarctica. This campaign was called Operation Highjump.


While the operation was billed in American newspapers, magazines and even the occasional newsreel as a mapping expedition, its actual military character is easily seen from a glance at its composition. Commanded by America's premier polar explorer, Admiral Byrd, the flotilla included an aircraft escort carrier (the Philippines Sea), two seaplane carriers (the Pine Island and Curritich), two destroyers (the Brownsen and Henderson), two escort ships (Yankee and Merrick), two fueling ships (Canister and Capacan), and a submarine (the Sennet). Additionally, four thousand troops equipped with helicopters, reliable fixed wing DC-3s, and a specially designed armored tracked vehicle were also at the Admiral's command.


 

Report of Operation Highjump, excerpt:

The short period available for planning and preparation required strenuous work on the part of all. Many of the ships were in an inactive status and all were below peace time complements. All aircraft required winterization and some alterations. Little time was available for the training and indoctrination of the hastily assembled crews of the ships and aircraft. Much specialized equipment had to be assembled and modified for the special conditions to be encountered, especially that for the base at Little America. The departure date of 2 December 1946 could not have been met except for the splendid cooperation of the various Bureaus and agencies of the Navy Department and of numerous commands afloat and ashore.

 

Outfitted for a stay of eight months, the expedition encircled the German claimed territory of Neuschwabenland (New Swabialand), Admiral Byrd stationing the naval vessels off the coast, and then advanced the ground troops and aerial reconnaissance from the pole toward the German territory.

Allegedly the German "base" was quickly found, overflown, and either an American flag, or a bomb, depending on the version of the story, was dropped on the position. In any case, the four escort craft accompanying the scout aircraft were lost without a trace

 

This single event" throws the whole Highjump exercise into a curious light, for "it somehow changed the whole character of the Byrd expedition. Within 48 hours Admiral Byrd had given orders which canceled the expedition and made preparations to leave Antarctica. The mission had lasted closer to eight weeks than to eight months. No official reason was given for the sudden withdrawal.Byrd was returned to Washington DC, debriefed, and his personal and operational logs from the mission were seized and remain classified to this day, fueling an endless stream of rumors and conspiracy theories.


On March 5, 1947, the prestigious Chilean newspaper "El Mercurio" carried an article from its correspondent Lee van Atta aboard the support ship "Mount Olympus". The title of the article was: "Admiral Richard E Byrd refers to the Strategic Importance of the Poles." It has often been alleged that this item never appeared and is fiction, but now we have the cutting in question, and so it exists. In the past it has often been misquoted in translation by occult enthusiasts, the usual interpolation in the text being "flying objects" having the ability "to fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds".

The article reads in true translation as follows:

Admiral Byrd declared today that it was imperative for the United States to initiate immediate defence measures against the possible invasion of the country by hostile aircraft operating from the polar regions. The Admiral stated: - 'I don't want to frighten anyone unduly but it is a bitter reality that in the case of a new war, the continental United States will be attacked by aircraft flying in from one or both poles.' - As regards the recently terminated expedition, Byrd said that the most important result of the observations and discoveries made is the current potential effect which they will have on the security of the United States.

Since Admiral Byrd was subsequently appointed Officer-in-Charge US Antarctic Programs, it is fair to assume that he was never at any time certifiably psychotic. The statement, which was never denied by the US Government, gives rise to a number of interesting questions:

(1) Why was the 1947 Antarctic Expedition terminated after only two months? What "observations and discoveries" did he make?

(2) Why did the Admiral make his statement at a Press conference before his return to the United States when the information he had was a matter he considered vital to the country's national defence, and he was bound by his office to report in the first instance to his superior, USN Secretary Forrestal?

(3) From where did he obtain the idea of "hostile aircraft" operating from Antarctica and the Arctic?

[Not "operating from" -  It says "the continental United States will be attacked by aircraft flying in from one or both poles" i.e. coming OVER the poles from the USSR.  There was during the 50's and 60's and perhaps during the latter 40's a general perception that if the US and the Soviets went to war Soviet bombers and missiles would come in over the North Pole; a trans-polar route tends to be shorter than a great circle route for certain flight paths. Since many ICBM's can achieve low orbit they could easily come in over the South Pole as well it would just take longer. Hence the construction of the radar and BMEWS lines.]

(4) How many "hostile aircraft" would it take to actually invade a country the size of the United States?

The matter was never mentioned again officially but there are two points we might like to bear in mind. These are the mental breakdown and mysterious suicide of USN Secretary Forrestal at Bethesda Naval Hospital, believed to be linked to Admiral Byrd's report and the spate of sightings of strange unidentified boomerang-shaped aircraft "with the ability to materialize and dematerialize at will" which were reported on numerous occasions to overfly USAF force bases during the early summer of 1947 and which are mentioned in a declassified USAF document drafted in August 1947.

But the expedition, in keeping with its cover as a mapping expedition perhaps, was composed also of small contingents of news media and reporters from other countries, one of which was Chile.


On March 5, 1947 the "El Mercurio" newspaper of Santiago, Chile, had a headline article "On Board the Mount Olympus on the High Seas" which quoted Byrd in an interview with Lee van Atta:

Adm. Byrd declared today that it was imperative for the United States to initiate immediate defense measures against hostile regions. The admiral further stated that he didn't want to frighten anyone unduly but that it was a bitter reality that in case of a new war the continental United States would be attacked by flying objects which could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds. [Earlier he had recommended defense bases AT the NORTH Pole.] Admiral Byrd repeated the above points of view, resulting from his personal knowledge gathered both at the north and south poles, before a news conference held for International News Service.


At that time in history, of course, there was only one nation that had undertaken anything like an extensive exploration of the southern polar continent: Nazi Germany.

The Neu Schwabenland Expedition


In late 1938 the Germans undertook an expedition to Antarctica, specially outfitting a seaplane carrier, the Schwabenland for the purpose, and placing it under the command of one of Germany's most experienced polar navigators. At a cost of some millions of Reichsmarks, the expedition was under the personal direction and mentorship of none other than Luftwaffe chief, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, which leaves one to wonder what possible purpose Göring would have in sponsoring such an expedition. [It is also to be noted that apparently the then Deputy Führer and Party chief, Rudolf Hess, was also privy to whatever secret purpose and findings this expedition had. Some people allege that this was in part a hidden motivation for Hess's inexplicable flight to Great Britain in 1941 to conduct secret "peace" negotiations with representatives of the British Fascist movement.]


That it was military in nature seems beyond doubt, for the Nazis spared no effort to outfit the expedition as thoroughly as possible. New canning techniques were invented for the food needed on the voyage from and back to Germany, and new clothing was designed, including allegedly a "grey almost bullet proof seamless and metallic appearing suit...made of whale skin." [Christoph Friedrich, Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions.] The inspiration for the expedition may have had hidden occult motivations as well, for the occult Thulegesellschaft or Thule Society subscribed to a Nordic Atlantis hidden beneath the polar ice, whence sprang, so the legend goes, the Germanic race. [This fact would also place the expedition within the brief of the SS Ahnenerbedienst.] In any case, small teams of specially selected biologists and other scientists accompanied the expedition to run laboratory experiments on board the refurbished Schwabenland. [The expedition is the subject of a fascinating novel by William Dietrich called Ice Reich. Dietrich's thesis is that the Germans were after unknown microbial and bacteriological life forms that were frozen in the ice and that could be transformed into biological weapons.]

The Germans chose the region of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, an area of the continent claimed by Denmark. In blatant disregard for international law, the Nazis overflew the enire area, dropping thousands of little swastika flags on the region with little spikes to embed them in the ice, and claimed it for Germany, renaming the region Neuschwabenland. but they did more than just fly and drop flags.

 

The German pilots extensively photographed the region, and reported mountain ranges in excess of 12,000 feet altitude, rocky crags projecting above the fields of ice. But most amazingly, they allegedly found ice-free ponds, heated geothermally, in which grew various unknown species of algae. They also discovered the southern tip of the fault line that runs from New Zealand, through Neuschwabenland, and up the Atlantic Ocean, the famous Atlantic "trench". The Germans concluded that such features might indicate the presence of rocky caverns on the continent, heated geothermally, the perfect place for a hidden base in the world's most isolated, desolate, and inaccessible wilderness.

 

Most intriguingly, the scientists aboard the Schwabenland were not idle in analyzing the potential foodstuffs of the continent. It is known that German dieticians were commissioned to prepare tasty and nutritious meals using only what was available in Antarctica.

 

Emperor penguins were captured for return to Germany for study. Walruses were shot and their bodies dissected. Their bodies were tested for fat, protein, vitamin and other nutrient content. The biological findings made during this expedition would occupy German university scientists for months to come but the aim of this focus was secret .  

Clearly, if these allegations are true, then the Germans were preparing for a relatively large and permanent presence on the continent.













 

Then, via an unusual zigzagging route between Africa and South America - itself one of the intriguing mysteries of the expedition - the Schwabenland returned to Germany, reaching port on April 10, 1939. Göring presented the expedition members with written medals and commemorations. Then, all further mention of the expedition in the German - or any other press - ceased.



So what do we have at this juncture?

  • Allegations from German writers of known or suspected Nazi sympathies of a continued German presence on the Antarctic continent during and after the war;
  • Actual suspicious U-boat activity in the South Atlantic at the end of the war;
  • Allegations of German research that could have been for no other purpose than establishment of a permanent German presence on the continent;
  • Allegations of discoveries of small thermally heated ponds with unknown types of algae on the continent's interior;
  • Allegations of Grand Admiral Dönitz that the U-boat fleet was involved in the construction of a secret base or bases far from the Reich, one base of which was surrounded by "eternal ice";
  • Allegations of a last sea battle in the Atlantic prior to the German surrender, with things going surprisingly disastrously for the Allies;
  • An actual large postwar American military adventure to the continent within two years of the end of the war, with small accompanying international press contingents, an expedition outfitted for eight months that stayed only eight weeks; and finally,
  • An actual newspaper report of Admiral Byrd trying to warn America of a military threat from "enemy aircraft" flying from pole to pole at tremendous speed.

     


    All of this would seem to imply at a minimum that something was going on in Antarctica, and that someone in the United States Federal government was quite worried about it.


    Indeed, when the United States returned to Antarctica some twelve years later, it did so once again with force, this time, nuclear force, and once again, under the cover of an "international cooperative effort," the International Geophysical Year of 1957- 1958. This means that if there were indeed Germans on a secret base somewhere on that frozen continent, they had some twelve years to do whatever they were doing. In terms of the Nazi legend, supposedly they were busily perfecting their strange wartime research. In any case, as Henry Stevens points out, this period, from 1947 to 1957-58, is in fact the "golden age" of the flying saucer, encompassing the Kenneth Arnold sightings, the alleged Roswell UFO crash and recovery, to the famous "buzzing" of the Capital and White House by UFOs that supposedly made even the unflappable Harry Truman anxious. [Stevens further speculates on the possible motivation for the UFO overflights of sensitive areas of Washington DC: "Was this overflight in retaliation for the Byrd overflight of the German base in Antarctica and designed to show the Americans they had no control over their own airspace?" Stevens offers no evidence for this speculation. Supposing Stevens is correct for the sake of argument, then suffice it to say that overflights of the American capital by Nazi flying saucers so long after the war's end would certainly have shaken the national security apparatus of the United States much more than overflights by apparently benign extraterrestrial ones, and the response would have been to clamp the lid down on government research of the phenomenon, exactly as happened, since the supposedly defeated enemy was not, if this is true, really defeated after all.] The famous 1952 Washington DC sightings prompted a nervous and unconvincing Pentagon press conference - the only one ever given by a general officer from the Pentagon - on the subject of UFOs.


    Under the cover of the geophysical year, the United States again sent a naval task force to the Antarctic. The use of military force – including atomic weapons! – was "covered" by the ridiculous story that the USA and USSR, in a rare moment of nuclear cooperation during the height of the Cold War, were interested in seeing how much of the continent could be "recovered" for use by warming it with nuclear explosions! Accordingly, it would be necessary to explode a few small nuclear "devices" for above the continent to warm and melt the ice as a proof of concept!

    As Stevens aptly quips, "You already know exactly where in Antarctica they planned to explode these atomic bombs."

    Three bombs were thus detonated at an altitude of approximately 300 miles above the target, one on August 27, 1958, one on August 30, 1958, and a third on September 6, 1958. [Stevens also notes that these bursts may have something to do with the "ozone hole" over the South Pole and the us government's reluctance to discuss the idea or the events that may have caused it. Additionally, perhaps it is possible that one atom bomb from each of the world's then nuclear powers, the US, the USSR, and the UK, were used.] If these bursts were indeed intended secretly against an actual target, then why so high? Stevens hypothesizes that they were to knock out any German equipment in the region by the strong electromagnetic pulse that results from a nuclear detonation. Stevens also notes that these bursts may have something to do with the "ozone hole" over the South Pole and the US government's reluctance to discuss the idea or the events that may have caused it.


    While this is a plausible explanation if the intention were to occupy the alleged base via a ground assault or assaults within the time frame of the bursts, no such contingent is known to have accompanied the small armada of two destroyers, two destroyer escorts, and a small aircraft carrier. However,  this explanation does bear some weight in connection with the allegations of the capabilities of German bases at the other pole. With the Geophysical Year expedition of 1958's atomic detonations, the alleged German base on the Antarctic continent fades, the Germans themselves supposedly gradually evacuating it during the interim period from Byrd's expedition to the final coup de grace for more favorable climes in South America. There the case for Nazi survival and continued research becomes much stronger. But before we can turn to that, we must investigate the alleged German goings on at the other pole.


    Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Arctic Canada: The Other German Polar Survival Myth


    The Western Allies, the Russians, and the Germans all relied heavily on weather reports to plan and execute their campaigns, and for this purpose, accurate up-to-the-minute reporting on Arctic conditions was crucial. To this end it is not surprising to find the Germans in particular outfitting special commando units - usually Waffen SS - to operate independently in Spitzbergen Island north of Norway, in Greenland, and in Arctic Canada. Such teams were delivered to their operational areas via U-boat. Spitzbergen in particular seemed to trade hands between the British and the Germans, as each side mounted commando operations to destroy the other's weather stations and listening posts.

    On one such occasion, the most famous perhaps, the German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship to the Bismarck, sailed to the island where one such British station was operating, leveled her 15 inch heavy guns at it, and promptly dispatched it, no doubt to the complete shock and surprise of the British manning it. Other allegations have a secret German weather base and listening post operating in Franz Josef Land, the islands to the north of Finland and the Soviet Union.

    However, with the allegations of German bases in Greenland, one again enters the realm of the surreal. These bases were allegedly comparatively large, as were the contingents of Germans operating them. While they were supposedly known by the Greenlanders and occupying American forces, most efforts to find them ended in failure. One postwar German source places as many as three independent SS battle groups (Kamfgruppen) operating in Greenland, under the code name of Thulekampfgruppen (Thule battle groups). The connection to the occult interests of the Third Reich are once again in evidence.


    Predictably, these "Thule battle groups" become the subject of another series of survival legends, as former SS officers supposedly reported seeing U-boats loaded with rates designated "Thule 1 K" and so on departing Germany in the final days of the war Sworn to secrecy by the SS, the "clear implication is that the 'Thule 1 K' is the Thule Kampfgruppe 1" and that it had "no intentions of surrender; and that there was still a mission to accomplish. The Americans, so the story goes, were unsuccessful in locating them bases for two reasons: the area was too large, and the bases were "like the German fortifications built in Neuschwabenland...tunneled deep underneath the glaciers of ice (into presumably solid rock) and that they were bored to a length of 2000 meters." [O. Bergmann, Deutsche Flugsheiben und U-Boote Überwachen die Weltmeere.]


    This allegation is surely implausible, since the transport of sophisticated mining and boring equipment, let alone enough explosive, for such a task by U- boat would have been an enormous undertaking, one quite beyond the labor capabilities of small SS battle groups – consider the fact that the huge underground factories in Germany were built over several months by thousands of slave laborers working around the clock with the best available existing mining and tunneling technology.


    But this is not the end of the surreal aspects of the story. Should the bases have been detected, they were supposedly defended with exotic electromagnetic weapons, one of which had a short range, but that could cause the ignition of aircraft engines to fail completely.

     

    After the war, the Vienna Wiener Montag reported in its December 29, 1947 edition that Eskimos reported to American authorities that an SS battle group of fully 150 men had been encountered. The number 150 is realistic for a battle group, but quite below the labor requirements for the construction of such large bases.

    January 6, 1994 Albuquerque Journal North article featuring
    William Lyne and His Mysterious Nazi Compass



    Ultima Thule


    In 1910, explorers Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen established an outpost on the northwest coast of     Greenland. They called it Thule . The name is from the "Ultima Thule" of ancient geographers, referring to the farthest north land known to be inhabited by humans.

    In the early 1900s, the Inuit knew Thule as a trade, medical and social center. Today it is the U.S. Armed Forces' northernmost base which includes a Space Warning Squadron and a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site designed to detect and track missiles launched against North America.


    When the base was planned, it was not known what the coldest Arctic temperatures or strongest winds might be, so everything was built to withstand temperatures as cold as -100F / -73C and winds of up to 200 mph / 320 km per hour.

     

    Thule sits on 1600 feet / 490 meters of permafrost, and as long as everything stays frozen, the buildings sit on solid ground. Ground level buildings have double floors with cold air circulating between them, and other buildings are well above ground to prevent the permafrost from thawing out. If it did, the buildings would be sitting on a slushy mix of water and gravel.

     

    What doesn't Thule have? A view of the Northern Lights! The base is almost directly in the center of the "auroral oval" and is too far north to see them.

     

    Besides these allegations of large bases and battle groups and exotic weaponry, there is a similar account circulated by the distinctly pro-Nazi novelist Wilhelm Landig in his 1971 novel Götzen gegen Thule, a novel he billed as "full of realities" (voller Wirklichkeiten), of a large German base in the Canadian Arctic, near the magnetic North pole. This base, he alleges, was serviced by the German military using special long-range aircraft and, of course, flying saucers! As if that were not enough, Landig maintains that these aircraft were not equipped with normal machine guns or cannon for their defensive weaponry, but utilized a Metallstrahl, essentially an electromagnetic "rail gun" used to propel tiny pellets with extreme velocity, a kind of hyper-velocity shotgun that would more than rip apart any Allied aircraft, and do so at great distances.

     

    All of these allegations would remain merely fanciful if it were not for the discovery by American UFOlogist William Lyne - himself definitely outside the "mainstream" of the UFOlogy community  -  of a piece of German equipment that, quite literally, he bought at a second-hand store in White Sands, New Mexico!

     

    [Lyne is the author of a rather extraordinary book of UFOlogy - a field in which the extraordinary seems to be the norm - called Space Aliens from the Pentagon, the main theme of which is his adamant insistence that UFOs are entirely terrestrial and man-made, and being used to advance a fictitious "alien agenda" and psychological operations campaign. Lyne, notwithstanding the more often than not unbelievable aspects of his book, was, in addition to Stevens, one of the few UFOlogists to take the Nazi origins myth of UFOs seriously prior to the publication of Nick Cook's The Hunt for Zero Point.]  

     

    The unusual thing about this piece of equipment was not only its circular central swastika - a clear reference to the occult Thule Gesellschaft since that version of the swastika appeared on its emblem - but also its designation as a Peiltochterkompass, a "daughter compass." Investigating this strange piece of equipment further, Lyne concluded that it was no ordinary compass, since it appeared not to operate by any magnetic means, which might explain how it ended up in White Sands, New Mexico! Lyne and his mysterious compass even became the subject of an article in a local American newspaper.


    Why is Lyne's find so important to the allegations of Nazi bases in the Canadian Arctic that were being supplied by long range aircraft?


    Very simple.


    If there were ever any truth to the allegations of German bases in these heavily forested regions, then normal magnetic compasses would be of virtually no use for navigation purposes in the region, since standard compasses are notoriously inaccurate at the polar regions with solar energy cascading down and causing local disruptions of the magnetic field. Some other method, therefore, had to be found to orient aircraft for safe navigation. Landig alleges that this was done by means of a compass that oriented itself to the sun by reading polarized light, rather than magnetic field lines. Lyne therefore seems to have found some version of this compass in an area of America known for its secret research laboratories some twenty years or so after Landig's surreal allegations first appeared!


    But according to Landig there is even more to consider, for according to him the German base in the Canadian Arctic was actively researching and developing so-called "free energy" devices, devices that would tap the so-called "zero point energy" of quantum mechanics. In this connection, the research was allegedly carried out under the auspices of the SS Entwicklungstelle IV, or SS "Developmental Installation IV," an entity, if it existed at all, that would have fallen under the mission brief and jurisdiction of Kammler's SS Sonderkommando, for it was responsible for "research into making Germany independent of foreign energy sources."  


    So with Landig's fantastic allegations, we come full circle back to the exotic energy sources, the technologies, the occult, and the SS research being conducted by Nazi Germany.

    To summarize the accumulated allegations and evidences:

    (1) Fact: The Germans undertook an expedition to Antarctica whose hidden purpose was clearly military in nature, since one cannot imagine the likes of Reichsmarschall Göring sponsoring an expedition for any other purpose;

    (2) Fact: The United States on two separate occasions over the wide time-frame of eleven to twelve years undertook two large military expeditions to that continent, both under appropriate cover stories for mapping (the 1947 Byrd expedition, Operation Highjump, and for the 1957-58 Geophysical Years (to study the effects of atomic blasts on Antarctic weather!);

    (3) Fact: Admiral Byrd, the leader of the first American expedition, was recorded in a South American newspaper as warning of "enemy" aircraft capable of violating American airspace with ease, and of flying form pole to pole with tremendous speed;

    (4) Fact: The German Navy showed great interest in the "free-energy" ideas and coils of Hans Coler, for the ostensible purpose of creating a means of submarine propulsion that would allow German U-boats to stay submerged more or less indefinitely;

    (5) Fact: Admiral Byrd's diaries and logs from his expedition are still classified;

    (6) Fact: Coler's inventions were highly classified by the German Navy, and later by the British, who only declassified them over thirty years after the war's end;

    (7) Fact: The Germans had also apparently contrived a sophisticated compass for possible use in polar regions by aircraft, and possibly by other less conventional aircraft;

    (8) Fact: the alleged time span of the German Antarctic base's survival is coincident with "golden age" of the UFO, from the Arnold sightings, the Roswell Crash, up to and beyond the great 1950s Washington DC UFO flap;

    (9) Fact: SS General Dr. Ing. Hans Kammler had assumed total control of all the Third Reich's secret weapons research by the end of the war, a position which would have made him privy to the German Navy's research;

    (10) Fact: It is evident from the movements of General Patton's divisions in the closing days of the European war that Kammler's SS secret weapons empire was the deliberate, and principal, target of these military operations.

    (11) Allegation: Grand Admiral Dönitz on more than one occasion alluded to the role of the German U-boat fleet in the construction of secret bases in polar regions;

    (12) Allegation: These bases were staffed by SS troops, and presumably technicians conducting ongoing secret research into "zero point energy" or "free energy";

    (13) Allegation: Said research fell under an SS entity called S-IV, recalling Kammler's S-III.

    (14) Allegation: These bases were said to be defended by exotic types of weaponry, including electromagnetic "rail guns" to devices that could interfere with and halt standard electrical engine ignitions systems;

    (15) Allegation: There were secret SS teams working on "areas of physics" even more exotic than atomic and thermonuclear energy;

    (16) Allegation: There is a connection to Nazi occult interests in the polar regions via the myth of the pre-war occult Thule Society(Thulegesellschaft).

    (17) Fact: The highest levels of the SS were initiates into Himmler's occult inner circle at Wewelsburg, making it likely that Kammler himself was such an initiate;

    (18) Fact: The 1944 German atom bomb test at Rügen took place at a location with its own occult pedigree and significance for the pre-war Germanic, and very occult, Order of the New Templars

    Antarctica
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    What emerges from this list is disturbing indeed. Clearly, a prima facie case can be made that the Nazi leadership had invested significant resources in the investigation of any and all avenues to power, occult and otherwise, and to new sources of energy. And equally clearly, the Nazi leadership was willing to think "outside the box" and to go to any lengths - often quite literally - to research those matters. What also emerges from this list is a preoccupation with areas of physics, and areas of the globe, almost completely neglected - at least publicly - by the wartime Allies.

    Moreover, what also emerges is a disturbing sense, that maybe, just maybe, there was something to the survival myths after all, for one thing seems clear from the pattern of events after the war, particularly in respect to Antarctica: such myths were inevitably connected to the exotic research pursuits the Germans were conducting, and such myths seem clearly to have been the hidden motivation for American counter-strikes.


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    STRANGE SECRETS OF THE ANTARCTIC REICH

    A magazine article published June 2004 in Portugal is shedding new light on the strange cruise of the German ship Schwabenland and the origins of the Antarctic Reich:


    While the German scientists improved the Vril, the Haunebu and the RFZ, other strange events happened quickly, beginning in 1938.


    One of the new problems that emerged in the early Twentieth Century, right after World War I, was the transportation of mail between     Europe and the Americas. In the 1920s, two companies contested for the newly-opened mail routes across the Atlantic Ocean. These were Pan American Airways and Luft-Hansa, the German airline. Trips by air over the vast ocean created numerous problems with refueling, logistics and maintenance. Both companies decided to use hydroplanes, and the Azores (owned by Portugal) became the logical replenishment point.


    The Germans invented an ingenious way to bypass the distance problem. They used catapult ships to launch the mail-carrying planes, and they remained in the waters of the     Azores to service the planes on their return trip. Using a long metal screen dragged by the ships, they reduced the height of the waves and made it safe for the hydroplanes to land.


    German catapult ships that became famous included the     Bremen, the Westfalen and the Schwabenland. This last one, built in 1925, could launch hydroplanes weighing as much as 14 tons. The Schwabenland was a modern ship, well-equipped and with a modern communications system, plus an excellent on-board meteorological station. The vessel often operated out of Horta and Faial in the Azores.


    On     May 24, 1938, the Schwabenland was visited by James Roosevelt, the brother of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. That same evening, the Schwabenland received a coded message from the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, ordering the captain to leave the Azores and proceed at once to Germany.


    And thereby hangs the tale. James "Rosey"     Roosevelt was the older half-brother of the president. A quick review of FDR's childhood is in order. Franklin was born in January 1882. His father, James Roosevelt, was 53 years old when he was born and already had an older son, James Jr., by his first wife. James Jr., nicknamed Rosey, was born in 1855 and was 27 when his baby brother, the future president, made his natal debut in Hyde Park, N.Y.

     

    Although he was the older brother of one president (FDR) and the cousin of another (Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909), not too much is known about Rosey. He was a Wall Street investment banker and the college roommate and lifelong pal of one of the USA's wealthiest billionaires, John Jacob Astor IV. After Astor died, it was Rosey who managed his friend's estate, with its numerous trust funds, annuities, bloc shares and whatnot. In short, Rosey was a heavy hitter on Wall Street, and he was in and out of the White House as often as Monica Lewinsky.

     

    What Rosey was doing aboard Hitler's "Antarctic Ark" is a mystery.

     

    But there's more. Rosey was the favorite child of Franklin's maternal grandfather, Warren Delano, a stalwart Republican from Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Of his New York City son-in-law, old man Delano once said, "James is the one who taught me that a Democrat could be a gentleman."

     

    In his youth, Warren Delano had been a sailor aboard a Massachusetts whaling ship that often plied Antarctic waters. Later he got involved in the China trade. Another contemporary from the same area of southeastern Massachusetts was a whaler-turned-fishmonger named Andrew J. Borden, who was chopped up with an axe by his daughter Lizzie in August 1892.

     

    The most notorious book about whalers in Antarctica is, of course, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849). Poe wrote about the whalers encountering strange ruins and hinted at an alien presence on the icebound southern continent, linked to the haunting phrase Tekeli-li.

     

    According to S.T. Joshi, the biographer of H.P. Lovecraft (who used Pym as the basis of his own novel, At the Mountains of Madness) the first book publication of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe is dated 1838 but was copyrighted in June 1837. Two installments had appeared in the January and February 1837 issues of the Southern Literary Messenger, at that time edited by Poe.

     

    So where did Poe get the idea for mysterious ruins in Antarctica? Probably from talking to returning American whalers in the Baltimore waterfront taverns that he loved to haunt. Clearly some very strange shit was going on in Antarctica during the late 1830s, and it was known to Delano and Borden and the other whalers of the New Bedford-Fairhaven-Nantucket area.

     

    A century after Poe penned his Antarctic tale, the Schwabenland returned to Hamburg. Following a swift and effective refitting, the ship departed for Antarctica.

     

    The official German Antarctic Expedition of 1938-1939 assumed a long-term strategic importance. Led by Captain Alfred Ritscher, a veteran Arctic explorer, this scientific expedition carried out extensive geographical, meteorological and zoological research in Queen Maud Land, which had formed part of the Norwegian territorial claim on Antarctica since 1930. Two large flying boats of the Dornier-Wal type flew daily from the expedition ship Schwabenland, taking over 11,000 photographs, occasionally landing, covering in all some 600,000 square kilometers and photomapping 350,000 square kilometers. The discovery of high Alpine peaks (Mühlig-Hoffman Mountains) and a group of warm-water oases (Schirrmacher Lakes) amid the frozen wastes was of particular interest as it suggested that there were hospitable microclimates (ecosystems) within the icebound continent.

     

    The explorers used harpoons with swastika flags, dropped from the air, to mark off their new territory of Neuschwabenland. They also drew up a detailed map of the region. However, today this map cannot be exhibited in Germany. Anyone found in possession of this map is prosecuted under the statues governing denial of the Holocaust.

     

    One of the people who led the expedition was Helmuth Wohlthat, a former German fighter pilot of World War I who had served in Hermann Göring's Jagdstaffel and remained friends with Göring after the war. Wohlthat was an economist by trade and represented the Third Reich at international financial conferences with British and American bankers. A strange choice to play a leading role in an Antarctic expedition, to be sure. But the Portuguese article asserts that Wohlthat was also a member of the Vril Society and the Thule Society, the mystical forerunners of the Nazi party.


    Also aboard the Schwabenland was a sizable contingent from Himmler's SS-Ahnenerbe, a kind of "Ministry of the Occult."


    Wohlthat prepared an extensive report of the expedition which he radioed to Göring on     May 9, 1939.

     

    In October of 1939, one month after the beginning of World War II, the Schwabenland was turned over to the Luftwaffe. On December 17, 1939, the ship again left Hamburg, headed for Antarctica, packed with scientists and equipment. This time they were going to build a permanent base in Antarctica.
     

    Running the Royal Navy's blockade, the Schwabenland returned to Hamburg on April 11, 1940. The ship and her crew were received in Germany as heroes.


    But not all of the Germans had returned. A handful had remained behind at the base now called "Point 211."


    In August 1942, the ship was sent to Tromso in     Norway, which was then under German occupation. She travelled to Tromso in a convoy of 24 ships.


    During the next year and a half, nobody knew where the Schwabenland was. It was not possible to find any record of its whereabouts. The ship's registration was transferred to     Norway, with the approval of the (Vidkun) Quisling government. At the same time, Hitler ceded to Norway a portion of the Antarctic territory claimed by Germany.


    Late in 1942, the Schwabenland came under the direct control of the SS. Himmler had the "home port" name on her stern changed from Oslo to Stockholm, and the ship began traveling under a false flag, that of neutral Sweden.


    [In 1965, actor Marlon Brando, made a strange little movie called Morituri. In the film, Brando plays an expatriate German who is blackmailed into spying for the Allies. He winds up on board a German U-boat tender disguised as a Swedish tramp steamer. Was this film a fictionalized version of the wartime     South Atlantic voyages of the Schwabenland?


    On     May 19, 1943, the Allies began to suspect that something strange was happening in Antarctica, mainly because of the large number of U-boats passing through the South Atlantic. Himmler was using large supply submarines--the famous Milch cow U-boats of Admiral Dönitz--to ferry Organisation Todt construction supplies and equipment to Point 211. Also heading south were thousands of Waffen-SS soldiers and the Antarktische Siedlungnsfrauen (ASF).

     

    At this time, President Roosevelt sent a coded message to President Getulio Vargas of Brazil, complaining that Portugal's (fascist) Prime Minister Dr. Antonio Salazar refused to permit the construction of an Allied naval base in the Azores. Roosevelt told Vargas that Allied intelligence had learned of an existing Nazi submarine base in the islands.

     

    Unknown to Dr. Salazar, General Eisenhower had prepared plans for a pre-emptive occupation of the Canary Islands (owned by Spain) and Cabo Verde (owned by Portugal). From these new bases, Allied 'sub- killers' would destroy the U-boat 'migration' to Antarctica.

     

    An OSS (Office of Strategic Services, World War II forerunner of the CIA) document dated May 23, 1944 affirmed that 'Salazar continues to play for time' before drafting a formal response for the Allies.


    After the war, Wilhelm Landig, a German expatriate, wrote three novels about Point 211, the Nazi underground Antarctic base. These were Wolfzeit um     Thule (1980), Götzen gegen Thule (1984) and Rebellen für Thule (1991).


    However, Henry Stevens, author of Hitler's Flying Saucers, pointed out that "his books each bore the sub-title 'Ein Roman voller Wirklichkeiten.' (Translated: A novel filled with realities), as this novel treatment was an easy avenue in avoiding post-war legal entanglements."


    Stevens added:

    Mr. Landig recently died, and it is now known that he was a Third Reich insider and knew of what he wrote. As mentioned earlier, it is now known that Landig was a member of the Waffen-SS and at one time was responsible for security for the development of German saucers."


    The (Nazi) Antarctic base was first attacked by the forces of many nations, led by the     United States, in a 1946 military operation codenamed Operation High Jump. This operation involved a fleet of ships, including an aircraft carrier, submarines and support craft. It also involved aircraft and four thousand armed troops under the command of Admiral Richard E. Byrd.


    Immediately four aircraft were mysteriously lost, and the whole operation, scheduled for six months' duration, was canceled after less than six weeks.


    According to Stevens, the     USA detonated three nuclear bombs in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year 1957-1958.

    Landig claims the type of rockets used in the 'test' to attack Point 211 were prototypes of the American Polaris missile, a solid-fuel rocket which was used later operationally. Detonation of these atomic weapons over the (Nazi) base generated electromagnetic shock waves, which, it was hoped, would destroy the (alien) apparatus in the base used for defensive purposes. Landig claims this tactic failed. The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack was insufficient to destroy the improved apparatus. Both High Jump and the 1957-58 attack turned out not only to be a fiasco but to be superfluous.


    Stevens claims the Nazis abandoned their Antarctic Reich in the 1960s. Others claim that Neuschwabenland, "the nation under the ice," continued to grow and flourish, eventually reaching a population of 3 million by the year 2000. The capital, Neuberlin, is said to have an "Alien Quarter" inhabited by a sizable number of extraterrestrial visitors to Earth.


    In his book, Alien Races and Fantastic Civilizations, Serge Hutin claimed:

    In 1961, an observer in a good position to filter through all 'top secret' information coming to light...told us about the blackout imposed on a discovery made by one of the American stations in Antarctica: the remains of a very old stone pavement found beneath an enormous accumulation of ice.


    The unnamed NATO source told Hutin that they weren't sure if it was a prehistoric superhighway dating from before the last Pleistocene glaciation back in 12,000 B.C., a runway for alien spacecraft, or what the Hawaiians call an a'a (fluid) basaltic lava flow.


    Hutin added:

    In this case, the official order of silence cannot be explained by anything other than a fierce defense of scientific orthodoxy. Proving the existence of a vanished civilization (which readers of H.P. Lovecraft know as Kadath) that once flourished on the Antarctic continent would have no effect on the power blocs headed by the     United States, the Soviet Union and China.

    [Hutin wrote his book in 1970]
     

    One by one, the secrets of the Antarctic Reich are coming out. But there's still a lot of information kept under wraps. (See the books Alien Races and Fantastic Civilizations by Serge Hutin, Berkley Medallion Books, New York, N.Y., 1975; Hitler's Flying Saucers by Henry Stevens, Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 2003; Timeless Earth by Peter Kolosimo, Bantam Books, New York, N.Y., 1975; Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 2002; Hitler's Priestess by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1998; and The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft by S.T. Joshi, Dell Publishing, 1997. See also OVNIs em Antarctica, Lisboa, 2004.)