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Ludecke, Cornelia, and Summerhayes, Colin.
The Third Reich in Antarctica.
Publisher: The Erskine Press and Bluntisham Books, Norwich;
Date of Publication: 2012
Stock Code: 14433
First edition, quarto, pp., [viii] 254 [255-260]. With four double sided plate leaves, with further illustrations throughout. Publisher’s black cloth covered boards with gilt titles to spine. In a pale blue and white unclipped pictorial dust-jacket. A near fine copy. The origins of the Third German Antarctic Expedition lie in the aspirations of German scientists to explore and understand the Antarctic environment, and the Nazi Party's drive for self-sufficiency on the road to war. Germany decided to explore the Dronning Maud Land, originally claimed by Norway, and to claim Antarctic territory there for itself. The 1938 expedition, led by Alfred Ritscher, took 16,000 aerial photographs, covering an area of approximately 250,000 square kilometres, dropping darts inscribed with swastikas every 26 kilometres in the process. Germany attempted to claim the territory surveyed by Ritscher under the name New Swabia, but lost its claim to the land following its defeat in the Second World War. £75.00