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John Whitfield wonders why fringe fantasies get attracted to the edges of the Earth.
After the initial flurry of interest, International Polar Year (IPY, launched this March) seems to have gone a bit quiet. I propose pepping things up with a good conspiracy theory.
Read the column here.
Posted by Nicola Jones on March 30, 2007
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A fun conspiracy theory, so I thought I'd add a bit based on some exposure I've had to it.
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Author Joseph Farrell and I just spoke at length about this during a recent interview on WW-II secret weapons.
This story largely emerged from the 1979 novel "Genesis", which later became known as Book #2 in WA Harbinson's "Projekt Saucer" series. Harbinson's most famous analysis of this actually comes as a footnote at the end of the book, in which he himself describes the story as being based on an utterly insane premise, but yet with enough supporting evidence that it was impossible for him to conclude anything else. Thus, being a rational man, he fictionalized the story in order to save his own reputation.
The story ACTUALLY begins at the end of the war. History records that many Nazi's had fled to Argentina and South America in u-boats to avoid detection. What's lesser known is that during the war, there was enough u-boat activity coming around Cape Horn that the British actually built a base in the Shetland Islands to prevent it. The explanation was innocent enough for it: without access to the Panama Canal, the Nazi's would have to circle the cape, so it was in the Allies best interests to deny them that route of passage.
Anyhow, our Nazi/Antartica story begins with u-boats being captured in the Shetlands as well as off the southern coast of South America, missing their command officers. It was assumed that these u-boats had dropped off the officers in Argentina, and then been ordered away to hide the location where the officers disembarked. This is also what's recorded in most history books - but the u-boat crews said something different. Many of them said they'd actually dropped off their officers in an underground base that they'd entered from underneath the ice-shelf.
Wherever they landed, the location that Harbinson proposed for the base was a part of Queen Maud Land named "New Schwabenland", claimed by Germany between 1939 and 1945 - the result of a secret mission to Antartica in 1938 under the pretext of "protecting the German whaling industry". Wikipedia has good material on both New Schwabenland and the expedition itself, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Swabia and http://www.dsm.de/Pubs2/26_06.htm ...one additional note, if you're interested. "New Schwabenland" means either New Fatherland or "Newly Fathered Land", depending on the vernacular, apparently. I don't speak German.
Now whether or not the Nazi's had a secret underground base in Antarctica, the prospect of it was worrisome enough that in 1947 Admiral Richard E. Byrd launched "Operation HighJump" as a massive training exercise to familiarize US forces with cold-weather warfare. This is a bit surprising, since this type of training usually occurs in Alaska or Canada, where it's more cost effective. And of course, cost effectiveness really mattered in 1947, because our country was still recovering from a war so costly that we had to drag the Iwo Jima vets around the country to sell enough war bonds to pay for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Highjump
It's entirely possible that Operation HighJump was only a military training exercise, but as you'll recall, we already had our hands full rebuilding Germany & Japan, plus beginning the cold war with the Soviet Union, and in general trying to recover from the war. It struck Harbinson as more likely that the US was following up on this Nazi myth of the underground base. If the idea had been Byrd's, then it would have made sense due to his prior experience with plane trips there in the 30's. However, the entire mission was proposed by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. A page promoting Aryan mythology documents this - as well as the beginnings of a connection to UFO's -- online here: http://www.thule.org/highjump.html
Harbinson and a few others have guessed that this Aryan mythology, more than anything else, would have been the reason for the Nazi's to attempt building a base in the Antarctic. The reasoning goes to a refrigeration engineer named Hans Horbiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre), who came up with a theory entitled "Welteislehre" in 1913. He proposed (incorrectly) that the moon and stars must be made of ice. The sun, quite obviously is made of fire, and thus the ying and yang of the Universe is fire and ice.
Horbiger's theory took a while to catch on, but eventually it became "accepted theory" in the Reich, especially after both Himmler and Hitler became supporters of it. While the science itself was bunk, it fit well with German romanticism, helped also by the fact that "fire and ice" was the core theme of the "Icelandic Eddas", which were the sourcebooks of the Teutonic mythology that the Nazi's apparently loved. So Harbinson concluded that building a base and perhaps even eventually a colony in Antarctica would have been some sort of Nazi purification ritual, involving hearts of fire in a land of ice.
Now, for the record, "Genesis" was not a novel about the Nazi's in Antarctica - it was actually a UFO novel. You see, it was Harbinson's belief back in '79 that the Nazi's had made breakthroughs like the Nazi-Bell, and had pioneered techniques that would let them somehow carve tunnels out of the ice, where they planned to start again. The Nazi's visualized themselves as the last remaining descendants of the Teutonic Knights, but their anti-Jewish propaganda seems to indicate that they believed themselves to be semi-corrupted. So Harbinson visualized them intentionally putting themselves into an environment so harsh that it would purify their descendants back into the "Aryan Master Race" from their romantic literature, and relying on technological advances like the Bell to somehow get them through otherwise untenable conditions.
This all brought Harbinson full-circle to the same problem that Nick Cook, Igor Witkowski, Farrell and myself, ran up against, which is that all of this material disappears after the war. Let me use this example: let's say you leave ten dollars lying on a table, and one of your friends comes by and swipes two of it (operation paperclip). Then, a few days later, another friend swipes the rest of it. They're both friends, so let's say that they feel guilty about stealing the cash, and so neither of them talks about it for a long time. Let's extend this parable to the USA and Soviet Union, and let's say that one of them has a change of heart later on, they get together to compare notes, and both of them pull out a total of $5 dollars that they stole. The obvious question is where's the other $5?
Anyhow, before I quit whining for today, I want to suggest that this is the big problem with World War II - and the same reason that it still compels people all over the world. It's too clean-cut, especially when we know that it wasn't. When I was a kid, my mother told me that the Israeli's tracked down most of the Nazi's and put them on trial in the 60's. Except for the ones working at high-levels in our government that we'd imported from operation paperclip, that is.
There are many things that I don't fully understand, maybe because I'm just too young. Why flee to Argentina? First of all, if you're a Nazi who believes that blonde-haired, brown-eyed Jews aren't "pure enough" for you, then why retire to a country where the entire population is the antithesis of your racist beliefs? That makes no sense. Secondly, most of these Nazi higher-ups are basically paper-pushers, so you'd expect them to stay someplace comfortable, and not want to hide out in the woods. If I was a Nazi, I'd either stay in Germany or perhaps move to South Africa, because at least there you can blend in and speak the local tongue.
Just imagine for a second that you're on the run, and the entire planet is out to get you. Where would you go? Would it be a country where you stick out like a sore-thumb, have no genetic immunity against malaria or any of the local diseases, and can't even communicate with the local population? How exactly is that even hiding?
Of course, that being said, I just finished watching a TV-special about the Nazi's sending emissaries to Tibet, and it turns out they were building some interesting ties between their own mythology and Tibetan mysticism during the war, so the next question is why not flee there instead of Argentina?
Posted by: Tim Ventura | March 30, 2007 11:20 PM
I am hardly surprised at all that in this transparent whitewash of The Truth, you do not mention the reason the Nazis were in Antarctica. It was of course to find a gateway into the hollow earth (with obvious strategic implications). This hidden realm is, of course, where the UFOs really come from (the idea that they are extra- rather than intra- terrestrial is obvious hokum...
Posted by: Oliver | April 2, 2007 10:33 AM
You forgot the alien stargate found in Antarctica on the Stargate: SG-1 TV series. I only wish it were true!
Posted by: Mike Maxwell | April 2, 2007 10:22 PM
Another theory related to Antartica is that prior to a crustal pole shift thousands of years ago, it was located in a temperate climate in the southern hemisphere and may have even been the contintent known as "Atlantis."
This idea, too, seems to have some facts and possibly some mistaken conclusions attached to it. These ideas have been explored in books and TV shows.
One interesting angle is that an ancient map was discovered that showed the coastline and other distinct geographic features of Antartica ... under the ice.
In modern times, we were only able to determine the coastline and other land masses in the 1950s or '60s when ice penetrating radar and sensors were used by the US military over Antarctica.
These modern readings matched the ancient maps.
The conclusion? Antartica had once been ice-free and ancient mariners sailed there and mapped it prior to a catastrophic crustal pole shift.
Some people worry that another crustal pole shift is due in the somewhat near future.
These ideas are examined further in the article referenced below:
"Earth’s crust and poles wander, drift and shift: Dangerous days ahead?"
Steve Hammons
American Chronicle
September 8, 2006
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=13364
The idea of pole shifts and Antartica as a once-temperate environment are also explored in my two novels, MISSION INTO LIGHT and the sequel LIGHT'S HAND. For more information, go to:
www.navyseals.com/community/members/ohio52
Follow the URLs to the online books to read details.
Posted by: Steve Hammons | April 4, 2007 02:14 PM
ok go to goole video ,type LEgend of atlantis and watch part 5, watching all of them is best, you dont have to bother with the newage alien stuff,. just look at the other stuff.
Posted by: jackattack | April 5, 2007 05:47 AM
a us patentin 1914 states that the earth is hollow and advanced life inhabits much of the center now. also the are a base for the ufo\s which the us deals with also. a deal was made with hitler to not burn files..from camps and doctors..
Posted by: eugene tano | August 5, 2007 04:16 AM
Weird!
Posted by: Annie | September 16, 2008 03:18 AM