Newly liberated after World War II, with its infrastructure destroyed, bread rationing still in effect, its scientific establishment in tatters, and facing colonial crises in Indochina and Algeria, France was hardly in a position to mount an expensive mission to the Arctic. But as polar science came back to life after the disruptions of the war, French anthropologist and explorer Paul-Emile Victor set his sights on Eismitte. For Victor, who had spent nearly two years living and trekking in Greenland in the interwar era, the very center of that island represented at once one of the last great Arctic challenges, the ideal culmination of his prewar adventures, and a focal point for broader polar ambitions, which included securing France’s Antarctic claim.