After 73 years after its disappearance, a German submarine was discovered in the depths of northern Denmark. At the end of the Second World War it was thought to be directed towards South America.
The U-3523 was one of Hitler's submarines, considered unanimously avant-garde at the time, and that probably failed to significantly contribute to halting the Allied victory just because it was terminated and consequently used when the conflict was now compromised for Germany Nazi.
The submarine was designed for submerged navigation for a prolonged period of time. He could even travel from Europe to South America without having to stop.
It was thought that the U-3523 had been sunk by an attack by the British Liberator B24 on 6 May 1945, but the inability to locate the wreck had fueled rumors that the German submarine was able to escape the attack.
Now the wreck has been spotted ten nautical miles north of Skagen - the northernmost city of Denmark - and nine miles west of the position reported by the British bomber after the attack.
The Danish Maritime War Museum, which found the submarine, said there was no evidence that there were Nazi leaders on board the U-3523 and the relative loot collected to flee to South America.
Gert Normann Andersen, the director of the museum, said: “It is said that the submarine had items of great value on board because it was moving away from Germany even though the war was over. I think the rumor developed because the U-3523 was a modern long-distance U-boat and some Nazis tried to escape with valuables in the last few days, but the submarine was headed for Norway, and not South America with Nazis and valuables. "
Declassified documents from American intelligence have fueled claims that the Nazi leadership, including Adolf Hitler himself, fled to South America in the last days of the war.
A CIA dossier dated 3 October 1955 reported allegations of a former SS soldier named Phillip Citroen, according to whom, Hitler had hid in Colombia and later in Argentina. The soldier also had a picture taken in the 1954 in the Colombian city of Tunja. In this photo a man who was said to be Hitler was immortalized.
The document stated: "According to Citroen, the Germans residing in Tunja followed this alleged Adolf Hitler with an idolatry of the Nazi past, addressing him as 'Fuhrer' and paying homage to the Nazi salute with which Hitler was flattered by his assault troops" .
Meanwhile, a file from the FBI archive, dated 21 September 1945, reported very detailed eyewitness statements that Hitler had arrived in Argentina aboard a submarine two and a half weeks after the fall of Berlin and that the dictator was was accompanied by six Argentine officers in the country's hinterland and more precisely towards the southern Andes area.
It is known that several prominent Nazis including the prominent Holocaust architect, Adolf Eichmann and the notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, have fled to South America, however, the new discovery shows that the U-3523 never crossed the Atlantic, and actually sank while it was headed to Norway, with all the 58 crew members.
Andersen also has a copy of the last telegram sent by the submarine, dated 5 May 1945, which does not mention any precious cargo or high-ranking passengers.
Nazi Germany would have signed the first unconditional surrender document only two days later, the 7 May 1945.
The scans of the seabed reveal that the U-boat is at 403 feet from the sea surface, making it very difficult to reach it.
Unusually, the entire front of the submarine lies buried in the sand, while the stern is at 65 feet above the bottom. Nazi Germany built 118 vessels of this type but due to poor quality control, only four were able to fight by the end of the Second World War.
The German project "made school" so much that it was later copied by Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union, which in turn inspired the Chinese navy for the construction of models very similar to those of the U-3523 recently found.
GB
Photo: Google