New Swabia

New Swabia (Norwegian and German: Neuschwabenland) was an area of Antarctica explored, with the intention to claim it, by Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1939, within the Norwegian territorial claim of Queen Maud Land. The region was named after the expedition's ship, Schwabenland, itself named after the German region of Swabia. Although the name "New Swabia" is occasionally mentioned in historical contexts, it is not an officially recognized cartographic name in modern use. The area is now part of Queen Maud Land, governed under the Antarctic Treaty System.
Like many other countries, Germany sent expeditions to the Antarctic region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of which were scientific. The late 19th century expeditions to the Southern Ocean, South Georgia, the Kerguelen Islands, and the Crozet Islands were astronomical, meteorological, and hydrological, mostly in close collaboration with scientific teams from other countries. As the 19th century ended, Germany began to focus on Antarctica.
The first German expedition to Antarctica was the Gauss expedition from 1901 to 1903. Led by Arctic veteran and geology professor Erich von Drygalski, this was the second expedition to use a hot-air balloon in Antarctica. It also found and named Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. The second German Antarctic expedition (1911–1912) was led by Wilhelm Filchner with a goal of crossing Antarctica to learn if it was one piece of land. As happened with other such early attempts, the crossing failed before it even began. The expedition discovered and named the Luitpold Coast and the Filchner Ice Shelf. A German whaling fleet was put to sea in 1937 and, upon its successful return in early 1938, plans for a third German Antarctic expedition were drawn up.
The third German Antarctic Expedition (1938–1939) was led by arctic veteran Alfred Ritscher (1879–1963), a captain in the German Navy. The main purpose was to find an area in Antarctica for a German whaling station, as a way to increase Germany's production of fat. Whale oil was then the most important raw material for the production of margarine and soap in Germany and the country was the second largest purchaser of Norwegian whale oil, importing some 200,000 metric tonnes annually. Besides the disadvantage of being dependent on imports, it was thought that Germany would soon be at war, which was considered to put too much strain on Germany's foreign currency reserves. In addition, there was a secret military assignment to explore the islands of Trindade and Martim Vaz for use as potential future naval bases.
On 17 December 1938, the secret New Swabia Expedition with 82 crew members left Hamburg for Antarctica aboard MS Schwabenland (a freighter built in 1925 and renamed in 1934 after the Swabia region in southern Germany) which could also carry and catapult aircraft. On 19 January 1939, the ship arrived at the Princess Martha Coast, in an area which had been claimed, as the expedition was already underway, by Norway as Queen Maud Land, and began charting the region. Naming the area Neu-Schwabenland after the ship, meanwhile the ship served as expedition base. Seven photographic survey flights were made by the ship's two Dornier Wal seaplanes named Passat and Boreas. About a dozen 1.2-meter (3.9 ft)-long aluminum darts, with 30-centimeter (12 in) steel cones and three upper stabilizer wings embossed with swastikas, were supposed to be airdropped onto the ice at turning points of the flight polygons (these darts had been tested on the Pasterze glacier in Austria before the expedition). According to expedition members, these darts were only dropped once, all together. Eight more flights were made to areas of keen interest, and on these trips some of the photos were taken with colour film by the geologist Ernst Herrmann. Altogether they flew over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers and took more than 16,000 aerial photographs, some of which were published after the war by Ritscher. The ice-free Schirmacher Oasis, which now hosts the Maitri and Novolazarevskaya research stations, was spotted from the air by Richard Heinrich Schirmacher (who named it after himself) shortly before Schwabenland left the Antarctic coast on 6 February 1939.
On its return trip to Germany, the expedition made oceanographic studies near Bouvet Island and Fernando de Noronha, arriving back in Hamburg on 11 April 1939. Meanwhile, the Norwegian government had learned about the expedition through the director of the NSIU, Adolf Hoel, who heard of the news by chance, from Ernst Hermann's wife. Furthermore the Norwegian government had received reports from whalers along the coast of Queen Maud Land.
Germany never advanced any territorial claims to the region.
Because the area was first explored by a German expedition, the name Neuschwabenland (New Swabia) is still used for the region on some maps, as are many of the German names given to its geographic features. Some geographic features mapped by the expedition were not named until the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition (NBSAE) (1949–1952), led by John Schjelderup Giæver. Others were not named until they were remapped from aerial photographs taken by the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition (1958–1959).
The exact location of objects in italics could not yet be determined because the position was given too imprecisely in the expedition report due to navigation problems with the aircraft, and most of the aerial photographs that would have allowed identification were lost during World War II. The names of objects that could be clearly located were used in the Norwegian translation of the topographical map Dronning Maud Land 1:250,000 published by the Norwegian Polar Institute in 1966.
Germany made no formal territorial claims to New Swabia. No whaling station or other lasting bases were built there by Germany, and no permanent presence was established until the Georg von Neumayer Station, a research facility, was opened in 1981. Germany's current Neumayer Station III is also located in the region.
Although New Swabia is occasionally mentioned in historical contexts, it is not an officially recognized cartographic designation today. The region is part of Queen Maud Land, administered by Norway as a dependent territory under the Antarctic Treaty System, and overseen by the Polar Affairs Department of the Ministry of Justice and the Police.
Neuschwabenland has been the subject of conspiracy theories for decades, some of them related to Nazi UFO claims. Most assert that, in the wake of the German expedition of 1938–39, a huge military base was built there. After the war, high-ranking Nazis, scientists, and elite military units are claimed to have survived there. The US and UK have supposedly been trying to conquer the area for decades, and to have used nuclear weapons in this effort. Proponents claim the base is sustained by hot springs providing energy and warmth.
The WDR radio play Neuschwabenland-Symphonie from 2012 takes up the conspiracy theories.
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