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eld during World War II. But there were worries
that the Antarctic Peninsula could be used to support German or Japanese maritime
operations, so the British deployed small military units there in 1943, purporting to be
watching for the enemy but this was only a coverstoryforstrengtheningasovereignty
claim. In the following years the con
Antarctica never became a battle
icting claims between these three nations led
regularly to formal protests, and also to some minor skirmishes between various stations
in the Peninsula. But the harshness of surviving in Antarctica meant that the people
stationed there on the whole developed ways of cooperation, rather than aggression.
Increasing international interest
After World War II, Antarctic exploration changed in scale and focus. This
can be illustrated by two very different expeditions, which each in their way
in
uenced international thinking about the continent.
The United States Navy conducted Operation Highjump in 1946, which
remains by far the largest expedition ever to take place in Antarctica. It involved
13 naval ships including a US Coast Guard ice-breaker, 33 airplanes, a submarine
and about 4800 men. For comparison, the approximately 30 countries now
conducting activities in Antarctica bring altogether only 3
4000 persons to the
continent each the summer. Unfortunately, the results of the expedition were not
commensurate with the effort. The size of the operation can be partly attributed to
the fact that there were many troops who had not yet been demobilised but it was
also meant to demonstrate the interest of a large country in Antarctica. Its objectives
included training men in polar climates and extending and consolidating US
sovereignty over Antarctic areas. In the emerging Cold War this did not go
unnoticed by the Soviet Union, which had not been active in the Antarctic, but
had a much larger community of polar experts from its Arctic activities.
The other noteworthy Antarctic effort was totally different. This was the
Norwegian
-
52, also named the Maudheim
expedition after the name of its station. It was different from all previous expeditions
in two main ways; it was truly international in science cooperation and in its
-
British
-
Swedish expedition of 1949
-
c ideas. It paved
the way for the science focus and the international cooperation that would be
paramount 8 years later, when the International Geophysical Year (IGY) began,
and the Scienti
financing, and its whole programme was based on testing scienti
c Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) was established.
The team at Maudheim consisted of very promising young scientists from
several nations, and probably no other polar expedition has ever been such a
springboard for eminent research careers. Two of these are especially important
in the history of Antarctic science: Valter Schytt, who became professor at
Stockholm University, was the
first secretary of SCAR from 1958
-
59. He was
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