Nazi Secrets: An Occult Breach in the Fabric of History (5 page)

Vampir infrared device for night vision

The
Sarin Gas
was discovered in 1938 by two German scientists who were attempting to create a strong pesticide. In mid-1939, the formula for the agent was passed to the chemical warfare section of the German Army Weapons Office, which ordered that it be brought into mass production for wartime use. A number of pilot plants were built, and a high-production facility was still under construction by the time World War II ended. Although sarin could be incorporated into artillery shells, for some reason Germany decided not to use nerve agents against Allied targets too close to home. This gas was used with devastating effects in a Tokyo subway during the 1995 attack of the Aum Sect.

NAZI OCCULTISM

Nazi occultism is a concept where it is difficult to separate historical facts from post-war fantasies. The latter are numerous, especially from the ‘60s onward. Two books helped this surge in Nazi occultism: Pauwels and Bergier's The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear of Destiny (1972). After these, any book that tackled the Nazi occultism theme was sure enough to make strong sales, well above 50,000 copies for the worst among them.

The only researched academic book to have seriously studied this field is The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke). It links the late 19th century ariosophist theories to the Thule Society, and possibly to the very beginnings of the Nazi Party. The only proven aspects of Nazi occultism are Himmler's known interest in the matter and the researches he ordered.

It is nonetheless obviously true that the twelve years of the Nazi era are like a breach in the fabric of history. The Nazi standards and values may be seen as the archetype embodiment of an evil empire compared to our own civilization, but they are above all values from the Absolute Elsewhere, as Pauwels and Bergier put it rightfully in their best-seller.

At this stage, it is hence more than necessary to determine the real facts concerning Nazi researches, expeditions and beliefs before we can properly evaluate post-war fantasies and cheap Internet Nazi myths. Let’s stress, though, that these myths are still best-selling as many readers prefer anything but the truth as long as it thrills them like a good TV series would.

The Hollow Earth Theory

Although this theory is merely a notion which was dismissed by the scientific community as early as the late 18th century, it still has advocates today.

During the Nazi era, the Hollow Earth Theory had followers in Germany but not more than in any other Western country during that time. In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, telling us of an awe-inspiring voyage inside the earth by a ship that entered through an alleged hole in the South Pole; in 1871, Edward Bulwer-Lytton published his famous fiction called The Coming Race about some superior creatures, called Vril-ya, that dwelled in the subterranean world; in 1864 Jules Verne wrote of A Journey to the Center of the Earth where prehistory still existed; in 1922 Ferdinand Ossendowski mentioned in his Beasts, Men and Gods the existence of an underground kingdom, with Agarthi as their capital city ... the very residence of the King of the World.

According to the book written by Pauwels & Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians (1960), German scientists were testing life inside a hollow universe on Rugen Island of the Baltic Sea. They even tried to use infrared rays to detect British navy ships, since the alleged inverted curvature of the Earth would have permitted the monitoring of their whereabouts. One does not wonder anymore why it failed so miserably.

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.”