by Frank Lost
The only proven link with Nazis is their fondness for tunnels, including underground bases and bunkers, that stretched sometimes for hundreds of kilometers, like those close to the Dora concentration camp in the Harz Mountains of Germany, or in the huge complex called Der Riese (The Giant) in what today is southwestern Poland.
World Ice Theory
The World Ice Theory (WEL or Welteislehre in German) is a cosmological theory coming straight from the mind of Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian mechanical engineer whose daily work was far away from astronomy.
Hanns Hörbiger (1860 – 1931)
Hörbiger got his knowledge from "visions" that he had seen around 1894 while sleeping. His theory states that ice is the base material of all events in the universe. Ice allegedly determined the shape our planet through the influence of "ice moons" that fell on Earth at various times throughout history, causing floods that wiped out entire ancient civilizations like Atlantis.
Himmler and Hitler were first enthusiastic about the WEL theory because of its alleged weather forecasting abilities. The Führer went so far as to adopt it as the Nazi Party's cosmology, but later the Propaganda Ministry ordered Hörbiger to stop all related publications. WEL did not survive WWII except among some minor neo-Nazi groups.
Neuschwabenland
New Swabia (Neuschwabenland in German) is the region of Antarctica under Norwegian influence, which was named after the boat Schwabenland of the German Antarctic Expedition of 1938-1939. This boat could carry and catapult two aircrafts.
The Schwabenland ship
There were two German expeditions before 1938 with the idea of crossing right through Antarctica: the Gauss expedition from 1901 to 1903 and the Filchner expedition from 1911 to 1912.
Germany decided in 1937 to put a whaling fleet to sea for economic reasons. After successfully returning home to Nazi Germany, which was in dire need of whale fat for its industry, they launched their infamous 1938-1939 expedition. Their hidden agenda was to find a good location for a German naval base.
Because of the initial lack of information and the secrecy of the operation, conspiracy theories emerged about the Nazi survival bases under the ice in New Swabia and their subsequent destruction by the British and American troops (the notorious High Jump Operation led by Admiral Byrd). One enigmatic clue comes from two statements made by Admiral Dönitz, first after the expedition returned in 1939 and then later in 1944; he allegedly claimed, "My U-boat operators discovered a real earthly paradise" and then that "Germany's submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Führer on the other end of the world...." During the Nuremberg Trials, Dönitz would have spoken of "an invisible fortification, in the midst of that eternal ice."
Official insignia of the 1938-1939 expedition
Once more, we have to deal with post-war fantasies, as this is very accurately debunked by Colin Summerhayes in his serious and well-researched article called Hitler’s Antarctic Base: The Myth and the Reality, first published in the Polar Record Magazine, issue 43, of the Cambridge University Press (2007). He concludes that "Using background knowledge of Antarctica, and information concerning these activities that has been published since the early 1940s, it is now demonstrated that: the two U-boats U-530 and U-977 could not have reached Antarctica; that there was no secret wartime German base in Dronning Maud Land; that SAS troops did not attack the alleged German base; that the SAS men in the region had civilian jobs at the time; that Operation Highjump was designed to train the US Navy for a possible war with the Soviet Union in the Arctic, reason why not to attack an alleged German base in Antarctica; and that Operation Argus took place over the ocean more than 2,000 km north of Dronning Maud Land. Activities that were classified have subsequently been declassified, and it is no longer difficult to separate fact from fancy, despite the fact that many may find it fancy not to do so."
Furthermore, there is the famous myth surrounding U-530 and U-977, two German submarines which surrendered at Mar del Plata (Argentina) weeks after the end of the war. If we are to believe cheap books on that matter, these U-boats carried none less than Hitler and Eva Braun to an Antarctica underground lair, with plenty of supplies to prepare the advent of the Fourth Reich or the construction of UFOs. Once more, let’s refer to Colin Summerhayes’ scientific approach that states clearly:
“Consideration of dates, times and speeds suggests that neither U-530 nor U-977 had time to visit Antarctica. But sailors can lie, and ship’s logs can be forged. The question we ask here is: was such a visit physically possible under the conditions prevailing at the time?
All previous considerations have omitted to note that June, July and August are mid-winter months in the southern hemisphere. Could a submarine reach the coast of Dronning Maud Land, surface, and unload onto the ice shelf in mid-winter? The first obstacle would be the notorious Southern Ocean itself. The second obstacle would be the pack ice 1-2 m thick that surrounds Antarctica during the winter. Satellite data collected by NASA (Gloersen and others 1992), and by India (Vyas and others 2004) show that off Dronning Maud Land the pack ice extends around 500km out from the coast in late May and June, and 1,665 km from the coast in July, August and September […]
Could U-boats surface through 1–2m of pack ice?
Because of their low freeboard, World War II submarines could easily be damaged by pack ice. […]
Supposing that U-977 had reached the coast, what circumstances would have met the crew?
The 24-hour darkness and the cloud cover would vastly increase the danger in navigating in ice close to a poorly mapped coast. Even seeing the ‘coast’ would have been difficult, because it comprises the 10-30 m high ice cliff at the edge of the ice shelf, which would be more or less invisible in the dark from the low deck of a submarine, not forgetting that the icy seas would be strewn with icebergs […]. [It] means that it would have been physically impossible for U-530 or U-977 to have gone anywhere near the coast of Antarctica in June, July or August 1945.
[Even if that had been possible] anyone landing from a submarine would have faced the most extraordinary difficulties in trekking 250 km across ice penetrated by hidden crevasses, in the dark and without navigational aids to a lair in the mountains where the temperatures would have been lower, down to -50◦C (Ohta 1999) and the weather worse.”
People who still hesitate should read this article in full, easily to be found on Google, since it proves in detail that all that was written before were pure fantasies, if not even gross lies. A scientific approach is always preferable than some unsubstantiated claim based on "anonymous insiders" and "government conspiracies."
The Ahnenerbe
In 1935 Himmler met with racial experts and founded an organization called “Deutsches Ahnenerbe, Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte” ("German Ancestral Heritage, Society for the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas"). In short it was just called the Ahnenerbe. The most prominent and final chief of the organization was Wolfram Sievers, who was condemned to death at the Nuremberg Trials.
The goal of the Ahnenerbe was to study and research the ethnological, anthropological and cultural history of the Nordic race, the so-called Aryan race. They organized expeditions in different parts of the world to search for the birthplace of the Aryan race, and proof that it once ruled the world. The outbreak of WWII put an almost complete end to all faraway expeditions.
Official insignia of the Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe had different departments, and although most of them were dedicated to archeology, they had a meteorological section based on Hanns Hörbiger's World Ice Theory, and they even had a musicology section.
These expeditions were numerous:
Karelia, Finland (1935): the goal was to record old sorcerers' and witches' chants, supposed to hold remnants of ancient Aryan pagan incantations.
Bohuslän, Sweden (1936): the team set off to the most ancient rock art site in the country, where ideograms were carved. Wirth, the then-president of the Ahnenerbe
, tried to prove that he had found a prehistoric alphabet among these petroglyphs, but was using a less-than-rigorous scientific method.
Italy (1937) and Middle East (1938): Two researchers, Franz Altheim and Erika Trautmann, went to Italy and then to Romania, Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in order to prove that the success of the Roman Empire was due to its Aryan racial base.
Germany (1937-1938): researchers excavated ancient fortresses and found prehistoric caves with Cro-Magnon artifacts. Some other SS studied the famous Extern Steine that would hold the proof about advanced Germanic prehistoric tribes, with a highly organized and a sophisticated solar religion.
France: the same researchers went to visit well-known prehistoric caves in France. Furthermore, during the war the SS tried to steal the Bayeux Tapestry (showing the invasion of England by the Normans) since this would have proven the superiority of the Germanic tribes.
The most mysterious case is that of Otto Rahn, an SS sent as a civilian to southwestern France pre-war to look for the Holy Grail, allegedly kept by the Cathars of Montségur. Rahn wrote interesting books about these legends. The strange part is that he died, literally frozen to death in the mountains, once he was back in Germany. Some suspect that it could have been neither an accident nor a suicide.
Spain: a recent archaeological exhibition in Bremen (Germany) "Dig for Germania. Archaeology under the Swastika" shows how the Nazis launched an expedition during WWII to find the Holy Grail. Truth turns out to be stranger than fiction. The exhibition tells how SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler allegedly visited Spain because he believed the grail was at the Montserrat Abbey near Barcelona.
He believed that finding the grail "would help Germany win the war and give him supernatural powers." Many undercover SS scientists searched in vain for the grail. The SS budget for such projects was vast inside the Ahnenerbe as the Nazis intended their finds to rewrite history and prove Germans to be the master race.
Tibet (1938-1939): Much has been said about this expedition. It would have had an esoteric and occult agenda to establish contacts with Bon Pö monks, who practiced shamanic black magic, enabling the Nazis to win the war. The only element of truth is that Himmler was very enthusiastic about Asian mysticism, and he wished to recruit "true Ahnenerbe scientists" like Edmund Kiss in order to test Hanns Hörbiger's World Ice Theory in Tibet.
SS of the Ahnenerbe with their Tibetan
hosts having a traditional meal
The truth, as stated by Ernst Schäfer in a 1994 Italian documentary called Il Nazismo Esoterico, is far less mystic than all the fantasies that flood the Internet with conspiracy theories. Schäfer stated clearly that there was nothing occult in this expedition, and that all other claims were nonsensical. Proofs should be brought by fantasy tellers, and not by their listeners. That is the way science and justice should work.
Ernst Schäfer led a normal expedition with many difficulties due to his passage through British India, just before the coming war, but he and his team only focused on geology, ethnology, botany, and zoology. They brought back to Germany many pictures, film rushes, samples of plants and animals, measurements and precious gifts from their Tibetan hosts, like a complete edition of the Tibetan sacred text, the Kangyur, in 108 volumes, and other ancient texts, one of which is an alleged document regarding the Aryan race. It has also been said that the Schäfer team brought back a statue called the "Iron Man" made of meteoritic metal, and probably as old as 1,000 years, dating from the pre-Buddhist Bon religion.
Poland (1939): Wolfram Sievers convinced Himmler to loot certain museum pieces, like the famous Veit Stoss altarpiece in Cracow, but in many cases Goering's men were quicker. The Ahnenerbe was mainly left with scientific devices and historical artifacts bearing little commercial value.
Crimea (1943): Himmler sent his men of the Ahnenerbe to go after the Gothic relics that were supposed to exist in this region, which then would have confirmed the presence of past Aryan tribes. All they found were just a few relics that dated back to ancient Greek colonies established in the region and stone-age artifacts.
Ukraine (1943): Strange and mysterious botanic experiments were held in that region, perhaps in an effort to discover a resistant variety of wheat that would enable the Reich to feed its wartime population.
Cancelled expeditions
Once the war started, the Ahnenerbe had to cancel its planned expeditions because the British fleet was everywhere. Cancelled expeditions included: Tiwanaku (Bolivia), which was set out to prove that these wonderful gigantic pre-Columbian constructions could only have been built by ancient Aryan migrants; Behistun (Iran) to study the inscriptions pertaining to the Aryan origin of the Iranians, ordered by Shah Darius-I, which were found on top of a steep cliff; Canary Islands, where legends reported that the ancient inhabitants had blond hair, and where they had found mummies with these characteristics; and Iceland, to study ancient farming and architectural practices, as well as their folklore.
"Gateway of the Sun" at Tiwanaku
Human experiments
The most infamous attributes of the Ahnenerbe were their experiments on human beings, to test how far a human could resist in freezing waters, to try new medications, and so forth. Even a collection of Jewish skulls was ordered to facilitate racial measurements. These experiments made the whole Ahnenerbe a criminal organization, as sentenced by the Nuremberg Trials, which condemned Wolfram Sievers to death. It has been said that a Tibetan ritual chant was performed upon his dead body.
Much has been said about the Ahnenerbe, and the weirdest conspiracy theories have been propagated through the Internet and some cheap esoteric articles here and there. They are far from the truth, and they include tales about Nazi vampires, übersoldaten, parallel universes only accessible to Nazi UFOs, etc. Though it is pure fiction, the most respectable work in that field is Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones movie that portrays how eager Nazi secret agents were to get ahold on the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.
The Wewelsburg
The Wewelsburg is a castle from the Renaissance era in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, close to the city of Paderborn. The overall shape of the castle is triangular, and dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, although some earlier strongholds had been built around that same place ever since the 9th century. It is worth mentioning that during the 17th century many women were held prisoner in the dungeon under the accusation of witchcraft, and they were consequently tortured and then burned at the stake.
Wewelsburg Castle
In 1934 Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler signed a lease of 100 years for one Reichsmark a year, with the intention to renovate the whole castle as an SS leadership school (SS-Führerschule). The works began first with volunteers of the Reichsarbeitsdienst, who were then replaced by forced labor from a nearby concentration camp. The bedrooms carried names of the Grail legend and King Arthur's adventures. The guests could also enjoy the use of a big dining room, an auditorium, a library and even a photographic laboratory.
They trained in such fields as ideology, early history, archeology, mythology and astronomy. Though it was already close to the defeat, Himmler had thought about building a planetarium and recruiting an astronomer to teach the high-ranking cadre of the SS. The teachings later became more oriented towards a special type of esotericism, made up of ancestral cults and practices (see Ahnenerbe), study of the runes and racial theories, as well as the worshiping of nature. This whole education was to serve as a kind of new and mysterious pagan cult, based on the legend of the Holy Grail and the Knights of the Round Table. New religious rituals were invented for this purpose, with the help of Karl Maria Wiligut, at least in the beginning, since his reputation and mental health was later questioned by many, even inside the SS.
Such rituals included SS marriages, most of the ancient pagan festivals like the Yuletide, and the winter and summer solstices. Himmler, who admired Ignatius of Loyola's book, Spiritual Exercises, allegedly practiced meditation with his higher-ranking g
enerals (Obergruppenführer), although no hard evidence could ever be found except for the testimony of SS General Walter Schellenberg at the Nuremberg Trials. He described a curriculum consisting of "spiritual training and meditation exercises."
