Old black and white photos are a treasure. They constitute an archive of stories which help us to understand the present.

In this day and age of TikTok reels, our memories are short, and our attention spans even shorter. So, if you will bear with me, the current article is an attempt to remedy that situation.

I have selected photos from 1930s Germany, which relate to distinct missions conducted by that nation’s government. My selection is not extensive, nor is it meant to be definitive. There are multitudes of old archival photos to choose from. I have selected photos that shed light on relatively unknown and underappreciated episodes from Nazi history.

The German Antarctic expedition

The image above refers to a little known overseas mission by the Nazi government; an initiative to set up shop in Antarctica. The reasons underlying this mission were both political and economic. Antarctica has been, and still is, a subject of geopolitical competition. Numerous nations, including Australia, have staked claims to Antarctic territory.

Germany did undertake expeditions to Antarctica in the past. Setting up a whaling and fishing station there meant that Germany could reduce its dependence on the import of fish, industrial oils and dietary fats. Britain’s maritime traffic in the southern oceans was extensive, and Germany could target that traffic from an Antarctic base.

Here are some of the crew of the MS Schwabenland (motor ship) that traveled to Antarctica:

Germany’s Antarctic territory, named New Swabia, has been the subject of multiple conspiracy theories, amplified by ‘documentaries’ on cable TV. Stories of secret military bases, storage of UFOs and alien technology, and missing millions in Nazi gold bullion have made the rounds for decades. All of it is very entertaining, but lacks any connection with reality.

New Swabia, Germany’s territorial claim to Antarctica, is now governed by Norway’s Queen Maud Land, under the Antarctic Treaty System

A Nazi travels to Palestine

Antarctica may have been of commercial interest to Nazi Germany, but it was not the only territory targeted by German missions. A little known but highly instructive episode is the secretive Nazi outreach to Palestine; no, not to the Palestinians, but to the budding Zionist Israeli settlement activity.

The Nazi government made clear its intention to make Germany and Europe Judenrein – Jew-free, or ‘clean of Jews.’ The Zionist Federation of Germany (ZfD) wanted Jewish emigrants to Palestine, building up new Jewish settlements for their exclusive state. Here was a marriage of convenience in the making.

The coin above, on the Star of David side, says ‘A Nazi travels to Palestine.’ On the swastika side it says ‘And tells about it in the Angriff.’

Der Angriff (Attack) was an official Nazi newspaper in Berlin.

The coin, issued by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, refers to the six month long trip of SS officer Baron Leopold von Mildenstein, and his wife. They were accompanied by their sponsor, Kurt Tuchler, an official from the ZfD, and his wife. Building Zionist settlements in Palestine, free from non-Jews, was in a way a mirror image of the white supremacist goal of constructing a foreigner-free Europe.

Two sides of the same coin….here is Mildenstein in Palestine

The British authorities, who were governing Palestine at the time, restricted the number of Jewish emigrants to that nation. Sensing a mutually satisfactory solution, the Nazi authorities and the Zionist federation deemed expulsion of the Jewish population to Palestine arrived at a convenient arrangement. However, with the outbreak of WW2 in Europe, the Nazi government lost interest in Zionism.

Nazi mission to Tibet

Motivated mostly by strategic political calculations, the Nazi mission to Tibet was underpinned by strong pseudoscientific theories. It was also part animal trophy hunting, and part drunken revelry.

Led by SS officer and zoologist Ernst Schafer, his team collected thousands of animal specimens, bones, birds and similar trophies. There were also one of the first European teams to shoot a panda bear.

However, hunting animals was not the only consideration underlying this expedition. Linking with Tibet could provide Berlin with a friendly outpost, from which to attack British India.

Accompanying Schafer, along with Tibetans and Nepalese Sherpas, was Bruno Beger, SS officer and racial anthropologist. Why did he join this mission?

The Nazi team were looking for evidence of Aryan ancestry, which they claimed were Nordic people from India and Tibet. While it is beyond the scope of the current article to disentangle each strand of racist pseudoscientific rubbish regarding the fabrication of an Aryan race, let’s just make a quick distinction.

Aryan, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘noble’, referred to an ethnicity in northern India. Aryan refers to proto-Indo-European languages. From this linguistic category, the Europeans transformed it into a racial one. Adding their own myths about the Volk (folk) of the German racial national community, the Nazi ideologues pursued any connection, no matter how tenuous or imaginative, to this mythological community of racialised Aryan ancestors.

After the destruction of Atlantis, the purported original home of the ancestral white Nordic race, the survivors fled and settled in remote locations for safety, one of them being the roof of the world, Tibet. The latter, a feudal outpost of China, became a Shangri-La type mythical land, where esoteric beliefs, Llama Buddhist doctrines, and the European fascination with the exotic East melded into one.

Various European racist intellectuals adopted the Aryan race taxonomy, supposedly proving that humanity could be classified into biologically distinct racial categories. By the time the Nazis took power, the Aryan concept had expanded to include Nordic white supremacist notions. Tibet became part of this pseudo archaeological fixation, with notions of the ancestral white Nordics leaving their traces in that land.

In the photo above, Beger is taking the skull measurements of a Tibetan person. Racial anthropologists, in pursuit of a taxonomic hierarchy of humans, tried to classify races according to their supposed physical characteristics. Beger and his associates collected measurements such as the one depicted above in their hundreds, hoping to find Aryan ancestry among Tibetan people.

Their attempts were unsuccessful.

Oh, and just one quick observation. You may remember that ridiculous movie from the 1990s, Seven Years in Tibet. It is based upon the exploits of Austrian Nazi SS officer, Heinrich Harrer. If you want something entertaining, or enjoy having sexual fantasies about the ageless Brad Pitt, be my guest.

However, learning about Tibet from that movie is the equivalent of trying to understand the Holocaust by watching Hogan’s Heroes. Oh, and the mountains in that movie, which are supposed to be the Himalayas? They are actually the Andes in South America.

I hope that these archival photos provided a glimpse into historical episodes that rarely receive any kind of publicity or examination.