The Second World War left many artifacts to mankind. Until now, search engines find military equipment, ammunition and abandoned military installations left after thousands of battles. Some bunkers were only discovered decades after the war ..
Buried under the sand
For more than 50 years, three Nazi bunkers were buried under thick sand on the Danish coast. Everything in them has been preserved in the form when the Wehrmacht soldiers left them fifty years ago: from abandoned things to an unfinished bottle of schnapps and a pinch of tobacco in a soldier's pipe.
Located on Houvig Beach, they were discovered in 2008 only because giant waves rolled out the sand during a storm and exposed cement walls and iron structures.
These three bunkers were built by the Germans as part of the construction of the fortifications, called the "Atlantic Wall". Most of the items in the bunkers were well preserved for 60 years, because they were in cold and dark and were literally preserved in sand.
Danish expert on European bunkers Bent Antonisen called the opening of fully furnished bunkers “unique in Europe”. Jens Andersen, an employee of the World War II Museum in the Hanstholm Fortress, was no less enthusiastic about the find.
“This is fantastic: we found untouched premises, in which chairs, tables, communication equipment, household items and personal belongings of the soldiers who lived here.
Hitler's nuclear laboratory in the mountains of Austria
A network of secret tunnels where the Germans worked to create nuclear weaponswas accidentally discovered in Austria in 2014 by director Andreas Sulzer. The complex is located in the immediate vicinity of the small town of St. Georgen an der Gusen, not far from Linz.
B8 Bergkristall. Photo: independent.co.uk The exact location of the complex was determined after careful analysis of spy reports from the Second World War and research that revealed places with high level radioactivity.
The facility was built using slave labor from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
Me 262. Photo: historynet.com The site also housed an underground plant where the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters were produced. After the war, Allied troops examined the plant, but could not find the entrance to the secret complex.
It took heavy equipment for Sulzer to break through. True, the Austrian authorities, having learned about the excavation, prohibited any work on this site.
Goebbels' secret bunker
In December 1998, an underground bunker belonging to Joseph Goebbels was accidentally discovered in Berlin, not far from the planned construction site of a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The three-room shelter was located near Potsdamer Platz in the center of Berlin.
A ruin inside the Goebbels bunker, which was next to the house and connected to it by an underground passage. Photo: vocativ.com Geophysical scanning helped to find the bunker. It was not possible to find any plans for a bunker in the archives, only its location near the house of the former Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda helped to establish the belonging of the underground structure.
The newly opened underground shelter was not connected to Hitler's bunker, where Goebbels and his family spent the last minutes of their lives. In the found bunker, most likely, a high-ranking Nazi was hiding during the bombing - raids on Berlin happened quite often.
Secrets of the "island of death"
Last year, the Russian Ministry of Defense, together with the Russian geographic society conducted several expeditions to the islands of Gogland and Bolshoi Tyuters, located in the central part of the Gulf of Finland. Bolshoi Tyuters, by the way, is called "the island of death."
During the war, the Germans turned it into a real fortress: rows of barbed wire girdled the entire island, machine-gun nests were located every 50-100 meters. There are still minefields and many rusted weapons on the island.
During the expedition on Bolshoy Tyuters, several bunkers were discovered, which were equipped by the Germans in granite rocks. For what purpose they were built is unknown.
Photo: project. moya-planeta.ru On a large map of the island from the archives of the Abwehr (the body of military intelligence and counterintelligence in Germany in 1919-1944) there is an inscription that says that there are 15 underground structures on the island.
There are many versions about the purpose of the mysterious bunkers. One of them says that they contained some of the valuables looted by the Wehrmacht.
This bunker was built in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 60s of the 20th century.
It was to become a shelter for the ruling elite in the event of a nuclear war.
It was located near Bonn and consisted of a system of tunnels with a total length of 17 kilometers.
It took 12 years and 5 billion marks to build.
Fortunately, he was never needed.
In the late 90s it was closed and disassembled. At the moment, only concrete tunnels remain from the bunker.
There is also a museum, whose workers have restored several rooms.
These photographs were taken while the bunker still existed. I signed them to make it clearer.
Bunker control panel - cameras, electric locks and more 
Federal Chancellor's room. Separate rooms were made only for the chancellor and the president of the country.
The remaining 3000 people were to live in rooms with bunk beds. 
Television studio for recording messages to the people 
Bathroom. This is a luxury room. There were two similar ones too. 
Meeting room 
Barbershop 
Dental office 
An ordinary worker's office 
Bathroom for staff. There were five of them in the bunker 
Vehicles for moving through tunnels.
For short distances, bicycles could be used. 
The main door to the bunker weighing 25 tons closed automatically in 15 seconds 
800 meter emergency exit tunnel 
Entrance to one of five dining rooms. In the evenings, they could be used as cinemas. 
Steel doors inside the silo 
Another tunnel 
Room with spare parts for equipment. 
Another tunnel 
Another 25 ton front door. There are four of them 
Negotiation point in case the telephone connection remains in working order 
And another steel door 
One of five kitchens 
Entrance to one of five infirmaries for radiation victims 
Another Chancellor's Room 
Access to the upper levels 
Bunker corridors 
Electric vehicle for fast movement 
Interpreter's office near the conference room.
There were more than 900 offices in the bunker. 
Checkpoint at the entrance 
Security room at a depth of 100 meters. The cleaners were not allowed to go there.
This painting was first discovered during the dismantling of the bunker in 1997.
This is what the entrance to the bunker looked like on the surface (model) 
And this is how the city looked like above the bunker. He, of course, is still there and stands
Today's post is dedicated to the story of one of the largest bunkers in the German defensive line Western Wall, erected in 1938-1940 on the western borders of the Third Reich.
In total, 32 objects of this type were built, which were built to protect strategically important points and roads. Only two such bunkers have survived to this day, of which only one B-Werk has survived intact. The second bunker was blown up in 1947 and covered with soil. Only decades later, a group of volunteers took up the restoration of the blown up bunker in order to create it inside the museum. The volunteers have done a huge amount of work to restore the bunker and today it is available for visiting for anyone interested in military history.
B-Werk Katzenkopf is located on the top of the mountain of the same name, located near the village of Irrel, which is a couple of kilometers from the border with Luxembourg. The facility was built in 1937-1939 to control the Cologne - Luxembourg highway. For this purpose, two B-Werk "a" were built on the Katzenkopf mountain, located close to each other. The second B-Werk Nimsberg was also blown up in the same way as the B-Werk Katzenkopf. post-war time and destroyed to such an extent that it could not be restored, unlike its brother.
01. View from Mount Katzenkopf to the village of Irrel.
The B-Werk Katzenkopf was destroyed in 1947 by the French as part of the agreements on the demilitarization of Germany and was in a state of ruins covered with earth for thirty years, until it became clear in 1976 that the explosion destroyed only the upper level of the structure, and the rest of the underground part was not damaged. After that, a volunteer fire brigade from the Irrel village took up the excavation of the object, through whose efforts the B-Werk was restored and since 1979 has become available to visitors as a museum.
02. In the photo there is a preserved part of the ground level with one of two entrances inside, not damaged by the explosion, but changed during the reconstruction process.
All B-Werke were built according to the same standard design, but could differ in details and layout of the interior. The name B-Werk came from the classification of the bunkers of the Third Reich, in which the objects were assigned a letter according to the thickness of the walls. Objects with walls and ceilings of 1.5 meters thick corresponded to Class B. In order not to give the enemy information about the thickness of the walls of the structures, these objects were then called Panzerwerk (literally: armored structure). This facility was officially named Panzerwerk Nr. 1520.
Before the explosion, the above-ground level of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 looked as follows. I marked with dark the part of the upper level destroyed by the explosion. 
03. The preserved wall of the left flank with one of the emergency exits. A dummy machine-gun armored tower is visible on the roof. Before the explosion, the object's armored towers were dismantled.
04. To give the object a shape close to the original, the volunteers erected models of both machine-gun turrets from brick and concrete. The roof of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 now looks like this:
Each Panzerwerk had a standard set of weapons and armored domes, which I indicated in this diagram. In the course of this photo walk, I will tell you more about them. To date, the only Panzerwerk with surviving armored domes is the B-Werk Bessering.
05. A wooden cross and a memorial plaque in memory of the fallen soldiers of the 39th Infantry Fusilier Regiment (Füssilier-Regiments), who fought in the USSR from 1941 to 1944, were installed on the wreckage of the destroyed part of the facility. Soldiers of one of the battalions of this regiment consisted of the garrison of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 in 1939-1940.
06. In front of the entrance to the Panzerwerk there is a small park with numerous benches and an excellent view of the Irrel village.
07. The entrance to the building in the original was a hatch about a meter in height, but now in its place is equipped with a regular entrance door of standard height, so that, going inside, you don't even have to bend down. An embrasure is traditionally located opposite the entrance. The design of this part has undergone significant changes during the restoration of the blown up bunker. Initially, the floor was much lower and the embrasure was located at the chest level of the entering person.
08. Behind the turn of the entrance corridor there was a pit, 4.6 meters deep and 1.5 meters wide. In peacetime, the pit was covered with a steel sheet, 2 cm thick, forming a kind of bridge.
09. In the combat position, the steel bridge rose and acted as an armor shield, for which an embrasure was built into it. Such a system made it almost impossible for the enemy to penetrate into the object. In the photo there is a pit in front of the second entrance, located in the destroyed part of the structure.
The diagram shows the construction of a similar system in the B-Werk class structures of the Western Wall. Each such object had two entrances, behind which were pits covered with an armor plate. Both entrances led to a common vestibule, which was also shot through through another embrasure.
For clarity, I will give the plan of the upper floor. The pits at the entrance hatches are marked with number 22, the common vestibule 16. In gray, I marked the rooms destroyed by the explosion, including: a guard casemate (17), a filter-ventilation casemate (19), an armored grenade launcher shaft (21), a casemate flanking the bunker entrances (23) and a number of utility and technical premises.
The rooms that survived to one degree or another: machine-gun armored dome (1), observation casemate with observation armored dome (3), command center (4), communication point (5), artillery observation armored dome (6), flamethrower casemate (11), stairs to the lower level (12) as well as several technical rooms and rooms for personnel.
10. Now let's look at the preserved part (more precisely, the partially preserved part) of the upper level of the bunker. In the center of the picture, you can see a room closed by a mesh door.
11. Behind the grid is the heavily damaged room of the flamethrower casemate and part of the flamethrower barrel. The can contains an original flamethrower mixture.
The fortress flamethrower was designed to protect the roof of the facility, in case of penetration by enemy soldiers, as well as for close defense of the bunker. The control of the flamethrower was completely electric, but in the event of a loss of voltage, a manual option was also provided. At one time, the flamethrower spewed 120 liters of fiery mixture, spraying it through a special nozzle and turning hundreds of cubic meters of space in a given direction into fiery hell. Then he needed a two-minute pause to charge the new mixture. The fuel reserves were enough for 20 charges and the range of the flamethrower was 60-80 meters. The installation was located on two levels, its diagram is shown in the figure:
13. All armored towers containing tens of tons of metal were removed from the facility in the post-fall time before the bunker was blown up. Today, brick-concrete dummies are in their place.
The six-bore towers of the 20P7 type were developed by the German concern Krupp and were made of high-strength steel. One such tower cost 82,000 Reichsmarks (currently about 420,000 euros). You can imagine how much the construction of the Siegfried Line cost, because there were 32 such objects and each had two towers. The tower's crew consisted of five people: the commander and four gunners. The commander watched from a periscope mounted on the roof of the tower for the situation around and commanded fire. Inside the tower were placed two MG34 machine guns, which could be freely rearranged from one embrasure to another, but at the same time could not simultaneously occupy two adjacent embrasures. There should always be a minimum gap between them - one embrasure. The thickness of the turret armor was 255 mm. Towers of this type were also used on the East and Atlantic Wall - two large defensive lines of the Third Reich, more than 800 of them were made.
In the destroyed part of the bunker, there was another armored dome for a 50-mm fortress mortar M 19, whose task was the close defense of the panzerwerk. The range of the mortar was 20-600 meters with a rate of fire of 120 rounds per minute. The diagram of the mortar armored dome is shown in the figure.
14. The photograph shows the numerous effects of the 1947 explosion, in particular the lopsided ceiling that fell into the bunker.
15. The personnel accommodation room is the only fully restored room in the bunker.
16. The facility was equipped with a forced ventilation system, in which air was forced inward by air pumps, passing through the fwa if necessary. Thus, an excess pressure was maintained inside the bunker, which prevented the penetration of poisonous gases into the interior. In the event of a power outage, in many places inside the bunker, manual back-up FVUs were placed, one of which you can see in the photo.
17. Ladder to the lower level, behind which the destroyed part of the bunker is visible. To the left of the corridor are the premises of the command center and the communication point.
18. The room of the command center was not damaged by the explosion, but the inside is still empty.
19. From the command center you can get to the observation casemate, which was once equipped with a cone-shaped observation armored canopy of the Typ 90P9 type.
The thickness of the armor of this small armored dome was 120 mm. The dome had five slots for circular observation and two optical instrument... This is what the observer's place looked like before the explosion of the bunker:
20. This is how it looks at the present time.
21. At the end of the corridor there is another room where the personnel were housed. This room is located near the destroyed part of the bunker and is also damaged by the explosion.
22. Adjacent to the room is the lower level of the 21P7 type artillery observation armored tower, which was intended to accommodate artillery observers with optical rangefinder devices. Thus, the bunker could also be used for aiming and adjusting artillery fire. Unlike the machine gun turret, the 21P7 turret had no embrasures, only holes for observation devices and a periscope. The presence of this tower B-Werk Katzenkopf differed from the standard design, according to which a similar structure was equipped with two identical six-bore machine-gun turrets. This panserverk also had two machine-gun turrets, but the second was located remotely and connected with the bunker of the underground porch.
23. Nothing has survived from the artillery observation tower to this day.
24. The rest of the upper level rooms were destroyed by the explosion. We go down to the lower level.
25. The lower level should be more interesting, as it was not damaged by the explosion.
At the lower level of the structure there were: ammunition depots (24, 25, 40), a kitchen (27) with a food warehouse (28), barracks for personnel equipped with emergency exits to the surface (29, 31), the lower level of a flamethrower installation (32) , a staircase leading to the Pörn system (33), a fuel storage for diesel generators (34), toilets (36) and a shower room (37), an infirmary (38), a machine room with two diesel generators (39) and a tank with a reserve water (41).
Now let's see what is left of all this.
26. In the corridor (35) there is a brace-ladder leading to one of the upper level rooms.
27. The infirmary room slightly damaged by the explosion.
28. At the end of the corridor was one of the ammunition storage bays, through the wall from which there was an engine room with two diesel generator sets.
29. The bunker received electricity from the external network, diesel generators served only as a backup source of electricity in the event of a loss of voltage in the power cable. The power of each of the two four-cylinder diesel engines was 38 hp. In addition to lighting, electricity was needed for the electric drives of the ventilation system, heating resistors, which were electric (while supplemented with ordinary stoves). The kitchen equipment was also fully electric.
30. The diesel generator room also keeps traces of the explosion. Almost nothing has survived from the equipment.
31. Ammunition depot.
32. Remains of a shower room.
33. Toilets.
34. Sewer equipment.
35. This room (34) held a fuel supply for diesel engines of 17,000 liters, calculated for a monthly autonomy.
36. We move to the second corridor (30) of the underground level.
37. There are also traces of destruction from the explosion. The transition to the upper level through the staple ladder is walled up here
38. One of two rooms of the underground level, which housed beds for the rest of the personnel (29). In the corner of the room there are two original filters from the object's filter and ventilation unit. In total, the bunker had six such filters in case of a gas attack. There is an emergency exit to the surface behind the lattice door. It originally had a completely different design, but as part of the restoration of the bunker as a museum, it was redesigned to meet modern safety standards. He is also visible from the outside in photo 03.
39. Former ammunition warehouses are home to modest displays designed to compensate for the void around them.
40. Information stands tell about the events of 75 years ago.
41. The room of the kitchen, from the equipment of which only the sink has been preserved. A warehouse for storing food is adjacent to the kitchen.
42. The second of two personnel recreation facilities. Each room had eighteen sleeping places on which the soldiers slept in turns in shifts. In total, the garrison of the bunker consisted of 84 people. Beds such as this one were typical of all Siegfried bunkers from the smallest to the B-Werke.
43. This room also contains one of the emergency exits to the surface. It had a structure due to which it was impossible to get inside the object from the surface. The D-shaped emergency exit barrel leading to the roof of the bunker with a ladder inside was covered with sand. If there was a need to leave the bunker through the emergency exit, wedges were pulled out, blocking valves inside the trunk and sand spilled out into the bunker, freeing the exit to the top. Approximately the same design of the emergency exit was used in Fort Schonenburg on the Maginot Line, only there was gravel instead of sand and it spilled out not inside the fort, but into the cavity inside the trunk.
This concludes the inspection of the lower level. Everything that I have described up to this point was typical of all 32 Panzerwerke built, the differences were only in the details. But the B-Werk Katzenkopf had an interesting feature that significantly distinguished it from the typical project, namely, an additional third level, located deeper than the main structure.
The diagram below clearly shows the structure of the bunker and the lower underground level located at a depth of twenty-five meters (in the diagram, the scale is not respected).
44. Such a ladder leads down.
45. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the bunker and the largest. There is no such space anywhere else inside the object.
46. \u200b\u200bInitially it was planned to connect this panzerwork with the Nimsberg panzerwerk located a kilometer away... The plans involved laying an electric narrow-gauge railway between the two structures. Thus, both panserverki could form something similar to the forts of the Maginot Line or the objects of the East Rampart. But in 1940, Germany seized France, Belgium and Luxembourg and the need for the Western Rampart disappeared, all construction work on the defensive line was stopped, including the construction of this postern stopped.
47. To the side of the staircase, there are two posterns located at right angles to each other. The one that was the largest was supposed to connect both panzerwigs. The smaller one leads to a warhead located away from the main structure and consisting of a machine gun turret and emergency exit.
Bunker underground level diagram:
48. First, I headed along the smaller porch. Its length is 75 meters.
49. The porch ends with a guard casemate covering the approach to the combat block. There is no armored door, like all armored doors at the facility.
50. Inside the guard casemate there is an embrasure from which the tunnel and a device for manual ventilation of the casemate in case of failure or stop of the electric ventilation system of the bunker were shot.
51. This is how the device for manual ventilation of the casemate looks like. Similar devices have been installed at all important points in the bunker.
52. There is also a staircase leading to the combat block.
53. Climbing the stairs we get to the lower level. An emergency exit portal is located in the wall, which has a typical design for such objects. Through a hole in the ceiling, an ascent to the machine-gun armored tower was carried out. This tower was a standard six-frame type 20P7, exactly the same as that installed in the main building. On the wall, you can see fastenings for three beds - in this room the calculation of the tower was located.
54. The tower itself was dismantled, like the rest of the object's armored domes immediately after the end of the war. Now a concrete dummy has also been built here.
Once again, how it looked in the original:
55. There is nothing more to see, we return back to the fork.
56. On the way, there is such an opening in the street. Apparently, the plans were to replenish the facility with another combat unit, or one of the small bunkers located on this mountain should have been connected to the system. Now it is impossible to find out.
57. Nice.
58. The ceiling height of the main porch is 3.5 meters. After the cramped interiors of the panzerwerk, this underground location seems enormous.
59. Inside the unfinished main porch there is an exposition of various aerial bombs and shells from the Second World War found in the region. There are information boards on the wall that tell the story of the object and the Siegfried line in general.
60. Here in the wall there is another opening (on the left in the photo), similar to the one we saw in the neighboring porch. But in contrast to the opening located in the porch leading to the armored tower, the purpose of this is known. A railway tunnel is located fifty meters under the bunker. At the time when they began to build this porch to unite both panserverki, there were plans to connect the underground passage system with railway tunnelthat is under the bunker. Thus, it was possible to transport ammunition and other ammunition to both bunkers completely unnoticed by rail. These plans were not destined to come true for the reasons described above.
61. At the end of the porch there is a small water supply casemate. Inside there is a well, 120 meters deep, and a powerful electric pump that pumps water from the well into the bunker water supply system.
62. In the place where the porch ends, a small diorama was erected, which is not related to the bunker.
63. The pump of the bunker water supply system remained in a relatively good condition.
64. There are remnants of some electrical equipment hanging on the wall.
65. Inspection of the object has come to an end and we are heading for the exit.
In the end, a few words about the history of this building. Combat duty at the facility began in August 1939 and lasted until May 1940, when France was captured. Service at the facility lasted from four to six weeks, after which the garrison left for rotation. After the capture of France, combat duty in the bunker was canceled, the facility was completely disarmed, and only one soldier was left in it to maintain the technical systems in order to keep an eye on the facility.
In December 1944, an order was received to prepare the bunker for battle and populate a garrison in it. But due to an acute shortage of people, it was possible to collect only 7 Wehrmacht soldiers and 45 people from the Hitler Youth, aged 14-16 years. In January, American troops approached the village of Irrel and began heavy shelling of the village and its surroundings, which continued for several weeks. In February, the Americans took up both panzerwakes, inflicting numerous air and artillery strikes on targets. The demoralized garrison of the Panzerwerk left the facility at night through the emergency exit and the Americans who entered did not find absolutely anyone there, after which they blew up the entrances to the bunker so that no one could use it, and in 1947, as part of the demilitarization of Germany, all the metal was removed from the bunker. the bunker was blown up and covered with soil. He stayed in this state for about thirty years, until in 1976 the local volunteer fire brigade undertook to restore it, who did a titanic work to make the object accessible to visitors.
For a long time, bunkers of the Second World War were top-secret objects, the existence of which only a few knew. But they also signed non-disclosure documents. Today the veil of secrecy over the military bunkers is ajar.
"Wolf's Lair"
Wolfsschanze (German Wolfsschanze, Russian Wolf's Lair) was the main bunker and headquarters of Hitler, the main headquarters of the Fuhrer and the command complex of the High Command of the German Armed Forces.
The German leader spent over 800 days here. From this place, the leadership of the attack on the Soviet Union and military operations on the Eastern Front was carried out.
The bunker "Wolf's Lair" was located in the Gierloz forest, 8 km from Kentshin. Its construction began in the spring of 1940 and proceeded in three stages until the winter of 1944. 2-3 thousand workers took part in the construction. The work was carried out by the "Todt Organization".
The Wolf's Lair was not a local bunker, but a whole system of hidden objects, in size more like a small secret city with an area of \u200b\u200b250 hectares. The territory had several levels of access, 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 go through three security posts.
Demining of the "Wolf's Lair" by the Polish People's Republic army continued almost until 1956, in total, sappers found about 54 thousand mines and 200 thousand ammunition.
To camouflage the object from the air, the Germans used camouflage nets and tree layouts, which were periodically updated in accordance with the changing landscape. To control the camouflage, the regime object was photographed from the air.
Wolf's Lair in 1944 served 2,000 people, from field marshals to stenographers and mechanics.
In The Fall of Berlin, British writer Anthony Beevor claims that the Fuehrer left Wolf's Lair on November 10, 1944. Hitler left for Berlin for a throat operation, and on December 10 moved to Adlerhorst (Eagle's Nest), another secret headquarters. In July of the same year, an unsuccessful attempt was made on Hitler's life in 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, Keitel ordered the headquarters to be destroyed. However, this is easier said than done. The ruins of the bunker still exist.
Interestingly, although the location of the "Wolf's Lair" was known to American intelligence as early as October 1942, for the entire period of its existence, not a single attempt was made to attack Hitler's headquarters from the air.
"Werewolf"
"Werewolf" (another name "Eichenhain" ("oak grove")), a bunker located eight kilometers from Vinnitsa, was another headquarters of the High Command of the Third Reich. Hitler moved here general base and his headquarters from the "Wolf's Lair" on July 16, 1942.
“Werewolf” began to be built in the fall of 1941. The construction was supervised by the same "Todt Organization", but the bunker was built mainly by Soviet prisoners of war, who were subsequently shot. According to the local historian, researcher of the history of the headquarters Yaroslav Branko, the Germans involved 4086 prisoners in the construction. The memorial to those who died during the construction of the Werewolf, installed near the Vinnitsa-Zhitomir highway, lists 14,000 dead.
The bunker operated from the spring of 1942 until the spring of 1944, when the Germans blew up the entrances to the Werewolf during their retreat. The bunker was a complex of several floors, one of which was on the surface.
On its territory there were more than 80 ground objects and several deep concrete bunkers. The industry of Vinnitsa provided the livelihoods of the rate. A vegetable garden was set up especially for Hitler in the Werewolf area.
There was a power plant, a water tower, and a small airfield was located nearby. The Werewolf was defended by many machine-gun and artillery crews, the air was covered by zeta guns and fighters based at the Kalinovsky airfield.
"Fuehrerbunker"
The Führerbunker was a complex of underground structures located under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. It was last resting place German Fuhrer. Here he and several other Nazi leaders committed suicide. It was built in two stages, in 1936 and 1943.
The total area of \u200b\u200bthe bunker was 250 square meters. It housed 30 rooms for various purposes, from a conference room to Hitler's personal toilet.
Hitler first visited this headquarters on November 25, 1944. After March 15, 1945, he did not leave the bunker, only once got out to the surface - April 20 - to reward Hitler Youth members for knocked out soviet tanks... At the same time, his last lifetime filming was made.
Stalin's bunker in Izmailovo
In total, some historians count up to seven of the so-called "Stalin's bunkers". We will tell you about two that still exist today, which you can visit if you wish.
The first bunker is in Moscow. Its construction dates back to the 30s of the XX century. It was part of the state defense program Soviet Union... The construction was supervised personally by Lavrenty Beria. Then he allegedly uttered the phrase that became famous: "Everything that is underground is mine!" He was assisted in his work by the head of Joseph Stalin's personal guard, General Nikolai Vlasik.
In order to disguise the object, a cover building was needed. It was decided to build a stadium. The media announced: “To ensure the appropriate holding of the Olympics, build a central stadium of the USSR in Moscow. During the construction of the stadium, proceed from the construction of auditoriums for at least 120,000 numbered seats and a sufficient number of various kinds of physical culture facilities of auxiliary value for educational and public use. "
In this way, the Stalinets stadium (today Lokomotiv) was born on the surface, and a bunker under the ground.
Its depth is 37 meters. In the event of an emergency, 600 people were accommodated here. Everything here was provided for life, from Stalin's office and generals' rooms to utility rooms and grocery warehouses. Stalin worked here in November-December 1941.
Today, on the territory of the once classified object, there is an exposition dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. The atmosphere of wartime was recreated. Even the Order of Victory, which was awarded to the Generalissimo, is presented.
Interestingly, the bunker is connected by a 17-kilometer underground road with the center of Moscow, automobile and rail.
Stalin's bunker in Samara
Stalin's bunker in Samara was built in case Moscow was surrendered. The reserve headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was located here. On October 15, 1941, the State Defense Committee issued a secret resolution No. 801ss "On the evacuation of the capital of the USSR, Moscow, to the city of Kuibyshev." On October 21, 1941 the State Defense Committee issued another secret decree No. 826ss "On the construction of a shelter in Kuibyshev."
The bunker was built by Moscow and Kharkov metro builders, as well as miners from Donbass. From February to October 1942, 2,900 workers and about 1,000 engineers took part in the work. The construction was based on the construction of the Moscow metro station "Airport".
The chief engineer of the project was Yu. S. Ostrovsky, the chief architect was M. A. Zelenin, and the chief of geomark survey work was I. I. Drobinin.
They built, of course, secretly. The land was taken out at night, the builders lived right there or in secure hostels nearby. The work was carried out in three shifts, in less than a year 25,000 cubic meters of soil were removed, 5,000 cubic meters of concrete were poured.
The State Commission officially accepted the bunker into operation on January 6, 1943.
Today the bunker is located under the building of the modern Academy of Culture and Art. There used to be the Kuibyshev Regional Committee here.
Wehrmacht bunker in the center of Minsk
Despite the fact that almost 70 years have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Belarusian land keeps the time marks of that time. One of them is located in the very center of the Belarusian capital, at the intersection of Kommunisticheskaya and Storozhevskaya Streets - right on the embankment of the Svisloch River. Both from Pobediteley Avenue and from Troitsky Suburb, Minsk residents and guests of the capital can perfectly see the building of the Bank Moscow-Minsk. But few people know that at its foot of the ground stick out ... reinforced concrete fragments of one of the largest German buried communication centers that have survived to this day. According to retired Colonel Ivan Zaitsev, who served in the Belarusian Military District, for almost 30 years after the war, part of the 62nd communications center was located in this bunker.
A few words about the hero of this article, without whose story I would not have been able to learn in such detail about such an unusual historical place.
Retired Colonel Ivan Zaitsev is an honorary signalman of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus in the truest sense of the word. Everyone can envy his experience and knowledge, apparently that is why he still, even after retiring, continues to work at the 62nd node.
The Oryol boy was brought to Belarus by the fate of the army. After training he served in Shchuchin in the aviation unit in the communications company. Even during his military service, he decided to become an officer, to graduate from some aviation communications school, good health allowed. But the order came to the unit from Gorky, from a tank school. Ivan got used to following orders - he went to Gorky. And I was incredibly surprised when I learned that this city also has a communications school ...
After graduating from the Gorky military school of communications technicians, he was sent to Belarus, to the 62nd communications center, where he passed all the steps of the career ladder - from a young beardless technician to the head. It was there that he was awarded the Order of the Red Star - for installing new equipment at the node and for organizing the ZAS service.
I still remember that collective with warmth, we had a special atmosphere, - says Ivan Ilyich. - And part of the elements of the 62nd was a former German underground bunker during the Great Patriotic War. At that time, the troops received new sets of ZAS, there was a lot of work. After all, the node was used in the command link. Large-scale exercises were often conducted, and all communication with the countries of the Warsaw Pact went through us. At the same time, the headquarters of the communications center was located at the headquarters of the Belarusian Military District, and in the bunker there was part of the radio equipment and even at first two transmitters - a kind of mini-radio center.
The appearance of a German bunker in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Tatar gardens of Minsk is shrouded in mystery. It is only known that its construction was started by the Nazis immediately after the occupation of the Belarusian capital in 1941. Then it was the outskirts of the city. The protected bunker was designed by the Germans and built by Soviet prisoners of war. Hitler's troops were rushing to Moscow, therefore, through this node, the army headquarters "Center" immediately established contact with the headquarters in Vinnitsa.
According to Ivan Zaitsev, the newest Siemens automatic telephone exchange at that time was installed in the bunker, including some equipment for sea communication centers, which, after the end of the war, for almost thirty years were used by Soviet signalmen for their own purposes. Large-capacity cables went to the German garrison in Masyukovshchina, to German institutions, which were located in the area of \u200b\u200bnowadays Belinsky and Karl Marx streets. After the war in the 1950s, the Minsk Suvorov Military School and later the headquarters of the Belarusian Military District were supplied with a separate cable from the bunker. Communication lines from the headquarters of the BVO and the house of the commander of the district troops, military units and formations, military hotels and other military institutions converged here.
The bunker itself was a one-story underground room with three entrances. Ivan Ilyich drew such a plan from memory. In the center is a long and wide corridor. In some rooms there were transmitters with receivers, long-distance communication equipment, in others - cabinets with telephone sets and boxes with cable entries. Rooms are 20 square meters each. The node could be powered by electricity independently - from German diesel power plants located there.
Was very interesting system ventilation, - says Ivan Ilyich. - There was no heating in the bunker at all, although both in winter and in summer the ventilation chimneys constantly maintained a temperature of about plus 18 degrees Celsius. There were no heating batteries, it always seemed cool. True, there was a lot of moisture, so the German hardware boxes and cabinets for storing communications equipment were equipped with rubber seals.
One unusual story is connected with this place in the service biography of retired colonel Ivan Zaitsev. Minsk at that time was an intermediate city for flights of military and Soviet aircraft to the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. They often landed at the Machulishchi airfield, where the 121st Guards Heavy Bomber and 201st Fighter Air Defense Aviation Regiments were stationed.
As retired colonel Ivan Zaitsev recalls, at the beginning of December 1972 it became known that negotiations between the leaders of the USSR and France - Leonid Brezhnev and Georges Pompidou - would be held in Minsk, or rather, in the new residence of the General Secretary near Zaslavl. The military began hastily to prepare for the arrival of high-ranking guests: at the airfield they demolished all the dilapidated buildings, renewed the garrison territory and the road to Minsk. The 404th relay station was installed near the bunker, which provided instant communication with Peter Masherov's dacha. Foreign television journalists sent programs to their home countries through the cables of the communication center located in the bunker.
On January 11, 1973, Brezhnev arrived in Minsk from Moscow by train, Georges Pompidou with accompanying persons and journalists - two Caravel planes from France. The weather then worsened: it was sleet during the day and froze at night. Therefore, it was decided to use heat engines on the runway around the clock. Not trusting the regimental guard, by order of the commander of the BVO troops, an officer guard was formed to guard two French aircraft. But this did not save from the emergency.
At night, the "conscript" driver of the OBATO fighter regiment's car fell asleep while cleaning the strip right behind the wheel and ran into the Caravel, ”says Ivan Ilyich. - Today one can speak about this political incident with a grin. And then it was a state of emergency. It turned out that the soldier had been driving continuously for two days, during which time he practically did not sleep. As a result, he was not only released from arrest, but also put in the infirmary of the garrison medical unit for a week under the supervision of doctors. And all the command, from the battalion to the head of the military department of the BVO KGB, was demoted.
The early 1980s were politically turbulent. In response to NATO's deployment of strategic forces, it was decided to place a "defense shield" on the western borders of the USSR. From the node, underground cables were laid to the lines of the Ministry of Communications, and a connection was made to the state network. It was assumed that in the event of the start of hostilities of the node, the 7th communications brigade of the Supreme High Command stationed in Gomel should come to this place. The area around the bunker allowed military signalmen to turn around with equipment and tents.
However, literally a couple of years later, the life of the bunker came to a standstill. The city expanded close to its walls. It was decided to install the new military communications equipment in another place ...
I remember that there was a barrack next to the bunker, in which the communications center workers used to live, - recalls retired colonel Ivan Zaitsev. - And then it was demolished and the hotel "Belarus" was put on this place. IN last years on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, the bunker was used as a warehouse for storing communications property.
Today, the German bunker can still be seen in the photographs of the open joint-stock company Bank Moscow-Minsk - its parking lot is located above the premises of the former communications center. One of the exhaust pipes rises not far from the central front entrance. All three entrances to the bunker are welded with metal doors, access to it is closed. He is waiting for a new owner ...
From the editor
In general, in 1941 - 1942. The sappers of the Wehrmacht built a whole network of bunker bunkers in Minsk, which were supposed to control the main thoroughfares of the city. This concrete chain began in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Chelyuskintsev park, controlling a giant stalag, where tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were kept and the strategic Minsk-Moscow highway, the main supply road for Army Group Center, passed. The bunker has survived to this day in the courtyards of houses on Independence Avenue near the Gabrovo restaurant. The next bunker with machine-gun nests and a room for the crew is located nearby: it also controlled the strategic highway, and you can see it in the courtyard of an antique store known to Minsk residents. Other links in the chain of the Wehrmacht casemates have not survived to this day, although old-timers remember them in the area of \u200b\u200b"Komarovka" and the current Victory Square. A unique round bunker crowned with an armored canopy and invulnerable to aerial bombs of that period is still a landmark of Minsk. Judging by its location, it was part of the system of the Wehrmacht security bunkers crossing Minsk from east to southwest, but belonged to the SS. This monster, then located on the territory of the Minsk ghetto, was supposed to suppress all inclinations from the inside and from the outside, and his large-caliber machine guns kept at gunpoint the road leading to the prisoner of war camps in Drozdy and Masyukovshchina. You can still see the bunker near the "Planet" hotel.
Undoubtedly, there were other bunkers, but in the 1940s they were mostly razed to the ground. If our readers have any information about these ominous artifacts from the times of war and occupation, we will gladly publish their information.