The Wolf's Lair

Hitler's Headquarters on the Eastern Front – An Illustrated Guide

John Grehan

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526753120
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Set deep in the heart of the Masurian woods of northern Poland, in what was formally East Prussia, lies a vast complex of ruined bunkers and shelters that once constituted Hitler’s headquarters – the Wolfsschanze or Wolf’s Lair – for Germany’s attack upon the Soviet Union in 1941. Built in conditions of the utmost secrecy, the Wolfsschanze was surrounded by fences and guard posts, its paths and tracks were hidden, and buildings were camouflaged and concealed with artificial grass and trees planted on their flat roofs. As the war in Eastern Europe continued, so the Wolf’s Lair grew in scale and sophistication, until it’s 2.5 square miles incorporated more than eighty buildings including massive reinforced bunkers. It was also at the Wolfsschanze that Colonel von Stauffenberg almost killed Hitler in the summer of 1944. That building is still there, its roof sitting on its collapsed walls. With the aid of a unique collection of color photographs, the reader is guided around the Wolfsschanze as it appears today, with each building and its purpose identified. Laced with numerous personal accounts of the installation and of Hitler’s routines, supplemented with contemporary images, the Wolfsschanze is brought to life once more. The Wolfsschanze, however, was not the only military complex in this small part of the Eastern Front. Once Hitler has established his command centre at the Wolfsschanze, in effect the home of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (or military high command), the other branches of the German armed forces and civil authorities quickly followed suit. Just a few miles away, for example, the German Army built its own operational headquarters at Mauerwald – a complex which amounted to an even greater concentration of buildings, many of which remain intact and open to the public. Göring duly ordered that the Luftwaffe’s headquarters, codenamed Robinson, be built further out near the current Russian border, whilst Himmler’s SS headquarters at Hochwald and that for Hans Lammers’ Reich Chancellery were situated back nearer the Wolfsschanze. For the first time, these astonishing sites, five complexes from which the war on the Eastern Front was directed, are shown and described in one book, providing a comprehensive survey of the installations whose gigantic scale still evinces awe and wonder.

Chapter 1

Führerhauptquartiere Wolfsschanze

The German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 shocked the world; it was though, hardly a surprise. Hitler had made his intentions quite clear many years earlier. After his failed coup in 1923, he had been incarcerated in Landsberg Prison, where he began work on his quasi-autobiographical book, Mein Kampf, in which he set out his political ideology and his future hopes for Germany. In this he wrote, with reference to the First World War: ‘If new territory were to be acquired in Europe it must have been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword and thus provide the nation with its daily bread.’

Hitler was fixated with the acquisition of more territory for the expanding German nation – the infamous Lebensraum, or living space – and he made it quite clear where that living space would be found: ‘We shall soon reach a point beyond which the resources of our soil can no longer be exploited,’ he wrote, ‘and at the same time we shall reach a point beyond which our man-power cannot develop . . . If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.’

Remarkably, he was able to find a justification for seizing Russian territory: ‘One must calmly and squarely face the truth that it certainly cannot be part of the dispensation of Divine Providence to give a fifty times larger share of the soil of this world to one nation than to another. In considering this state of affairs to-day, one must not allow existing political frontiers to distract attention from what ought to exist on principles of strict justice. If this earth has sufficient room for all, then we ought to have that share of the soil which is absolutely necessary for our existence.’

Having stated his beliefs in this fashion and repeated such philosophies many times during the intervening years, Hitler felt impelled to fulfil these promises to his people. He would give them their Lebensraum and would clear the Slavs from the territory he won – and it would be won by the sword. Few then, could have doubted that at some point, Germany would invade the Soviet Union.

However, one day in 1941, while sitting in the Führerbunker in the Wolfsschanze alone with his friend and photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler gave quite a different explanation for the attack upon the Soviet Union: ‘Through a concatenation of circumstances, I was compelled to take the first step in what is a war of prevention – and let me emphasise, it must be explained with the utmost clarity to the German people, that is indeed a war of prevention. It was vital that I get my blow in first, before the Russians struck . . . We need oil for our aircraft, oil for our armour, and the thrust towards the Russian oilfields must at all costs succeed.’1

Hitler’s first step eastward was taken on 1 September 1939, when he invaded Poland. Stalin and his acolytes had been duped into a pact with Germany that enabled the Führer to attack Poland knowing that the Soviets would join him in occupying and partitioning the country. When the subjugation of Poland had been accomplished, German and Soviet forces faced each other across the agreed demarcation line. While Stalin believed that Hitler had achieved his ends and that he would honour the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler was planning the invasion of Russia.

In the autumn of 1940, Dr Fritz Todt, a construction engineer who had formed a civil and military engineering organisation, Organisation Todt (OT), and who in March of that year had been made Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition, was instructed to find a suitable site for the establishment of a headquarters complex close to the border with the Soviets from where the Führer and his staff could direct the assault upon the USSR.

Todt set off for East Prussia, taking with him his army adjutant, Hauptmann (later Generalleutnant) Gerhard Engel, and other headquarters staff and construction specialists. After a prolonged search, a site was found deep inside the forest of Görlitz, 5 miles to the east of the town of Rastenburg, which is today’s Polish town of Kętrzyn, and 50 miles from the Soviet border. There would be built the largest of all the Führer headquarters (Führerhauptquartiere), which during its secret construction was called the Chemische Werke Askania (Askania Chemical Works) or Anlage Nord (Camp, or installation or facility, North) but would soon be known as the Wolfsschanze – the Wolf’s Lair.

There were a number of reasons why the Görlitz forest was chosen by Todt. To the east is the great Mazurian Lakes system, which forms a 70km-long natural water obstacle against ground-based troops. Also to the east, between two of the larger lakes, is the Boyen fortress (more of which in a later chapter) which was situated in an important strategic position and had played a part in the momentous Battle of Tannenberg against the Russians in the First World War. There were also barracks and garrison towns in the general vicinity. One-third of the area was woodland and it was only sparsely populated, both of which helped with security and concealment.

The need for a static base close to the centre of operations had become clear during the invasion of Poland in 1939. Before the outbreak of hostilities, no measures had been taken to establish a forward command post for the war for either Hitler or the High Command of the Armed Forces, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). This meant that the leadership travelled around on Hitler’s special command train, the Führersonderzug Amerika, while the senior staff of the army, the Heer, and the air force, the Luftwaffe, were sitting in their own respective headquarters. Clearly, this was an unsatisfactory arrangement.

Though Hitler had been persuaded to establish a settled base for the invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940, the first of the static Führerhauptquartiere, the Felsennest (Rocky Nest), was small and cramped, with just four rooms. It would be quite different for the campaign in the East. The Wolfsschanze and the corresponding Army headquarters at nearby Mauerwald would be largest and most complex of all the command installations. During the war, 12.9 million working days, each lasting between eight and sixteen hours, were spent on building the various Führerhauptquartiere across Europe. The workforce reached 1.5 million as the war progressed.

Hitler officially ordered the construction of the Wolfsschanze and Mauerwald on 15 November 1940, with the instruction that the work had to be complete by the following April. Work soon began on the Wolfsschanze. The forest was cleared of inhabitants and buildings and a forbidden zone with a radius of 10km extended around the site surrounded by barbed wire and fences, and the road from Rastenburg was given a new asphalt surface. Outside and inside the main perimeter fence were infantry trenches, dugouts, munitions depots and wooden barracks for the guards and a fire brigade crew. Inside the fence there was also a minefield approximately 150m wide as well as camouflaged watch towers that stood up to 35m high. At each entrance to the Wolfsschanze was a barrier, on both sides of which were displayed signs that read, ‘Stop Military Object. No Admittance to Civilians’. Once permitted through the barriers, which were guarded night and day, other signs warned visitors: ‘It is forbidden to leave this road. Danger to Life. Commanding Officer’. Similar signs were placed all around the perimeter.

The use of the Askania Chemical Works as a ‘front’ enabled the legitimate purchase of materials from unsuspecting contractors. These included the firm Hoyer from Hamburg, which produced monolithic reinforced concrete structures; the Draiger (or Draeger) company, which dealt with ventilation and filtering systems; Klaus Ackermann, which made reinforced concrete blocks; and the company Warenvertrieb GmbH, which dealt with barracks, warehouses and service structures.

Thousands of construction workers of the Organisation Todt and the Hochtief Aktiengesellschaft were transported into the area under the auspices of the Konstrukionsburo.2 The companies Wayss & Freytag and Dyckerhoff & Widmann, which specialised in bunker construction, acted as general contractors for the construction work. All the workers all wore greenish-brown uniforms that had been taken from the Czech army in 1939 following the German invasion of that country.

The former Hindenburg Barracks at Rastenburg.

The area around Rastenburg was soon populated by work detachments, with some of the workers being accommodated in the town itself and in the local Hindenburg Army barracks. The Organisation Todt also had a building materials warehouse at Rastenburg train st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Geoff Walden
• A Cautionary Note
• 1. Führerhauptquartiere Wolfsschanze
• 2. Inside the Lair of the Wolf
• 3. Oberkommando des Heeres Mauerwald
• 4. Feldkommandostelle Hochwald
• 5. Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, Robinson
• 6. Other Headquarters in East Prussia
• 7. Führerhauptquartier Werwolf
• 8. Valkyrie – The 20 July 1944 Assassination Attempt on Hitler at the Wolfsschanze
• 9. The End in the East
• Notes
• Sources