Underground factories of the Third Reich. Hitler's underground citadels: the history of the Nazis' secret military factories

An underground city that is not afraid of not only a collapse, but also a nuclear war, an unsurpassed creation of military engineers of the Third Reich. “Earthworm Camp” has revealed some of its secrets.

To NTV correspondent Viktor Kuzmin for the first time we managed to visit one of the most mysterious objects of the Second World War, which is associated with the disappearance without a trace of an entire SS division and even the Amber Room.

It’s easy to get lost in the passages and tunnels of the reinforced concrete kingdom of “Regenwurmlager”; even today there is no exact map of it. For diggers, this fortified area in the northwestern part of Poland is a real paradise. True, at the entrance there is something completely different written.

Stanislav Vitvitsky, conductor: “Original armored doors, the wing weighs half a ton.”

“Welcome to Hell” - an inscription written by some digger greets everyone who enters these buildings. Two floors of a combat bunker and a concrete staircase down. About 100 of the 300 such autonomous points with flamethrowers and grenade launchers were built along the entire line. Several hundred steps lead to a 40-meter depth. “There has never been Russian television here,” our guide notes.

After the First World War, the border between Germany and Poland passed in the north-west of Poland, and in this area the neighbor seemed to have wedged itself into German territory. From here, in a straight line, it’s a little more than 100 kilometers to Berlin.

Fearing a threat from the east, the Germans began to build a unique underground military structure in this area, stretching for tens of kilometers. But as history has shown, this line never became a line of defense.

There is no fortified area equal to this in the world even now. Corridors, casemates, stations, railways, power plants - all this is the “Regenwurmcamp”, or “Earthworm Camp”, which dug up an area of hundreds of square kilometers with its communications.

Stanislav Vitvitsky, conductor: “We have reached the main road and are at the Heinerys station.”

You need to check the map periodically. It was at this station that Hitler arrived in 1934. He was then pleased with what he saw, but, appearing here again four years later, he ordered construction to be frozen.

Germany was already preparing not to defend itself, but to attack. By this time, the work was only 30% completed. According to the general plan, the defense line was planned to be launched in 1951. How grandiose the object must have been, if even the third built is amazing in size.

Stanislav Vitvitsky, conductor: “In 1980, they planned to store nuclear waste here, putting it directly into bunkers. But the local residents unanimously said: no, no and no.”

Even after several decades, the mystery of the “Earthworm Camp” has not been fully studied. There is a rough map of the corridors compiled by diggers, but it does not give a complete picture. It is not clear where some of the moves lead. They say that some of them could lead to the Reich Chancellery.

There were also a lot of ground objects. For example, a moving island on one of the reservoirs and drawbridges. But the secret construction plan was never discovered.

There is always someone present here; groups of diggers from all over Europe are interested in the object. In the surrounding villages you can hire a guide for several days, but amateurs are not advised to go underground.

In the 90s, a tourist died here after staying in the tunnels for the night. They say that they did not find the Soviet foreman who tried to ride a motorcycle here on a dare. German engineers built securely and with all sorts of secret traps. They pioneered the use of waterproof concrete and string slabs, and the drainage and ventilation systems are still in operation.

In 1944, this was the site of the Daimer Benz military aircraft factory, which employed more than two thousand prisoners of war. At the end of the war, the site was guarded by boys from the Hitler Youth and old men from the Volkssturm.

In January 1945, a Soviet tank brigade bypassed the line along a rural road without firing a shot. Although local history buffs claim that there was a battle here, and the remnants of the SS unit “Totenkopf” then left along the corridors.

However, official data says that in the entire history of the Regenwurmlager, four young Poles died while exploring the structure after the war.

The Nazi “Earthworm Camp”, its existence, has been known since the end of the war. But it still represents one of the most burning secrets of the Third Reich, and most questions have not yet been answered.

For the first time in the vastness of the former USSR, people began to talk about the “Earthworm Camp”, in German “Regenwurmlager”, in 1995. But the information that was published in the popular magazine “Around the World” was not widely disseminated then. But, thanks to the development of the Internet, more and more publications began to appear on the virtual network about the existence of the ruins of an underground Nazi city, lost in the forests of northwestern Poland, not far from its border with Germany. Moreover, unlike most other articles, in this case we are talking about a fact that is completely reliable and accessible for review. Which, however, not only does not reduce, but, on the contrary, increases interest in it from amateurs.

"Earthworm Camp" is the largest and most extensive of the known underground fortifications in the world. It is dug in a triangle between the rivers Verta - Obra - Oder. And the famous entrance is located in the forests near the Polish city of Miedzyrzecz.

Until 1945, this land belonged to Germany and was transferred to Poland only at the end of the war. Therefore, the Nazis had the opportunity to build a gigantic underground structure in strict secrecy. Presumably, underground work began back in 1927, and after coming to power they were accelerated.

The “camp” was probably given great importance, although no one knows why it was dug. They are only making guesses. Most likely, the “Camp” was assigned the role of a fortified area, which was supposed to serve as a springboard for an attack on Eastern Europe and protect Germany along the main strategic axis: Moscow - Warsaw - Berlin. It was from here that German troops moved to Warsaw, and then to Moscow.

1945, winter - after the capture of this territory, Soviet specialists could not ignore the strange object. But, having discovered many diverging tunnels, they were afraid to penetrate them to a sufficiently large distance. After all, the war is not over yet. The object could have been mined, and SS men might have been hiding in the tunnels. But at the end of the war, Soviet units of the Northern Group of Forces were stationed in the Miedzyrzech area. Their representatives also tried to conduct reconnaissance. However, being wary of mines, they did not show much zeal, so they did not achieve success. The thick armor door was welded shut with an autogen gun, and they forgot about the “Camp.”

The next attempt was made only in the 1980s. Then the Soviet military carried out engineering and sapper reconnaissance, but were unable to complete it. The required volume of work turned out to be unbearable due to lack of funds. That’s why these days, from time to time, only amateurs go down into the dungeon, especially since they are not able to explore an object of such a scale.

It is therefore not surprising that not much is known about Camp Earthworm. We do not even know the true dimensions of this underground structure. Apparently it is a gigantic labyrinth of many tunnels with countless branches radiating to the north, south and west. They, like the metro, have electrified double-track narrow-gauge railways. But what the electric trains carried along them, and who their passengers were, is unknown. There is information that the Fuhrer visited the “Earthworm Camp” twice, but for what purpose is also not clear. Presumably, here are the keys to many of the secrets of the Third Reich, for example, warehouses of works of art and other treasures looted from occupied countries, not to mention stockpiles of weapons and explosives.

One of those who became interested in the “Earthworm Camp” was Colonel Alexander Liskin, a military prosecutor at the time, who visited these places in the early 1960s. At that time, the outskirts of Miedzyrzecz, in the area of the small settlement of Kenypicy, were impenetrable forests, strewn with minefields, entangled with barbed wire and strewn with the ruins of concrete fortifications. The colonel was intrigued by the stories of local residents about the forest lake Krzyva with a strange floating island in the center. On military maps of the Third Reich, this place was marked with the name “Earthworm Camp.” He came across its remains while following a forest road to the location of one of the communications brigades of the Northern Group of Soviet Forces.

This is how Colonel Liskin described what he saw: “After 10 minutes of walking, the wall of the former camp, made of huge boulders, appeared. About a hundred meters from it, near the road, like a concrete pillbox, a gray two-meter dome of some kind of engineering structure. On the other side are the ruins of what was probably a mansion. On the wall, as if cutting off the road from the military camp, almost no traces of bullets and shrapnel are visible.”

They say that two regiments, a school of the SS division “Totenkopf” and other units were based in this place. When it became clear to the Germans that they might be surrounded, the Nazis hastened to retreat. This was done literally within a few hours, although the only road along which it would be possible to retreat to the west was already occupied by Soviet tanks. It was difficult to imagine how and where it was possible for almost an entire division to escape from this natural trap in a few hours. Most likely, the Nazis used the underground tunnels built under the camp to save themselves.

Liskin also learned that near the lake, in a reinforced concrete box, an insulated outlet of an underground power cable was discovered. Instruments showed that he was under voltage of 380 volts. A concrete well was also found, into which water fell from a great height and disappeared somewhere in the bowels of the earth. Supposedly, there is a hidden power plant here, the turbines of which are turned by this water. They said that the lake was somehow connected to the surrounding bodies of water, and there were many of them there. However, the sappers who found the cable and the well were unable to solve this mystery.

The colonel managed to explore the shores of the lake by boat, because it turned out to be impossible to do this by land. On the eastern shore he saw several man-made hills that looked like waste heaps. They say that inside they are riddled with secret passages and manholes. Liskin also paid attention to small puddles. The sappers were sure that these were traces of flooded entrances to the dungeon. But of particular interest was an island in the middle of the lake, overgrown with spruce and willow trees. Its area was no more than 50 square meters. He moved slowly along the water surface, but did not swim far. It seemed that the island was slowly drifting, as if standing at anchor.

Liskin also examined the entrance to the tunnel, which was discovered by sappers and disguised as a hill, and came to the following conclusion: “Already at first approximation, it became clear that this was a serious structure, moreover, probably with various kinds of traps, including mines.” The sappers told him that once a tipsy sergeant major decided to ride a motorcycle through the mysterious tunnel as a bet, but never returned. The military ventured 10 kilometers through the tunnel and discovered several previously unknown entrances.

Later, other groups of military men also descended into the labyrinth. They discovered railway tracks, cables for power supply, many branches, walled up, and much more. According to Captain Cherepanov, who visited the “Lair,” “it was man-made, representing an excellent implementation of engineering.” It had everything needed for off-grid living for many years. Cherepanov and a group of military men descended into the dungeon through the pillbox along steel spiral staircases. By the light of acid lanterns they entered the underground metro. “This was precisely the metro, since a railway track was laid along the bottom of the tunnel. The ceiling had no signs of soot. There is a neat layout of cables along the walls.

As you can see, the locomotive here was driven by electricity... The beginning of the tunnel was somewhere under a forest lake. The other part was directed to the west - to the Oder River. Almost immediately they found an underground crematorium. “Perhaps it was in his furnaces that the remains of the dungeon builders burned,” said Cherepanov.

It became known that both the height and width of the underground metro shaft are approximately three meters. Its walls and ceiling are made of reinforced concrete slabs, the floor is lined with rectangular stone slabs. The neck smoothly lowers and dives underground to a depth of 50 meters. Here the tunnels branch and intersect, and there are transport interchanges. The main highway ran in a westerly direction. Therefore, they suggested that perhaps it passes under the Oder. After all, it is only 60 km from Kenyitsa. It was hard to even imagine where it goes next and where its final station is. Perhaps the labyrinth was connected to the plant and strategic underground storage facilities located in the area of the villages of Vysoka and Peski, which are located two to five kilometers west and north of Lake Krzyva.

It is interesting that at its bottom in clear weather it is possible to see something similar to a hatch. It is called the "eye of the underworld." Probably, the hatch was made so that the labyrinth, if necessary, could be flooded, and very quickly. But if the hatch is closed to this day, it means that it was not used in January 1945. Therefore, it can be assumed that the underground city was not flooded, but only “mothballed until a special occasion.” What do its horizons and labyrinths store and what await?

According to the testimony of the former chief of staff of the brigade, Colonel P.N. Kabanov, shortly after the first inspection of the camp, the commander of the Northern Group of Forces, Colonel General P.S. Maryakhin, made a special visit to Kenyitsa and personally went down to the underground metro. After his visit and numerous examinations by specialists, the military began to develop a new vision of this military mystery, unusual in its scale. According to the engineering report, 44 km of underground communications were discovered and examined.

The history of the creation of the underground city was well known to Doctor Podbielski, a resident of Międzyrzecz, who was about 90 years old in the 1980s. This passionate local historian in the late 1940s - early 1950s, alone, at his own peril and risk, repeatedly descended underground through the discovered hole. He said that construction of the camp had been particularly active since 1933. And in 1937, Hitler himself came here from Berlin, and - the most curious thing - he allegedly arrived on the rails of a secret subway. In fact, from that time on, the underground city was considered to be put into use by the Wehrmacht and the SS.

Many wartime objects have been preserved on the surface around the lake. Among them are the ruins of a rifle complex and a hospital for the elite SS troops. All of them were built from reinforced concrete and refractory bricks. But the main objects are powerful pillboxes. Once upon a time, their reinforced concrete and steel domes were armed with large-caliber machine guns and cannons, and equipped with semi-automatic ammunition feeding mechanisms.

Under the meter-long armor of these caps, underground floors went to a depth of 30–50 m, in which there were sleeping and living quarters, ammunition and food warehouses, and communication centers. The approaches to the pillboxes were reliably covered with minefields, ditches, concrete gouges, barbed wire and engineering traps. A bridge led from the armored door into the pillbox, which, if necessary, could tip over under the feet of the uninitiated, and they would inevitably fall into the deep concrete well underneath.

Obviously, exploring the labyrinth of the “Earthworm Camp”, this “road to hell”, can present many more surprises. But this requires large funds. Most likely, neither Poland, nor Germany, nor Russia wants to spend them. In addition, there are probably reasons of a strategic nature. And small and poorly equipped groups of amateur researchers are not able to carry out serious reconnaissance.

This gives rise to claims that the labyrinth stretches all the way to Berlin, that it is one of the sites where the Nazis tried to create atomic weapons, and that its tunnels store the treasures of the Third Reich, looted around the world. Some researchers believe that it is in the labyrinths of the “Earthworm Camp” that the famous “Amber Room” is hidden. It is likely that some documentary traces have been preserved in the archives of Germany, and perhaps even evidence of the builders and users of this military-engineering phenomenon, but nothing is known about them yet...

Interesting article about the dungeons of the Third Reich

There have been, are, and will continue to be legends about this area for a long time, each darker than the other.

“Let’s start with this,” says one of the pioneers of the local catacombs, Colonel Alexander Liskin, “that near a forest lake, in a reinforced concrete box, an insulated output of an underground power cable was discovered, instrument measurements on the cores of which showed the presence of an industrial current of 380 volts. Soon the sappers' attention was drawn to a concrete well, which swallowed water falling from a height. At the same time, intelligence reported that perhaps underground power communications were coming from Miedzyrzech. However, the presence of a hidden autonomous power plant, and also the fact that its turbines were rotated by water falling into the well, could not be ruled out. They said that the lake was somehow connected to the surrounding bodies of water, and there are many of them here.

Sappers discovered the entrance to the tunnel disguised as a hill. Already at a first approximation, it became clear that this was a serious structure, moreover, probably with various kinds of traps, including mines. They said that once a tipsy foreman on his motorcycle decided to take a bet through a mysterious tunnel. The reckless driver was never seen again.”

Whatever they say, one thing is indisputable: there is no more extensive and more ramified underground fortified area in the world than the one that was dug in the Warta-Obra-Oder river triangle more than half a century ago. Until 1945, these lands were part of Germany. After the collapse of the Third Reich they returned to Poland. Only then did Soviet specialists descend into the top-secret dungeon. We went down, were amazed at the length of the tunnels and left. No one wanted to get lost, explode, disappear into the giant concrete catacombs that stretched tens (!) kilometers to the north, south and west. No one could say for what purpose the double-track narrow-gauge railways were laid there, where and why the electric trains ran through endless tunnels with countless branches and dead ends, what they carried on their platforms, who the passengers were. However, it is known for certain that Hitler visited this underground reinforced concrete kingdom at least twice, coded under the name “RL” - Regenwurmlager - “Earthworm Camp”.

For what?

Any study of a mysterious object is subject to this question. Why was the giant dungeon built? Why are hundreds of kilometers of electrified railways laid in it, and a good dozen other “why?” and why?"

A local old-timer - a former tanker and now a taxi driver named Yuzef, taking with him a fluorescent flashlight, undertook to take us to one of the twenty-two underground stations. All of them were once designated by male and female names: “Dora”, “Martha”, “Emma”, “Bertha”. The closest one to Miedzyrzecz is “Henrik”. Our guide claims that it was to his platform that Hitler arrived from Berlin, from here to go over the surface to his field headquarters near Rastenberg - “Wolfschanze”. This has its own logic - the underground route from Berlin made it possible to secretly leave the Reich Chancellery. And the “Wolf’s Lair” is only a few hours away by car.

Jozef drives his Polonaise along a narrow highway southwest of the city. In the village of Kalava we turn towards the Scharnhorst bunker. This is one of the strongholds of the Pomeranian Wall defensive system. And the places in the area are idyllic and do not fit in with these military words: hilly copses, poppies in the rye, swans in lakes, storks on the roofs, pine forests burning from the inside with the sun, roe deer roaming.

WELCOME TO HELL!

A picturesque hill with an old oak tree on top was crowned with two steel armored caps. Their massive, smoothed cylinders with slots looked like Teutonic knightly helmets, “forgotten” under the canopy of an oak tree.
The western slope of the hill ended with a concrete wall one and a half times the height of a man, into which was embedded an armored hermetic door the size of a third of an ordinary door and several air intake openings, again covered with armored shutters. They were the gills of an underground monster. Above the entrance there is an inscription sprayed from a can of paint: “Welcome to hell!” - "Welcome to Hell!"

Under the watchful eye of the machine gun embrasure of the flank battle, we approach the armored door and open it with a long special key. The heavy but well-oiled door easily swings open, and another loophole looks into your chest - frontal combat. “If you entered without a pass, you received a burst of machine gun fire,” says her empty, unblinking gaze. This is the entrance vestibule chamber. Once upon a time, its floor treacherously collapsed, and the uninvited guest flew into the well, as was practiced in medieval castles. Now it is securely fastened, and we turn into a narrow side corridor that leads into the bunker, but after a few steps is interrupted by the main gas lock. We leave it and find ourselves at a checkpoint, where the guard once checked the documents of everyone entering and kept the entrance hermetic door at gunpoint. Only after this can you enter the corridor leading to the combat casemates, covered with armored domes. In one of them there is still a rusty rapid-fire grenade launcher, in another there was a flamethrower installation, in the third there were heavy machine guns. Here is the commander’s “cabin” - the “Führer-raum”, periscope enclosures, a radio room, map storage, toilets and a washbasin, as well as disguised emergency exit.

On the floor below there are warehouses for consumable ammunition, a tank with a fire mixture, an entrance trap chamber, also known as a punishment cell, a sleeping compartment for the duty shift, a filter-ventilation enclosure... Here is the entrance to the underworld: wide - four meters in diameter - a concrete well goes vertically down to the depth of a ten-story Houses. The flashlight beam illuminates the water at the bottom of the mine. The concrete staircase descends along the shaft in steep, narrow flights.

“There are a hundred and fifty steps,” says Jozef. We follow him with bated breath: what’s below? And below, at a depth of 45 meters, there is a high-vaulted hall, similar to the nave of an ancient cathedral, except that it is assembled from arched reinforced concrete. The shaft, along which the stairs wound, ends here in order to continue even deeper, but now like a well, almost filled to the brim with water. Does it have a bottom? And why does the shaft overhanging it rise up all the way to the casemate floor? Jozef doesn't know. But he leads us to another well, narrower, covered with a manhole cover. This is a source of drinking water. You can at least scoop it up now.

I look around the arches of the local Hades. What did they see, what was happening underneath them? This hall served the Scharnhorst garrison as a military camp with a rear base. Here, two-tiered concrete hangars “flowed” into the main tunnel, like tributaries into the riverbed. They housed two barracks for one hundred people, an infirmary, a kitchen, food and ammunition warehouses, a power plant, and a fuel storage facility. Trolley trains also rolled up here through the airlock gas mask chamber along the branch leading to the main tunnel to the Henrik station.

Shall we go to the station? - asks our guide.

Jozef dives into a low and narrow corridor, and we follow him. The pedestrian road seems endless, we have been walking along it at an accelerated pace for a quarter of an hour, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. And there will be no light here, as, indeed, in all the other “earthworm holes.”

Only then do I notice how chilled I am in this cold dungeon: the temperature here is constant, both in summer and in winter, - 10oC. When I think about how thick the earth our gap-path stretches under, I feel completely uneasy. The low arch and narrow walls squeeze the soul - will we get out of here? What if the concrete ceiling collapses, and what if water rushes in? After all, for more than half a century, all these structures have not seen any maintenance or repair, they are holding back, but they are holding back both the pressure of the subsoil and the pressure of water...

When the phrase was already on the tip of the tongue: “Maybe we’ll go back?”, the narrow passage finally merged into a wide transport tunnel. Concrete slabs formed a kind of platform here. This was the Henrik station - abandoned, dusty, dark... I immediately remembered those stations of the Berlin metro, which until recent years were in similar desolation, since they were located under the wall that divided Berlin into eastern and western parts. They were visible from the windows of the blue express trains - these caverns of time frozen for half a century... Now, standing on the Henrik platform, it was not difficult to believe that the rails of this rusty double-track also reached the Berlin metro.

We turn into a side passage. Soon puddles began to squish underfoot, and drainage ditches stretched along the edges of the footpath - ideal drinking bowls for bats. The flashlight beam jumped upward, and a large living cluster, made of bony-winged half-birds and half-animals, began to move above our heads. Cold goosebumps ran down my spine - what a nasty thing, though! Despite the fact that it’s useful, it eats mosquitoes.

They say that the souls of dead sailors inhabit seagulls. Then the souls of the SS men must turn into bats. And judging by the number of bats nesting under the concrete arches, the entire “Dead’s Head” division, which disappeared without a trace in the Mezeritsky dungeon in 1945, is still hiding from sunlight in the form of bats.

Get away, get away from here, and as soon as possible!

OUR TANK - OVER THE BUNKER
To the question “why was the Mezeritsky fortified area created”, military historians answer this way: in order to hang a powerful castle on the main strategic axis of Europe Moscow - Warsaw - Berlin - Paris.

The Chinese built their Great Wall in order to cover the borders of the Celestial Empire from the invasion of nomads for thousands of miles. The Germans did almost the same thing by erecting the Eastern Wall - Ostwall, with the only difference being that they laid their “wall” underground. They began building it back in 1927 and only ten years later they completed the first stage. Believing to sit behind this “impregnable” rampart, Hitler’s strategists moved from here, first to Warsaw, and then to Moscow, leaving captured Paris in the rear. The result of the great campaign to the east is known. Neither anti-tank “dragon’s teeth”, nor armored dome installations, nor underground forts with all their medieval traps and the most modern weapons helped to restrain the onslaught of the Soviet armies.

In the winter of 1945, Colonel Gusakovsky’s soldiers broke through this “impassable” line and moved directly to the Oder. Here, near Międzyrzecz, the tank battalion of Major Karabanov, who burned down in his tank, fought with the “Dead Head”. No extremists dared to destroy the monument to our soldiers near the village of Kalava. It is silently guarded by the memorial “thirty-four”, despite the fact that now it remains behind NATO lines. Its gun faces west - towards the armored dome of the Scharnhorst bunker. The old tank went into a deep raid of historical memory. At night, bats circle above him, but sometimes flowers are placed on his armor. Who? Yes, those who still remember that victorious year, when these lands, dug up by the “earthworm” and still fertile, became Poland again.

September 8th, 2016

In the late 1930s, the Wehrmacht begins construction of the largest underground bunker in eastern Germany. The purpose of this bunker was not typical for such facilities - inside the bunker it was planned to place an underground plant for the production of open gas on the eve of trifluorine, known under the code name N-Stoff. In 1943, construction of another chemical plant began on the territory adjacent to the underground plant, where they planned to produce the nerve gas sarin on an industrial scale.

I had heard about this place for a long time and when it was time to get ready for the next bunker tour to the east, it was decided to get into the territory of both factories and see what would be available. Below the cut is a traditionally detailed story about the unique factories of the Third Reich, where it was planned to produce the latest chemicals designed to change the course of the war, but never reached the point of use on the battlefields. During the Soviet period of history, this place not only did not stand idle, but became one of the most secret on the territory of the GDR, and there were reasons for that...

Before going to this place, all my information preparation was reduced to printing out a map of the area and marks of the approximate location of the objects of interest to us. I didn’t know whether the territory was protected or whether it was abandoned, and I had to find out through our traditional experimental method.

01. A branch from the highway passing through the forest leads us to the first checkpoint. It looks completely abandoned, only the brand new section of the fence with striped tape is alarming.

02. The inscription on the sign warns that access to the territory is prohibited.

04. A railway track enters the territory. These rails have been lying here since 1942; in the past they led directly into the bowels of the underground plant. The delivery of components for the production of N-Stoff" and the removal of finished products were planned to be carried out by rail. After the end of World War II and the transfer of the facility to the control of the Soviet army, this access road was never used for its intended purpose again, and the rails were dismantled and left as reparations to the Soviet Union.

We looked behind the fence, but saw only a bend in the road, lost in the forest.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

05. We park the car on the side of the road away from the gate and dive into the forest to look for a hole in the perimeter.

06. For the most part the perimeter is quite tight and in good shape, but there are also a lot of holes in it. The place is famous among diggers and many of them tried their luck here in attempts to get inside the largest underground bunker on the territory of the former GDR.

07. In some places in the ground there are such skeins of “thorns”.

08. Initially, I mistook this insulator for the remains of an electric fence, but now, while researching materials on the network, I learned that there was never a high-voltage fence here.
In Soviet times, the facility had the maximum degree of secrecy and an electric fence could raise suspicions that something very important was located behind it.

The fence is periodically supplemented with information leaflets threatening fines for those who enter private territory.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

Just outside the perimeter you can see some concrete ruins, which in the past were clearly part of an underground factory.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

09. We cross the perimeter, and as quietly as possible, hiding behind the bushes, we begin exploring the territory. The first object we encountered was a water tower, which in the past was connected by a pipeline system to an underground complex.

Before we continue the tour, a little historical background. After a new highly effective incendiary substance, chlorotrifluoride, codenamed N-Stoff, was invented, it was decided to build an underground plant for the industrial production of this substance. Construction work began in mid-1939 and was completed in 1943. The bunker plant was built on the site of a luxurious palace built in 1793, which was demolished to make way for the military needs of the Reich. The object was codenamed "Muna Ost"

Chlorotrifluoride was used for the production of incendiary bombs and also in the Nazi rocket program as an oxidizer for rocket fuel, and since the rocket program was Hitler's priority, no money was spared on it - about 100,000 Reichsmarks were spent on the construction of an underground plant - crazy in those terms sometimes money. The bunker was built in an open way, its depth was 10-15 meters and it itself consisted of several production facilities, a huge warehouse for storing the produced substance and a railway tunnel passing through the entire bunker. The total area of the underground premises was about 14,000 square meters and the thickness of the concrete walls was at least three meters. Four huge towers came to the surface, which were intended to ventilate the facility and remove exhaust gases. I present the only picture that gives an approximate idea of the structure of the bunker, which is available on the network.

10. Let's return to our walk. This water tower was used as a water reserve during production and for safety purposes. In the event of an accident and a leak of poisonous gas, the bunker was subject to flooding. For this purpose, there were water tanks inside the bunker and a water pump like this outside.

11. In the post-war period, when the bunker was rebuilt into the command center of the Warsaw block, the tower lost its original purpose and was used as a kennel and also for resting the guards guarding the perimeter. The nets from the kennel that encircle the perimeter of the tower are still preserved here.

12. It would have been possible to climb up, but we did not do this, since we could hear people’s voices in the immediate vicinity, a car was driving somewhere nearby, and we were not alone on the territory of the facility. Moreover, those who were here were clearly its owners, and they did not want to be seen by them. As it turned out later, the matter would not have ended with simple expulsion from the territory, but this will be discussed below.

14. The dimensions of the “ventilation heads” are impressive.

15. Nearby is another ventilation tower with beveled corners of the “hat”. In one of these towers there is an emergency exit from the bunker, but without special equipment it will not be possible to get inside - all the stairs are cut off at a level of six to seven meters from the ground.

16. Fundamental structure!

Production of N-Stoff began in 1943, and already in February 1945 the entire plant was evacuated due to the approach of Soviet troops, who occupied the territory without a fight in April 1945. The plant’s equipment fit on 60 railway cars, chlorotrifluoride reserves They occupied five tanks and the train set off for Bavaria.

After the territory was occupied by Soviet troops, the remains of the equipment from the plant were dismantled and taken to the USSR as reparations, and the access road leading to the plant territory was also completely dismantled. The rails went to the Soviet Union. For ten years, the territory of the former plant was not used in any way, until in 1958 the bunker was rebuilt into a command center by the Internal Affairs Troops, and from that moment its new history begins, which I will tell you about later.

17.

18. Meanwhile, we are trying to find the entrance to the underground system. Crouching and running from one shelter to another, we explore the territory. Very close by you can hear people talking and the sounds of a running engine. The main entrance to the facility is located exactly where the sounds are coming from, but we are not allowed to go there. There remains hope to find some kind of emergency exit.

19. We come across some kind of structure that is clearly related to the object.

20. The entrance is closed with an armored door. The partner climbs through the narrow gap, but soon returns with bad news - there is no way through.

21. Having walked around the territory that was accessible to us within the framework of relative safety, we came across another hatch, which was impossible to open.

22. Very close by you can see the buildings of a military camp. The three-story building in the picture was built in 1982 and served as a service hotel for senior officers from other parts of the GSVG and ATS countries who arrived here for training. The risk of being noticed is very high and the instinct of self-preservation forces us to abandon ideas about further exploration of the territory and penetration into the object - we return back.

The decision not to tempt fate, as it turned out, was correct. A couple of months after our visit to these parts, a message of the following nature popped up in one of the German Facebook groups dedicated to military tourism:

The underground plant is currently guarded by a private security company and I would describe the situation we found ourselves in as follows: “Of course, we got into the territory by accident. We were walking in the forest and along the way we came across an old rusty perimeter with many holes, not a single one was forbidden We didn’t come across any signs along the way. When we noticed that we were on the territory of the former town of GSVG, we tried to behave as quietly and secretly as possible. But this did not last long as we heard voices that were quickly approaching us. Soon guards came out of the bushes and aggressively demanded that we follow them. The security company staff were overly unfriendly and later handed us over to the police, who filed an offense report. In the near future, we will be informed about the progress of the case by mail. There must be hidden cameras or motion sensors on the premises, otherwise I will not I understand how they could detect us - we were quieter than water and lower than the grass. So be careful, there are unlikely to be any cameras on the back side of the object, but there are definitely some kind of tracking systems on the side of the workshops. The police mentioned animal surveillance cameras that might be located on the property and told us that climbers like us are often caught here and the case is always taken to court without exception. Our case is currently being heard in court, but we have already been notified of a lifelong ban on approaching this territory, even if a museum is ever opened here."

It’s good that I learned this information after visiting the site; if I had known this earlier, I definitely would not have come here and this post would never have existed.

We did not lose hope of getting to the bunker territory and decided to check a couple more dirt roads leading into the forest in the direction we needed.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

23. The first dirt road led us to a fence with a sign like this. We decided not to risk it and tried the last option.

24. He turned out to be more successful. We approached the site from the east and ended up at the second plant, where it was planned to produce the nerve gas sarin.

25. There was no perimeter on this side or signs indicating that this area was private. Therefore, we felt much freer here than near the underground plant, where it was really scary.

26. The ruins you see in these photographs are a plant whose construction began in August 1943 and was supposed to be completed in May-June 1945. It was planned to produce a weapon of mass destruction at this factory - the nerve gas sarin, discovered by German scientists in 1938. The facility received the code name "Seewerk" - that is, "factory by the lake." By the beginning of 1945, construction work on the creation of the plant was 80% completed, but in February it was curtailed due to the approach of Soviet troops. The most valuable factory equipment and construction equipment were evacuated to the west. Fortunately, it never came to the point of producing sarin.

27. When the factory territory came under Soviet control, all the equipment remaining from the Germans and all construction elements that could be used were dismantled and taken to the USSR as reparations, after which the factory territory was abandoned. From the unfinished plant, only skeletons of workshops remained, which have survived to this day in the form in which they remained after the dismantling of equipment and construction materials by the Soviets.

28. Currently, this location may be of interest only to lovers of military history and the stalker atmosphere, which is quite expressive here.

29. And here is the main building of the plant, which is the main dominant feature for tens of kilometers around.

30. Impressive design! Although I am completely indifferent to unfinished buildings, this unfinished building has history - and that changes everything.

31. The above-ground buildings are very overgrown with lush flora, behind which not much can be seen.

32. If you look closely, you will notice that there is also an underground level. But there is nothing there except empty concrete spaces.

33. A person in the frame to understand the scale.

34. The remains of the brickwork miraculously hang in the air, as if some kind of stalker-like anomaly is lurking here.

35. Correct geometric shapes create a rather harmonious and creative space. It was as if we were in a museum of modern art, lost in the middle of the forest.

36. Art, by the way, is also present here, but in the most minimal quantities.

37. Our path lies to the very top of the concrete structure.

38. There are stairs leading up. All the metal was apparently cut out as reparations, so there are no railings present.

39. A walk here requires maximum care - the place is replete with many hidden dangers.

40. But the aesthetics here are definitely good. An industrial photographer will not leave this place without a couple of expressive shots.

41. Demobilization inscriptions of Soviet soldiers are a common sight on such objects.

42. In one place, the concrete segment of the ladder is missing, but someone attached an iron ladder to the protruding reinforcement bars, which, although it looks ugly, is quite securely fastened.

43. Our goal is the roof of the building, so we use every opportunity to get there. Since the subway is in trouble today, let there be at least roofing on this walk.

44. One could safely film a sequel to Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” here.

Video to better convey the atmosphere.

45. In some places, wooden formwork has been preserved, which has been hanging here since 1945 - since the construction of the facility.

46. The final segment of the stairs takes us to the top of the concrete structure.

47. It feels like you are on a concrete ship cutting through a green sea stretching to the horizon.

48. It would be a sin not to take a photo as a keepsake in such a beautiful place.

49. Not far away you can see Soviet buildings erected near the former underground plant, the entrance to which we were looking for an hour ago.

50. Nearby is a small clearing, immediately beyond which you can see the ruins of some other industrial facility, clearly related to an unfinished sarin production factory.

51. We mark this place as our next goal.

52. The views from the roof are gorgeous, I just wanted to stop for an hour, sit on the edge and drink a bottle of beer, looking at this endless sea of greenery.

53. But our time is limited, and today we still have a lot to watch, so there is no time for lyrics.

54. We descend back to the ground.

55. We have already seen the demobilization inscriptions of the Soviet military.

56. Steep stairs to the upper two levels.

57. From some angles, the ruins of the factory resemble a religious building of a vanished civilization. The green surroundings especially add to the atmosphere, framing the concrete on all sides and giving this colossus an aura of abandonment and mystery.

58. Meanwhile, our walk continues. The next goal is some industrial ruins that we noticed from the roof of an unfinished factory.

We cross a picturesque clearing.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

59. Behind the clearing, thickets of nettles begin, reaching to the waist and sometimes even higher. Despite the fact that I’m wearing shorts today, nettle doesn’t scare me, and its burning sensation evokes nostalgic memories of childhood, when as a boy I ran through the forests surrounding our military town and regularly burned my feet with nettles.

A much greater danger is posed by ticks, of which there are plenty. During this walk, I picked up my first tick of the season, and my partner only managed to remove them from himself. For some reason they found it more tasty.

60. Five minutes of walking - and we are at the goal.

61. The structure was another unfinished factory floor associated with the sarin production plant.

62. Basement level.

63. Occasionally, the emptiness of the interiors is brightened up by not particularly expressive graffiti.

64. This photo clearly shows that the building was supposed to have several floors, but only the first one was completed.

65. Ideal German brickwork is recognizable at first sight.

66. Immediately behind this workshop there is a fence separating the private territory with the treasured bunker from the abandoned part. We did not tempt fate and make a second attempt. If there was no one on the territory, we would not even think about the question - to climb or not to climb? But everything we saw that day clearly hinted that it was not worth climbing.

67. So we wandered around the abandoned area a little more, photographing some concrete buildings left over from the factory.

68. The shed was probably used by the Soviet army, otherwise it would have long been overgrown with dense forest.

69. The watchtower was also not idle during the Soviet period, judging by the remains of the camouflage paint.

70. The tower was clearly built by the Germans, since all the objects in the GSVG units were standard, and I have never seen towers of this type anywhere else.

71. Some buildings with their appearance aroused our hopes of finding a small bunker, but upon inspection they turned out to be simply objects of factory infrastructure.

72. There were many such objects in this forest. Now we can only guess about their purpose.

73. This overpass stretched for several hundred meters, apparently there was some kind of pipeline or something like that.

Here and there, firewood is neatly stacked in niches - the work of a local forester.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

74. This concludes our walk through the territory of the chemical plants of the Third Reich. The territory of the unfinished sarin production plant is interesting from a historical point of view and also has a wonderful stalker atmosphere. This place is worth visiting if possible.

75. But I would not recommend going into the territory of the underground plant-bunker. There is a very high probability of getting into trouble and getting to know the German judicial system better, as less fortunate researchers are already doing.

We leave this location and move on to the next goal of this day, but the post does not end there.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

This year, a group of Russian diggers managed to get inside the underground plant and inspect its interior. One of the group members ralphmirebs kindly provided photographs of what he was able to see inside for this post. Next I will continue the story of the post-war history of the underground plant, illustrating it with photographs by Ralph Mirebs.

As you already know, in February 1945, due to the approach of Soviet troops, the most valuable equipment of the chemical plants in Falkenhagen was evacuated. After the Soviet military occupied the territory, as reparations they dismantled the remaining metal structures on the territory, dismantled the rails and everything that could be removed and reused was removed and went to the USSR. The territory where the factories are located was used for some time as an automobile repair shop, and it was freely accessible to local residents. The underground plant itself was sealed.

Everything changed in 1959, when the decision was made to rebuild the underground production complex into a command bunker for the Warsaw Pact countries.

76. All entrances to the facility are blocked by massive anti-nuclear hermetic doors.

The territory becomes closed and is disguised as a maintenance station for Torpedo military trucks, and large-scale work begins underground to rebuild the plant into a command bunker, which lasted from 1959 to 1965. In 1965, the facility entered combat duty, but not in its final form - in the following decades, the command bunker was repeatedly expanded and rebuilt.

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It is noteworthy that the object was so well classified that Western intelligence did not know about its existence until the early 1990s, when the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Europe began. In NATO intelligence documents, the territory was listed as an ammunition depot and had a low attack priority in the event of a full-scale war. Such camouflage was also achieved because, unlike many other important objects of the GSVG, the ATS command bunker was not surrounded by an electric fence, which would hint that something serious was hiding behind it.

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In addition, German schoolchildren held friendly meetings in the territory next to the underground facility, which further created the feeling that there was absolutely nothing important or secret behind the fence. Even the government of the GDR did not know for thirty years that the main command post of the Warsaw Pact Organization was hidden behind the usual military fence in Falkenhagen.

Only in 1992 was the secrecy removed from the facility and one of the main secrets of the GDR, which no one was able to discover during the Cold War, was revealed to the world.

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Let's return to the only object diagram that is available on the Internet. In the center of the diagram you can see a four-story block with a staircase.

80. This is what this staircase looks like now.

81. Here, on four floors, the main part of the command bunker was located with the work areas of the signalmen, various equipment and other things. With the departure of the Soviet troops, they also took with them all the valuable equipment, so now there is absolute emptiness here. The photo shows the central meeting room.

82. A certain level of comfort was provided for the commander-in-chief at the underground facility - there was even a bathroom. Even the chief GDR security officer, Erich Mielke, did not receive such luxury; there was only an ordinary shower, and even located in the same section as the toilet.

83.

84. This is what one of the mushroom towers that we saw on the surface looks like inside. Inside the tower there is an emergency exit to the surface, through which some German diggers manage to get inside the object.

85. Not for people with a fear of heights.

86. A couple more pictures from the tower.

87.

88. Entourage technogen.

89.

90. During the construction of the plant, it was designed in such a way that the extremely dangerous production could be instantly flooded in the event of a dangerous leak of the product produced here. To do this, a water tower with a water reservoir was built on the surface, connected to the underground facility by a pipeline, and four reservoirs were placed inside the bunker, holding 900 cubic meters of water intended for flooding the underground complex.

91. During the Soviet period of the facility’s history, tanks were used in the bunker’s water supply system to accumulate water reserves. They have survived to this day and you can see them in these photographs. There is also information that in Soviet times, sewage from all the toilets in the bunker was pumped into one of the reservoirs. Before leaving, the Germans flooded the lower level and the entire sewer system, and Soviet specialists were never able to pump out the water to fix the sewer system. Since the lower floors of the bunker are below the level of the nearby lake, each time water was pumped out from the lower level, the water level in the lake dropped.

92. The underground complex is huge and not all of its parts were used when rebuilding the plant into a command post. Some locations were left unchanged. During Soviet times, this part of the bunker was used as a ventilation duct. The hatches in the pictures lead to the rooms in photo 97

93. The equipment from these locations was partially dismantled during the Soviet period, partially by the new owner of the facility, who has owned the complex since 2002.

This photo was probably taken in the mid-2000s, and as you can see, there was more equipment in this location ten years ago than there is now. What is shown in the photo is most likely the plugs for ventilation grilles, which ensured the tightness of the command center in the event of the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

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No one could say for what purpose the double-track narrow-gauge railways were laid there, where and why the electric trains ran through endless tunnels with countless branches and dead ends, what they carried on their platforms, who the passengers were. However, it is known for certain that Hitler visited this underground reinforced concrete kingdom at least twice, coded under the name “RL” - Regenwurmlager - “Earthworm Camp”.

The Third Reich goes underground
The spectacle is not for the faint of heart when, in the forest twilight, bats emerge from the viewing slots of old pillboxes and armored caps, swarming and squeaking. The winged vampires decided that people had built these multi-story dungeons for them, and settled there long ago and reliably. Here, near the Polish city of Miedzyrze, lives the largest colony of pipistrelle bats in Europe - tens of thousands. But we are not talking about them, although military intelligence chose the silhouette of a bat as its emblem.

There have been, are, and will continue to be legends about this area for a long time, each darker than the other.

Soon the sappers' attention was drawn to a concrete well, which swallowed water falling from a height. At the same time, intelligence reported that perhaps underground power communications were coming from Miedzyrzech. However, the presence of a hidden autonomous power plant, and also the fact that its turbines were rotated by water falling into the well, could not be ruled out. They said that the lake was somehow connected to the surrounding bodies of water, and there are many of them here.

For what?

This has its own logic - the underground route from Berlin made it possible to secretly leave the Reich Chancellery. And the Wolf’s Lair is only a few hours away by car.

Jozef drives his Polonaise along a narrow highway southwest of the city. In the village of Kalava we turn towards the Scharnhorst bunker. This is one of the strongholds of the Pomeranian Wall defensive system. And the places in the area are idyllic and in no way fit with these military words: hilly copses, poppies in the rye, swans in lakes, storks on the roofs, pine forests burning from the inside with the sun, roe deer roaming.

WELCOME TO HELL!

The western slope of the hill ended with a concrete wall one and a half times the height of a man, into which was embedded an armored hermetic door the size of a third of an ordinary door and several air intake openings, again covered with armored shutters. They were the gills of an underground monster. Above the entrance there is an inscription sprayed from a can of paint: “Welcome to hell!” - "Welcome to Hell!"

Once upon a time, its floor treacherously collapsed, and the uninvited guest flew into the well, as was practiced in medieval castles. Now it is securely fastened, and we turn into a narrow side corridor that leads into the bunker, but after a few steps is interrupted by the main gas lock. We leave it and find ourselves at a checkpoint, where the guard once checked the documents of everyone entering and kept the entrance hermetic door at gunpoint. Only after this can you enter the corridor leading to the combat casemates, covered with armored domes.

In one of them there is still a rusty rapid-fire grenade launcher, in another there was a flamethrower installation, in the third there were heavy machine guns. Here is also the commander’s “cabin” - the “Führer-raum”, periscope enclosures, a radio room, map storage, toilets and a washbasin, as well as disguised emergency exit.

On the floor below there are warehouses for consumable ammunition, a tank with a fire mixture, an entrance trap chamber, also known as a punishment cell, a sleeping compartment for the duty shift, a filter-ventilation enclosure... Here is also the entrance to the underworld: wide - four meters in diameter - a concrete well goes vertically down to the depth of a ten-story Houses. The flashlight beam illuminates the water at the bottom of the mine. The concrete staircase descends along the shaft in steep, narrow flights.

Does it have a bottom? And why does the shaft overhanging it rise up all the way to the casemate floor? Jozef doesn't know. But he leads us to another well, narrower, covered with a manhole cover. This is a source of drinking water. You can at least scoop it up now.

Trolley trains also rolled up here through the airlock gas mask chamber along the branch leading to the main tunnel to the Henrik station.
- Shall we go to the station? - asks our guide.

Only then do I notice how chilled I am in this cold dungeon: the temperature here is constant, whether in summer or winter, - 10oC. When I think about how thick the earth our gap-path stretches under, I feel completely uneasy. The low arch and narrow walls squeeze the soul - will we get out of here? What if the concrete ceiling collapses, and what if water rushes in? After all, for more than half a century, all these structures have not seen any maintenance or repair, they are holding back, but they are holding back both the pressure of the subsoil and the pressure of water...

I immediately remembered those stations of the Berlin metro, which until recent years were in similar desolation, since they were located under the wall that divided Berlin into eastern and western parts. They were visible from the windows of the blue express trains - these caverns of time frozen for half a century... Now, standing on the platform of the Henrik, it was not difficult to believe that the rails of this rusty double-track also reached the Berlin metro.

We turn into a side passage. Soon puddles began to squish underfoot, and drainage ditches ran along the edges of the walkway—ideal drinking bowls for bats. The flashlight beam jumped upward, and a large living cluster, made of bony-winged half-birds and half-animals, began to move above our heads. Cold goosebumps ran down my spine - what a nasty thing, though! Despite the fact that it’s useful, it eats mosquitoes.

Get away, get away from here, and as soon as possible!

OUR TANK – OVER THE BUNKER

To the question “why was the Mezeritsky fortified area created”, military historians answer this way: in order to hang a powerful castle on the main strategic axis of Europe Moscow - Warsaw - Berlin - Paris.

They began building it back in 1927 and only ten years later they completed the first stage. Believing to sit behind this “impregnable” rampart, Hitler’s strategists moved from here, first to Warsaw, and then to Moscow, leaving captured Paris in the rear.

The result of the great campaign to the east is known. Neither anti-tank “dragon’s teeth”, nor armored dome installations, nor underground forts with all their medieval traps and the most modern weapons helped to restrain the onslaught of the Soviet armies.

No extremists dared to destroy the monument to our soldiers near the village of Kalava. It is silently guarded by the memorial "thirty-four", even though it is now left behind NATO lines. Its gun faces west - towards the armored dome of the Scharnhorst bunker.

The old tank went into a deep raid of historical memory. At night, bats circle above him, but sometimes flowers are placed on his armor. Who? Yes, those who still remember that victorious year, when these lands, dug up by the “earthworm” and still fertile, became Poland again.