With global climate change, the eternal ice of the North and South Poles of the Earth is gradually melting, and ancient glaciers present us with new surprises every year. Some of the discoveries become delightful clues to the mysteries of the human past, return to us objects lost in time, or tell us about incredible anomalies that even the most famous scientists in the world are not able to explain.

Recently, mankind has been increasingly directing its gaze into space, but there are still many unexplored corners on Earth, and one of such places rich in enchanting secrets is the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. The eternal ice continues to melt, and this process allows for incredible discoveries that are both delightful and mysterious or even terrifying.

The ruthless north can be a very formidable and frightening place, because we still don't know so much about it. Scholars and conspiracy theorists are constantly arguing and ridiculing each other for differences of opinion about most of the mysteries of the Arctic. Whether it is traces of alien civilizations or inexplicable natural phenomena, areas of eternal cold continue to disturb the minds of researchers and theorists struggling to unravel the most interesting discoveries that appear from under the ice with enviable constancy.

Perhaps we will not get answers to all our questions soon, and most of the mysteries of the North will remain unsolved, but this is not a reason to turn a blind eye to them. Here is a selection of 15 of the most incredible, creepy and amazing discoveries made in the Arctic and Antarctica in recent years.

15 Giant Sea Spiders


Photo: Market Business News

Sea spiders, which in the scientific community are more often called pantopods, pycnogonids or multi-arm (pantopoda, pycnogonida), usually live in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean region, but the largest individuals of this species have even been found in some areas of Antarctica and the Arctic. These amazing creatures are a vivid example of polar gigantism, a phenomenon that scientists have been trying to explain for a very long time. No one is exactly sure why these spiders and many other creatures living in the coldest regions of our planet grow so large. One theory suggests that a lack of oxygen in the icy water may be the cause.

In the coldest seas, giant sea spiders grow up to 90 centimeters in length. However, despite their impressive size and eerie appearance, these creatures are completely harmless, and technically they belong to a separate class of marine chelicerae rather than arachnids.

14. Long-nosed chimera


Photo: Siberian Times

Rhinochimaeridae, better known as the long-nosed chimera, is one of the rarest fish species on Earth and has only been caught twice in history, the second time being caught by a fisherman in the icy waters of Davis Strait in Northern Canada. So rarely this sea creature gets into the net for a rather simple reason - an amazing fish usually swims at depths from 200 to 1900 meters, and for a person this is not the most accessible environment.

It is not surprising that for her long nose, the rare chimera was nicknamed Pinocchio. In addition, it is often confused with the rhinoceros shark due to the similarity of their mouths and noses. That is why the long-nosed chimera is often mistakenly called a ghost shark. In fact, the deep-sea chimera belongs to the family of nosed chimeras from the class Cartilaginous. An interesting distinguishing feature is that an extremely poisonous spike grows in front of the first dorsal fin of the fish, which usually serves as protection from predators, and this dangerous process easily folds into a special recess when the chimera is not in danger.

13. Melting eternal ice can provoke new viral epidemics


Photo: Gizmodo

Global climate change has long been the cause of increased melting of the Arctic ice. The size of the glaciers in the Arctic Ocean is shrinking more and more every summer. As a result, due to unusually warm weather, melting glaciers release microbes that had previously been dormant for many centuries.

In August 2016, an unexpected outbreak of anthrax caused the death of a 12-year-old boy and the hospitalization of 72 villagers. The cause of the epidemic was the contamination of local groundwater with the cadaveric juices of thawed deer, who once died just from this dangerous infection. The Siberians suffered because all the drinking water in the village was poisoned.

And here is another precedent - in Norway, the bodies of 6 young men who died back in 1918 from the Spanish flu were discovered, and a perfectly preserved virus was found in the blood of the dead. There is fear among experts that the frozen graves of smallpox victims will also cause outbreaks of the deadly virus in the future.

12. These puppies are 12,000 years old.


Photo: redorbit.com

In 2001, researchers who traveled to the northeast of Yakutia in the hope of discovering the remains of ancient mammoths there found perfectly preserved remains of puppies from the Ice Age. Five years later, an employee of the World Mammoth Museum at the North-Eastern Federal University, Sergei Fedorov, went to the site of the discovery of an ancient puppy and found not one, but two well-preserved bodies of animals from the Ice Age.

Frozen puppies could theoretically help scientists find out when and where exactly dogs split into a separate subspecies of wolves and became the first tame animals in human history. The study of the finds showed that the puppies died at the age of about 3 months, and they died, most likely, having fallen under an avalanche. Scientists are going to use the remains of the discovered animals for research on the chronology of the domestication of this species, because so far there is still no consensus in the scientific community about the timing and place where dogs were first tamed by humans.

11. Secret base of the Nazis in the Arctic


Photo: Siberian Times

In October 2016, Russian scientists discovered a secret Nazi base in the Arctic. An object called Schatzbraber or "Treasure Hunt" was found on the island of Alexandra Land, and it was built about a year after the German invasion of Russia.

Apparently, the base was completely empty in 1944, when Nazi scientists poisoned themselves with polar bear meat. The second time people appeared here already as much as 72 years later. Russian polar explorers found about 500 different artifacts at the base, including rusty bullets and documents from the Second World War, and all these items were hidden in bunkers for many years. The base has been preserved in excellent condition due to extremely low temperatures.

There are versions that the object was created to search for some ancient relics and sources of power, in the existence of which Adolf Hitler himself believed. Although more skeptical experts believe that the secret base supplied the Nazis with information about weather conditions, which could give Germany significant advantages in planning the movement of its troops, ships and submarines. The Russians are now using this island to build their own military base.

10 Ancient Giant Virus


Photo: National Geographic

In 2014, in the eternal ice of Siberia, researchers discovered a virus called Pithovirus that had been lying untouched in the cold for almost 30,000 years, and it turned out to be a truly giant non-cellular infectious agent. The find is recognized as unique, because Pithovirus is the largest representative of viruses known to modern science.

In addition, the virions found in the Arctic are genetically much more complex than conventional viruses. Pitovirus contains 500 genes. By the way, discovered in 2013, Pandoravirus, now recognized as the second largest virus on the planet, has as many as 2,500 genes. For comparison, HIV contains only 12 genes. Even more eerie, after 30,000 years of dormancy, the giant virion is still active and capable of infecting amoeba cells.

Many scientists believe that it is extremely difficult to get infected with this prehistoric virus today, although such a danger is still possible under optimal conditions. For example, if you find the body of a person who died from this infection. Such a scenario is very unlikely, but the very idea that unknown and potentially dangerous microorganisms lurk in the eternal ice, waiting to be discovered, makes some experts seriously worried.

9. 100-year-old photographs from Antarctica


Photo: Heritage Trust

In 2013, specialists from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust were working on the restoration of an old research base and found a box with 22 undeveloped 100-year-old negatives there. The photographs were taken by famed explorer Ernest Shackleton on an expedition to the Ross Sea and have been waiting for nearly a century to finally be rescued from the ice and developed. The famous exploration team intended to make a trip around the whole of Antarctica and drop in supplies for Shackleton. However, the mission was thwarted because several members of the expedition, including the eminent figure of the "heroic age of Antarctic exploration", unexpectedly got stuck on Ross Island, where they nearly died. Their ship was swept out to sea during severe bad weather, but the group was still saved then.

A photographer from Wellington (New Zealand city) took on the development of old negatives, and the result of his labors is right in front of you. Obviously, the old photographs have suffered a bit from the extreme weather conditions, but they still represent an amazing echo of the legendary polar explorations and learn even more about the 100-year-old expedition.

8. Gravity anomaly discovered in Antarctica under the ice sheet


Photo: Ohio State University

In December 2016, scientists discovered a huge object hidden under the eternal ice of Antarctica. The discovery was made in the Wilkes Land region, and it is an anomalous area with a diameter of about 300 meters, lying at a depth of about 823 meters. The find was called the Wilkes Earth gravitational anomaly, and it was discovered in a crater with a diameter of 500 kilometers thanks to observations from NASA satellites in 2006.

Many researchers suggest that the huge anomaly is all that remains of a giant prehistoric asteroid. It was probably 2 times (or according to other sources 6 times) larger than the asteroid, because of which the dinosaurs once died out. Researchers also believe that it was this celestial body that caused the global catastrophe that provoked the Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, when 96% of marine life and about 70% of land creatures died.

As always, conspiracy theorists take a different view. Many of them believe that once this crater was either an underground base of aliens, or a secret refuge for fallen angels from the Bible, or even a portal to the inner part of the Earth, where there is a separate world (the hollow Earth hypothesis).

7 Mysterious Arctic Civilization


Photo: Siberian Times

In 2015, 29 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, scientists discovered traces of a mysterious medieval civilization. Despite the fact that the find was made in the region of Siberia, archaeologists have established that this people was related to Persia.

The remains were wrapped in furs (presumably bear or wolverine skins), birch bark, and covered with copper objects. Under the conditions of permafrost, the bodies in such a “wrap” were literally mummified, and therefore have been perfectly preserved to this day. In total, researchers found 34 small graves and 11 bodies at the site of the medieval site.

Initially, it was believed that only men and children were buried there, but in August 2017, scientists discovered that among the mummies there is also a body that once belonged to a woman. Scientists have nicknamed her the Polar Princess. Researchers believe that this girl belonged to a high class, since she is so far the only representative of the fair sex discovered during these excavations. Work with artifacts is still ongoing, so it is possible that many more amazing discoveries await us ahead.

6. The mystery of the warships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus


Photo: mirror.co.uk

The bombardier ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were refitted specifically to take part in Sir John Franklin's infamous lost Arctic exploration expedition of 1845-1847. Both ships under the command of Franklin set off on a journey through the unexplored regions of the far North, but in the Canadian territories they were captured by ice, and none of the 129 crew members, including the captain himself, never returned home.

In 1981-1982, new expeditions were undertaken, the purpose of which was to explore the islands of King William and Beechey (King William Island, Beechey Island). There, scientists discovered the bodies of some of the members of the Franklin expedition, perfectly preserved to this day thanks to the process of natural mummification. According to the conclusion of forensic experts, the cause of death of these polar explorers was poisoning with low-quality canned food, tuberculosis and severe weather conditions incompatible with life. As a result of examining the remains, experts also concluded that the members of the Franklin expedition at some point literally went crazy with exhaustion and even began to eat each other - suspicious cuts and notches were found on their bodies, testifying in favor of cannibalism.

Then, on September 12, 2014, an expedition in the Victoria Strait area discovered the wreckage of HMS Erebus, and exactly 2 years later (September 12, 2016), members of the Arctic Research Foundation also found HMS Terror, and in almost perfect condition.

5 Unidentified Sounds From The Bottom Of The Arctic Ocean

Photo: Incredible Arctic

In 2016, near the Eskimo settlement of Iglulik, the territory of Nunavut (Igloolik, Nunavut), in the area of ​​​​the Canadian part of the Arctic, strange things were recorded, coming straight from the bottom, and frightening even wild animals living in these waters. A team of scientists sent by the Canadian military had to determine the source of the sounds and find out if a foreign submarine had swum into state territory. But in the end, all they found was a pod of whales and 6 walruses. After making sure that the suspicious signals did not pose any danger, the military curtailed the operation and left the place.

The origin of the mysterious sounds is still unknown, but conspiracy theorists believe in several fantastic versions at once, including messages from the inhabitants of the mythical Atlantis, signals from the underwater base of alien creatures, or even the voices of giant deep-sea animals, about which science is still unknown.

4. Blood Falls


Photo: National Geographic

Discovered back in 1911 by Australian geologist Griffith Taylor, the blood red waterfall is a 15-meter stream that flows out of the Taylor Glacier (named after its discoverer) and flows into the ice-covered West Lake Bonnie (West Lake Bonney). The water of the waterfall is colored rusty due to the high content of iron oxide in it.

The study of samples from this waterfall showed the presence of 17 different types of microbes in it. The existence of living microorganisms in the extreme weather conditions of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where Blood Falls is located, may indicate that life at the lowest temperatures can be found not only on Earth, but also on other planets with similar conditions, including Mars and the oceans of Europa (a moon of Jupiter).

Scientists still do not quite understand how the microorganisms of the Blood Falls manage to do without light, partly without oxygen and other nutrients, while being content only with the processing of iron and sulfur. Researchers believe that the study of this amazing natural will be able to provide answers to many other scientific mysteries.

3. New species of bees


Photo: Siberian Times

The ice bumblebee, also known as Bombus glacialis, was first discovered in 1902 on the island of Novaya Zemlya, and scientists believe it is the only creature to have survived the last ice age. In addition, DNA analyzes of this insect, conducted in 2017, showed that the glacial bumblebee is a completely separate insect species, different from all modern bumblebees.

The discovery of the Arctic bumblebee suggests that Novaya Zemlya was once either partially or completely free of glaciers, which now cover this place in a dense layer. Scientists also believe that these creatures lived on other Arctic islands, although no evidence of this version has yet been found.

But what if there are still many intriguing discoveries ahead of researchers, and eternal ice hides from us more than one species of hitherto unknown creatures? Glaciers continue to melt, and new sensations are probably just a matter of time.

2. Arctic funnels


Photo: NBC

Mysterious craters have been appearing in Siberia for a long time. One of the largest such craters was discovered in the 1960s and named the Batagayka crater. The funnel expands every year by about 15 meters in diameter. In addition, new craters began to appear on the eastern coast of the Yamal Peninsula. For example, on the morning of June 28, 2017, local reindeer herders noticed flames and columns of smoke near the village of Seyakha. In the same place, the researchers discovered 10 new Arctic funnels.

The thundering explosion was actually due to global warming. Eternal ice has been melting more and more actively lately, and because of this, here and there, previously sealed methane reserves are released from underground, which provokes the appearance of new failures.

But what about without fantastic versions of conspiracy theorists? In the case of funnels, conspiracy theorists also make some pretty interesting assumptions. For example, they believe that the funnels are the former bases of frozen UFOs that periodically leave the Earth, leaving behind mysterious holes in frozen soils. Another common version says that the Arctic craters are the gates to the other world.

1. Discovery of the missing ghost ship HMS Thames


Photo: Wikipedia

In August 2016, near the village of Goroshikha, south of the Arctic Circle, an abandoned British steamer HMS Thames was discovered, which was considered to have sunk back in 1877. The ship was found by two researchers from the Russian Geographical Society in the area of ​​the Northern Sea Route. This route was very popular among polar explorers in the early 19th century, but sailing along it was often unsuccessful until the early 20th century.

The ship was built to explore the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei River, and to pave the best trade route to the shores of Russia. The crew abandoned this ship after wintering on the coast of the Yenisei, since HMS Thames was thoroughly frozen during the absence of the crew. The locomotive was, if possible, disassembled and sold in parts, and after that his team, led by Captain Joseph Wiggins (Joseph Wiggins), returned home to the UK. Agree, there is something terrible and sad about the discovery of the remains of a ship that has been drifting in the northern seas for the past 140 years ...

Hitler hoped to find a way to the mysterious "Wonderland"

"" - such information published these days by many media has attracted attention. Sensation? However, we received "intelligence" about this mysterious object of the Nazis a few years ago thanks to a meeting with a well-known Arctic explorer, historian, doctor of science Pyotr Boyarsky.

From him it was possible to learn details about the German base, arranged on a distant northern island that belonged to the USSR.

Pyotr Viktorovich Boyarsky, who now holds the post of adviser to the director of the Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage. D.S. Likhacheva, for many years leads the Marine Arctic Complex Expedition (MAKE), organized by this institute. It was during one of the expeditionary trips to the far northern regions that Boyarsky managed to visit the site of the former Nazi Arctic base.

I heard about this secret object of the Nazis for the first time back in 1985 from the famous polar pilot Akkuratov, - Pyotr Vladimirovich recalled during our meeting. - He said that shortly after the end of the war, he, once flying over Alexandra Land, which is part of the Franz Josef Land archipelago, noticed an incomprehensible white spot of a rectangular shape near the coast against the background of the stony thawed tundra.

Intrigued by what they saw, the aviators decided to sit down and see what it was. When they came close to the mysterious spot, it became clear that this was the roof of a dugout, painted with white paint. The door leading inside swung open easily.

The pilots, turning on their flashlights, went inside and were dumbfounded. German uniforms are scattered on the couches, in the middle of the table - cans of canned food, spoons, bowls ... And "Schmeisers" hang on the walls.

One got the feeling that the soldiers of the Third Reich still live here, who have just left for a minute. In fact, the dugout had long been uninhabited, but its appearance suggested that the Nazis at one time left their shelter in a big hurry.

Historians know many facts about German actions to seize the Soviet Arctic.

The Nazis needed bases and meteorological stations to ensure raids by cruisers and submarines along the Northern Sea Route, explained Pyotr Boyarsky. - In addition, many of the top leadership of the Third Reich, as you know, were fond of all kinds of mysticism and held very peculiar views. Among them, for example, there was a belief that the Earth is hollow, and one can get inside it through ice caves that exist in the polar zones.

The Nazi "bonzes" were aware of the existence of vast caves on Novaya Zemlya, on Franz Josef Land, and they were sure that this was the real path to the underworld. Therefore, special naval expeditions organized by the Reich to our Arctic rear had not only military, but also research goals.

Among others, there was a project coded as "Wonderland". It was about creating a base on the island of Alexandra Land. This operation was carried out by the Germans in 1943. The weather station equipped there, the Nazis called the "Treasure Detector". They delivered the necessary equipment, materials and supplies to the island on ships and submarines, and dropped something by parachute in special bomb-shaped containers.

According to Boyarsky, the assumption he heard from Akkuratov that the Germans were leaving their secret base in a hurry is fully confirmed by the facts that were discovered later: “As far as I was able to find out, the Nazis evacuated from Alexandra Land in an emergency order in July 1944. This happened by no means for military-strategic reasons. The Nazis were let down by their own stomachs and the lack of household knowledge about the rules of life in the Arctic.

These warriors once shot a polar bear and decided to feast on an exotic northern dish. However, the invaders did not know that this bear meat must be cooked for a very long time. And as a result, they got a severe stomach disease. They were so twisted that they had to call the plane on the radio and urgently take out the entire team from the base. They did not have time to find replacements for those evacuated in a hurry, but soon it became completely useless. The last months of the war were going on, Nazi Germany was no longer up to the Arctic ... ".

In the middle of the 2000s, Peter Boyarsky managed to visit the site of the former Nazi base. Together with several colleagues from the MAKE, he landed from the Somov expedition ship to examine what was left of the Treasure Detector.

What we saw showed that the Germans settled here for a long time. The place for the base was chosen very well - on the shore of a deep bay, which is adjoined by a vast strip of tundra, free from the ice shell. A little further away is a lake with fresh water. To protect the base from land, the Nazis set up minefields to the north and east of it. And from the side of the bay, a machine-gun pillbox was equipped as a cover, the ruins of which are still visible.

The huge amount of shoes and other equipment brought by the Germans to the island is surprising, - Petr Vladimirovich emphasized. - It seems that they intended to significantly expand this military base.

Some of the German supplies are still lying around on the territory of the former Treasure Hunt. In addition, I was told that in the 1960s and 1970s, when our frontier post appeared on Alexandra Land (it is located about 10–15 kilometers from the former Nazi special facility), its garrison removed a lot of good ammunition from the abandoned fascist base. For a long time, the border guards used German boots, inherited from the war years.

In addition to the bunker on the Treasure Hunter, there are still the remains of a house, a dugout ... Examining the territory of the German base, our scientists found several of the same bomb-like containers for aviation "parcels". Scraps of old camouflage nets also survived, and inside the abandoned dugout there were sheets from books with Hitler's speeches ...

In fact, there may be even more German "souvenirs" from the war in these places. After all, strong winds often blow in the area of ​​Franz Josef Land, and therefore some of the containers dropped by parachute could be carried away by the air flow far to the side.

An interesting find was waiting for us closer to the shore of the bay. Here we saw some kind of pipe going deep into the earth. Perhaps this is part of the ventilation system of some hidden structure. It is impossible to exclude the existence of a natural grotto, which the Germans managed to find and adapt for their own purposes.

I fully admit that the dimensions of this cavity in the bowels of the stone island are so large that submarines could enter it. At least the existence of such huge caves on other Arctic islands, communicating with the sea by underwater corridors, is known. And in German sources there is information that they managed to find such caves in the north and even start their submarines in them.

Such natural bunkers are very convenient for building secret storage facilities in them, and the leaders of Nazi Germany used this. The materials preserved in the archives report that at the end of the war, transports and submarines left the German ports, on which the Nazis took out some equipment, documents, valuables somewhere ... The destinations and fate of many of these ships are still unknown. Perhaps some of them reached the distant Arctic Alexandra Land. In this case, the name of the base arranged here by the Nazis and then hastily abandoned by them - "Treasure Hunter" - acquires a special meaning for us.

8 230

In 1931, cooperation between the USSR and Germany was no longer as wide as two or three years ago, but it still continued very actively in many areas of science, technology and industrial production. The countries also cooperated in the military field. Therefore, the Soviet leadership and representatives of state security did not see anything reprehensible in the invitation received from the German aeronaut Eckener to a number of Soviet scientists to take part in the Arctic air expedition.

The famous German aeronaut and airship designer, who was then predicted to have a great future, Dr. Hugo Eckener (1868–1954) arrived in Leningrad on June 25, 1931 on a huge airship Graf Zeppelin. The northern capital of Russia met him and forty-two other German researchers with orchestras and great enthusiasm. Much was written about the upcoming expedition in the newspapers and broadcast on the radio.

Eckener planned to go from Leningrad over the ice of the Barents Sea to Franz Josef Land, from there to Severnaya Zemlya, then fly over the Taimyr Peninsula and Lake Taimyr, head for Novaya Zemlya, and from there return to Berlin. The Soviet leadership gave permission to fly over the territory of the USSR. In those years, there lay absolutely deserted, devoid of not only any industry, but even practically human habitation, wilderness. Moreover, the terrain is difficult to reach even for aviation and airships, and navigation in northern waters has always been a difficult and dangerous business. Therefore, in the USSR it was believed that no one could find out any secrets there, and geographical maps exist independently of the flights of the Graf Zeppelin.

The Germans invited the former head of the polar expedition on the Krasin icebreaker, which took place in 1928, the famous professor R.L. qualifications of E. T. Krenkel. All of them received the "go-ahead" from the Soviet authorities to cooperate with the Germans in the study of the Arctic - the country's leadership also had considerable interest in information about the remote northern area, fraught with many different riches in its bowels.

Before the flight, the Graf Zeppelin airship was quite thoroughly modified in Leningrad in order to prepare it for work in the Arctic. Part of the equipment was removed from the airship, but in order to be able to land on the water, the bottom of the gondola was made waterproof and additional floats were installed, as on seaplanes. In addition, they added scientific equipment and cameras for perspective and vertical aerial photography and installed additional radio navigation equipment, without which at that time there was simply nothing to do in the Arctic conditions.

Finally, all work was completed and the Graf Zeppelin headed across the Barents Sea to Franz Josef Land, where the Malygin icebreaker was already waiting for the arrival of the airship in Tikhaya Bay to exchange mail - then this served as the most reliable way of communication in the vast Arctic expanses. The journey from Leningrad to Franz Josef Land took the airship about a day and a half. In Tikhaya Bay, he landed on the water for a very short time. Then he rose again and continued flying along a predetermined route: just in case, the Soviet authorities and state security agencies firmly insisted on strict adherence to a pre-agreed and laid route.

Later, Professor Samoylovich said and wrote that in almost five days of flying on the Graf Zeppelin airship, it was possible to do such scientific work and achieve such results, which, under normal conditions, would require expeditions on icebreakers for several years.

Below, under the airship, lay completely unexplored areas of the Arctic covered with non-melting snow, and the members of the expedition continuously conducted aerial photography of the coast, aerological and meteorological observations, measured geomagnetic anomalies, which is very important for navigation, and studied the patterns of ice movement. Previously completely unknown islands abandoned in the deserted expanses were drawn on the map. At the end of the expedition, without any incident, the airship arrived in Berlin.

Then there was the "International Society for the Exploration of the Arctic". On behalf of this international organization, the Germans soon published a scientific report on the air expedition, richly illustrated with many photographs. In the country of socialism, the results of the research of a joint scientific expedition with the Germans to the Arctic were practically not covered either in the general press or in scientific publications.

Now it is difficult to irrefutably prove that the expedition started by Eckener was not at all purely scientific and was not inspired by the German General Staff. However, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that among the more than forty members of the crew of the Graf Zeppelin airship who arrived in Leningrad from Berlin, there were probably purely military specialists and intelligence officers who were extremely interested in obtaining information about the Arctic territories of the USSR. This is confirmed by the fact that the German General Staff, the naval forces and, in particular, Admiral Karl Dönitz, who was appointed commander of the German submarine fleet in 1939, did not fail to take advantage of the results of the German-Soviet Arctic "scientific" expedition in developing plans for military operations in the northern communications.

Here it is necessary to pay tribute to Soviet intelligence - although not in all details, however, the Center became aware of the developments of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht and the German naval forces, as well as the sources of their information. There was no longer any possibility to prevent the Germans, and Professor Samoylovich answered for the “expedition” before the Chekists: he was repressed as a spy for the Germans and an “enemy of the people”.

Meanwhile, Admiral Dönitz developed an original, bold and detailed doctrine of submarine operations in the northern seas. It should be noted that among the senior officers of the German Navy, Karl Dönitz was the only staunch National Socialist, loyal to the Fuhrer to the point of fanaticism and enjoying his full confidence: it was not for nothing that in 1945, before his death, Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor .

The admiral also tirelessly built up the submarine fleet. In 1935, Germany had only eleven small submarines, and supporters of the "big" surface fleet with a certain amount of contempt and distrust treated the submarines. But the stubborn Dönitz saw a great future in them and, as time has shown, he was completely right. He reported personally to Adolf Hitler about his doctrines and received his approval and money. By the beginning of World War II, Germany already had fifty-seven well-armed submarines in service, and over the years of the war, the Germans managed to build one thousand one hundred and fifty-three submarines that sank three thousand allied ships and two hundred warships.

At the insistence of Dönitz, special submarines were built for warfare in the Arctic and navigation in the northern seas near the coast - they have their own specific navigation features. Quite naturally, these boats needed special reliable bases for refueling, resting crews, repairing the undercarriage and hull, as well as replenishing ammunition and ensuring stable communication with command and mail exchange. In the end, even with a significant - more than eight thousand miles! - the range of the German submarines, they still could not stay in the voyage indefinitely.

Dönitz put forward an extremely bold idea, based on the results of the "scientific" expedition of Eckener-Samoilovich to the Arctic: to create secret bases for German submarines on deserted islands in the mouths of the rivers of the Soviet northern territory. At that time, it was practically uninhabited and the border of the state was not actually guarded there - from whom to protect huge deserted spaces covered with eternal ice, terribly far from other powers?

The audacious idea of ​​the admiral became very relevant when convoys of the allies went to Murmansk, and the Nazis faced the task of cutting this artery at all costs, which supplied warring Russia with military equipment, food and strategic materials. The convoys were subjected to constant air attacks, they were guarded by German raiders and ... submarines hiding in secret Arctic bases, which put the sea hunters trying to destroy them to a standstill. Submarines disappeared, and no one could then understand - where?

Admirals Dönitz and Raeder were completely convinced that the secret submarine bases would not be discovered by Soviet aviation and sailors, and that the Abwehr should reliably cover them from enemy reconnaissance. The construction of the necessary structures - buried in ice or even in permafrost - was carried out by the Todt department. In 1942, Dönitz moved his headquarters to Paris and from there supervised work in the Arctic. It is clear that the German submariners could not manage with one super-secret base, several such objects were required, which, in the event of a sudden discovery and destruction of one or more of them, could duplicate each other. The builders were delivered to the place of work on submarines, as well as the materials necessary for the arrangement of facilities. And the Germans already had sufficient experience in building in snow and ice - during the First World War, German, Italian and Austrian troops waged war in the ice in the Alps, building tunnels, bunkers in glaciers and cutting through long galleries.

The discovery of such secret submarine bases was indeed a very difficult matter - in the Third Reich they knew how to reliably keep their secret secrets, and during the war period, Soviet aircraft practically did not fly over remote regions of the Arctic. Fuel was in short supply, everything went for the front and for victory, and what else could aircraft do where there were no shipping lanes and no housing?

Most likely, the Soviet state security agencies received data on the secret bases of German submarines in the Arctic only after the victory, while actively working with prisoners of war, who had nothing to hide, or they found out everything about this unexpected move by Admiral Karl Dönitz from captured secret trophy documents. However, the Soviet special services also know how to keep their secrets, and the presence of German bases in our northern rear dealt a terrible, almost irreparable blow to the prestige of state security: still, to miss this under your nose! Therefore, neither side officially acknowledged the existence of secret bases.

In the early 60s of the XX century, on one of the islands in the mouth of the Lena, local residents allegedly discovered a long-abandoned German secret base. They even planned to send an expedition there with the participation of journalists, but the collapse of the USSR began and everyone was not up to secret Nazi bases.

On the coast of the Kara and Barents Seas, in the vicinity of Tiksi and on Taimyr, they find many iron barrels left over from the time of the American Lend-Lease, but among them, no, no, and there are barrels with a white spread-eagle clutching a wreath with a swastika in its claws - Marking of the Nazi Wehrmacht. Where did they come from? Did the sea bring?

Geologists told how on the coast of Taimyr, in the permafrost, they found plaques with a swastika from German naval belts, spoons “decorated” with a swastika and other utensils made of aluminum: it was a very popular metal among the Germans. Has the sea also brought all this into the permafrost?

The details of the campaign could be somewhat different, but the "534th" had to go into both secret Arctic bases located deep in the 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 covered 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 soil 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 the Egyptian pyramids, were built 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 time of the Kaiser's 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 accuracy 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. The secret base of the 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 submarine cruisers 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 fighting in Norway, the 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 will begin the story with a brief overview of the 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 found 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 powerful 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 banks of Devkina Bay directly indicates that somewhere here the Nazis carried out some work that was of great importance for the Reich and was 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, is explained by the fact that all these premises are located below sea level and the plugs of secret locks are open somewhere, then in the case of Devkina Zavod, the opposite is true, since all 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 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!

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were many “blank spots” on world maps. One of the most "white" was the Arctic, in whose possessions travelers rushed not so zealously as in the tropics hung with bananas. It is understandable: wild cold, eternal ice and depressing stories of contemporaries. The only people who voluntarily lived in the neighborhood with polar bears and seals were the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, and the Pomors, whose "frostbite" no one doubted ...

At the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, one of the first states in the history of mankind, Ancient Egypt, was formed in the Nile River valley. This is known to any teenager from the school curriculum, in which, unfortunately, there is no mention of the fact that already two or three thousand years before that people lived not only in Africa, but also, for example, in the north of the European part of Russia. At a time when there were no pyramids and in the project, our ancestors, or, so to speak, "geographical compatriots" inhabited the Kola Peninsula. With primitive equipment, with a life extremely far from the norms of civilization, in conditions that we today consider extreme ... Three thousand years later, permanent settlements appeared on the coast of the White Sea. The people who lived in them went out to sea in primitive leather and wooden boats and hunted sea animals and fished. These campaigns gave rise to Arctic navigation. Slavic tribes appeared in the Russian North in the 5th-6th centuries AD. e. They traded with the inhabitants of the northern region, in particular, buying furs. In the X-XI century, Novgorodians appeared here, who by the XII century made the region a colony of Veliky Novgorod. The shores of the White Sea, Northern Dvina, Onega and Pinega were gradually settled by serfs who fled from the middle zone, with whom the indigenous population - Karelians, Komi, Lapps - partially assimilated. Then in the XIII century, the region was called "Russian Pomorye", and the descendants of the first settlers began to be called "Pomors".

In the 15th century, Pomors made long sea voyages to Grumant (Spitsbergen), Bear Island, and Novaya Zemlya. Northern expeditions are also actively organized by the Dutch, who are looking for a short sea route to India and China. True, for the latter, voyages in northern latitudes do not bring the desired results, and only Russians continue to successfully develop new territories ...

COLONY STROGANOV

The Novaya Zemlya archipelago deserves special interest in the Arctic. The rocky islands, unsuitable for human life, hold many mysteries, one of which is almost forgotten in our time.

At the end of the 15th century, the well-known merchants Stroganovs founded a fishing colony on Novaya Zemlya for the extraction of sea animals and furs. The business is profitable, and according to the few surviving historical documents, bringing multiple profits. Colonists - as a rule, "Strogano peasants" beat walruses, whales, polar bears, and in their free time from fishing they get married and have children. The furs and fat of marine animals are transported to the mainland in Arkhangelsk; the colony is flourishing. However, prosperity does not last long and after some ten years all the settlers die, and the developed fishing center turns into a cemetery...

The main cause of death of people is considered to be "an unknown infection caused by fogs" - an official of the Arkhangelsk governor Klingstedt writes about this in 1762. Also, there are references to “mysterious deadly fogs” in northern legends, according to which, these are nothing more than people whose souls were not taken by the Polar Star for all kinds of sins. The fog then shrinks, spreads over vast spaces, extinguishes all sounds, does not allow you to see anything, drives people crazy, kills on the spot or forever “clouds”.

The death of the "Stroganos" colonists was taken for granted by the indigenous inhabitants of those places. According to the legends of the Nenets, the newcomers from the mainland were punished for breaking one important taboo. The fact is that in addition to fishing for sea animals, the colonists had another task - they were looking for pearls in the rivers of Novaya Zemlya. And not just pearls, but the legendary "Green Incorruptible", which the Stroganov merchants dreamed of getting...

GREEN INCORRECT

The Stroganovs of Novgorod have been mining pearls since the 15th century. They mined the precious mineral on the Kola Peninsula in the rivers near Lake Onega and the White Sea. The pearl harvest was considerable, because in addition to the domestic market, it was also supplied abroad. The mined pearls were used in the manufacture of icons, jewelry, various embroideries and ceremonial attire. Pearls can be very different - from white and pale blue, to yellow, reddish and even black. The only serious drawback is that it is short-lived; The life of pearls is on average 250-500 years. Over time, it loses its luster, fades, and finally turns into powder...

The mythical "green incorruptibles" are pearls of a different kind - eternal, unfading, unfading. Pearls acquire such properties only in the rivers of the Far North, receiving their strength from the Polar Star. Northern shamans say that green pearls choose their own owner, and can both make a person happy and bring trouble on him.

According to rumors, one such pearl fell into the hands of the Stroganov merchants. A dangerous relic settled like a green spark in their hearts, clouding the minds of everyone who has ever seen it. And it was this legendary green pearl for the Stroganovs that the settlers on Novaya Zemlya were looking for...

The wholesale pestilence that devastated the colony was apparently caused by an epidemic of a virus that had no immunity to people who came from the mainland. Modern scientists are well aware that particles of such “wonderful” things as anthrax and smallpox are perfectly preserved in permafrost, and what the colonists exploring Novaya Zemlya could “catch” only God knows. Those who came to the site of the extinct settlement years later found only the final result: the pre-river ruins of dwellings, a few graves and ... a lot of scattered human bones.

CURSED BY THE POLE STAR

However, there is another version of the rapid death of the Stroganov colony. Arkhangelsk local historian V. Krestinin, in his notes published in January 1789, writes that the colonists were killed by "unknown warriors with iron noses and teeth." He heard this story from the Mezen sailors, and Andrei Vvedensky, the author of several books about the Stroganovs, writes about the same. Vvedensky believed that the inhabitants of the colony were exterminated by the sharashuts - the descendants of the ancient people of the Arctic and the mysterious inhabitants of the Novaya Zemlya caves.

Legends about sharashuts circulated among the inhabitants of the Arctic until the beginning of the 20th century. The Nenets believed that on Novaya Zemlya in deep caves, where there are warm lakes, mysterious warriors live, who come to the surface in the form of fog and shadows. They, like many centuries ago, worship the North Star, collect "green incorruptibles", and kill strangers, or take them underground with them.

Historian K. Vokuev, who lives in Naryan-Mar, collected little-known materials on sharashuts. According to him, it was the Sharashuts who were the very people who were cursed by the North Star. The Nenets historian believes that the main reason for the curse is cannibalism, which, although it was a huge rarity among the peoples of the Far North, still took place...

Now it is difficult to judge how real the attack of the sharashuts on the colonists was, one can only build hypotheses and guess. No one has been looking for “green incorruptibles” for a long time on Novaya Zemlya, although “unknown warriors” still live in the bowels of the archipelago, who, like their predecessors, probably have “iron teeth”. True, they are not sitting in caves, but at computers, and everything that happens is hidden from us under the heading "SECRET".

Andrey Rukhlov