Author: Colin Summerhayes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781720918899
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The origins of the Third German Antarctic Expedition lie in a unique combination of the aspirations of German scientists to contribute to exploring and understanding the Antarctic environment, and the Nazi Parti's drive for self-sufficiency on the road to war. Germany had joined the whaling nations in the South Atlantic, keen to obtain whale oil without having to use valuable foreign currency reserves needed for rearmament. It decided to explore the possibility of setting up a supply base on the coast of Dronning Maud Land and to claim Antarctic territory there for itself. Councillor of State Helmut Wohlthat, the man in charge of German whaling, put this idea to his superior, Hermann Goring, the Commissioner for the Four Year Plan for economic development who approved the concept, and in May 1938 assigned resources for a reconnaissance expedition.Thus the Third German Antarctic Expedition was born. When they set sail they did not even have a map of where they were going and it was their job to make one. The expedition was led by Alfred Ritscher, a captain in the German merchant navy, aboard the MS Schwabenland, a freighter built in 1925 and renamed after the Swabia region in Southern Germany. On January 19, 1939, it arrived off Dronning Maud Land and began charting the region. Nazi German flags were placed on the sea ice along the coast and the area was named Neuschwabenland after the ship. Seven photographic survey flights were made by the ship's two seaplanes which took more than 16,000 aerial photographs covering an area of some 250,000 square kilometres. On its return trip to Germany the expedition made oceanographic studies near Bouvet Island and Fernando de Noronha. This is the story of an ambitious and little-known expedition, which set out to map a large piece of Antarctica from the air, and in the process discovered an 800 km long mountain range and previously unsuspected freshwater lakes.

Author: Colin Summerhayes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781720666349
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Secrets of the Third Reich's Base in Antarctica A remarkable event occurred in 1999, but only specialists paid adequate attention to it. A research expedition discovered a virus in Antarctica; at that, neither people nor animals had immunity to the virus. After all, Antarctica is far away, for this very reason the virus cannot be dangerous for the rest of the planet, especially the dangerous discovery was deep in the permafrost. However, scientists say that against the background of a global warming threatening the Earth, the unknown virus can cause an awful catastrophe on the planet. Expert Tom Starmerue from the University of New York also shares the pessimistic forecasts of his colleagues. "We don't know what the mankind will face in the South Pole in the nearest time due to the global warming. It is not ruled out that an unbelievable catastrophe may break out. Viruses protected with a protein cover survive even in the permafrost; as soon as the temperature gets warmer they will immediately start reproducing." American scientists treated the Antarctica discovery very seriously and even organized a special expedition that currently tests the ice for unknown viruses in order to develop an antidote in good time. What is the source of the virus in Antarctica where only penguins can survive in the ice? There is no answer to the question, specialists are at a loss. However, several theories concerning the problem have been put forward. We would like to touch upon the most interesting of them. A majority of scientists are inclined to believe that prehistoric forms of life probably survived in the permafrost. There are more versions that are interesting and sometimes quite unusual. Some specialists blame bonzes of the Third Reich for delivery of a secretly developed bacteriological weapon to Antarctica. And this theory arose not in a vacuum. It is known that already in 1938 Nazis suddenly became interested in Antarctica, they organized two expeditions to the area in 1938-1939. At first, planes of the Third Reich took detailed pictures of unexplored territories and then they dropped several thousands of metal pennons with swastika there. The whole of the explored territory was called Neuschwabenland and was considered a part of the Third Reich. After the expedition, Captain Ritscher reported to Field-Marshal Hering: "The planes dropped the pennons each 25 kilometers; we covered the area of about 8.600 thousand square meters. 350 thousand square meters of them were photographed." In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz dropped a remarkable phrase: "Germany's submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuhrer on the other end of the world." Submarines were mostly used for transportation of necessary freight to the place. The submarines also received passengers whose faces were hidden behind surgical bands. Wilhelm Bernhard was commander of one of the submarines, U-530; the submarine left the port of Kiel on April 13, 1945. When it reached the shores of Antarctica, 16 members from the crew built an ice cave and put boxes into the cave; it was allegedly said that the boxes contained relics of the Third Reich, including Hitler's documents and personal stuff. The operation was code named Valkyrie-2. When the operation was over on July 10, 1945, the submarine U-530 entered the Argentinean port of Mar-del-Plata and surrendered to the authorities. It is also supposed that another submarine from the formation, U-977, under the command of Heinz Scheffer, delivered the remains of Hitler and Braun to Neuschwabenland. It followed the route of the U-530 submarine and called at Antarctica. The sub arrived in Mar-del-Plata on Aug. 17, 1945.

Author: Wilhelm Dege
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Dege was leader of a German weather station in a remote corner of Svalbard during the winter of 1944-45. It was secret, because the Allies were trying to prevent the Germans from tracking weather in the north. Though he and his crew knew the war had ended, it was not until May 1945 that the Allies sent a vessel north to fetch them; thus they were the last German troops to surrender. His account was published in German in 1954, and his here translated by William Barr, a historian of Arctic exploration. The English edition incorporates material from his typescript that was not included in the original. It is co-published with the Arctic Institute of North America and the University Press of Colorado, and distributed in the US by Michigan State University Press. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Author: Emil Bessels
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781552388754
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672

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"Polaris is a thoroughly edited, annotated translation of Die Amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition by Emil Bessels (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1879). Bessels recounts the expedition of the ship Polaris, led by Captain Charles Francis Hall, on its failed attempt to reach the North Pole. Bessels, Polaris's chief scientist, provides a thorough account of the voyage, including detailed descriptions of St. John's, Newfoundland, Greenland settlements, Inuit people and culture, and plentiful scientific data on the flora, fauna, geography, oceans they encountered. Recent discoveries concerning a more sinister aspect of the voyage also make this a vital critical edition. While wintering at Thank God Harbour in Northwest Greenland, Hall died suddenly; Bessels proclaimed the cause of death was stroke. In 1968 English professor Chauncy Loomis and pathologist Franklin Paddock exhumed Hall's body from the permafrost, discovering that Hall had in fact been poisoned with arsenic. Bessels had the knowledge and opportunity to poison Hall, but for decades no motive could be found. However, new evidence has emerged of a romantic triangle between Hall, Bessels, and a young American sculptor Vinnie Ream, providing, at last, a motive for murder. Barr's introduction and epilogue outline the unique aspects of Bessels book, placing it in the historical context of arctic exploration. Barr has added 723 endnotes, drawing on 73 bibliographic sources, to explain and to contextualize Bessels writing. Barr's appendices cover Bessel's scientific appendix, Hall's instructions, the Board of Inquiry that followed the expedition's return, and biographies of the seven major players in this tale of exploration and murder."--

Author: David Thomas Murphy
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803232051
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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German Exploration of the Polar World is the exciting story of the generations of German polar explorers who braved the perils of the Arctic and Antarctic for themselves and their country. Such intrepid adventurers as Wilhelm Filchner, Erich von Drygalski, and Alfred Wegener are not as well known today as Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton, Robert E. Peary, or Richard E. Byrd, but their bravery and the hardships they faced were equal to those of the more famous polar explorers. In the half-century prior to World War II, the poles were the last blank spaces on the global map, and they exerted a tremendous pull on national imaginations. Under successive political regimes, the Germans threw themselves into the race for polar glory with an ardor that matched their better-known counterparts bearing English, American, and Norwegian flags. German polar explorers were driven, like their rivals, by a complex web of interlocking motivations. Personal fame, the romance of the unknown, and the advancement of science were important considerations, but public pressure, political and military concerns, and visions of immense, untapped wealth at the poles also spurred the explorers. As historian David Thomas Murphy shows, Germany's repeated encounters with the polar world left an indelible impression upon the German public, government, and scientific community. Reports on the polar landscape, flora, and fauna enhanced Germany's appreciation of the global environment. Accounts of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, accurate or fantastic, permanently shaped German notions of culture and civilization. The final, failed attempt by the Nazis to extend German political power to the earth's ends revealed the limits of any country's ability to reshape the globe politically or militarily.

Author: Frederic Beecher Perkins
Publisher: New York, G. P. Putnam's sons [c1877]
ISBN:
Category : Best books
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description

Author: Lyle Dick
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 1552380505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description
Muskox Land provides a meticulously researched and richly illustrated treatment of Canada's High Arctic as it interweaves insights from historiography, Native studies, ecology, anthropology, and polar exploration.

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3385304806
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Author: Best reading
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Best books
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description

Author:
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803216396
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Robert Falcon Scott?s 1901?4 expedition to the Antarctic was a landmark event in the history of Antarctic exploration, creating a sensation comparable to the Arctic efforts of the American Robert E. Peary. Scott?s initial expedition was also the first step toward the dramatic race to the South Pole in 1912, which resulted in the tragic deaths of Scott and his companions. Since then Scott?s reputation has vacillated between two extremes: Was he a martyred hero, the beau ideal of a brave and selfless explorer, or a bumbling fool whose mistakes killed him and his entire party?øPilgrims on the Ice goes beyond the personality of Scott to remove the first expedition from the shadow of the second, to study objectively its purpose, its composition, and its real accomplishments. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface by the author.