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Chapter 14: THE ANTARCTIC SHANGRI-LA
1 John Toland, Adolf Hitler, Volume II, p. 1002. Adolf Hitler was as mythical in death as he was brutal and large in life. Because of the curious circumstances of his suicide, and the inability of the wartime Allied powers to cooperate on an extensive and through proof that he did die, a whole mythos of his survival grew up after the war, and continued for some many years afterward. Betrayed even by Himmler himself, who had secretly begun peace negotiations with the western Allies through t h e Swedish government, and with one time designated "Deputy Fuhrer" and former party chief Rudolf Hess in a British prison cell, and his designated replacement Reichsmarschall Goring claiming leadership in the chaos of the collapsing Reich to the quick denunciation by Hitler for treason, the Fuhrer relinquished power before his suicide to an unlikely candidate, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, who for a brief period of little more than a week, was Nazi Germany's second dictator before he ordered its armed forces to surrender. The selection of Donitz by Hitler is, for our purposes here, significant, for Donitz was in an usual position to coordinate the escape of fleeing Nazis to South America and other places via the new type XXI U-boats just entering service. But before proceeding to that story, it is worth looking at the Hitler and various other Nazi survival myths in a broad overview, in order to have a basis on which to distinguish possible fact from deliberate myth and misinformation. For these various Nazi survival myths and legends, Hitler's survival is not so much a fact, as a grotesque parody of an icon, a disturbing possibility that hovers over every version. For example, the standard view of Hitler committing suicide on April 10, 1945, is itself not without its own occult significance, for this is the date of the eve of a "witches' sabbath," the Walpurgisnacht. Moreover, in mediaeval Cathar doctrine - a doctrine well-studied by the SS Ahnenerbe - suicide (the endura) was a permissible act, if done in concert with another, with a soul mate. Hitler and his newly married mistress of many years, Eva (Braun) Hitler, both committed suicide together. These non-standard Hitler and Nazi survival myths run the whole spectrum, from fanciful and implausible stories of underground bases in the Canadian Arctic, or on Antarctica itself armed with some of the exotic weaponry described in the previous chapter, to more "mundane" and plausible stories of Nazi colonies in South America or secret weather stations and commando teams operating in Greenland during the war, to the well-known and best documented case, that of Operation Paperclip, America's wholesale importation of Nazi scientists and doctors after World War Two to assist the United States in continued covert development and research on a whole host of black projects. In one rather interesting version of the Hitler survival myth, he and other Nazi bigwigs underwent plastic surgery before the end of the war, and were spirited off to Antarctica or South America. One version of this myth even has an elderly Hitler ministering to the poor as a Catholic priest! is the thesis of the next two chapters that there is some truth to some of these Nazi survival myths, excluding the Hitler survival myth, and that all need to be viewed against the backdrop of the Nazis' own plans for postwar survival and continuance under a variety of fronts, organizations, or in concert with new "host" governments such as the United States or the various governments of Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In this and the succeeding chapter, we will proceed by examining the more audacious survival myths, through some accounts of South American colonies, to Paperclip, and finally, to Bormann's top secret plan for postwar survival and economic resurgence. What will emerge from this examination is a disturbing picture that suggests deliberate Nazi misinformation in the immediate postwar period, and a deliberate attempt to disguise ongoing projects inside the black projects of the new "host" governments and corporations. A slight, though discernible connection emerges that substantiates the thesis of part one of this book, namely, that the secret weapons think tank, the Kammlerstab, survived the war more or less intact, and continued its work in a variety of host countries, most particularly in the United Kingdom and even more so in the United States, either in concert with them, and sometimes independently of them. Then in the remaining chapters of this book, we shall examine two well-known UFO "crash and recovery" cases for the indications that they may have been the recoveries of something truly extraordinary, but not extra-terrestrial. In this examination, it is crucial to bear in mind all the information of the preceding part of this book, for they have all led up to it.
A. The Antarctic Survival Myth Of all the high-ranking German military leaders, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz is the most often overlooked, and yet he may have been the most crucial for the story of Nazi survival and continued secret weapons research. After all, the secret preparations and voyage of the U-234 to Japan, with its precious cargo of enriched uranium and infrared fuses, could not likely have taken place without his express knowledge, participation, and authorization. Thus, outside Kammler's "think tank", he was perhaps the one military leader of a conventional service arm to know the full extent of Nazi Germany's actual advances in atom bomb and other nuclear research. Best known for his orchestration of the Nazi U-boat campaign against British, Canadian, and American shipping, his alleged role in the various survival myths is little known outside a small circle of UFOlogy and World War Two researchers. And of all the Nazi military leaders, his selection by Adolf Hitler as the second Fuhrer of the Third Reich is, at best, problematical, unless viewed in the light of these late war technology transfers and escaping Nazis. Why would Hitler have chosen Donitz, a World War One veteran of the High Seas Fleet of Kaiser Wilhelm, with the Kriegsmarine 's well-known imperialist culture and leanings that he represented, to be his successor? A conventional answer is afforded by the circumstances outlined above: betrayed on all sides - by Himmler and Goring themselves - a desperate Hitler reached out to what he thought was the most loyal conventional military service arm of the Wehrmacht, the Navy. But the survival mythos contributes a very different perspective from which to view Hitler's possible motivations. Donitz himself does nothing to allay those suspicions, either during or immediately after the war. According to Henry Stevens, who has almost single-handedly investigated every lead - no matter how implausible the detail - of the Nazi UFO and survival legends, Donitz on more than one occasion alluded to the Navy's role in exotic secret weapons research and in the construction of very secret bases far from the Reich homeland. In 1943, the Grand Admiral is reported to have stated that,
Strange language for an admiral well-known for cold calculation in military strategy and tactics, and not well-known to be inclined to mystical statements. Then again, in 1944, the Grand Admiral doled out a little more information:
But it was Donitz's almost insane remarks at Nuremberg that seemed to point clearly to one of the two polar regions as the "site" for these "plans". At Nuremberg he boasted of "an invulnerable fortress, a paradise-like oasis in the middle of eternal ice."4 2 Henry Stevens, The Last Battalion and German Arctic, Antarctic, and Andean Bases (Gorman, California: The German Research Project, 1997), p. 2, citing Col. Howard A. Buechner and Capt. Wilhelm Bernhardt, Hitler's Ashes (Metarie, Louisiana: Thunderbird Press Inc.), p. 1. 3 Ibid., p. 2, citing Buechner and Bernhardt, pp. 2-3. 4 Ibid., citing Willibald Mattern, UFOs Unbekannte Flugobjekt? Letzte Geheimwaffe des Dritten Reiches? (Toronto: Samisdat Publisher, No date), p. 38. Whatever the trustworthiness of Steven's sources, these statements, plus the unusual behavior of some U-boats at the end of the war, and the Germans' well-publicized pre-war Antarctic scientific expedition, certainly seemed to spur the United States into a sudden and intense postwar military interest in Antarctica. Again, since the basic facts are well-known to but a small circle of World War Two and UFOlogy researchers, it is worth recalling them in some detail.
5 Ibid., p. 48, citing Buechner, pp. 175-176. When the U-530 and U-977 surrendered so late after the European War's end, Allied intelligence was more than a little concerned, and dispatched agents to interrogate the German officers. They certainly did not believe that the German captains had taken their ships on a South Atlantic excursion of three to four months just to surrender to the Argentines, as Captain Schaeffer of the U-977 and Captain Wermoutt of the U-530 actually, and apparently in all seriousness, stated. Stevens summarizes the Allies' real concern - Nazi survival in no uncertain terms:
6 Ibid., p. 51, citing Buechner, p. 232. A glimpse into this extraordinary mission and the high importance afforded by the German Navy High Command (the Oberkommando der KriegsMarine or OKM) to it can perhaps be afforded by a glance of the alleged performance characteristics of the U-530. In the spring of 1945, an old fashioned type U-boat with the number 530 was dry-docked after being damaged by a freighter which had rammed it. As was typical for the Kriegsmarine, a new submarine, probably a type XXI or further development of it, was launched at approximately the same time, and was given the same service number, an obvious ploy to confuse Allied military intelligence. But why was the U-boat that actually sailed to the South Atlantic and that later surrendered to Argentina probably a type XXI or some derivative? Because Captain Wilhelm Bernhardt, a pen name of an actual crew member of Captain Wermoutt's U-530, let out a significant piece of information; he stated that her submerged speed was approximately 30 knots, an unheard of speed for a submerged submarine in that day. The only submarines in service in any navy in the world capable of that performance at that time were the German type XXI U-boats.  The type XXI U-boat, like most U-boats in the German Navy by that time, was fitted with the special snorkel device that allowed its main diesel engines to operate while submerged underwater. It is quite possible that these newer Type XXI U-boats also had the newer Schnorkels fitted with the special anti-radar coatings examined in the previous part of this book. But the Type XXI was also outfitted with the special "Walther" turbine, an underwater "jet" device that utilized hydrogen peroxide that allowed great underwater cruising speeds. In effect, these turbines were "silent" engines allowing great underwater speeds for limited durations of time. Thus, the Type XXI had brought submarine technology and warfare to a new and sophisticated level by the war's end. But would even the Type XXI have been able to brave the North and then South Atlantic Oceans, by that point in the war all but Allied lakes? There is some indication that not only were they successful in doing so, but wildly so. In the previous part of this book mention was made of special new guidance systems the Germans had adapted to missiles, and torpedoes. These systems included wire-guidance, as well as magnetic proximity fuses. Stevens reports that on May 2, 1945, a flotilla of U-boats, many of them Type XXIs, carefully husbanded by Donitz at Kristiansand fjord in Norway, departed in a wolf pack for Iceland, making the traditional run through the straits between Iceland and Greenland. What happened next has been deleted from what passes as history, at least in the countries of the former Allied Powers. What happened was the last great sea battle of the Atlantic. The German U-boat convoy ran straight into an Allied naval battle formation.7 The result was stunning. Using the new torpedoes... the Allied ships were totally annihilated. Apparently the Allies never quite realized what they had run into. Our only third-party report of the event was an article in a South American newspaper which learned of the event. A quote from the only survivor of the attack is often quoted by the underground German writers although this writer has not seen a copy of the newspaper:
The British consistently maintained a flotilla of destroyers, accompanied occasionally by heavier units of light and heavy cruisers, on station in these straits throughout the war. This was reportedly carried in "El Mercurio", Santiago, Chile, and "Der Weg" a paper published by exiled Germans living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.8 The use of new torpedoes -whether wire-guided, acoustic-seeking, or magnetic proximity-fused9 - leads once again back to Karnnler's "think tank" secret weapons empire. These torpedoes, plus the high-submersible speeds and "proto-stealth" capabilities of the Type XXI U-boats would have been more than a match for the British destroyers on station between Iceland and Greenland. But as we have previously noted, the Coler coil came to the quick attention of the Kriegsmarine in the early days of the Third Reich, which immediately classified it at the highest level, and funded further research. It is not hard to understand the Kriegsmarine's interest in the Coler device. It is the perfect generator for submarine use. It produces no exhaust and burns no fuel. It could be linked directly to existing electric-drive vessels and run under water indefinitely. Did the Germans actually accomplish this? The underground German writers say that this indeed happened. This theme runs throughout the writing of Bergmann whose specialty is the link between German submarines and German flying saucers.10 This is an incredible, if not outlandish, claim. Yet it is worth pondering for a moment. The Coler devices, developed in 1933,11 and their unusual ability to transduce electrical power out of something were known to the Germans fully six years before the war had even started, and were developed in secret for twelve years after that (and then presumably by the British for another twenty three years after that!). We do not know, of course, nor is the British Government saying (if indeed it knows), to what state the Germans brought this device, but whatever the state, they bad fully twelve years in which to do it. 8 Stevens, op. cit., p. 28, citing Mattern,
p, 82. But whether perfected or not, notice what else is being implied by the assertion that it was brought to some state of praetieal use on submarines: the Germans were deliberately after a method of submarine propulsion that would have allowed indefinite submerged cruising, much as a modern nuclear submarine, but by a device much simpler in design and construction, and presumably, much less risky in operation Whether or not the Germans were able to bring it to a state of practical use is thus, in one sense, immaterial, since t h e classification of the device alone indicates the nature of their interest. In any case, the odd circumstances of the late-surrendering U- boats, not to mention the alleged naval debacle suffered by the British so late in the war when everything seemed - from a naval and military standpoint - so secure and safe, focused Allied and particularly American eyes quite quickly and forcefully on Antarctica.12 Whatever the Allies learned, there was a sudden, intense interest in Antarctica. This interest was so strong that in 1946, as Allied troop were returning home from the War and all thoughts were turned to peacetime pursuits, the United States Government, under President Harry Truman, found it absolutely imperative that a full military expedition be mounted against Antarctica. This campaign was called Operation Highjump.13 12 It goes without saying that the high priority that the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee placed on recovering a Coler device and its inventor after the war tends to corroborate the notion that the British had learned the hard way that it had been brought to some state of practical use for submarine propulsion. 13 Stevens, op. cit., p. 51. While the operation was billed in American newspapers, magazines and even the occasional newsreel as a mapping expedition, its actual military character is easily seen from a glance at its composition. Commanded by America's premier polar explorer, Admiral Byrd, the flotilla included an aircraft escort carrier (the Philippines Sea), two seaplane carriers (the Pine Island and Curritich), two destroyers (the Brownsen and Henderson), two escort ships (Yankee and Merrick), two fueling ships (Canister and Capacan), and a submarine (the Sennet). Additionally, four thousand troops equipped with helicopters, reliable fixed wing DC- 3s, and a specially designed armored tracked vehicle were also at the Admiral's command.14 Outfitted for a stay of eight months, the expedition encircled the German claimed territory of Neuschwabenland (New Schwabialand), Admiral Byrd stationing the naval vessels off the coast, and then advanced the ground troops and aerial reconnaissance from the pole toward the German territory. Allegedly the German "base" was quickly found, overflown, and either an American flag, or a bomb, depending on the version of the story, was dropped on the position. In any case, the four escort craft accompanying the scout aircraft were lost without a trace. This single event" throws the whole Highjump exercise into a curious light, for,
Byrd was returned to Washington DC, debriefed, and his personal and operational logs from the mission were seized and remain classified to this day, fueling an endless stream of rumors and conspiracy theories. But the expedition, in keeping with its cover as a mapping expedition perhaps, was composed also of small contingents of news media and reporters from other countries, one of which was Chile. A reporter working for the Chilean El Mercurio in Santiago, one Lee van Atta, accompanied Admiral Byrd, who "made some astounding statements, all dutifully recorded" and reported by van Atta, and dutifully ignored in the American press.16
14 Ibid.., p. 52. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 53. 17 Ibid.  At that time in history, of course, there was only one nation that had undertaken anything like an extensive exploration of the southern polar continent: Nazi Germany.
B. The Neuschwabenland Expedition In late 1938 the Germans undertook an expedition to Antarctica, specially outfitting a seaplane carrier, the Schwabenland for the purpose, and placing it under the command of one of Germany's most experienced polar navigators. At a cost of some millions of Reichsmarks, the expedition was under the personal direction and mentorship of none other than Luftwaffe chief, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring,18 which leaves one to wonder what possible purpose Goring would have in sponsoring such an expedition. That it was military in nature seems beyond doubt, for the Nazis spared no effort to outfit the expedition as thoroughly as possible. New canning techniques were invented for the food needed on the voyage from and back to Germany, and new clothing was designed, including allegedly a "grey almost bullet proof seamless and metallic appearing suit...made of whale skin." 19 The inspiration for the expedition may have had hidden occult motivations as well, for the occult Thulegesellschaft or Thule Society subscribed to a Nordic Atlantis hidden beneath the polar ice, whence sprang, so the legend goes, the Germanic race.20 In any case, small teams of specially selected biologists and other scientists accompanied the expedition to run laboratory experiments on board the refurbished Schwabenland.21 18 It is also to be noted that apparently the then Deputy Fuhrer and Party chief, Rudolf Hess, was also privy to whatever secret purpose and findings this expedition had. Some people allege that this was in part a hidden motivation tor Hess's inexplicable flight to Great Britain in 1941 to conduct secret "peace" negotiations with representatives of the British Fascist movement. 19 Ibid., p. 3, citing Christoph Friedrich, Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions (Toronto: Samisdat Publishers, No date), p. 21. 20 This fact would also place the expedition within the brief of the SS Ahnenerbedienst. 21 The expedition is the subject of a fascinating novel by William Dietrich called Ice Reich (Time Warner, 1998). Dietrich's thesis is that the Germans were after unknown microbial and bacteriological life forms that were frozen in the ice and that could be transformed into biological weapons. The Germans chose the region of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, an area of the continent claimed by Denmark. In blatant disregard for international law, the Nazis overflew the entire area, dropping thousands of little swastika flags on the region with little spikes to embed them in the ice, and claimed it for Germany, renaming the region Neuschwabenland. But they did more than just fly and drop flags. The German pilots extensively photographed the region, and reported mountain ranges in excess of 12,000 feet altitude, rocky crags projecting above the fields of ice. But most amazingly, they allegedly found ice-free ponds, heated geothermally, in which grew various unknown species of algae. They also discovered the southern tip of the fault line that runs from New Zealand, through Neuschwabenland, and up the Atlantic Ocean, the famous Atlantic "trench". The Germans concluded that such features might indicate the presence of rocky caverns on the continent, heated geothermally, the perfect place for a hidden base in the world's most isolated, desolate, and inaccessible wilderness.22 Most intriguingly, the scientists aboard the Schwabenland were not idle in analyzing the potential foodstuffs of the continent:
Clearly, if these allegations are true, then the Germans were preparing for a relatively large and permanent presence on there continent. 22 Stevens, op. cit., p. 4. 23 Ibid., citing Friedrich, p. 87. Then, via an unusual zigzagging route between Africa and South America - itself one of the intriguing mysteries of the expedition - the Schwabenland returned to Germany, reaching port on April 10, 1939.24 Goering presented the expedition members with written medals and commemorations. Then, all further mention of the expedition in the German - or any other press - ceased. 24 Stevens, op. cit., p. 4.   Goring's Commemorative Medal for the Antarctic Expedition So what do we have at this juncture?
All of this would seem to imply at a minimum that something was going on in Antarctica, and that someone in the United States Federal government was quite worried about it. Indeed, when the United States returned to Antarctica some twelve years later, it did so once again with force, this time, nuclear force, and once again, under the cover of an "international cooperative effort," the International Geophysical Year of 1957- 1958. This means that if there were indeed Germans on a secret base somewhere on that frozen continent, they had some twelve years to do whatever they were doing. In terms of the Nazi legend, supposedly they were busily perfecting their strange wartime research. In any case, as Henry Stevens points out, this period, from 1947 to 1957-58, is in fact the "golden age" of the flying saucer, encompassing the Kenneth Arnold sightings, the alleged Roswell UFO crash and recovery, to the famous "buzzing" of the Capital and White House by UFOs that supposedly made even the unflappable Harry Truman anxious. The famous 1952 Washington DC sightings prompted a nervous and unconvincing Pentagon press conference - the only one ever given by a general officer from the Pentagon - on the subject of UFOs.25 25 Ibid., p. 53. Stevens further speculates on the possible motivation for the UFO overflights of sensitive areas of Washington DC: "Was this overflight in retaliation for the Byrd overflight of the German base in Antarctica and designed to show the Americans they had no control over their own airspace?" (p. 55) Stevens offers no evidence for this speculation. I will offer my own speculations concerning a similar scenario in connection with my examination of the Majic-12 documents and the Roswell incident in chapter 16. But supposing Stevens is correct for the sake of argument, then suffice it to say that overflights of the American capital by Nazi flying saucers so long after the war's end would certainly have shaken the national security apparatus of the United States much more than overflights by apparently benign extraterrestrial ones, and the response would have been to clamp the lid down on government research of the phenomenon, exactly as happened, since the supposedly defeated enemy was not, if this is true, really defeated after all. Under the cover of the geophysical year, the United States again sent a naval task force to the Antarctic. The use of military force -including atomic weapons! -was "covered" by the ridiculous story that the USA and USSR, in a rare moment of nuclear cooperation during the height of the Cold War, were interested in seeing how much of the continent could be "recovered" for use by warming it with nuclear explosions! Accordingly, it would be necessary to explode a few small nuclear "devices" for above the continent to warm and melt the ice as a proof of concept!26 A Stevens aptly quips,
Three bombs were thus detonated at an altitude of approximately 300 miles above the target, one on August 27, 1958, one on August 30, 1958, and a third on September 6, 1958.28 If these bursts were indeed intended secretly against an actual target, then why so high? Stevens hypothesizes that they were to knock out any German equipment in the region by the strong electromagnetic pulse that results from a nuclear detonation. While this is a plausible explanation if the intention were to occupy the alleged base via a ground assault or assaults within the time frame of the bursts, no such contingent is known to have accompanied the small armada of two destroyers, two destroyer escorts, and a small aircraft carrier. 26 Ibid., p. 55. 27 Ibid., p. 57. 28 Ibid. Stevens also notes that these bursts may have something to do with the "ozone hole" over the South Pole and the US government's reluctance to discuss the idea or the events that may have caused it. Additionally, perhaps it is possible that one atom bomb from each of the world's then nuclear powers, the US, the USSR, and the UK, were used. However, as we shall see in a moment, this explanation does bear some weight in connection with the allegations of the capabilities of German bases at the other pole. With the Geophysical Year expedition of 1958's atomic detonations, the alleged German base on the Antarctic continent fades, the Germans themselves supposedly gradually evacuating it during the interim period from Byrd's expedition to the final coup de grace for more favorable climes in South America.29 There the case for Nazi survival and continued research becomes much stronger. But before we can turn to that, we must investigate the alleged German goings on at the other pole. 29 Ibid., p. 58.
C. Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Arctic Canada: The Other German Polar Survival Myth The Western Allies, the Russians, and the Germans all relied heavily on weather reports to plan and execute their campaigns, and for this purpose, accurate up-to-the-minute reporting on Arctic conditions was crucial. To this end it is not surprising to find the Germans in particular outfitting special commando units - usually Waffen SS - to operate independently in Spitzbergen Island north of Norway, in Greenland, and in Arctic Canada. Such teams were delivered to their operational areas via U-boat. Spitzbergen in particular seemed to trade hands between the British and the Germans, as each side mounted commando operations to destroy the other's weather stations and listening posts. On one such occasion, the most famous perhaps, the German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship to the Bismarck, sailed to the island where one such British station was operating, leveled her 15 inch heavy guns at it, and promptly dispatched it, no doubt to the complete shock and surprise of the British manning it. Other allegations have a secret German weather base and listening post operating in Franz Josef Land, the islands to the north of Finland and the Soviet Union.30 30 Ibid, p. 5. However, with the allegations of German bases in Greenland, one again enters the realm of the surreal. These bases were allegedly comparatively large, as were the contingents of Germans operating them. While they were supposedly known by the Greenlanders and occupying American forces, most efforts to find them ended in failure.31 One postwar German source places as many as three independent SS battle groups (Kamfgruppen) operating in Greenland, under the code name of Thulekampfgruppen (Thule battle groups). The connection to the occult interests of the Third Reich are once again in evidence. Predictably, these "Thule battle groups" become the subject of another series of survival legends, as former SS officers supposedly reported seeing U-boats loaded with rates designated "Thule 1 K" and so on departing Germany in the final days of the war.32 Sworn to secrecy by the SS, the "clear implication is that the 'Thule 1 K' is the Thule Kampfgruppe 1 and that it had "no intentions of surrender; and that there was still a mission to accomplish."33 The Americans, so the story goes, were unsuccessful in locating them bases for two reasons: the area was too large, and the bases were "like the German fortifications built in Neuschwabenland... tunneled deep underneath the glaciers of ice (into presumably solid rock) and that they were bored to a length of 2000 meters."34 This allegation is surely implausible, since the transport of sophisticated mining and boring equipment, let alone enough explosive, for such a task by U- boat would have been an enormous undertaking, one quite beyond the labor capabilities of small SS battle groups.35 31 Ibid., p. 6. 32 Ibid., p. 8. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., citing O. Bergmann, Deutsche Flugsheiben und U-Boote Uberwachen die Weltmeere, Hugin Gesellschaft fur politisch-philosophische Studien (Horstl, Germany: 1989), pp. 134, 137. 35 Consider the fact that the huge underground factories in Germany were built over several months by thousands of slave laborers working around the clock with the best available existing mining and tunneling technology. But this is not the end of the surreal aspects of the story. Should the bases have been detected, they were supposedly defended with exotic electromagnetic weapons, one of which had a short range, but that could cause the ignition of aircraft engines to fail completely. After the war, the Vienna Wiener Montag reported in its December 29, 1947 edition that Eskimos reported to American authorities that an SS battle group of fully 150 men had been encountered.36 Besides these allegations of large bases and battle groups and exotic weaponry, there is a similar account circulated by the distinctly pro-Nazi novelist Wilhelm Landig in his 1971 novel Gotzen gegen Thule, a novel he billed as "full of realities" (voller Wirklichkeiten), of a large German base in the Canadian Arctic, near the magnetic North pole. This base, he alleges, was serviced by the German military using special long-range aircraft and, of course, flying saucers! As if that were not enough, Landig maintains that these aircraft were not equipped with normal machine guns or cannon for their defensive weaponry, but utilized a Metallstrahl, essentially an electromagnetic "rail gun" used to propel tiny pellets with extreme velocity, a kind of hyper-velocity shotgun that would more than rip apart any Allied aircraft, and do so at great distances.37 All of these allegations would remain merely fanciful if it were not for the discovery by American UFOlogist William Lyne -himself definitely outside the "mainstream" of the UFOlogy community - of a piece of German equipment that, quite literally, he bought at a second-hand store in White Sands, New Mexico!38 The unusual thing about this piece of equipment was not only its circular central swastika - a clear reference to the occult Thulegesellschaft since that version of the swastika appeared on its emblem - but also its designation as a Peiltochterkompass, a "daughter compass." 36 Ibid. Again, the number 150 is realistic for a battle group, but quite below the labor requirements for the construction of such large bases. 37 Ibid., pp. 11-12. 38 Lyne is the author of a rather extraordinary book of UFOlogy - a field in which the extraordinary seems to be the norm - called Space Aliens from the Pentagon, the main theme of which is his adamant insistence that UFOs are entirely terrestrial and man-made, and being used to advance a fictitious "alien agenda" and psychological operations campaign. Lyne, notwithstanding the more often than not unbelievable aspects of his book, was, in addition to Stevens, one of the few UFOlogists to take the Nazi origins myth of UFOs seriously prior to the publication of Nick Cook's the Hunt for Zero Point. Investigating this strange piece of equipment further, Lyne concluded that it was no ordinary compass, since it appeared not to operate by any magnetic means, which might explain how it ended up in White Sands, New Mexico! Lyne and his mysterious compass even became the subject of an article in a local American newspaper. Why is Lyne's find so important to the allegations of Nazi bases in the Canadian Arctic that were being supplied by long range aircraft? Very simple. If there were ever any truth to the allegations of German bases in these heavily forested regions, then normal magnetic compasses would be of virtually no use for navigation purposes in the region, since standard compasses are notoriously inaccurate at the polar regions with solar energy cascading down and causing local disruptions of the magnetic field. Some other method, therefore, had to be found to orient aircraft for safe navigation. Landig alleges that this was done by means of a compass that oriented itself to the sun by reading polarized light, rather than magnetic field lines.39 Lyne therefore seems to have found some version of this compass in an area of America known for its secret research laboratories some twenty years or so after Landig's surreal allegations first appeared! But according to Landig there is even more to consider, for according to him the German base in the Canadian Arctic was actively researching and developing so-called "free energy" devices, devices that would tap the so-called "zero point energy" of quantum mechanics. In this connection, the research was allegedly carried out under the auspices of the SS Entwicklungstelle IV, or SS "Developmental Installation IV," an entity, if it existed at all, that would have fallen under the mission brief and jurisdiction of Kammler's SS Sonderkommando, for it was responsible for "research into making Germany independent of foreign energy sources."40 39 Stevens, op. cit., p. 12. 40 Ibid., p. 19.
 January 6, 1994 Albuquerque Journal North Article Featuring William Lyne and His Mysterious Nazi Compass So with Landig's fantastic allegations, we come full circle back to the exotic energy sources, the technologies, the occult, and the SS research being conducted by Nazi Germany. Therefore, before proceeding to examine more seriously substantiated instances of Nazi survival in the next chapter, it would be worthwhile to summarize the accumulated allegations and evidences of this and previous chapters:
What emerges from this list is disturbing indeed. Clearly, a prima facie case can be made that the Nazi leadership had invested significant resources in the investigation of any and all avenues to power, occult and otherwise, and to new sources of energy. And equally clearly, the Nazi leadership was willing to think "outside the box" and to go to any lengths - often quite literally - to research those matters. What also emerges from this list is a preoccupation with areas of physics, and areas of the globe, almost completely neglected - at least publicly - by the wartime Allies. Moreover, what also emerges is a disturbing sense, that maybe, just maybe, there was something to the survival myths after all, for one thing seems clear from the pattern of events after the war, particularly in respect to Antarctica: such myths were inevitably connected to the exotic research pursuits the Germans were conducting, and such myths seem clearly to have been the hidden motivation for American counter-strikes.
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