"New Swabia" lives on. New Swabia or the secret base of the Third Reich in Antarctica ... Map of New Swabia
New Swabia (German Neu-Schwabenland or Neuschwabenland) is the territory of Antarctica between 20 ° East longitude and 10 ° West longitude, which was claimed by Germany in the period from January 19, 1939 to May 8, 1945.
1873
German exploration of Antarctica began in 1873, with an expedition organized by the German Society for Polar Research.
1910
In 1910 the expedition of V. Filchner (Wilhem Filchner) took place on the ship "Deutschland".
1925
In 1925 - a special ship for polar research "Meteor" under the command of Dr. A. Merz (Albert Merz).
After the NSDAP party came to power, headed by A. Hitler, interest in Antarctica appeared already at the political level, as a continent that did not have a certain state affiliation. The entire mainland (or part of it) was considered as a new territory of the Third Reich, with the possibility of state consolidation.
The idea of \u200b\u200ba civil expedition (with government support and cooperation from Lufthansa) to Antarctica came up. The expedition was supposed to explore a certain part of the mainland, with the subsequent declaration of its German identity.
1934
For the expedition, the ship "Schwabenland" was selected, which had been used since 1934 for transatlantic mail transport. An important Schwabenland. At the stern there is a seaplane, to the right - a crane a feature of the ship was the seaplane Dornier "Wal" (Kit). He could start from a steam catapult at the stern of the ship and after the flight again climb aboard using a crane. The ship was prepared for an expedition to the Hamburg shipyards.
The ship's crew was selected and trained by the German Society for Polar Research. The command of the expedition was taken over by the polar explorer Captain A. Ritscher Route Map (Alfred Ritscher), who had previously taken part in several expeditions to the North Pole. The budget of the expedition was about 3 million Reichsmarks.
1938
Schwabenland left Hamburg on December 17, 1938, and headed for Antarctica along the planned route. The ship reached pack (coastal) ice on 19 January at 4 ° 15 "W, 69 ° 10" E.
Over the next weeks, the ship's seaplane launched the seaplane from the ship 15 flights, surveying about 600 thousand square meters. km of territory. This made up almost a fifth of the continent. With the help of a special camera Zeis RMK 38, 11 thousand pictures were taken and the emblem of the expedition was photographed 350 thousand square meters. km of Antarctica. In addition to registering valuable information, the plane dropped the expedition's pennants every 25 km of flight. The territory was named Neuschwabenland and declared German. At present, this name is still used along with the new (from 1957) - Queen Maud Land.
The most interesting discovery of the expedition was the discovery of small ice-free areas with small lakes and vegetation. The expedition geologists suggested that this is a consequence of the action of underground hot springs.
1939
In mid-February 1939, Schwabenland left Antarctica. During the two months of the return journey, the captain of the expedition, Ritscher, systematized the research results, maps and photographs. Upon his return, Ritscher planned to start preparing a second expedition using ski-powered aircraft, probably for further exploration of the "warm" zone of Antarctica. However, due to the outbreak of World War II, the expedition did not take place.
The course of subsequent German exploration of Antarctica and the creation of a base there is very vague. Probably, he is hidden not only under the signature "Geheim", but also "Top secret" and "Top secret".
1943
The "gray wolves" of the Fuehrer of the submarine fleet, Grand Admiral K. Denitz, specially equipped for sailing in polar latitudes, began to go to Antarctica. Continuing further research into the "warm" zone of Antarctica, German scientists discovered a system of caves with warm air. "My divers have discovered a real earthly paradise" - said then Doenitz. In 1943, he declared: "The German submarine fleet is proud to have created an impregnable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other side of the world."
For 4-5 years, the Germans carried out a carefully hidden work to create a base in Antarctica, code-named "Base-211". Mining equipment and other equipment were constantly sent to the polar continent, including railways, trolleys and huge cutters for driving tunnels. Sevens in ice. Antarctic? Probably, surface ships and submarines converted for the transport version were used for the delivery of goods. Including from the "Fuehrer's Convoy".
Retired American Colonel Wendelle C. Stivens said: “Our intelligence, where I worked at the end of the war, knew that the Germans were building eight very large cargo submarines. All of them were launched, completed and then disappeared without a trace. today we have no idea where they went. They are not on the ocean floor and they are not in any port we know of. It's a mystery, but it can be solved thanks to a German documentary found by Australian explorers in which shows large German cargo submarines in Antarctica, ice around them, crews stand on decks waiting for a stop at the pier. "
The "fattest" submarines in the German submarine fleet were type XIV "Milchkuh" submarines, which served as supply boats in the Atlantic. They provided combat submarines with fuel, spare parts, ammunition, medicines, and food. A total of 10 type XIV submarines were built. All of them were sunk, and the coordinates of the death of each are known. So, specifically, they could not be those "large cargo submarines", but boats similar to the data, secret construction, could be used for flights to Base-211.
There were no fundamental obstacles to the creation of such an underground base. Many of the largest plants, such as the Nordhausen plant and the Junkers plants, were located underground in tunnels and adits. Such factories successfully withstood any bombing and usually stopped working only when the enemy ground forces approached.
Since 1942, thousands of concentration camp prisoners have been deployed to Base-211 as a labor force, as well as service personnel, scientists and members of the Hitler Youth - the gene pool of the future "pure" race. Probably, substantial reserves of food and ammunition were created for long-term autonomous operation or in case of a possible siege.
1945
In April 1945, the last submarine flights to Base-211 were made. Two submarines (U-530 and U-977) from the "Fuehrer's Convoy" surrendered in Argentina in July and August 1945. In the book "Steel coffins of the Reich" the author Kurushin M.Yu. noted:
"In July 1945, the nine U-530s of Ober-Lieutenant Otto Vermouth appeared off the coast of Argentina. On July 10, the submarine surrendered to the Argentine fleet in Mar del Plata. In numerous interrogations, the crew claimed that all this time it was patrolling off the coast of the United States, then gave up.
On August 17, the "seven" U-977 of Chief Lieutenant Heinz Schaeffer surrendered there. It is completely incomprehensible how a submarine of this type could have been at sea for so long when the autonomy of the "seven" does not exceed seven weeks. The submariners felt quite well - while waiting for the Argentine minesweeper sent after them, they fed the albatross with sardines in oil. As in other cases, the interrogations of the German submariners yielded nothing. At least that's the official point of view. At the same time, there is information that it was the submarines that were supposed to evacuate the values \u200b\u200band the highest ranks of the Reich at the end of the war. "
After the surrender, Base-211 began an independent existence. The possibility of the normal functioning of Base-211 was also ensured by the fact that they simply did not know about it and were not particularly interested in it, being carried away by the division of the Reich's rocket-reactive heritage and the Cold War.
However, the staff gradually developed a problem that is typical for those who have to stay in underground rooms for a long time. An example is the Belarusian partisans. After living for some time in the catacombs, they were forced to come to the surface, even knowing that it was almost fatal. Both physical and mental health deteriorated. This is mainly due to the "confined space" syndrome and changes in the natural electromagnetic background. Probably, as the reserves were depleted and due to diseases, the inhabitants of the colony left or died.
1961
Base 211 became uninhabited in 1961.
And now is the time to remember that many legends and myths are associated with the history of Antarctica, most of which date back to the times of the German Third Reich. Those interested in alternative versions of historical events can easily find on the World Wide Web a lot of materials concerning the strange interest of the leaders of Nazi Germany in this silent ice continent. Some of the versions are very exotic and, at first glance, lacking common sense, although they contain links to some documents of the special services and the memoirs of very old veterans of the German Navy and Air Force. And yet they seem to deserve some attention, even if they are examples of military mythology of the twentieth century.
On the Internet you can find links to a certain secret report of Colonel V.Kh. Heimlich, the former chief of American intelligence in Berlin, who believed that "there is no evidence for the Fuehrer's suicide theory." From here, fans of historical sensations conclude that the Fuhrer managed to avoid well-deserved retribution. In this opinion, they are strengthened by the publication of the Chilean magazine "Zig-Zag" on January 16, 1948, from which it follows that on April 30, 1945, Luftwaffe captain Peter Baumgart took off on his plane from Germany to Norway, having Hitler on board. In one of the fjords of this northern country, the Fuhrer, accompanied by several persons, allegedly plunged into one of the submarines, the detachment of which headed for Antarctica. Some Easter Island residents, by the way, recalled the strange nocturnal visits of rust-covered submarines in the fall of 1945.
It was reported that the Nazis in Antarctica created a "base 211" and even an entire underground city called "New Berlin" with a population of almost two million people. The main occupation of the inhabitants of the underworld is genetic engineering and space flights. In support of this hypothesis, journalists refer to repeated UFO sightings in the South Pole region. In 1976, Japanese researchers, using the latest radar equipment, allegedly discovered nineteen objects that went from outer space to Antarctica and suddenly disappeared from the radar screen in the region of the ice continent.
“I am confident about the future. The "weapon of retaliation" that I have will change the situation in favor of the Third Reich. "
Adolf Gitler,
February 24, 1945.
All publications on this topic look like a myth. But at the same time, it is known that even in the pre-war years, the Nazis, obsessed with the search for traces of ancient civilizations, were interested in Antarctica and during 1938-1939 carried out two expeditions to the continent. Luftwaffe planes delivered by ships to Antarctica took detailed photographs of vast territories and dropped several thousand metal pennants with a swastika there. The entire surveyed area was named New Swabia and was declared part of the future millennial Reich.
After the expedition, Captain Ritscher reported to Field Marshal Goering: “Every 25 kilometers, our aircraft dropped pennants. We have covered an area of \u200b\u200bapproximately 8.600 square meters. Of these, 350 thousand square meters were photographed. " It is also known that in 1943, Admiral Karl Doenitz dropped a cryptic phrase: "The German submarine fleet is proud to have created an impregnable fortress for the Fuehrer at the other end of the world."
There is some indirect evidence in favor of the hypothesis that from 1938 to 1943, the Nazis built several secret settlements in Antarctica in the area of \u200b\u200bQueen Maud Land. Mainly submarines from the Fuehrer's Convoy unit (35 submarines) were used to transport cargo. According to historians, at the very end of the war in the port of Kiel, torpedo armament was removed from these submarines and loaded with containers with various cargoes. In Kiel, the submarines received passengers whose faces were covered with surgical bandages.
German experts believed that, according to the theory of the "hollow Earth", it is in Antarctica that there are giant underground cavities - oases with warm air. German submariners who explored Antarctica, if you trust the statements of some Western researchers of the secrets of the Third Reich, as if they managed to find such underground caves, which they called "paradise". There, on the personal instructions of Hitler, the construction of two underground bases began, and in 1942, the transfer of future residents began to New Swabia, primarily scientists and specialists of the Ananerbe, an integrated SS scientific center, as well as "full-fledged Aryans" from among members of the Nazi party and the state. During construction, prisoners of war were used, who were periodically destroyed and replaced with "fresh" labor.
In January 1947, according to some US archives researchers, the US Navy launched Operation High Jump, disguised as a conventional research expedition. A naval squadron headed to the shores of Antarctica: an aircraft carrier, 13 other warships. In total - more than four thousand people with a six-month supply of food, 25 aircraft. But soon after the arrival of Queen Maud at Land, Admiral Richard Byrd, the squadron commander, was unexpectedly ordered from Washington to interrupt the operation and return the ships to their permanent bases. The researchers, however, managed to make more than 49 thousand aerial photographs of the coast.
The start of the US Navy expedition coincided with the completion of the interrogations of the former commanders of the German submarines U-530 and U-977, conducted by the American and British special services. The U-530 commander testified that his submarine had left the base in Kiel on April 13, 1945. Upon reaching the shores of Antarctica, 16 of the team allegedly built an ice cave and stacked boxes containing relics of the Third Reich, including Hitler's documents and personal belongings. This operation was codenamed "Valkyrie-2". Upon its completion on July 10, 1945, "U-530" openly entered the Argentine port of Mar del Plata, where it surrendered to the authorities. Submarine U-977 under the command of Heinz Schaeffer also visited New Swabia.
A year later, the Brizant magazine published in Western Europe reported shocking details of this operation. The Americans were allegedly attacked from the air and lost one ship and four combat aircraft. With reference to the servicemen who dared to have a frank conversation, the magazine wrote about some "flying discs" that "emerged from under the water" and attacked the Americans, about strange atmospheric phenomena that caused mental disorders in the expedition members.
The magazine contained an excerpt from the report of the head of the operation, Admiral R. Byrd, which he allegedly made at a secret meeting of a special commission that was investigating the incident. "The United States needs to take protective actions against enemy fighters flying from the polar regions," the admiral allegedly claimed. "In the event of a new war, America may be attacked by an enemy capable of flying from one pole to another at incredible speed!"
In the 1950s, after Byrd's death, references to a certain admiral's diary appeared in print. As follows from the records, supposedly made by the commander himself, during the operation in Antarctica, the plane on which he flew to reconnoitre the ice continent was forced to land strange aircraft, "similar to British soldiers' helmets." A tall, blue-eyed blonde approached Byrd, who had climbed out of the plane, and in broken English conveyed an appeal to the American government demanding an end to nuclear tests. This mysterious stranger turned out to be a representative of a settlement created by the German Nazis in Antarctica. Later, according to rumors, the United States reached an agreement with the fugitives from defeated Germany who had taken refuge in underground structures: the Germans introduce the Americans to their advanced technologies, and they supply the German colony with raw materials.
"The German submarine fleet is proud to have created an impregnable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other side of the world."
In addition to this version, it should be added that already in the 1980s, one of the Western special services intercepted a confidential letter from the already mentioned Schaeffer to another former German submariner Bernhard, who, apparently, was going to publish his memoirs about the wartime. This message was dated June 1, 1983 and contained the following lines: “Dear Willie, I was considering whether to publish your U-530 manuscript. All three boats ("U-977", "U-530" and "U-465") that participated in that operation are now sleeping peacefully at the bottom of the Atlantic. Maybe it's better not to wake them up? Think about it, old comrade! .. We all took an oath to keep a secret, we did nothing wrong and only carried out orders, fighting for our beloved Germany, for her survival. So think again: maybe it's better to present everything as an invention? What will you achieve when you tell the truth about our mission? And who will suffer because of your revelations? Think about it!..".
Among the surviving SS veterans after the war, there was also talk of a two-day meeting in 1944 at the Strasbourg Hotel Mezorunge, in which a group of high-ranking officers of the Imperial Security Service (SD), led by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, secretly gathered. Then a plan was allegedly developed for the flight of the top of Nazi Germany to South America. From August 1944, a secret network called the Gateway began to operate. Along its secret paths, not only prominent Nazis and SS and SD officers, but also leading scientists and designers began to withdraw to Latin American countries.
Nazi Germany, it must be admitted, managed to achieve great scientific and technological achievements, including in shipbuilding. Retired American Colonel Wendelle C. Stevens reports: “Our intelligence, where I worked at the end of the war, knew that the Germans were building eight very large cargo submarines, and all of them were launched, completed and then disappeared without a trace. To this day, we have no idea where they went. They are not on the ocean floor and they are not in any port that we know of. It's a mystery, but it can be solved thanks to this Australian documentary, which shows large German cargo submarines in Antarctica, ice around them, crews on decks waiting for a stop at the pier.
"The United States needs to take defensive action against enemy fighters flying from the polar regions."
Admiral Richard Byrd, 1947
The same Stevens argued that the Germans tested the models of "flying discs" and managed to make significant progress towards their creation. “We have classified information,” wrote a former American intelligence officer, “that some of the research enterprises have been transported to a place called New Swabia ... Today it may already be a fairly large complex. Maybe these big cargo submarines are there. We believe that at least one disc development facility has been moved to Antarctica. We also have information that one was evacuated to the Amazon region, and the other to the northern coast of Norway, where there is a large German population. They were evacuated to secret underground structures ... "
A small digression. Interestingly, in 1931, the writer Howard Loughcraft, who used to create in a state of trance and in fact described his travels to "parallel worlds", published the novel "Ridges of Madness". In it, he portrayed the sixth continent as a mysterious place, where, according to the writer, the prehuman races continue to inhabit, which in ancient times were the masters of the Earth. In the polar depths, Lovecraft warned, a certain essence of Evil lurked as the true master of our planet, which at any moment can regain its supreme power.
There is information about the creation of a secret Wehrmacht training center in the summer of 1940 in a mountainous and wooded area near the city of Kovary in the south-west of occupied Poland. Soldiers and officers specially selected from the elite units of the Wehrmacht were trained there. They were trained for combat operations in the harshest conditions of the polar zones of the Arctic and Antarctica. Soon, a special unit was formed in the Wehrmacht under the command of General Alfred Richter, the backbone of which was made up of servicemen from the Kovar center. It is they, as it is assumed, that the Nazis managed to transport them by submarines to Queen Maud Land, which had been well researched earlier by Norwegian polar explorers.
Some researchers also claim that in 1941 the Germans actually landed in Antarctica, in the Norwegian "possessions", and founded their station "Oasis" there. The area is now known as the Bunger Oasis, named after the American pilot who discovered it in 1946. Antarctic "oases" are areas of land that are free of ice for unknown reasons.
In 1961 it became known that uranium deposits were found in the bowels of Antarctica. The main deposits are located in New Swabia - Queen Maud Land. The development of minerals on the ice continent, however, has not yet begun - this is hindered by the interstate agreement of 1959. According to some reports, the percentage of uranium in Antarctic ore is at least 30 percent, i.e. a full third more than the world's richest deposits in the Congo. The Nazis in Germany, seeking to create nuclear weapons, were in dire need of uranium. And they knew that the raw materials they needed were in Antarctica. Having examined samples of rocks brought from Antarctica by the German polar explorer Wilhelm Filchner back in 1912, the head of the Nazi "atomic project" Werner Heisenberg suggested that the depths of the Queen Maud Land might contain the richest reserves of high-quality uranium.
This is another argument in favor of the version about the validity of Nazi Germany's interest in the distant polar continent.
In conclusion, we will give one more interesting quote. At the celebration of the completion of the building of the new Reich Chancellery, Hitler smugly said: “Well, okay! If in this divided-redivided Europe in a few days it is possible to annex a couple of states to the Reich, then no problems are foreseen with Antarctica, and even more so ... "
P.S. When this publication, summarizing the materials of the Russian-language Internet, was being prepared for publication, it became known that documents from the collection of the famous thinker and diplomat Miguel Serrano had been stolen from the special custody of the Chilean National Military Historical Archive in Santiago. Mysteriously disappeared at the request of Serrano until 2014, part of the documents, which contained materials about the underground cities in Antarctica allegedly built by Nazi Germany at the end of the war. The Chilean press claims that the circle of the deceased ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, who maintains friendly ties with Serrano, may be involved in the loss of the archive. The former Chilean diplomat back in the 1950s-1960s, in a number of his books, put forward the thesis that Hitler did not die, but found refuge in a huge underground city somewhere in the New Swabia region - part of the Queen Maud Land.
Serrano claimed that a new generation of aircraft had been created in the laboratories of Nazi Germany. In his last letters to Pinochet, Serrano reported that he had evidence that the secret base of Nazi Germany not only survived after the war, but also grew significantly. Now this evidence is safely hidden in someone's archives. So someone has something to hide?
In late 1946, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, an experienced polar explorer, was assigned to lead a research expedition to Antarctica, codenamed High Jump.
The mission of the American expedition was to explore a part of the ice continent called Queen Maud Land, or New Swabia. She was outfitted, however, was strange for a peaceful expedition. To the shores of the ice continent set off: an aircraft carrier, 13 ships of various types, 25 aircraft and helicopters. The expedition consisted of only 25 scientific workers, but there were 4100 marines, soldiers and officers! Soon, information appeared in American newspapers that the real purpose of the expedition was to search for the secret "Base-211", which belonged to the Nazis.
The leaders of the Third Reich began creating a base on the icy continent back in 1938. First, a research ship was sent to the shores of Antarctica. The seaplane on it photographed nearly a quarter of the continent and threw metal pennants with a swastika onto the ice. Germany declared itself the owner of a huge territory called New Swabia.
Then submarines with sea wolves of Admiral Karl Dönitz secretly headed to the shores of Antarctica. After the end of World War II, documents were found indicating that researchers had discovered a system of interconnected caves with warm air in New Swabia. Reporting on the results of the expedition, Dönitz said: "My submariners have discovered a real earthly paradise." And in 1943, another phrase, incomprehensible to many, sounded from his lips: "The German submarine fleet is proud that at the other end of the world it has created an impregnable fortress for the Fuhrer."
The German navy took unprecedented precautions to keep the underground city in Antarctica safe during World War II. Any vessel that appeared in the area of \u200b\u200bthe ocean that washed Queen Maud Land would immediately sink to the bottom.
Since 1939, the systematic development of New Swabia and the construction of a Nazi secret base, code-named "Base-211", began.
The research vessel Schwabenland made flights to Antarctica every three months. For several years, mining equipment and other equipment, including railways, trolleys and huge milling cutters for tunneling, have been transported to Antarctica. To supply Baza-211, 35 of the largest submarines were used, from which they removed their weapons and adapted for the delivery of goods. In addition to them, according to American Colonel Windell Stevens, who worked in intelligence at the end of the war, the Germans built eight huge cargo submarines. All of them were launched and were used only for delivering cargo to the secret Base-211.
By the end of the war, the Germans had nine research enterprises, which tested the projects of "flying discs". According to Colonel Vitaly Shelepov, who collected a lot of material about the history of the exploration of Antarctica by the Germans, during the Second World War at least one such enterprise was transported to Antarctica, and the production of aircraft was organized here. With the help of submarines, thousands of concentration camp prisoners, prominent scientists with their families, as well as members of the Hitler Youth - the gene pool of the future "pure" race, were transported to the southern continent as labor force.
In an underground city isolated from the whole world, Nazi scientists conducted research to create a superman who was supposed to dominate the world, and to improve weapons that would allow them to conquer the Earth. The discs were such a weapon. In some foreign newspapers at the end of the 20th century, articles appeared, which say that Germanic researchers of Tibet managed to find repositories of ancient knowledge. The information obtained was used to develop and create at the end of World War II fundamentally new aircraft in the form of huge discs, capable of reaching speeds of 700 kilometers per hour and flying around the globe.
Now back to Admiral Byrd's expedition. During the first month of operation, American aircraft took about 49 thousand photographs of the ice continent in the area of \u200b\u200bQueen Maud Land. The question arose about its detailed study by ground detachments. And suddenly something inexplicable happened. On March 3, 1947, the study that had just begun was urgently curtailed, and the ships hastily headed home.
A year later, in May 1948, a sensational article appeared on the pages of the European magazine Brizant. It turns out that the work of the expedition was interrupted due to "tough enemy resistance." In the course of the collision, one ship, four combat aircraft were lost, and dozens of people were killed. Nine more planes had to be left as unusable. The article contained the memoirs of the crew members of combat aircraft. The pilots talked about incredible things: about "flying discs" that emerged from under the water and attacked them, about strange atmospheric phenomena that caused mental disorders ...
The printed note about the collision of American planes with unknown "flying discs" was so incredible that most readers thought it was just another newspaper duck. Several decades passed, and reports began to arrive from the ice continent that disc-shaped UFOs appeared here several times more often than in other areas.
The most famous case occurred in 1976. Japanese researchers simultaneously spotted 19 round objects on the radars, which "fell" from space to Antarctica and immediately disappeared from the screens.
In 2001, the reputable American magazine Weekly World News published a report that Norwegian scientists discovered a mysterious tower in the depths of the Antarctic continent, at a distance of about 160 kilometers from Mount McClintock! The height of the building is about 28 meters. The tower was built of hundreds of ice blocks and resembles, according to scientists, a watchtower of a medieval castle. Given the Nazis' addiction to medieval symbols, the thought involuntarily suggests itself that it was built by the SS, who considered themselves the successors of the German knightly orders.
Not so long ago, the hypothesis that the secret "Base-211" continues to function, received another confirmation. An article by Olga Boyarina about a strange incident that happened in Antarctica in March 2004 appeared in one of the ufological newspapers. Canadian pilots found the remains of an aircraft on the ice and photographed them. The pictures showed a wide funnel, in the center of which was a damaged disk. For a detailed study, a special expedition was sent to the area of \u200b\u200bits fall, but it did not find either the diskette or its wreckage.
Now comes the fun part. Two weeks later, 85-year-old Lance Bailey came to the Toronto Tribune editorial office, which published a photo of the aircraft. He told reporters that he is Russian and his real name is Leonid Bely. During the war, he was a prisoner of a concentration camp, whose prisoners worked at a secret military aircraft factory in the village of Peenemünde.
I'm shocked, ”Lance Bailey told the editorial office. - After all, the photo in the newspaper shows one to one a device that I saw with my own eyes 60 years ago ... In September 1943, four workers rolled out a round object with a transparent cabin in the center onto a concrete platform near one of the hangars. It looked like an overturned basin on small inflatable wheels. This "pancake" made a hissing sound, came off the concrete platform and hovered at a height of several meters.
If the message in the Canadian newspaper was not just another "duck", then it turns out that the secret German "Base-211" still existed in Antarctica, and they made diskettes on it. And the very fact of the accident of one of these aircraft and the clarity with which it was evacuated literally from under the noses of the Canadians, indicate that the secret underground base continues to function successfully now.
It is still said that Nazi Germany was not completely destroyed in 1945. Part of Hitler's followers managed to escape to the end of the world, to Antarctica, where a secret base 211 called "New Swabia" was created in the system of underground karst tunnels and caves on the sixth continent. The only way to get to the new German state was by submarine. From the land side, reconnaissance aircraft and surface ships have seen and still see only a thick ice shell and black coastal rocks ...
The son of the Nizhny Novgorod scientist Arkady Nikolaev, the first in the world to reach the Pole of Inaccessibility of Antarctica in 1958, told us that a secret Nazi object may exist at the southernmost point of the Earth.
"Do you think my father was sent to the Pole to put a bust of Lenin there?" - Andrey Nikolaev voiced his version. “It’s hard to believe. 13 years after the war, when the country was still half in ruins, for some reason, colossal funds were suddenly invested in my father's expedition. He took his team to the center of Antarctica in all-terrain vehicles at a speed of 5 km / h, risking falling into ice cracks several kilometers deep. They dragged a sled with diesel fuel weighing thirty tons behind them. Two people died from lung burns, because they jumped out of the cabins of all-terrain vehicles without special masks on monkey fur. Two planes were washed into the ocean off the coast. What are the sacrifices for? I do not exclude that the expedition to the Pole was a cover, but in fact the USSR, like our other allies in World War II, was looking for traces of a Nazi base there. "
It is worth noting that the first to speak about the secret Nazi base was the German Hans-Ulrich von Kranz. He managed to track down a former SS officer, scientist Olaf Weizsacker, who, as it turned out, had seen the base with his own eyes. In 1938, Weizsacker got there as a research scientist, and in 1945 - already as a refugee, fleeing along with other members of the SS order.
Von Krantz found Weizsacker in Argentina. The result of this meeting, as well as many years of independent research, was the sensational book by Krantz entitled "The Swastika in the Ice."
The Germans began exploring Antarctica in 1938, when German reconnaissance aircraft flew over the continent. Taking pictures of the area from the air, German scientists, among whom was Olaf Weizsäcker, found oases with warm lakes, free from snow and covered with vegetation, among the eternal snows. There they found the ruins of two ancient cities, the inscriptions on the walls of which resembled runes. These stunning discoveries, which were immediately classified by the secret services of the Third Reich, turned the world view of Antarctica as a dead country of eternal ice and terrible cold.
But the most interesting thing was not outside, but inside. According to Weizsacker, the water in the Amudsen Sea turned out to be several degrees warmer than in other surrounding waters - moreover, warm springs gushed from the coast. To investigate this phenomenon, on the personal orders of Hitler, five newest submarines were sent. Arriving in Antarctica, one of them dived under a rock and ended up in a system of caves connected to each other by deep freshwater lakes - so warm that you could even swim in them. Above the underground lakes, another tier of caves was discovered, but completely dry and suitable for living. Many of them contained traces of ancient human activity - reliefs on the walls, obelisks and steps carved into the rocks. It was a vast, habitable underworld.
I must say that Adolf Hitler believed in the ancient theory of the hollow earth, which is that inside the globe, like a matryoshka in a nesting doll, there are several lands and civilizations that may significantly surpass us in development. This idea completely contradicted the orthodox science that the earth consists of a continuous layer of crust, mantle and core.
Hitler took the report on the underground kingdom of Antarctica as confirmation of his theory and decided to build a system of secret cities there, later called New Swabia.
And so huge transport submarines crawled across the entire Atlantic Ocean, transporting to New Swabia stocks of food, clothing, medicine, weapons and ammunition, mining equipment, rails, sleepers, trolleys, cutters for laying tunnels. Back to Germany, the boats went loaded with minerals.
“In 1940, the richest deposits of rare earth metals were discovered on the territory of Ellsworth Land. From that moment on, New Swabia ceased to be an extremely costly project for Germany and began to bring tangible benefits, ”writes von Krantz. - “The situation with rare earth metals in Germany still surprises many historians. The Reich did not have its own deposits, the reserves accumulated by 1939 should have been enough for a maximum of two years. By all accounts, German tank production should have completely stopped in the summer of 1941. However, this did not happen. Where did the Germans get the most important raw materials from? The answer is obvious: from the Ice Continent! "
According to von Krantz, by 1941 the population of the underground city reached 10 thousand people. He was already fully self-sufficient with food - a huge oasis with a fertile soil layer of 5 thousand kilometers was discovered 100 km from the coast, which was called the "Garden of Eden". By the end of 1943, a submarine repair shipyard was completed in the karst caves. The scale of the enterprise was such that it was easy to organize the mass production of submarines there. Several metallurgical and machine-building enterprises were already operating in New Swabia. And in 1945, the base became the last refuge for the Nazis.
After the surrender of Germany, it turned out that many submarines had disappeared in an unknown direction. The victorious side did not find them anywhere - neither on the ocean floor, nor in ports. Most likely, they sailed far south ...
“In total, about 150 submarines were prepared for the great exodus,” writes von Krantz. - “A third of them were transport, with a fairly large capacity. In total, more than 10 thousand people could be accommodated on board the submarine fleet. In addition, relics and valuable technologies were sent overseas. "
According to him, the submarines of the dying empire took with them its "brains" - biologists, specialists in rocketry, nuclear physics and aircraft construction. The winners never got the cutting edge in high technology. Meanwhile, on the eve of the defeat in Germany, atomic bombs, jet aircraft, ballistic missiles FAU-1, FAU-2 and FAU-3 were developed. The latter was able to reach a height that is considered outer space.
It is now reliably known that "by the end of the war in Germany there were nine research enterprises, which developed projects of flying discs," that is, flying saucers or aircraft with a circular wing. Where these developments have gone is unknown.
Working in the archives, von Krantz discovered the names of several factories that produced high-tech products, which after the war have sunk into obscurity. "All of them were evacuated on the personal order of Martin Bormann in January-April 1945 to the north of Germany," he writes. "Obviously, their further path lay across the entire Atlantic Ocean to the land of eternal ice." Valuable trophies did not go to the winning side.
Humanity has tried three times to find base 211. And all three times these attempts have tragically ended in the death and disappearance of people. Von Krantz describes them in detail in the book "The Swastika in the Ice".
In 1947, an impressive American squadron of 14 ships went to the shores of Antarctica in search of a Nazi base. In addition to the flagship aircraft carrier, it included thirteen destroyers, more than twenty aircraft and helicopters, and five thousand personnel. The operation was called High Jump, which was actually not high at all.
Flying over the coast, one of his American pilots noticed a quarry for mining. A detachment of 500 people went to this place in heavy all-terrain vehicles with air support from several aircraft. Suddenly, fighters with crosses on their wings appeared in the sky, and the landing was destroyed in a few minutes: burning aircraft and all-terrain vehicles - that's all that was left of it. Then one of the US ships was blown up - a column of water rose in its place. And all of a sudden, objects resembling flying saucers appeared in the sky!
“They darted silently between the ships, like some kind of satanic blue-black swallows with blood-red beaks, and incessantly spat a deadly fire,” - recalled many years later, expedition member John Cyerson. “The whole nightmare lasted for about twenty minutes. When the flying saucers dived under the water again, we began to count the losses. They were terrifying. "
The torn apart squadron returned to America and for a long time the case was classified as "Top Secret".
The next victims were the members of the expedition Jacques-Yves Cousteau. On the ship "Calypso" in 1973, its crew went to Queen Maud Land on an unofficial task of the French special services - to find traces of base 211. Cousteau's scuba divers discovered an underwater entrance to underground caves and made their way there. But all five people disappeared in one of the tunnels. The expedition had to be curtailed urgently.
The USSR was the third to pay for its curiosity. We have already mentioned the 1958 expedition - it found nothing. Nova went in search in the late 70s, when aerial photographs appeared that showed large, snow-free and populated oases in Antarctica. A group of researchers was sent to one of them. Our people set up camp in the oasis, and then tried to get into the mine leading into the earth. At that moment, a powerful explosion was heard, and three people were killed. A few days later, the rest of the expedition members disappeared without a trace ...
Since then, the world powers have ceased to bother the mysterious inhabitants of the Ice Continent. A natural question arises - is there a base of the Third Reich now?
“There is no unequivocal answer even today, but there are more indirect ones - more than enough,” says our historian Vadim Telitsyn in his book “Hitler in Antarctica”, “Radar stations of the US Air Force, Argentina and Chile very often record“ flying discs ”," cylinders "and other" geometric shapes "plying from one tip of Antarctica to another."
The second argument for such statements is the skull of Hitler who allegedly shot himself, which, after much research, turned out to be female. This suggests that someone needed to fake the death of the Fuhrer in order to completely confuse the tracks. What would Hitler look like in old age? On the left is the original, on the right is a computer model.
Therefore, it is possible that the Third Reich is still flourishing under the ice of Antarctica, far ahead of us in scientific and technological progress. This would at least explain the nature of the unidentified flying objects that we consider to be alien.
Video - Secrets of New Swabia
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Preparations for the New Swabia expedition continued until 1938. The German ship "Swabia" was re-equipped for Antarctic research, a seaplane, a crane and other equipment were fixed on it. The team of specially trained polar explorers was led by Captain Alfred Reacher, an experienced explorer who had visited the North Pole several times before. The expedition is said to have cost the budget of Nazi Germany about 3 million Reichsmarks.
In December 1938, the "Swabia" sailed from the port of Hamburg in the direction of Antarctica, the journey to the mainland took a little more than a month. The research (and they were large-scale) took less time than the actual road from Hamburg to Antarctica - in mid-February of the same year, the expedition set off on the return journey.
During this expedition, photographs of the Antarctic territory of over 300 thousand square kilometers were carried out from two planes (and in general, the German researchers flew about 600 thousand km2), the Schirmacher oasis was discovered, where there was no ice. The Germans scattered a large number of pennants with the Nazi swastika around the perimeter of the investigated territory, thereby marking the boundaries of their future possessions.
Upon returning home, Reacher urged Hitler to organize another expedition as soon as possible, with a lot of equipment. But the outbreak of the Second World War prevented the implementation of these plans.
Nazi Antarctic military base 211 "New Berlin" is nothing more than a myth
During their three weeks in Antarctica, Reacher's expedition could not even build a military base there. And she did not set such a goal - it was physically impossible. Meanwhile, the equipment of the Antarctic secret military base 211 "New Berlin" is attributed by conspiracy theorists and esotericists to Alfred Reacher. Allegedly, the occult values \u200b\u200bof the Third Reich were subsequently delivered to Antarctica on submarines and hidden there, and the Germans contacted aliens at a secret base.
All these tales are based on information about the activity of Nazi submarines off the coast of Antarctica during World War II. German submariners really often cruised in these places, especially since 1943, a period of turning point in the Great Patriotic War, when the Nazis realized that their defeat in this war was apparently inevitable.
The Germans transported valuables and people on submarines to Argentina, where, not without the help of Nazi Germany, a coup was made in 1943 and the pro-Nazi Juan Perón came to power. It is no coincidence that many Nazi criminals subsequently took refuge in this particular South American country. After unloading in some Argentine port, German submarines deliberately went to the shores of Antarctica and actively indicated their presence there in order to mislead American and British intelligence. And then they returned to their bases.
It is no coincidence that, apart from the sites of Nazi submarines, modern Antarctic explorers on this continent did not find anything. An entire base with underground utilities is not a needle in a haystack.
There are still a lot of rumors and legends around this operation, and sometimes it seems simply impossible to separate truth and fiction. The indisputable fact is that the secret expedition sent by Hitler to the shores of Antarctica had a very definite goal. And the tasks assigned to the participants in the operation were very far from mysticism. Rather, the goal was set very practical and quite achievable, as it seemed to the Fuhrer.
Perspective plan
Even during the First World War, when Adolf Hitler took part in the hostilities, he saw how the British naval blockade affected Germany, effectively cutting off the country's supply lines. After taking over as head of state, the Fuhrer planned to learn from the experience of his predecessors.
In 1936, the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a four-year plan appeared, as a result of which Nazi Germany would become independent of food supplies from other countries. Hermann Goering was instructed to develop an operation to achieve Germany's complete economic and military self-sufficiency. In preparation for a protracted total war, serious reserves should have been made. The main task was to expand the sources of raw materials and food.
At that time, margarine occupied a significant place in German cuisine, and its annual consumption reached almost 8 kg per person. The production of margarine from whale oil seemed very promising in this respect. Moreover, with the advent of kerosene, an excess of rather cheap whale fat was formed, which manufacturers began to include in margarine.
In addition, whale oil could be used for the military industry: in a liquefied form, it could become a machine lubricant, and was also widely used in the production of nitroglycerin, which is necessary for explosives. German and British companies bought 83% of the whaling industry in 1938.
In 1938, the decision was made to send an ambitious expedition to Antarctica to Queen Maud Land in order to destroy Norway's claims to this territory and gain access to the resource-rich waters.
To the shores of Antarctica
In December 1938, a motley crew of scientists, soldiers and whalers, led by Captain Alfred Ritcher, set out on a cruise in a modernized vessel that could catapult two ten-ton seaplanes borrowed from Lufthansa airlines.
The team members were selected taking into account their experience of polar expeditions, but there was a German official on board who monitored the observance of party standards and personally obliged all participants in the campaign to listen to Adolf Hitler's Christmas speech. The ship was named "Schwabenland" after the region in Bavaria, and the land that was the object of German claims was to become New Swabia (Neu-Schwabenland).
On January 14, 1939, when a secret German expedition was already approaching the Antarctic Circle, Norway officially declared its rights to Queen Maud Land. Nevertheless, German seaplanes, by dropping swastika darts, marked the boundaries of the future New Swabia, covering a distance of 600 thousand square kilometers. The expedition explored the coast and increased the previously known dimensions of Antarctica by 16 percent.
Exploring a huge territory, fixing magnetic pennants, more than 11 thousand photographs, the discovery of the Schirmacher oasis and new mountain ranges, in fact, did not bring any benefit to Germany itself. Old German maps still show New Swabia around Queen Maud Land, but no country recognized the claims of Nazi Germany.
The only result of the expedition was research into the operation of aircraft at low temperatures, which were used later in the invasion of the Soviet Union. As history has shown, this did not affect the outcome of the war.
Already in mid-February, "Schwabenland" left Antarctica and two months later docked in Hamburg. Almost immediately, preparations began for a new expedition, in which it was planned to use a large number of aircraft, but after the outbreak of World War II, the expedition was canceled.
Nevertheless, there are still myths about a certain Base 211 on the territory of the Schirmacher oasis and another oasis allegedly discovered by a German expedition. Rumors were spreading about the entrance to the cave with a rather comfortable temperature inside, where the mysterious Nazi base was located. It was assumed that communication with her was maintained with the help of submarines from the Fuehrer's convoy.
As evidence, the words of the commander of the German submarine fleet Karl Dönitz were cited, who claimed that German submariners had built an impregnable fortress in Antarctica for their Fuhrer. But no documentary or factual confirmation of Dönitz's words was found either in documents or on the lands of Antarctica.
The history of World War II consists of many separate episodes, each of which can become a monument to human heroism, generosity, cowardice or stupidity. because, if not for a happy ending, humanity in April 1945 could have lost a significant part of its cultural treasures.
When the United States learned about the high probability of the existence of Antarctic uranium, Rear Admiral Byrd was ordered to urgently stake out a part of Antarctica that had not yet been occupied by the Nazis. He decided to start with the Graham Land Peninsula. But only American planes appeared over the future Antarctic Peninsula, it turned out that they were far from the first here, and the peninsula is not as deserted and ownerless as it seemed earlier ...
It turned out that the Argentines closely followed the activities of the German polar explorers in Antarctica, including in the areas declared by the Germans, and when the war began, they immediately began to disembark expeditions to different points of the icy continent. Here, Argentine polar explorers collected samples of geological rocks and made test drilling to various depths, and scientists at Argentine research centers studied these rocks for the presence of uranium, gold, manganese and molybdenum. As a result of the work carried out, they were able to establish that, in addition to the Queen Maud Land, three more Antarctic regions are equally promising: one on the coast of the Weddell Sea (near the Coots Land mountain range), the other in the northeast of Graham Land, and the third on Enderby Land ...
At the same time, the percentage of uranium content in Antarctic ore was almost 30 percent, that is, three times more than in the richest deposits in the world of the Belgian Congo. But when Byrd decided to personally visit the local Argentine base stations "General San Martin" and "General Belgrano", he was informed that the peninsula and the adjacent territory from the Land of Ellsworth to the Land of Cotes became the territory of the Republic of Argentina with all the ensuing "consequences" and obligations.
In the direction of New Swabia, as before, the Americans tried not to look.
We, in contrast to the subordinates of Admiral Byrd, at least in absentia, but will visit the Antarctic possessions of the Nazis.
For the first time, the British started talking openly about them immediately after the end of World War II. In Europe, they just died out in battles, and the British Admiralty sent appropriate specialists to Germany, who very quickly found here indications of the discovery by the Germans in the area of \u200b\u200bQueen Maud Land of a certain warm area measuring 105 thousand square kilometers, that is, larger than the island of Tasmania. Further more! Fantastic information gradually began to seep into American and English newspapers and magazines.
Imagine a flat slab of snow and ice with an area of \u200b\u200bmany thousands of square kilometers, only 150-200 meters in toltsin. This gigantic slab is submerged in water, rising above the ocean surface by only 10–20 meters. With one edge it is leaning against the shore and is, as it were, hooked on underwater ledges, with the other it breaks off into the open sea. At first glance, the glacier surface is perfectly flat and safe. But as a result of stresses arising in the ice, large cracks are formed here (often brought on the surface by snow), where dangerous traps lie in wait for researchers. At times, parts of the ice plate split and float into the sea, forming giant table icebergs. Initially, it was on such a glacier that the polar explorers of Bazy-211 lived, who later became the founders of New Swabia. They felt uncomfortable on the ice shelves. Mid-lane spring and summer in Antarctica is the time of almost daily blizzard during severe frosts. From above, the houses were quickly swept by snowstorms, and below, under the floor, several tens of meters away, the bottomless ocean depths were hidden. And there were no guarantees that one day the glacier would not crack and the station, like an uncontrolled ship, would not float into the Ross Sea or the Indian Ocean. But this is the lot of the pioneers. Many Antarctic winterers passed through living on such ice platforms, but almost all stations were eventually abandoned and covered with snow, including Baza-211: the future founders of New Swabia left the dangerous glacier and settled on Queen Maud Land ... It was a very good decision.
After the end of World War II, the British published the so-called map of Antarctica, on which two ice shelves were drawn at once ... New Schwabeland: on the prime meridian - New Schwabeland-I, and twelve degrees east - New Schwabeland-II. Both were part of the so-called Bellingshausen Ice Shelf. What is the fidelity of the decision of the residents of Base-211?
In the first post-war years, the Soviet whaling flotilla "Slava" came to the Antarctic continent. On March 20, 1948, its captain-director A.N. Solyanik brought his flagship to the area of \u200b\u200bthe point 69 degrees 10 minutes south latitude and 0 degrees 52 minutes west longitude, that is, slightly north than the point that Bellingshausen's court reached in 1820. But even from here, our whalers saw ... not "hardened ice of extraordinary size", but most of the Antarctic coast and mountain peaks in the depths of the continent. It turns out that global warming and the melting of Antarctic ice became clearly visible by the middle of the 20th century. Perhaps it was the noticeable melting of ice within the so-called Bellingshausen shelf barrier that forced the residents of Baza-211 to leave their camp and move to the mainland. Almost nothing is known about the inhabitants of the Antarctic Nazi bases.
But while working on the book, we managed to find very interesting information, although it still requires serious verification. Judge for yourself!
In the summer of 1940, in southwestern Poland, near the city of Kovary, a secret training center was created, where soldiers from SS units and the Wehrmacht mountain corps were selected for training. The fact of the creation of such a center is indirectly confirmed by the fact that in the same year the formation of new mountain rifle and mountaineger divisions of the Wehrmacht was discontinued. And six mountain divisions, already created and staffed by the natives of the alpine mountain villages, began to replenish the best soldiers of the Wehrmacht infantry divisions. But after all, recruits growing up in mountain villages entered to replenish some units. Knowing about the famous German pedantry and pragmatism, we can safely say: certainly not in the infantry or tank regiments of the Wehrmacht and not on the Kriegsmarine submarine.
After completing training in conducting combat operations in the harsh conditions of the Arctic, the graduates of the Kovar Center were taken to the "unknown" on various German blockade-breaker ships. And most likely - to Antarctica. How did this assumption come about?
After the war, it became known that the entire set of Kovar cadets in 1941, before graduation, underwent an internship in the mountain brigade of the SS troops, which fought in the Murmansk direction. Then the former cadets disappeared all as one. They were allegedly sent to carry out some special assignments. But where? Until now it is not clear. If they, every one of them, did not perish on the Nazi blockade breakers and “did not evaporate,” then maybe they really went to Antarctica? At least it is known that they no longer appeared in the Murmansk direction or in the Caucasus. Moreover, starting in 1942, the 20 Mountain Army, whose divisions fought in the Soviet Arctic and in the Caucasus, began to include conventional infantry units and even the Wehrmacht airfield divisions, which were staffed by Luftwaffe technical personnel For mountain riflemen - veterans of Narvik and Crete - it was a serious wound of pride: at times it reached outright clashes between mountain soldiers and ordinary infantry.
At the end of World War II, the British received some information about the existence and the alleged area of \u200b\u200b"Base 211", and most likely - "New Swabia". The British Admiralty sent appropriate specialists to Germany, who very quickly found here indications of the discovery by the Germans in the Queen Maud Land area of \u200b\u200ba warm area measuring 105 thousand square kilometers, that is, larger than the island of Tasmania. In October 1945, a group of British commandos specially trained for warfare in Antarctica was dropped on the Falkland Islands to take part in the secret operation Tabernal.
By November 1945, the group was ready to carry out the tasks of the operation. The starting point of the campaign was a certain British Antarctic base *, either Halley Bay (Z), or the one that remained unnamed, transferred to the FRG in the 1960s and named “Georg von Neumeier”. Only they could be 300 kilometers from New Swabia, very close by Antarctic standards. The preparation of the secret operation was carried out very carefully. And the British knew she was at risk of death.
Earlier, in May 1945, English winterers, who arrived in Antarctica with an unknown goal, stumbled upon a strange tunnel in the Mühlig-Hoffmann mountains. The reconnaissance group, which went through the tunnel towards the New Swabia Land, was unexpectedly attacked by the Germans and almost completely destroyed. Of the 13 people, only one scout survived. Quite by accident, he came across an abandoned warehouse, founded at the beginning of the century by the winterers of Wilhelm Filchner. He was also lucky that this warehouse was not laid in ice, but in a prefabricated house, which saved, however, only from the piercing wind, but not from the wild frost. The English scout was so eager to survive that he defeated stormy winds, fierce cold, and prolonged loneliness. Moreover, I waited for a meeting with the scouts of the Tabernal group! It was he who told the British commandos about the huge under-ice cave where his reconnaissance group was discovered and died.
His story was short. During the day, British scouts walked through the tunnel for more than 20 kilometers and came out to a huge light cave. This natural structure was heated by geothermal waters, but judging by the taste of the water, it was associated with the sea. On the shore of the cave there were six berths, apparently for Nazi submarines, two of which were equipped with Demag cranes. Nearby, three slips were descending to the water for the launch of large-bellied aircraft with black crosses in a white edging on the fuselage. Suddenly an alarm went off in the cave: the guards noticed strangers. The fight was short. Almost all the British, not killed by the first machine-gun and automatic rounds, were finished off by soldiers in yellow-brown camouflage, from under which black buttonholes with double runic "lightning" peeped out, that is, in the form of SS special forces. Only the rear end of the British reconnaissance group survived.
After listening to the confused story of the scout, the next morning the Tabernal group moved to the tunnel on snowmobiles. Here, right at the entrance to the tunnel, the vehicles were left under the protection of two commandos, who received detailed instructions for all cases of the development of the search operation.
Nine English soldiers with full backpacks entered the cave darkness. For almost three days they walked towards the cherished goal, found a cave, but during mining they were discovered and engaged in mortal combat. Of the entire group, only three survived. Through an unnamed Antarctic base, they returned to the Falkland Islands. Maybe it was here, after the British commandos in the winter of 1946, that the squadron of the same Rear Admiral Richard Byrd came and suffered significant losses here?
It is still unclear when this base was abandoned by the Nazis. It is only known that the Norwegian-British-Swedish expedition, which worked here in 1949-1952, did not find any warm territory. Meanwhile, in 1974, to celebrate the New Year, Belgian polar explorers invited their Soviet colleagues from the Novolazarevskaya station to the almost abandoned Antarctic station. This invitation was doubly pleasant, since for almost a week all the winterers sat at their stations because of the blizzard that did not subside all these days. And here - new meetings and new people.
This is how our polar explorer V. Bardin later described in his book the internal view of the structure he saw:
All-terrain vehicle "snow cat" suddenly stops. Mechanic Pierre shows us to follow him. The snow is soft, the foot falls ankle-deep ... Pierre points to a black rectangular hole in the snow.
I look in there. A steep metal staircase goes into the darkness.
This is a hatch, - says Misha confidently.
Deep? - I ask Pierre.
Five meters, - he points with his fingers.
A device is installed above the hatch, very similar to a gallows, with the help of which a heavy load is lowered and raised on blocks.
When everything is lowered down, I climb into the hatch and I. A bright square hole is already high overhead. There is twilight at the bottom of the snow well. An icy corridor runs in one direction, the ceilings are strongly bent and threaten to collapse. On the other hand, there is a massive, metal-edged door. I open it and find myself in a square room lit by a fluorescent lamp. The walls, apparently made of some kind of plastic, are covered with a crust of ice. The shelves along the walls are stacked in narrow piles of chocolate bars, sugar and other supplies. The square room is a walk-through, further, in depth, another door leads. Behind it is a corridor flanked by tiny compartments that look like a carriage compartment; inside each there are two bunks, one above the other, and a small table. In the central compartment there is a special air-blower stove that runs on liquid fuel. Now it is turned on, and the warm air begins to warm up the cold rooms.
However, it turned out that this book of the Soviet era did not tell everything about that New Year's meeting. It later became known that the Belgians had known about this abandoned base since the mid-1960s. Belgian polar explorers sometimes used it to shelter from bad weather. In the local living quarters, up to two dozen people could calmly wait out any blizzard.
Then, in 1974, even before arriving on a visit, the Soviet polar explorers learned that several specialists from Holland worked as part of the Belgian expedition, who, under the leadership of the deputy head of the Donne station, just a week ago went to the area of \u200b\u200bCape Sedov for scientific research and almost died during a blizzard. They were saved in some miraculous way. What, the Belgians did not tell. But during the meeting it did not escape the attention of our polar explorers that the Dutch had faces tired of a long stay in the kingdom of the snow. And everything fell into place.
After the New Year celebration at the abandoned station was over, Soviet polar explorers were invited to the inhabited Belgian station King Baudouin. She was also under the snow. Only the chimneys peeped out and there were three strange pavilions with legs.
Compared to the one just seen, this station had a completely different look.
Here, even in the corridors, everywhere there is light, warmth, you can feel housing.
We pass into the wardroom. It is a long room with columns in the middle: they serve as supports for the vaults of the ceiling, which is pressed against by a ton of snow.
A number of rooms are located under the snow: diesel - the power plant's heart; Pierre's possession is a radio center; a number of laboratories, including the ionospheric one.
It was here, under the influence of the famous Russian drink, which, depending on the amount drunk, loosens the tongues of any person on earth, the Belgians let slip that the first station they showed was once ... a German Antarctic station.
But back to the Second World War.
The preparations for the Third German Antarctic Expedition, planned for the winter of 1939-1940, were stopped, and then completely curtailed: the British Royal Navy blocked the English Channel and the North Passage to the Atlantic. The route to Antarctica was closed for fascist transport ships. Now only a few armed raiders and submarines could break through to the Antarctic shores, but their campaigns are difficult to link with cargo transportation. The holds of the former were filled with numerous reserves for long-term autonomous navigation, and the capacity of the compartments of the latter was very limited. Due to the fact that the possibility of secretly building enrichment plants in the Antarctic oases disappeared, Hitler quickly lost interest in the expensive nuclear project and forbade any development here for the time being. Polar explorers who moved from Baza-211 to New Swabia, as well as the miners who arrived here during 1940, were left out of business.
