German submarines in the Arctic. A secret Nazi base has been discovered in the Arctic. Hitler's nuclear laboratory in the mountains of Austria

The details of the campaign could have been somewhat different, but the 534th had to go into both secret arctic bases located in the deep rear of the USSR /

Moreover, after returning from the Arctic, U-S34 was planned to travel to the shores of Argentina, and possibly Antarctica to participate in the Tierra del Fuego special operation (according to one of the versions, the delivery of some important cargo or some officials to the secret bases of the South America). Perhaps the performers of the aforementioned performance with doubles?

The lost submarine was found by Danish scuba divers back in 1977. After its inspection, some of the preserved ship documents told about the route of the campaign and the loading of certain boxes of special cargo on board. But this cargo was not on the submarine!

What was in them and who was supposed to receive the special cargo on Severnaya Zemlya remained a mystery. Only in the early 90s was it possible to establish that the day after the death of the submarine, that is, already on the morning of May 6, 1945 (1), despite the chaos that reigned then in the German headquarters, a special team of Kriegsmarine divers lifted all the cargo and took it out in an unknown direction. Such efficiency and organization, of course, makes one think and assume that the cargo exported by U-534, had a special significance for the Third Reich!

In addition, according to documents found on the boat, it was found that there were 53 people on board (along with some passengers) (although these days on Type VII-C40 submarines, which included U-534, the maximum crew size was not more than 48 people). This was due to the fact that after the death of the Nazi transports "Wilhelm Gustlov" and "General Steuben" in the Baltic, which evacuated cadets and teachers of the Kriegsmarine Diving School, on German submarines that went to sea, the shortage of personnel was legalized by special order.

It turns out that U-534 carried not only special cargo, but also five passengers to Severnaya Zemlya or at the mouth of the Lena, and could take up to ten people back, for whom there were sleeping places on the submarine due to a decrease in staffing. But some passengers did not wait for their savior.

It is quite appropriate to recall here that in May 1945, somewhere on the shore of the Buor-Khaya Bay (Laptev Sea), there were still representatives of the Wehrmacht. And this is not a fantastic assumption, but a real fact, which is confirmed by a very mysterious find made in the summer of 1963, not far from the Soviet port of Tiksi, on the deserted shore of the Neyol Bay.

On that day, about 25 kilometers from the port, on a stone scree near the bay, the remains of a deceased person in a gray “non-Soviet” uniform were found. Neither documents nor any papers were found on the deceased, and the polar beast worked on his appearance. However, on the collar of the jacket of the deceased, a black buttonhole with yellow patterned sewing has been preserved, and on a piece of fabric that was once the left sleeve of the jacket, there is a piece of black bandage "...tsche Wehrm ...". The deciphering of the remnants of this inscription suggests that, most likely, it was a private or non-commissioned officer from the German TeNo (Technische Nothilfe) urgent technical assistance corps.

At the same time, the height of the slope on which the unknown was found completely ruled out even the assumption that he could have been brought here by the current from the Vilkitsky Strait. Perhaps it was a repairman from some Nazi unit that served the base in the Lena River Delta, sent to reconnoiter the Soviet airfield at Tiksi, but died on the way.

In addition to the ambiguity with the true purpose of the secret base in the Lena River Delta, there is another, one can consider, a global question: how could such a fundamentally built base be created in the distant Soviet rear, and even in the conditions of the Arctic?

After all, for the construction of a 200-meter concrete berth, it took more than a dozen qualified construction workers and more than one thousand tons of cement and metal fittings. ”And without the presence of special equipment on site, building such a pier is very, very problematic. Moreover, all construction problems (and they certainly were) had to be solved not on the territory of the Reich or at least occupied Norway, but 3 thousand kilometers from them, and even in the conditions of the Arctic climate. But since there is a secret base, then all the specialists, all the necessary equipment and building materials were somehow delivered here!

Of course, it can be assumed that all the necessary cargo, equipment and people were delivered on board the German raider "Komet", which in August 1940 passed through the Laptev Sea, but this assumption is absolutely unrealistic, because the landing of such a large group of builders and many days of unloading building materials and the technicians for the base could not but see our pilots who were on board the cruiser at that time.

In addition, the Komet could hardly have carried these cargoes on board, since the raider passed the entire route along the Northern Sea Route in record time and his crew simply did not have time for long unloading (and even on the unequipped coast of the Arctic). But then who, how and when delivered and built all this at the mouth of the Lena?

And further! If the German construction specialists were nevertheless taken away after the construction was completed, and ordinary laborers, most likely Soviet prisoners of war, were liquidated on the spot, then where did all the construction equipment go? They probably didn't take her away. Apparently, they drowned here, somewhere near the pier. Therefore, it would be very interesting to explore the ground near this pier, which, of course, is much easier and more promising for an introductory expedition than to open up the rocks that blocked the entrance to the cave. So it turns out that today there are only questions about this Nazi base in the Lena River Delta, and what else! But it is extremely important to search and find answers to them! At least for reasons of state security of the new Russia.

By the way, it is no coincidence that we started talking about security. After all, all these and similar structures, almost like Egyptian pyramids, erected for centuries! At the same time, let's remember our probably almost fantastic assumption that one of the bases for fascist submarines on Novaya Zemlya is a legacy from the times of Kaiser Germany. But it is quite possible that it was actively used during the war with the Soviet Union! So why not assume that, perhaps, somewhere someone dreams that the secret bases of the Third Reich, mothballed in the former Soviet, and now the Russian sector of the Arctic, can be actively used in case ... however, these are already questions not our area of expertise!

Of course, it can be said that today such assumptions are generally unrealistic. But as we will see in the next story, some of the mechanisms launched by the Nazis more than 60 years ago continue to work today with the precision of Swiss watches, for example, the mechanisms for flooding galleries at the Nazi factory in Liinakhamari.

By the way, I would like to draw attention to the following very interesting fact.

At present, it is to the Lena River Delta that one of the German firms has organized a tourist route for residents of Germany and Austria on the motor ships Mikhail Svetlov and Demyan Bedny. Only in 2003-2006, twelve tourist groups visited here, which included more than one and a half thousand German and Austrian tourists.

In the future, the possibility of organizing a tourist camp for lovers of extreme recreation is further considered. Involuntarily, a completely legitimate question arises: “Why exactly here, in the area where there was once a secret Nazi base?”

Maybe someone needs to determine how this base has retained its military purpose, or find something very important in a cave littered with an explosion or at the bottom near the pier?

Could it be that in September 1944 the aforementioned fascist submarines tried to break through into this secret base (and not at all into Nordvik Bay, as Soviet military historians believed for a long time)?

Meanwhile, the secrets of the Third Reich still live! And not only in remote areas of the Soviet Arctic, but also in such a long-established region of the Soviet Arctic as the Pechenga Bay. True, this secret can hardly be called a secret of a "district" scale. Most likely, it should be attributed to state level! However, judge for yourself.

NAZI "BRIDGE": TAIMYR - LIINAKHAMARI, OR WHAT IS HIDDEN IN THE ADITS OF DEVKA'S PLANT?

We lived in a small hollow between rocks. Our housing is only barbed wire in one row, and no buildings. Here it was forbidden to walk in the same place, so that paths would not appear. and we knew that with the end of construction, none of us would ever return to the mainland.

This is the story of one of the three Soviet soldiers who still managed to escape from the top secret Nazi construction on the shores of Devkina Bay (in the middle part of the Pechenga Bay) near the small village of Liinakhamari.

Even today, many different mysteries of the Third Reich are connected with the shores of this bay, and the most important in this series is the secret of the Arctic activities of the German “ghostly convoy”, or, more simply, the secret of creating a fascist underwater “bridge” to Taimyr.

After the end of the Second World War, the studies of military historians most often considered individual campaigns of blockade breakers, supply vessels and some Kriegsmarine submarines in the South Atlantic, Indian or Pacific Ocean, as well as campaigns combat German submarines in the Arctic. But the activities of the German ocean "supplies" that provided the German submarines in the Kara Sea (possibly in the Laptev Sea), and especially the transport submarines of the Third Reich, are still hidden behind a veil of stubborn silence.

However, as it turned out, the German submariners of Grand Admiral Dennitsa came to the shores of Soviet Siberia not only to hunt Soviet polar convoys.

In the aforementioned book by Hans-Ulrich von Krand “The Swastika in the Ice. secret base Nazis in Antarctica” tells in detail about the mysterious German submarine squadron “A”, whose submarines were never even officially listed as part of the Kriegsmarine. In Soviet literature, analogues of this formation were usually referred to as "Hitler's personal escort", sometimes - "ghostly escort".

It is possible that we are talking here in general about two different formations of German submarines that the Reich needed either to carry out some serious military and economic tasks, or to divert attention from the secret flights of transport submarines from Squadron A. After all, it is not in vain that Mr. von Krantz believes that a “personal escort” is a props, because ... professionals leave no traces. Although how can the crews of seventy submarines act and leave no traces at once, which, according to various sources, were part of the “ghost compound” (and taking into account combat submarines converted into transport ones, - ^ much bigger)? This is hardly possible!

Today we know that the submarines of squadron "A" include:

Submarines of the XA type were originally built as ocean-going minelayers. There was work on the project. unexpectedly terminated due to the fact that Grand Admiral Karl Dennits was a principled opponent of boats of such significant size.

Submarines of the XB type were minelayers of a slightly smaller displacement, but still remained the largest boats in the Kriegsmarine, Vsv 8 submarines of this type were most often not used for their intended purpose, but were used as underwater "supplies". In addition, the “ghost connection” could include 3 Type XI submarines and an unspecified number of high-speed German submarines of Project 476 (Type XVIII).

In general, the history of the creation of this secret submarine formation is also confused by the fact that before the start of World War II, OKM staffers did not really think about the transport activities of Kriegsmarine submarines. But already the Norwegian company forced Grand Admiral Raeder to reconsider the combat use of his submarines. Indeed, in the interests of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe units leading fighting in Norway, OKM had to urgently use almost all combat submarines to deliver ammunition and fuel. But in Germany, they started talking seriously about submarine transports only in the autumn of 1942, when the question arose about the possible use of submarines to carry out a surprise invasion of German troops into Iceland. Therefore, the submarine transport tanker U-459 (type XIV) was laid down and built at the shipyards of the Reich. Behind him, another and another ... Soon, the Kriegsmarine included two series of special transport submarines: ten underwater tankers milchkuh (colloquially "cash cows") and four underwater torpedo carriers.

These submarines were intended for refueling combat submarines located in ocean positions. With their own displacement of 1932 tons, they took on board up to 700 tons of diesel fuel to provide the positions of the wards of the "gray wolves". Torpedo carriers were somewhat smaller than submarine tankers. They had a special torpedo compartment, which received 39 torpedoes.

Only one submarine tanker, paired with a Torpedo-voz, ensured the extension of the hostilities of ten submarines in position for a period of at least 30 days,

However, in the waters of the Soviet Arctic, submarine tankers were almost never used. Instead, small fuel bases and small depots of torpedoes and mines, created on secluded Arctic islands, were widely used. Here the Reich needed transport submarines to transport bulk cargo. As it became known, after the war, OKM had to convert part of the serial submarines for water transport in order to use them on the Northern Sea Route for transporting special cargo from Taimyr, and mercury and rubber from the countries of the southern seas.

In the autumn of 1943, 15 submarines (type XX) with a snorkel system were ordered for the Kriegsmarine. The new submarines were specifically designed to transport especially valuable cargo. At the same time they could take up to 800 tons of liquid fuel. However, the construction of submarines of this type was first delayed until 1944, and then, according to official data, completely stopped. But whether this was actually the case is not yet clear, since this project was directly related to the provision of a “ghostly convoy” with special underwater transports.

The main measure of the effectiveness of the "ghost convoy" in the waters of the Soviet Arctic, most likely, was not the number of Soviet transports and ships sunk, but the number of certain cargoes, quietly, as if stealthily, delivered from Taimyr to the port of Liinakhamari and then, after some processing in the adits of Devkina backwater, sent to Germany.

Since these were very special cargoes, the documentation of these operations, of course, is available in some archives of the Reich, and familiarization with it could tell a lot.

In addition, it is quite possible that the Nazi submarine U-362, which was destroyed by the Soviet minesweeper T-116 near Biruli Bay (Khariton Laptev Coast), as we have already written, was part of one of these units.

As for the special cargo, which is probably on board U-362, its research could tell a lot about the secrets of the Liinakhamar plant in Devkina backwater, to which this story is dedicated. It is probably not very difficult to do this, since the very fact of the destruction of this submarine was confirmed by a diving inspection during the war years and, therefore, the coordinates of its death are precisely known! But no one dealt with this issue in the USSR, as, by the way, now in Russia,

After the review okay we got acquainted with the history of the creation and use of transport submarines in the Reich, it's time to tell about the underground secrets of the end point of the transarctic "bridge" - at that time still the Finnish port of Liinakhamari, where fascist underwater transports came very actively in 1942-1944.

And we'll start the story with overview history of Liinakhamari.

Interest in this area as a part of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was part of Russia, was made by German and Swedish miners as early as 1868, when they organized the extraction of gold and silver-lead ores on the shores of the Pecheneg Bay, near the Tana River, which is west of Pechenga, in for ten years they managed to mine several poods of gold, and in 1890, from the Dolgaya tuba, they obtained about 8 thousand poods of lead ore. As a monument of those past years, the remains of old ore trolleys are still lying on the banks of the Dolgaya,

In Russia at that time, little attention was paid to the ore resources of the Arctic, including the natural storerooms in the area of the Pechenga Bay. Only two partnerships were organized here: the Russian-Finnish Stefanovich-Ostrem and the Russian-German Mining Society, which mainly carried out exploration work. But even with such unhurried work, Russian industrialists in the Pechenga region found peridotites, which could be associated with deposits of chromite, platinum and nickel. But the lack of sufficient funding (another eternal trouble in Russia, - Auth.) very quickly put an end to the serious development of the discovered deposits by Russia. Moreover, almost immediately after the revolution (1920).

According to the Derpt (Yurievsky) peace treaty, Pechenga passed to Finland, which immediately formed the Petsamo region in this area. After 5 years, Finnish geologists either discovered themselves, or, using data on nickel-bearing rocks obtained by Russian geologists, announced the discovery of rich nickel deposits in the area of Kaula and Kammikivi. These finds immediately attracted the close attention of the German company Friedrich Krulp and the Canadian company International Nickel Company of Canada (INCO). And in 1934, the Finnish government leased Pechenga to the INCO company for 4 9 years.

INKO established its subsidiary Petsamon Nickel here, which acquired the monopoly right to develop all the identified deposits and began construction of a metallurgical plant on the Kolosjoki River.

I would like to especially note that lovers of military history, search engines and local historians of the Arctic have long been interested in mysterious structures on the coast of the Pechenga Bay, which were erected by some builders from Canada even before the war.

This interest is primarily due to the fact that Canadians from the INKO company were working at the mines of the Kaula and Kammikivi deposits, which are more than 80 kilometers from Pechenga. But what were they building in Liinakhamari? Another still pre-war Liinakhamarskaya riddle! Maybe it's here in a few years something successfully completed and put into action by the Nazis?

But first things first, but for now let's continue the historical digression.

Even before the outbreak of World War II, the British Shell and the American company Esso built large fuel tanks in Liinakhamari, and the Swedes built a large fuel berth for ocean tankers.

But Germany tried to "step" furthest in the development of coastal areas near Liinakhamari. So, back in 1937, German industrialists expressed a desire to lease Petsamo for a period of 99 years in order to equip a trawl station here.

However, it was quite clear that such a station could easily be turned into a submarine and air force base at any time. Therefore, the Germans were refused. But this did not stop the Nazis, since the fishing German-Italian company Gismondi was nevertheless created in Liinakhamari through figureheads. But, apparently, something went wrong in the plans of the Reich. Perhaps this is evidenced by a granite monument to thirty-two German soldiers, which was installed on the western bank of the Pasvik River (near the village of Janiskoski). This monument says in German: "They gave their lives for the Fuhrer, XII.1939-III.1940." This is another riddle of the Third Reich in Liinakhamari, which must be unraveled.

The next main mystery of the Nazis in Liinakhamari dates back to the summer of 1942, when, in fact, immediately after the failure of the Nazi blitzkrieg in the Soviet Arctic, the command of the Liinakhamari naval base of the Kriegsmarine received an order to accept, equip and provide with everything necessary a special group of the Wehrmacht.

Soon, the house, which had previously housed only officers of the local Gestapo, was remodeled and renovated. And in January 1943, little talkative officers in uniform with orange buttonholes and piping on shoulder straps appeared here.

From the very first days, the arrivals were given a high-speed sea boat, on which the guests went out to the Varanger Fjord area every morning. The crew of the boat, even when meeting with friends, was silent. And only the fact that every evening the fuel tanks of this boat were filled, so to speak, to the eyeballs, and moreover, additional canisters were loaded on board, definitely indicated the range of trips of the officers of this Sondergroup.

Simultaneously with the advent of a special group, qualified mining specialists (collected throughout the Reich) began to arrive in the village of Liinakhamari, and physically healthy prisoners of war from two concentration camps began to arrive in a special barrack of the nearest concentration camp: near the village of Elvenes (near Kirkenes) and near Mount Porvitash (south east of Nikel). The entrance to this barracks was forbidden to everyone, including the soldiers of the security units.

In June 1943, a ship moored at the Liinakhamar pier, delivering from Germany mobile compressor stations intended for drilling operations, and special equipment for mining drilling.

Most of the delivered equipment was placed in a closed area, some was taken towards Cape Numero-Niemi (at the entrance to the Pechenga Bay), and several sets were sent by cable car to the frontline Musta-Tunturi ridge. Very soon, breaking through adits and casemates in the rocks on the territory of the spetsstroy began to be carried out around the clock. At the same time, a grandiose plan was launched to provide the Liinakhamari area with all kinds of protection.

So, for example, to provide antiamphibious defense at Cape Krestovy, from which the entrance to the Pechenga Bay was clearly visible, in the very first days of construction, a 150-mm battery was installed at the water's edge, and a little higher - a 68-mm anti-aircraft battery. The gun yards of these batteries were lined with stone, the command post, several shelters for personnel and ammunition depots were securely hidden under the thick cover of coastal rocks.

At the entrance to the base, anti-torpedo nets were installed, and at Cape Numero-Niemi, a rocky smoke station was installed.

At the same time, on the Risti-Niemi peninsula and near the isthmus between the lakes Kantejärvi and Khikhnajärvi, the construction of concrete pits began, intended for the installation of four 210-mm guns, which were supposed to tightly “lock” the Motovsky and Kola bays. This battery had powerful underground casemates and communication passages.

In addition, two medium-caliber artillery batteries were installed at the entrance points of Risti-Niemi and Numero-Niemi. The only road to them from the east side was covered by a 2-meter stone wall, the thickness of which reached almost 1.5 meters.

Special anti-tank gates were built on the approaches to Lake Pura-järvi, although the use of tanks in the tundra was very problematic. The height of the gate reached 3 meters, and their powerful doors moved with the help of electric motors. Not a single tank, not a single vehicle could pass this obstacle without exposing its side to the mortal blows of shells from a neighboring anti-tank battery.

On the western side of the coastal mountain Valkelkivi-Tzshturi, under thick rocks, a torpedo complex was built, which included three torpedo launchers. Their machines with torpedo chutes were directed towards the bay through special loopholes. Under this complex, an extensive underground system of passages and a capacious storage for torpedoes were cut down. This torpedo system completely blocked the entrance to the Pechenga Bay for its entire width.

From the air, the entire Petsamo-Liinakhamarsky region, together with the Pechenga Bay, was reliably covered by fighters from four (!) Airfields specially built in this area at once. Not a single Nazi base (including the one where the Tirpitz super battleship was based) had such a powerful defense complex (from sea, air and land) on the Scandinavian Peninsula.

This very strange fact of creating an unusually powerful defense of the Petsamo-Liinakhamari region, Soviet historians have always explained by the fact that, they say, in this area were the main nickel developments of Germany, located just 40 kilometers from the front line - And it was their Third Reich that was forced to especially protect,

But was it really so? Most probably not!

Indeed, the protection of objects on the shores of the Devkina Bay backwater directly indicates that somewhere here the Nazis carried out some kind of work that had great value for the Reich and constituted not only a special state secret, but also extremely dangerous for human life. The latter can be confirmed by the fact that, as is known, all construction sites strategically important for the Third Reich have always used the skilled labor of exclusively German military builders.

In Liinakhamari, special work teams and sapper units of the Wehrmacht carried out work on a secret facility under construction only in the summer of 1942 for the first two to three months. Then all the German builders were urgently taken out of the construction site and transferred to France and Norway for the construction of bunkers on the special order of the Kriegsmarine. And in their place were driven Soviet prisoners of war.

The prisoners cut in the rocks of Devkina backwater multi-meter adits for the construction of workshops of a factory and even ... underground rooms for a hospital. The construction was carried out in conditions of such secrecy that even German artillerymen from neighboring batteries were strictly forbidden to appear on the territory of the special construction, and even more so to enter the adits.

Every two or three weeks, new teams of Soviet prisoners of war from a special barrack were delivered to these adits to continue work. At the same time, their predecessors, who left for construction earlier, never returned to the barracks! Even the officers of the Liinakhamar Gestapo turned out to be unprepared for the work of such a massive and well-established "factory of death"!

Where did our compatriots disappear to? Until now, this secret is securely kept by the adits of Devka's backwater and, of course, the documentation for this plant, which is certainly located somewhere in the archives of the former Third Reich.

A peculiar continuation of this Liinakhamar riddle is that the adits of the plant's workshops and the hospital chambers, being much higher than the level of the Barents Sea, are constantly flooded with sea (!) Water. Any attempts to pump it out are unsuccessful, since initially the water from the flooded structures seems to start to leave, and then, as if on command, very quickly refills all the rooms carved into the rocks of the Devkina backwater. At the same time, the mechanism of the “self-liquidation” system has been working flawlessly for 65 years. The most paradoxical thing is that in all the years that have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War, not a single serious attempt (at the state level) has been made to reveal the secret of this strange and at the same time unique construction. Although it seems quite obvious that if the impossibility of pumping sea water, for example, from the dungeons of Kaliningrad, it is explained by the fact that all these premises are located below sea level and the plugs of secret gateways are open somewhere, in the case of Devkina Zavod, the opposite is true, since all the underground structures are located significantly above sea level. This means that powerful pumps and a certain power plant that feeds them continue to operate somewhere nearby today.

But where it is hidden, what kind of energy for more than half a century makes these pumps work smoothly (if they are pumps at all), and how this whole flooding system works in general, no one knows. And finally, for so many decades, has no one been interested in knowing the structure of this entire system?

Meanwhile, if the flooding of a secret military plant can still be somehow explained by the need to maintain secrecy of production, then why is the hospital flooded and so carefully hidden from prying eyes? Or maybe it was not quite an ordinary hospital? And these are far from idle questions, since it is reliably known that during the three war years Liinakhamari was not only a base for training and sending nickel to Germany, but also a processing plant something, what was delivered here by German submarines from somewhere in the Arctic and then urgently sent somewhere to Germany!

Moreover, there is evidence that these cargoes were delivered in special containers placed outside the strong hull of the submarine. If to this at add the facts of the mass and complete disappearance of all those who worked in the workshops of this terrible underground monster, then there is a well-founded assumption that the Nazis were working here with some components of the very “weapon of retaliation” that Hitler so dreamed of?

It is possible that the work of this enterprise was associated with the enrichment of some kind of radioactive raw material, which has alpha-emitting isotopes in its composition, which, in principle, are quite safe for external human exposure. True, only external radiation! But God forbid, if such an isotope somehow, for example, in the form of gas or dust, got into the inside of the human body. Then death was inevitable, and in a fairly short time!

An example of this is the worldwide sensational death of a British citizen, Mr. Litvinenko, who, according to the official version, also died overnight from the alpha-emitting isotope of polonium.

And if we add to the above version the presence of a secret hospital directly at the plant, then this only strengthens the suspicion that there is a production facility for the processing of some radioactive materials in the adits of Liinakhamari,

It is possible that all these are just our fantasies, but after all, Adolf Hitler’s dreams of creating a nuclear “retaliatory weapon” that are already in service today, and not only in the United States and Russia, were once regarded as such.

By the way, if something was really done on the banks of the Devkina backwater according to a top-secret program related to the “weapon of retaliation”, then all those super-emergency measures that were taken by the Nazis to defend the Petsamo-Liinakhamari region, as well as the disappearance without a trace in the galleries of Devkina backwaters of Soviet prisoners of war who worked at this plant.

Of course, the hospital, as well as the cargo of the submarine U-362, which we have already written about, could tell a lot not only about the fate of those who were here, but also about the plant itself. They could, but in order to obtain this information, one must be able to drain the underground structures on the banks of the Devkina backwater or raise samples of cargo from the flooded U-362.

And since so far this has not been possible, it turns out that no one in Russia knows any data about the spetsstroy and its alleged (or real) “products” today! However, it is absolutely impossible to even assume that there are no detailed technical documentation and relevant reports on the results of the activities of such a top-secret enterprise. Therefore, we again ran into the archives of the Third Reich, where we need to look for these documents.

But in order to get to archival repositories of this category, we need appropriate approvals at the interstate level! Probably, now such agreements and approvals are quite possible and even necessary, if only because the absolutely secret former Nazi enterprise, located during the war on the Soviet, and now Russian territory, actually remains ready for proper operation! So find out what same hiding in the adits of Devkina backwater and the dungeons surrounding it - this is not only our right, but even a duty and obligation to future generations of Russians! This gives hope that the curtain of secrecy over Devkina backwater and the activities of the Liinakhamar port in 1942-1944 will still be lifted and that this will happen in the near future!

The Nazis, unlike many military theorists, attached great strategic importance to the territories beyond the 60th parallel of the northern latitude.

The head of the Marine Arctic Complex Expedition, Dr. historical sciences Deputy Director of the Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D.S. Likhachev Pyotr Boyarsky.

When, in what area and under what circumstances did you receive evidence of Nazi activity in the Soviet Arctic? Apparently, they managed to firmly grow into these places.

Traces of the presence of fascists in the Arctic were discovered by us in Ice Harbor Bay during the first expeditions in the late 1980s. Our goal was to study the winter hut of Willem Barents, arranged by him in 1596-1597 on Cape Sporiy Navolok of the island New Earth. By our time, the old lighthouse remained from the entire winter hut. Having sailed, we saw that it was destroyed, but not at all from time or storms. Looks like he was shot at with guns. In any case, its upper part was destroyed by the explosion. It is known that it was in these places that a German submarine in 1943 sank our research vessel "Akademik Shokalsky". So they shot, apparently, from her.

Indirect evidence of the appearance of the Nazis during the war years is also kept by the camp, equipped with pomors in the 1920s-1930s on a small island north of Ledyanaya Gavan and northeast of Novaya Zemlya. In this large house, the Pomors both lived and engaged in fishing. The house has destruction similar to that of a lighthouse. It is known that the Germans passed by these places from Cape Zhelaniya.

And on Cape Desire, there is a lot of evidence of Nazi aggression. Our pillboxes, bunkers and other fortifications built to repel German attacks remained there. There are traces of battles everywhere. And in the Small Karmakuly, where the Russian meteorological polar station has been located since the end of the 19th century. It carried two seaplanes received by the Soviet Union from the Americans under Lend-Lease. So, both the station and the village around it were also destroyed by a German submarine on July 27, 1942. The wreckage of seaplanes, including their engines, we found lying on the shore. Some of them were taken out by our expedition - these are all material evidence of military operations in this territory.

Our coast guard fired on German ships approaching Taimyr and Dixon. It is too historical fact, which indicates that the Nazis were interested not only in the Barents Sea, but also in the Kara Sea. The wreckage of German ships or the results of their combat activities are also found in the Matochkin Shar Strait. These are, for example, the remains of submarines. It is known that fascist submarines hid in the western bays of this area for a long time.

- Did you manage to find any large Nazi bases in the North?

Yes, we succeeded. It is known that the Germans installed their weather stations at different points in Novaya Zemlya so that their ships, submarines and aircraft would receive accurate information about the ice situation. On Novaya Zemlya, such stations existed at Cape Pinegina, at Cape Bear. The Krot station was still working on Mezhdusharsky Island, and a runway for aircraft was cleared near it. One of these German weather stations was built on Franz Josef Land - this is the northernmost archipelago of Eurasia. Now our frontier outpost is located on Alexandra Land.

In 1943, the Germans carried out Operation Wunderland there, for which they built the Treasure Detector weather station. It consisted of several dugouts and firing points that we found during the expeditions of 2005-2007. It was a very large base. The equipment and equipment that was dropped in this area in containers on parachutes is not designed for a couple of dozen people who settled at the base at the beginning. Obviously, over time, new residents should have arrived on it and the expansion of the base would have begun. In the 1960s and 1970s, our border guards took a lot of good ammunition from the Treasure Hunter and used German boots for a long time.

In 1985, I happened to meet the famous polar navigator Valentin Akkuratov, who was the first to discover this German base.

Flying over the island of Alexandra Land, among the snow and glaciers, he noticed an unnatural white rectangle - it turned out to be the roof of the dugout. Those who soon entered the station had the feeling that the Germans had just left. Helmets, machine guns were hung everywhere, there were tin cans, spoons, bowls, German propaganda literature on the table. Obviously, the Nazis left the dugout in a great hurry.

The reason for the hasty flight of the Germans from the Treasure Hunter soon became clear.

The inhabitants of the base, like many participants Arctic expeditions before and after them, we decided to try an exotic dish - polar bear. As a result, they began to have indigestion, weakness and other troubles. Uncooked bear meat leads to acute diseases. The Nazis were evacuated from the base in such a hurry that they left everything as it was. The remains of a house, a dugout have been preserved. Among the stones are metal containers that look like air bombs. In them, the Nazis dropped part of the cargo delivered to the "Treasure Detector" by air. In addition, we saw scraps of old camouflage nets, sheets from books with Hitler's speeches on the significance of the Aryan race. Surely there were still tents here, but they were blown away by hurricane winds.

The location for the base was chosen very well. There is a deep bay, and a multi-kilometer strip of rubble tundra adjoins it - the largest piece of land in the entire archipelago that is free from an ice shell. And a little to the side there is a lake with fresh water. From the side of the bay, the base was covered by a machine-gun pillbox - its ruins are quite clearly visible. To protect the object from land, minefields were arranged. Closer to the water, we found a pipe leading into the bowels of the island. Perhaps this is part of the ventilation system for some hidden structure. Apparently, there are underground grottoes where submarines could be based. It is known about the existence of similar huge caves on other Arctic islands, communicating with the sea by underwater corridors. Such natural bunkers are very convenient for building secret storage facilities in them. We have yet to explore them.

- What did the Nazis need in the harsh Arctic ice?

Under Lend-Lease, our country was supplied with weapons, which were delivered by ships from the West through the Barents Sea. There were deliveries from the East. So, my father was one of the curators of the base, which received the planes. To stop these supplies, the Germans needed bases in these places. Accurate weather data were also needed, which meant weather stations that would give reports. In addition, the Nazis attacked our polar stations, receiving diaries and weather reports, and the Red Army, in turn, was deprived of this data. Thanks to these accurate data, the Nazis sank many ships, including passenger ships with the families of polar explorers.

It was a zone from which it was possible to deliver rear strikes on the central part of Russia. Part of our factories were transferred beyond the Urals, and it would be very convenient for the Nazis to bomb them from airfields in the Arctic. That is why they intended to build airfields on Novaya Zemlya.

In addition, the exploration of the Arctic was associated with German mythology about the hollowness of the Earth. For the same purpose, expeditions were sent to Tibet and Antarctica. The Nazis were looking for cosmic energy that would allow them to take over the world. For their ideology, the North was sacred.

The military reasons for the development of the North are understandable, but German scientists began to explore the Arctic long before the war. Why?

The idea of a trip to the northeast in German General Staff appeared in the 1920s. Preparation for its implementation was a joint Soviet-German expedition on the best German airship Graf Zeppelin. Photo and filming of the North was carried out from its board. It was needed not only for scientific, but also for intelligence purposes. Filming Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya was of strategic importance. The Germans, however, later declared that it had failed, therefore Soviet Union photographs of these territories were not transmitted. But after the war, the pictures were found in the archives of the Reich. The pictures gave a picture, for example, of the ice situation in the Kara Sea.

- How did the boats navigate through the ice?

The thickness of the ice is two to five meters, and below is the depth, so nothing prevents the submarines from sailing. But in order to emerge in the right places near the coast, these pictures were just needed. In addition to them, information was given by a German intelligence officer who worked in the area of Cape Zhelaniya. The Nazis knew where polynyas formed in the summer. In addition, reconnaissance aircraft reported on the ice situation. German airfields were located up to Dikson Island. So the Nazi submarines sailed freely in the Barents and Kara Seas.

- Really Soviet authorities did not know what was happening in our deep rear?

Of course they did. Our Soviet base existed on Franz Josef Land in Tikhaya Bay, from which they somehow saw a German reconnaissance aircraft and realized that the Nazis were working somewhere nearby. But all the forces were sent to the front, no one was particularly interested in the life of the polar explorers. The only thing is that by the end of the war, ours recaptured the base for aircraft on Belushya Bay from the Germans. Our patrol boats also appeared there. And on Dixon - a Soviet battery. So by the end of the war, the Germans realized that they had nothing more to do in this region.

- What happened to the German bases in the Arctic after the war?

I can tell in what form they are now. For example, on Mezhdusharsky Island, at the entrance to Belushya Bay, on Capes Konstantin and Pinegin, there were airfields and radio stations. To this day, runways have survived, barrels of fuel are lying here and there, but, in fact, there is not much material evidence left. Therefore, I believe that weather stations and other objects should be conserved as historical monuments. But here lies a certain danger: many objects are still mined.

Russian researchers told about the secret base of the Nazis discovered in the Arctic, called the Treasure Hunter. The object was located on the island of Alexandra Land, which is part of the Franz Josef Land archipelago and is located a thousand kilometers from North Pole. The artifacts discovered by the researchers are well preserved due to the cold northern climate. All the finds are planned to be sent to the mainland, where they are carefully examined, and after that they will be put on public display. inquired about the details of the opening.

The press secretary of the Russian Arctic National Park, Yulia Petrova, clarified: about 500 items were recovered from the ruins of the bunker opened by scientists historical significance during the Second World War - in particular, gasoline cans and paper documents, bullets and personal hygiene items, shoes with a swastika.

Rumors about the existence of a base on the island of Alexandra Land have been circulating for many decades. “Before that, it was known only from written sources, but now we have real evidence”, - said the senior researcher of the national park Evgeny Yermolov.

Experts believe that the secret base was built in 1942 on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler. Most likely, the Germans began to operate the facility in September 1943 and left it in June 1944. Scientists believe that the reason for curtailing the mission is trichinosis - infection of station employees with nematodes due to the consumption of raw meat from polar bears. Some crew members, scientists believe, died, and the survivors were evacuated by a BV-138 seaplane as part of a special rescue mission. The most valuable equipment was later taken out by the German submarine U387.

The Treasure Hunter is one of the most mysterious Nazi bases in the Arctic. The existence of a meteorological and direction-finding station became known to the military as early as 1942, when Soviet pilots flew near the warehouses of the base. However, traces of the presence of the Germans on the island were observed by the Soviet military earlier - in 1941, and after World War II, a specially organized Soviet expedition visited the base abandoned by the Nazis, about which fragmentary information has been preserved.

For example, it is known that in September 1951, the Semyon Dezhnev icebreaker, as military journalist Sergei Kovalev reports in his book The Arctic Shadows of the Third Reich, passed in the strait between the islands of George Land and Alexandra Land. The ship's crew explored an abandoned Nazi station. The expedition discovered five dugouts designed for 30 people, a meteorological platform and an antenna mast. The base's residential bunker consisted of seven equipment rooms, a bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, and a pantry. A quarter of the structure was hidden in the ground, and the rest was painted with white oil paint.

Video: Unusual Things / YouTube

The dugouts were surrounded by trenches, in which the researchers found a radio station, mortars and machine guns. A more powerful radio transmitter was hidden under an awning five kilometers from the coast, in the depths of the island. Also, a motor boat was found on the coast near the base. The station was invisible from the water and was located half a kilometer from the coast, at an altitude of 30 meters above sea level. Obviously, the "Treasure Hunt" was run by the Kriegsmarine (from the German Kriegsmarine) - the navy of the Third Reich.

Frame: Unusual Things / YouTube

This was confirmed by the Soviet military, who saw the underground base of German submarines in the area of the Nazi station and airfield on Alexandra Land. Unfortunately, today these witnesses are no longer alive, and the available information about the secret station is a collection of rumors that are difficult to verify. In wartime, there was a Soviet airstrip near the German airfield and weather station on the island of Alexandra Land. Unlike the German one, it was not located in the best place on the island: it was irregularly blown by arctic winds, so it slowly dried out.

Today, Alexandra Land is part of the Franz Josef Land state nature reserve. The only settlement on the island is Nagurskoye, where the base of the border service and the northernmost airfield of the country are located. Currently, the facilities of the village are being actively modernized. In particular, the runway is planned to be made year-round - due to thawing of the soil in the summer, it becomes inoperative.

The second-class runway will measure 2.5 kilometers by 42 meters and will allow receiving Su-34 and MiG-31 fighters, as well as Il-78 tankers. An administrative and residential complex of a closed cycle with a total area of more than 14,000 square meters will be erected on the territory of the village. The modernized infrastructure on the island of Alexandra Land will allow Russia not only to quickly solve defense tasks, but also to follow in the general direction of the growing interest in the Arctic, associated with transport opportunities and the natural wealth of the region.

Thousands of war criminals, collaborators who collaborated with the Germans during the war, after it ended, could not escape punishment. The Soviet special services did everything possible so that none of them escaped the deserved punishment.

A very humane court

The thesis that there is a punishment for every crime was refuted in the most cynical way during the trials of Nazi criminals. According to the records of the Nuremberg Court, 16 out of 30 top SS and police leaders of the Third Reich not only saved their lives, but also remained at large.

Of the 53 thousand SS men who were executors of the order to exterminate "inferior peoples" and were part of the "Einsatzgruppen", only about 600 people were prosecuted.

List of defendants on the main Nuremberg Trials consisted of only 24 people, it was the top of the Nazi organs. There were 185 defendants at the Small Nuremberg Trials. Where do the rest go?

For the most part, they ran along the so-called. South America served as the main refuge for the Nazis.

By 1951, only 142 prisoners remained in the prison for Nazi criminals in the city of Landsberg, in February of that year, US High Commissioner John McCloy pardoned 92 prisoners at the same time.

Double standards

Tried for war crimes and Soviet courts. We also dealt with the cases of executioners from concentration camp Sachsenhausen. In the USSR, the chief doctor of the camp, Heinz Baumketter, who was responsible for the deaths, was sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. huge amount prisoners; Gustav Sorge, known as "Iron Gustav" participated in the execution of thousands of prisoners; camp guard Wilhelm Schuber personally shot 636 Soviet citizens, 33 Polish and 30 German, also participated in the execution of 13,000 prisoners of war.

Among other war criminals, the above-mentioned "people" were handed over to the German authorities to serve their sentences. However, in federal republic all three did not remain behind bars for long. They were released, and each was given an allowance of 6 thousand marks, and the "doctor-death" Heinz Baumketter even got a place in one of the German hospitals.

During the war

War criminals, those who collaborated with the Germans and were guilty of the destruction of civilians and Soviet prisoners of war, the Soviet state security agencies and SMERSH began to search for even during the war. Starting from the December counter-offensive near Moscow, operational groups of the NKVD arrived in the territories liberated from occupation.

They collected information about persons who collaborated with the occupation authorities, interrogated hundreds of witnesses to crimes. Most of the survivors of the occupation willingly made contact with the NKVD and the ChGK, showing loyalty to the Soviet government.
In wartime, trials of war criminals were conducted by military tribunals of active armies.

"Travnikovtsy"

At the end of July 1944, documents from the liberated Majdanek and the SS training camp, which was located in the town of Travniki, 40 km from Lublin, fell into the hands of SMERSH. Wachmans were trained here - guards of concentration camps and death camps.

In the hands of SMERSHovtsy was a card file with five thousand names of those who were trained in this camp. They were mostly former Soviet prisoners of war who had signed an obligation to serve in the SS. SMERSH began the search for "Travnikovites", after the war the search was continued by the MGB and the KGB.

The investigating authorities have been looking for the Travnikovites for more than 40 years, the first trials in their cases date back to August 1944, the last trials took place in 1987. Officially, at least 140 trials of the Travnikovites are recorded in the historical literature, although Aharon Schneer, an Israeli historian who has closely dealt with this problem, believes that there were many more.

How did you search?

All repatriates who returned to the USSR went through complex system filtration. It was a necessary measure: among those who ended up in the filtration camps were former punishers, and accomplices of the Nazis, and Vlasov, and the same "travnikovites".

Immediately after the war, on the basis of captured documents, acts of the ChGK and eyewitness accounts, the USSR state security agencies compiled lists of Nazi accomplices to be wanted. They included tens of thousands of surnames, nicknames, names.

For the initial screening and subsequent search for war criminals in the Soviet Union, a complex but effective system was created. The work was carried out seriously and systematically, search books were created, a strategy, tactics and methods of search were developed. Operational workers sifted through a lot of information, checking even rumors and those information that were not directly related to the case.

The investigating authorities searched and found war criminals throughout the Soviet Union. The special services were working among the former Ostarbeiters, among the inhabitants of the occupied territories. So thousands of war criminals, fascist comrades-in-arms were identified.

Tonka machine gunner

Indicative, but at the same time unique is the fate of Antonina Makarova, who for her "merits" received the nickname "Tonka machine gunner". During the war years, she collaborated with the Nazis in the Lokot Republic and shot more than one and a half thousand captured Soviet soldiers and partisans.

A native of the Moscow region, Tonya Makarova, in 1941, she went to the front as a nurse, ended up in the Vyazemsky cauldron, then was arrested by the Nazis in the village of Lokot, Bryansk region.

The village of Lokot was the "capital" of the so-called. There were many partisans in the Bryansk forests, whom the Nazis and their associates managed to catch on a regular basis. To make the executions as demonstrative as possible, Makarova was given a Maxim machine gun and was even given a salary of 30 marks for each execution.

Shortly before Elbow was liberated by the Red Army, Tonka the machine-gunner was sent to a concentration camp, which helped her - she forged documents and pretended to be a nurse. After her release, she got a job in a hospital and married a wounded soldier Viktor Ginzburg. After the Victory, the family of the newlyweds left for Belarus. Antonina in Lepel got a job at a garment factory, led an exemplary lifestyle.

On her traces, the KGB came out only after 30 years. The coincidence helped. On Bryansk Square, a man attacked a certain Nikolai Ivanin with his fists, recognizing him as the head of the Lokot prison. From Ivanin, a thread began to unravel to Tonka the machine gunner. Ivanin remembered the name and the fact that Makarova was a Muscovite.

The search for Makrova was intensive, at first another woman was suspected, but the witnesses did not identify her. Helped again by chance. The brother of the “machine gunner”, filling out a questionnaire for traveling abroad, indicated the name of his sister by her husband. Already after the investigating authorities discovered Makarova, she was “led” for several weeks, several confrontations were held to accurately establish her identity.

On November 20, 1978, the 59-year-old machine-gunner Tonka was sentenced to capital punishment. At the trial, she remained calm and was sure that she would be acquitted or have her sentence reduced. She treated her work at Lokta as a job and claimed that her conscience did not torment her.

In the USSR, the case of Antonina Makarova was the last major case of traitors to the Motherland during the Second World War and the only one in which a female punisher appeared.

Russian researchers spoke about the secret Nazi base discovered in the Arctic, called the Treasure Detector, Lenta.ru reports.

The object was located on the island of Alexandra Land, which is part of the Franz Josef Land archipelago and is located a thousand kilometers from the North Pole. The artifacts discovered by the researchers are well preserved due to the cold northern climate. All the finds are planned to be sent to the mainland, where they are carefully examined, and after that they will be put on public display. Lenta.ru asked about the details of the opening.

Yulia Petrova, press secretary of the Russian Arctic National Park, clarified that about 500 objects of historical significance from the Second World War were recovered from the ruins of a bunker opened by scientists, in particular, gasoline cans and paper documents, bullets and personal hygiene items, shoes with a swastika.

Rumors about the existence of a base on the island of Alexandra Land have been circulating for many decades. “Before that, it was known only from written sources, but now we have real evidence,” said Yevgeny Yermolov, a senior researcher at the national park.

For example, it is known that in September 1951, the Semyon Dezhnev ice drift, as military journalist Sergei Kovalev reports in his book Arctic Shadows of the Third Reich, passed in the strait between the islands of George Land and Alexandra Land. The ship's crew explored an abandoned Nazi station. The expedition discovered five dugouts designed for 30 people, a meteorological platform and an antenna mast. The base's residential bunker consisted of seven equipment rooms, a bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, and a pantry. A quarter of the structure was hidden in the ground, and the rest was painted with white oil paint.