During World War II allied ships and aircraft operating in the north sea often picked up
mysterious signals that seemed to be coming from somewhere far to the north.
With war raging across europe though, and no vital allied interests anywhere near the
arctic, the signals were disregarded as a curiosity and generally ignored.
However, while the allies were ignoring these mysterious signals, it was the Nazis themselves
who were sending them, all from a secret installation deep in the Arctic and just north of Russia,
was this a Nazi super villain base in the Arctic?
A thousand miles shy of the north pole, and only a few hundred miles from Russian territory,
scientists from the Russian Arctic National Park unearthed the remains of a secret base
on a remote island known as Alexandra Land.
Spotted from the air in 1947 but not reached by the Soviets until 1952, a 2016 archaeological
investigation made possible by unseasonably warm weather has yielded hundreds of items
that detailed the lives of the German scientists who worked there.
Amongst the items discovered were German mines, hand grenade fragments, cartridge boxes, ammunition,
uniforms, coats, and sacks bearing the label of the Wehrmacht, or German army.
But just what in the world were the Germans doing so far north, and so perilously deep
in Soviet territory?
Predicting the weather has been vital for militaries since antiquity.
During the famous Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece, the Persian invaders and their
superior fleet were absolutely devastated by surprise storms, sending hundreds of ships
and thousands of men to the bottom of the Aegean Sea.
When the Mongols sent an invasion force of tens of thousands of warriors to Japan, a
storm once more devastated the invasion fleet and foiled the planned attack.
A second invasion attempt would meet with the same fate, and by then so many men and
materials had been lost that any invasion was canceled forever.
Clearly weather, and understanding it, is critical for military success, yet it wasn't
until the advent of radio and modern meteorology that we began to understand it or how to predict
it.
The Germans knew that forecasting the weather in the north seas would be critical in their
fight against England's superior fleets, and just as important for their mighty Luftwaffe
which would be useless during bad weather.
Understanding how weather systems worked, and predicting them, could give Germany a
critical advantage in the war, and allow their bombers to strike enemy targets without fear
of running into storms which would ruin the accuracy of their bombing runs.
To this end Germany set up a secret weather research station one thousand miles south
of the North Pole, on an island known as Alexandra Land.
Weather stations were not anything new, but they were still very high priority targets
that were often destroyed by ships or by aircraft.
Denying the enemy the ability to forecast the weather was as critical as scoring direct
military victories, and so any enemy weather stations were high on the list of targets
for both sides during the war.
This station in Alexandra Land however would prove to be even more dangerous than normal
for the Germans to operate, as it would be based only a few hundred miles from Soviet
Territory and well out of range of the German navy or air forces.
The men would be completely on their own, and relied on extreme secrecy to ensure their
survival.
To that end the construction crews and the men who would operate the station were all
delivered via U-boat, slinking past Allied ships by diving underneath them.
The plan worked perfectly and it wouldn't be until two years after the war that anyone
would discover the secret base.
From their base in Alexandra Land the Germans were able to monitor arctic weather patterns
and conduct atmospheric research which would be vital in understanding how weather actually
worked.
The remains of the base included pieces of weather balloons, thermometers, astronomic
tables, and journals full of meteorological data.
Over seven hundred weather reports were sent via radio back to Germany from the base, and
it was never once discovered.
Meanwhile the vital data allowed the Nazi war machine to avoid bad weather, or exploit
imminent breaks in ongoing storms.
Ultimately though the station would have to be abandoned in 1944 after the inhabitants
ate tainted polar bear meat.
The bear had been contaminated with roundworm, likely getting the infection itself from a
seal, and it made the men ill enough to force an evacuation via U-boat.
With the war going so poorly for Germany, the station was never re-manned again.
Yet rumors of other secret Nazi bases have persisted to this day, most famously the claim
that they built and operated a base in Antarctica- some sources claim that Nazis remain in their
secret Antarctic base to this day, plotting their icy-cold revenge upon the world that
forgot them.
Probably with giant robots or something.
These rumors however are exactly that, just rumors, but born from a very real expedition
that had actual plans to build a base in Antarctica- and for reasons you will never guess.
At first thought you might think that the Germans would build a base in Antarctica to
allow them to research and develop super secret ultimate weapons, deadly biological plagues,
or perhaps to make direct contact with C'thulu and his Elder Things which remain to this
day asleep deep beneath the Antarctic ice.
The reality however is far weirder, because Hitler wanted a base in Antarctica for one
reason and one reason only: margarine.
Widely known as the crappier substitute to butter, margarine was incredibly important
for Germany as the German people absolutely loved the stuff.
Yet one of the main ingredients for margarine and many other oil and fat-based products
was whale oil, which Germany had to purchase from Norway.
In the case of war, Hitler knew that Norway would probably be pretty reluctant about conducting
trade with Germany, and even if it still did want to trade, the Allies would very easily
blockade his ports and block the import of all-important whale oil.
Hitler needed a substitute source of whale oil, and he needed it before he went to war.
By the 1930s though commercial whaling in the north atlantic and north pacific had decimated
whale populations, so Hitler ordered the construction of factory whaling ships that would hunt in
the distant southern waters.
Operating so far from home, the German whalers needed a base of operations to conduct repairs
and to rest their crews, so Hitler decided that he would claim part of Antarctica for
himself.
In August of 1936 the German Foreign Office found some unclaimed territory in Antarctica
between Norwegian and British Zones and organized an expedition to explore the region and claim
it.
By the summer of 1938, Captain Alfred Ritscher, a decorated World War I commander was selected
to lead the expedition- though only grudgingly as he had married a well known Jewish artist
and was not a member of the Nazi party.
Still, the Captain was one of the most experienced polar navigators in Germany, and in the end
was granted command.
For three months the Captain's ship, the Schwabenland, underwent extensive retrofits to turn it into
an icebreaker, and Ritscher at last sailed from Hamburg on December 17th, 1938, with
a crew of 82 scientists, officers, and enlisted men.
The ship was also equipped with a catapult for two Dornier flying boats and a crane to
recover them from the sea upon return.
A month later the ship reached the Antarctic coast line, and the flying boats were sent
to conduct aerial reconnaissance.
This very mountainous region had never before been explored, and the German scientists named
it New-Schwabenland after their ship.
However the expedition wasn't free of troubles, and during one flight the crew ran low on
fuel and were forced to toss out every pound of equipment they could in order to lighten
the aircraft.
This included boxes of tiny metal swastikas which they were supposed to have dropped across
the claimed land in order to cement the German claim to it.
To this day the tiny swastikas remain strewn across the Antarctic landscape, where they
have likely murdered a very unsuspecting and utterly surprised penguin or two.
More proof that the Nazis really were monsters.
The expedition ended up surveying an area larger than Germany, and on February 5th,
1939 the expedition sailed home confident that Germany could claim the land and build
a whaling station there.
On the way home the ship even conducted scans of the ocean floor and discovered seismic
activity that ran from north to south along the middle of the Atlantic- these would later
be found to be lines of volcanoes known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which make up a region
where two of the Earth's tectonic plates meet.
This early discovery wouldn't cement our modern understanding of plate tectonics until the
1950s, which goes to show that if the Nazis had been less warmongering and mass-murdering
super villains, they might have led the way in scientific discovery.
Ultimately the whaling station was never meant to be, as Germany decided to start World War
II and destroy itself in the process.
That doesn't stop the rumor mill from generating ever-evolving stories about secret bases in
Antarctica though, and while entertaining, about all the evil the Nazis did in this most
remote of continents is murder an unsuspecting penguin or two with free-falling boxes of
swastikas.
Or perhaps that's just what we would say if the Nazis did establish a secret base thousands
of miles from the nearest civilization, and struck up an alliance with C'thulu and the
Elder Things after freeing them from their icy prisons, and now plot their revenge on
an unsuspecting world.
What secret Nazi bases have you heard about?
Are the poets turning mad as they herald C'thulu's million year reign of darkness and madness?
Also, check out our other video: What If Hitler Had Won?!
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