Ever since it achieved unification in 1871, Germany craved colonies as a matter of national pride. But by the late nineteenth century, most of the ‘uncivilised world’ was already carved up by established European powers. In an eleventh-hour effort, the German Empire acquired a few scraps of Africa and Asia – mainly wild or empty lands nobody else wanted. And even this colonial empire, with the bits few and far between, was taken away after Germany’s defeat in the First World War.
The revanchist mood that swept the Nazis into power in the early nineteen thirties also revived Germany’s by now totally outdated colonial ambitions. Those were turned to the last great area of the globe that was not yet colonized: Antarctica - big, cold and empty. At the beginning of 1939, a Nazi expedition explored a hitherto uncharted area of the Antarctic. By foot and plane, the Nazis surveyed an area between latitudes 69°10’ S and 76°30’ S and longitudes 11°30 W and 20°00’ E, totalling 600.000 sq. km. They called it Neuschwabenland, or New Swabia.
In 1952, the government of the new Federal Republic of Germany exercised its right, based on the Nazi exploration, to name geographical features in the area. The German polar research station ‘Georg von Neumayer’ is located in what was formerly known as Neuschwabenland. Thus endeth the official version.
A plethora of rumours maintains that Neuschwabenland wasn’t abandoned by the Nazis after the first expedition. In fact, a few crew members of the ‘Schwabenland’ stated that they made several trips to the Nazis’ Antarctic colony, transporting military equipment and heavy tools for mining and tunneling. This must be the origin of the legend that several submarines filled with top-level Nazis fled Europe as the war was ending, finding refuge in a secret network of underground bunkers in Neuschwabenland.
Some stories even maintain that this little Nazi hideaway is the real origin of UFOs (or rather Reichsflugscheiben) – as they really are a German invention rather than an extraterrestrial one.
Also see this documentary (sit it out, it gets better to the end)