Secret Journey to Planet Serpo by Len Kasten Read Free Book Online

and August 17, 1945, respectively. U-1238 was scuttled by her crew off northern Patagonia, which is at the tip of South America, and was very likely en route to or from Antarctica. Wermuth and Schaeffer were intensely interrogated by both the United States and Great Britain before being released as civilians. It is very likely that information gathered in these interrogations triggered both Operation Taberin and Operation Highjump, although the British already had incriminating information of their own that they had not shared with their U.S. counterparts.
    OPERATION TABERIN
    According to James Robert, a British civil servant and World War II historian, in an article in the August 2005 edition of
Nexus Magazine
(vol. 12, no. 5), the Germans succeeded in building an underground base in the massive ice cave, using the discovered inlets for access. He claims that British soldiers from the secret Antarctic Maudheim Base found the entrance in late 1945 and
    followed the tunnel for miles, and eventually they came to a vast underground cavern that was abnormally warm; some of the scientists believed that it was warmed geothermally. In the huge cavern were underground lakes; however, the mystery deepened, as the cavern was lit artificially. The cavern proved so extensive that they had to split up, and that was when the real discoveries were made. The Nazis had constructed a huge base into the caverns and had even built docks for U-boats, and one was identified supposedly. Still, the deeper they traveled, the more strange visions they were greeted with. The survivor reported that “hangars for strange planes and excavations galore” had been documented.
    The Nexus article included a long-kept secret, firsthand account of what was called Operation Taberin II *11 in October 1945, by a former British SAS (Special Air Service) commando, who had participated in the raid and survived. *12 While Britain had several secret bases in and around Antarctica, the Maudheim base was the largest and was top secret because it was only about two hundred miles from the Muhlig-Hofmann Mountains, and it was from Maudheim that the attack was launched. During training for the operation, the agent was informed that Antarctica was Britain’s secret war. The British bases in Antarctica had been set up in anticipation of an eventual confrontation, after they had learned about the construction of the Nazi base in 1939. This information was revealed by three key Nazis who were captured by the British—Rudolph Hess, Heinrich Himmler, and Admiral Karl Doenitz, all of whom knew all the details of the secret base—and by submarine commanders Otto Wermuth and Heinz Schaeffer. In fact, it was highly probable that Doenitz was named as Hitler’s successor precisely because, as commander of the submarine fleet, he was best positioned to protect the Antarctic colony, the future home of the Fourth Reich. This choice by Hitler came as a great surprise to the entire German High Command.
    After a month of arduous cold-weather training, the special commando team was informed that the tunnel to the Nazi base had been discovered during the previous Antarctic summer and explored by a previous SAS team. Of that team of thirty men from the Maudheim base, there was only one survivor who had succeeded in somehow lasting through the Antarctic winter without going stir-crazy. He told the new team what they had discovered and how the others had died. The new team set up an advance base at the mouth of the tunnel, and then were told they had orders to follow the tunnel all the way “to the Führer, if need be.” Two men remained behind with the radio and other equipment while eight commandos, led by a major and carrying a huge amount of explosives, went into the tunnel. After walking for five hours, they entered an enormous cavern illuminated by artificial lighting. In his account, the SAS agent says, “As we looked over the entire cavern network, we