For over twenty years, Russian scientists have attempted to break through some two miles of ice and breach the surface of Lake Vostok. Recently, the Russian expedition seemingly vanished. Now, it has reappeared and reports of success are running rampant. What did the expedition find? Nothing at all? New lifeforms? A Nazi submarine complete with Hitler’s corpse?
The Lost World of Lake Vostok?
Lake Vostok has been sealed off from the outside world for somewhere between 400,000 to 20 million years. It remains liquid due to heavy pressure from the ice as well as geothermal heat. Lake Vostok constitutes an extreme environment, not too dissimilar from what one might expect to find underneath the ice on Mars or Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Researchers are hopeful they will find new lifeforms (probably microbial in nature) within its waters.
Lake Vostok = Secret Nazi Base?
However, at least one source is suggesting a different possibility. RIA Novosti is the state-owned Russian news agency that broke the story of the expedition’s success. In its report, RIA Novosti discussed a theory that the Nazis built a secret base in the region. It also mentioned other Antarctica-based rumors: Nazi relics…secret files…and even the corpses of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun which were apparently being set aside for…you guessed it…cloning purposes.
The odds of the Russian expedition discovering Nazi artifacts in the vicinity of Lake Vostok are beyond low. Still, it’s not completely out of the question. The Nazis explored Antarctica in 1939 and were interested in building a naval base in the region. Also, several Nazi submarines, notably the U-977, escaped immediate capture after the war. The activities of these subs remain shrouded in mystery. Here’s more on the Nazi speculation at Lake Novosti from RIA Novosti:
It is thought that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and started constructing a base at Lake Vostok. In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz was quoted saying “Germany’s submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.
According to German naval archives, months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April, 1945, the German submarine U-530 arrived at the South Pole from the Port of Kiel. Crewmembers constructed an ice cave and supposedly stored several boxes of relics from the Third Reich, including Hitler’s secret files.
It is also rumored that later the submarine U-977 delivered the remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun to Antarctica for DNA cloning purposes…