HIT LER ’S ANT ARCT IC BA SE: THE MYT H AND THE REA LIT Y 3

per man ent ly man ned bases that cou ld be use d to ob- tain informati on on shipp ing acti vity , to deny the use of ha rb ou rs to Ge rm an sh ip s, an d to su pp or t te am s of rese arche rs enga ged in geogr aphic al disc ove ry and scientiﬁc investigation (Fuchs 1982: 22–54). Denial of the islands as bases to potential enemies began with the visit of HMS

Queen of Bermuda

to Deception Island, on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, in March 1941 to destroy stocks of coal and to puncture fuel tanks. Argentina had placed marks of sovereignty on Deception Island in 1942. They were obliterated in January 1943 by HMS

Carnarvon Castle

, which hoisted the Union Flag there (Sullivan 1957). In 194 3, Gre at Bri tai n be ga n pla nni ng to occ upy the ter rit ory . A sec ret mil ita ry ex erc ise , cod e nam ed Operation Tabarin, was mounted by the Royal Navy to establish bases on the peninsula and in the islands to the west (Fuchs 1982: 22–54; Mills 2003: 489). According to these authors, British wartime interests did not extend to Dronnin g Maud Land, 1000 km to the east across the Weddell Sea. The ne xt wel l-d ocu men ted ev ent bea rin g on the subject of this paper occurred early on 10 July 1945, two months after the German surrender, when a German U- boat,

U-530

, entered the Argentine naval base at Mar del Plata (NARA 1985; Blair 1998). Leutnant Otto Wermuth, the Captain of

U-530

, appears to have believed that he woul d be well receiv ed by the Argentin es. His arri val cre ate d muc h spe cul ati on. Dis reg ard ing the ne ws of Hitler’s suicide on 30 April, many believed that

U-530

had som eho w spi rit ed Hit ler , Ev a Bra un, Ma rti n Bor man n and others out of Germany and had landed them either on the coast of Patagonia or at a ‘New Berchtesgaden’ in Antarctica. On 16 July, a detailed account of Hitler’s sup pos ed ﬂig ht and hid ing pla ce in Dro nni ng Mau d Lan d, Antar ctica , was published in the Arge ntine newspa per

La Critica

, by Ladislas Szabo, a Hungarian exile living in Argentina (Szabo 1947: 8). It was repeated in major newspapers worldwide, for example under the headline ‘Hitler’s on Ice in Antarctic’ in Toronto (

Toronto Daily Star

18 July 1945). Speculation increased when

U-977

, under the comma nd of Ober leutn ant Hein z Scha effe r, appeared at Mar del Plata on 17 August (Schaeffer 1952; NARA 1985; Blair 1998). As Argentina was a combatant power at the end of the war, Wermuth and Schaeffer and their crews became prisoners of war and were interrogated by the Argentine Na vy , the US Na vy , and the Ro yal Na vy (Sc hae ff er 195 2). Inter rogat ion focus sed on wheth er Hitle r and/ or other high-ranking Nazis had, in fact, escaped from Germany by submarine. Eventually, the interrogators were satisﬁed th at th e la te ar ri v al of th e su bm ar in es in th e So ut h At la nt ic was entirely innoc uous . W ermut h and Schae ffe r were released. Th at di d no t st op sp ec ul at io n. In hi s 19 47 bo ok

Hitler is alive

, Szabo claimed that both submarines were part of a submarine convoy that had taken Hitler and other senior ﬁgures from the Third Reich to Antarctica, where ‘New Berchtesgaden’ had been set up in 1938– 39 by

Schwabenland

, on the orders of Admiral D ¨ onitz. Despite Schaeffer’s denials (Schaeffer 1952), the rumour continued to spread (see Mattern and Friedrich 1975: 68; Landig 1980). Buechner and Bernhart (1989: 216) provided a dif- ferent version, claiming that Hitler had indeed died in his bunker in Berlin, but that

U-977

had then transported his ashes to Antarctica, in convoy with other submarines,

en route

to Mar del Plata. According to these authors, the ashes were deposited along with other Nazi treasures pac ked in six bro nze , lea d-l ine d box es tha t had bee n landed in Dronning Maud Land by

U-530

, and placed in a ‘very special natural ice cave in the M¨ uhlig-Hofmann Mountains’ (Buechner and Bernhart 1989: 188). To lend an a ir of au thent icity to this tale, Bern hart claim ed t o hav e been one of the crew of

U-530

, although his name is not on the

U-530

manifest provided by the Argentine Navy (Szabo 1947: 13–14). ‘New Berchtesgaden’ appears, like the phantom con- vo y , to be the brain chi ld of Sza bo (19 47: 155), and has bee n a fa vo uri te ele men t of Naz i myt hol ogy ev er since (Goodrick-Clarke 2002). Several writers accept the ex ist enc e of the suppo sed base , and that the re wa s a conspiracy to suppress information about it (for example Mat ter n and Fri edr ich 197 5; Fri edr ich 197 9; Ste ve ns 1997, 2003; Choron date unkno wn; Farrell 2005; and Robert 2005a 2005b, 2005c). Expanding on Szabo (1947: 200–202), and each of them building on the one before, they go on to suggest that US forces attacked the German base during Operation Highjump in the southern summer of 194 6–1 947 , tha t tho se for ces were rep uls ed by the secret weapons of the German defenders, and that as a result the US forces had to leave the area sooner than planned. The tale has become more elaborate with the passage of time. A different version of these events has recently been published by Robert (2005a, 2005b, 2005c) in a trilogy entitled

Britain’s secret war in Antarctica

. Robert claims not only tha t the re wa s ind eed a sec ret Germa n bas e in Dronning Maud Land during World War II, but also that the British spied on it from their own secret base in Dro nni ng Mau d Lan d. He cla ims that the Britis h Arm y’ s SASattac kedand tri ed to des tro y theGerma n bas e aroun d Chris tmas 1945.According to Robe rt (2005c ), that attempt was ineffective, as were the subsequent attempts by the USA’s Operation Highjump, and the German base was ﬁnally destroyed by secretly exploding three atomic bombs above it in 1958 as part of the activities of the IGY . Robert (2005c) claims that the truth about the German base and the attacks on it by Britain and the United States have been deliberately suppressed by the US and British governments. This supposed suppression he describes as ‘A travesty of history’. If they were true, the propositions of Szabo, Robert and others listed above would be fascinating for history and for science. Indeed, there is an element of truth in all of these tales. The Germans

did