Germanic soul attitudes on the classical Icelandic soil uninfluenced by the overpowerful grasp of western civilization. In only a few years has the natural look of the country, which since the Ur-time has remained mostly untouched in stone and meadow, in desert and untamed mountain torrents, revealed its open countenance to man and has fundamentally changed from mountainsides and rock slabs to manicured lawns, nurseries and pasture grounds, almost as far from Reykjavik as the barren coast section, a feat accomplished by the hand of man; the city itself expands with almost American speed as roadways and bridges, power stations and factories emerge and the density of the traffic in Reykjavik corresponds with that of a European city.
Dr Schweizer goes on to bemoan the loss of ancient agricultural techniques such as forging, wood-carving, spinning, weaving and dyeing; along with the forgetting of myths and legends and the lack of belief in a ‘transcendent nature’. After describing the lamentable rise of materialism that drew people from rural areas to the city (and gave an unfavourable impression to good German visitors!), the doctor continues:
Every year that we wait quietly means damage to a number of objects, and other objects become ruined for camera and film due to newfangled public buildings in the modern style. For the work in question only the summer is appropriate, that is, the months of June through August. Furthermore, one must reckon that occasionally several rainy days can occur, delaying thereby certain photographic work. The ship connections are such that it is perhaps only possible to go to and from the Continent once a week.
All this means a minimum period of from 5–6 weeks for the framework of the trip.
The possible tasks of an Iceland research trip with a cultural knowledge mission are greatly variegated. Therefore it remains for us to select only the most immediate and most realizable. A variety of other tasks … should be considered as additional assignments.
Thus the recording of human images (race-measurements) and the investigation of museum treasures are considered to be additional assignments. (37)
As Levenda wryly observes, it is not clear how the people of Iceland would have reacted to the taking of ‘race measurements’ or, for that matter, the ‘investigation of museum treasures’, which almost certainly would not have remained in the museums for very long!
German interest in Antarctic exploration goes back to 1873, when Eduard Dallman mounted an expedition in his steamship Gronland on behalf of the newly founded German Society of Polar Research. Less than 60 years later, the Swiss explorer Wilhelm Filchner, who had already led an expedition to Tibet in 1903-05, planned to lead two expeditions to Antarctica with the intention of determining if the continent was a single piece of land. Filchner’s plans called for two ships, one to enter the Weddell Sea and one to enter the Ross Sea. Two groups would then embark on a land journey and attempt to meet at the centre of the continent. This plan, however, proved too expensive, and so a single ship, the Deutschland, was used. The Deutschland was a Norwegian ship specifically designed for work in polar regions, and was acquired with the help of Ernest Shackleton, Otto Nordenskjold and Fridtjof Nansen. The expedition reached the Weddell Sea in December 1911. Another expedition was mounted in 1925 with the polar expedition ship Meteor under the command of Dr Albert Merz.
In the years running up to the Second World War, Germany wanted a foothold in Antarctica, both for the propaganda value of demonstrating the power of the Third Reich and also because of the territory’s strategic significance in the South Atlantic. On 17 December 1938, an expedition was despatched under the command of Captain Alfred Ritscher to the South Atlantic coast of Antarctica and arrived there on 19 January 1939. The expedition’s ship was the Schwabenland, an aircraft carrier that had been used since 1934 for transatlantic mail delivery. The Schwabenland, which had been prepared for the expedition in the Hamburg shipyards at a cost of one million Reichsmarks, was equipped with two Dornier seaplanes, the Passat and the Boreas, which were launched from its flight deck by steam catapults and which made fifteen flights over the territory which Norwegian explorers had named Queen Maud Land. The aircraft covered approximately 600,000 square kilometres, took more than 11,000 photographs of the Princess Astrid and Princess Martha coasts of western Queen Maud Land, and dropped several thousand drop-flags (metal poles with swastikas). The area was claimed for the Third Reich, and was renamed Neu Schwabenland.
Perhaps the most surprising discovery made by this expedition was a number of large, ice-free areas, containing lakes and sparse vegetation. The expedition geologists suggested that this might have been due to underground heat sources.
In mid-February 1939, the Schwabenland left Antarctica and returned to Hamburg. Ritscher was surprised at the findings of the expedition, particularly the ice-free areas, and immediately began to plan another journey upon his arrival home. These plans, however, were apparently abandoned with the outbreak of war.
At this point, orthodox history gives way to strange rumours and speculations regarding the true reason for the Third Reich’s interest in Antarctica. It has been suggested, for instance, that the 1938-39 expedition had been to look for a suitable ice-free region on the continent that could be used for a secret Nazi base after the war. According to the novelist and UFO researcher W. A. Harbinson: Throughout the war, the Germans sent ships and aircraft to Neu Schwabenland with enough equipment and manpower (much of it slave labour from the concentration camps) to build massive complexes under the ice or in well-hidden ice-free areas. At the close of the war selected Nazi scientists and SS troops fled to Antarctica …’ (38)
Such speculations properly belong to the field known as ‘Nazi survival’, which we will discuss in depth in the final chapter of this book. Therefore, let us place them aside and turn our attention to another important element in the concept of a lost Aryan homeland: a symbol that once signified good fortune but was irreparably corrupted by the Nazis, and which now signifies nothing but terror and death.
In antiquity, the swastika was a universal symbol, being used from the Bronze Age onwards on objects of every kind. The word ‘swastika’ comes from the Sanskrit: su (Greek eu, meaning ‘good’), asti (Greek esto, meaning ‘to be’) and the suffix ka. (39) The symbol means ‘good luck’ (the Sanskrit-Tibetan word Swasti means ‘may it be auspicious’). According to Joscelyn Godwin, the shape of the swastika derives from the constellation Arktos, also known as the Great Bear, the Plough and the Big Dipper. To the observer in the Northern Hemisphere, this constellation appears to rotate around Polaris, the Pole Star (an effect caused by the rotation of the Earth). If the positions of Arktos in relation to Polaris are represented in pictorial form (corresponding to the four seasons), the result is highly suggestive of a swastika; in 4000 BC, they were identical to the symbol. It is for this reason that the swastika (aside from denoting good fortune) has been used to represent the Pole. (40)
The swastika gained in importance in European culture in the nineteenth century, primarily in the fields of comparative ethnology and Oriental studies. The absence of the symbol from Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria and Phoenicia led the ethnologists to believe that the swastika was an Aryan sun-symbol. (41) Madame Blavatsky saw the significance of the symbol, and incorporated it into the seal of the Theosophical Society to signify the harmony of universal movement. According to Godwin: ‘So innocent were the “good luck” associations of the swastika that during World War I, it was used as the emblem of the British War Savings Scheme, appearing on coupons and stamps.’ (42)
The swastika appears in two forms: left-handed and right-handed. However, confusion quickly arises when one is faced with the question of how to define ‘left’ and ‘right’ with regard to this symbol. Some occultists and historians favour a definition based on the direction taken by the arms as they extend outward from the centre; while others prefer to define left’ and ‘right’ in terms of the apparent direction of rotation. The confusion arises from the fact that a swastika whose arms proceed to the left appears to be rotating to the right, and vice versa.
Each swastika variant has been taken to mean different things by writers on the occult, such as the Frenchman Andre Brissaud who says that the counter-clockwise-spinning swastika represents the rotation of the Earth on its axis and is the ‘Wheel of the Golden Sun’, symbolising creation, evolution and fertility. The clockwise- spinning swastika is, according to Brissaud, the ‘Wheel of the Black Sun’, representing man’s quest for power in opposition to Heaven. (43) The Chilean diplomat, esotericist and Hitler apologist Miguel Serrano (b. 1917), whom we shall meet again in the final chapter, has another explanation of the left-and right-handed swastikas: the left- handed (clockwise-turning) symbol represents the migration of the ancient Aryan Race from its homeland at the North Pole, while the right-handed (counter-clockwise-turning) symbol — the one used by the Nazis — represents the destiny of the Aryans to return to their spiritual centre at the South Pole. (44)
