Visit to Hitler’s secret bunker

Located in the former East Prussia, the easternmost province of the German Reich, the forest becomes increasingly dense when visited. Today, most of the area belongs to Poland. Near the town of Rustenburg, now called Keterzin, Adolf Hitler built his headquarters in the Görlitz Forest, known as the “Wolf’s Lair”.

A hermetically sealed and guarded site intended to be impregnable, it was built between 1940-44 and covered an area of ​​approximately 2.5 square kilometres. It had about fifty bunkers, seventy barracks, two airports and a railway station. Hitler together with his closest collaborators, Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring, had a private retreat while there were also retreats specifically for official visitors. The fort’s concrete walls were five to seven meters thick and around two thousand military and civilian personnel lived there permanently. The name of the headquarters “Wolf’s Lair” comes from Hitler’s little boy “Adolf”, which in ancient German meant “noble wolf”, which the Führer liked and used as a code name, guide Lukas Polubinski told us.

Nature helps in camouflaging the headquarters

The site is surrounded by huge deciduous trees that perfectly camouflaged the headquarters. There the “Führer” spent most of World War II. “If a building can become a symbol of a situation, then this bunker succeeds, as it looks like an ancient Egyptian tomb,” says the guide, referring to Hitler’s favorite architect, Albert Speer. “In this tomb Hitler lived, worked and slept. The seven-meter-thick concrete walls that surrounded him separated him, metaphorically, from the outside world, trapping him in his fantasies,” Polubinski continues.

Almost 80 years later, walking through the ruins you feel the presence of Hitler and his staff. Here they planned the genocide of the Jews. Shortly before the end of World War II, on January 24, 1945, when the Soviet Forces approached the fortress, the German Army blew it up. Since 1959, approximately 300,000 thousand tourists from all over the world visit the part of the fortress that was saved every year.

Continuing the tour, the guide emphasizes us to stay on the paths designated for visitors. Some disobeyed him and climbed into the ruins. “We have freed several wounded” Lukas Polubinski tells us, begging us to stay on the paths. Walking through the damp corridors I shudder to think of the thickness of the walls that surround me.

Hitler’s near overthrow

Just a few steps after entering, I see a plaque commemorating Klaus von Stauffenberg. On July 20, 1944, the colonel tried to kill Hitler with a bomb. The attempt failed. “It was not the first attempt against the Führer,” Polubinski points out. The dictator had at least 42 attacks against him. In his fortress every visitor was thoroughly checked. It is questionable how Stauffenberg managed to get close to him carrying the bomb. Hitler miraculously survived while Stauffenberg, convinced of the dictator’s death, headed for Berlin to complete the coup, but was captured and executed the same night.

I wonder how different things would have been if one of these attacks had been successful. Why, I asked our tour guide, didn’t the Allies attack the fort to stop the Nazi terror? “The shelters were very bulky,” explains Polubinski. “The British and Americans probably knew from the summer of 1943 that Wolf’s Lair existed, but they didn’t know when Hitler was there. After all, the planes were not then able to attack East Prussia and then return to England.” The location of the headquarters was not chosen by chance, it was very close to the Russian border. On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the “Wolf’s Lair” to attack the Soviet Union.

Just a few kilometers away, also well camouflaged in the forest, is the headquarters of the Wehrmacht’s high command, known as the “Walled Forest”. The bunkers here were never destroyed, and today figures of Hitler and other generals are installed along with a reconstruction of a submarine and a replica of the ‘Amber Room’. It was built in the 18th century in Prussia and was donated by the King of Prussia Frederick William I as a token of friendship to Tsar Peter I. It was placed in St. Petersburg and was considered the “eighth wonder of the world”. During the Second World War the Nazis removed it and since then its fate is unknown. It was never found in the “Walled Forest” either, despite the fact that Erich Koch, Gauleiter of the National Socialist Party in East Prussia, had hinted before his death that the treasure was hidden there.

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