Adolf Hitler

One of the less known Antarctic expeditions is that of the Germans, aboard a ship called Schwabenland, were in the white continent between December 17, 1938 and April 12, 1939, a few months beforethe outbreak of the Second World War. This expedition visited the western part of the territory now known as Queen Maud Land (Fig. 1).
The issue arose from the German government's concern for thefuture of the national whaling industry. At that time, whaling was an important activity that supplied oil, lubricants, glycerin (to produce the nitroglycerin used in explosives), margarine and othernecessities (Lüdecke 2004: 75; Mills 2003: 552). Germany invested a lot in this industry and its whaling fleet consisted of fifty-seven hunters ships factory ships, which produced 492,532 barrels of oil inthe 1938 whaling season - 1939. The fleet operated somewhere near the coast of the Land Queen Maud, who was discovered by Norwegian whalers (Christensen 1935, 1939), but it is not yet officiallyknown by that name. This territory was claimed on behalf of Norway, but no official announcement by a royal proclamation was made (Mills 2003). The German government regretted not being in the samesituation with regard to the South Atlantic, where Britain imposed its right to charge fees for concessions higher whaling and imposed restrictions on this activity. Therefore, we planned a secretexpedition to reclaim an area of Antarctica to Germany and find there a suitable place for a base of German whaling fleet (Lüdecke 2004, Mills 2003).
The expedition was authorized by Herman Goering as part ofthe German plan of economic development for four years. Among the objectives was publicly admitted continuing scientific studies initiated earlier in the century by Erich von Drygalski, at about 90 °E, and by Wilhelm Filchner in the Weddell Sea.
But he also had some secret military objectives. On the return trip, the mission would investigate whether the isolated islands Trindade and Martin...