Tourists in Poland can visit the ruins of Adolf Hitler's Wolf's Lair, the bunker where he oversaw the war, the Holocaust, and survived an assassination attempt. DW's Suzanne Cords took a look around.
Tour guide Lukas Polubinski explains the layout of the Wolf's LairImage: Suzanne Cords/DW
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In a dense forest in former East Prussia, the easternmost province of the German Reich until the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler built his secretive Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze) military headquarters.
Located near the small town of Ketrzyn in Poland, the hermetically sealed and highly guarded complex was built between 1940 and 1944 and included 50 bunkers, 70 barracks, two airfields and a railroad station. Hitler, his secretary Martin Bormann and army head Hermann Göring had private bunkers, and one was reserved for state guests.
The walls of the concrete structures were between five and seven meters thick. Three heavily secured exclusion zones, countless guard posts and ten kilometers of mines protected several thousand military and civilians who lived in the Wolf's Lair.
"The name comes from Adolf, which means 'noble wolf' in Old High German," tour guide Lukas Polubinski tells our group. That pleased Hitler, and Wolf became his cover name.
Hitler's bunker was heavily fortified and well hiddenImage: Suzanne Cords/DW
The Führer's own headquarters was perfectly camouflaged and impossible to spot from the air. Towering deciduous trees and nets concealed the facility. Nowhere did Adolf Hitler spend as much time during the Second World War — the dictator passed around 830 days in the bunkers at Wolf's Lair.
From the outside, Hitler's bunker resembles an ancient Egyptian tomb. Hitler lived in this tomb, he worked and slept there. "It seemed as if the seven-meter-thick concrete walls that surrounded him figuratively, separated him from the outside world and imprisoned him in his madness," said Polubinski.
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Nature reclaims the site
When the Red Army, the Soviet Union's armed forces, drew closer, the German Wehrmacht blew up the quarters on January 24, 1945.
But the massive steel buildings were not completely destroyed. After the war, the locals looted building materials from the ruins but huge blocks of concrete still lie in the forest, overgrown with ferns and moss.
Stauffenberg (left) with Hitler at the Wolfsschanze in 1944Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
The minefields were cleared, and tourists have been flocking to Wolf's Lair since 1959. Almost 80 years later, visitors can still sense the atmosphere of the place where Hitler, his generals and marshals not only planned campaigns but also discussed the genocide of the Jews in detail.
For a while, one tour operator allowed visitors to sit on tanks and play war games with air guns. But the approach put off potential visitors, Polubinski said. Since 2017, the Wolf's Lair has been under state management. About 300,000 people visit annually, most from Poland but many from around the world.
It is forbidden to enter the bunker remains, yet some visitors climb into the few remaining corridors. "We've had to pull many out who got hurt," said Polubinski, admonishing the group to please "stay on the paths."
I have no desire at all to crawl through the damp corridors. It must be oppressive being surrounded by meters-thick concrete.
42 assassination attempts on Hitler
A few steps into the area, I spot a memorial plaque commemorating Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. On July 20, 1944, the colonel tried to kill Hitler with a bomb.
The attack failed. "It was not the first attempt on the Führer's life," Lukas Polubinski said, adding there were at least 42 attacks on the dictator. What the world would have been spared if only one of them had succeeded, I think to myself.
A stone plaque at the site of the Stauffenberg bomb attempt Image: Suzanne Cords/DW
Hitler took it as a good omen that he kept escaping. But he was wary. Visitors to the Wolf's Lair were checked before entering the seemingly impregnable fortress. I figure it was almost a miracle that Stauffenberg got close to Hitler with a bomb at all.
Hitler survived the attack only because it took place in a wooden barrack. He and his military staff had gathered to discuss the military situation, and Stauffenberg was also invited. The colonel had already tried several times to smuggle in a bomb but always had to abort at the last moment.
This time Stauffenberg succeeded in placing a briefcase with a bomb under an oak table next to Hitler — but someone pushed it aside with his foot because it was in the way. Hitler owes his life to this circumstance, as well as to the fact that the blast pressure was directed outward through the windows that were open because of the summer heat.
Four officers were killed, while Hitler was only slightly injured. Had the meeting taken place in the bunker, he presumably would have died.
Stauffenberg had left the room under a pretext. Convinced of Hitler's death, he left for Berlin to complete the putsch. Instead, he and his co-conspirators were arrested and executed that very night.
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They were few, but they existed: People who risked their lives to fight the Nazis. The German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin pays tribute to them.
Image: Votava/brandstaetter/picture alliance
The assassination attempt of July 20, 1944
Seventy-five years ago, a bomb exploded in the Führer's Wolf's Lair headquarters, which was supposed to kill Adolf Hitler. The assassination attempt failed; Hitler survived. The resistance fighters involved were executed in the days following the attempted coup.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Man behind the July 20 plot
Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg was instrumentally involved in the bomb plot of July 20, 1944. As early as 1942, the officer realized that the Second World War could no longer be won. In order to save Germany from imminent destruction, Stauffenberg and other Wehrmacht officers decided to overthrow the Hitler regime.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Kreisau Circle
Fundamental political reform in Germany was the goal of the Kreisau Circle. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg (pictured) were the driving forces behind the movement. Some members of the Circle joined the July 20 plot in 1944 and were tried and sentenced to death after the assassination attempt failed.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Hans and Sophie Scholl
Starting from 1942 a group of Munich students, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, tried to resist the National Socialists. The group, which called itself the White Rose, distributed thousands of leaflets denouncing the crimes of the Nazi regime. In February 1943 the Gestapo found the siblings and sentenced them to death.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Attempted Hitler assassination by Georg Elser
In 1939, carpenter Georg Elser fastened explosive devices behind Hitler's lectern in the Munich Bürgerbräu brewery. The bomb detonated as planned. However, since Hitler's speech was shorter than expected, he had already left the hall before the explosion. Seven people died and 60 more were injured. Elser was arrested on the same day and taken to Dachau concentration camp, where he died in 1945.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Images
Weidt's Workshop for the Blind
During the Second World War, Berlin manufacturer Otto Weidt employed mainly blind and deaf Jews. His broom and brush bindery was considered an "important defense business" and could therefore not be closed down by the Nazis. Weidt managed to provide for his Jewish employees throughout the war and protect them from deportation.
Image: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
Resistance by artists and intellectuals
Numerous artists and intellectuals already turned against the regime when Hitler came to power in 1933. Many who did not want to adapt or openly oppose the system fled into exile. Others, such as the Berlin cabaret group Katakombe, openly criticized the regime. In 1935 the theater was closed by the Gestapo and its founder Werner Finck was imprisoned in the Esterwegen concentration camp.
Image: picture-alliance / akg-images/J. Schmidt
Die Swing Youth
The Swing Jugend or Swing Youth, regarded the American-English way of life, represented by swing music and dance, as a clear opposition to the Nazi regime and the Hitler Youth. In August 1941 there was a wave of arrests, especially in Hamburg, of Swing Youths, many of whom were taken into custody or deported to special youth concentration camps.
Image: Getty Images/Hulton/Keystone
Red Orchestra resistance group
The Gestapo used direction finders to track down illegal transmitters used by resistance groups. In the summer of 1942, more than 120 members of the Rote Kapelle were arrested. This group, centered around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack, wanted to help Jews document the crimes of the Nazi regime and distribute leaflets. More than 50 members were sentenced to death and executed.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
German Resistance Memorial Center
On July 19, 1953, the ceremonial unveiling of the Memorial to the German Resistance took place in Berlin in the inner courtyard of the Bendlerblock building, the place where Count Stauffenberg was executed after the failed Hitler assassination. In addition, however, the memorial also commemorates all the other courageous men and women who stood up against the Hitler regime.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
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Planning the invasion of the Soviet Union
Why didn't the Allies attack the Wolf's Lair to end the Nazi terror, I wonder. Simply because the bunkers were too massive, said Polubinksi.
"Probably the British and the Americans knew from the summer of 1943 that the Wolf's Lair existed, but they weren't concerned with the buildings — they wanted to get Hitler. And they didn't know when he would be there." Besides, the tour guide argues, the planes at the time didn't have the range to fly to East Prussia, drop bombs and return to England.
Hitler chose the location in East Prussia not only because it was a good hideout, but above all because it was not far from the Russian border, Polubinksi explained. On June 22, 1941, he ordered the attack on the Soviet Union from the Wolf's Lair.
Amber Room at Mauerwald?
Just a few kilometers away, also well-hidden in the dense mixed coniferous forest, the Army High Command had set up its headquarters, known as the Mauerwald.
The Mauerwald bunker was rumoured to hide the famous Amber Room Image: Suzanne Cords/DW
Unlike the Wolf's Lair, these bunkers were not destroyed. Life-size figures have been placed in the damp, oppressive rooms, visitors can marvel at a replica of a submarine, and surprisingly, a replica of the legendary Amber Room, a chamber decorated in amber panels.
Prussian King Frederick William I gave it to Tsar Peter I the Great in 1716 as a sign of their friendship and to confirm the alliance between their countries.
The tsar displayed the chamber in his palace in St. Petersburg. But during WWII, Nazi soldiers stole it and to this day, no one knows where it is.
Back then, East Prussia district head Erich Koch suggested the precious room might be hidden in the Mauerwald. After the war, he was not executed because the authorities hoped he would disclose the mysterious whereabouts. He has kept silent, however. Mauerwald has been searched again and again, most recently in 2017, but to no avail.
Victims and heroes: Berlin war memorials
On July 20, 1944, German officers tried to kill Hitler. The assassination attempt failed, and the attackers were executed. On the anniversary, DW visits some memorial sites in Berlin.
Image: Andrea Warnecke/dpa/picture alliance
Memorial to the German resistance
World War II almost ended a year earlier: On July 20, 1944, a group of German officers led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler. But the assassination attempt failed and the officers involved were executed. The German Resistance Memorial Center remembers those who died while resisting the Nazi regime.
Since 1993, the Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) has been Germany's central memorial site for the victims of war and tyranny. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century according to designs of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and has always been a memorial site. First for the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation 1813 — 1815, later for the fallen of the First and Second World War.
Image: Marc Vorwerk/SULUPRESS.DE/picture alliance
Pieta by Käte Kollwitz
A mother embraces her dead son: this replica of Käthe Kollwitz' statue is the centerpiece in the Neue Wache. Kollwitz crafted the artwork in honor of her son Peter, who was killed in World War I. The original statue is housed at Cologne's Käthe Kollwitz museum.
Image: picture-alliance/W. Rothermel
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
There are numerous memorials for the victims of the Nazi regime in Berlin. The most famous and largest one is the Holocaust Memorial near Brandenburg Gate. A field of 2,711 stelae commemorates the more than 6 million murdered Jews in Europe.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Büttner
Topography of Terror
With about one million visitors annually, the documentation center Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstrasse is one of the most visited memorial sites in Berlin. From 1933 to 1945, this was the site of the headquarters of the Secret State Police Office and the SS — in other words, where the Nazi regime's system of terror was planned and managed.
Image: DW/F. Wiechel-Kramüller
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered during the Nazi era
A water basin, filled with symbolic tears. The names of concentration camps are inscribed on the stone slabs around it. The monument in Berlin's Tiergarten commemorates 500,000 people who were persecuted and murdered as "gypsies" by the Nazis in Germany and other European countries between 1933 and 1945.
Image: imago/C. Ditsch
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz was severely damaged in bombing raids in 1943. When it was to be completely demolished and rebuilt in the postwar years, the people of Berlin protested. Thus the 71-meter-high (233 ft) tower ruin was preserved as a memorial against war and destruction, for peace and reconciliation, visible from afar.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Günther
The Soviet War Memorial
A Soviet soldier holding a rescued child on his arm and a lowered sword over a shattered swastika — this huge monument towers above the Soviet Memorial in Treptow. The military cemetery is the final resting place for 7,000 Soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the fight for Berlin in the spring of 1945.
Image: picture-alliance/360-Berlin/J. Knappe
Commonwealth War Cemetery in Berlin
Some 3,600 Air Force soldiers, mainly killed in air combat over Berlin, are buried in the British cemetery on Heerstrasse. The honorary cemetery was built between 1955 and 1957 for the fallen soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth States, especially Canada. It is still under special protection by the British Crown.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images/Schoening Berlin
Monument to the Polish liberators of Berlin
For a long time there was no place in Berlin to remember the Polish victims of war and German occupation. But in September 2021, this memorial plaque was unveiled in Berlin in honor of the Polish troops who took part in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.
Image: DW/W. Szymanski
New documentation center to be created
The German Bundestag has decided to establish a new documentation center on the Nazi occupation in Europe. It will be dedicated to all victims of the German war of extermination and Nazi occupation, focusing on groups of victims that have received little attention up to now.
