Expl0ring The Forb1dden Ru1ns Of Hitler’s Eastern Headquarters 

Expl0ring The Forb1dden Ru1ns Of Hitler’s Eastern Headquarters 

On the 24th of June, 1941, Adolf Hitler arrived at a complex of bunkers    in Eastern Prussia. Two days earlier, he had unleashed Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. It would be here, far away from Berlin, in the East Prussian forests, that the Führer of the Third Reich would make the key decisions of the Second World W4r.

The complex was named Wolfschanze, the Wolf’s Lair. I’m here with Johnny Whitelam, Third Reich expert, to discover the ruins of Hitler’s command center, and to uncover how the Führer’s mental and physical state deteriorated from the early victories to the eventual c4tastrophic retreat back to Berlin.    It was here where Hitler would change the course of the war.

They want to take Moscow. They want to decapitate  uh the Red Army, essentially destr0y the Soviet leadership.  And where he faced one of the biggest thre4ts to his rule.  Four people are k1lled in the explosion, but not Hitler.  Johnny, we’re a long way from Berlin here in the freezing Polish winter, only 20 mi from the Russian border.

But it’s at this site that we have one of the most important command centers for the Nazis during the Second World W4r.  Uh I would say the most important. We are standing in the Wolf’s Lair, uh command center that Hitler only wanted to use very  briefly after the invasion of the Soviet Union, but actually would end up spending the majority of his time here from 1941 up to his de4th.

And whilst we can’t see the complex, the evidence for the site is already beneath our feet.  Yes, this is the train tracks where Hitler would have arrived. And if you brush away the snow down here, you can still see the tracks. And this is where uh Hitler would have arrived in complete secrecy during the Second World W4r.

In 1940, the German army appeared unstoppable. Following the fall of France, Hitler and the Wehrmacht began drawing up plans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. This served both tactical needs, depriving Britain of a potential ally, and fulfilled Hitler’s ideological goals, destr0ying communism once and for all, and gaining resource rich Lebensraum, living space, for German settlers.

In preparation for this upcoming invasion, the Nazis built a fortified military headquarters close to what would be the new front line. Deep in the East Prussian forest, it was here where Hitler would spend the vast majority of the war, over 800 days in total.  So, here we are. This is the uh first bit of bricks and concrete I can see.

Yes, get used to that. There’s a lot of this here, but this is actually one of the smaller ones. This was the Reich Security Office, so there’s going to be thousands of staff here, uh especially over the years, you know, people be coming and going. And while the place doesn’t grow so much after they initially move here, they’re always going to need uh more men, more people, more representation from the military, more security.

Well, watch your step. Let’s make our way up. It’s quite treacherous conditions in the winter. So, what I really want to know, Johnny, is why here? Why does Hitler decide to build this complex in the middle of this woodland?  Back in the 1940s, this was the easternmost part of Germany, and of course, after Hitler had had his early successes in the war, he was worried about basically a two front war opening on him, so he decided to jump the g.un.

So, the you know, the Brits are stuck on that island being b0mbed, uh and whilst he’s struggling to knock them out, he’s thinking, “What if the Soviets come from the other side?” And so, he starts to prepare a plan to invade the Soviet Union, and he wants a base that’s basically near the front line, uh not really for practical purpose, so much as propaganda.

He’s the first sold1er of the Reich. So, he wants the cameras here. He wants people to know that he’s near the front, that he’s suffering like his men are, f1ghting for his country.  He knows it’s going to be ma.ssively important, and who does he put in charge of constructing this?  Uh Fritz Todt. Uh Todt was, you know, the Nazis’ kind of chief engineer, definitely in the early days when they first came to power.

You talk about the Nazis building the Autobahn, that’s Fritz Todt. When we look at the Second World W4r, uh anything with concrete bunkers, g.un emplacements, he’s building those. And therefore, he’s building this secure location here as well. Him and Hitler have had a had a chat about this particular location. We’re surrounded by dense woodland, so it’s going to have cover from the air, so the allies aren’t going to be able to see it, b0mb it.

We’ve also got several lakes and very swampy territory nearby, so it’s going to be difficult to invade as well. It’s very well protected.  Operation Barbarossa began on the 22nd of June, 1941, with millions of Axis troops advancing into Soviet held territory. The largest invasion force in history. The @ttack bl1ndsided Stalin, who refused  to believe his own intelligence pointing to the imminent thre4t.

The Germans, maintaining heavy pressure against the Soviet, have won successes in the north and south.    The initial German push proved to be c4tastrophic for the Red Army.    Within a matter of weeks, millions of Soviet sold1ers had been captured or k1lled. By the end of June, the Wehrmacht took Minsk, by August, the Baltic states and vast swaths of Ukraine.

The mood amongst German High Command was jubilant, and many expected the Soviet Union    to collapse at any moment.  Wow. Now, I think one of the the misconceptions people have when they think about the Wolf’s Lair is that this is some den in the middle of the woods. This is evidence that this is a huge complex. Tell me about the layout.

Yes. So, as you first The only things we can see are the last things that they built, right? So, the fact that it’s ma.ssive is obviously true, but they added this right at the end, 1944. Basically, just before they left, this kind of stuff was finished. But, there were I mean, several buildings here, most of which were made of wood.

There were um quite a few the bunkers that were there, but they were really the minority of the buildings, but I mean, when people arrived here, they would have had to have gone through so much security. They would have had to have gone through the security zone three, that’s the outer perimeter. You’ve got a 10 km fence, a 200 m minefield, and there are then two other security zones within that, two and one.

Two, you’re going to find a lot of military figures and so on. And then in one, you’ve got all of the most the most special higher ups. You’ve got generals, you’ve got Hitler himself, you’ve got a bunker for Göring, but you’ve also got a kind of revolving door of important visitors, Mannerheim from Finland, Mussolini coming up from Italy.

Their key allies are going to be here, potentially making key decisions. Hitler’s not great at informing his allies before he does something, to be honest.  And so it’s interesting you mentioned all those several layers of defenses, because we are right by the visitors bunker complex, but it just shows you how many layers of security they have to get to to get to the entrance to the to the site.

Exactly, and the paths they’re not straight, so the lines of sight are obscured should the place ever be invaded. The idea is that it’s yeah, concealment within a concealment within a concealment. And of course, a lot of the the sky would have been blocked out to people inside of here as well. You had camouflage nets covering up the entire thing, so that yeah, enemy planes wouldn’t be able to spot it.

Wow, a incredibly well defended site. You’ve got mines, cover, machine g.un nests, guard posts.  Absolutely, anti aircraft g.uns.  Impenetrable.  Absolutely, and it was never successfully discovered or @ttacked by  the Allies.  Today, the bunkers are no longer structurally intact, but getting up close reveals the true scale of the project to build them.

And it’s just when you get really up close to this complex here, you just see how much concrete is going to be needed, the materials, but also the labor for this for this complex here at the Wolf’s Lair.  Yes, it is a huge undertaking and a very quick one. Now, the initial construction phase from December ’40 to May ’41, that’s not this.

This is added later, but of course we can only see what they added at the end because they built it on top of the original buildings. But those original construction workers, you’re talking about 4 and 1/2 thousand people on site at any one time, but tens of thousands in total over those months. And this is already World W4r II.

So, many of those people are foreign forced laborers, but they’re only going to be working in the perimeter. We are in in the heart of it, in one of the most secure places in the world during the Second World W4r. And only people that are very trusted by the Organisation Todt, by the you know, one of Hitler’s closest men, are going to be allowed to work in here.

And how much is all of this going to cost him?  For the initial plans, it’s about 36 million Reichsmarks, which in today’s money we’re talking hundreds of millions.  Well, we’re in minus five right now, but spare a thought for those workers who are going to be    laboring day in, day out, patrolled, guarded.

I mean, it must have been really brut4l.  Incredibly brut4l. I mean, in this area, this time of year, and again, construction started December, so they’re going to work through December, January, February. Minus five is on the warmer end. They would have worked in in very extreme conditions.  Well, speaking of cold weather, let’s get ourselves inside. Take a look.

Oh my goodness me.  An incredible place, huh?  So, we’re walking through the dilapidated ruins of the of the bunker complex. But, let’s rewind the clock back to the summer of 1941 when Hitler arrives on the train. How’s he feeling as he enters the Wolf’s Lair?  I mean, on top of the world.

Uh he has successfully invaded huge parts of Europe. He’s beaten the the old enemy, as the Germans called them, France, right? Germany came together, the German Empire, after defeating France. France was the one of the big enemies during the First World W4r, and they’ve been they’ve been taken in a matter of months.

Uh his generals have told him not to do X, Y, and Z, and he’s pushed ahead and done it his own way. And now he’s thinking he’s he’s master of the world. Everything he touches, in his mind, turns to gold. So, he really enters this place on on a high.  And I’m interested, Hitler spent some time in here, right?  In this particular bunker, yes, but right at the end.

So, in 1944 when they start to add all of the the huge amount of concrete that you see around us, his bunker is actually uh uh one of the very last places to be finished. So, in those final months that he’s in the Wolf’s Lair, he’s mostly in here.  And I really want to get an understanding of what daily life is like around the Wolf’s Lair, especially when Hitler arrives.

What’s what kind of activities are happening on this site?  Uh I mean, it is it is Hitler’s court. Hitler is is holding court. Everything happens exactly how he wants it to, and he has Some people will say it’s an erratic uh schedule, but it’s not so much erratic as, how can I say, very particular. So, he’s very he’s very late to wake up.

He wakes up at 11:00 in the morning, usually. He then sits in bed and reads the newspapers for an hour. He’ll then have um a quite long breakfast. And so, his first kind of morning situation meeting with his generals, with the various officials in the map room, is going to start really at 1:00 in the afternoon. That’s going going for a couple of hours.

Uh if it’s a particularly bad day, it’s going to last even longer. And so, when they sit down for lunch, sometimes it’s as late as 5:00 p.m. That’s lunch. So, then he has another hour or so, 2 hours of him basically talking to the people who he is closest with, to his yes men, always telling the same stories. He’s talking about his victories in the First World W4r, how he was a sold1er in the trenches.

He’s talking about f1ghting democracy in the 1920s. I mean, it’s an old man telling the same stories and everyone’s going, “Oh, that’s great.” Uh lunch will then sometimes be interrupted by the next uh situation meeting, and then dinner is going to follow that. And then after dinner, the closest circle are going to be invited for kind of uh drinks and chats.

And then it will even continue after this until basically 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. In fact, people who are closest to Hitler in here had the feeling that he could he couldn’t bear uh to be alone.  Right.  That he always had to uh had to be talking, had to have an aud1ence despite the fact that a lot of what he was saying  was completely useless.

And then he’s taking a ton of uh dru9s to help him get to sleep that are going to be given to him by his doctor. And then rinse and repeat, the whole thing then starts again from 11:00 a.m. the next day.  Then he mentions the the the generals who are with him having to listen to his long tirades, but also talking strategy with him.

Who else joins Hitler in the Wolfsschanze?  I mean, you’re going to find at some point all of the top generals will be kind of uh coming up here to discuss orders. I mean, they do have modern telephone connections, but they don’t like to use them. If you want something from Adolf Hitler during World W4r you come in person to the Wolfsschanze.

As the war progresses and the situation worsens for Germany, he’s going to get rid of people who he doesn’t like, who contradict him and his orders, and he’s going to instead uh rely on on the people who make him feel good, basically, on his closest yes men. And the two military figures that are these these most important yes men are Keitel and Jodl.

And Jodl has a place in the Wolf’s Lair, doesn’t he?  his own bunker here as well, which I I think we should explore next.  Let’s do it. I’m thinking about Hitler’s relationship with his army, with the Wehrmacht. He he very much believes in them, but not necessarily the people who are in charge at the top.

I mean, they’re like anything, they’re useful tools for him until they’re until they’re not until he doesn’t like them. But, the relationship has been strained uh in many ways for years. I mean, the leading military figures, the aristocratic conservative Germans, they had a huge loss of status after the First World W4r.

They were very skeptical of the angry little corporal until they decided, “Hey, we’ve got something in common. We both h@te communism.” Um and so, when it came to uh who’s going to be in power in these undecided elections of of 1932, eventually they got him and put him into power in 1933, but it will take a while for him to really take control of the military.

That happens towards the end of the ’30s. Takes to a couple of basically trumped up scandals um that allows him to replace the head of the military with himself. And well, in the military, you’re supposed to earn the spot at the top rather than take  it.  Alfred Jodl’s bunker, positioned next to the Wehrmacht military quarters,    is one of the few to have been restored.

Well, one person that Hitler does trust is Alfred Jodl, and he puts him in a in a top position.  Yes, he is chief of the operations staff of the combined forces. It’s called the Oberkommando des Wehrmacht. And so, it’s his job to basically take Hitler’s orders and turn them into effective military policy, something that can be disseminated and coordinated with everything, with the army, with the air force, and with the navy.

And effectively, he’s picked because even when Hitler is giving him quite disastrous orders that, you know, people in the know, people with experience are saying, “This is going to get us k1lled. This is going to get us defeated.” Jodl’s just no matter his own reservations, wh@tever his own opinion is, he’s happy to just take the leader’s orders and put them into action, to not cause too much conflict.

But interestingly, in the in the summer and then into the autumn of of 1941, Operation Barbarossa is going fantastically. I’m really interested in terms of the the attitude of the generals, who might have distrusted Hitler, they they can’t have any dissent at this point.   The games are big, but that’s also part of the problem.

The German army ends up uh stretched. Tanks are destr0yed in huge numbers that they have no hope of of replacing. I mean, they’ve rushed into Barbarossa. They’re not ready for it. And then, it grinds to a halt before they’ve taken the major objective, which is Moscow. And this is where, again, we see one of the big splits between Hitler and the Wehrmacht.

The Wehrmacht, the military, these these kind of old, traditional, aristocratic figures, they want to take Moscow. They want to decapitate  uh the Red Army, essentially destr0y the Soviet leadership, and they think the rest will crumble. Hitler, on the other hand, wants to stop before Moscow and actually send troops rather down into the south into the Caucuses into Ukraine and well, there’s a practical purpose behind it.

Germany has very little in terms of natural resources and they want the they want the the wheat and the oil of of Ukraine and uh the general region down there. I mean, you can just see how unprepared they are by the sheer fact that the sold1ers that are on the front lines in Russia uh going into this terrible winter, they don’t have enough like literal underwear.

Um I mean, that’s how unprepared they are. Goebbels, propaganda minister, uh he addresses the nation on the radio in the middle of December ’41 and says, “If you really want to support the war effort and support our sold1ers, you’re you’re going to send essentially thermal underwear, woolen underwear to the to the Eastern Front, right?” I mean, it uh it shows you how out of touch they are. I mean, it’s cold here.

It’s minus 30, minus 40 here. They know what that biting cold feels like, but they’re locked away in these bunkers here, completely safe.  Isolated from the bitter conditions at the front, Wehrmacht generals pushed for an advance on the Soviet capital. But cautious not to follow in the same footsteps as Napoleon, the Führer was reluctant to approve the occupation of Moscow.

Pressured by his general staff, Hitler gave the go ahead.  Deutsche Panzer haben den äußeren Verteidig.ungsring von Moskau erreicht.  What followed was a gritty b4ttle of attrition with the Soviet Army, led by General Zhukov, f1ghting inch by inch to repel the Nazi forces. Hitler’s men came close, reaching the outskirts of the city, but the resolve of Zhukov’s forces would prove too much for the overstretched Army Group Center.

On the 7th of January 1942, the The Army experienced its first major defeat on the Eastern Front. This crushing blow eroded what little remaining confidence Hitler held in his general staff. Already suspicious of those around him, the Führer dismissed the head of the Wehrmacht and appointed himself commander in chief.

But, despite changes at the top, one aspect of the invasion remained constant. The ma.ss atrocities inflicted upon the civilian population.  Hitler calls this war a war of annihilation. What does he mean by that? He wants Germany to be a world superpower population of 250 million people to rival the United States, and he knows he’s going to need room for this to happen.

And so, in his mind, it’s invade Eastern Europe where the inhabitants are Slavic people. They’re considered untermenschen, subhumans by Nazi racial ideology. And they’re to be exterminat3d and effectively replaced with with ethnic Germans. And that makes the war on the Eastern Front vastly different from the war in the West.

They’re extremely brut4l as well. That that the sold1ers are essentially given orders to murd3r people who aren’t even  To brut4lize civilians. Um and we’ll we’ll see that in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa with @ttacks on on Jews as well. Um synagogues being burned and destr0yed with people inside.

Um children being k1lled. I mean, this is this is incredibly brut4l from the beginning and will only get worse over the next two to three years.  Operation Barbarossa had failed. Moscow proved one step too far. Hopes for a swift victory quickly vanished as the Germans began to run d4ngerously low on crucial supplies.

A new offensive, codenamed Fall Blau, Case Blue, was being prepared for the summer of 1942. The aim, to capture the oil rich fields of the Caucasus. On the 28th of June, 1942, Army Group South, made up of German, Romanian, and Italian troops, began their a.ssault. The initial push quickly overwhelmed the Red Army, providing a much needed boost to the morale of the sold1ers on the ground.

Within a month, the Wehrmacht had in on the outskirts of Stalingrad, the site of a b4ttle that would become a major turning point in the war.  Wow, look at that.  I mean, absolutely ma.ssive, right? And honestly, of all of bunkers here, this is probably the best preserved, which is not to say it’s perfect, but you know, it’s got a lot of cracks, a lot of chunks missing, but especially around here.

I mean, you can see how big it is. You can With the cracks, thankfully, see how thick the walls are. And again, this is the preparation that’s made really in the dying months of the war. They make it this big.  Still, even with the cracks though, I mean, it’s just so remarkably preserved. It’s obviously growing a little bit of moss on top of it now.

of branches as well, yes.  But just the amount of work that goes into making something this sturdy is is absolutely incredible.  Absolutely. Well, it’s designed to survive a direct hit. And to that end, there are machine g.uns on the top of there were and anti aircraft g.uns as well. I mean, in a way it’s made for a last stand and that last stand here will of course never happen.

Well, it’s quite an upgrade on Yodel’s quarters just over there.  Yeah. I mean, huge. 36 ft tall, 177,000 cubic feet of concrete. I mean, something that’s really built to be imposing, something that’s built to last, but it also shows the status of Goring within Hitler’s inner circle.  And when was this built, do you know?  So, this part that we’re looking at here was 1944, but there’s going to be the inner core of it, the original part where they would have started in 1940 and finished just in advance of the

invasion of the Soviet Union.  And it’s I think quite befitting of the man, Goring, a larger than life character in many ways and his bunker reflects that.  Yes, and it would have been filled with a certain amount of finery inside of it as well. I mean, these are people who are at the at the top of society.

So, of course Goring is somebody who was incredibly vain and like to surround himself with the finest things. He stole all of this art from all over Europe. He had a great big mansion outside of Berlin. Ultimately though, Goring would not have spent a huge amount of time here with with Hitler.

He’s not somebody who part of his image is not that he’s down there in the trenches with the men. So, he effectively doesn’t have to be here.  And that’s that’s incredible though to me because he doesn’t spend that much time there and yet I mean, this must take an enormous amount of work and expense to build. I can see on top of it as well.

It seems to be almost layered into into two different layers.  Yes, so there’s going to be a layer of sand inside of there as well. That means that should it take a direct hit, some of the force of that will be able to dissipate and it the entire thing won’t crack. The fact that it looks like this is not because it was hit externally by the Red Army or the RAF, it’s because it was blown up by the Germans themselves from inside.

Actually, as late as January 1945.  Well, should we take a look inside?  Let’s see.  Well, as you can see, this is completely collapsed essentially.  Yes, you can see where the concrete has fallen away, where the steel reinforcements have been exposed. You can see the remains of ventilation systems as well, because of course they would have needed that to stay safe in the event of a gas @ttack.

There were steel shutters, there were doors that would seal. I mean, this was like all of the bunkers in here, incredibly secure.  You can see literally just through the gap here as well, the brickwork at the top is absolutely remarkable. I’m just looking around. It’s a wreck site now, but you can just imagine how formidable this would have been at its height.

And how claustrophobic it must have felt as well coming in and out of these places. Especially if they thought that there was an air raid, if they had a warning, they were rushing into these places for safety.  Speaking about the man who would have   been here, albeit somewhat briefly. He promises a lot to Hitler.

Certainly also when we move towards the Caucuses and and they refocus the army’s efforts to try and capture those oil fields. The Luftwaffe is going to play a really important part in that.  Well, he’s going to say that the Luftwaffe will play an important part of that. So, yes, he is the head of the Luftwaffe.

He is Reichsmarschall Göring, a kind of title that’s just invented for him to make him feel good about himself, to be honest with you. And I mean, he’s over promised already with the Battle of Britain and they haven’t met their goals there. And now when the German army starts to enter Stalingrad, he says, “Well, we’ll we’ll clear the way. We’ll b0mb the city.

” And of course, he puts rubble in their way, and he he essentially hands the Soviets an advantage because they have inferior equipment, but if the German tanks can’t smash through the streets, then the Soviet rifles are are going to do the job. And then, when they end up caught in Stalingrad, when they end up surrounded, well, the leadership are told, “We need 500 tons of material today.

” And Göring says, “Well, I’ll be able to get 350 tons per day in  by air.” And I mean, he’s already promising not enough, and he’s already not going to deliver that. I mean, it Göring’s inability to deliver on his promises is one of the contributing factors to the loss at Stalingrad.  And it’s funny, it’s the the our surroundings right now are almost reminiscent of what areas of Stalingrad would have looked like.

Just rubble everywhere, tunnels, they’re f1ghting in sewers, the hand to hand combat. This isn’t what the the Wehrmacht wants. It wants to be able to roll the tanks. Blitzkrieg does not work.  Blitzkrieg has met its end really with the beginning of the invasion in the east, with the opening of the Eastern Front.  After months of bitter street to street f1ghting, the German army failed to make a breakthrough.

Intense b0mbing of the city had not helped their cause, creating a maze of ruins and rubble, an ideal landscape for Soviet defenders. Capitalizing on this, General Zhukov and Marshal Vasilevsky conceived a plan to encircle the German Sixth Army, led by General Paulus, in the war torn city. Codename Operation Uranus, the Soviet counteroffensive targeted the weak flanks of their enemy using armored divisions to break through on both sides of the city before joining each other across the steppe.

Launched in the early hours of the 19th of November, Axis troops were caught by surprise. Within days, Soviet forces had encircled more than 250,000 troops. Sensing disaster, Paulus requested a retreat. Hitler denied it.  Paulus is stranded and Stalingrad over the winter of 1942 on the home front back in Germany, I mean becomes a central focus for civilians, right? And so when it does eventually fail in in February of ’43, it is a c4tastrophic loss in terms of German morale, in terms of their psyche, in terms of their

leadership. They kind of pinned all of their hopes on this and I mean Paulus is is promoted right at the end to become a field marshal because no field marshal has ever been captured. I mean this is a sign for him to say you’re not supposed to be captured.  Yeah.  end it beforehand, but I think he takes a look at Hitler and he’s like, I mean guy’s cr4zy.

He’s he’s the main reason why we weren’t allowed to retreat, why we’ve been stuck here, why so many of my men have d1ed and I’m not going to be the next one. He    effectively refuses to take his own life and ends up captured by the Soviets.  And the juxtaposition from Paulus’s desperate, hopeless situation whilst Göring and Hitler, they’re hanging tight where we are right now.

Absolutely. So this is the image that you the Nazi news crews are here, they’re filming Hitler and Göring and people and celebrating his birthday and things like this. They’re saying time also saying that Hitler is this sold1er on the front, but he’s not. He doesn’t visit the front. He doesn’t visit the trenches.

Like you say, he’s he’s kind of I mean, almost in the lap of luxury here, certainly compared to what his sold1ers are going through. So there is always going to be this constant disconnect with what the sold1ers are really doing, how brut4l the situation is. It’s much easier to say, “Well, you keep f1ghting in the cold. You’ll be fine.

You eat the rats. You f1ght in the sewers.”  Minus 30. It gets up to minus 40 even.  Without proper clothing again. I mean, brut4l in every every respect.  It doesn’t bear thinking about. They are completely divorced from reality here in the Wolf’s Lair, aren’t they?  Absolutely. And what better monument to the hubris of the Nazis than a bunker built at a completely futile time that achieved nothing and thus it’s here in ruins.

Stalingrad was the bl00d1est b4ttle in history. Millions d1ed in the stru.ggle to take the city. But in the end, it was the Red Army who would come out victorious. It was a setback from which the Third Reich and its Führer would never recover. The Germans were now on the back foot. But one last great offensive was being prepared.

One that the Nazis hoped would help them gain the upper hand once again. Despite Hitler’s anxieties with his generals’ plans, he reluctantly agreed to the advance towards the Soviet city of Kursk.  Well, Johnny, speaking of yes men, person stationed here, he was the worst of the lot, wasn’t he?  Uh right up there.

This was Keitel’s bunker. The other generals, uh they had a nickname for him based on the word uh lackey, which is similar in German. They called him Lackeitel cuz he just did really wh@tever the boss wanted, no questions. Yes, sir.  Well, at this point, he’s surrounding himself with people like Keitel, but the war’s not exactly going his way.

By 1943, if Stalingrad was the turning point, they’re losing North Africa, they’re worried about a new front, uh you know, an Allied invasion of Western Europe. They’ve had to spare Rommel’s blushes. Italy could be a problem. I mean, it’s all going wrong.  Uh not least Germany itself is being b0mbed. I mean, in a very very big way, in a way that it never was before.

This is when the Western Allies start to shift towards area b0mbing, when Hamburg ends up destr0yed. And more and more yes men are brought in. Hitler never bl4mes himself. It’s always everybody else. And so, you end up with this vicious cycle. More yes men, more bad decisions. The war just keeps getting worse as 1943 continues.

Yeah, it’s almost as if, you know, uh at some point, any general who actually has experience is just dismissed. And therefore, you’re just going to keep getting more and more more defeats.  Absolutely. And more and more so, they are locked away here. They’re not really seeing reality, but it’s during this time that Hitler’s becoming more paranoid.

Where he was having these long breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with people before, he’s spending more and more time locked away inside of his own bunker. And his physical appearance starts to deteriorate rapidly. Uh at one point, Goering, you know, after the failure of Stalingrad, he says that 3 years of war has has aged this man 15 years. He’s He’s stooping.

His skin is turning gray. Uh he becomes more paranoid and and I mean, less of a pleasure to be around. You have to remember the people here like him, look up to him.  And in that state Hitler almost uh has the last roll of the dice in terms of an offensive strategy on the Eastern Front in the Kursk campaign. An absolute disaster, yet again.

Uh they go from disaster to disaster. Kursk is going to be you know, the the hero of the day, the wonder w3apon of 1943 is going to be the the new tanks, the Tiger, the Panther. They are actually unveiled to him here as well. Remember, anybody who wants anything during World W4r II has to come here. And this means private industry as well, because Germany is going to rely very heavily on private industry, on concentration camp labor within that.

But the tanks that they make are too complex, they run out of fuel too quickly. Remember, the supply lines aren’t good, they don’t have a lot of resources, that’s why they want that oil. And you might have the best tank in the world, if it’s got no fuel, it’s not going anywhere and it’s going to be completely surrounded by Soviet tanks.

And the Soviets in 1943, they have surpa.ssed German uh production capacity with a lot of help, uh resources and money from the US, yes, but essentially, it’s not just a last roll of the dice. I mean, he may as well be throwing the dice away.  Right. Yeah, I mean, it it there’s no also there’s no point having a tank if it’s going to be outnumbered 10 to 1 by by the Soviets who are just producing these sort of T 34s at at ridiculous rate.

Absolutely, but  yeah, propaganda wise, they’re going to pin all their hopes on this. It’s going to be a big success. They’re never going to admit defeat. Uh very late on in the war, there’s a a joke that spreads among the German people, you know, we were winning outside Moscow and then we were winning in Königsberg and now we’re winning on the edge of Berlin.

Right.  Seems to be winning a lot closer to home as this war progresses.  And it’s it’s so interesting you mention that. You can almost imagine there being sort of a table laid out where the new uh blueprints for the new tanks are being shown and everything as you said is is looks hunky dory.

Everything’s amazing, but everyone knows it’s almost like a a tacit understanding between everyone that the war is not going well.  Yeah, that it’s completely futile, but you’re not allowed to say that around here. You everybody has to bend to the will of Adolf Hitler in here. In meetings or dinners, he doesn’t let people whisper.

I mean, it’s a bit like a primary school teacher. If people are whispering, he’ll say, “Well, you’ve got something to say to the whole room.”  Yeah.  And he’s not always obsessed with the things that matter, the things that are in front of him. He likes to read the newspapers, and so he’ll be reacting to the news and wanting to change laws back home.

But his job is supposed to be what? Focusing on the entire war effort, being in charge of that. It seems like he doesn’t know any point where to put his his time and energy.  Yeah, and bending to the will of the Führer, Keitel, he was the best at it.  He Well, he earned the nickname.  Yeah.  Despite the c4tastrophic Eastern Front demanding more and more resources and America’s entry into the war, the Third Reich became increasingly determined to expand its genocide against people considered undesirable.

Soon, millions of Jews, innocent men, women,  and children would experience the full force of Nazi terror.  Well, Johnny, we should stress that by 1943, there have already been a couple of years of of ma.ss murd3r of the Jewish population. But it’s really in this year that the horrors, the true horrors of the of the final solution are laid bare for everyone to see.

The question really here is again how much did Hitler know? This is a place that is somewhat sealed off from the world. Much as he doesn’t visit the sold1ers at the front, he doesn’t visit the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But we do know that Himmler came here a lot. Himmler came here on average at 1.6 times per month.

He had his own little base of operations barracks nearby to here as all the most important people in Nazi Germany did if they weren’t based exactly in here so that they could come very quickly. I mean, he could arrive here within 45 minutes whenever he wanted to. And what we do know from Himmler’s diary is that he will visit concentration camps and gas chambers and then very soon after, 1 2 days after, will come here and have the most lockdown private meetings with Hitler.

Usually there’s a stenographer, there’s other people in the room when he meets Himmler. It’s always as the Germans say, under four eyes.  Meaning there are only two people in the room. We don’t have the notes from those meetings. We don’t know exactly.  It doesn’t bear thinking about what they would have been discussing.  But it seems likely given how much Hitler at this very place rants about the Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy that the Jews have infected the governments of the Brits and the Americans that they’re controlling Stalin that

when they decide that they are going to exterminate the Jews of Europe that the person in charge of it, Heinrich Himmler, with in his special secret meetings with Adolf Hitler would certainly have talked about it. In my opinion, there is no doubt that Hitler would have known the ins and outs of this.  And it’s Heinrich Himmler who makes two very important speeches uh in regards to the final solution to the SS in Poznan.

Yes, uh Poznan, as the Germans would have called it, in the town hall. He’s surrounded by SS leaders and he talks about the the hard and dirty work that they have to do. And he also talks about how it has to be done in complete secrecy. They These meetings were not supposed to ever be known about to the likes of you and I.

Everything was supposed to be locked down and kept very secret. This is why it was only people that he really trusted in there. And it’s not until years later that a recording of these speeches was actually found and that’s why we we know for sure that he was very well aware, of course, as the head of the SS, but that several other people were.

And I’ll never be able to say how many of the details he spoke about with Hitler here, but it’s unlikely that it was none. It’s unlikely that it was nothing.  Dissent against Hitler within Germany had already beg.un prior to the outbreak of World W4r II. But the disastrous situation on the Eastern Front further convinced some in the Wehrmacht that drastic action was needed.

Hitler had to go. In 1943, a young lieutenant colonel joined the slowly growing resistance, Claus von Stauffenberg. Drawn to Hitler’s anti Versailles Treaty views, he at first welcomed the conquest of Poland and the fall of France. But, upon hearing about the atrocities committed by the SS on the Eastern Front and seeing Germany’s staggering casualties, his loyalties began to shift.

Stauffenberg would become the central figure in the most daring a.ssa.ssination attempt on Hitler’s life.  Johnny, by 1944, it’s now no longer if, it’s when the war is going to end. How do people in Germany react to this looming fate that’s that’s set to be falling them pretty soon?  I mean, you’re going to find a wide variety of opinions.

Of course, Germany had a huge left wing. There’s been a lot of communist resistance through the years of the Nazis, and a few of these people are looking across to Stalin and kind of waiting to be rescued. There’s an excitement there, but frankly, that’s a minority. A lot of people I mean, their cities have been b0mbed. Hundreds of thousands of people have been made homeless, but rather than breaking their resolve, as Germany tried to do in the UK and failed, well, the allies found the same thing.

The b0mbings just got people to dig in their heels, to want to f1ght, to want to win, especially with the promises of Nazi wonder w3apons.  Yeah, the propaganda, yeah. Absolutely. But, there is also resistance, underground resistance coming from within    Hitler’s inner circle.  Yes.

There is a growing kind of est4blishment resistance movement, which I know sounds a little bit strange. There have been many attempts on his life. Actually, a b0mb very nearly got him in 1939, but that was a man acting entirely alone, Georg Elser. This est4blishment resistance, what do I mean by that? Already in 1938, there’s a group within the upper echelons of the Wehrmacht who have decided this guy isn’t great, but they they start to flag a little bit.

I mean, they do f1ght his war for him. And then in March of 1944, there are two attempts on his life. One of them, a b0mb that’s planted on his plane, disguised as two bottles of cognac, that fails to go off. And then about a week later, in the middle of Berlin, in the old Prussian armory, Hitler’s come to visit an exhibition, and a man inside of there has wired himself up with a su1cide b0mb on a 10 minute timer, but Hitler doesn’t spend 10 minutes there.

The chap goes to the bathroom, takes it off, and Hitler has, once again, unknowingly survived yet another attempt on his life. And there are many more.  It’s always these fine margins, isn’t it? But then, around the summer of 1944, a man named von Stauffenberg enters the fray.  Yes, and he gets very close.  In 1944, Stauffenberg volunteered to a.ssa.ssinate Hitler himself.

Three previous failed attempts on the Führer’s life had neither discouraged nor dissuaded the young officer of his desire to remove Germany’s leader. On the 20th of July, Stauffenberg was summoned to the Wolf’s Lair for a military briefing, where he’d be within meters of his target. This was his chance. Arriving at Hitler’s headquarters on an excruciatingly hot summer’s day, Stauffenberg carried two briefcases containing explos1ves.

So, Johnny, Stauffenberg has got himself close to Hitler, where we’re stood here.  Yes, this is where it happens. But, as we know, it doesn’t quite go according to plan.  Why?  Uh, he’s beset by several problems. So, he wakes up around 6:00 in the morning in Berlin, he’s on a flight over to the Wolf’s Lair, he’s got his meeting, kind of ready to go, he’s got his plan in his head, and then a few things happen.

The meeting gets bumped up, it’s going to take place half an hour earlier, and you have to remember this guy’s only got three fingers left, so arming these two b0mbs, it’s going to be difficult. And in fact, he does manage to slip away, but he’s only got time to arm one of the b0mbs. So, we’re going to have half the explos1ve power.

The other big problem is a problem that’s been really here for years. It gets hot. It is humid. There’s a lot of mosquitoes. It’s uncomfortable. And 20th of July, peak summer, it’s a horrible hot day. And so, instead of having the meeting in one of the newly fortified bunkers, Hitler’s only just come back here because these fortified bunkers are almost ready.

The meeting takes place in It’s often said that it’s a wooden hut. It’s not only made of wood. There’s a bit of concrete, bit of brick, but it’s certainly not a great big bunker.  Well, we’ve got some of the concrete here from the rubble. In fact, this huge slab covered by snow almost represents could represent the table in which Hitler’s looking at his map.

Tell me exactly what happens on that day.  So, this is one of Hitler’s situation meetings. There’s going to be several Wehrmacht officers here. Anyone who’s important for making these supposedly key decisions, these terrible decisions that Hitler’s making at this time. And Stauffenberg, he has very poor hearing by this stage as a result of of his injuries from earlier in the war.

And so, he says he’s going to need to stand right next to Hitler just to make sure that he can hear him, that he can take part in the meeting.  So, Stauffenberg gets himself close cuz he can’t hear. He’s right next to Hitler. Is that where he places the briefcase just under him?  Yeah, right beneath the table, as close to Adolf Hitler as possible.

And he he does actually take part in the meeting  for a little bit, but then he says, “Oh, he has to make a call.” And he leaves. And the plan, of course, is that he’s not just going to leave. He’s not making a call at all. He’s going to hop into his car,    drive to the nearby airfield, fly back to Berlin, and the resistance movement are going to enact this this top secret Valkyrie plan, kept secret from the Wehrmacht, and the plan actually is what to do in case of a popular uprising against the Nazis, but they’re going to

use these orders to effectively stage a coup.  And at 12:42 on the dot, the b0mb goes off.  Yes, there is a great bang. Hitler, who at this point his eyesight is not so good, he has his magnifying gla.ss, he’s leaning over the table, he’s very close to the map. Four people are k1lled in the explosion, but not Hitler.

And one of the reasons is because the briefcase has been moved.  Yes, after Stauffenberg leaves the room and starts on his way secretly back to Berlin, one of the officers had this you know, this bag under the table, it’s in the way, so he just shifted over. The one of the other reasons is, yeah, we’re not in one of those great big concrete bunkers, the explosion is not contained in a small room, but it’s able to kind of blast out into the trees that surround us.

And it also affords Stauffenberg time to get out because the people around the Wolfsschanze, they don’t even necessarily know that a b0mb’s gone off yet, despite the noise.  No, explosions here are actually not that uncommon, the Organisation Todt are still working here, still reinforcing the bunkers, building those great big thick concrete walls.

And actually because so many outsiders have been coming in to work on this project, the initial thinking in the very early minutes is, it must be one of those workers. But quite quickly they start to realize, well, who’s the one person who left the room?  Yeah.  Stauffenberg. And so, they do realize that something is afoot.

Remarkably, we actually have photographs of this room on the day, of the aftermath of the explosion. Now, Hitler, he doesn’t suffer life thre4tening injuries as a result, and just by chance, Mussolini is visiting the Wolfsschanze this day, so you can see Göring inspecting the damage here. And if you look here Look at this one.

Here is Adolf Hitler next to Mussolini on the day It’s like a a little boy showing his friend you know, what happened. Look what happened to me.  this?  Yeah, absolutely.  incredible. So, Mussolini was literally just arriving the b0mb goes off. What a  What a weird coincidence, huh?  What an incredible coincidence.

And you can see here the the remnants of the table. It’s been absolutely I mean, the the the the site is is completely wrecked. It almost It’s It’s unbelievable.  see parts of the roof have come down, the walls are damaged. Stauffenberg, when he heard the b0mb blast go off, when he saw the smoke come up, he thought there’s no way anybody could have survived that.

And what I find interesting is he’s he’s almost pleased. You can see his face here. He’s almost He’s He’s pleased showing this. Look, if I can survive this, I can survive anything.  Absolutely. He’s excited, and this b0mb blast is really going to harden his resolve.  Yeah.  The July Plot failed. Stauffenberg and his accomplices were quickly rounded up, with many being executed, including the young officer.

In the following weeks and months, a witch h.unt was launched across Germany, with thousands being k1lled. Hitler saw his surv1val as divine intervention, reinforcing his belief that the war’s failures were due to the treachery of the Wehrmacht, rather than his own incompetence. The German army, which had always retained a certain level of independence, now came fully under the control of the Nazi Party.

As Hitler continued to reorganize his forces, the Soviets’ rapid advance westwards continued. On the 17th of August, 1944, Stalin’s forces crossed into the heartland of the German Reich for the very first time. His empire crumbling around him, Hitler began to close himself off from the world.    So, here we are.

The biggest one here, and for the the biggest ego, the biggest personality. This was Adolf Hitler’s bunker.  Wow, still original b0mb blast door. So, it’s conceivable that Adolf Hitler may have touched this. It’s incredible. So, when does work begin on this absolutely gigantic bunker in front of us?  So, you’ve got two phases, right? That initial phase where they build a smaller bunker, that’s going to be ready for the invasion of the Soviet Union for June 1941 for when he first arrives here.

And then as things go not quite so well, Hitler moves out of the Wolf’s Lair for a few months while they build this these huge concrete bunkers. Essentially a huge concrete sh3ll that’s going to going to surround that inner core where he has been spending most of his time, most of his nights in bed.

Over 800 of them will be here from the summer of 1941 up to the time he leaves here November ’44.  And of course, you know, towards this point in the war he becomes more and more isolated. And this is almost like the perfect isolation chamber.  Absolutely, yeah. The the metaphor is a bit on the nose, isn’t it? I mean, he’s he’s kind of locked away in here.

And as each year progresses, his health deteriorates. It’s thought that perhaps he was suffering from Parkinson’s. Certainly his left hand and left leg are constantly shaking. Uh that could also be the fact that he’s on the entire time more and more    medication. I guess is the word that he would have used, but to be honest, dru9s.

Yeah, his he has a a doctor who supplies him with all sorts of things for his intestines and his stomach and  Yes, it it’s quite telling the books that he actually has inside of here above his bed. He’s got two books on stomach health and a guide book to London. Should that eventually become a success should he need to know his way around? And this this doctor that he’s with Theodore Morell one one of the other people in the Wolf’s Lair gives him the nickname of the Black Spitzen Minister, the Imperial Injection Minister. I mean, yeah,

Hitler’s basically like a pincushion towards the end of the war. One of the things he’s injected with that puts him in the supposed good mood dream like state is uh well, extracted from the testicles of a steer.  What?  Not not words most people would like to hear, but Morell says, “Yeah, I do that quite often and puts him in a good mood.

”  It’s essentially Hitler’s isolation chamber.  It’s actually very simple. You’ll find people like Goering and Martin Bormann here who bring a bit of finery with them. They kind of they either like to be seen like that or they like their stuff around them, but Hitler wants to give the image that, you know, this is a kind of an outpost on the front line and I mean you have very simple furniture.

The cr4zy thing for me is that, you know, we know how cold this place gets. He doesn’t actually have this place heated. It’s only well, only a little bit. So, up to 10 or 11 Celsius only. I guess the image is is that he’s suffering alongside the German people, but it’s again, it only adds to this delusion.    Johnny, I feel  like I need to take a moment just to just to take this in because as formidable as it looked from the front, it’s really when you get to the back that you just realize how gigantic this

structure would have been.  Yeah, we are very lucky to be able to stand up here to take a look at it. And of course,  yeah, this probably could have survived a a direct hit from a b0mber, but they weren’t designed to survive explos1ves being  packed on the inside. And so it is the Germans themselves who destr0yed this.

Nothing could be left for the allies as they were encroaching German territory that would be useful. And so it is in January 1945, so Hitler’s already been gone for about 2 months, that this place is just b00m, blown up. And I mean it was a huge explosion. In the nearby town  Rastenburg, they weren’t warned.

They heard this ma.ssive bang. Windows were blown out. But at this time, people in Rastenburg will be packing up their things,    evacuating, fleeing the city as the Soviets make their advance.  I’m just trying to think about Hitler’s emotional state and physical state at this point in in time. Yes, he surrounds  himself with people who cover up the facts, but he does know that the Russians are encroaching.

He absolutely knows that they’re on the way. I I would suppose he’s feeling ever more paranoid. I mean, certainly people have been trying to k1ll him, and there are now millions of those people approaching this location on the way here. But he’s also getting more and more sick, more and more detached from reality as the war worsens.

Right. And so the walls are closing in. He’s dru9ged up. He knows this this we’re talking a matter of weeks now. Do they have to dr4g him out of here kicking and screaming? Because this is a huge moment for him. He he has to leave. It’s an admission of defeat.  It is, I suppose, but he never thinks he’s going to be defeated, I suppose.

They they they keep talking about wonder w3apons, the final victory,  digging in for the winter. This is certainly what the propaganda is saying. And we do know that around this time, around December ’44, January ’45, he’s talking with Albert Speer as well about how well, they are going to f1ght to the last man in Berlin, and that he quite likes that image of being the last  person, you know, defending Germany, defending this ideology.

So, he knows, but he also doesn’t want to give up. He wants to keep  clinging on to something. It’s like at every single moment he has to cling on to something, some vision. He has to create a vision for himself.  Absolutely, and he’s always going to stick to his word. It’s very telling that when he does take his own life,  30th of April, ’45, the enemy forces are only a couple of hundred meters away.

And as we look over this wreckage in front of us, it really is symbolic of the decay of Hitler’s mind and body.  Absolutely.  On the 20th of November, 1944,  Adolf Hitler left the Wolf’s Lair for the last time. Two months later, Soviet forces would arrive at the complex, only to find  it empty and in ruin.

The war was lost, but the k1lling would  continue. Hitler, a broken man, but still refusing  to accept reality, would condemn millions of his own people to further suffering until his final  days.  Mhm.