The Third Reich in Antarctica: the German Antarctic Expedition, 1938-39

The Third Reich in Antarctica: the German Antarctic Expedition, 1938-39
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 286
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1720918899
ISBN-13 : 9781720918899
Rating : 4/5 (899 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Third Reich in Antarctica: the German Antarctic Expedition, 1938-39 by : Colin Summerhayes

Download or read book The Third Reich in Antarctica: the German Antarctic Expedition, 1938-39 written by Colin Summerhayes and published by . This book was released on 2012-12-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


The Third Reich in Antarctica: the German Antarctic Expedition, 1938-39 Related Books

The Third Reich in Antarctica: the German Antarctic Expedition, 1938-39
Language: en
Pages: 286
Authors: Colin Summerhayes
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-12-15 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

The origins of the Third German Antarctic Expedition lie in a unique combination of the aspirations of German scientists to contribute to exploring and understa
Germans in the Antarctic
Language: en
Pages: 290
Authors: Cornelia Lüdecke
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-02-08 - Publisher: Springer Nature

GET EBOOK

While science was usually at the forefront of German Antarctic expeditions, research into the Southern Polar region always had a political or economic component
Hitler's Antarctic Base: the Myth and the Reality
Language: en
Pages: 26
Authors: Colin Summerhayes
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-05 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

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 d
Hitler's Monsters
Language: en
Pages: 411
Authors: Eric Kurlander
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-06-06 - Publisher: Yale University Press

GET EBOOK

“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—
The Hitler Conspiracies
Language: en
Pages: 289
Authors: Richard J. Evans
Categories: HISTORY
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

The Hitler Conspiracies focuses on five of the most enduring conspiracy theories involving the Nazi period, including those that accompanied and even buttressed