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- [00:00]
Carter Roy
In 2004, a team performing mapping work for NASA discovers an anomaly under some ice on an island off the coast of Antarctica. The hope is it's a lost plane that crashed back in 1946 due to inclement weather. The plane, nicknamed George the First, was part of a military operation run by the US Navy called Operation Highjump. Three men died and their bodies are still buried about 100 to 150ft beneath the ice, wrapped in parachutes and placed beneath the plane's wing. In May 2012, Congress passes an amendment to a defense spending bill that authorizes the Pentagon to undertake all feasible efforts to recover the lost airmen. It's hopeful news for the men's relatives, who've been waiting decades for their remains to be returned to U.S. soil. But in response, the Navy releases a statement saying the risk is too high. They consider George the First to be the final resting place of these brave sailors, and we do not support disturbing or potentially desecrating their remains. With such emotional stakes, there are difficult questions on both sides of the aisle. On one hand, what does the government owe officers who have died in service to their country? On the other, what do they owe those who might die trying to recover them? Then there are those with an entirely separate set of questions, like why were they sent to the South Pole in the first place? They crashed about a year after World War II ended. The Cold War was just beginning. Why then was the US Navy mounting the largest Antarctic sea and air operation ever attempted? And did it have anything to do with with secret Nazi bases? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram he conspiracypod and we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. This summer we're jet setting through history on a world tour of mystery and motives. Today we're traveling down to Antarctica to explore some theories about secret Nazi bases and the COVID missions some believe were sent to find and destroy them. The episode includes discussions of violence and suicide. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health issues, visit Spotify.com resources stay with us.
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- [03:18]
Carter Roy
Somewhere that the average American spends 13.
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Carter Roy
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- [03:43]
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- [04:15]
Carter Roy
We're heading back in time to December 1938 and touching down on a ship sailing toward the southernmost tip of the world, Antarctica. The ship is called the Schwabenland. It's captained by German war veteran Alex Alfred Richa. Though not a member of the Nazi party, he acts on their strict orders, as does his crew of 82 scientists, officers and support men. They're on a secret mission preparing for the next inevitable war. They reach the coast of Antarctica in January 1939. They land between two territories, one controlled by Norway and the other by Britain. The goal is to lay the foundation for an eventual Antarctic base, one that could ideally support the so called German FAT Plan. The plan is part of the Third Reich's strategy to prepare for an inevitable war by improving self sufficiency in case of embargoes or other disruptions. They want to increase their domestic production of goods, particularly fat based products like margarine who whose primary ingredient at the time is whale oil. Since commercial whaling has recently done a number on northern populations, an operation in the south would be in Germany's best interest. That's in addition to any other unstated goals the expedition may have. Richa and his team bring two flying boats with them to perform aerial reconnaissance of the area. Their crews carry boxes filled with small metal swastikas meant to be dropped onto the ice below. Hello. It's supposed to be their way of staking Nazi Germany's claim to the land they pass over, but it doesn't quite happen the way they'd like. Some swastikas may have been thrown from the planes, but many never make it out of their packaging. A crew realizes they're short on fuel one day and decides to lighten the plane's load by throwing out some boxes they have on board. Oops. In the process, the symbols of German dominance are lost to the ice. All told, it's a bit of a failure. But the team succeeds in mapping about 97,000 square miles of the continent and they name the area Neu Schwabenland. According to official accounts, the Germans never establish an Antarctic base. They return home in February 1939. Any and all follow up trips are interrupted by the breakout of World War II. Other countries continue to lay claim to territory in the South Pole, but the United States doesn't really get involved until after the war ends. It's August 1946. President Harry Truman sits in the Oval Office with the Nuremberg trials still underway. The U.S. navy authorizes the largest Antarctic sea and air expedition ever attempted. The fleet includes 13 ships, an aircraft carrier and a submarine. On board are 33 planes and 4700 men, including 11 journalists. Officially, the goals of the trip are to learn how to create a sustainable military operation in the South Pole through training, testing and research, and to expand US sovereignty to as large an area as possible. Training personnel in the frigid conditions will also help prepare them for operations in other militarily significant locations like Greenland and the North Pole. The fleet leaves the United States on December 6, 1946. Some, but not all, ships arrive by late December and begin sending planes over the continent for mapping and reconnaissance. On December 30, an aircraft called George I gets caught in whiteout conditions, made worse by a blinding solar glare known as an ice blink. Unable to see, the pilots accidentally brush an ice ridge and puncture the plane's fuel tank. The pilots send the craft into a maximum throttle climb, hoping to reach clear skies in safety. But the gallons of fuel pouring out of the broken tank explode into a fireball that blows the plane into fragments and sends the men on board and the wreckage tumbling towards the ground. Some get ejected from the craft and land in the snow below them. But three crew members die in the blast. Luckily for the survivors, it's summer in the south, so the sun stays in the sky 24,7. But they spend the next 12 days waiting for rescue. Harsh weather conditions meant search planes couldn't reach the men until January 11th. On day 13, the men are finally found and dropped food and supplies. Rescue comes on day 14. The plane crash isn't the only tragedy that occurs during Operation Highjump. A few days later, an officer accidentally falls from a tractor and is crushed by his own equipment. Adding a fourth casualty, Operation Highjump leaves Antarctica earlier than expected. With winter fast approaching, they begin their return journey on February 24th 3rd, 1947, after spending only about two months in the South Pole. As for what the men found when they were down there, that remains a mystery for the time being. Despite the 11 journalists on board presumably documenting what was, up until that point, a public mission, the results of Operation Highjump are immediately classified.
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- [11:02]
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Carter Roy
Operation Highjump sails back to America in 1947 after spending about two months in Antarctica. But in order to understand the long list of conspiracy theories that haunt the polar ice caps, we need to rewind a bit. As we mentioned, officially, Hitler's expedition never established an Antarctic settlement. They went down, did some mapping, and never returned to the South Pole. But some theorists believe they were successful in creating a base, just one that may not have been visible to the naked eye. After the Germans left, other countries kept visiting Antarctica. Four years later, Britain actually launched a secret military operation to establish their own bases. With World War II approaching, they wanted to be able to cut off access to any enemy ships, and obviously enemies included the Germans at the time. But the Brits didn't necessarily know where Hitler and his forces landed in the South Pole or how successful their expedition was. The Germans kept their results hidden, and by some accounts, the Brits never made it over to Queen Maud Land. Their activity was contained more to the west, meaning if they were looking for a German base and one actually existed, they wouldn't have found it. Flash forward to another important part of this theory and one of the most Famous bunkers in history. It's April 20, 1945, Hitler's 56th birthday and the tail end of World War II. As Allied forces drive the Germans back from the west, while the Soviets shell Berlin from the east. The writing is on the wall. For the Fuhrer, there is no path to victory. Hitler spends the next few days having a meltdown as Soviet forces close in on him. He whines, he cries, and against the advice of his closest loyalists, he refuses to flee and go into hiding. Before long, it's too late to escape, even if he wanted to. As one of his final acts on earth, Hitler marries his longtime mistress, Eva Braun in a midnight ceremony, and the next day they both die by suicide. She swallows a poison capsule. He shoots himself with a gun. Following orders, Hitler's remaining loyalists rush their bodies out of the bunker and set them on fire with the help of some petrol. It's a very dramatic ending. There are bombs raining down and everything, but importantly, no one else other than the loyalists are around to witness the burning. We cover this story more in greater detail in our episodes on Hitler. But the point is, some theorists question whether Hitler actually died that day. Escape was technically possible even as Soviet forces closed in. One German air force commander managed to flee the bunker on Hitler's orders. Even Stalin, who helped defeat the Nazis, said he believed Hitler could have escaped. And he wasn't alone. Other Soviets did as well. Dwight Eisenhower even suggested as much, though he quickly recanted the statement. The question is, if the most notorious dictator in the world did Survive World War II, where did he go? Enter one theory, a real mysterious submarine. On July 10, 1945, two months after Germany surrenders, a German U boat arrives at a naval base in Argentina. Though not a direct ally during the war, Argentina has had a long history of friendly relations with Germany. And in the aftermath of World War II, it becomes something of a safe haven for Nazis, along with many other South American countries. You might remember Colonia Dignidad from our episode on Boris Weisfeiler's disappearance. The self contained colony was founded by former Nazi sympathizer Paul Schaeffer, which later became a secret prison and torture center for the Chilean government. So clearly, for some, there was life after being a war criminal. When that Nazi U boat docks In Argentina in 1945, it sneaks past fishermen and a sentry standing guard before signaling surrender. According to a report by Time magazine that year, rather than shun the men on board, the Argentine navy treats the more than 50 crew members to a hot meal and haircuts before housing them at a rest camp. Officials eventually interrogate the crew, but it's not an easy investigation. Before coming ashore, the men destroyed pretty much all of the submarine's logs and records. That included any documents that could corroborate their identities. Now, there were two months of unaccounted for time between the war's end and the submarine's arrival. According to the crew members, those two months were spent basically puttering about the Atlantic. And while the Navy's investigation finds that the men's story holds up. Given the lack of corroborating evidence, not everyone believes them. Rumors swirl about those two months at sea being spent on a special mission. What else could the U boat have been carrying? Adding fuel to the fire, an Argentine journalist supposedly saw a police report about a submarine surfacing near the country's southern coastline. Earlier, two people climbed ashore. One looked like a high ranking officer and the other looked like a civilian. Some theorists believe that could have been the Nazi U boat dropping off Hitler and Eva Braun in disguise. Others suggest the submarine didn't surrender for two months. Because they made a pit stop in Antarctica first. In fact, six days after the submarine's arrival, a Hungarian living in exile in Argentina writes a detailed op ed suggesting just that. His name's Ladislau Sabo, and his piece gets picked up by newspapers all around the world. It runs under headlines like Hitler's on Ice in Antarctica. And as wild as that sounds, there's barely any time to process the proposal before there's another update in the story. A few weeks after the piece hits newspapers, another German U boat arrives in Mar del Plata, Argentina. There's less men on board because they apparently drop some off in Norway. Besabo takes the news as confirmation of his theory. In his mind, it's too much of a coincidence. The submarines must have been working together by 1947. The Hungarian publishes a book outlining his case called Hitler is Alive. He believes the dictator and a number of other Nazi officials. Found refuge on a base built during that 1938-39 Antarctic expedition. He suspects the Germans probably built on the coast of Queen Maudland. Before constructing another base further inland. Others come to share Szabo's conviction. And over time, the list of alleged evidence for a secret Nazi base in Antarctica grows longer. There are those who believe that some government officials knew the Germans had them. That's why Britain launched their secret military operation in 1943. And the United States launched Operation Highjump. They were seek and destroy missions. Operation Highjump left Antarctica earlier than they anticipated. Some accounts suggest the US Navy was successful in finding the German base, but weren't in destroying it. Which might have something to do with the fact that, according to those same accounts, they encountered more than just bad weather and ice blinks. In addition to some suspicious disappearances, they were met with German superweapons and maybe even UFOs.
- [20:42]
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Carter Roy
Trust me, I hate that. Bad plan. Come on. Terrible. That's a stupid plan.
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Carter Roy
Operation High Jump was largely led by experienced polar explorer Admiral Richard Byrd. In 1975, 28 years after the book Hitler is Alive hit shelves, two authors release a new account of Admiral Byrd's alleged experience on the expedition. They claim he found the Nazi secret Antarctic base. He flew right over it on one of his reconnaissance trips. As a result, the Germans shot some US Aircraft out of the sky with hidden weapons. The incident, they claim, was one of the reasons Operation Highjump left the South Pole much earlier than originally planned. Adding to those losses, others go on to suggest that at least four aircraft disappeared under mysterious circumstances and that many of Byrd's men were lost on the trip. Stranger still, some say the Nazi base was defended by technology that included highly advanced UFOs. Could that be true? According to Rubens J. Vieja, a former employee of NASA and a researcher whose work was published by Cambridge University Press, Antarctica has long been a hub for well documented UFO sightings and related phenomena. And when it comes to Operation Highjump, some claim you don't have to look any further than Admiral Byrd's own words. He gave an interview with one of the reporters who joined Operation Highjump to Cover the excursion. Byrd told that reporter he thought the United States was should prepare for a possible invasion from the polar regions. A 1947 issue of the Chilean magazine El Mercurio cited the interview, and after two authors translated it to English, their translation read, in case of a new war, the continental United States would be attacked by flying objects which could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds. Now, that's a pretty chilling warning from a respected and experienced leader. How does the US Respond to these threats? Theorists believe with nuclear power. It's not a theory that the United States detonated three atomic bombs in the Southern Hemisphere in the late 1950s. The nuclear tests were part of another secret military initiative called Operation Argus. Many theorists saw them as confirmation of a hidden German threat in Antarctica. And most agree the bombs were successful in erasing Nazi presence on the continent, even if they don't agree on much else, like the location of the base. Almost all believe it was located somewhere on Queen Maudland, but exact coordinates have been up for debate since the beginning. Some have even suggested it wasn't even on Queen Maudland so much as under it, tucked away in a natural ice cave. Others go one step further and place it even further below that. This variation is connected to the Hollow Earth conspiracy theory, which we've covered before. As the name suggests, theorists believe our planet is actually hollow, kind of like a giant tennis ball. And inside the hollow shell are all kinds of things. Thriving civilizations, exotic plant life, prehistoric animals, even advanced alien beings. They also believe there's another sun inside the Earth which allows for all that life. Importantly, in Hollow Earth theory, the only access point points to this elaborate world within our world are located in the north and South Pole. So as it relates to secret German bases, the idea is that the Nazis found a portal and even got some help from the aliens inside. That might explain the accounts of UFOs and superweapons. The concept of of an advanced underground civilization in Antarctica dates Back to an 1871 German novel, Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. It described a powerful utopian society fueled by an energy source called Vril. And despite the fact that the book was fiction, some believed they could be real. In particular, the concept resonated with followers of Theosophy, a pseudo religious occult movement that may have fueled the Nazis belief in an Aryan master race. Given Hitler and the Nazis documented interest in the occult, some theorists believe they sought to find this subterranean Vril and harness its energy for their own dark purposes. But other accounts suggest the Nazis didn't so much find a high Tech underground civilization in Antarctica as they found a gateway to hell. And this gateway to hell is sometimes placed on the other side of an enormous ice wall that allegedly surrounds the perimeter of our entire planet and keeps its contents from falling off the edge of the world. Yes, secret Nazi bases have somehow also been tied to Flat Earth theory, which we've also covered on the show before. We promise we didn't choose this topic to advertise old episodes. It just worked out that the most popular conspiracy theory we could find about the continent of Antarctica has been a magnet for the building blocks of every other conspiracy theory under the sun. We've got a faked death, covert military ops, government coverups, disappearances, UFOs, secret lost societies, alien technology, and what feels like every different iteration of our planet's composition that's ever been suggested. What's verifiable and what isn't? The Germans did run an Antarctic expedition in the late 1930s. A few years later, Britain did send a secret military program. Two German submarines filled with Nazis really did arrive on the shores of Argentina a few months after World War II ended. In Europe, they really didn't have much of anything to corroborate the claims of what they'd been up to. By 1947, the US did launch Operation Highjump. People did die. The trip was shorter than it was supposed to be. Admiral Byrd did come home warning about threats coming from the Poles. And about a decade later, the US did detonate for three atomic bombs in the Southern hemisphere as part of a separate classified operation. That's all true. And when neatly lined up like that, it does sound suspicious. Add in all the rumors about Hitler faking his death and a secret Nazi base can start to make sense. But here's what we also know. First, nothing in any of the surviving records from Germany's 1939 expedition suggest they established a base. Of course, that could be on purpose. They wanted it to be kept a secret. But when Britain went down a few years later, now declassified records indicate their aircraft didn't even fly over Queen Maud Land, let alone touchdown. And while Operation Highjump's results were immediately classified, they became public very shortly after and were widely published. An Oscar winning documentary about the excursion premiered the year after they returned. Second, there's nothing in the declassified reports that mentions Admiral Byrd or his forces ever coming under attack. Lost men, mysterious disappearances, superweapons. Those details were most likely fabricated by quite a few different authors over time. As for that UFO quote from Admiral Byrd, intentionally or not, it was mistranslated. A more accurate Spanish to English translation reads, the United States should adopt measures of protection against the possibility of an invasion of the country by hostile planes coming from the polar regions. The cruel reality is that in case of a new war, the United States could be attacked by planes flying over one or both poles. Sounds less scary, right? That translation also paints a pretty accurate picture of why countries were so invested in Antarctica in the first place. The earliest expeditions to the South Pole happened in the years leading up to the nuclear age. Operation Highjump specifically coincided with the start of the Cold War. At the time, the world superpowers saw the north and South Pole as incredibly militarily significant. That's in large part due to their proximity to every other continent on Earth and the valuable airspace that provides. The United States achieved what they wanted to with Operation Highjump. They returned with 49,000 photographs and mapped about 537,000 square miles of its core coastline and interior. Though not permanent, they established a research base called Little America 4 and returned with a better understanding of how to sustain permanent facilities in the future. As for Operation Argus, the secret nuclear tests that the US conducted in the late 1950s, we now know a lot about the program. Much like Highjump, it didn't stay classified for very long. And we can confidently say the US didn't drop bombs on any Nazi bases. There were three detonations, and they were meant to study the effects of nuclear explosions outside the atmosphere, meaning they took place at high altitudes. The lowest bomb that went off happened about 100 miles above sea level, and none of them even took place in the atmosphere over Queen Maudland. The closest was more than 1,400 miles north. And there's little reason to question official records. If an atomic bomb detonated on Queen Maudland in 1958. Well, it's safe to say the scientists from Norway, Belgium, Britain, and Japan who were living there at the time would maybe know about it. As for the Hitler piece of it, all the Nazi U boats that appeared in Argentina are probably the most legitimately suspicious element of the story. Like we said, some really notorious Nazis escaped Germany and took refuge in South America after the war ended. That includes Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Mengele, and Walter Roff, men who committed absolutely heinous crimes against humanity. That said, if any important Nazi officials were on board those two submarines, Hitler wasn't among them. As one scientist put it, the evidence that Hitler died is overwhelming and comprehensive. A piece of his teeth and jawbone survived the attempt to burn his body Those remains are now kept in an archive somewhere in Moscow. And on more than one occasion, teams of forensic scientists have confirmed they belong to Hitler. They claim there is no room for doubt. And yet, against all evidence, theories about Hitler's survival still persist in fringe groups today. Authors continue to write alternative history books filled with elaborate theories about how Nazi power somehow survived World War II. And the more time passes and the further south the stories go, the stranger they seem to get. What is it about Antarctica that attracts such elaborate conspiracies and wild speculation? The vastness? The otherworldly environment? The mind altering harsh conditions? Maybe the truth sometimes just gets lost in the cold. Like those boxes of unopened swastikas that are still buried in the ice. Or the Navy plane and its passengers that to this day have never been recovered. Thank you for watching Conspiracy Theories. We are here with a new episode every Wednesday. For more information on Operation Highjump, secret Nazi bases and the theories that surround them, we recommend checking out the Polar Record research paper, Hitler's Antarctic the Myth and the Reality by Colin Summerhays and Peter Beeching. Among the many sources we found. Be sure to check us out on Instagram heconspiracypod, and if you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Until next time, Remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Connor Sampson, engineered by Sam Amezquah, and video edited and sound designed by Ryan Contra. Special thanks to Nick Johnson, Paige Ransberry, Andrew Byrne and Jonathan Ratliff. I'm your host, Carter Roy.