The German grasping at the Antarctic

Part I: The Facts

The history of German Antarctic research started at 1873 when Sir Edward Dolman on behalf of the newly founded German Society of Polar Research discovered new Antarctic routes with his ship "GRÖNLAND". Dolman discovered the "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Inseln" at the western entrance of the Bismarck along the Biscoue Islands. Exploring the polar regions, the Germans were already at this time quite innovative, for the "GRÖNLAND" was the first steamship to see the Antarctic ice at all.

Within the next 60 years 2 further expeditionary thrusts took place, and two complete expeditions were fulfilled, namely 1910 under Wilhem Filchner with his ship "DEUTSCHLAND" and 1925 with the special designed polar expedition ship, the " METEOR" under the command of Dr. Albert Merz.

During the recent years before WWII the Germans claimed to hegemony about parts of Antarctica and the wished to possess an own base grew stronger. At this time the Antarctic was not safe due to international treaties like today and a pragmatic proof of Germany´s claim by a single strike to the south pole on the eve of the war seemed to be the best option. Hitler himself was anxious for a foothold in the Antarctic and such a claim could be used pretty well for the National socialistic propaganda and a further demonstration of the uprising "Superpower Germany" . On the other side a new provocation of the Allied had still to be avoided for some time. Germany was - at this time - not completely prepared for the coming war.

As a matter of fact, the idea of a semi-civilian expedition in cooperation with the German national airline company, the "LUFTHANSA" grew up. A civilian covered expedition with truly military and strategic background, a highly political charged balancing act. The command on this strike was given to the polar -experienced Captain Alfred Ritscher, who had already led some expeditions to the North Pole and proved courage and skillness in critical situations. The selected ship was the " MS SCHWABENLAND" , a German aircraft carrier used since 1934 for transatlantic mail delivery by special flight boats, the famous 10t schwere Dornier "Wale" . These "Wales" were mounted on steam catapults on the deck of the ship and could be started and refueled this way easily. This circumstance should proof very well during the expedition. The "SCHWABENLAND" was prepared for the expedition on Hamburg´s shipyards, which cost the huge amount of 1 Million Reichsmark, nearly a third of the complete expedition budget.

Meanwhile, the crew was prepared and scheduled by the German Society of Polar Research precisely .This society also made the sensational step to invite Richard E. Byrd, the most famous American Antarctic researcher. On the mid of November 1938 he arrived in Hamburg and showed the crew and a clearly selected publicity of 84 persons his new Antarctic documentation movie in the Urania of Hamburg. Byrd, who had flown across the south pole as the first human in 1929, was already at this time a living legend, a national hero to the Americans and most of the polar researchers. In 1938 he still was civilian. This invitation to the Germans could have been a typical irony of history, for nearly ten years later exactly this Richard E. Byrd - then in the rank as US NAVY admiral - got the instruction to destroy the secret German Antarctic base 211. To do this, he was given the command of the biggest military force on the Antarctic ice ever seen, 13 ships and nearly 4000 men staff. That mysterious operation which is said to have ended in a catastrophically failure.

(In fact, if you have ANY information on this expedition, please do not hesitate to inform me. Thanks)

But -for now- back to the fact:

The "NEUSCHWABENLAND" left the port of Hamburg on December 17th 1938 heading to the Antarctic on a precisely planned and determined route  and reached the ice on January 19th 1939 at 4° 15´ W and 69° 10´S. The following weeks on 15 flights the "PASSAT" and the "BOREAS" flew across some 600.000 square kilometers and made with their special designed German "Zeiss Reihenmessbildkameras RMK 38" more than 11.000 pictures of the area. The old Norwegian maps from 1931 on these area were renewed, for they proved to be fake. (Could not be different, because the Norwegian expeditions before did never go so deep into the ice from the used Northern landing point). Nearly one fifth of the whole Antarctic area was scanned this way, thus documented for the first time and simultaneous claimed to be German territory. To stress this claim on the outside too, the two planes dismissed several thousands of drop-flags, special metal poles with expedition's insignia on them, the "swastika". The whole territory now got the still valid name: "NEUSCHWABENLAND", referring to a south German region (which is actually not far from me here).

Interestingly, the Expedition seemed to have discovered ice-free areas with even lakes and small signs of vegetation in the mid of the Antarctic occurred. The geologists said that this phenomenon was due hot sources in the ground. Concurrent, the landings points where marked with "prick-flags".

Notes:

1. some newer historians reduce the discovered area to an amount of 325.000 square kilometers. Do not trust these numbers, I have copies of the original flight maps here, revealing the number 600.000 in ancient letters. What could be the reason to reduce this number ?
   
   
2. Most parts of "NEUSCHWABENLAND" were renamed according to the Antarctic treaty in 1957. Look out for "QUEEN MAUD LAND"., "PRINCESS MARTHA COAST","PRINCESS ASTRID COAST". On the older maps you will still find the original names. Yet, until today still many of the mountains in the northern Antarctic area carry German names like: "MÜHLIG-HOFFMAN-MOUNTAINS", "WOHLTAT-MOUNTAINS", etc. These names were given according to leading Berlin bureaucrats who enabled with their policy the expedition's targets.

In the mid of February, the "SCHWABENLAND" again left the Antarctic. It took two months back to Hamburg and Ritscher carefully used this time to organize the results, maps and photos. Captain Ritscher surprised by the results of the flights, immediately planned after the arrival a second, fully civilian, expedition in use of lighter airplanes with skids. Facing the beginning of WWII, these civilian (!) plans were said to be given up somewhere on October 1939.

Yet, what about the military and strategic option achieved by this strike? Was it wasted resources so far? Today, all historians agree in the fact that the WWII was not accidentally started but pretty well planned from the early 30´s and even before. At least since 1933 the whole German dictatorship tried to gain war fitness within a decade or earlier. In all - and I really mean all - aspects of life: military, "civilian", economic, social, private, resourcing, engineering, foreign policy, and so on, in all aspects the Germans were put straight on their way to war more or less obviously. Pointing to this only aim, the Nationalists abused the typical kind of German correctness and missing sense for rebellious scrutinizing. Nothing was left to chance! And this same method was used in the Antarctic issue, which in my eyes NEVER ended with Ritscher´s return 1938 but went on during the WWII.

Unfortunately, at this point all valid information are vanished. What is left is a scattered puzzle of hints, testimonies and reports which go up to the fifties and which we partially can not verify anymore. So IF the Germans WERE able to build up an Antarctic (underground) base on the results of Ritscher´s expedition, this would be one of the really best covered secrets in German history. No question, German engineers HAD the knowledge to construct something like that as the huge underground establishments of the Nordhausen complex in the Harz as well as Kahla complex at Th&uumlringen and many more prove. Does this you Americans remembers you of something??? The pattern somehow is the same: A lying government / dictatorship and a frightened, blind-held folks willing to obey and believe in what they are fed up with..(see Roswell)

So, what we did in Part II .... was the attempt to restructure chronically those parts of the puzzle we could gather within some months of research on this topic. Nobody can say that the following really happened, so you might see it as speculation first. Yet, we HAVE tremendous parallels on several sources from which we can only say this one thing 100%ly:

THEY COULD FAIRLY HAVE KNOWN OF EACH OTHER

Part II ....