Antarctica
Adolf Hitler Death and Survival Legends
    Did Hitler's Nazis believe in a hollow Earth......
The German Antarctic Expedition had discovered several ice-free regions with lakes and signs of vegetation (mostly lichen and moss) in the territory’s interior. The expedition's geologists said that this phenomenon was due to hot springs or other geothermal sources. This discovery, it is claimed, led Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to hatch a bold plan to build a permanent base in Antarctica.

The brackish water of the warm lakes virtually confirmed that all had an outlet to the sea and would thus have been a haven for U-boats. The two ice-free mountain ranges in Neu Schwabenland presented no worse an underground tunnelling project for Organization Todt than anything they had encountered and overcome in Norway. The Germans were the world's experts at building and inhabiting underground metropolis.

At the end of the war the United States gave anything concerning Ohrdruf a top secret classification for 100 years upwards. The fact that there had been substantial underground workings there, and Ohrdruf was the location of the last Redoubt, was concealed absolutely. Fortunately for researchers, in 1962 the DDR had taken sworn depositions from all local residents during an investigation into wartime Ohrdruf, and upon the reunification of the two Germanys in 1989, these documents became available to all and sundry at Arnstadt municipal archive.

From the Arnstadt documents it is clear that the Charite Anlage unit operated in a three-story underground bunker with floors 70 by 20 metres. When working, the device emitted some kind of energy field which shut down all electrical equipment and non-diesel engines within a range of about eight miles. For this reason, even though Ohrdruf was crawling with SS, it was never photographed from the air nor bombed. Declassified USAF documents dated early 1945 admit the existence of an unknown energy field over Frankfurt/Main "and other locations" which "fantastic though it may appear" were able to "interfere with our aircraft engines at 30,000 feet."

Ohrdruf rebuilt below Neu Schwabenland during the last two years of the war would not have been difficult, and since Charite Anlage had the highest priority of anything in the Third Reich, it seems likely that it must have been. Such a base would have been impregnable, for the suggestion is that the force-field worked in various ways favourable to the occupants.

For more than sixty years rumors about a base code named “Station 211” have tantalized historians and researchers. Could it be that it was actually constructed and staffed as an ongoing project throughout the war? Perhaps Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz announced its completion when, in 1943, he said:

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.

 
The maps of Neu Schwabenland that cannot be exhibited in Germany on penalty of imprisonment

Most of the rumors agree that Station 211, if it really existed, was located inside a prominent ice-free mountain in the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains of Neuschwabenland (Queen Maud Land). In 1946-47 Admiral Byrd, America’s most recognized polar explorer may have searched for Station 211. In what was called Operation Highjump he had at his disposal the largest armada ever sent to Antarctica. Some 13 ships and 4,700 men, which included an aircraft carrier, a submarine, two destroyers, more than two-dozen aircraft and some 3,500 Marines in full battle gear were sent by the United States to Antarctica on what was officially described as a “training” mission. Yet persistent rumors insist that the actual purpose of Highjump was to find the Nazi fortress. It’s unclear if Byrd ever discovered the location of the Führer’s “Shangri-La” -- if it really was there and if he really was looking for it, that is.

Between the period of 1956 and 1960 a Norwegian expedition mapped most of Queen Maud Land from land surveys and air photos. Tantalizingly they did find an ice-free mountain that matched the description of the one in the Station 211 rumors. They called it Svarthamaren (the black hammer). If it truly is the location of Station 211 its secret will be kept well into this century, for it has been designated an Antarctic Specially Protected Area and Site of Special Scientific Interest under the Antarctic Conservation Act of 1978. It was listed as an “exceptional natural research laboratory for research on the Antarctic petrel (Thalassoica Antarctica), snow petrel (Pagodroma nivea) and south polar skua (Catharacta maccormicki), and their adaptation to breeding in the inland/interior of Antarctica.” Access is limited to only a handful of specially selected scientists. If this is a ruse, anyone and everyone not deemed safe with the knowledge of what really went on there will be prevented from getting too close for many years to come.

Col. Buechner and Capt. Bernhart avoid mention of Station 211 though, perhaps to maintain its secrecy, which would be in keeping with the general tone of their two books. Indeed, they admit that the names given for all members of the 1979 expedition, including Bernhardt and Hartmann, are fictitious and where used to protect their true identities. It is clear that Buechner does not tell us all he knows.

Instead, Buechner and Bernhardt tell us that the submarine crew in 1945 placed Hitler’s treasure at the foot of an unnamed glazier in the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains, dug in and protected with steel plates. This would have meant them finding one of the few stretches of beach not blocked by miles of shelf ice. Then to have gone on shore and trekked more than 100 miles deep into the interior, loaded down with a ton or more of steel! This seemed to us to be the least plausible piece of this whole mad jigsaw puzzle. Some parts of Antarctica receive as much as sixty feet of snow in a single year. How deeply would this treasure have been buried after more than thirty years? And why head for an ice-free region only to stash it in the ice? No, this part of Buechner’s cover story can be rejected - if any of it were true then they must have taken the Holy Lance somewhere from which it would be easily recoverable -- to Station 211.

STATION 211

Surprisingly there is evidence that Hitler’s right hand man, Rudolf Hess, who went to England and was arrested as a war criminal on 10 May 1941, had been entrusted with coordinating the effort to build Station 211.

Following his arrest, Hess was held in Spandau Prison in isolation until his death. Such unique treatment is suggestive that he had information that the Allies considered dangerous. Indeed, in his book Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions Christof Friedrich states Hess “was entrusted with the all-important Antarctic file. Hess, himself, kept the Polar file.” Now, granted, such information as Hess possessed, if any, would have been complete only to the time that he took off on his solo flight to England... but that period... prior to 1941 would have covered the initial recovery of the Bavarian “flying disc” in 1936, and at the very least, the early stages of any project or projects arising from such a recovery. It would also contain any information with regard to any survivors of the crash, and their eventual fate(s). Many believe that Hess, who had no part in any of the so-called “war crimes” was deliberately kept in Spandau Prison, for life, in an attempt to keep him quiet. It has also been speculated that the man who died, in Spandau Prison, was, in fact, not Hess at all... that Hess had been murdered, years before, in an effort to keep the truth... on several highly embarrassing matters... from getting out.

In his book The Murder of Rudolf Hess, Hugh Thomas casts doubt on the man who was locked up in Berlin’s Spandau Prison for so long and offers fairly persuasive evidence that the figure held prisoner there was not the real Hess, but an imposter. Yet if that were the case – and the evidence is quite startling – why was he not executed at Nuremberg, as so many of his contemporaries were, or simply released as a harmless stooge, before his death there in 1981? Other characters served long prison sentences, such as Albert Speer, a civilian figure who might arguably have had a more heinous war record than Deputy Führer Hess, who, after all absconded to Britain in 1941 before the war had taken a more serious turn for the worse. So why such a long sentence? It has been suggested that Hess was in some way connected to BASE 211…did the real Hess abscond in 1941 to Base 211 itself, simultaneously using a loyal double, with instructions to fly to Scotland and thereafter take the brunt of ridicule and long incarceration? If So, Hess would have effectively disappeared to oversee the development of a Fourth Reich in the southern hemisphere.

Whatever the truth, there is no doubt…Base 211 is an extremely potent one and…it’s all part of the wider picture. Along with the intricate history of the secret societies [and] the overall story of the development of flying discs in Germany it is all the easier to accept when one looks at the background…

Pages 48-49.

It should be noted that Rudolf Hess had a lasting relationship with Karl Haushofer who was, according to researcher Louis Pauwels, a member of the Vril Society. Haushofer, like others in the secret society, believed in the existence of a subterranean race living within the Earth. In 1979 the Hartmann expedition discovered, within Base 211 itself, an inscription from none other than Rudolf Hess’s mentor.

~Gary Hyland
Blue Fires – The Lost Secrets of Nazi Technology ©2001

Historians have often dismissed Hess as a Nazi figurehead, positioned highly because of his total subservience to the Führer, but perhaps this was because his true role was so well concealed.

If Hess was involved with Station 211, he must have enlisted the aid of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler had rejected Christianity, as had many of the Nazi inner core and believed in a strange Germanic version of a neo-pagan New Age. He was a devotee of the German occultist, Dr. Friedrich Wichtl who specialized in Masonic lore and "world conspiracy" theories. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Dr. Wichtl wrote a best-selling book entitled Weltfreimaurerei, Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik [World Freemasonry, World Revolution, World Republic]. Himmler was drawn into the occult after reading Dr. Wichtl's book in 1919, while a military cadet convalescing after a serious stomach illness.

Himmler eventually became a believer in the Hindu concept of world-ages or Yugas. He believed that the current age, or Kali Yuga, would end in a global cataclysm, thereby giving birth to a new world-age called the Satya Yuga. By sending a Nazi colony to Antarctica, Himmler believed that he was ensuring a remnant of the "pure Aryan race" would survive the coming cataclysm with its society and culture intact. He believed that these survivors would then take possession of Antarctica after the cataclysm had melted the south polar ice cap.

Germany built more than two dozen “super subs” during the war. Each was the size of an aircraft carrier, but they weren’t built as war ships, they were underwater cargo ships. Initially they were used to re-supply the submarine “Wolfpacks.” Later, it would seem, they were pressed into transporting tools, equipment, raw materials, and perhaps even slave labor to the south polar base. Evidence suggests that the U-boat traffic to Neuschwabenland continued even after Germany’s surrender in 1945.

During the war, surface ships were involved in this massive effort, but as the tide of war turned against the Germans the bulk of the transport work fell to the U-boats and their crews.

Several surface ships appear to have been put on "watch dog" duty, re-supplying the subs and keeping Allied shipping away.

Between 1939 and 1941, well after the outbreak of war in Europe, Captain Bernhard Rogge of the commerce raider Atlantis made an extended voyage in the South Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific, visiting the Iles Kerguelen between December 1940 to January 1941 and burying a seaman at Bassin de la Gazelle.

NAZI BASE REPORTED IN ANTARCTIC AREA; Repair Shop at Deception Bay, 500 Miles From South America, Is Blown Up BYRD MAKES DISCLOSURE Admiral at Boston Greets Ship Returning With Members of United States Expedition

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 06, 1941

BOSTON, May 5 -- The establishment of a German naval repair shop at Deception Bay, only 500 miles from South America, was revealed today as the motorship North Star docked at the army base with thirty-six scientists and explorers home from Little America.

The Atlantis is known to have been visited by an RFZ-2, the UFO style craft which had served as a reconnaissance aircraft since late 1940 which was photograhed./ The ship then adopted a new disguise as Tamesis before being sunk by HMS Devonshire near Ascension Island, on 22 November 1941. The Atlantis was also known as Hilfskreuzer 16 and was, at various times, disguised as Kasii-Maru or Abbekerk.

The Kerguelen Island (named the Most Useless Island In the World in 1995) continued to feature prominently in Nazi plans. For example, in 1942 the German Navy planned to establish a meteorological station there. In May of that year the ship Michel transferred a meteorologist and two radio operators with full equipment to a supply vessel Charlotte Schlieman that went on to the island, however the orders for the station were later counter-manned.

It is interesting to note that Kerguelen was also the centre of a mid 19th Century mystery. Then entirely uninhabited, except for seals and seabirds, British Captain Sir James Clark Ross landed there in May 1840. He found in the snow unidentifiable “traces of the singular footprints of a pony, or ass, being 3 inches in length and 2 inches in breadth, having a small deeper depression in either side, and shaped like a horseshoe.” Similar markings appeared overnight in England fifteen years later ["The Devil's Footprints"] and have also defied adequate explanation.

The Kerguelen Archipelago – ideal for secret supply bases

Then in 1942 Captain Gerlach in his ship the Stier investigated nearby Gough Island as a possible temporary base for raiders and a camp for prisoners.

This ship activity does not appear considerable, however the level of U-boat activity in the South Atlantic was much higher. The exact nature and extent of how high will probably never be known, however some insight might be gleaned from the fact that between October 1942 and September 1944 16 German U-boats were sunk in the South Atlantic area. And... some of these submarines did appear to be engaged in covert activities.

A fine example of this would be that of U-859 which, on April 4, 1944 at 04.40hrs, left on a mission carrying 67 men and 33 tons of mercury sealed in glass bottles in watertight tin crates. The submarine was later sunk on 23 September by a British submarine (HMS Trenchant) in the Straits of Malacca and although 47 of the crew died, 20 survived. Some 30 years later one of these survivors spoke openly about the cargo and divers later confirmed the story on rediscovering the mercury. The significance being that mercury is usable as a fuel source for certain types of aerospace propulsion. Why would a German submarine be transporting such a cargo so far from home? It is not odd, at all, if one considers the fact that aviation/avionics construction is what the Polar Base Station 211 seems to be all about...

Further evidence that Station 211 existed, and continued to be inhabited after the war’s end, can be seen in the several accounts of German naval activity after the fall of Berlin. For example, on July 10, 1945, more than two months after the cessation of known hostilities, the German submarine U-530 surrendered to Argentine authorities at the port of Mar del Plata, one of the closest Argentine harbors to Antarctica. Similarly, U-977 arrived a month later in Mar del Plata on 17 August. These were but two of the boats that are believed to have made up the convoy of the “Führer’s Final Army.” Col. Buechner’s informant, “Capt. Bernhardt,” supposedly served on one of these U-boats, but which one is never made clear so as to hide his real identity.

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 Unbekanntes Flugobjekt? Letzte Geheimwaffe des Dritten Reiches ]

Watever 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. 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. 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.

Byrd´s diary and flight log

On an expeditionary flight, a copy of Byrd´s flight diary reveals that Byrd and his radio operator flying a C-47 exploratory craft was seized down softly by two flying saucers. Byrd lost control of the plane and its instruments and flight controls, the prop-driven C-47 went down very much like a helicopter. As the plane landed this way, two tall men, both blond and Germanic looking escorted him and his radio operator to an underground facility, where he was assigned with giving the following message to the "surface governments": Stop exploding nuclear weapons for you will most assuredly experience difficult times ahead. That was all, Byrd and his companion were escorted back to their plane. The strange men said something very similar to "Auf Wiedersehen" when they went, calling their own discs "FLUGRAD."

These events throw the whole Highjump exercise into a curious light, for they somehow change 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.

There continued to be accounts of German activity for a considerable post-war period. The French Agence France Press on September 25, 1946 stated, "the continuous rumors about German U-boat activity in the region of Tierra del Fuego between the southernmost tip of Latin America and the continent of Antarctica are based on true happenings."

Then the French newspaper, France Soir, gave the following account of an encounter with such a German U-boat:

Almost one and a half years after cessation of hostilities in Europe, the Icelandic Whaler Juliana was stopped by a large German U-boat. The Juliana was in the Antarctic region around Malvinas Islands [The Falklands] when a German submarine surfaced and raised the German official Flag of Mourning - red with a black edge.

The submarine commander sent out a boarding party, which approached the Juliana in a rubber dingy, and having boarded the whaler demanded of Capt. Hekla part of his fresh food stocks. The request was made in the definite tone of an order to which resistance would have been unwise.

The German officer spoke a correct English and paid for his provisions in US dollars, giving the Captain a bonus of $10 for each member of the Juliana crew. Whilst the foodstuffs were being transferred to the submarine, the submarine commander informed Capt. Hekla of the exact location of a large school of whales. Later the Juliana found the school of whales where designated.

To address that 1947 story: To this day there has never been any Icelandic whaler in the South Atlantic, let alone in the Antarctica. No Icelandic ship has ever been named Juliana and Hekla is an active volcano in Iceland, not a last name. 99% of all Icelandic last names for males end in ”-son”.

Hekla eruption 1980

Could it be possible that other German U-boats, in addition to U-530 and U-977 were continuing to operate in the area following the war?

The future may well reveal the fate of more of these submarines; however given the French and South American reports, and the number of missing U-boats, it may not be unreasonable to conclude that at least some of them relocated to the South Polar area.

History also gives us further clues as to a German-Antarctica connection, for it records that Hans-Ulrich Rudel of the German Luftwaffe was being groomed by Hitler to be his successor. It is known that Rudel made frequent trips to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America nearest Antarctica. And...one of Martin Bormann’s last messages from the bunker in Berlin to Dönitz also mentioned Tierra del Fuego.

It is reasonable to suppose that once the first phases of construction at Station 211 were complete, a number of experimental weapons research and development programs would have been relocated there. It is well known that the German High Command hung on believing that the new weapons under development would turn the tide of the war back in Germany’s favor. With ever increasing Allied bombing and armies closing in on Germany from the east, west and south it would seem prudent to move one’s most precious projects to somewhere beyond reach -- and what could be further from the Allies’ grasp than Antarctica?
In 1959, three large newspapers in Chile reported front-page articles about Unidentified Flying Object encounters in which the crew members appeared to be German soldiers. In the early 1960s there were reports in New York, and New Jersey, of flying saucer ‘aliens’ who spoke German, or English with a German accent. Nor, can it be neglected to mention that in one of the most spectacular legal cases of the Twentieth Century... the “atomic espionage” trials... Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spoke of “warships of space.” Since they had access to top secret information, and, at that point, no reason to lie, what was it, exactly, that they meant?

South America has always been a “hotbed” of Unidentified Flying Object activity. Many of the reports coming out of the area are unverified, and unverifiable... However, many have credence.

The claims that something extremely unusual was taking place around the foreboding reaches of the frozen continent took a major leap forward in the 1960s when the Argentine Navy was charged with the official investigation into strange sightings in the sky.

A 1965 official report prepared by Captain Sanchez Moreno of the Naval Air Station Comandante Espora in Bahia Blanca stated that Between 1950 and 1965, personnel of Argentina’s Navy alone made 22 sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects that were not airplanes, satellites, weather balloons or any type of known (aerial) vehicles. These 22 cases served as precedents for intensifying that investigation of the subject by the Navy.

Following a series of sightings at Argentine and Chilean meteorological stations on Deception Island, Antarctica, in June and July 1965, Captain Engineer Omar Pagani disclosed at a press conference that “Unidentified Flying Objects do exist. Their presence in Argentine airspace is proven”. The report went on to state, however, “their nature and origin are unknown and no judgment is made about them”.

More details of these UFO sightings were given in a report in the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo in its 8th July 1965 edition:

For the first time in history, an official communiqué has been published by a government about the flying saucers. It is a document from the Argentine Navy, based on the statements of a large number of Argentine, Chilean and British sailors stationed in the naval base in Antarctica. The communiqué declared that the personnel of Deception Island (left) naval base saw, at nineteen hours forty minutes on 3 July, a flying object of lenticular shape, with a solid appearance and a colouring in which red and green prevailed and, for a few moments, yellow. The machine was flying in a zig-zag fashion, and in a generally western direction, but it changed course several times and changed speed, having an inclination of about forty-five degrees above the horizon. The craft also remained stationary for about twenty minutes at a height of approximately 5,000 meters, producing no sound. The communiqué states moreover that the prevailing meteorological conditions when the phenomenon was observed can be considered excellent for the region in question and the time of year. The sky was clear and quite a lot of stars were visible. The Secretariat of the Argentine Navy also states in its communiqué that the occurrence was witnessed by scientists of the three naval bases and that the facts described by these people agree completely.

Practically everyone in the “UFO Community” is aware that in March 1950 Commodore Augusto Vars Orrego of the Chilean Navy shot still pictures and 8mm movie footage of a very large cigar shaped flying object that hovered over and manoeuvred about in the frigid skies above the Chilean Antarctic. The photos and the report of Orrego’s sighting have, quite literally, been seen by millions over the half century since he saw, and photographed the objects. Orrego stated “during the bright Antarctic night, we saw flying saucers, one above the other, turning at tremendous speeds. We have photographs to prove what we saw .”

There have, of course, been numerous other Chilean sightings. During January 1956 another major Unidentified Flying Object “event” was witnessed by a group of Chilean scientists who had been flown by helicopter to Robertson Island in the Wendell Sea to study geology, fauna and other features. This experience was the subject of a later article entitled "A Cigar-Shaped UFO over Antarctica":

At the beginning of January 1956, during a period of stormy weather, the party suddenly became aware of something which, in other circumstances, could have been very grave for them. This was that their radio had mysteriously ceased to function. This was not too worrying a disaster in so much as it was firmly settled that the helicopter would return to take them off again on January 20.

One of the scientists, a doctor, was in the habit of getting up in the night to observe anything of meteorological interest, but another of the group, a professor, did not like to be disturbed. However on the night of 8 January 1956, the Doctor decided to wake the professor. He “pointed upwards, almost overhead. Still in a bad temper due to being disturbed, the professor looked as directed, and beheld two “metallic, cigar-shaped objects in verticular positions, perfectly still and silent, and flashing vividly the reflected rays of the sun”. Just after 7.00am, two other members of the party, an assistant and a medical orderly joined the two men. The group watched the two craft. “At about 9.00am object No. 1 (the nearest to the zenith) suddenly assumed a horizontal posture and shot away like a flash towards the west. It had now lost its metallic brightness and had taken on the whole gamut of visible colours of the spectrum, from infrared to ultra-violet".

The report of the sighting went on to say...

Without slowing down it performed an incredible acute-angle change of direction, shot off across another section of the sky and then did another sharp turn as before. These vertiginous manoeuvres, the zig-zagging, abrupt stopping, instantaneous accelerating, went on for some time right overhead, the object always following tangential trajectories in respect to the Earth and all in the most absolute silence.

The demonstration lasted about five minutes. Then, according to the witnesses, the object returned and took up position beside its companion in almost the same area of the sky as before. Then, it was the turn of No. 2 to show its paces and do a convoluted, zigzagging dance across the sky. Shooting off towards the east, it performed a series of ten disjointed bursts of flight, broken by abrupt changes of direction, and marked by the pronounced colour changes when accelerating or stopping. After about three minutes, object No. 2 was observed to resume its station near its companion, and return to its original solid and metallic appearance.

Due to the nature of their mission, the group had with them two Geiger-Miller counters of high sensitivity, one of the auditory and the other of the flash-type. When the two objects had finished their dance and reassumed their stations in the sky, someone discovered that the flash-type Geiger counter now showed that radioactivity around them had suddenly increased 40 times... far more than enough to kill any organism subjected long enough to it. The discovery greatly increased the anxiety felt by the four men. Although they had no telescopic lens, they did have cameras with them, and managed to take numerous photographs of the objects, both in colour and black and white.

The report does not state what became of these photographs, but it is safe to assume that they are in the possession of the Chilean Government, and there is no reason to assume that they have not been shared with that of the United States, as well as others. Of course... no names are given in this report, but... it has the ring of truth, and is consistent with any number of similar sightings... Would that we knew their names!

It is one of the exasperating facts of Unidentified Flying Object research that so many of the South American and South Atlantic sightings are attributed to “anonymous sources” or the names of the witnesses involved, have been expunged from the “official” records. So many of the witnesses being cited would be, with reference to their stated credentials, credible sources, but because of the practice of expunging names from records which might fall into “public hands” are practically impossible to trace. The absence of names... in many, if not most cases deliberately expunged from official reports... simply lends to an aura of “unbelievability”, even though it is a common practice, especially in most countries.

There are Chilean and Peruvian scientists/bases being near or along the route of UFOs emanating from inside the Earth. Many UFOs fly directly south-north along South America. If one draws a line from South America, through the Antarctic bases of Chile, etc through the South Pole to the South Magnetic pole - then you get a straight line. What's interesting about this potential "UFO route" is that UFOs coming from Inside the Earth would end up flying over the America South Pole base.

However, the line of flight is such that the only places in the Antarctic where you'd stand a chance of seeing these UFOs is in the "Weddell sea" area where South American countries have their bases and at the Scott Base at the South Pole.

The other parts of the UFO route is somewhat offset from the commonly traveled routes and so there's little chance of running into UFOs by accident at any other places. That would explain why the US Govt doesn't like visitors to the South Pole base: It's not that the hole is AT or NEAR the South Pole base (as we originally thought), but along the route from the real hole in the oceans off the coast.

Bob Borino, in his article, 'UFO Bases Found in Antarctica' (Globe, Jan. 18, 1983) quotes from certain scientists who believe that a subterranean UFO Base is located beneath the strange 'Polynya Sea' in the Antarctica's Weddell Sea region.

Malcolm W. Browne, in his article 'Underground Tunnels Threaten Town in Hungary's Wine Country' (NY Times Nov. 8, 1967, p.2) tells of over 60 miles of ancient tunnel systems of unknown origin and purpose which have been discovered beneath the town of Eger, Hungary, some of which have collapsed. The civilization which built the tunnels must have been fairly advanced in engineering and science in order to create such a subterranean system.

Yet another documented account of a UFO sighting over Antarctica is by Rubens Junqueira Villela, a meteorologist and the first Brazilian scientist to participate in an expedition to the South Polar region, and now, a veteran of eleven expeditions to Antarctica (two with the US Navy, eight with the Brazilian Antarctic Programme and another on the sailing ship Rapa Nui). While on board the US Navy icebreaker Glacier, which had set sail from New Zealand at the end of January 1961, Villela claims that he witnessed a UFO event in the skies over Antarctica which he immediately recorded in his diary, even including the emotions felt by all those involved. On 16 March 1961, after a fierce storm had forced the expedition to retreat to Admiralty Bay in the King George Isles, “a strange light suddenly crossed the sky, and everyone started to shout”. Speculation went wild. Some thought the object to be an incoming missile. Others thought it to be a meteor. The excitement was widespread and growing. “Trying to describe the light which appeared over Almirantado Bay” he told interviewers, later, “wasn’t easy because I wrote in my diary:

Positively the colours, the configuration and contours of the object, as a bodied light, with geometric forms, did not seem to be from this world, and I did not know what could possibly reproduce it.

The object, he went on to report, was “multi-coloured”, and had a luminous, oval-shaped body. It left, behind it, a “long tube-like orange/red trail”. Allegedly, it split into two pieces, as if it had exploded. Then, each part shone even more intensively, with white, blue and red colours projecting V shaped rays behind it. They quickly moved away and could be seen 200 meters above the ground b& According to the witnesses, the entire display was completely silent. The US Navy officially registered the incident as “a meteor or some other natural luminous phenomenon” according to the report submitted by the Glacier’s captain, Captain Porter.

However, this is a common practice, and has been, ever since the inception of the Unidentified Flying Object cover-up. This policy of “official denial” and “logical explanation” no matter how far fetched, would seem, has been followed by all branches of the United States Government since the first days after the Roswell Incident, in July 1947. It certainly applies to any sightings or alleged sightings in and around Antarctica...

Villela, on the other hand, easily dismissed the official line:

How could they mistake a meteor with an object carrying antennae, completely symmetrical and followed by a tail without any sight of atmospheric disturbance?

According to most “official” sources... and certainly according to world renowned sceptic and self-styled debunker, Phillip Klaas, this particular episode is a classic example of plasma, however the late meteorologist, James McDonald argued that the highly structured nature of the object and the low cloud overcast present at about 1500 feet were not compatible with Klaas’s hypothesis. The list of sightings in the South Atlantic area is practically endless. It is, and has been, particularly since the end of the Second World War, one of the most active areas on earth with respect to Unidentified Flying Object activity.

Another classic sighting took place on 16 January 1958 when the Brazilian naval vessel Almirante Salddanha was escorting a team of scientists to a weather station on Trindade Island. As the ship approached the island (or rather an outcrop of rock) an Unidentified Flying Object reportedly flew low, over the water, past the ship, circled the island, then flew off in front of dozens of witnesses. One of the witnesses to this particular event, the expedition photographer, took a number of photographs of the object. Later, the film was handed over to the military by the Captain. Amazingly, after the initial analysis, the Brazilian government released the film stating that they were unable to account for the images.

In official public statements, Argentina and Chile have solidly nailed down the existence of UFO color pictures taken at their Antarctic scientific stations. Adding to earlier press stories, the Secretary of the Argentina Navy confirmed these details:

On July 3, 1965, a giant lens-shaped flying object was seen, tracked and photographed at the Argentina scientific base, Deception Island, in the Antarctic. Lt. Daniel Perisse, C.O., confirmed by radio that the large UFO alternately hovered, then accelerated and manoeuvred at tremendous speeds. While being tracked by theodolite and watched through binoculars, the unknown object caused strong interference with variometers used to measure the earth's magnetic field, and also registered on magnetograph tapes. Color pictures were taken through a theodolite by a member of a visiting group from the Chilean scientific base.

Also confirming these points, the Chilean Minister of Defence at Santiago added new information radioed by Cdr. Mario Janh Barrera, C.O. of the Chilean base:

On June 18, a similar UFO had manoeuvred over the area, seen by all personnel. During the July 3 sighting, the strange object had caused strong radio interference, temporarily blocking his attempts to report the UFO to the English and Argentina bases.

In late 1947, only months after the famous Roswell Incident, then Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal sent a naval task force to Antarctic including Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Krusen and Admiral Byrd, called “Operation Highjump”. It was touted to be an expedition to find “coal deposits” and other valuable resources, but... the facts indicate otherwise... In actuality they were apparently trying to locate an immense underground base constructed by the Germans, before, during and immediately after the Second World War. This base was allegedly located in Neuschwabenland, an area of Antarctica which Germany explored, and claimed, before the outbreak of the Second World War... In fact, Germany had done a very detailed study of Antarctic and were alleged to have built a small underground base there before the War.

At this point, one must ask why, exactly, the United States, and, in fact, her allies, suspected that German activity at the pole was continuing, after the conclusion of the Second World War... The answer, quite honestly, has nothing at all to do with Unidentified Flying Objects... That part of the story came to light from a completely different set of sources... The fact is that there was plenty of evidence, at the time, to indicate that as late as 1947, elements of the Kriegsmarine, or German Navy, were still very much active in the South Atlantic, operating either out of South America, or some base, previously unsuspected, in the Antarctic.

They were thought to be Type XXI U-Boats, with the “snorkel” that allowed them to make the entire passage from Germany submerged and operating out of Argentina, possibly under the Argentine flag, but crewed by German crew. The fact that in the dying moments of the Second World War, ten U-Boats, based in Oslofjord, Hamburg and Flensburg, were made available to transport several hundred German officers and officials to Argentina to found a new Reich is widely accepted. These officers, mostly involved in “secret” projects, and many of whom were members of the SS and Kriegsmarine, itself, sought to escape the “vengeance” of the Allies, and continue their work, abroad. The U-boats were filled with their luggage, documents and, more than likely, gold bullion, to finance their efforts. All the U-boats departed their home ports between 3 and 8 May 1945. They were to proceed to Argentina where they would be welcomed by the friendly regime of Juan Peron and his charismatic wife Eva Peron.

Seven of the ten of the U-Boats, based on the German/Danish border, set off for Argentina through the Kattegat and Skagerrak. None were ever seen again... “officially”.

It has been, however, documented that three of the boats did, in fact, arrive in Argentina... These were U-530, U-977 and U-1238. U-530 and U-977 surrendered to the Argentine Navy at Mar del Plata in early July and August, 1945... U-1238 was scuttled, by her crew, in the waters of San Matias Gulf, off Northern Patagonia. Seven boats are as yet unaccounted for... and... Kriegsmarine archives, recently discovered, indicate that a total of more than forty boats are completely unaccounted for... all of which were late construction, state-of-the-art craft, and could have made either Argentina or Antarctica, completely submerged... and completely unnoticed by existing “allied” technology of the time... for the entire duration of their crossing

The question arises, of course, why these men would make such a perilous crossing. It must surely be seen as a act of either desperation or fanaticism, or both... and such men as crewed U-Boats were neither. Nor, were the scientists and military officers who were their passengers. The fact is, it would seem that most of those who fled the ruin of Germany to the far South, were scientists and engineers, and their dedication sprang from the project on which they were working... To understand this dedication, it is necessary to go back, before the outbreak of the Second World War, to an isolated section of the Bavarian Alps, It was there, in the summer of 1936, that an Unidentified Flying Object, crewed by a distinctly human, and Aryan appearing race, made a forced landing, very similar to the one which was to occur, some ten years later, in the desert, near Roswell, New Mexico, in the United States.

While the occupants of the two craft were completely unrelated, the technology involved, seems to have been strikingly similar. Also, the outcome of the recovery effort, undertaken by Germany, just as a similar recovery effort was undertaken by the United States, had strikingly different results.

The Bavarian crash of 1936, seems to have yielded an functioning, or almost functioning and repairable (with the technology of the time) power plant, and a nearly completely destroyed, or unrepairable airframe. The Roswell crash resulted in exactly the opposite... a nearly intact airframe and a ruined power plant. Because of this, the German research, which was to follow, took a vastly different turn from that which was undertaken in the United States, some ten years later... Germany needed an airframe which was capable of supporting the “engine” (for lack of a better term), while the United States would eventually need an “engine” capable of giving maximum performance to the airframe.

This, of course, would explain the vast array of “experimental” aircraft... of extremely “unique” design... to literally pour out of the design bureaus of Messerschmidt, Focke Wulf, Fokker and a multitude of smaller firms in the period between 1939 and 1945. The most notable, of course, is the Horten “Flying Wing” which was later copied by the United States, and is, of course, the ancestor of today’s “stealth” bomber and fighter designs... notably, the B-2 Heavy Bomber.

It is also beyond doubt that both Unidentified Flying Object recoveries are the initial impetus for the long standing and ongoing research in “anti-gravity” propulsion seen in work of current aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Lockheed in the United States, and PanAvia in Europe.

NAZI UFOS

By the end of 1944 Himmler's SS had taken over complete control of all advanced weapons’ design and most of their manufacturing. This included the so-called super weapons projects (like the V-2 rockets and jet fighter planes), and the numerous underground facilities in Germany and elsewhere, and the associated slave labor camps needed to build them.

Nazi ideology wasn’t limited by the established and conventional sciences as taught in American schools. It is apparent that Nazi technological programs enjoyed a similar leisure. These programs were the fusion of Nazi madness and the mobilization of Germany’s seemingly endless resources of production and radical concept.

One such program, headed by implosion technologist Viktor Schauberger, developed flying saucers and levitating disks. Schauberger (1885-1958) pioneered a new understanding of the Science of Nature, discovering primary laws and principles unacknowledged by contemporary science.

The Allies stumbled upon evidence of the saucer program after the war. At the Peenemünde rocket site, managed by the future head of NASA, Wernher Von Braun, the Allies discovered several photographs of the saucers. They viewed images of the Mercury powered Flugkreisel, and the luminescent mystery spheres labeled by Allied pilots as Foo-Fighters. An article in the May 1980 issue of Neue Presse details the recollection of a German engineer from Peenemünde who worked on the project to develop a saucer craft capable of flying manned with weaponry at 3,000 kilometers per hour. Defecting to the United States after the war, the engineer filed for a patent on a flying saucer of his own design.

From 1947 until 17 December 1969, the United States Air Force actively investigated reports and sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) under a program called Project Blue Book. The project was headquartered at Wright-Patterson AFB. After closing Project Blue Book, the US Air Force has not publicly acknowledged any further interest in UFO sightings. The man in charge of Project Blue Book, Captain Edward Ruppert, said in 1956:

When World War II ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers.

The Allies felt fortunate for Germany’s timely defeat after examining the evidence from their experimental weapons programs. Sir Roy Feddon, entrusted by the Brits to investigate Nazi aircraft production said:

I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if they had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly weapons in air warfare.

An early saucer, the long range reconnaissance craft dubbed the RFZ-2, was photographed accompanying the Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean. It is likely that some of these longer range saucers were used to assist the later U-boat missions. Before the production of the Elektroboat -- an electric powered submarine -- the U-boats were required to refuel. The ports friendly to German submarines en route to the South Pole were found in Tierra del Fuego and near the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. From the onset of the Neuschwabenland development, UFO sightings were abundant around these ports and their surrounding areas and in South America persisted for decades afterward.

After Hess’ ill-fated peace mission to England that resulted in his spending the rest of his life behind bars, Admiral Dönitz may have assumed Hess’ role of leading the Antarctic project. While giving a commencement speech for graduating naval cadets in 1944, the Admiral ominously boasted:

The German Navy still has a great role to play in the future. The German Navy knows all the hiding places for the Navy to take the Führer to, should the need arise. There, he can complete his last measures in complete quiet.

NEUBERLIN

If you had been a Wehrmacht soldier at the bombed-out railroad station in Poltava, a city in the Ukraine, during the summer of 1942, you may have seen a very strange-looking military unit on the march, heading for a waiting passenger train. The unit consisted of women, all of them blond and blue-eyed, between the ages of 17 and 24, tall and slender, their sensational figures encased in striking sky-blue uniforms. Each woman wore an Italian-style garrison cap, an A-line skirt with the hem below the knee, and a form-fitting jacket with the insignia of the SS. You might have thought the SS had recruited a platoon of high-class call girls, but the truth was far stranger than that. You would have been looking at Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's latest brainstorm - the Antarktische Siedlungensfrauen [Antarctic Settlement Women or ASF].

So wrote Russian UFOlogist Konstantin Ivanenko.

From the movie Schindler's List, people have gotten the idea that killing Jews was the Nazis' main concern. But in actual fact, Hitler and the SS were just as ruthless with the rest of the population in their eastern European empire, thinking nothing of shuffling large numbers of people around in their quest for a more perfect Aryan race.

This shuffle was accomplished by a little-known office of the SS called the Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (German for Race and Settlement Bureau) or RuSHA. In the Ukraine alone, RuSHA drafted 500,000 women for forced labor in the munitions factories of Nazi Germany,

It was RuSHA which selected women for Himmler's unit of Antarktische Siedlungsfrauen (Antarctic Settlement Women) About half of the "recruits" were Volksdeutsch--ethnic Germans whose ancestors had settled in the Ukraine in the Seventeenth and Eighteeneth Centuries. The others were native Ukrainians whom RuSHA had "upgraded" to full Aryans. This process was called Eindeutschung (Germanization).

Ivanenko claimed that as many as 10,000 Ukrainians with acceptable racial purity (out of the more than half a million Ukrainians deported during the war) were transported, not to munitions factories in Germany, but to the German Antarctic!

According to Ivanenko, There is increased popularity for the idea of a 'German-Slavonic Antarctic Reich.' It is said that 10,000 of the 'racially most pure' Ukrainians, out of half a million deported in 1942 by Martin Bormann, were transported to the German Antarctic bases during World War II, in the proportion of four Ukrainian women to one German man.

If true, this would mean that Himmler transferred 2,500 Waffen-SS soldiers, who had proven themselves in combat on the Russian front, to Station 211 - now Neuschwabenland - in Antarctica. This may be the source of the myth of the "Last SS Battalion."

An ASF training camp was set up in Estonia, on a peninsula near Ristna on Hiiumaa Island in the Baltic Sea. It was a combination finishing school and boot camp, where the ladies took lessons in charm and housekeeping along with their courses in polar survival. Himmler kept the camp's existence a closely-guarded secret. For "unhappy campers," the only escape consisted of a one-way train ticket to Auschwitz.

[There is one known instance of an ASF "deserter." In 1943, Auschwitz guard Irma Griese, 22, the off-and-on girl friend of Dr. Josef Mengele, took to wearing a sky-blue ASF uniform, which she had scavenged from a pile of inmate clothing. Griese was hanged in 1946 for war crimes. The uniform's original owner must have had serious second thoughts about a permanent move to Antarctica].

The failure of Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz's U-boat offensive by May 1943 freed up dozens of "milk cow" U- boats. These were large submarines, almost as big as tramp steamers, which Dönitz had used to supply his U- boat "wolf packs" in remote seas of the world. Himmler now put them to work carting supplies and personnel to Antarctica.

Himmler's rationale for sending thousands of settlers to Antarctica can only be understood within the context of his mystic beliefs. As a result of his youthful reading of New Age books, his association with the occultist Dr. Friedrich Wichtl, and his membership in the Artamen, Himmler became a believer in the Hindu concept of world-ages or yugas. He believed that the current age, or Kali Yuga, would end in a global cataclysm, thereby giving birth to a new world-age called the Satya Yuga. By sending a Nazi colony to Antarctica, Himmler was ensuring that a remnant of the "pure Aryan race" would survive the coming cataclysm with its society and culture intact. They would then take possession of Antarctica when the cataclysm melted the south polar ice cap.

According to believers, the Neuschwabenland colony survived not only the end of World War II, but a full on battle with the 3,500 Marines and aircraft of Operation High Jump.

In 2003 Ivanenko wrote:

The total population of Nazis in Antarctica now exceeds two million and that many of them have undergone plastic surgery in order to move about with greater ease through South America and conduct all manner of business transactions.

He called the Antarctic Reich "one of the most militarily powerful states in the world because it can destroy the USA several times over with its submarine-based nuclear missiles, remaining itself invulnerable to U.S. nuclear strikes because of the two-mile-thick ice shield." Further, he claims that the city of Neu Berlin, the colony's capital, sprawls through "narrow sub-glacial tunnels" under an unnamed mountain range, heated by "volcanic vents." The ufologist also makes the claim that Neu Berlin adjoins "the prehistoric ruins of Kadath, which may have been built by settlers from the lost continent of Atlantis well over 100,000 years ago."

Still other fringe researchers claim that the actual ruins of Atlantis have been found -- and possibly reoccupied - under the Antarctic ice. Some say that Atlantis is located near one of the 70 or so warm water lakes that have been discovered miles beneath the Polar Ice Sheet, such as Lake Vostok near the Russian base at the Pole of Inaccessibility.

Another of the oft made claims about Neuberlin is that the city has an Alien Quarter, where Pleiadians, Zeta Reticulans, Reptoids, Men In Black, Aldebarani and other visitors from the stars dwell.

The Nazis were working on some very advanced aircraft, some of which may have been capable of leaving the earth's atmosphere. Some researchers are convinced that the Nazis did indeed make it to the moon, and even Mars. Could they have made contact with space aliens once they left the earth? Or, could their rockets, foo-fighters and disk aircraft have attracted aliens to visit them?

A claim floats around in modern U.F.O. lore that an extraterrestrial craft with anti-gravity propulsion crashed in the Schwarzwald in the summer 1936, and was recovered by the Nazis who back-engineered it, thus explaining their flying saucer program.

This parallels stories of a similarly recovered crashed "saucer" near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, the American back-engineering of which supposedly led to the discovery of the transistor (patented by Bell Laboratories the following year), fiber-optics and other exotic technologies.

Ivanenko reported that talk about the Antarctic Reich is "becoming more and more popular" in Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, Belarus and other countries in eastern Europe. He writes, "In the May 10, 2003 issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Polish journalist A. Stagjuk criticized Poland's decision to send troops to Iraq" to assist with the Allied occupation. "At the end, he said, ''The next Polish government will sign a treaty with Antarctica and declare war on the USA.'"

Ivanenko added that Stagjuk's words were broadcast on the shortwave radio station Deutsche Welle the same week. Some analysts compared this sentence to famous code phrases which started wars in the Twentieth Century, such as 'Over all of Spain, the sky is cloudless' in 1936, and 'Climb Mount Niitaka' in 1941. ("Climb Mount Niitaka" was the signal Admiral Yamamoto sent to Kido Butai, the Imperial Japanese Navy's fleet, to begin the attack on Pearl Harbor.)

Lake Vostok, about the size of Lake Ontario in Canada, is about 2km below the surface ice. It contains life forms that are not known anywhere else on the planet and is at a relatively comfortable temperature of between 50 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Not bad considering the surface temperature is about -60 degrees F.

In 1998 NASA and JPL were involved in a scientific operation to drill into and explore Lake Vostok. Their stated objective was to train astronauts for future missions to the frozen moons of Jupiter. It seems that in 1998 the chances of any manned craft getting to Jupiter in the life time of the men being trained was not very likely.

In February, 2001, all drilling and scientific work at Lake Vostok was abruptly ceased. NASA and JPL stated that they were vacating the area and abandoning their research. They just up and walked away from billions of dollars worth of equipment. Why? Because they were concerned about damaging the natural environment. Since when has NASA had a 'Green' conscience? However, they didn't leave the base unattended. As they walked out, the NSA walked in.

Many other strange events happened around the same time. Extraordinary and unprecedented emergency airlifts were made to evacuate ill personnel during the dead of the six-month winter. Scientists discovered massive magnetic anomalies beneath the ice at Lake Vostok. Three of those same scientists died in 'accidents' before they could leave Antarctica. Another technician apparently "became insane" and was evacuated to New Zealand. This is after the hitherto lucid, rationally-minded man publicly broadcast news of large UFOs at McMurdo Base.

What could have caused them to stop? One site believes that a civilization from Mars is below there. Iit’s just as likely this could be the Nazi base that was constructed in the war.

It is strange to think of a large population living under the ice of Antarctica, totally divorced from the "mainstream" world. Then again, there are Jivaro indigenous people living on Lago de Yanayacu (lake), less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Iquitos, Peru, who have never heard of Courtney Love. So, is there a city under the ice inhabited by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original SS settlers? Or is it just an urban legend stemming from the chaotic conditions that prevailed in Europe during World War II? What, if anything, did Admiral Byrd encounter in 1947?

Some day we may know for certain.

THE BATTLE FOR NEUSCHWABENLAND

Most of the rumors about the alleged German colony in Antarctica agree that Station 211, if it really existed, was located inside a prominent ice-free mountain in the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains of Neuschwabenland (Queen Maud Land).

In 1947, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, America’s most recognized polar explorer, led what was, basically an invasion of the Antarctic, and at least one follow-up expedition. That is fact. It is undeniable. But... the part of the story that is seldom told, at least in “official” circles, is that Byrd and his forces encountered heavy resistance to their Antarctic venture from “flying saucers” and had to call off the invasion. This aspect of the story was pushed forward, again, a few years ago, when a retired Rear Admiral, allegedly living in Texas, who had been involved in the “invasion”, said he was “shocked” when he read material from a documentary, entitled "Fire from the Sky". He allegedly claimed that he knew there had been “a lot of aircraft and rocket shoot-downs”, but did not realize the situation was as serious as the documentary presented it.

Operation “High Jump”, consisted of three Naval battle groups, which They were led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s command ship, the ice-breaker “Northwind,” and consisted of the catapult ship “Pine Island,” the destroyer “Brownsen,” the aircraft-carrier “Phillipines Sea,” the U.S. submarine “Sennet,” two support vessels “Yankee” and “Merrick,” and two tankers “Canisted” and “Capacan,” the destroyer “Henderson” and a floatplane ship “Currituck.”

Some 13 ships and 4,700 men, which included an aircraft carrier, a submarine, two destroyers, more than two-dozen aircraft and some 3,500 Marines in full battle gear were sent by the United States to Antarctica on what was officially described as a “training” mission, departing from Norfolk, VA, on 2 December 1946.

Thus Operation Highjump, began... The expedition was filmed by the Navy and brought to Hollywood to be made into a commercial film called The Secret Land. It was narrated by Hollywood actor Robert Montgomery, father of Bewitched star, Elizabeth Montgomery, who was, himself, an officer in the Naval Reserve.

It seems incredible that so shortly after a war that had decimated most of Europe and crippled global economies, an expedition to Antarctica was undertaken with so much haste (it took advantage of the first available Antarctic summer after the war), at such cost, and with so much military hardware - unless the operation was absolutely essential to the security of the United States.

At the time of the operation, the US Navy itself was being taken apart piece by piece as the battle-tested fleet was decommissioned with its mostly civilian crew bidding farewell to the seas forever. The Navy was even reduced to further recruitment to man the few remaining ships in service.

Tensions across the globe were also mounting as Russia and America edged into a Cold War, possibly a Third World War that the US would have to fight with “tragically few ships and tragically half trained men.” This made the sending of nearly 5,000 residual Navy personnel to a remote part of the planet where so much danger lurked in the form of icebergs, blizzards and sub-zero temperatures even more of a puzzle. The operation was also launched with incredible speed, “a matter of weeks.” Perhaps it would not be uncharitable to conclude that the Americans had some unfinished business connected with the war in the polar region. Indeed this was later confirmed by other events and the operation’s leader, Admiral Richard Byrd, himself.

The official instructions issued by the then Chief of Naval Operations, Chester W. Nimitz were: to (a) train personnel and test material in the frigid zones; (b) consolidate and extend American sovereignty over the largest practical area of the Antarctic continent; (c) to determine the feasibility of establishing and maintaining bases in the Antarctic and to investigate possible base sites; (d) to develop techniques for establishing and maintaining air bases on the ice, (with particular attention to the later applicability of such techniques to Greenland) and (e) amplify existing knowledge of hydro graphic, geographic, geological, meteorological and electromagnetic conditions in the area.

Little other information was released to the media about the mission, although most journalists were suspicious of its true purpose given the huge amount of military hardware involved. The US Navy also strongly emphasized that Operation Highjump was going to be a navy show; Admiral Ramsey’s preliminary orders of 26th August 1946 stated that “the Chief of Naval Operations only will deal with other governmental agencies” and that “no diplomatic negotiations are required. No foreign observers will be accepted.” Not exactly an invitation to scrutiny, even from other arms of the government.

Yet persistent rumors insist that the actual purpose of Highjump was to find, and if occupied, engage the Nazis in their fortress.

Some facts, however, are well known...

The baker’s dozen of ships in Byrd’s flotilla arrived at three different rendezvous points in the Southern Ocean inside the Antarctic Circle, spread out over more than a month, with the first to arrive dropping anchor on December 30, 1946.

The plan was for the main body of men and equipment, the Central Group, to go to Byrd’s Antarctic “home,” Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf, where they would set up a base camp. There would be two other groups of ships, each group composed of a seaplane tender, a destroyer and a tanker. One group would begin to the east of the central group, the other to the west.

The Central Group consisted of the Mount Olympus, a communications vessel; two supply ships, the Yancey and the Merrick; two icebreakers, the Burton Island and the Northwind; and a submarine, the Sennet.

The East Group, under the command of Captain George J. Dufek, would start on the opposite side of the continent from the base camp at Little America. It would be East Group’s task to begin their mission by reconnoitering Dronning Maud Land, the Norwegian name for the area called Neuschwabenland by the Germans. They began to the east of Neuschwabenland and swung around west, photographing all of the former Deutsch Antarctica in the process. The East Group consisted of the seaplane tender Pine Island, the destroyer Brownson and their refueling ship the Canisteo.

The West Group, under Captain Charles A. Bond, was made up of the Currituck, a seaplane tender, the Henderson, a destroyer, and the Cacapon, a tanker. They in turn began in the center and ended their voyage half-way around the Antarctic continent at Dronning Maud Land, completing the circle.

Bringing up the rear was the brand new aircraft carrier the Philippine Sea with Admiral Byrd on board. She had been finishing up a shakedown cruise near Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when her orders came in to participate in Operation Highjump. A hasty trip north returned her to harbor at the Norfolk Navy Base in Virginia. It would take a month to complete the preparations for her 10,000 mile voyage to Antarctica.

Since she would be going through the Panama Canal, changes had to be made in the hull and flight deck structures. Dug at the beginning of the 20th Century, the canal can only accommodate small to moderately sized ships. Today’s giants of the sea - supertankers, container ships, and the floating cities that are modern carriers - are forced, like sailing ships of old, to go around the Horn.

Soon piles of crates burdened the docks around the Philippine Sea as over one hundred tons of miscellaneous equipment and supplies arrived and waited to be loaded. Several helicopters landed on the flight deck and were secured for the trip.

Then came the biggest of the problem children, six R4D transport planes. These were military versions of the famous DC3. They were far too large to land on a WWII era carrier, and could only take off from one with the assistance of rocket engines affixed to their sides. The landing field was over a mile from the dock, so a path from airport to quay had to be cut right through the middle of the naval base. Drivers had to "pilot" the planes through that narrow pathway, with sailors sitting on the wings to prevent a sudden burst of wind from picking the plane up and hurling it against the sides of buildings, fences or machinery. Often the wingtips came within inches of disaster.

Last aboard the Philippine Sea was Admiral Byrd, just hours before shoving off. Shortly after noon on Thursday, January 2, 1947, with Admiral Byrd on the bridge, the Philippine Sea slowly pulled away from the pier as bands played and the local command saluted farewell.

The Central Group had reached their designated rendezvoused point in Antarctica three days before the Philippine Sea even left port, arriving at Scott Island on December 30, 1946. That is, all except for the icebreaker Burton Island. She was also on a shakedown cruise when tapped for the mission. The Burton Island would leave its west coast base late and arrive in the Southern Ocean last of all – indeed, she got there just in time to go home when the hasty retreat was called, as we shall see in a moment.

The first “casualty” of Byrd’s War was the submarine, the USS Sennet. The ships of the Central Group followed the icebreaker Northwind through the pack ice into the open waters of the Ross Sea. The official story is that the ice proved to be too dangerous for the sub, which was towed back to Scott Island. Some researchers have speculated that she actually hit German anti-submarine defenses. From the Ross Sea she went to New Zealand for repairs then headed back to home base, the Balboa naval facility in the Canal Zone. The remainder of the group reached the Bay of Whales on January 15.

Over the following two days, landing parties went ashore and selected a location for their base camp. Once a site was chosen for Little America IV construction began immediately. A wide assortment of vehicles were soon off-loaded and put to use building three compacted snow runways and a short airstrip made of steel matting, as well as preparing the ice surface for their tent city (which also boasted a single Quonset hut). The heavy machinery used included tractors, jeeps, “weasels,” bulldozers and other tracked equipment.

The second “casualty” and the first official fatality occurred on January 21. The victim was a young sailor named Vance Woodall, from the supply ship Yancey. From one account of the incident:

The D6 tractors were proving too heavy to ride on top of the snow that lay on the surface of the bay ice. In order to gain sufficient towing purchase, the drivers had to let the steel treads plow into the snow until reaching the hard ice. As a result, one tread would often grip the ice before the other, throwing the tractor violently from side to side until both treads took equally. The official accident report states that Woodall unfortunately caught both his right arm and head in the slats of the roller just as the tractor suddenly lurched ahead. Woodall's spinal column was severed "high in the neck" and the navy veteran of only seven months died instantly.

Four days later a very displeased Admiral Byrd arrived. The Philippine Sea rendezvoused with the Central Group on January 25 near Scott Island. Four days later, on January 29, the first two R4D's successfully took off for the dangerous flight to Little America -- with Admiral Byrd aboard the first plane aloft. By January 30, all six R4D's had arrived safely. With that the carrier's objective had been completed. Too big to return to the carrier the R4Ds were simply going to be left behind at the end of the mission. The Philippine Sea promptly put her stern to Antarctica and made all possible speed for home, arriving back at Quonset Point, Rhode Island on February 28.

From their base at Little America the six R4D’s flew scores of mapping flights deep into the heart of the frozen continent, including several over-flights of the South Pole. Meanwhile their colleagues, in the PBM “flying boats” launched from the seaplane tenders in the East and West groups, flew mapping missions all along the Antarctic coast.

In all over 73,000 photographs would be taken. But what should have been a mapmaker's dream turned out to be a cartographic nightmare. Only a few thousand of the photographs were of any value due to lack of adequate ground control points. Without known locations to mosaic the images around, all they had were meaningless pictures of ice. Or so it was claimed.

The following year a much smaller expedition, called Operation Windmill, was launched to get these needed coordinates. Some researchers have suggested that Windmill’s real purpose was to see if Station 211 were still occupied, and the need for ground control points was a literal “shore story”.

Not that the photo mapping went that well for the crews of Operation Highjump. All three groups were plagued with bad weather: fogs, low ceilings, dense clouds in the upper atmosphere, strong winds, and so on, but The Western Group had it the worst, spending whole weeks without getting a plane in the air.

The most remarkable happening from the Western Group was the discovery of “Bunger’s Oasis.” As one Antarctic chronicler put it:

On either January 30 or February 1 (the record is unclear), PBM pilot Lieutenant Commander David E. Bunger lifted from the bay and headed south for the continent some hundred miles distant. At this time the USS Currituck was off the Shackleton Ice Shelf on the Queen Mary Coast of Wilkes Land. Reaching the coastline, Bunger flew west with cameras humming. Suddenly the men in the cockpit saw a dark spot come up over the barren white horizon and as they drew closer, they couldn't believe their eyes. Byrd later described it as a "land of blue and green lakes and brown hills in an otherwise limitless expanse of ice.

Bunger and his men carefully inspected the region and then raced back to the ship to tell the others of their discovery. Several days later Bunger and his flight crew returned for another look, finding one of the lakes big enough to land on. Bunger carefully landed the "flying boat" and slowly came to a stop. The water was actually quite warm for Antarctica, about 30°, as the men dipped their hands in to the elbow. The lake was filled with red, blue and green algae which gave the lakes their distinctive color. The fly boys "seemed to have dropped out of the twentieth century into a landscape of thousands of years ago when land was just starting to emerge from one of the great ice ages", Byrd later wrote. Byrd called the discovery "by far the most important, so far as the public interest was concerned of the expedition.

Dr. Paul Siple, Admiral Byrd’s closest friend who had accompanied him on all of his polar expeditions, including this one, later commented that discussions between the expedition’s scientists as to the nature of "Bunger’s Oasis" had hardly even begun "before the eleven press representatives aboard the USS Mount Olympus had fired off dispatches to the outside world describing the oasis as a 'Shangri-La' and implying that it was warmed by a mysterious source of heat and might be supporting vegetation". Does “Shangri-La” and “a mysterious source of heat” sound familiar? Officially, because of the brackish nature of Bunger’s water sample, "Bunger’s Oasis” was dismissed as being an inlet of the sea.
It was the Eastern Group, flying over Neuschwabenland, who would suffer the next, and last officially recorded fatalities. The official story was that one of their PBM “flying boats” named George One struck the top of a mountain and went down, killing three. What happened is here described by one of the survivors, radar operator Jim Robbins:

My radar had nothing to see except the top of the mountain range peaks that had rugged terrain with good reflective surfaces. They were 15 miles away as indicated on my radar. This agreed with our very erroneous charts and we were still fogged in flying at 800 ft (mostly below the weather) and about to turn back as there was no CAVU over the coast as indicated by the crew on George One's earlier flight. Before we had a chance to turn around, we hit a bump that caused an explosion. We had torn a hole in the hull and hull gas tank which caused the 145 octane to come pouring out. The engine exhaust flames set it all off immediately. Probably the biggest airplane explosion ever, back in 1946! The entire hull completely disintegrated! Most of us were thrown out in the same general direction from the flight deck. Two of us went through the propellers and died instantly.

Bill Kearns was blown right through the windshield in front of the co-pilot's seat, Warr was blown way down the hill behind us. It was snowing like the devil! Williams was seated next to our flight engineer Warr, watching the instrument panel with him. After the explosion we found him beside the flaming fire pit and internally hurt very seriously, bleeding from the mouth and nose. He died a couple of hours later. The photographer, McCarty had been sleeping in the tunnel by his trimetrigon camera and tunnel hatch. He was evidentially thrown around in there (the tunnel section remained pretty well intact and became our foul weather home). Frenchy was left hanging by his seat belt in the flames caused by the remaining fuel from the hull tank still burning. Our honored guest observer, the Capt. of the USS Pine Island, sea plane tender super deluxe, was strapped into a very special new bow seat that replaced the old bow turret. It was encased in a clear plexiglass dome with the most beautiful possible view ever! He was blown right through it. He appeared to be in fairly good shape except for his nose which was obviously badly broken. We later noted that he had a bad limp.

The Duluth-Minnesota News-Tribune for January 2, 2005, ran the story: “Navy tries to find plane lost in Antarctica 58 years ago" on page 7A that read, in part:

On November 27, 2004, the Navy undertook the initial flight...to try to locate the wreckage of the George 1, the plane that crashed in 1946. The search flight was a joint one, conducted aboard a Chilean Navy Orion P-3 aircraft with a Chilean crew and NASA scientists working together.

“This wasn't just a routine task for us,” said Capt. Christian Aldunate, the senior Chilean pilot on the recovery flight. “It was a challenge to find clues that could help locate the plane, even though we knew it would be almost impossible to get at it because of the ice and snow that had piled up over so many years."

During an 11-hour flight from and back to Punta Arenas, in the extreme south of Chile, the search plane dipped as low as 500 feet (150 meters) over Thurston Island so scientists could use radar and laser beams to try to locate the remains of the U.S. Navy PBM (Martin) Mariner seaplane.

"Even today it's not easy, but we can rely on information from satellite photos, GPS systems and wind predictions,” Aldunate said, referring to global positioning networks. “But from the time they took off until the time they arrived in the area, they had no idea what to expect."

Though little known in the outside world, the three men who died in the (1946) crash --Wendell K. Hendersin, Maxwell Lopez and Frederick Williams-- are still celebrated in Antarctica as heroes.

At McMurdo Station, a U.S. research base on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, there is a plaque to honor the four men who died on Operation Highjump, the first Americans to die on any of Byrd's many expeditions.

Admittedly, the official record of the operation doesn’t sound much like a report from a war zone. Yet there have been persistent rumors of pitched battles, massive casualties, planes shot down, and more. All just wild tales? If so, why did Captain Richard H. Cruzen, the operational commander of the expedition order an abrupt end to the mission after just eight weeks, when they had enough provisions for 6 to 8 months in the polar region?

In the end, the task force came steaming back to the United Sates with their data, which then, immediately became classified “top secret”. Secretary of the Navy (by this time, Secretary of Defense) James Forrestal retired... and started to “talk”.... not only about Highjump, but about other things, as well... He was put in Bethesda Naval Hospital psychiatric ward where he was prevented from seeing or talking to anyone, including his wife... and... after a short while he was thrown out the window while trying to hang himself with a bed sheet. So the story goes... It was, of course, ruled a suicide, case closed. However, some of what he knew... about Highjump... about Roswell... and other things... did manage to “leak”... How much is truth, how much is speculation is difficult to tell. However, in every “myth” there is a grain of truth...

This much is certain... As incredible as it may sound, there is considerable supporting evidence for these claims about a German base in Antarctica... On the very eve of the Second World War, the Germans themselves had invaded part of Antarctica and claimed it for the Third Reich.

Did Byrd, and perhaps the George One, encounter Nazi disk aircraft?

In 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 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.

Admiral Byrd in March 1955 was placed in charge of Operation Deepfreeze which was part of the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958, exploration of the Antarctic. He died, shortly thereafter... in 1957... many have suggested he was murdered...

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; a battle that would make its claims on the continent more legitimate; but, most importantly, a battle that ended the war that it had been compelled to wage.

What does help substantiate their story is the little known fact (which Pravda reported on 16 January 2003) that, in 1983, Special Services seized a confidential letter that Captain Schäffer wrote to "Captain Bernhardt", and in the letter Schäffer pleads to Bernhard not to publish his memoirs in too profound a detail and, in fact, states his intent for the world not to know the truth:

We all made an oath to keep the secret; we did nothing wrong: we just obeyed orders and fought for our loved Germany and its survival. Please think again; isn't it better to picture everything as a fable? What results do you plan to achieve with your revelations? Think about it, please.

The missing U-boats were part of the Antarctic jigsaw puzzle that Britain had been putting together since the Nazis first sent Admiral Ritscher on his Thule sponsored polar mission. And with Britain's Intelligence network - the SOE (Special Operations Executive) and the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) providing virtually all the information to the Allied Forces via the Enigma machine and its immense European spy network during the War, the picture was appearing slowly.

An East German source who had served in the Kriegsmarine and has first-hand accounts about Neuschwabenland, claimed:

Neuschwabenland, after Europe, was in ruins and Norway, completely in German hands, became the only viable base of operations. When it was decided that for the German nation surrender was best, those who could, left, and took their chances in the U-boat convoys.

Antarctica was a secret but rumors persisted, and only for the most dedicated was it a haven. Most of those with any intimate knowledge of Neuschwabenland did not see the end of the war, and of those who did, the majority were executed, committed suicide or were sent to the Russian gulags... Only those captured by the British forces fared better, but after interrogation were forbidden to mention their wartime exploits again. The threat of having damaging wartime links brought up kept the Germans silent and helped the Allies suppress the truth.

From 1941 until the start of the British/Swedish/Norwegian Expedition of 1949–52, Britain sent at least 12 official missions to Antarctica, half of them between the end of the war and the beginning of Operation Highjump, led by Admiral Byrd, starting in December 1946. Even more intriguingly, Britain sent no missions from the commencement of Highjump until 1948, during which time the US had Antarctica all to itself. Britain nonetheless was more active in Antarctica during the 1940s than any other nation, yet the only Antarctic mission mentioned in depth by historians is Admiral Byrd's. His mission still overshadows every other mission and is the main focus of attention for many conspiracy theorists. Britain's exertions were and still are totally overlooked; and with Admiral Byrd spreading misinformation, the true conspiracy concerning Antarctica as a Nazi haven was forgotten.

In the UK, British Intelligence unearthed more of Norway's secrets but suppressed them; Antarctica was no exception. When the Norwegian Government returned to a liberated Norway, Antarctica soon returned to their consciousness, though the Norwegians would have to wait several years to go back there, lest the rumors of a Nazi base were true.

On the other hand, Britain decided it had collated enough knowledge about Antarctica to initiate an intense investigation, one that had to dispel all fears and hide all evidence, for it could not tolerate any more technology or personnel being acquired by the wrong hands, namely, the USSR and the USA.

Britain had helped liberate Norway and, as 1945 was drawing to a close, was in the process of "liberating" Queen Maud Land (the new atlas of the post-war world no longer recognized Neuschwabenland). However, the mysterious wartime expeditions conducted by all the combatant countries, especially Germany, were not entered into the World War II history books. A travesty of history had occurred.

The Nazi "Shangri-La" did exist. Of unknown size, it was set up during the 1938–39 Deutsche Antarktische Expedition. The existence of a Nazi Antarctic base hidden in vast caverns was considered feasible enough for the British to set up bases in many parts of Antarctica during the war in response to the threat. And whilst the officially recorded British expeditions mainly concentrated around the Antarctic Peninsula, those not recorded were those that concentrated on investigating Queen Maud Land, so named by Norwegian whalers prior to 1939 in honor of Queen Maud of Norway (1869–1938), consort of King Haakon VII and formerly Princess Maud of the United Kingdom, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

Britain's arrogance in committing troops to Antarctica, independent of the United States, and in celebrating the feat with the release in February 1946 of a provocative stamp set, would inevitably lead to Britain's claims on Antarctica being contested, even though the stamps commemorated Britain's final fight with Nazism rather than being a statement of its Antarctic claims. And even though Britain expressed outrage publicly when Highjump was launched, it was just a pretense: privately, Britain knew that the USA's newfound superpower status meant that it would not permit Antarctica to be utilized by other nations for financial gain.

The USA, distracted by the war against Japan and the brewing Cold War, had been caught short by Britain's Antarctic exertions and humbled by its aggressive stance. So the Americans soon adopted a policy, dreamt up during the war, that would destroy Britain's imperial aspirations, hinder every attempt by Britain to exert any influence around the world and make the country an "ally" in name only. However, as early as 1942, Britain and British identity were suffering as a result of the United States' globalization agenda. It must be remembered that Britain was denied its own atomic bomb, despite the fact that the bomb could have not been created without British expertise. Furthermore, the British people faced worse rationing than any other Western nation, lasting direfully until the 1950s, and Britain was also pressured into giving full independence or self government to most of the territories in its Empire.

So, whilst Britain went into World War II a superpower, by the end of the war and by the actions of American foreign policy, especially Operation Highjump, it had been put firmly in its place. The United States became the only country that could successfully influence Britain, as the 1956 Suez crisis proved. Even now, 60 years after the end of World War II, British blood is still being shed on behalf of US foreign policy.

Britain halted its Antarctic flights and operations for two years, giving the United States a free hand in Antarctica with the commencement of Operation Highjump. With the Nazi haven destroyed, there was little need for the British to return: the Americans would not discover anything that had not already been discovered. Or would they?

In the two years they had to discover as much about Antarctica as possible, the Americans found dry areas and warm water lakes that provoked immense media interest, but Operation Highjump, which they'd planned to last for six months, ended after just eight weeks. They received a hostile reaction from other nations, but it was only after the mission's return that the rumors and theories began to abound and the enigma surrounding Highjump really began.

In the years prior to the June 1961 ratification, the USA, UK and USSR had all used Antarctica for military purposes and all three nations were rumored to have tested nuclear bombs on the continent. On 27 and 30 August and 6 September 1958, at least three such bombs were detonated in Antarctica, allegedly by the Americans. Rumor has it that they were set off in the area of Queen Maud Land and were triggered 300 meters above the target, with the initial aim being to "recover" frozen areas. The locations of other bomb detonation sites have been firmly suppressed, but it is believed that the areas reconnoitered by the Germans in 1939 and 1940 were targeted.

With the Germans and Americans officially claiming to have found warm water lakes on their expeditions, it was only a matter of time before more were discovered. One such lake, discovered by the Russians, is Lake Vostok, which is 4,000 meters below the surface and curiously is located under the Russian base camp of Vostok. News of the discovery was not released to the world until 1989, so had the Soviets found the subterranean lake years earlier and was this their main reason for refusing to leave its base? The lake has still not been investigated, mainly out of fear of what could be unleashed and to avoid contamination of the lake, although a huge magnetic anomaly has been identified.

Subterranean lakes with signs of life, geothermally warmed lakes in dry valleys in a supposed frozen wasteland, viruses that threaten mankind, mysterious holes in the atmosphere allied with suppressed military ventures may seem the work of fiction, and yet they are all fact! Antarctica is a truly mysterious place, and that is why it is inconceivable that the Nazis would claim an area and leave it unoccupied and undefended,...

Whether the British mission did destroy the Nazi base, with any remaining Nazis finally being expunged by the atomic force of the wartime allies, is not the question that needs asking. What is, though, is just how much of Antarctica's past, present and, indeed, its future has been, is being and will be suppressed?

 

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. 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.

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 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 the 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. 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 either polewith 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

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.

Who was the enemy that owned or flew these flying objects? Germany was apparently defeated, and there was no evidence that the new emerging enemy, Russia, had such superior technologies. They were, like the United States, only on the verge of the “rocket age”, and totally dependent upon technology, and expertise captured from Germany at the end of the War. There was no other known threat could that could account for the United States’ invasion of Antarctica nor for the development of any craft that could fly “fly from Pole to pole with incredible speeds.” Of course, the Roswell Incident had been in the news the past summer, but.. it had been “officially” explained, and hushed up by the time Highjump began.

Rumours began to circulate that even though Germany had been defeated, a selection of military personnel and scientists had fled the Fatherland as Allied troops swept across mainland Europe and established themselves at a base on Antarctica from where they continued to develop advanced aircraft based on extraterrestrial technologies. It is interesting to note that at the end of the war the Allies determined that there were 250,000 Germans unaccounted for, even taking into account casualties and deaths. This would be quite a population base for a fledgling colony, and provide the essential degree of skill, expertise, and pure manpower for an industrial base of any sort, let alone the production of, even by today’s standards, extremely high technology.

All Unidentified Flying Object researchers are, of course, aware of the multitude of reports concerning sightings of ‘flying saucers’ with Swastikas or iron crosses on them, ‘aliens’ speaking German, etc. Most have also heard of abductees who have been taken to underground bases with Swastika emblems on the walls, or as in the case of noted abductee Alex Christopher, have seen “Reptiloids” and “Nazis” working together aboard antigravity craft or within underground bases. Barney Hill was apparently, not the only one to describe the so-called “Nazi” connection to Unidentified Flying Object abductions. However, reports such as Christopher’s and Hill’s must be taken with a rather large grain of salt...

According to paranormal investigator Alan DeWalton:

One thing that Admiral Byrd stated in a press conference after his defeat at Antarctica was that the Antarctic continent should be surrounded by a "wall of defense installations since it represented the last line of defense for America."

Although the U.S. and Russia had been allies during the war, suddenly the "Iron Curtain" was created and we and the Russians became enemies.

Both the Soviets and the United States ringed the poles with defense and detection bases, and in between was the barren no-man's-land of the poles where absolutely nobody lived, or did they? Could it be that we pretended we were protecting against the Russians and they pretended they were protecting against us, while really we and they were both scared of what was in between us -- the Nazi Last Battalion?

Another claim which has been made by some investigators, although the original source is difficult to track down, was that upon returning to the States Admiral Byrd went into a rage before the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff (some versions of the story say he was testifying before Congress) and in an almost demanding tone, strongly “suggested” that Antarctica be turned into a thermonuclear test range. Urban Legends add that shortly after Byrd’s demand to nuke the Nazis in Antarctica UFOs buzzed the Capitol. It has been conjectured by some that the UFOs were Nazi craft from Antarctica warning the US of their power to retaliate should Byrd’s recommendation be acted on.

No evidence of Byrd’s alleged testimony to Congress has been found, but he was debriefed by the President, and the records of that debriefing are still sealed. UFOs were seen over the Capitol twice, once by day and later again that night. They were witnessed by thousands and were duly reported in the nation’s press. Unfortunately, they were sighted in 1951 long after Byrd’s return, and still nearly two years after Operation Windmill. It seems unlikely that there was any connection between these events.

After Highjump and Windmill, the Antarctic was literally crawling with expeditions. Although the Americans stayed away from Antarctica for the next decade, expeditions were launched by more than a dozen nations in the next few years. if there had been a Station 211 it was surely abandoned long before the International Geophysical Year (1958-59) that saw the greatest number of non-German visitors to Antarctica up till that time.

While there is, still no conclusive evidence of a German base on Antarctica, It is beyond doubt that something highly unusual was happening on, or around, the frozen continent. In general, it appears that the probability for such a base to have existed... and perhaps continue to exist, to this day, are rather high... The evidence, a large volume of it, is there for all to see...

The Germans explored and claimed part of Antarctica on the very eve of of World War Two. There was ongoing ship and submarine activity in the South Atlantic and polar regions throughout and after the war had apparently ended. This activity continued well into the 1950s, and if some accounts are to be believed, continues to this day, with what can only be considered U-Boat sightings, and a very high incidence of Unidentified Flying Object sightings in the South Atlantic and South Polar regions, including the Southern portions of South America.

The US literally invaded the continent of Antarctica, itself, with considerable naval resources leaving mainland America exposed and vulnerable as the world edged into the Cold War. The task force limped home as if defeated only weeks later, and the local South American press wrote of such a defeat. This coincided with a substantial increase in Unidentified Flying Object activity... generally attributed to the first major “wave” of such activity in modern times, with an inordinate amount of this activity taking place in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in South America.

Hundreds of thousands of Germans and a minimum of forty (40) U-boats were missing at the end of the war. Documentation and eyewitness accounts prove that at least a portion of these craft made it as far as South America, in some cases, several months after the end of the war in Europe.

The RECOVERY OF THE HOLY LANCE: THE HARTMANN EXPEDITION

The recounting of the legend of the Spear of Destiny in SECRETS OF THE HOLY LANCE: The Spear of Destiny in History

The Legend began and ended in 1979 with the recovery of the Holy Lance from the ice of Antarctica by the “Hartmann Expedition.” The retelling of that event was an admitted fiction, blending the material from Col. Buechner and Capt. Bernhart’s books with the authors' own research into Station 211. As a literary device each chapter in the book begins with a fictionalized reenactment of the most important scene in it, opening with the Hartmann Expedition’s exploration of a long abandoned Station 211 and final discovery of the treasure they sought. Besides its obvious cinematic value, the story of the Lance began and ended in 1979 because if at least partially true then the Spear of Destiny is not an object on display in some museum, or holed up in some church, but is actually an active player on the world's stage. “The destiny of the world for good or evil” may again be in one man’s hands!

The late Dr. Howard A. Buechner’s books are based on the evidence provided him by a former German U-boat submariner who claimed to have helped take the Holy Lance to Antarctica in 1945 and to have helped the Hartmann Expedition recover it in 1979. As the co-author of Buechner’s books he wrote under the pseudonym of “Capt. Wilhelm Bernhart.” Capt. Bernhart provided Dr. Buechner with what was claimed to be the log of the Hartmann Expedition, including a hand-written letter of authenticity signed by “Hartmann,” also a pseudonym, and photos of some of the objects recovered.

Col. Buechner and Capt. Bernhart avoid mention of Station 211 though. Instead, Buechner and Bernhart tell us that the submarine crew in 1945 placed Hitler’s treasure at the foot of an unnamed glacier in the Muhlig-Hofmann Mountains, dug in and protected with steel plates. The submarine then proceeded to Mar del Plata, Argentina where it surrendered some months after the war’s end. At least the mysterious surrenders of two such subs to Argentine authorities in July and August of 1945 can be confirmed.

In Adolf Hitler And The Secrets of The Holy Lance Col. Buechner and Capt. Bernhard detail how the Hartmann Expedition came about. It began, they wrote, in 1969 when Rudolf Hess was taken to a British hospital for the treatment of ulcers. Several days later an ex-crew member of U-boat 530, one of the subs that had surrendered at Mar del Plata after the war’s end, received the key to a bank box in Switzerland. This box led to another where a number of sealed envelopes were found, along with a large amount of liquid assets. The message had been signed “H.”

The sealed envelopes in the Swiss bank were opened by the former U-530 crewmember. He was instructed to contact and deliver the contents of the box to the man whom Hitler had personally entrusted with sending some of his most prized possessions, including the Holy Lance, to Antarctica. In Buechner and Bernhard’s books he would only be identified as “Colonel Maximilian Hartmann” a name they admitted to being false. Hartmann did not leave Germany at the end of the war, but he saw to it that senior officials, like Martin Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary, and the Reich treasurer Hitler had entrusted to him got out in two or more subs in the final days of the war. This group of subs, somewhere between three and twelve in number, have often been referred to as the “Führer Convoy.” It was part of the northern “Rat Line” that helped escaping Nazis – and may have conveyed the Führer himself!

The sailor did as instructed, passing the envelopes to Colonel Hartmann. In the first one Hartmann found a coded message from Professor Karl Haushofer. Haushofer was to the Third Reich what the Rev. Billy Graham has been to the last several American Presidents, and then some. More than confidant, Haushofer actively molded the thinking of the Nazi inner core. His beliefs were part of the motivation for the Nazi search for the Ark of the Covenant and Agharta, the mystical realm of enlightened beings who lived inside the hollow earth! Decoded, his message revealed the exact location of the bronze boxes Hartmann had sent to Antarctica aboard a submarine so many years before.

The second envelope instructed Hartmann to recreate Himmler’s Knight’s Grand Council, only this time the knights were to dedicate themselves, and use the power of the Holy Lance, for the purpose of world peace. The organization was also to be called by a new name, Knights of the Holy Lance.

The third envelope contained a very large sum of money. With it Hartmann set about the task of creating the Knights of the Holy Lance and preparing to recover their mystic talisman, the Spear of Destiny. As Buechner and “Bernhart” put it:

In 1974 the Order of the Knights was reorganized by a former German army officer named Colonel Maximilian Hartmann, but now the group had a vastly different purpose. This time there was no ancient castle for a meeting place. The military uniforms had been replaced by business suits and guns had given way to briefcases. Violence had disappeared and the wisdom of negotiation had taken its place.

While the major objective of their new direction was the attainment of world peace, or so we are asked to believe, they also put the reunification of their homeland as a central goal. Of overriding importance was the need for the power and guidance of the Holy Lance. They believed that there was little hope of success without it. The recovery of the Lance became their first objective. They knew that a secret expedition to Antarctica would be a Herculean task and that the cost would be incredible, but they were determined to succeed.

The Log of the Hartmann Expedition as quoted from and explained by Buechner and Bernhart details a long and somewhat implausible series of changes of planes, boats and finally a helicopter to arrive in Antarctica. Although Buechner seemed to accept the authenticity of the log your authors had a hard time swallowing it. Frankly, it reads like poor amateur fiction. Still, what would you expect from an aging businessman writing in German, then translated into English by an equally aged German sailor who picked up English as a second language? We suspect the narrative was laced with misdirections and half-truths to prevent anyone from identifying those involved – assuming it happened at all of course.

Finally Col. Hartmann arrived in Antarctica aboard a helicopter with three other Knights of the Holy Lance. They located and removed the steel plates placed over the entrance to Lance’s hiding place and found a steel lined tunnel leading into the mountain. Quoting from the expedition’s log we read:

Our lights penetrate the steel tunnel which extends for approximately ten meters. When we arrive at the end of the tunnel, we find ourselves in a huge cavernous area. It seems warm. As we search the cavern with our lights, we notice frozen pillars of ice in strange and grotesque shapes. We penetrate into the cavern the distance of about 300 meters. It is at this point that we came to a smaller cavern which turned towards the right and ended in a room approximately 80 meters in width and ten meters in height. It is here that the Reich treasures are hidden!!!

At this point stands a small obelisk about a meter in height which marks the spot. There is an inscription which reads as follows:

There are truly more things in heaven and ‘in’ earth than man has dreamt of (Beyond this point is AGHARTA) Haushofer, 1943.

Our lights immediately fall upon the treasure which consists of eight large bronze chests. This makes two for each man and will require two trips. Can we do it? This remains to be seen. Each one of us grasps a bronze box in his hands.

Hartman was soon disappointed to realize that the weight of the boxes, in total, is too heavy for his team to carry back to their waiting helicopter. Four of the boxes had to be left behind. Hartmann continues:

The trek back is energy consuming and difficult. We stop to rest several times along the return route. The chests are growing heavier and heavier as we go along. We have to stop and rest more frequently. Finally we reach the [helicopter] just as complete exhaustion is setting in. After one more brief rest, we begin our task of loading the bronze chests aboard. Lothar and Heinz remove the extra fuel supply cell after pumping its contents into the main benzene tank... Bits and pieces of unnecessary gear are discarded. The loss of weight will compensate for the extra cargo. Eight chests would have been an impossible load.

Shortly before we are ready to leave, the chest containing the Holy Lance is opened. We all watch with profound fascination as Klaus knocks the bronze pin from the clasp. Inside the chest is a faded leather case along with a variety of other items. We carefully open the case. It is there! the Holy Lance! the lance that pierced the side of Our Lord Jesus Christ! The oil torch we have lit … makes it seem like a ceremony. I hold the Holy Lance aloft in my hand. Without thinking, the words seem to flow from my mouth, “the Holy Lance points ever towards our eternal Deutschland.”

Buechner and Bernhart wrote that from Antarctica, Col. Hartman and his team made their way back to their starting point in Brazil, where papers were obtained for the Holy Lance, declaring it an art object. This enabled them to slip it through customs with little or no difficulty. Most of Hartmann’s team returned to Germany, and their everyday lives as successful but otherwise unremarkable businessmen.

Col. Hartmann, however, went on to the United States. There he met with a former crewman from one of the submarines that, perhaps, Admiral Dönitz had used to ferry material and personnel to Station 211. Buechner and Bernhardt claim that Col. Hartmann left certain items with this seaman, including a copy of the log of the Hartmann Expedition and a signed, handwritten letter of authenticity. Hartmann then departed, taking the Spear back to Germany.

Iif true, then the Spear of Destiny is not an object hidden in some church or displayed in a musty museum but is in the hands of men who mean to alter mankind’s destiny with it - for good or evil?

WHERE IS THE HOLY LANCE NOW?

Buechner was sure that the Spear is now held in the protective custody of these Knights of the Holy Lance. It would seem that their plan is working, for indeed, Germany is again reunited as a single, and very great, nation. Buechner died believing that these modern knights were guarding the Spear, preventing it from ever again falling into the wrong hands. Are they? Perhaps only time will tell.