"My U-Boat men, six years of U-Boat warfare lie behind us. You have fought like lions. A crushing superiority has compressed us into a narrow area. The continuation of the struggle is impossible from the bases that remain. U-Boat men, unbroken in your war-like courage, you are laying down your arms after a heroic fight which knows no equal. In reverent memory we think of our comrades who have sealed their loyalty to the Führer and Fatherland with their death. Comrades, maintain in the future your U-Boat spirit with which you have fought at sea, bravely and unflinchingly, during the long welfare of our Fatherland. Long live Germany!"
-- Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz , 4 May 1945, ordering his U-Boats to start their return journey.
U-2511 and U-3008 were the only Type XXIs to go on war patrols, and neither sank any ships. U-2511 had a British cruiser in her sights on 4 May when news of the German cease-fire was received. She made a practice attack before leaving the scene undetected.
With 16 German U-Boats sunk in the South Atlantic area between October 1942 and September 1944, and with most of those sunk engaged in covert activities, Britain had long since been aware of Neuschwabenland being a possible base, but it was not until after the war in Europe had ended that the world awoke to the possibility.
On 18 July 1945, newspapers around the world focused their headlines on Antarctica. The "New York Times" stated "Antarctic Haven Reported", whilst others claimed that "Hitler had been at the South Pole" ["Le Monde", 18 July 1945]. These headlines which shook the world were based, in part, on fact. The news reports and events happening in South America made the world sit up and take notice, not least the military forces of the United States and Great Britain.
On 10 June 1945, an unmarked German U-Boat surrendered to the Argentine Navy; no further details were released. The whereabouts of at least a hundred other U-Boats were still a mystery, as renowned historian Basil Liddell Hart, in "History of the Second World War", noted: "During the early months of 1945 the size of the U-Boat fleet was still increasing... In March, the U-Boat fleet reached its peak strength of 463".
The mystery deepened when, on 10 July 1945, the German U-530 surrendered at Mar del Plata, Argentina, and it only took eight days for the world to know. However, the U-Boat mystery did not end with U-530; just over a month later, on 17 August 1945, U-977 also surrendered at Mar del Plata. Even more curious was the fact that the same month, U-465 was scuttled off Patagonia.
U-465 was sunk on 2 May 1943 in the Bay of Biscay, north-west of Cape Ortegal, Spain, by depth charges from an Australian Sunderland flying boat of No. 10 Squadron RAAF.
Only three months after the Kriegsmarine's U-boat's strength had peaked, the first of the unaccounted-for U-Boats appeared. Unfavourably though, historians tend to gloss over the enigma of the missing U-Boats and Hart also offers no explanation other than to explain the 362 known U-Boats' fate:
"After Germany surrendered in May, 159 U-Boats surrendered but a further 203 were scuttled by their crews. That was characteristic of the U-Boat crews' stubborn pride and unshakeable morale".
With so many U-Boats missing—a minimum of 40 were estimated missing at the end of the War—and with Britain still possessing one of the world's largest navies and strategically based territories in the Falklands and Antarctica, Britain was the most ideally placed of all the Allies to deal with a Nazi haven. It would have been the best informed about the missing U-Boats due to its southern hemisphere territories and an empire that, though crumbling, was still the largest the world had ever seen. Intelligence soon substantiated the suspicions with the interrogations of the captains of both the U-977 and U-530.
Otto Wehrmut, the commander of the U-530, claimed that under Operation Valkyrie-2 his U-Boat set off to the Antarctic on 13 April 1945. Under interrogation he divulged just what the mission had involved. Supposedly, 16 crew members had landed on the Antarctic shore and deposited numerous boxes that were apparently documents and relics from the Third Reich. Heinz Schäffer, the Captain of the U-977, also claimed that his U-Boat had spirited relics away from the Reich. However, less plausible is the theory that the U-Boat delivered the remains of Hitler and Eva Braun to the South Pole, and other theories that the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny were also taken to the Antarctic only cloud the truth.
What does help substantiate their story is the little-known fact, that, in 1983, Special Services seized a confidential letter that Captain Schäffer wrote to Captain Otto Wehrmut, and in the letter Schäffer pleads to Wehrmut not to publish his memoirs in too profound a detail and, in fact, states his intent for the world not to know the truth:
"We all made an oath to keep the secret; we did nothing wrong: we just obeyed orders and fought for our loved Germany and its survival. Please think again; isn't it better to picture everything as a fable? What results do you plan to achieve with your revelations? Think about it, please".
-- "Pravda", 16 January 2003, citing a confidential letter from Schäffer to Wehrmut. The letter, dated 1 June 1983, was seized by Special Services, whom a German source claims were from the former German Democratic Republic [GDR] and sent at the USSR's behest.
Another mystery that has never been solved is that of the cargo of mercury contained inside U-859 which was sunk on 23 September 1944 by the British Royal Navy submarine "HMS Trenchant" in the Strait of Malacca in the Java Sea, so far from home with such an anomalous cargo—a cargo that could be utilised as a fuel source for certain types of aerospace propulsion. Why would a German submarine be transporting such a cargo so far from home? The survivors divulged to their British captors what they had been carrying, and that information would have definitely raised eyebrows when their find was relayed to British Intelligence.
German submarine U-859 was a Type IXD2 U-Boat, was one of a select number to join Monsun Gruppe or Monsoon Group, which operated in the Far East alongside the Imperial Japanese Navy.
U-859 only had a single war patrol from which she never returned, but her six month career was highly eventful and carried her halfway across the world and into an entirely different theatre of conflict.
Commanded by Kapitänleutnant Johann Jebsen, U-859 sailed from Kiel for Penang on 4 April 1944, carrying 31 tons of mercury in metal flasks destined for use in the Japanese munitions industry, and [according to some sources] Uranium oxide also destined for Japan. She avoided shipping lanes and during her time in the North Atlantic, remained submerged for 23 hours every day, running on her Schnorchel, surfacing for just one hour per day at 23:00, later reduced to 15 minutes.
Three weeks into her voyage, Jebsen saw a target he could not refuse. The 'MV Colin', formerly an Italian freighter taken over by American authorities and registered in Panama, was slowly steaming unescorted in the North Atlantic following engine failure. Three torpedoes sank her before U-859 went on her way southwards.
The boat's voyage continued smoothly for the next two months, and she rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean without further trouble. On 5 July she was spotted by a Lockheed Ventura aircraft, which swooped down on the boat only to be brought down by the anti-aircraft guns. There were no survivors from the aircraft's crew. One rating of U-859 was killed and one officer seriously injured. [Other sources say the attacking plane was a Catalina anti-submarine-plane].
Her third victim was her most famous, and became one of the most famous treasure shipwrecks of the Twentieth Century. The unescorted Liberty ship 'SS John Barry' was transporting a cargo of 3 million silver one-riyal coins from Aden to Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf as part of an American government agreement with the Saudi royal family; the silver coins had been minted in America for Saudi monarch King Abdul Aziz Al-Saud and were stacked in huge boxes in the hold, and went down with the ship when she was torpedoed south of the entrance to the Arabian Sea. A massive salvage operation in 1994 succeeded in retrieving many of the lost coins.
Three days later another unescorted merchantman, the British 'SS Troilus' was also sunk, with six hands drowned.
On 23 September 1944 U-859 was running on the surface, within 26 miles of Penang and the end of her voyage, when she was intercepted in the Malacca Straits by the British submarine 'HMS Trenchant', which had been forewarned of her arrival date and route by decrypted German signals. In difficult conditions with a heavy swell running and a second U-Boat thought to be lurking, Trenchant's commander Arthur Hezlet carried out a snap attack using his stern torpedo tubes, hitting U-859 amidships. The U-Boat sank immediately in 160 feet of water with several compartments flooded, and 47 men drowned, including her commander.
Twenty of the crew did manage to escape however, opening the hatch in the relatively shallow sea and struggling to the calm surface. Eleven of the survivors were picked up by 'HMS Trenchant' immediately following the sinking, and the remaining nine were picked up by the Japanese after being adrift for 24 hours and were taken ashore to await repatriation.
In 1972 a total of 12 tons of mercury were recovered from U-859 and brought into Singapore. The West German Embassy claimed ownership of the mercury. The Receiver of Wreck took possession of the mercury, and the High Court of Singapore ruled that "the German state has never ceased to exist despite Germany's unconditional surrender in 1945 and whatever was the property of the German State, unless it was captured and taken away by one of the Allied Powers, still remains the property of the German State..."
The case of U-859 was not an isolated one. Many German U-Boats were active throughout the world; many supplied the Japanese throughout the war and, strangely, even after the German capitulation. In July 1945, an unmarked German U-Boat, supposedly part of a secret convoy, delivered a new invention to Japanese research and development units. The Japanese constructed and activated the device. The device soared into the sky where, however inauspiciously, it burst into flames. It was never dared to be built again.
The British Navy, having already retrieved many of the U-Boats that had surrendered in Norway, was well aware that many more had fled, especially if the tale reported in the Latin American press about a German U-Boat convoy totally annihilating the British destroyers that engaged the convoy is to be believed. On 2 May 1945, "El Mercurio" and "Der Weg" claimed that the final naval battle of World War II between the Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy had been won by the Kriegsmarine, and that the story had been suppressed in the Western press for fear of stimulating German resistance. Only one destroyer was reputedly spared and the Captain was reported as declaring, "May God help me, may I never again encounter such a force". Though the story has been suppressed and the British Government would never admit to the event, rumours of the naval battle are whispered amongst ex-servicemen—but very little of the rumour is substantiated.
The Captain cited by "El Mercurio" and "Der Weg" has never been named, nor has the story been given any credence by the British Navy.
The missing U-Boats were part of the Antarctic jigsaw puzzle that Britain had been putting together since the Nazis first sent Admiral Ritscher on his Thule-sponsored polar mission. And with Britain's Intelligence network—the SOE [Special Operations Executive] and the SIS [Secret Intelligence Service]—providing virtually all the information to the Allied Forces via the Enigma machine and its immense European spy network during the War, the picture was appearing slowly.
The Intelligence network performed wonders for the Allies, especially after the capture of an Enigma machine with decoding documents on 9 May 1941; the German U-110 was captured by 'HMS Bulldog' and 'HMS Aubretia' of the 3rd Escort Group. The Germans never discovered the fact that Britain had broken their "unbreakable" codes.
One prime example of Britain's Intelligence excelling was in how much Britain knew about the Nazi's secret atomic weapons programmes which, in turn, helped the RAF bomb the Nazi's secret research station at Peenemünde in the Baltic Sea. The Germans were at a loss to how the British had even heard about it, let alone been able to bomb it.
With British forces controlling northern Germany and the ports that went with their sector at the end of World War II, there was a strong likelihood of their capturing most of the Nazi hierarchy. They were also ideally placed because Russia was more interested in Berlin, and the vast US forces were stationed mainly in southern Germany where they had been sent to investigate the supposed "Redoubt". Even so, four years before the end of the war, Britain had managed to apprehend the Deputy Führer of the Third Reich, Rudolf Hess, and he was arguably the most knowledgeable of all the Nazis at that juncture.
Rudolf Hess landed in Scotland on 10 May 1941 and asked to meet the Duke of Hamilton. His plans for peace talks were quickly rebutted, and so began his 46-year incarceration. Hess's imprisonment is one of the most widely discussed mysteries of the war. Some claim he was imprisoned because of the damage any revelations he possessed would inflict on the British monarchy. Others claim that Britain's refusal of his peace proposal led to the nation's huge losses territorially, materially, financially and emotionally; because of his silencing, the British people never heard the peace terms or learned how beneficial they may have proved. And some believe that "Hess was entrusted with the all-important Antarctic file"; but whether this was a paper file or a mental note, one thing is for certain: Hess, Deputy Führer, would have known everything about the Nazis' Antarctic intentions.
Though Hess was dismissed by both Hitler and the British Government as "insane", surely Hess's insanity would have restricted his ability in his numerous roles in the Nazi Party and Government.
Hess's insanity is just one aspect of the Hess mystery, and the numerous references to his insanity are too numerous to catalogue. However, it did not prevent him from standing for trial at Nuremberg.
Yet Hess was chief of the Auslandsorganisation, Commissar for Foreign Policy, Commissar for All University Matters and University Policy, Commissar for All Technological Matters and Organization, and also head of the Office for Racial Policy.
-- Picknett, L., Prior, S. and Prince, C., "Double Standards", Little Brown, 2001
Hess, in layman's terms, had his "finger in every pie".
Rudolf Hess was also an active member of the Thule Society, and his interest in Antarctica would have been on both personal and professional levels. Hess, a keen aviator, used his position in both the Nazi Party and the Thule Society to meet Richard Byrd when he lectured the personnel who were heading for the Antarctic with the Deutsche Antarktische Expedition [German Antarctic Expedition] in 1938, and through his channels Hess would have known everything that had been discovered in Neuschwabenland. Byrd, a living legend throughout the world for being the first man to fly over both the north and south poles, was possibly the most well-informed polar explorer ever, and he divulged his vast knowledge and details of his exploits to the Nazis.
Byrd's advice in his lecture and ultimately the Nazis' successful expedition to claim Neuschwabenland may have given the Nazis conviction enough to establish a viable Antarctic base. Hess' flight and eventual capture a few years after the Deutsche Antarktische Expedition meant that plans would have been underway. His enviable position as Deputy Führer and his close affiliation with the Thule Society which sponsored the expedition meant, as Canadian journalist Pierre van Paasen Van Paasen, in the "Chicago Times", claimed shortly after Hess's flight, that "[t]here was no major military plan and secret of the Third Reich of which he was unaware".
The secrets he gave away in those four years, though dismissed officially as "lunacy" by the British Government and at the Nuremberg Trials, were taken seriously in some quarters—particularly after Britain had caught more of Germany's most powerful Nazis at the end of the war. Unfortunately, with Hess being imprisoned until his suspicious "suicide" in 1987 at the age of ninety-seven, all records about him are locked firmly away under the UK Official Secrets Act and will be for the foreseeable future.
Britain, France, the USSR and USA took turns to guard war criminals including Hess in Spandau Prison. Hess's suspicious death occurred, so we are led to believe, because the Russians were going to release him when their turn next came around. See Picknett et al., "Double Standards", for more detail.