Latest / Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History / Operation Highjump: Did Admiral Byrd Discover Antarctica’s Greatest Secret?

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Operation Highjump: Did Admiral Byrd Discover Antarctica’s Greatest Secret? · Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History

0:03
This is late 1946, World War II is
0:06
over, the U.S. is demobilization, soldiers are
0:10
being sent home, warships are being decommissioned.
0:14
Yet, the Navy assembles a force larger than
0:17
the one used to invade Guadalcanal and it
0:21
is sent to Antarctica.
0:23
The official mandate was simple, train personnel in
0:27
polar operations, test equipment in the extreme cold,
0:30
expand America's scientific presence on the continent.
0:34
But as we've seen, there are details that
0:36
does not fit the picture.
0:38
First detail, why bring an aircraft carrier?
0:41
Why bring a submarine?
0:44
Why bring fighter planes and a full infantry
0:47
force to a place with no enemies?
0:51
Second detail, why do you do it when
0:54
you already have all the Arctic experience you
0:57
need?
0:58
Third detail, when the expedition returned in February
1:04
1947, after only two months instead of eight,
1:08
Byrd was silent.
1:10
He who otherwise loved to talk to the
1:13
press avoiding questions, his official reports were classified,
1:17
it has still not been fully released.
1:20
Fourth detail, in a rare interview on the
1:22
way home, cited in the Chilean newspaper, Byrd
1:26
said, the United States must prepare to defend
1:30
itself against enemy fighters that can come from
1:33
the polar regions in the event of a
1:36
new war.
1:37
America could be attacked by an enemy with
1:40
the ability to fly from one pole to
1:43
another at equitable speed.
1:47
That's a strange statement.
1:50
The Soviet Union in 1947 had no aircraft
1:52
that could do that.
1:54
No one did.
1:55
Yet, one of America's most experienced polar explorers
1:58
and a senior officer said it publicly.
2:02
What was he referring to?
2:08
This is where the documented facts ends.
2:10
And this is where we must do something
2:13
this podcast always does.
2:15
We must draw a sharp line between what
2:17
we know, what we do not know, and
2:20
what people believe.
2:22
In the next chapters we will be a
2:24
little more speculative.
2:25
Let me start with the German submarines.
2:32
In the summer of 1945, two months after
2:35
Germany's surrender, two submarines sailed into the port
2:39
of Mar del Plata in Argentina, U-530
2:44
and U-977.
2:47
They surrendered to the Argentine authorities, not to
2:51
the Allied forces, as you might expect.
2:53
When interrogated, the crew told a strange story.
2:56
They claimed that they had been a part
2:58
of something called the Führerkonvoi, a top-secret
3:02
naval unit tasked with transporting something to Antarctica.
3:07
According to American intelligence, which gains access to
3:11
the interrogation records, the captain of U-530
3:14
said his submarine had delivered Reich relics, Hitler's
3:21
personal belongings and passengers with bandaged faces, to
3:24
Antarctica.
3:26
This was just weeks before the war ends.
3:29
The captain of U-977, Heinz Schäufer, confirmed
3:35
having followed the same route a little later.
3:40
Now we need to be very precise here.
3:45
There is documentation for this submarine's surrender to
3:49
Argentina.
3:52
That's a fact.
3:54
There is documentation that the Allied intelligence interrogated
3:59
the crew.
4:00
That's also a fact.
4:01
But the claim about Reich relics, passengers with
4:05
bandaged faces and a secret naval base in
4:08
Antarctica comes from witnesses' statements that has no
4:12
independent sources, has not been confirmed.
4:16
It comes from men who have every reason
4:19
to conceal their own role in the Nazi,
4:22
should we say, final chapter.
4:24
So take it for what it is, a
4:26
witness testimony, uncorroborated, but noted in official archives.
4:34
The interesting thing is that the Americans took
4:37
them serious enough to send the largest naval
4:40
forces in history to Antarctica barely 18 months
4:44
later.
4:46
And there's more.
4:48
The Germans had been in Antarctica before the
4:51
war.
4:51
This is documented.
4:54
In 1938 and 1939, Nazi Germany sent an
4:58
expedition to Green Mordsland, officially to establish whaling
5:01
stations.
5:02
Unofficially?
5:03
Yeah, well, there are theories.
5:07
The expedition was led by Captain Alfred Reucher.
5:11
Two aircraft were launched from the ship Schwabenland
5:15
using catapults.
5:17
Over three weeks, they flew over 600,000
5:20
square kilometers and they dropped metal flags bearing
5:23
swastikas for every 25 kilometers.
5:27
The area was then declared as German territory.
5:30
They called it Neuschwabenland, and that procedure was
5:33
in accordance with the rules at that time.
5:36
That's facts.
5:38
There are maps, there are aerial photos, there
5:41
are Reucher's reports.
5:44
What the Nazis were looking for there, and
5:47
what they might have found, is another matter.
5:50
But a few years later, in the middle
5:53
of the war, Great Admiral Karl Dönitz said
5:57
something strange.
5:58
He is quoted to saying, the German submarine
6:02
fleet is proud to have built an impregnable
6:04
fortress for the Führer on the other side
6:08
of the world.
6:09
And then a little earlier, my submarines, sorry,
6:14
my submariners has discovered a truly earthly paradise.
6:21
What does a man like Dönitz mean by
6:23
an impregnable fortress on the other side of
6:26
the world?
6:28
What does he mean with an earthly paradise?
6:34
No one knows this for certain, but the
6:36
theory is, and here we are in speculative
6:39
waters, is that the Germans built a base
6:42
in Antarctica, codenamed Base 211.
6:45
Why?
6:46
Possible to control the southern seas, possible to
6:49
extract minerals, especially uranium, possibly as a refuge
6:54
for the Nazi elites if the war was
6:57
lost.
6:58
After the war, the Americans discovered that thousands
7:02
of highly qualified German scientists had disappeared, not
7:06
dead, not captured, just gone.
7:11
Over 100 submarines were also not on the
7:13
official list of sunk vessels or prisoners of
7:17
war.
7:18
Something has been moved, but where?
7:26
That brings us to the heart of the
7:28
mystery.
7:29
Operation Highjump was officially terminated after eight weeks
7:32
due to adverse weather conditions.
7:36
But Antarctic weather records from 1947 show no
7:40
unusual events.
7:42
So what happened?
7:46
There is one eyewitness, a man called John
7:48
Sileson.
7:49
He was a military pilot who participated in
7:52
the expedition.
7:53
In an interview many years later, he described
7:56
what he claims to have seen on February
7:59
26, 1947.
8:01
I quote, They jumped out of the water
8:05
like gorillas.
8:06
They slid between the ship mast at such
8:09
speeds that the air current tore the radio
8:13
antennas apart.
8:14
Several corsairs managed to take off from the
8:17
Casablanca.
8:18
I didn't have time to blink before two
8:21
of them were hit by some unknown rays
8:24
from those flying saucers.
8:27
They crashed into the water near the ships.
8:30
I was on the deck of the Casablanca.
8:32
I understood nothing.
8:34
The objects made no sound.
8:36
They were silent between the ships and speeded
8:41
deadly fire.
8:43
The whole nightmare lasted about 20 minutes.
8:46
When they flew back under the water, we
8:49
began to count the losses.
8:51
They were terrible.
8:55
There is no independent confirmation of Sileson's account.
8:59
There is no official report mentioning attacks.
9:01
There is no ship losses that matches the
9:04
description.
9:05
But there is something else.
9:08
In 1948, the year after Highjump, the U
9:11
.S. sent another expedition to Antarctica, Operation Windmill,
9:15
officially to take control of Otus.
9:18
The question is, control of what?
9:22
And in 1949, James Forstall, America's first Secretary
9:26
of Defense, died under circumstances that is still
9:29
debated today.
9:31
He fell, or was pushed, out of a
9:34
window on a military hospital, officially a suicide.
9:38
But Forstall has shortly before spoken about Operation
9:42
Highjump, about flying saucers and about Nazi bases
9:46
in Antarctica.
9:49
Okay, let's step one step back.
9:52
The theories about what happened during Highjump fall
9:56
into three main categories.
9:58
The first category.
10:01
The Americans were hunting Nazis.
10:03
According to this hypothesis, the Germans had managed
10:06
to establish a secret base in Antarctica, Base
10:09
211.
10:11
They had moved scientists, technology, and perhaps even
10:14
Hitler himself there.
10:16
Highjump was an attempt to eliminate that base.
10:19
But the Germans had developed disk-shaped craft
10:22
that could operate both underwater and in the
10:26
air.
10:28
It was these flying saucers that attacked the
10:31
American fleet, hence the retreat.
10:36
Second theory.
10:38
Admiral Byrd has discovered an entrance to the
10:41
Earth interior, the so-called Hollow Earth Theory.
10:45
The idea is older than Byrd.
10:47
It dates back to Edmund Halley in the
10:49
1600s and was popularized by Gilles Verne with
10:54
the Journey to the Center of the Earth
10:57
in 1864.
11:01
The theory says that the Earth is hollow,
11:05
that an entire ecosystem exists inside, with its
11:09
own sun, its own seas, its own civilization.
11:14
According to this theory, Byrd flew through an
11:17
opening in the pole and saw a world
11:20
of green valleys, rivers, and in some versions,
11:23
giant animals like mammoths.
11:25
Some of them even claim that he met
11:27
an advanced civilization that warned him about nuclear
11:30
weapons.
11:32
Then there is the third theory.
11:34
There is no mystery at all.
11:36
Highjump was exactly as it says, a training
11:39
exercise cut short due to bad weather and
11:44
logistical problems.
11:45
Byrd's strange statement is taken out of context
11:49
or is poorly translated.
11:51
The NASA submarines were simply fleeing, and their
11:54
story is self-advertising.
11:59
Which theory is correct, we don't know.
12:02
But we can test the theories again, what
12:04
we actually know.
12:09
Let me be completely honest, there is no
12:11
documentation that Operation Highjump was attacked by flying
12:14
saucers.
12:15
There is no official casualty figures showing 50
12:19
dead or destroyed aircraft.
12:21
There is no video, no photos of this
12:24
alleged attack.
12:26
The only witness, John Sireson, is a single
12:28
voice.
12:29
His account has never been corroborated by other
12:31
participants.
12:33
So what explains the persistence of the account?
12:38
There is a fascinating dynamic here.
12:40
In the 1950s and 60s books about Nazi
12:43
UFOs, secret bases, and Admiral Byrd's missing diary
12:48
began to flourish.
12:50
Authors like Ladida Slabo, Ernst Sudell, and others
12:55
wrote detailed accounts with technical drawings, photographs, and
12:59
even some secret documents.
13:03
The problem is that none of these authors
13:05
ever produced a single source of original.
13:10
Their documents were always in private hands or
13:14
were lost after publications.
13:16
Things like that.
13:18
Their drawings showing aircraft that looked like something
13:21
from science fiction, which they also were.
13:26
Some of the aircraft turns out to be
13:28
models from model building kits from Airfix and
13:31
Revell that has sold purely fantasy products.
13:38
That doesn't mean that nothing happened.
13:40
It means that we must be cautious.
13:43
There are unexplained phenomena associated with Antarctica.
13:49
The subglacial lakes, Lake Rostock for instance, are
13:52
real.
13:53
They lie under 4 km of ice.
13:57
The water temperature is around 3-3 °C,
14:01
but the water remains liquid due to the
14:03
pressure.
14:04
Some of these lakes have been isolated for
14:06
millions of years.
14:08
In 2013, a Russian research team found microbial
14:13
life in Lake Rostock, life that has now
14:17
found nowhere else on the earth.
14:21
That is science.
14:22
That is documented.
14:24
But it is not proof of an airspace.
14:26
It is not proof of a hollow earth.
14:29
What about Bert's diary?
14:32
The secret diary allegedly describing his flight into
14:36
the earth interior appeared in the 1990s.
14:40
It is believed to have been written in
14:42
1956, a year before his death.
14:46
The problem is that no one has ever
14:48
seen the original.
14:50
There are no handwritten pages in public archives.
14:53
There is no documentation that the diary ever
14:55
existed, apart from references in books that is
14:59
already highly speculative.
15:03
The only thing is worth nothing, sorry, one
15:08
thing is worth nothing, however, the diaries circulating
15:11
on the internet contain patches that sound like
15:16
something from a novel.
15:18
An underground civilization, a master who warns against
15:22
atomic weapons, flying saucers with swastikas, it is
15:27
a narrative that is almost too perfect, too
15:29
satisfying to be true.
15:32
Perhaps the theory says more about us than
15:35
about Antarctica.
15:42
And there is a deeper point here.
15:45
The boundary between what we know and what
15:48
we do not know is not a line,
15:49
it is a landscape.
15:51
And that landscape is filled with gaps that
15:53
invite explanations.
15:56
Antarctica is vast, it is isolated, it is
15:59
extreme.
16:00
It is easy to imagine that something is
16:02
hidden there because we know so little.
16:06
And that brings us back to Byrd himself.
16:08
In an interview in 1954, a year before
16:13
his final expedition, he said something that is
16:15
very crude.
16:16
The host asked, Is there any unexplored land
16:21
left on earth that might appeal to young
16:24
adventurers?
16:26
Byrd replied, Yes, there is an area left
16:30
on the world today as big as the
16:32
United States that has never been seen by
16:35
human beings.
16:37
And that is on the other side of
16:39
the South Pool.
16:41
On the other side of the South Pool.
16:45
Notice the words.
16:47
He does not say south of the South
16:49
Pool, he says on the other side.
16:52
What does it mean?
16:54
I mean, if you stand on the South
16:55
Pool, all direction is north.
16:59
There is no other side unless you are
17:01
talking about something else.
17:06
Byrd died in 1957.
17:08
He was 68 years old, officially on a
17:12
heart attack.
17:13
His son Richard Byrd III died under mysterious
17:17
circumstances in 1988.
17:19
He was on his way to give a
17:21
speech about his father's work when he disappeared.
17:24
Three weeks later he was found dead in
17:27
an abandoned warehouse in Baltimore, wearing different clothes,
17:31
in a different city, reportedly of starvation and
17:34
dehydration, officially nothing criminal.
17:38
But the pattern is strange.
17:47
So why do these stories persist?
17:51
It has been decades since high jump.
17:53
Countless satellites have photographed every centimeter of Antarctica.
17:57
Thousands of researchers have lived on the continent.
18:00
No secret society, no underground civilization, no flying
18:04
saucers has been officially confirmed.
18:07
Yet the stories keep appearing in books, on
18:10
YouTube, in podcasts like this.
18:13
Perhaps it's nothing about Antarctica.
18:17
Perhaps it's about trust.
18:19
We live in an age where institutions are
18:23
being challenged, governments lies, the military classifies information,
18:30
science got things wrong or gets overtaken, into
18:35
the void that uncertainty creates narrative flows and
18:39
some of them are more satisfying than the
18:42
official version.
18:43
Because the official version is so boring, a
18:47
training exercise that was interrupted by a weather,
18:50
a hero that growled and died, submarines surrendered.
18:55
The unofficial version is exciting, secret bases, flying
18:59
saucers, a warning from a forgotten civilization, a
19:04
truth too dangerous to be told.
19:08
But there is something else at play, something
19:10
about ourselves.
19:12
Humans has always sought the hidden worlds underground,
19:20
beneath the ice, beyond the horizon, from Atlantis
19:24
to Shambhala, from Sylvain to H.P. Lovecraft.
19:28
We have a deep longing for believing that
19:31
there is more than we can see.
19:33
The reality has layer, that the truth is
19:36
hidden, not absent.
19:38
Perhaps that is why Admiral Burdess still fascinates,
19:43
not because he was a liar, but because
19:46
he was an explorer and we want what
19:53
he explored to be greater than ice.
19:56
In the end, Operation Highjump says more about
20:00
humanity's relationship with secrets than anything, any secret
20:06
in the ice.
20:08
We want to believe there is something, because
20:10
the alternative, that there is nothing, is less
20:13
interesting.
20:14
And perhaps, just perhaps, that is what drives
20:18
us, curiosity, the longing for the undiscovered, the
20:22
need for a place where the rules are
20:24
different.
20:25
I don't know what Admiral Burdess saw in
20:30
Antarctica in 1947.
20:32
None of us do.
20:34
The archives are still closed.
20:36
The reports are still classified.
20:38
The witnesses are dead.
20:40
But the interesting thing isn't whenever the theories
20:43
are true.
20:45
The interesting thing is the question that never
20:47
disappears, that the ice holds something we do
20:52
not fully understand.
20:53
Maybe it is just ice.
20:56
But the question, the question is keep living.
21:00
What do you think?
21:02
Are there something in Antarctica?
21:04
Burdess' other side of the pole, was that
21:06
a metaphor, a mistranslation, or is a hint
21:09
of something real?
21:11
I don't have the full answers.
21:13
I don't have the answers.
21:15
But I have more episodes on the way,
21:18
about subglacial lakes, about maps showing Antarctica without
21:22
ice, about Nazi's fascinations for the good.
21:26
And next time, we will drive into another
21:34
mystery.
21:35
Remember to like and subscribe.
21:36
And remember, what you think you know, always
21:39
ask yourself, how do I know that?
21:42
See you next time.
22:10
This is late 1946.
22:12
World War II is over.
22:14
The U.S. is demobilization.
22:17
Soldiers are being sent home.
22:19
Warships are being decommissioned.
22:21
Yet, the Navy assembles a force larger than
22:24
the one used to invade Guadalcanal, and it
22:28
is sent to Antarctica.
22:30
The official mandate was simple.
22:32
Train personnel in polar operations.
22:35
Test equipment in extreme cold.
22:37
Expand America's scientific presence on the continent.
22:41
But as we have seen, there are details
22:43
that does not fit the picture.
22:45
First detail.
22:46
Why bring an aircraft carrier?
22:48
Why bring a submarine?
22:51
Why bring fighter planes and a full infantry
22:54
force to a place with no enemies?
22:58
Second detail.
23:00
Why do we do it when we already
23:02
have all the Arctic experience we need?
23:05
Third detail.
23:08
When the expedition returned in February 1947, after
23:13
only two months instead of eight, Byrd was
23:16
silent.
23:18
He, who otherwise loved to talk to the
23:20
press avoiding questions, his official reports were classified,
23:24
it has still not been fully released.
23:27
Fourth detail.
23:28
In a rare interview on the way home,
23:30
cited in the Chilean newspaper Byrd said, the
23:34
United States must prepare to defend itself against
23:38
enemy fighters that can come from the polar
23:41
regions in the event of a new war.
23:44
America could be attacked by an enemy with
23:47
the ability to fly from one pole to
23:50
another at equitable speed.
23:54
That's a strange statement.
23:57
The Soviet Union in 1947 had no aircraft
24:00
that could do that.
24:01
No one did.
24:02
Yet one of America's most experienced polar explorers
24:06
and a senior officer said it publicly.
24:10
What was he referring to?
24:15
This is where the documented facts ends.
24:18
And this is where we must do something
24:21
this podcast always does.
24:22
We must draw a sharp line between what
24:24
we know, what we do not know, and
24:27
what people believe.
24:28
In the next chapters we will be a
24:31
little more speculative.
24:32
Let me start with the German submarines.
24:39
In the summer of 1945, two months after
24:42
Germany's surrender, two submarines sailed into the port
24:46
of Mar del Plata in Argentina.
24:49
U-530 and U-977.
24:54
They surrendered to the Argentine authorities, not to
24:58
the Allied forces as you might expect.
25:00
When interrogated, the crew told a strange story.
25:03
They claimed that they had been a part
25:05
of something called the Führerkonvoi, a top-secret
25:09
naval unit tasked with transporting something to Antarctica.
25:14
According to American intelligence, which gains access to
25:18
the interrogation records, the captain of U-530
25:21
said his submarine had delivered Reich relics, Hitler's
25:28
personal belongings and passengers with bandaged faces, to
25:31
Antarctica.
25:33
This was just weeks before the war ends.
25:36
The captain of U-977, Heinz Schäfer, confirmed
25:42
having followed the same route a little later.
25:47
Now we need to be very precise here.
25:53
There is documentation for this submarine's surrender to
25:56
Argentina.
25:59
That's a fact.
26:01
There is documentation that the Allied intelligence interrogated
26:06
the crew.
26:07
That's also a fact.
26:08
But the claim about Reich relics, passengers with
26:12
bandaged faces and a secret naval base in
26:15
Antarctica comes from witnesses' statements that has no
26:19
independent sources, has not been confirmed.
26:23
It comes from men who have every reason
26:26
to conceal their own role in the Nazi,
26:29
should we say, final chapter.
26:31
So take it for what it is, a
26:33
witness testimony, uncorroborated, but noted in official archives.
26:41
The interesting thing is that the Americans took
26:45
them serious enough to send the largest naval
26:47
forces in history to Antarctica, barely 18 months
26:51
later.
26:53
And there's more.
26:56
The Germans had been in Antarctica before the
26:58
war.
26:59
This is documented.
27:01
In 1938 and 1939, Nazi Germany sent an
27:05
expedition to Queen Maudsland, officially to establish whaling
27:08
stations.
27:10
Obviously, yeah, well, there are theories.
27:14
The expedition was led by Captain Alfred Reuscher.
27:18
Two aircraft were launched from the ship Schwabenland
27:23
using catapults.
27:24
Over three weeks, they flew over 600,000
27:27
square kilometers, and they dropped metal flags bearing
27:31
swastikas for every 25 kilometers.
27:34
The area was then declared as German territory.
27:37
They called it Neuschwabenland.
27:38
And that procedure was in accordance with the
27:42
rules at that time.
27:43
That's facts.
27:45
There are maps.
27:46
There are aerial photos.
27:48
There are Reuscher reports.
27:51
What the Nazis were looking for there and
27:54
what they might have found is another matter.
27:58
But a few years later, in the middle
28:01
of the war, Great Admiral Karl Dönitz said
28:04
something strange.
28:05
He is quoted to saying, The German submarine
28:09
fleet is proud to have built an impregnable
28:12
fortress for the Führer on the other side
28:15
of the world.
28:17
And then a little earlier, My submarines, sorry,
28:21
my submariners has discovered a truly earthly paradise.
28:28
What does a man like Dönitz mean by
28:30
an impregnable fortress on the other side of
28:33
the world?
28:35
What does he mean with an earthly paradise?
28:41
No one knows this for certain.
28:43
But the theory is, and here we are
28:45
in speculative waters, is that the Germans built
28:48
a base in Antarctica codenamed Base 211.
28:52
Why?
28:54
Possible to control the southern seas, possible to
28:57
extract minerals, especially uranium, possibly as a refuge
29:01
for the Nazi elites if the war was
29:04
lost.
29:05
After the war, the Americans discovered that thousands
29:09
of highly qualified German scientists had disappeared, not
29:14
dead, not captured, just gone.
29:18
Over 100 submarines were also not on the
29:21
official list of sunk vessels or prisoners of
29:24
war.
29:25
Something has been moved, but where?
29:33
That brings us to the heart of the
29:35
mystery.
29:35
Operation Highjump was officially terminated after eight weeks
29:40
due to adverse weather conditions.
29:43
But Antarctic weather records from 1947 show no
29:47
unusual events.
29:49
So what happened?
29:53
There is one eyewitness, a man called John
29:55
Sileson.
29:56
He was a military pilot who participated in
29:59
the expedition.
29:59
In an interview many years later, he described
30:03
what he claims to have seen on February
30:06
26, 1947.
30:09
I quote, They jumped out of the water
30:12
like gorillas.
30:13
They slid between the shipmast at such speeds
30:16
that the air current tore the radio antennas
30:21
apart.
30:22
Several corsairs managed to take off from the
30:24
Casablanca.
30:25
I didn't have time to blink before two
30:28
of them were hit by some unknown rays
30:31
from those flying saucers.
30:35
They crashed into the water near the ships.
30:37
I was on the deck of the Casablanca.
30:39
I understood nothing.
30:41
The objects made no sound.
30:43
They were silent between the ships and speeded
30:48
deadly fire.
30:50
The whole nightmare lasted about 20 minutes.
30:53
When they flew back under the water, we
30:56
began to count the losses.
30:58
They were terrible.
31:02
There is no independent confirmation of Sileson's account.
31:06
There is no official report mentioning attack.
31:09
There is no ship losses that match its
31:11
description.
31:12
But there is something else.
31:15
In 1948, the year after hijab, the U
31:18
.S. sent another expedition to Antarctica.
31:21
Operation Windmill officially took control of us.
31:25
The question is, control of what?
31:29
And in 1949, James Forstall, America's first Secretary
31:33
of Defense, died under circumstances that is still
31:37
debated today.
31:38
He fell, or was pushed, out of a
31:41
window on a military hospital.
31:44
Officially a suicide, but Forstall has shortly before
31:47
spoken about Operation Hijab, about flying saucers, and
31:52
about Nazi bases in Antarctica.
31:56
Okay, let's step one step back.
31:59
The theories about what happened during hijab fall
32:03
into three main categories.
32:05
The first category.
32:08
The Americans were hunting Nazis.
32:10
According to this hypothesis, the Germans has managed
32:14
to establish the secret base in Antarctica, Base
32:17
211.
32:18
They have moved scientists, technology, and perhaps even
32:21
Hitler himself there.
32:23
Hijab was an attempt to eliminate that base.
32:26
But the Germans has developed disk-shaped craft
32:29
that could operate both underwater and in the
32:34
air.
32:35
It was these flying saucers that attacked the
32:38
American fleet, hence the retreat.
32:43
Second theory.
32:45
Admiral Byrd has discovered an entrance to the
32:48
Earth interior, the so-called Hollow Earth theory.
32:52
The idea is older than Byrd.
32:54
It dates back to Edmund Halley in the
32:56
1600s and was popularized by Jules Verne with
33:01
the journey to the center of the Earth
33:04
in 1864.
33:09
The theory says that the Earth is hollow,
33:12
that an entire ecosystem exists inside, with its
33:17
own sun, its own seas, its own civilization.
33:20
According to this theory, Byrd flew through an
33:24
opening in the pole and saw a world
33:27
of green valleys, rivers, and in some versions,
33:30
giant animals like mammoths.
33:32
Some of them even claim that he met
33:34
an advanced civilization that warned him about nuclear
33:37
weapons.
33:39
Then there is the third theory.
33:41
There is no mystery at all.
33:43
Hygiene was exactly as it says.
33:46
A training exercise got short due to bad
33:50
weather and logistical problems.
33:53
Byrd's strange statement is taken out of context
33:56
or is poorly translated.
33:58
The NASA submarines were simply fleeing, and their
34:01
story is self-advertising.
34:06
Which theory is correct, we don't know.
34:09
But we can test the theories again, what
34:11
we actually know.
34:15
Let me be completely honest.
34:18
There is no documentation that Operation Hydra was
34:21
attacked by flying saucers.
34:23
There is no official casualty figures showing 50
34:27
dead or destroyed aircraft.
34:28
There is no video, no photos of this
34:31
alleged attack.
34:33
The only witness, John Sireson, is a single
34:35
voice.
34:36
His account has never been corroborated by other
34:38
participants.
34:40
So what explains the persistence of the account?
34:43
There is a fascinating dynamic here.
34:47
In the 1950s and 60s books about Nazi
34:50
UFOs, secret bases and Admiral Byrd's missing diary
34:55
began to flourish.
34:57
Authors like Ladida Slabo, Ernst Sudell and others
35:02
wrote detailed accounts with technical drawings, photographs and
35:06
even some secret documents.
35:08
The problem is that none of these authors
35:12
ever produced a single source of original.
35:17
Their documents were always in private hands or
35:21
were lost after publications.
35:23
Things like that.
35:25
There are drawings showing aircraft that looked like
35:28
something from science fiction, which they also were.
35:32
Some of the aircraft turns out to be
35:35
models from model building kits from Airfix and
35:38
Revell that has sold purely fantasy products.
35:46
That doesn't mean that nothing happened.
35:48
It means that we must be cautious.
35:51
There are unexplained phenomena associated with the attack.
35:56
The subglacial lakes, Lake Rostock for instance, are
36:00
real.
36:00
They lie under 4 km of ice.
36:04
The water temperature is around minus 3 degrees
36:07
Celsius, but the water remains liquid due to
36:10
the pressure.
36:11
Some of these lakes have been isolated for
36:13
millions of years.
36:15
In 2013, a Russian research team found microbial
36:20
life in Lake Rostock.
36:22
Life found nowhere else on the Earth.
36:28
That is science.
36:29
That is documented.
36:31
But it is not proof of an airship
36:33
base.
36:33
It is not proof of a hollow Earth.
36:36
What about Bert's diary?
36:39
The secret diary, literally describing his flight into
36:44
the Earth interior, appeared in the 1990s.
36:48
It is believed to have been written in
36:50
1956, a year before his death.
36:53
The problem is that no one has ever
36:56
seen the original.
36:57
There are no handwritten pages in public archives.
37:00
There is no documentation that the diary ever
37:03
existed, apart from references in books.
37:06
That is already highly speculative.
37:10
One thing is worth nothing.
37:16
However, the diaries circulating on the internet contain
37:20
passages that sound like something from a novel.
37:25
An underground civilization.
37:27
A master who warns against atomic weapons.
37:31
Flying saucers with swastikas.
37:34
It is a narrative that is almost too
37:36
perfect, too satisfying to be true.
37:39
Perhaps the theories say more about us than
37:42
about Antarctica.
37:49
And there is a deeper point here.
37:52
The boundary between what we know and what
37:55
we do not know is not a line.
37:56
It is a landscape.
37:58
And that landscape is filled with gaps that
38:00
invite explanations.
38:03
Antarctica is vast.
38:05
It is isolated.
38:06
It is extreme.
38:07
It is easy to imagine that something is
38:10
hidden there, because we know so little.
38:13
And that brings us back to Bert himself.
38:15
In an interview in 1954, a year before
38:20
his final explanation, he said something that is
38:22
very crude.
38:24
The host asked, Is there any unexplored land
38:28
left on Earth that might appeal to young
38:32
adventurers?
38:33
Bert replied, Yes, there is an area left
38:37
on the world today, as big as the
38:39
United States, that has never been seen by
38:42
human beings.
38:44
And that is on the other side of
38:46
the South Pole.
38:48
On the other side of the South Pole.
38:52
Notice the words.
38:54
He does not say south of the South
38:57
Pole.
38:57
He says on the other side.
38:59
What does it mean?
39:01
I mean, if you stand on the South
39:03
Pole, all direction is north.
39:06
There is no other side, unless you are
39:08
talking about something else.
39:12
Bert died in 1957.
39:15
He was 68 years old, officially on a
39:19
heart attack.
39:20
His son Richard Bert III died under mysterious
39:24
circumstances in 1988.
39:26
He was on his way to give a
39:28
speech about his father's work when he disappeared.
39:31
Three weeks later, he was found dead in
39:34
an abandoned warehouse in Baltimore, wearing different clothes,
39:38
in a different city, reportedly of starvation and
39:41
dehydration.
39:43
Officially nothing criminal, but the pattern is strange.
39:54
So why do these stories persist?
39:58
It has been decades since high jump.
40:00
Countless satellites have photographed every centimeter of Antarctica.
40:04
Thousands of researchers have lived on the continent.
40:07
No secret society, no underground civilization, no flying
40:11
saucers has been officially confirmed.
40:14
Yet the stories keep appearing in books, on
40:17
YouTube, in podcasts like this.
40:21
Perhaps it's nothing about Antarctica.
40:24
Perhaps it's about trust.
40:27
We live in an age where institutions are
40:30
being challenged.
40:31
Government lies.
40:34
The military classifies information.
40:36
Science gets things wrong or gets overtaken.
40:41
Into the void that uncertainty creates, narrative flows,
40:47
and some of them are more satisfying than
40:49
the official versions.
40:51
Because the official version is so boring, a
40:54
training exercise that was interrupted by weather, a
40:57
hero that growled and died.
40:59
Submarines surrendered.
41:02
The unofficial version is exciting.
41:05
Secret bases, flying saucers, a warning from a
41:08
forgotten civilization, a truth too dangerous to be
41:13
told.
41:15
But there is something else at play, something
41:18
about ourselves.
41:20
Humans has always sought the hidden worlds underground,
41:27
beneath the ice, beyond the horizon, from Atlantis
41:31
to Shambhala, from Sylvain to H.P. Lovecraft.
41:35
We have a deep longing for believing that
41:38
there is more than we can see.
41:40
The reality has layer, that the truth is
41:43
hidden, not absent.
41:46
Perhaps that is why Admiral Burdiss still fascinates.
41:50
Not because he was a liar, but because
41:53
he was an explorer, and we want what
42:00
he explored to be greater than ice.
42:04
In the end, Operation Highjump says most about
42:07
humanity's relationship with secrets than anything, any secret
42:14
in the ice.
42:15
We want to believe there is something, because
42:17
the alternative, that there is nothing, is less
42:20
interesting.
42:22
And perhaps, just perhaps, that is what drives
42:25
us, curiosity, the longing for the undiscovered, the
42:29
need for a place where the rules are
42:31
different.
42:33
I don't know what Admiral Burdiss saw in
42:37
Antarctica in 1947.
42:39
None of us do.
42:41
The archives are still closed.
42:43
The reports are still classified.
42:45
The witnesses are dead.
42:47
But the interesting thing isn't whenever the theories
42:51
are true.
42:52
The interesting thing is the question that never
42:55
disappears, that the ice holds something we do
42:59
not fully understand.
43:00
Maybe it is just ice.
43:03
But the question, the question is keep living.
43:07
What do you think?
43:09
Are there something in Antarctica, birds other side
43:12
of the pole, was that a metaphor, a
43:14
mistranslation, or is a hint of something real?
43:18
I don't have the full answers.
43:20
I don't have the answers.
43:22
But I have more episodes on the way,
43:25
about subglacial lakes, about maps showing Antarctica without
43:30
ice, about Nazi's fascinations for the good, and
43:34
next time we will drive into another mystery.
43:42
Remember to like and subscribe, and remember, what
43:45
you think you know, always ask yourself, how
43:48
do I know that?
43:49
See you next time.