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Wolf's Lair - Hitler's Hidden HQ

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Hitler’s most well-known field headquarters, Wolfschanze (Wolf’s Lair), was located in Rastenburg (Ketrzyn), East Prussia (now Poland), 200 km north of Warsaw. It was built in 1941 and enlarged in 1944.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union began June 22, 1941. Hitler arrived at Wolfschanze on June 24th. While the dictator stayed only a few weeks in his other redoubts, he spent three years at Wolfschanze, a place Colonel General Alfred Jodl described as “a cross between a cloister and a concentration camp.” Hitler left Wolfschanze November 20, 1944, as the Red Army approached. On January 24, 1945, German soldiers dynamited the bunkers.

Hitler at WolfsschanzeOf all Hitler’s field headquarters, Wolfschanze is most popular with tourists, despite the fact that it is nothing but a heap of ruins. Nevertheless, the site is quite open and accessible. 250,000 visitors arrive yearly, mainly Poles and Germans, singly and in groups. Swarms of ravenous mosquitoes greet them.
The standard tour passes Martin Bormann’s bunker number 11, Hitler’s bunker 13, Hermann Göring’s bunker 16, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl’s bunker 17, and Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel’s bunker 19. Fritz Todt, who built Wolfschanze, had his own bunker, which Albert Speer inherited after Todt’s death in a mysterious plane crash, February 8, 1942. In all, there were more than eighty bunkers and buildings, among them a railroad station, two airfields, and a power plant. Still present are the ruins of the barracks where Claus von Stauffenberg’s bomb exploded.
Conference room after Stauffenberg's bomb exploded, July 20, 19442,100 officers, soldiers, and civilians were stationed at Wolfschanze. Barbed wire, mine fields, ordnance, guardhouses, road barricades, and the East Prussian forests separated this work force from the outside world.
Wolfschanze was freezing cold in winter, stifling hot in summer. To eliminate mosquitoes, the Wehrmacht poured oil on the nearby lakes, but killed all the frogs along with the mosquitoes. Hitler was peeved. The croaking frogs serenaded him to sleep, he said. So his minions had to bring in more frogs.
Hitler’s bunker had an external concrete shell, like a nuclear power plant, covering a huge concrete block. His chamber was windowless, completely closed off from the outside, illuminated only by electric light. Albert Speer described Hitler’s bunker as resembling an ancient Egyptian tomb. In these surreal, cramped surroundings, the Führer would hold forth for hours on end, torturing his minions with long-winded disquisitons in the wee hours of the morning. Only courtesy and a sense of duty, according to Speer, enabled Hitler’s exasperated listeners to stay awake.

A private company currently maintains Wolfschanze. Officials insist that they will never turn it into a Hitlerian Disneyland.
[source: stevenlehrer.com]

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