Where Was Hitler 39;s Hideout

[Ermelindo Klatt]

Ina dense forest in former East Prussia, the easternmost province of the German Reich until the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler built his secretive Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze) military headquarters.

Located near the small town of Ketrzyn in Poland, the hermetically sealed and highly guarded complex was built between 1940 and 1944 and included 50 bunkers, 70 barracks, two airfields and a railroad station. Hitler, his secretary Martin Bormann and army head Hermann Gring had private bunkers, and one was reserved for state guests.

The walls of the concrete structures were between five and seven meters thick. Three heavily secured exclusion zones, countless guard posts and ten kilometers of mines protected several thousand military and civilians who lived in the Wolf's Lair.

From the outside, Hitler's bunker resembles an ancient Egyptian tomb. Hitler lived in this tomb, he worked and slept there. "It seemed as if the seven-meter-thick concrete walls that surrounded him figuratively, separated him from the outside world and imprisoned him in his madness," said Polubinski.

But the massive steel buildings were not completely destroyed. After the war, the locals looted building materials from the ruins but huge blocks of concrete still lie in the forest, overgrown with ferns and moss.

The minefields were cleared, and tourists have been flocking to Wolf's Lair since 1959. Almost 80 years later, visitors can still sense the atmosphere of the place where Hitler, his generals and marshals not only planned campaigns but also discussed the genocide of the Jews in detail.

For a while, one tour operator allowed visitors to sit on tanks and play war games with air guns. But the approach put off potential visitors, Polubinski said. Since 2017, the Wolf's Lair has been under state management. About 300,000 people visit annually, most from Poland but many from around the world.

It is forbidden to enter the bunker remains, yet some visitors climb into the few remaining corridors. "We've had to pull many out who got hurt," said Polubinski, admonishing the group to please "stay on the paths."

The attack failed. "It was not the first attempt on the Fhrer's life," Lukas Polubinski said, adding there were at least 42 attacks on the dictator. What the world would have been spared if only one of them had succeeded, I think to myself.

Hitler took it as a good omen that he kept escaping. But he was wary. Visitors to the Wolf's Lair were checked before entering the seemingly impregnable fortress. I figure it was almost a miracle that Stauffenberg got close to Hitler with a bomb at all.

Hitler survived the attack only because it took place in a wooden barrack. He and his military staff had gathered to discuss the military situation, and Stauffenberg was also invited. The colonel had already tried several times to smuggle in a bomb but always had to abort at the last moment.

Hitler chose the location in East Prussia not only because it was a good hideout, but above all because it was not far from the Russian border, Polubinksi explained. On June 22, 1941, he ordered the attack on the Soviet Union from the Wolf's Lair.

Unlike the Wolf's Lair, these bunkers were not destroyed. Life-size figures have been placed in the damp, oppressive rooms, visitors can marvel at a replica of a submarine, and surprisingly, a replica of the legendary Amber Room, a chamber decorated in amber panels.

Back then, East Prussia district head Erich Koch suggested the precious room might be hidden in the Mauerwald. After the war, he was not executed because the authorities hoped he would disclose the mysterious whereabouts. He has kept silent, however. Mauerwald has been searched again and again, most recently in 2017, but to no avail.

The Los Angeles City Council has declined a donation for two police dogs after one city leader raised concerns that the canines were trained by a company that shares its name with a Nazi military hideout used by Adolf Hitler.

Blumenfield, who represents the west San Fernando Valley, said he could find no other meaning beyond the Hitler reference. After Blumenfield voiced his misgivings at the council meeting Tuesday, the K-9 donation issue was sent back to the public safety committee for further discussion.

Activists and community members have raised questions about Adlerhorst in recent months at meetings of the Board of Police Commissioners, citing both the problematic name and the violent history of police dogs being used against Americans of color.

Reaver said the company name comes from a German kennel where his father bought a dog, Cora, in the 1960s. His father, a former electrician and Air Force veteran who was once stationed in Germany, started breeding sporting dogs and then began working with law enforcement. The elder Reaver launched the business in 1976, and his son said they buy most of their dogs from breeders in Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Adlerhorst has worked with hundreds of police forces nationwide. Reaver said the kennel was responsible for Cairo, the 70-pound Belgian Malinois that accompanied the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

There, as Soviet troops moved closer to Berlin, Hitler spent his final days. He gave commands, took meals, and married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. And on April 30, 1945, with the war all but lost, the Fhrerbunker was where Adolf Hitler took his own life.

The idea of underground bunkers wasn't new in Berlin. The Vorbunker, a subterranean air-raid shelter beneath the Reich Chancellery, had been completed in 1936. It had dormitories, a dining room, a kitchen complete with wine storage, and bathrooms, and it was meant as a temporary hideout for Hitler and his associates during World War II.

As bombing by Allied forces intensified in the 1940s, however, a second connected shelter called the Fhrerbunker was constructed in 1944. Located 28 feet beneath the Reich Chancellery's garden and smaller than the Vorbunker, the Fhrerbunker was built as a command center. It had conference rooms, a telephone switchboard, and private quarters complete with bedrooms and studies for Hitler and Eva Braun. The hideout was protected by 13 feet of solid concrete and gas-proof doors made of reinforced steel to withstand even the most brutal attacks from above.

Altogether, the Vorbunker and Fhrerbunker contained around 30 rooms complete with heating, water, and electricity. There were exits into the Chancellery as well as an emergency escape into the garden. The Vorbunker's dormitories were used to house dozens of support staff and doctors in addition to the Nazi officers who worked closely with Hitler.

Though deep beneath the ground, efforts were made to make the Fhrerbunker feel hospitable. Expensive carpets lined the floor, opulent art from the Chancellery hung on the walls, and Hitler's favorite portrait of Frederick the Great was affixed over his desk in his private office.

On Jan. 16, 1945, Hitler and his staff retreated to the bunker. They were soon followed by some of his closest associates, including his mistress, Eva Braun, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and his family.

These sessions often lasted until the wee hours of the morning as bad news poured in from around the world. At the end of January, Soviet forces crossed the Oder River into Germany. In February, the German city of Dresden was bombed. In March, Allied forces traversed the Rhine.

By April, Soviet troops were closing in on Berlin. The city was frequently bombed, which meant that even garden strolls could be dangerous. Hitler stayed inside the Fhrerbunker for longer stretches of time. On April 20, he spent his 56th birthday there. It would be the last one he ever celebrated.

By April 1945, Adolf Hitler was not a well man. Prone to screaming fits, he had a noticeable tremor in his left hand, suffered from stomach problems, and was taking a number of powerful drugs prescribed to him by his doctor, Theodor Morell. But there were two things that Hitler wanted to accomplish: He wanted to get married, and he wanted to die.

Hitler then dictated his personal and political last testaments. In an anti-Semitic screed, he wildly insisted that the war was the fault of others and that "posterity cannot place the responsibility... on me."

The next day, April 30, Hitler and his new bride died by suicide. After testing cyanide pills on Blondi, the newlyweds prepared to kill themselves. They said goodbye to their staff, and then Hitler reportedly told his valet, SS officer Heinz Linge: "I am going to shoot myself now. You know what you have to do."

Inside Hitler's private sitting room in the Fhrerbunker, the Nazi leader and Braun had both taken cyanide pills, and Hitler had shot himself in the head. Linge and other Nazis brought their bodies to the surface. They poured gasoline on the two corpses and then lit them on fire. As Hitler and Braun burned, the men threw up one last "Heil Hitler."

Eight days later, Germany surrendered. Hitler had no known children (the question of Hitler's descendants is something else entirely), and thus his bloodline ended with him. No one picked up his poisonous mantle, and modern-day Germany has worked hard to suppress his ideas.

These were destroyed, though rumors have spread ever since that some parts of the Fhrerbunker, hidden and sealed, remain intact. The German government had no desire for the site to become a shrine to neo-Nazis, so officials largely ignored it for several decades.

Today, there's nothing at the site except for a parking lot. A small sign, added quietly in 2006, tells the bunker's history and displays its layout. But there is no visible structure that anyone can visit. The Fhrerbunker where Adolf Hitler died, got married, and ultimately lost World War II is no longer.

After seeing Adolf Hitler's bunker, the Fhrerbunker, read about the conspiracy theory that suggests Hitler didn't die in the Fhrerbunker but instead fled to Argentina with Eva Braun. Then, go inside America's Greenbrier bunker that was meant to protect government officials during nuclear war.

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