Hitler's headquarters Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze, Wolfschanze). Wolfsschanze - Hitler's headquarters

After spending the night in the wonderful town of Kętrzyn (formerly Rastenburg), which will be discussed later, we go to the town of Gierłoż (German: Görlitz), where Hitler’s headquarters was located during World War II.


Actually, Hitler had more than a dozen bets. In the picture below, the red dots indicate the rates in which the Fuhrer personally visited.

From the Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze/Wolfschanze) Hitler directed military operations against the USSR. Here he spent more than 800 days from June 21, 1941 to November 20, 1944. Only for three and a half months from July 16 to October 31, 1942, the headquarters from the Wolf's Lair was transferred to the Werwolf bunker near Vinnitsa (Ukraine).
Like the headquarters of the Wehrmacht ground forces in , the headquarters in Wolfschanz was conceived to lead military operations on the eastern front against the USSR. The construction of both complexes, which began in the spring of 1940, was entrusted to the secret organization of Fritz Todt. For cover, the object was presented as the chemical enterprise Chemische Werke Askania. The location of the headquarters in this particular place was determined by its proximity to the border of the USSR, inaccessibility and desolation of the territory. In just four years, more than 80 different objects were built on an area of ​​250 hectares. At its core, the Wolf's Lair is the whole city with all the services and facilities necessary for life - an airfield, a railway station, power plants, a heating system, water supply and numerous economic and communication services.
The entire complex consisted of three zones, differing in the degree of security. The most secure was inner zone 1 (Sperrkreis I), where the headquarters complex and bunkers of Hitler, Bormann, Goering, Dietrich (press secretary of the NSDAP and the Imperial Government) were located. Access to it was strictly limited and approximately 130 people had the right to be in it.

This photo, taken in June 1940 in Wolfschanz, shows the headquarters of the German command.
Bottom row from left to right: W. Brickner, O. Dietrich, W. Keitel, A. Hitler, A. Jodl, M. Bormann, N. von Below.
Middle row: K. Bodeschanz, R. Schmund, K. Wolf, T. Morel, R. Schulze.

In the second zone (Sperrkreis II) were located railroad station, meeting rooms, separate objects of the Wehrmacht command and commandant's office. The third, outer zone (Sperrkreis III) was a patrol zone and was limited by minefields 50-250 m wide along the outer perimeter.

Great attention was paid to camouflaging the complex. Four times a year, in accordance with the season, the camouflage nets stretched over the entire complex were changed. Aerial photography of Wolfschanze was carried out regularly to identify possible shortcomings in camouflage. objects A special system for external lighting was developed with special lanterns invisible from above. The external camouflage of the bunkers was the same as in: algae and moss.

An amazing fact: during the entire existence of Wolfschanze, Allied aviation never carried out any serious bombing of the complex. Although the construction of the bunker in which Hitler was supposed to be was not completed in the summer of 1944 and it was vulnerable to heavy aerial bombs.
There are facts that suggest that the exact location of the Wolf's Lair was known to the Allies almost at the end of 1943. It is possible that the Soviet command also knew about the coordinates of the headquarters. At the end of July 1944, the Red Army troops were approximately 140 km east of Görlitz and a landing would have been sufficient large quantity paratroopers in order to seriously disrupt (if not completely destroy) the functioning of the headquarters. In 1944, there were a little more than 2,000 people at headquarters, of which 300 were senior officers, 1,500 soldiers of the security battalion and 150 people from the SS intelligence and security service. But, be that as it may, the Wolf's Lair was blown up by the Germans themselves on January 23-24, 1945. Our troops entered Wolfschanze without a fight on January 27.
Demining of the complex was carried out by Polish sappers right up to 1956. In total, about 54,000 mines and over 200,000 ammunition were cleared.

The thickness of the walls of the bunkers reached 8.5 m. The reinforced concrete of the walls is very similar to that used in the construction of the recently destroyed overpass bridge in Kaliningrad. Only in the Wolf's Lair everything is much stronger and more massive.

Remains of an anti-aircraft artillery bunker

When detonated, individual fragments of the walls of this bunker ended up in the fire pool

Remains of the walls of the officer's casino

Communications bunker. The telegraph was located here.

Security bunker

Bunker No. 13 was supposed to house Hitler (I wonder if this number was assigned to the bunker during construction, or later, during the organization of the museum in the Wolf’s Lair?)

Now in the former inner zone (Sperrkreis I) of Wolfschanze there is a museum and entrance to its territory is paid.
Admission to the territory of Sperrkreis II is free. An old German paving stone passes through it, along which you can get to Gierloz. Along the road there are the remains of several objects, access to which is generally not limited by anyone or anything, except for standard signs about the need to comply with safety measures.

Close to Wolfschanze, in addition to the complex

To get into this dark and mystical, but at the same time extremely interesting place I've been dreaming for a long time. You probably remember the primitive American action movies with a kind of “center of evil”, a huge global center with a bunch of computers, huge monitors and a map of the world, from where everything in the world is regulated? Here, in the north-east of Poland, among the most beautiful lake region, surrounded by rivers and forests, that very “center of evil” is located. Only not cinematic, but absolutely real. On an area of ​​several thousand square kilometers, the Nazis built from 1940 to 1944 about 10 massive complexes, each consisting of many dozens of bunkers going many levels underground, airfields, defense lines, minefields, see the exact coordinates of the place on Wikimapia. The largest of these complexes is the so-called “Wolf’s Lair,” Hitler’s headquarters, which consisted of 80(!) bunkers scattered over an area of ​​20 hectares. Hitler was here from June 26, 1941 to 1944 and led the actions on the Eastern Front. Leaving the headquarters and retreating, the Germans blew up the facility with tens of thousands of tons of dynamite. This place is also known for the fact that on July 20, 1944, an unsuccessful attempt was made on Hitler’s life -

I want to immediately warn all romantics that you will not be able to feel like stalkers and discoverers of dark catacombs. I’m talking not so much about the Wolf’s Lair, but about this fortified area in general, even several tens of kilometers from Hitler’s headquarters. All more or less interesting objects have long been “captured” by local businessmen from tourism, who have partially ennobled the objects, in some places turned them into mediocre props (selling souvenirs, shooting range, restaurants, cafes, etc.) and charging money from those entering for every step.

These same figures brazenly concreted and blocked everything where it was possible to get through without paying money. Sometimes, having found an object you are interested in on the map, you will already meet a collector of money for entry near the object. What do they take money for? This is not always obvious. So that the failure does not fail, apparently. Sometimes you can bypass the tax collectors, and sometimes they are on duty right next to the object. And if avoiding parking fees is not so difficult (park nearby), then getting into the bunkers without paying is already more difficult. On average, the cost of visiting each site varies from 10 to 15 zlotys (1 euro = 4 zlotys).

A small plaque in honor of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who attempted to assassinate Hitler and was subsequently shot “for treason” along with 5,000 other Wehrmacht officers (including the commander of the German Afrika Korps, Erwin Rommel), who took part in the plot against the Fuhrer -

Memorial plaque in honor of Polish sappers who died while clearing about 54,000 mines laid by the Germans around the Wolf's Lair -

And we go further, to the town of Mamerki (Mauerwald), where another fortified area is located. By the way, pay attention to these roads, laid by the Germans in the late 30s. See the exact coordinates of the object on Wikimapia -

Located approximately 20 km north of the Wolf's Lair, this fortified area was the headquarters of such famous German commanders as Paulus, Guderian, Rommel and the aforementioned Von Stauffenberg. Foreign guests stayed in these bunkers, such as Benito Mussolini, Karl Mannerheim (remember the Finnish Mannerheim line?) and others. In 1944, the headquarters was evacuated and partially destroyed by retreating German troops -

And just a couple of hundred meters from the gloomy bunkers - beautiful lake Mamerki -

Whatever you say, the roads built by the Germans have been preserved in perfect condition, neither time (almost 70 years!), nor climate - nothing has power over them -

Having driven somewhere into the forest, we came across bunkers that had not yet been captured by tourism. But here, too, the construction of infrastructure in the form of restaurants, hotels and ticket offices -

And these are the locks on the Masurian Canal -

We continue to move north, using the navigator to search for a number of little-known military fortifications. Alas, it was getting dark and evening, plus we almost came up against the border fence separating Poland and the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation. Literally a kilometer from this place, on the Russian side, is the village of Krylovo in the Zheleznodorozhny district. It is noteworthy that with the Poles you can come close to the border fence, but on the Russian side they invented border zones and fine you (more likely take bribes) for the very fact of being closer than 50 km to the border -

Some barns -

And again the lakes -

"Wolfsschanze" (German: Wolfsschanze, Russian: "Wolf's Lair") was Hitler's main bunker and headquarters; main bet Fuhrer and the command complex of the German High Command. The German leader spent more than 800 days here. From this place military operations on the Eastern Front were controlled.

The Wolf's Lair bunker was located in the Görlitz forest, eight kilometers from the city of Rastenburg, East Prussia (now the Polish city of Kętrzyn). Its construction was carried out by the Todt Organization from the spring of 1940 to the winter of 1944 with 2-3 thousand workers.

The “Wolf’s Lair” was not a local bunker, but a whole system of hidden objects, in size more reminiscent of a small city with an area of ​​250 hectares. The secret territory had several levels of access and was surrounded by towers with barbed wire, minefields, machine gun and anti-aircraft positions. In order to get to the Wolf's Lair, it was necessary to pass three security posts.

Demining the "Wolf's Lair" by the Polish Army People's Republic lasted almost until 1956; in total, sappers discovered about 54 thousand mines and 200 thousand ammunition.

To create the effect of an object being inconspicuous from the air, the Germans used special grids and tree layouts, which were periodically updated in accordance with seasonal changes in the landscape. To control the camouflage, the sensitive object was photographed from the air.

The Wolf's Lair in 1944 was staffed by 2,000 people, from field marshals to stenographers and mechanics. In the book "The Fall of Berlin" British writer Anthony Beevor claims that the Fuhrer left this bunker on November 10, 1944. Hitler went to Berlin for throat surgery, and on December 10 he moved to Adlerhorst (Eagle's Nest), another secret headquarters. In July of the same year, an unsuccessful attempt was made on Hitler's life at the Eagle's Nest.

The evacuation of the German command from the “Wolf’s Lair” was carried out at the last moment, three days before the arrival of the Red Army. On January 24, 1945, Wilhelm Keitel ordered the destruction of the headquarters. However, this is easier said than done. The ruins of the bunker can still be seen today.

It is interesting that although American intelligence knew about the location of the Wolf’s Lair back in October 1942, not a single attempt was made to attack Hitler’s headquarters from the air.

In the autumn of 1940, in a deserted forest near East Prussian Rastenburg (now Polish Kętrzyn), large-scale construction suddenly began to boil. Local residents were sure that a new chemical plant was being built next door to them, but in fact, among the Masurian swamps, a secret facility with a completely different purpose was growing. Behind vast minefields, trenches, machine gun towers and several barbed wire fences at once, the Wolf's Lair was located, the main headquarters of the Fuhrer of the German nation, Adolf Hitler, on the Eastern Front. In 1941-1944, he spent a total of more than two years of his life here. It was from here, and not at all from Berlin, that the operational leadership of all the most important battles with the Soviet Union. The birth, life and death of Wolfschanze, the place where the fate of the world was decided, is in this review*

*The review contains photographs of German political figures and a scientific and technical overview of the construction art of the Third Reich and the insignia of those years. All photographs are provided for informational purposes only, to show how the site was previously

Photo 2. The headquarters was called Wolfsschanze (“Wolf’s Lair”). Hitler really liked it, not only because he had a passion for wolves as such. “Wolf” (translated from German as “wolf”) was his old pseudonym since the beginning of the struggle for power in Germany, and it is no coincidence that some objects associated with his activities received “wolf” names.

In total, about 250 hectares of the Görlitz Forest were allocated for the Wolfsschanze. The section was crossed by the Rastenburg-Angerburg railway (modern Polish Kętrzyn and Wegorzewo, respectively), passenger traffic on which was immediately prohibited. Along this line, the necessary building materials were first delivered to the site, and then along it, letter trains with Nazi bosses and their many guests. An alternative means of communication with the “Mainland” was a field airfield located a few kilometers from the “Lair” in a meadow near the village of Wilhelmsdorf (modern Vilamovo).

Photo 3. In total, the complex consisted of more than 80 buildings, of which approximately 40 were residential and utility buildings, 40 light reinforced concrete shelter bunkers and 7 massive fortified structures. The complex had bomb shelters, an officers' casino, a train station, its own power plant and two runways.
The internal perimeter of the complex was divided into three security zones, fenced off from each other by wire fences and electrical
wire. To cross the boundary of each zone, it was necessary to have three various types passes restricting access to closed sectors.

Photo 4. Early in the morning of June 24, 1941, on the way to the Görlitz station, lost in the East Prussian wilderness, a letter train bearing the strange name Sonderzug Amerika (“Special Train “America”) arrived. It consisted of 15 cars: two with air defense guns, two luggage, two sleeping, two guest, two dining cars, one car with restrooms and bathrooms, one staff car, one security car, one for signalmen, but the heart of “America” was the Führerwagen , which housed the personal quarters of the leader of the Third Reich. It was the third day of the war with the Soviet Union, and Hitler came here, to a brand new front-line headquarters, to directly supervise Operation Barbarossa. In total, he had to spend more than 800 days and nights here - two more than a year life among a dense forest and hungry clouds of mosquitoes indifferent to authority.

Photo 5. The choice of this particular site, located in the Görlitz forest, 8 kilometers east of Rastenburg, was made, apparently, personally by Fritz Todt, the Reich Minister of Arms and Ammunition, the man who headed the “Todt Organization” (a giant concern that was engaged in the construction of autobahns, "Western Val", bunkers for submarines and many other strategic structures of the Third Reich). At one time, Todt vacationed in a small hotel near Görlitz, and he remembered this area with its dense forests, swamps and numerous lakes. On the one hand, it was quite close to the Soviet border, on the other, it was relatively easy to organize its defense. Finally, third important factor there were good access roads and relative sparseness of people, which made it possible to ensure large-scale construction and the required degree of secrecy.

Work on the new headquarters began in the fall of 1940, shortly before the official signing of Directive No. 21, which finally approved the blitzkrieg plan against the USSR. According to a legend spread among the local population, the Askania Nord chemical plant was supposed to appear near Rastenburg. The same cryptonym was also used in official contracts concluded with private contractors. About 2-3 thousand builders were working on the site at the same time, but their composition was constantly changing so that the workers could not understand the real nature of the object they were building. According to experts, in total, up to 20 thousand people were employed in the construction of Askania Nord.

Photo 6. To protect against detection from the air, mock-ups of trees and a camouflage net were used. It was changed 4 times a year, according to the environment, therefore, there was no difference between objects and environment. The walls of many bunkers were lined with seaweed and then painted green or grey colour. The entire area was photographed from the air in order to check the camouflage. Entry to the territory was possible only through three security posts.

In 1944, about 2,000 people served the Wolf's Lair - 300 field marshals, generals and adjutants; 1200 soldiers of the Hitler Escort Battalion; 150 SS intelligence and security personnel; 300 administration workers, drivers, electricians, mechanics, stenographers and secretaries, waiters, hairdressers, etc. Hitler first came here on June 24, 1941 after the attack on the Soviet Union.

The evacuation of the German command from Wolfsschanze came suddenly, when the Red Army had already approached too close. On January 24, 1945, just before the arrival of the Soviet troops (January 27, 1945), Field Marshal Keitel ordered the destruction of the Wolfsschanze so that no one else could use it.

There was no deliberate attempt to destroy the Wolf's Lair, although its existence and exact location were known to American intelligence as early as October 1942.

Photo 7. Construction in the “Wolf’s Lair” did not stop until last moment— in total, more than 80 different structures appeared here. Hitler was constantly overcome by paranoid fear for his life, which resulted in the permanent process of building increasingly powerful bunkers. By June 1941, only light shelters and temporary structures, only partly made of brick and concrete, were ready. The leadership of the Third Reich counted on the lightning-fast nature of the “Eastern Expedition” and did not plan to linger near Rastenburg. When the protracted nature of the war became obvious, and the Allies began to bomb German cities, the previous buildings began to gradually be replaced with more and more capital ones. The apotheosis was the new “Führerbunker”, commissioned in the summer of 1944, a few days after the famous assassination attempt on Hitler.

Photo 8. Stauffenburg attempted to carry out an assassination attempt at one of the “situational” meetings that constituted main meaning Hitler's life in the "Wolf's Lair". With rare exceptions, each of the more than 800 days the Fuhrer spent in the Görlitz Forest was similar to the previous one. He woke up quite late and after morning baths and breakfast he usually walked with his dog Blondie. Speer describes it this way: an important event Everyday life Nazi leader:

“During these walks, Hitler’s attention was drawn not to his companions, but to the shepherd Blondie, which he was trying to train. After several stick fetch exercises, the dog had to balance on a log barely twenty centimeters wide and eight meters long. Hitler, naturally, knew that dogs recognize those who feed them as their master. Before giving the signal to the servant to open the door of the enclosure, he usually waited for several minutes, and the dog, barking and whining with joy and hunger, rushed to the fence. Since I was in particular favor, I was allowed to accompany Hitler several times to feed the dog, while everyone else had to be content with the view from afar.”

“The shepherd had the most important place in Hitler’s private life; it was more important to him than his closest collaborators.”
After Blondie's walk, Hitler usually worked with his mail and press, and at noon the first of the “situations” began - meetings at which what happened on the fronts at night and in the morning was discussed. Then it was time for lunch (for Hitler - vegetarian) in one of the canteens, after which free time“Mr. Wolf” met with especially important guests who arrived at headquarters, and then drank tea in a specially built house. Around six in the evening, the second “situation” took place, followed by dinner and entertainment - usually a movie and endless, sometimes late-night conversations with his “inner circle.”

“Evening tea parties, to which he invited people at headquarters, gradually moved back to two o’clock in the morning and ended at three or four. And he increasingly postponed his bedtime until early in the morning, so I once said: “If the war continues, then we will at least return to a normal daily routine and Hitler’s evening tea party will be our morning tea.” , Speer wrote after the war.

Photo 9. In total, there were more than 2 thousand people on a permanent basis at the Wolfsschanze at the same time: in addition to the top leaders of the NSDAP and the army, these were dozens of staff officers, signalmen, hundreds of security personnel and service personnel- from secretaries to cooks. More and more people from the fronts and from Berlin came here every day to report. In the Wolf's Lair, Hitler met with the most important representatives of the Axis countries and its allies: Mussolini, Mannerheim, the premier of the French collaborationists Pierre Laval, the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III, the head of the Croatian fascists Ante Pavelic and many other less significant government and military figures, each whom he arrived in the Gerlitz forest with his escort.

Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of people knew about the existence of this headquarters, and it is all the more striking that its location remained a mystery to the opposing side - and to Soviet Union, and for its Western allies. Despite Hitler's paranoia and his belief that the Wolf's Lair would be bombed any day, not a single bomb fell on it during the war. All the precautions, the wasted cubic meters of concrete and tons of steel, which cost Germany a fantastic 36 million Reichsmarks, turned out to be, in fact, unnecessary. As it turned out, the main danger to the Fuhrer was not the phantom threat from the air, but the opposition to the Nazis within the Wehrmacht.
It was here, in the Wolfschanze, that the most famous attempt on Hitler's life took place, known as the “Plot of July 20th”. The Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht Reserve Army, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, despite all the numerous checks and checkpoints at the entrance to the headquarters, was able to smuggle explosive devices into its territory twice and detonate one of the bombs the second time. Hitler was saved from death only by a chain of accidents.

Photo 10. Hitler practically did not appear on fresh air(regularly - only for walking with the dog), although it would seem that the surrounding forest contributed to such relaxation. Speer compared his life at Wolfsschanze to a prison:

“It was only here that I realized that Hitler’s life had many similarities with the life of a prisoner. Although his bunker then [we are talking about the events of 1943] did not acquire the dimensions of the huge mausoleum that was intended for him after July 1944, it still had powerful ceilings and walls that looked like a prison, steel doors and shutters blocked the few paths, his miserable walks behind barbed wire gave him no more air and nature than a prisoner circling the prison yard.”

Photo 11. The site of the assassination attempt and the memorial sign now

Photo 12. And in this, according to Speer, “the stultifying world of the bet,” Hitler finally lost touch with reality, refusing to admit his own mistakes. The worse Germany's position on the fronts became, the more severe the separation of Hitler's fantasies from reality became.

Shortly after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, construction began on a new secret facility in Lower Silesia, in the Owl Mountains, which was called Riese (“Giant”). Hitler, who was in a prolonged depression, apparently decided to change the place of his permanent deployment, moving from East Prussia, to which the front line was getting closer and closer, to a new bastion near the fortified city of Breslau (now Wroclaw). However, work on “The Giant” proceeded too slowly. On November 20, 1944, at 5:15 a.m., the Fuhrer again boarded his special train, by that time long since renamed from “America” to “Brandenburg,” and set off from the Görlitz Forest to Berlin, never to return from there.

Photo 13. Despite the hopeless situation at the front, sluggish construction work in the empty Wolfsschanze continued for a couple of months. At the same time, on the personal order of the owner of the “Lair,” mining of his structures was carried out. On January 25, 1945, a series of enormous explosions occurred near Rastenburg. Two days later, the former Führerhauptquartier was occupied by the troops of the 31st Army under Lieutenant General Pyotr Shafranov.

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Photo 33. Former SS barracks and intelligence services

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Photo 41. Stenographers' office - almost 45 meters long

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Photo 43. . Keitel's dining room

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Photo 45. This huge bunker is used as a security bunker for a sauna, underground food storage and other nearby premises

Photo 46. former guest dining room

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Photo 48. Huge guest bunker. Its length is 45 meters, width 27 meters; roof 6.5 m. In this whole pile of concrete there were only two rooms with an area of ​​85 square meters. meters, the rest is walls, roofs and corridors:

Photo 49. Remnants of the Bunker of Keitel, Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces. Caring visitors prevent the multi-ton wall from falling and offer their chopsticks

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Photo 58. During the first post-war decade, Polish sappers neutralized about 54 thousand mines left there by the Nazis in the vicinity of the Wolf's Lair. Soon after, the gradual process of turning the property into a tourist attraction began. Only the barracks of the imperial security service have survived in their original form, but the ruins of the bunkers, especially the main “Führerbunker”, are probably even more impressive. Explosions of colossal force split multi-meter walls and moved the monstrously thick roof, revealing to the public the ligature of crippled Krupp reinforcement.

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Photo 63. fire pool

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Photo 69. Nothing from the interior remained; the Bunker was blown up from the inside. Pay attention to the thickness of the ceiling

Photo 70. Hitler's bunker is visible ahead

Photo 71. Hitler's bunker is the largest object on this territory. Its area outer surface- 2480 sq. m. In 1944 it was rebuilt and strengthened. There were six entrances to the bunker, all on one side.

Photo 72. The dining room was attached next to the main bunker

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Photo 75. Everything inside was destroyed by the explosion. Roof thickness - 8.5 m

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Photo 78. Finally, the majority of the departure participants bowed to the great leader by correcting the natural needs in the Fuhrer’s bedroom (this is not for you to go to the table at the factory). And she was waiting for us long road home

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Photo 80. Anti-aircraft artillery towers were installed on each heavy bunker

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Photo 82. And next to all this moss-covered gloomy Teutonic power, under the still noisy ancient trees of the Görlitz Forest, fighting off the still vicious Masurian mosquitoes, for which even the rain is not a hindrance, you very quickly become imbued with the atmosphere of the place where on the headquarters map With the stroke of a pencil, month after month, millions were doomed to death, but only one person should have found (but, alas, never found) his death.

Konig Diggers wish that the leader would burn forever in hell and that this terrible thing would never happen again. Bye everyone, until new reviews!

In 1944, a group of German officers made an attempt on Hitler's life here. Chief executive Claus von Stauffenberg arrived at headquarters from Berlin on July 20 for a headquarters meeting. He had a briefcase with him that contained explosives. He placed the briefcase next to Hitler and then went out to answer a pre-scheduled telephone call. Meanwhile, one of the officers, who was in the way of the briefcase, moved it to another place. The explosion injured or killed several people, but Hitler escaped serious injury. Von Stauffenberg and about 500 other people allegedly involved in the assassination attempt were executed.

On January 24, 1945, when the Red Army was very close, the Germans blew up the headquarters, and most of the bunkers were seriously damaged or completely destroyed. However, huge concrete slabs, some up to 8.5 m thick, and twisted reinforcement can still be seen here. All this looks especially impressive in winter under a thick layer of snow, and there are not many tourists during this period.

Large map of the complex with markings on English language located at the entrance to the territory (Hitler’s bunker was apparently given the number 13 on purpose). Booklet (there are versions in English and German languages) , which offers a self-guided tour of the bet, can be purchased at the kiosk in the parking lot. For 60zl you can hire a Russian-speaking guide.

Wilczy Szaniec; Tel.: 89 752 4429; www.wolfsschanze.pl; entrance for adults/discount 12/6zt; from 08.00 until dark.