What is hidden in the underground Nazi bunker in Brandenburg.

Today's post is dedicated to the story of one of the largest bunkers of the German defensive line, the West Wall, built in 1938-1940 on the western borders of the Third Reich.

A total of 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 to this day. The second bunker was blown up in 1947 and covered with soil. Only decades later, a group of volunteers took on the task of restoring the blown up bunker with the aim of creating a museum inside. Volunteers did a huge amount of work to restore the bunker and today it is available for visiting to 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, a couple of kilometers from the border with Luxembourg. The facility was built in 1937-1939 with the aim of controlling the Cologne-Luxembourg highway. For this purpose, two B-Werks were built on Mount Katzenkopf, located close to each other. The second B-Werk Nimsberg, like the B-Werk Katzenkopf, was blown up in the post-war period 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.

B-Werk Katzenkopf was destroyed in 1947 by the French as part of the agreements for the demilitarization of Germany and lay in a state of ruins, covered with earth, for thirty years, until in 1976 it turned out that the explosion had destroyed only the upper level of the structure, and the rest of the underground part was not damaged. After this, the volunteer fire brigade of the village of Irrel took over the excavation of the site, through whose efforts the B-Werk was restored and since 1979 has become available to visitors as a museum.

02. The photo shows the preserved part of the ground level with one of the 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 interior layout. The name B-Werk comes from the classification of bunkers of the Third Reich, in which objects were assigned a letter according to the thickness of the walls. Class B corresponded to objects with a wall and ceiling thickness of 1.5 meters. 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 object was officially called Panzerwerk Nr.1520.

03. Before the explosion, the above-ground level of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 looked like this. I marked the part of the upper level destroyed by the explosion as dark.

04. The preserved wall of the left flank with one of the emergency exits. A dummy armored machine gun turret is visible on the roof. The facility's armored turrets were dismantled before the explosion.

05. To give the object a shape close to the original, volunteers built dummies of both machine-gun armored turrets from brick and concrete. Now the roof of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 looks like this:

06. Each Panzerwerk had a standard set of weapons and armored domes, which I have indicated in this diagram. During this photo walk I will tell you more about them. Today, the only Panzerwerk with surviving armored domes is the B-Werk Bessering.

07. On the rubble of the destroyed part of the facility, a wooden cross and a memorial plaque were installed in memory of the fallen soldiers of the 39th Fusilier Infantry Regiment (Füssilier-Regiments), who fought from 1941 to 1944 on the territory of the USSR. The soldiers of one of the battalions of this regiment formed the garrison of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 in 1939-1940.

08. In front of the entrance to the Panzerwerk there is a small park with numerous benches and an excellent view of the village of Irrel.

09. The entrance to the building in the original was a hatch about a meter high, but now in its place there is an ordinary entrance door of standard height, so that when going inside, you don’t even have to bend down. An embrasure is traditionally located opposite the entrance. The design of this part underwent 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 person entering.

10. Around the bend in the entrance corridor there was a hole 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.

11. In a combat position, the steel bridge rose and acted as an armored shield, for which an embrasure was built into it. Such a system made it almost impossible for the enemy to penetrate inside the facility. The photo shows a hole in front of the second entrance, located in the destroyed part of the structure.

12. The diagram shows the structure of a similar system in class B-Werk buildings of the Western Wall. Each such object had two entrances, behind which there were pits covered with armor plate. Both entrances led to a common vestibule, which was also shot through another embrasure.

13. For clarity, I will give a plan of the upper floor. The holes at the entrance hatches are marked with the number 22, the general vestibule is 16. I marked in gray the rooms destroyed by the explosion, among which: the guard casemate (17), the filter and ventilation casemate (19), the grenade launcher armored dome shaft (21), the casemate flanking the entrances to the bunker (23) and a number of utility and technical premises. Premises that have survived to one degree or another: a machine-gun armored dome (1), an observation casemate with an armored observation dome (3), a command center (4), a communications point (5), an artillery armored observation dome (6), a flamethrower casemate (11), a staircase to lower level (12) as well as several technical rooms and personnel rooms.

14. 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 photo you can see a room closed with a screen door.

15. Behind the net there is a heavily damaged flamethrower casemate and part of the flamethrower barrel. The jar contains the original flammable mixture for the flamethrower.

16. The fortress flamethrower was intended to protect the roof of the facility in the event of enemy soldiers penetrating it, as well as for close defense of the bunker. The control of the flamethrower was completely electric, but in the event of a power failure, a manual option was also provided. At one time, the flamethrower ejected 120 liters of a fiery mixture, spraying it through a special nozzle and turning hundreds of cubic meters of space in a given direction into fiery Gehenna. 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:

18. All armored turrets, containing tens of tons of metal, were removed from the site in the post-war period before the bunker was blown up. Today, in their place are brick and concrete dummies.

19. Six-recessed towers of type 20Р7 were developed by the German concern Krupp and made of high-strength steel. One such tower cost 82,000 Reichsmarks (about 420,000 euros today). You can imagine how much the construction of the Siegfried Line cost, because there were 32 such objects and each had two towers. The turret's crew consisted of five people: a commander and four gunners. The commander observed the situation around him from a periscope installed on the roof of the tower and commanded fire. Two MG34 machine guns were placed inside the turret, which could be freely rearranged from one embrasure to another, but could not occupy two adjacent embrasures at the same time. 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 Wall and the Atlantic Wall, two major defensive lines of the Third Reich, more than 800 of them were produced in total.

20. In the destroyed part of the bunker there was another armored dome for the 50-mm M 19 fortress mortar, 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.

21. In the picture you can see numerous consequences of the explosion of 1947, in particular the ceiling that was lopsided and collapsed into the bunker.

22. The personnel accommodation room is the only fully restored room in the bunker.

23. The facility was equipped with a forced ventilation system in which air was forced inside by air pumps, if necessary passing through the FVA. Thus, excess pressure was maintained inside the bunker, which prevented poisonous gases from penetrating inside. In case of power loss in the network, manually operated reserve fuel units were placed in many places inside the bunker, one of which you see in the photo.

24. Stairs to the lower level, behind which the destroyed part of the bunker is visible. To the left of the corridor are the command center and communications rooms.

25. The command center premises were not damaged by the explosion, but the inside is still empty.

26. From the command center you can get into the observation casemate, which was once equipped with a cone-shaped observation armored cap of the Type 90P9 type.

27. The armor thickness of this small armored dome was 120 mm. The dome had five slits for all-round observation and two optical instruments. This is what the observer's position looked like before the bunker exploded.

28. This is how it looks now.

29. At the end of the corridor there is another room in which the personnel were located. This room is located near the destroyed part of the bunker and was also damaged by the explosion.

30. Adjacent to the room is the lower level of an artillery observation armored tower of type 21P7, which was designed 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 21Р7 turret did not have embrasures, only holes for observation devices and a periscope. By the presence of this turret, the B-Werk Katzenkopf differed from the standard design, according to which a similar structure was equipped with two identical six-embrasure machine gun turrets. This panzerwerk also had two machine-gun turrets, but the second one was located remotely and was connected to the underground tunnel bunker.

31. Absolutely nothing has survived from the artillery observation tower to this day.

32. The remaining rooms on the upper level were destroyed by the explosion. We go down to the lower level.

33. The lower level should be more interesting, since it was not damaged by the explosion.

34. 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), a lower level of a flamethrower installation ( 32), staircase leading to the turn system (33), fuel storage for diesel generators (34), toilets (36) and shower (37), infirmary (38), engine room with two diesel generator sets (39) and tank with a supply of water (41).

Let's see now what's left of all this.

35. In the corridor (35) there is a ladder leading to one of the rooms on the upper level.

36. The infirmary room was slightly damaged by the explosion.

37. At the end of the corridor there was one of the ammunition storage warehouses, across the wall from which there was an engine room with two diesel generator sets.

38. The bunker received electricity from an 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 electric drives of the ventilation system, heating resistors, which was electric (and was supplemented by ordinary potbelly stoves). The kitchen equipment was also completely electric.

39. The diesel generator room also contains traces of an explosion. Almost nothing has survived from the equipment./p>

40. Ammunition depot.

41. Remains of the shower room.

42. Toilets.

43. Sewage equipment.

44. In this room (34) a supply of fuel for diesel engines was stored in the amount of 17,000 liters, with the expectation of a monthly autonomy.

45. We move to the second corridor (30) of the underground level.

46. Traces of destruction from the explosion are also visible here. The transition to the upper level through a ladder ladder is bricked up here

47. One of two rooms on the underground level, which housed beds for resting personnel (29). In the corner of the room there are two original filters from the facility’s filter and ventilation installation. In total, the bunker had six such filters in case of a gas attack. Behind the grated door is an emergency exit to the surface. It was originally of a completely different design, but as part of the bunker's restoration as a museum, it was remodeled to meet modern safety standards. It is also visible from the outside in photo 03.

48. The former ammunition depot houses modest displays to compensate for the emptiness that reigns around.

49. Information stands tell about the events of 75 years ago.

50. A kitchen room, only the sink remains of its equipment. Adjacent to the kitchen is a warehouse for storing food.

51. The second of two rooms for rest of personnel. Each room had eighteen beds in which the soldiers slept in shifts. In total, the bunker garrison numbered 84 people. Beds like the one in this picture were typical of all siegfried line bunkers from the smallest to the B-Werke.

52. This room also contains one of the emergency exits to the surface. It had a design that made it impossible to penetrate into the object from the surface. The D-shaped emergency exit shaft leading to the roof of the bunker with a ladder ladder inside was covered with sand. If there was a need to leave the bunker through the emergency exit, the wedges blocking the valves inside the barrel were pulled out and the sand poured out into the bunker, freeing the exit to the top. Approximately the same emergency exit design was used at Fort Schonenburg on the Maginot Line, only there was gravel instead of sand and it spilled not into the fort, but into a cavity inside the trunk.

This completes the inspection of the lower level. Everything that I have described up to this point was typical for all 32 Panzerwerke built, the differences were only in the details. But B-Werk Katzenkopf had an interesting feature that significantly distinguished it from the standard project, namely an additional third level, located deeper than the main structure.

53. The diagram below clearly shows the structure of the bunker and the lower underground level, located at a depth of twenty-five meters (the diagram is not to scale).

54. There is a ladder leading down like this.

55. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the bunker and the largest. There are no such open spaces anywhere else inside the facility.

56. Initially, it was planned to connect this panzerwerk with the Nimsberg panzerwerk, located a kilometer away. The plans called for an electric narrow-gauge railway to be laid between both structures. Thus, both panzerwerks could form something similar to the forts of the Maginot Line or the objects of the Eastern Wall. But in 1940, Germany captured France, Belgium and Luxembourg and the need for the Western Wall disappeared, all construction work on the defensive line was stopped, including the construction of this postern.

57. Two posterns diverge to the side of the staircase, located at right angles to each other. The larger one was supposed to connect both panzerwerks. The smaller one leads to the combat block, located away from the main structure and consisting of a machine gun turret and an emergency exit.

58. Layout of the underground bunker level:

59. First, I headed along the smaller one. Its length is 75 meters.

60. The turn ends with a guard casemate covering the approach to the combat block. There is no armored door, as are all armored doors at the facility.

61. Inside the guard casemate there is an embrasure from which the tunnel was shot through and a device for manual ventilation of the casemate in the event of failure or stoppage of the bunker’s electrical ventilation system.

62. This is what a device for manual ventilation of a casemate looks like. Similar devices were installed at all important points in the bunker.

63. There is also a staircase leading to the combat block.

64. Climbing the stairs we find ourselves on the lower level. There is an emergency exit portal in the wall, which has a design typical for such objects. Through a hole in the ceiling, access was made to the machine-gun armored turret. This tower was a standard six-ambrasure type 20Р7, exactly the same as that installed in the main building. On the wall you can see fastenings for three beds - the tower crew was located in this room.

65. The tower itself was dismantled, like the rest of the armored domes of the facility immediately after the end of the war. Now a concrete dummy has also been built here.

66. Once again what it looked like in the original:

67. There’s nothing more to see here, let’s go back to the fork.

68. Along the way there is such an opening in the back. Apparently, the plans were to replenish the facility with another warhead, or one of the small bunkers located on this mountain was to be connected to the system. There is no way to know now.

69. Beautiful.

70. The ceiling height of the main postern is 3.5 meters. After the cramped interior of the Panzerwerk, this underground location seems simply huge.

71. Inside the unfinished main postern there is an exhibition of various WWII bombs and shells found in the region. There are information plaques on the wall telling the history of the site and the Siegfried Line as a whole.

72. Here in the wall there is another opening (on the left in the photo) similar to what we saw in the neighboring postern. But unlike the opening that is located in the turn leading to the armored turret, the purpose of this one is known. Fifty meters below the bunker there is a railway tunnel. At the time when they began to build this postern to unite both panzerwerks, there were plans to connect the underground system of passages with the railway tunnel that is located under the bunker. In this way, it was possible to transport ammunition and other ammunition into both bunkers completely unnoticed by rail. These plans were not destined to come true for the reasons described above.

73. At the end of the terna 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’s water supply.

74. In the place where the postern breaks off, a small diorama has been built, which is not related to the bunker.

75. The bunker water supply pump has been preserved in relatively good condition.

76. The remains of some electrical equipment hang on the wall.

77. The inspection of the facility has come to an end and we are heading to the exit.

Finally, 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 went on rotation. After the capture of France, combat duty in the bunker was canceled, the facility was completely disarmed, and in order to maintain the technical systems in good working order, only one soldier was left in it to look after the facility.

In December 1944, an order was received to prepare the bunker for battle and move a garrison into it. But due to an acute shortage of people, it was possible to gather 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 surrounding area, which continued for several weeks. In February, the Americans set to work on both panzerwerks, inflicting numerous air and artillery strikes on the targets. The demoralized garrison of the Panzerwerk left the facility at night through the emergency exit and the Americans who went inside found absolutely no one 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 and the bunker itself The bunker was blown up and covered with soil. It remained in this state for about thirty years, until in 1976 the local volunteer fire brigade took on its restoration and did a Herculean job to make the object accessible to visitors.

So, readers here write to me that it’s been a long time since there have been any stalker crawls or posts with the tag on my blog, I’m urgently correcting it. Moreover, the topic was very interesting - not just some abandoned house or factory, but an entire underground bunker from the war.

The bunker is located in the very center of Minsk, on the Svisloch embankment, not far from the famous Trinity Suburb. During World War II, it was a communications bunker designed and built by the Germans. In the post-war years, these premises were used to provide communications between the Warsaw Pact countries, and since the seventies the bunker was completely abandoned.

So, today’s post is a story about a secret German wartime bunker that almost no one knows about.

First, let's take a closer look at the history of the building. The bunker was built in 1941, after the occupation of Minsk - it was designed by the Germans, and Soviet prisoners of war were directly involved in the construction work. The bunker was built on the then sparsely populated outskirts of the city, in the Tatar vegetable gardens area - now this is the city center.

Not too much is known about the military period in the history of the bunker - all that can be said for sure is that the bunker was used as a communications center for Army Center groups - in particular, through the Minsk bunker communication was carried out with headquarters in Vinnitsa and the German attack on Moscow was coordinated. Communication cables also stretched to the area of what is now Belinsky Street, where the military barracks buildings occupied by the Germans during the war are located, as well as to the area of Karl Marx Street - where, apparently, there were some buildings of the German administration.

In the post-war years, Soviet signalmen were located in the bunker - part of the 62nd communications center was located there, and it worked on captured German equipment (produced by the Siemens factory). After the war, the bunker operated for about 30 years, after which it was closed and mothballed - the city had grown greatly, and a new location had to be found for the secret communications center.

02. Now let's see what this whole business is like. This is what the concrete walls of the bunker look like now, partially protruding due to the masking embankment. In total, there were three entrances to the bunker - apparently, two main and one evacuation. Two main entrances lead to unconnected rooms.

03. One of the portals to the bunker is apparently an emergency evacuation portal; it is located a little away from the main structures of the bunker.

04. Another entrance, now sealed with steel sheets. A powerful buttress was attached to the entrance wall at an angle of 90 degrees, apparently to give greater strength to the entire reinforced concrete structure.

05. Let's go inside. The first room is something like a small airlock. However, “airlock” is not an entirely correct term - bunkers from World War II did not yet have radio protection and hermetically sealed doors, and were intended only for protection from conventional bombing. In this room there could be, for example, something like a checkpoint for everyone entering the bunker.

06. The main rooms of the bunker are located to the right of the main entrance, there is another metal door leading there - the old type, without hermetic seals and a bolt wheel on a worm gear (turn the wheel - and metal rods go into the walls), there is no such thing here - just ordinary locks.

07. The bunker is dirty, there is water on the floor in some places - so shoe covers from the Khimza L-1 will be far from superfluous)

08. This corridor opens behind a metal door at the entrance. The corridor is 15 meters long, on the left side of the corridor there are doors to the rooms, on the right there is a solid concrete wall, this is the outer wall of the bunker, facing the street.

09. The rooms of the bunker have an area of about 12-15 square meters, what exactly was in them is now impossible to say, there are no traces left. What’s interesting is that the interior walls of the bunker were brick, which is clearly visible in the part of the wall on the left. Also pay attention to the bricks themselves - do you see how some of them are darkened by soot? Most likely, the bricks for the construction of the bunker were collected nearby, in the Nemiga area, from buildings destroyed and burned by bombing.

10. Old doors in one of the rooms, most likely still German. The bunker was not damaged in any way during the war and passed into the hands of Soviet signalmen “as is.”

11. Stalactites hang from the ceiling of the corridors - I assume that they were formed not due to direct seepage of water, but due to many years of condensation formation - it is very damp in the bunker. By the way, during the war the bunker did not have its own heating system - a special ventilation and air conditioning system was installed in it, which maintained the necessary humidity and temperature of 18 degrees in summer and winter.

12. One of the rooms with some kind of metal stool and an ajar door - completely rusted. Please note that all the walls of the bunker are black - I assume that these are traces of soot from the fires of looters who stole non-ferrous metals, burning insulation from the remains of cable routes.

13. A rusty metal door on the left leads to the transformer room, which was responsible for the electrical supply of the bunker.

14. In the transformer room you can see completely rusted racks with some large switches with hardboard handles - most likely, these are the remains of the same German Siemens equipment that has been standing here since 1941.

15. On the back of the cabinet you can see some more modern cables, wrapped with electrical tape. Most likely, these are traces of the post-war use of the bunker, or even part of some more modern line, for example, temporary lighting installed here in the eighties, after the bunker was mothballed.

16. In the far corner of the transformer room, part of the still German electrical wiring has been preserved - with massive porcelain insulators of unusual shape.

17. Apparently, in this room there was once a common electrical input of the bunker, which provided power to various rooms and lines - the air conditioning system, lighting system, communication system, etc.

18. Close-up of insulators:

19. Even in the transformer room there is still this mesh screen of unknown purpose:

20. The mesh is very old, literally rusted through from time and dampness - it breaks off easily, like a cookie.

21. Part of an internal wall with brickwork and remains of plaster:

22. Let's go out.

We were able to discover such an object in the very center of Minsk - surprisingly, many Minsk residents had not heard anything about it. And I thought - why not make a museum there? Usually such bunkers are located somewhere far in the forest, but here there is a free abandoned bunker right in the center of the city. Part of the museum's exhibition could be devoted to the history of World War II (technique and equipment of those years), and part to the post-war functioning of the bunker (equipment and stories from the Cold War).

In my opinion, it could turn out to be an interesting tourist attraction.

What do you say? Write in the comments if it’s interesting.

The remains of the bunker are located in Belarus, in the Orsha region, near the village of Gadovichi.
The purpose of the bunkers is not known exactly, but there are two main versions- this is one of the surviving bunkers of Adolf Hitler's headquarters "Olga" or this is the headquarters of Heinz Guderian. More details about each version below

Entrance to one of the few remaining rooms:

After the liberation of the area from the Germans, almost all the bunkers and bunkers remaining in the vicinity were blown up by Soviet sappers who were clearing the area. Later, the pioneer camp Vasilek was organized on this territory. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the pioneer camp withered away, and the forest on the territory was cut down

The doorway on the right is the entrance to the main room of the preserved bunker

The main room of the preserved bunker

Concrete walls and slabs are visible from the outside:

Half-buried entrance to the bunker

Around the preserved bunker in the forest, the remains of other buildings and communications are visible - ventilation and sewerage

Versions of the origin of the bunker - No. 1 Hitler's Headquarters

This is Hitler's Headquarters "Olga" (FQH Olga).

On June 20, 1943, at the Rastenburg residence, Adolf Hitler conferred with the general designer, the talented 36-year-old engineer Leo Müller (Dr. Leopold Müller\OT Oberbauleiter). As a result of the technical meeting, the general designer of special facilities received an order to build another headquarters on the border of Ostland and Russia, from where the commander-in-chief of the Third Reich planned to direct some upcoming large-scale military operation in the east.

On June 27, 1943, a week after receiving the order, with a team of technical specialists, Leo Muller flew to the Orsha area to select a site for the construction of a new facility, codenamed “Olga” (FQH Olga).
As a result of a construction inspection, specialists found a suitable location for the construction of a small headquarters structure, consisting of a closed perimeter, checkpoints and several outbuildings to house the commandant’s office and security.

It was planned to build the facility near the main highway (Minsk-Smolensk) near Orsha, approximately 200 km from Minsk.

The situation in the summer of 1943 was as follows: Hitler had high hopes for the implementation of the “Citadel” plan developed by the German command back in April, designed to undermine the offensive power of the Red Army on the Kursk Bulge, and defeating it with the forces of an almost million-strong group of troops, with the support of 16.5 thousand tanks and 2 thousand aircraft - turn the offensive towards Moscow.
However, due to the fact that the plans of the German command became known in Moscow, a number of countermeasures were taken, as a result of which the “great” German offensive that began on July 5 was drowned in blood. By July 23, it became clear that Operation Citadel had failed miserably...

However, the German command did not lose the illusory hope of rectifying the situation with the help of Army Group South, and construction work at the Olga facility (FQH Olga) continued until mid-October 1944. Only when German troops were thrown back to the Vitebsk-Lenino-Gomel-Kyiv line was it decided to curtail construction work at the site.

It is known that OFFICIALLY at the time of completion of construction, 400 cubic meters of concrete were poured into the base of the bunker, 3599 square meters of the complex territory were prepared and equipped, and the construction of checkpoints and barracks was completed.

Unfortunately, information about this object was not reflected in any way in post-war historical literature. So far, absolutely everything is a mystery - not only the type of bunker that was planned to be built, but also the exact location of the territory of the Olga object.

According to our considerations and calculations, which are based on the bits of information that we found in the archives, the object should be located ten kilometers northwest of Orsha, in the area of present-day Yurtsevo. Our experience of studying Hitler's headquarters located in Europe shows an amazing pattern - the Germans were very responsible about the transport connections of the objects (we must not forget that the Fuhrer loved to travel on his numerous special trains, and therefore all bets were equipped with a special line directly to the territory of the object ), as a result of this feature, we assume that the object may be located near the Orsha-Vitebsk railway line.

Another significant nuance - the general designer of the facility, Leopold Müller, was primarily a specialist in the construction of large-scale mining facilities and began his military engineering career with the construction of an underground command center in Sossen, after which, in the Todt construction organization, he headed all responsible work requiring knowledge of mining engineering . In 1945, he was captured by the British in northern Norway during the construction of the “northern road” (Nordlandbahn). He returned to Germany in 1946, and already in 1948 he organized the enterprise “engineering bureau” of geology and construction (Ingenieurbüro für Geologie und Bauwesen), in the following decades he made a number of important discoveries in mining, but in subsequent years, about his career in fortunately the Reich never spread.

However, it is very strange that during the year of construction (according to German sources from July 1943 to October 1944, however regarding October... to put it mildly, there is a significant discrepancy - Orsha was liberated on June 27, 1944), through the efforts of such a major specialist, was not officially managed to finish such a small project! - after all, according to official statements, it took more than a year to build a small bunker (which was not completed), a dozen checkpoints and several kilometers of perimeter fencing.

Also, some vague assumptions are suggested by the fact that in the Wasserburg facility built near Pskov, a standard headquarters bunker of type 102 V (Regelbautyp 102V) was used as the main shelter erected under a luxurious estate. It is very likely that in the case of "Olga", they decided not to complicate the project and limited themselves to the same simple solution...

Version No. 2 - Heinz Guderian's rate

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (German: Heinz Wilhelm Guderian - Heinz Wilhelm Guderian; June 17, 1888 - May 14, 1954) - Colonel General of the German Army (1940), Inspector General of the Armored Forces (1943), Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces (1945), military theorist, one of the pioneers of motorized methods of warfare, the founder of tank building in Germany and the tank branch of the world, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, commander of the 2nd Tank Group as part of Army Group Center, a direct opponent of our troops in the Battle of Kursk.

The legend says... Several years ago, an elderly woman died in the village of Borodino, Orsha district. A native of the Smolensk region, as a teenage girl she came to these places in the early forties, and remained here. Just before her death, she revealed to her family a secret that she carefully kept all her life.
It turns out that during the war years she was forced to work for the Germans - she went as a servant to General Guderian.

According to the woman, the general even trusted her to clean his personal office. On the floor in the office there was a mosaic of a red rose - his favorite flower. And when the German troops retreated at the end of June 1944, Guderian promised her life in exchange for silence.

She kept her word to him until her very last days. Although, of course, the reason for her silence was not at all the fear of revenge on the part of Guderian and his minions: the very fact of working for the Germans would have completely ruined the girl’s life.

The woman talked about a whole headquarters located in the forest near the village of Gadovichi...

If you look at it, this is a completely plausible version. Today we know a lot about “Werewolf” - Hitler’s headquarters in the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine. Slightly less known are “Hegewald” (translated from German as a protected forest) - Himmler’s headquarters near Zhitomir and “Streinbruck” (quarry), built for Goering. Why shouldn't there be a secret bunker in the Orsha forests? Moreover, Guderian was, according to eyewitnesses, an ambitious, hot-tempered and poorly managed man. He was acutely worried about the fact that the command in every possible way hindered his military career, and he could well have organized construction even without an order from the “center.”

In addition, the bunker in this case would have been in a convenient place for Guderian, who often left the front: sometimes to meet with Hitler, and sometimes to relax with his wife at a resort, which he writes about in some detail in his book “ Memoirs of a Soldier." So this headquarters could become a good transit base for the general on his way from the front to Germany and back.

Such bunkers were built in complete secrecy, usually by prisoners, who were then mercilessly destroyed. So, for example, according to various researchers, from 4 to 14 thousand prisoners of war were shot at the construction site of the Werewolf. Not only people were destroyed - even documents that mentioned construction and subsequent executions. So the absence of papers in this case rather confirms the assumptions than refutes them.

By the way, if the leaders of the partisan movement more than once mentioned the construction of a bunker near Zhitomir in their reports to Moscow, the Soviet leadership did not know about Guderian’s headquarters. Perhaps due to the fact that the scale of these bets was incomparable. And perhaps the terrain features played a role: the completely deaf Orsha forests, through which the road constantly winds and twists, and it is almost impossible to follow the cars moving along it either from the ground or from the air.

June 21st, 2015

The forests of eastern Germany hide in their depths many secrets related to the military past of these lands. A huge number of secret facilities were built in the forests of the former GDR - these include bunkers for the leadership of the GDR and underground communication centers and numerous military camps of both the People's Army of the GDR and groups of Soviet troops. But the highest degree of secrecy has always surrounded everything related to nuclear weapons. Such objects were usually located deep in the forest, away from civilization and human eyes, and were fenced with a triple energized perimeter with patrols and firing points. The Germans were not allowed into Soviet nuclear facilities, not even soldiers of the Soviet-controlled People's Army of the GDR. This was exclusively Soviet territory, and local residents could only guess what was hidden in the surrounding forests.

My story today is dedicated to one of these top-secret facilities - the positions of Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles OTR-22, located in the forest near the Saxon city of Bischofswerda. In the post I will tell the history of the object, show what remains of it and then give coordinates for those who want to visit this place on their own.

I learned about this place, as well as about many other equally interesting objects, from Martin Kaule’s book “Faszination Bunker: Steinerne Zeugnisse der europäischen Geschichte”. There were no coordinates of the object in the book, but the villages neighboring the former secret forest were named, so it was not difficult to calculate the approximate location of the missile positions using Google maps. At the end of March this year, I found myself in Saxony again and on the way from Dresden to Zittau I decided to make a stop along the way and visit the once secret site to see with my own eyes what was left of it.

01. At the right place I turn off the highway onto a dirt road, which should lead us to the goal, but in front of the forest the path is blocked by a barrier. The forest is a protected area and entry by vehicle is prohibited. We leave the car in front of the barrier and continue on foot.

02. After half a kilometer of path, a forest dirt road leads us to an area lined with concrete slabs. This is one of four launch sites at the facility from which nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles would launch towards West Germany in the event of Hour X. There are two concrete roads leading off from the launch site - one leads straight, the second to the right. Let's first go see where the right concrete road leads.

03. After a hundred meters the concrete road runs into a bunker.

04. There was only one photograph of a similar bunker in the book and I thought that this bunker was all that was left of the object, since the book contained information that the military unit was demolished and the bunkers were covered with earth.

But before continuing the review, as usual, a little history.

In the mid-1970s, the Eastern Bloc and NATO countries achieved nuclear parity. In 1976, the Soviet Union deploys RSD-10 medium-range ballistic missiles in Europe, upsetting the established balance. In response, in 1979, NATO decided to deploy Pershing 2 medium-range missiles and ground-mobile Tomahawk cruise missiles in Europe. The NATO bloc was ready to partially or completely eliminate these missiles, provided that the Soviet Union did the same with its RSD-10, in response, the Soviet Union strengthened its nuclear presence in Eastern Europe with OTR-22 missile systems (SS-12 Scaleboard according to NATO classification ). In the GDR, missile bases armed with OTR-22 missiles were built in four places: Bischofswerda, Königsbrück, Waren and Wokuhl. (see map)

In 1981, the forest between the villages of Uhyst am Taucher and Stacha was declared a closed military zone and construction of a future missile base began there, which lasted three years. In April 1984, the 1st separate missile division (point 68257) of the 119th missile brigade (the 2nd and 3rd divisions were stationed in Königsbrück) arrived from the Western Military District (Georgia, the village of Gombori) and the unit took up combat duty.

The OTR-22 "Temp-S" missile systems were in service (according to NATO classification - SS-12/SS-22 Scaleboard). The main task of the Temp-S missile system was to launch nuclear strikes in the corresponding theater of military operations. The MAZ-543 tractor was used as the chassis for the launcher. The missile was hidden in a special container that opened along the longitudinal axis after verticalization of the missile before launch.

The photo shows the OTR-22 Temp-S missile system.

The missile base near Bischofsvärda housed four launchers and eight missiles with nuclear warheads with a yield of 500 kilotons (35 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). The missiles' flight range was 900 km. The construction of the base took place in strict secrecy and even employees of the Stasi (GDR Ministry of State Security) initially did not know what would be located in the forest near Bischofswerda and were gradually privy to this secret. But the population of the surrounding villages already in 1985 knew about nuclear missiles in the forest, since a transport convoy with a missile passed from Bischofsvärda to the forest at night once every two weeks, and on these nights residents of the villages adjacent to the forest were forbidden to approach the windows facing the road, along which missiles were transported.

Missile system OTR-22 "Temp - S" at the launch position. Next to the launcher is a test and launch vehicle (TLM)

In December 1987, the USSR and the USA signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, according to which all intermediate-range (from 1000 to 5500 km) and shorter-range (from 500 to 1000 km) missiles were subject to elimination. According to the agreements, all OTR-22 Temp-S complexes were also subject to destruction.

The town of Bischofsvärda went down in history because it was here that the practical implementation of the measures provided for by the Soviet-American Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty began. On February 25, 1988, the withdrawal ceremony of the 119th Missile Brigade took place in Bischofsvärde (seeing off the echelon with missile systems to the base for their elimination in Stankovo, Belarus). In March of the same year, the last units left the garrison. The 119th missile brigade was redeployed to the ZakVO (Georgia, Gombori village).

I found several archival photographs online taken at Bischofsvärda station on the day the missile systems were sent"Temp - C"back to the USSR.

At the Bischofsvärdy station, after the ceremonial meeting, the awning was removed from one launcher and journalists were allowed to film.

Ceremony on February 25, 1988 in Bischofsvärde to mark the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the region.

Article dated February 25, 2012 in the newspaper Bautzener Bote, dedicated to the history of the deployment of nuclear missiles in the Taucherwald forest:

After the removal of the missile systems, the Soviet military remained on the territory of the missile base for several more years and only left it completely on June 14, 1992. During 1996, work began on forest reclamation on the territory of the base - the perimeter and firing points were dismantled, trenches were filled in, and in 2002 the barracks building and several other buildings were demolished.

Now let's go back to our walk and examine what remains of the former missile base.

05. This bunker was the first structure we encountered in this place. Seeing the closed doors, I thought that they were welded shut or were tightly rusted.

But soon, to our joy, it turned out that I was wrong in my assumptions:

06. If you watched the video, then you saw that inside there is nothing except a warehouse of building materials, skeins of chain-link mesh and the remains of a ventilation unit.

07. This bunker was intended to shelter the main element of the missile system - the SPU 9P120 launcher and the MIP 9V243 test and launch vehicle.

08. The test and launch vehicle is designed to carry out pre-launch preparation and launch of the rocket at the launch position. It housed all the control panel equipment of the complex. The MIP is made on the basis of a URAL-375A vehicle with an extended frame, and is distinguished by the presence of an electric generator powered by a power take-off and an additional 300 liter fuel tank. This machine houses testing and launch equipment, power supplies, a set of aiming devices (special theodolite, aiming rod, gyrocompass, levels for verticalizing the rocket, etc.), operator workstations.

09. This type of bunker is marked FB75 (FB - Fertigteilbunker, that is, a bunker made from prefabricated parts). It is a bunker constructed from standard concrete panels sprinkled with earth on top. Such bunkers were easy to manufacture and were used for sheltering equipment, equipment, ammunition, and placement inside command facilities or communications facilities.

A container with a 9M76 missile from the 9K76 "Temp-S" complex in one of these bunkers. A very detailed and illustrated description of the Temp-S complex can be found at this link.

10. The entrance to the bunker was closed with massive armored gates with a hydraulic drive.

11. I thought that this bunker was the only thing that remained of the former missile base...

I will give a plan of the facility, which I took from the site www.sachsenschiene.net and slightly modified for better understanding by Russian-speaking users.

The site plan shows the perimeter, the personnel barracks, demolished in 2002, next to it is a former guardhouse, now used by the forestry, and various bunkers located around the four launch pads.

1 - command bunker.
2,4,5,8 - bunkers for placing four launchers with testing and launch machines.
3.7 - bunkers for other equipment.
6 - warehouse of nuclear warheads
9,10 - command bunkers for starting batteries.

We arrived at the site along the road from the western side, ending up at the launch site in the center of the diagram. The bunker we visited first is marked on the plan with the number 8.

13. At the end of the concrete road another structure was visible.

14. But along the road there was a branch of the concrete road to the left, at the end of which there was another bunker.

15. We decided to examine it first.

Another archival photograph from Taucherwald, taken in 1988 during the withdrawal of missile systems from Bischofswerda. The bunker in the background is different, but the concrete is the same.

16. This bunker, like the previous one, looked closed.

17. It took some effort to open the massive armored doors.

18. Inside it turned out to be several times shorter than what we examined earlier.

19. Only one military truck could fit here.

On the map, this bunker is indicated by the number 3. Note that next to it is another bunker 5, which contained one of the four launchers.

20. This is all that remains of bunker 5. It was completely demolished and filled up. Only the concrete gate arch sticks out from the embankment.

21. We continue our journey along the concrete road.

22. Which leads us to another bunker.

23. There is a concrete platform in front of this bunker, which distinguishes this bunker from others we have seen before.

24. It was the image of this bunker that I saw in the book from which I learned about the existence of this place.

On the map this bunker is marked as number 6.

25. What really surprised me was the presence of such a sign near the gate. The Germans' attitude towards history never ceases to amaze me. And what a quality sign!

26. This bunker is the so-called “pump room” - the place where nuclear warheads were stored, the most important part of the base. This is the only bunker equipped with an air conditioning unit that maintained the humidity and temperature required for storing nuclear bombs.

27. The external armored gates here are the same as in the other bunkers. They were not airtight.

28. But inside the bunker there is another partition, which was covered with hermetic gates, ensuring complete tightness of the internal space. It was here that eight warheads were stored, with a total destructive power of 4,000 kilotons, which is comparable to 260 bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima. The contents of this bunker could wipe out all of western Germany, turning it into a scorched desert.

29. For a long time I puzzled over why cinder blocks were suspended from the ceiling?

30. There is, of course, nothing to look inside now. We leave the atomic storage facility.

On this day it was my birthday, and besides, this missile base and I turned out to be the same age and were born at the same time - in the spring of 1984. Symbolic. I made a video.

On the plan it is indicated by the number 4.

32. Next to him, an electric cable with a voltage of 380 volts came out of the ground, judging by the inscription on the shield.

33. The insides of the shield.

34. The inside is empty as standard, but a folding table like this was discovered.

35. Well, the remains of the ventilation system.

36. This bunker, like the first one we visited, served as a garage for the launcher and test and launch vehicle.

37. This concludes our walk through the territory of the former Soviet missile base. It’s a pity that I didn’t have a map of the site with me, so three bunkers remained uninspected by us. But, judging by the photographs on the Internet, only the first bunker, in which the command post was located, is worthy of attention.

38. Such secrets are hidden in the depths of the Saxon forests. As you understand from the title of the post, this was the first part of the series. In total, I have about two dozen posts planned about completely different, but each more interesting than the other, Cold War objects lost in the forests of eastern Germany.

The territory of the missile base in the Tauherwald forest is not a restricted area and anyone can visit it without the slightest risk. There is not much to see there, but from a historical point of view the object is more than interesting.

Object coordinates: 51°10"46" N, 14°14"03" E.

P.S. I created a group on Facebook where I will post selections of photographs from abandoned military installations in Europe. Anyone interested in the topic - join.

The second bunker was blown up in 1947 and covered with soil. Only decades later, a group of volunteers took on the task of restoring the blown up bunker with the aim of creating a museum inside. Volunteers did a huge amount of work to restore the bunker and today it is available for visiting to 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, a couple of kilometers from the border with Luxembourg. The facility was built in 1937-1939 with the purpose of controlling the Cologne-Luxembourg highway. For this purpose, two B-Werks were built on Mount Katzenkopf, located close to each other. The second B-Werk Nimsberg, like B-Werk Katzenkopf, was blown up in the post-war period and destroyed to such an extent that it could not be restored, in differences from its brother.

01. View from Mount Katzenkopf to the village of Irrel.

02. The photo shows the preserved part of the ground level with one of the two entrances inside, not damaged by the explosion, but changed during the reconstruction process.

Before the explosion, the above-ground level of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 had the following appearance. I marked the part of the upper level destroyed by the explosion as dark.

03. The preserved wall of the left flank with one of the emergency exits. A dummy armored machine gun turret is visible on the roof. The facility's armored turrets were dismantled before the explosion.

04. To give the object a shape close to the original, volunteers built dummies of both machine-gun armored turrets from brick and concrete. Now the roof of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 looks like this:

Each Panzerwerk had a standard set of weapons and armored domes, which I have indicated in this diagram. During 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. On the rubble of the destroyed part of the facility, a wooden cross and a memorial plaque were installed in memory of the fallen soldiers of the 39th Fusilier Infantry Regiment (Füssilier-Regiments), who fought from 1941 to 1944 on the territory of the USSR. The soldiers of one of the battalions of this regiment formed 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 village of Irrel.

07. The entrance to the building in the original was a hatch about a meter high, but now in its place there is an ordinary entrance door of standard height, so that when going inside, you don’t even have to bend down. An embrasure is traditionally located opposite the entrance. The design of this part underwent 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 person entering.

08. Around the bend in the entrance corridor there was a hole 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 a combat position, the steel bridge rose and acted as an armored shield, for which an embrasure was built into it. Such a system made it almost impossible for the enemy to penetrate inside the facility. The photo shows a hole in front of the second entrance, located in the destroyed part of the structure.

The diagram shows the structure of a similar system in B-Werk class buildings of the Western Wall. Each such object had two entrances, behind which there were pits covered with armor plate. Both entrances led to a common vestibule, which was also shot through another embrasure.

For clarity, I will give a plan of the upper floor. The holes at the entrance hatches are marked with the number 22, the general vestibule is 16. I marked in gray the rooms destroyed by the explosion, among which: the guard casemate (17), the filter and ventilation casemate (19), the grenade launcher armored dome shaft (21), the casemate flanking the entrances to the bunker (23) and a number of utility and technical premises.

Premises that have survived to one degree or another: a machine-gun armored dome (1), an observation casemate with an armored observation dome (3), a command center (4), a communications point (5), an artillery armored observation dome (6), a flamethrower casemate (11), a staircase to lower level (12) as well as several technical rooms and personnel rooms.

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 photo you can see a room closed with a screen door.

11. Behind the net there is a heavily damaged flamethrower casemate and part of the flamethrower barrel. The jar contains the original flammable mixture for the flamethrower.

The fortress flamethrower was intended to protect the roof of the facility in the event of enemy soldiers penetrating it, as well as for the close defense of the bunker. The control of the flamethrower was completely electric, but in the event of a power failure, a manual option was also provided. At one time, the flamethrower ejected 120 liters of a fiery mixture, spraying it through a special nozzle and turning hundreds of cubic meters of space in a given direction into fiery Gehenna. 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 turrets, containing tens of tons of metal, were removed from the site in the post-war period before the bunker was blown up. Today, in their place are brick and concrete dummies.

Six-recessed towers of type 20Р7 were developed by the German concern Krupp and are made of high-strength steel. One such tower cost 82,000 Reichsmarks (about 420,000 euros today). You can imagine how much the construction of the Siegfried Line cost, because there were 32 such objects and each had two towers. The turret's crew consisted of five people: a commander and four gunners. The commander observed the situation around him from a periscope installed on the roof of the tower and commanded fire. Two MG34 machine guns were placed inside the turret, which could be freely rearranged from one embrasure to another, but could not occupy two adjacent embrasures at the same time. 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 Eastern and Atlantic Walls - two major defensive lines of the Third Reich, more than 800 of them were manufactured.

In the destroyed part of the bunker there was another armored dome for the 50-mm M 19 fortress mortar, 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. In the picture you can see numerous consequences 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 inside by air pumps, if necessary passing through the FVA. Thus, excess pressure was maintained inside the bunker, which prevented poisonous gases from penetrating inside. In case of power loss in the network, manually operated reserve fuel units were placed in many places inside the bunker, one of which you see in the photo.

17. Stairs to the lower level, behind which the destroyed part of the bunker is visible. To the left of the corridor are the command center and communications rooms.

18. The command center premises were not damaged by the explosion, but the inside is still empty.

19. From the command center you can get into the observation casemate, which was once equipped with a cone-shaped observation armored cap of the Type 90P9 type.

The armor thickness of this small armored dome was 120 mm. The dome had five slits for all-round observation and two optical instruments. This is what the observer's position looked like before the bunker exploded:

20. This is how it looks now.

21. At the end of the corridor there is another room in which the personnel were located. This room is located near the destroyed part of the bunker and was also damaged by the explosion.

22. Adjacent to the room is the lower level of the 21P7 type artillery observation armored tower, which was designed to accommodate artillery observers with optical rangefinders. Thus, the bunker could also be used for aiming and adjusting artillery fire. Unlike the machine gun turret, the 21Р7 turret did not have embrasures, only holes for observation devices and a periscope. By the presence of this turret, the B-Werk Katzenkopf differed from the standard design, according to which a similar structure was equipped with two identical six-embrasure machine gun turrets. This panzerwerk also had two machine-gun turrets, but the second one was located remotely and was connected to the underground tunnel bunker.

23. Absolutely nothing has survived from the artillery observation tower to this day.

24. The remaining rooms on the upper level were destroyed by the explosion. We go down to the lower level.

25. The lower level should be more interesting, since 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), a lower level of a flamethrower installation (32) , staircase leading to the tern system (33), fuel storage for diesel generators (34), toilets (36) and shower (37), infirmary (38), engine room with two diesel generator sets (39) and a reservoir with a reserve water (41).

Let's see now what's left of all this.

26. In the corridor (35) there is a ladder leading to one of the rooms on the upper level.

27. The infirmary room was slightly damaged by the explosion.

28. At the end of the corridor there was one of the ammunition storage warehouses, across the wall from which there was an engine room with two diesel generator sets.

29. The bunker received electricity from an 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 electric drives of the ventilation system, heating resistors, which was electric (and was supplemented by ordinary potbelly stoves). The kitchen equipment was also completely electric.

30. The diesel generator room also contains traces of an explosion. Almost nothing has survived from the equipment.

31. Ammunition depot.

32. Remains of the shower room.

33. Toilets.

34. Sewage equipment.

35. In this room (34) a supply of fuel for diesel engines was stored in the amount of 17,000 liters, with the expectation of a monthly autonomy.

36. We move to the second corridor (30) of the underground level.

37. Traces of destruction from the explosion are also visible here. The transition to the upper level through a ladder ladder is bricked up here

38. One of two rooms on the underground level, which housed beds for resting personnel (29). In the corner of the room there are two original filters from the facility’s filter and ventilation installation. In total, the bunker had six such filters in case of a gas attack. Behind the grated door is an emergency exit to the surface. It was originally of a completely different design, but as part of the bunker's restoration as a museum, it was remodeled to meet modern safety standards. It is also visible from the outside in photo 03.

39. The former ammunition depot houses modest displays to compensate for the emptiness that reigns around.

40. Information stands tell about the events of 75 years ago.

41. A kitchen room, only the sink remains of its equipment. Adjacent to the kitchen is a warehouse for storing food.

42. The second of two rooms for rest of personnel. Each room had eighteen beds in which the soldiers slept in shifts. In total, the bunker garrison numbered 84 people. Beds like the one in this picture were typical of all siegfried line bunkers from the smallest to the B-Werke.

43. This room also contains one of the emergency exits to the surface. It had a design that made it impossible to penetrate into the object from the surface. The D-shaped emergency exit shaft leading to the roof of the bunker with a ladder ladder inside was covered with sand. If there was a need to leave the bunker through the emergency exit, the wedges blocking the valves inside the barrel were pulled out and the sand poured out into the bunker, freeing the exit to the top. Approximately the same emergency exit design was used at Fort Schonenburg on the Maginot Line, only there was gravel instead of sand and it spilled not into the fort, but into a cavity inside the trunk.

The diagram below clearly shows the structure of the bunker and the lower underground level, located at a depth of twenty-five meters (the diagram is not to scale).

44. There is a ladder leading down like this.

45. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the bunker and the largest. There are no such open spaces anywhere else inside the facility.

46. Initially it was planned to connect this panzerwerk with the Nimsberg panzerwerk. , located a kilometer away. The plans called for an electric narrow-gauge railway to be laid between both structures. Thus, both panzerwerks could form something similar to the forts of the Maginot Line or the objects of the Eastern Wall. But in 1940, Germany captured France, Belgium and Luxembourg and the need for the Western Wall disappeared, all construction work on the defensive line was stopped, including the construction of this postern.

47. To the side of the staircase, two posterns diverge, located at right angles to each other. The larger one was supposed to connect both panzerwerks. The smaller one leads to the combat block, located away from the main structure and consisting of a machine gun turret and an emergency exit.

Layout of the underground bunker level:

48. First, I headed along the smaller one. Its length is 75 meters.

49. The turn ends with a guard casemate covering the approach to the combat block. There is no armored door, as are all armored doors at the facility.

50. Inside the guard casemate there is an embrasure from which the tunnel was shot through and a device for manual ventilation of the casemate in the event of failure or stoppage of the bunker's electrical ventilation system.

51. This is what the apparatus for manual ventilation of a casemate looks like. Similar devices were installed at all important points in the bunker.

52. There is also a staircase leading to the combat block.

53. Climbing the stairs we find ourselves on the lower level. There is an emergency exit portal in the wall, which has a design typical for such objects. Through a hole in the ceiling, access was made to the machine-gun armored turret. This tower was a standard six-ambrasure type 20Р7, exactly the same as that installed in the main building. On the wall you can see fastenings for three beds - the tower crew was located in this room.

54. The tower itself was dismantled, like the rest of the armored domes of the facility, immediately after the end of the war. Now a concrete dummy has also been built here.

Here's what it looked like in the original:

55. There’s nothing more to see here, let’s go back to the fork.

56. Along the way there is such an opening in the blind. Apparently, the plans were to replenish the facility with another warhead, or one of the small bunkers located on this mountain was to be connected to the system. There is no way to know now.

57. Beautiful.

58. The ceiling height of the main porch is 3.5 meters. After the cramped interior of the Panzerwerk, this underground location seems simply huge.

59. Inside the unfinished main postern there is an exhibition of various WWII bombs and shells found in the region. There are information plaques on the wall telling the history of the site and the Siegfried Line as a whole.

60. Here in the wall there is another opening (on the left in the photo) similar to what we saw in the neighboring postern. But unlike the opening that is located in the turn leading to the armored turret, the purpose of this one is known. Fifty meters below the bunker there is a railway tunnel. At the time when they began to build this postern to unite both panzerwerks, there were plans to connect the underground system of passages with the railway tunnel that is located under the bunker. In this way, it was possible to transport ammunition and other ammunition into 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 terna 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’s water supply.