The Schwabenland Antarctic expedition was a Nazi attempt to claim large sections of Antarctica for the Reich, ultimately with a view to extend the areas in which the German whaling fleet could operate and thus reducing German reliance on imports. The expedition flew over sections of the Antarctic continent not previously charted, and conducted biological and oceanographic observations off the coast, but no member of the expedition actually set foot on the continent. Planned and carried out in secret, the expedition was virtually unknown at the time, until the present work was published in a first volume; the second volume did not appear until 1958 (not present here).