Found a bunker of the Second World War. Military history, weapons, old and military maps

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

The entrance to one of the few surviving rooms:

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

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

Main room of the surviving bunker

Concrete walls and slabs are visible from the outside:

Half-filled entrance to the bunker

Around the preserved bunker in the forest, you can see the remains of other buildings and communications - ventilation and sewerage

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

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

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

On June 27, 1943, a week after receiving the order, with a team of technical specialists, Leo Müller flew to the Orsha area to select a site for the construction of a new facility, codenamed "Olga" (FQH Olga).
As a result of the construction inspection carried out by specialists, it was found appropriate place for the construction of a small headquarters building, consisting of a closed perimeter, checkpoints and several outbuildings, to accommodate the commandant's office and security.

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

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

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

It is known that OFFICIALLY at the time of completion of the construction, 400 cubic meters concrete, prepared and equipped 3599 square meters the territory of the complex, the construction of checkpoints and barracks has been completed.

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

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

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

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

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

Version number 2 - The rate of Heinz Guderian

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

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

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

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

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

If you look at it, this is a completely plausible version. Today we know a lot about "Werewolf" - Hitler's headquarters in the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine. Slightly less well-known are "Hegewald" (translated from German - reserved forest) - Himmler's headquarters near Zhitomir and "Streinbruck" (quarry), built for Goering. Why not exist and a secret bunker in the Orsha forests? Moreover, Guderian was, according to eyewitnesses, an ambitious, hot-tempered and poorly controlled person. He was acutely worried about the fact that the command in every possible way prevented him military career, and could well organize construction even without an order from the "center".

In addition, the bunker in this case would be in a convenient place for Guderian, who often left the front: when to meet with Hitler, and when at all in order to relax with his wife at the resort, about which he writes in sufficient detail in his book “ Memories of a Soldier ". So this headquarters could become a good staging ground for the general on the way from the front to Germany and back.

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

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

This bunker was built in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 60s of the 20th century.
It was supposed to be a hideout for the ruling elite in case of nuclear war.
It was located near Bonn and consisted of a system of tunnels with a total length of 17 kilometers.
It took 12 years and 5 billion marks to build.
Fortunately, he was never needed.
In the late 90s, it was closed and disassembled. At the moment, only concrete tunnels remain from the bunker.
There is also a museum, whose workers have restored several rooms.
These photographs were taken while the bunker still existed. I signed them to make it clearer.

Bunker control panel - cameras, electric locks and more


Federal Chancellor's room. Separate rooms were made only for the chancellor and the president of the country.
The remaining 3000 people were to live in rooms with bunk beds.


Television studio for recordings of appeals to the people


Bathroom. This is a luxury room. There were two similar ones too.


Meeting room


Salon


Dental office


An ordinary worker's office


Bathroom for staff. There were five of them in the bunker


Vehicles for moving through tunnels.
For short distances, bicycles could be used.


The main door to the bunker weighing 25 tons closed automatically in 15 seconds


800-meter emergency exit tunnel


Entrance to one of five dining rooms. In the evenings, they could be used as cinemas.


Steel doors inside the silo


Another tunnel


A room with spare parts for equipment.


Another tunnel


Another 25 ton front door. There are four of them


Negotiation point in case the telephone connection remains in working order


And another steel door


One of five kitchens


Entrance to one of the five infirmaries for radiation victims


Another Chancellor's Room


Access to the upper levels


Bunker corridors


Electric vehicle for fast movement


Interpreter's office near the conference room.
In total, there were over 900 rooms in the bunker.


Checkpoint at the entrance


Security room at a depth of 100 meters. The cleaners were not allowed to go there.
For the first time this picture was discovered during the dismantling of the bunker in 1997.

This is what the entrance to the bunker looked like on the surface (model)


And this is how the city looked like standing above the bunker. He, of course, is still there and stands

The noise around Hitler's "golden train", in which the Nazis allegedly hid the looted treasures of the "Third Reich" under the ground in Poland, has not yet subsided, and the German media are already reporting on a new possible sensation. This time we are talking about underground adits discovered in the vicinity of the Brandenburg village of Genshagen, south of Berlin. During World War II, one of the factories of the Daimler-Benz concern was located here, which, however, produced not cars, but engines for military aircraft - mainly for Messerschmitt 109 and 110 fighters.

An underground bomb shelter was built nearby for the workers. For some reason, underground work was carried out for a surprisingly long time, and the construction did not stop until the very end of the war, when cement, bricks, steel and others building materials it was sorely lacking even for direct military needs. Another oddity: according to the testimony of local residents, the entrance to the adits was guarded by SS soldiers, even as if from the elite division "Dead Head". Ordinary bomb shelters did not have anything like that.

Why were the bunker entrances blown up?

A few days before the surrender of Nazi Germany, in April 1945, several powerful explosions shook the surroundings. The Red Army was very close, but it had nothing to do with the explosions. SS men blew up all five entrances to the bunker. The underground tunnel was blocked so that these entrances were discovered only after seven decades!

Context

This was achieved thanks to the efforts of the historian Rainer Karlsch. His attention was attracted not only by these facts, but also by the fact that the underground bunker was not shown on any maps of that time. Even in the well-preserved archives of the Daimler concern, he did not figure. True, they knew about its existence from local residents, and twice, in the fifties and eighties, they tried to find it. They dug in various places, including with the help of excavators, but to no avail.

It took Karlsch two years and the help of another enthusiast, the vice-burgomaster of the district center Torsten Klaehn, to first discover the ventilation shaft, and then gradually explore the adits themselves - more precisely, until only 6 kilometers of an extensive system of tunnels stretching presumably for several dozen kilometers.

What was found underground?

It turned out that we were not talking about a large vaulted hall (this is how underground bomb shelters were usually built), but about adits, about 2 m 30 cm high and one and a half meters wide, diverging in different directions. They were dug at a depth of 15 meters, reinforced with solid concrete blocks connected to each other. The construction was clearly not completed: the researchers found stacks of bricks, facing tiles and so on stretching for several tens of meters.

More, however, - nothing interesting. Rusted metal cabinets, half-rotted wooden furniture, ancient medical equipment, steel doors bent from explosions - that's all. No hidden treasures, no secret files of the Third Reich, no plans for the first jet fighter Messerschmitt 262, which was assembled at the plant in Genshagen at the end of the war ...

Rainer Karlsch is not at all embarrassed by this. He reminds again and again that only a small part of the underground tunnels has been explored. And he draws attention to the fact that only 15 kilometers from the bunker, next to the personal estate of the Minister of Post of the Third Reich Hakeburg, there was a scientific laboratory of the ministry. It sounds almost anecdotal, but the fact is that the Reich Minister of Post was Hitler's old ally in the Nazi party, the owner of the "gold badge" of the NSDAP, Wilhelm Ohnesorge. His department conducted very important research. According to Spiegel magazine, under the leadership of Onezorge, in particular, surface-to-air missiles with remote control... In addition, its scientists worked to create nuclear weapons.

Eyewitnesses talk about trucks that were allegedly transported in April 1945 by some heavy loads from Hackeburg to Genshagen. What were they carrying? Drawings of the "weapon of vengeance"? Secret files of the Third Reich? Nazi gold? You can assume anything. By the way, Onezorge, who died in Munich already in 1962 and did not spend a day in prison (although all his property was confiscated from him after the war), never talked about an underground bunker, or about any treasures or secret documents. You can also interpret this as you like.

See also:

• Warehouse No. 12

  This secret warehouse was the largest bunker in East Germany. Here were stored up to 20 thousand tons of cartridges, shells, uniforms, as well as diesel fuel, anti-aircraft guns, field kitchens, bakeries, other equipment and equipment in case of war for the armies of the GDR and its allies under the Warsaw Pact. To take everything out at once, it would take 500 railway cars.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Underground plant

The warehouse was located near the German-German border near Halberstadt. For the construction of the bunker in 1979-1983, adits were used, cut by prisoners during the "Third Reich", when the production of "Junkers" from Dessau was about to be transferred here. On the territory of the concentration camp, a few kilometers from the underground complex, there is now a memorial complex.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Disarmament

After the reunification of Germany, the Bundeswehr used the warehouse, but in 1994 the garrison was disbanded, and the bunker was sold to a private investor, who never figured out how to use it. The complex was badly damaged by vandals and metal thieves, for whom gates, bars and locks did not become an obstacle. With the owner's permission, excursions are sometimes conducted into the bunker.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Dark, cold and dry

Absolute darkness, everything is de-energized. Light - only from flashlights. Dry and cold, 12 degrees. A thin layer of soot was everywhere. Several years ago, a fire broke out underground, apparently due to the careless handling of the autogen, with the help of which the kidnappers cut the metal. Once upon a time, 250 soldiers served in the bunker. Now it is practically not guarded.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

"Dolphin"

The warehouse began to be filled in 1983. The arrangement took 190 million marks of the GDR. It was part of the Dolphin program, which planned to build nearly seventy atomic shelters in East Germany for government, military and civil defense purposes. The total cost of the program exceeded two billion East marks.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Dismantling

What happened to the complex over the course of several decades from the spring of 1945 to the opening of the warehouse? Halberstadt was in the Soviet occupation zone. The equipment, which they managed to install for aircraft production underground, was exported to the USSR. After that, the adits, during the laying of which thousands of prisoners of a specially created concentration camp were killed, were decided to blow up.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Undermining preparation

Preparations for the bombing began in 1949. Soviet miners managed to plant more than 90 tons of explosives, but nine times more were required to completely destroy them. With such a powerful explosion, a crater would have formed in the place of the mountain. New German authorities turned to the Soviet command with an insistent request to abandon the plan with such consequences.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

After the war

Instead of blowing up, the Germans offered to fill everything up, but as a result they agreed to blow up the tunnels at the entrances. Around the same time, a memorial complex was opened nearby on the territory of the former concentration camp "Malachite" (Langenstein-Zwiberge). Now in one of the adits leading to the underground bunker, an exposition of its documentation center is equipped.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Eyewitnesses

According to the stories of local residents, the remaining accessible part of the underground complex was used by divisions for some time. Soviet army... One excursion participant recalls how in 1959, as a boy, he and his friends climbed into the restricted area, where in a dark tunnel they stumbled upon Soviet tanks.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

In case of nuclear war

In the 1960s, the GDR authorities recalled the existence of the complex and began to consider options for using it for the good. National economy... In particular, it was supposed to place a refrigeration plant in the tunnels, but with an aggravation cold war the object acquired strategic importance, as underground shelters were actively built on both sides of the German-German border in case of a nuclear war.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Seventeen kilometers

"Warehouse complex number 12" (Komplexlager KL-12) of the National people's army The GDR was put into operation for the May holidays in 1984. The total length of the tunnels, taking into account the new ones, was about 17 kilometers. Half of the old tunnels that could not be restored were walled up.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Underground city

The scale is astounding. The trains stopped by to unload underground. In one of the tunnels, a 500-meter platform was equipped for this. From her, the goods were transported to the warehouse bays. The total area of ​​the storage facility was almost 40 thousand square meters, and the volume of the underground space was 220 thousand cubic meters.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

At the combat post

"I prefer to show the bunker by car, you can see more. Walking on concrete quickly gets tired," says the former commandant of the complex, Hans-Joachim Büttner. A retired lieutenant colonel served here from the first to last day... He started in the GDR and ended up as an officer in the Bundeswehr.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Questions to the commandant

This is what the bunker looked like in 1993. The former commandant patiently answers the group's questions. Asking about Soviet nuclear missiles SS-20? “We definitely didn't have it,” he says, smiling. Did you know who cut down the old tunnels? "Yes. Everyone who served here has been to the memorial complex at least once." Where was the money? ...



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

One hundred billion

The bunker played a role in one of the final acts of the history of the GDR. After the exchange of Eastern marks, all the withdrawn from circulation cash currency of East Germany was brought here - 620 million notes per 100 billion with a total weight of three thousand tons, as well as savings books and checks. They decided to bury the money, mixing with rock- in the hope that over time they will rot. The entrance was securely walled up.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Money graveyard

The place was kept secret, but after a few years odd-smelling East German bills began to appear at numismatic auctions. Among them were banknotes of 200 and 500 marks, which were not put into circulation at all. Someone climbed into the bunker and punched a hole in the multi-meter layer of concrete. It turned out that in a dry and cold bunker, socialist stamps did not rot, did not decompose, did not deteriorate.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

The Irony of Fate

Several treasure hunters were caught and sentenced to suspended sentences. In order to prevent the amateur production of priceless money, in 2002 they decided to remove it from the bunker and destroy it at a garbage incineration plant together with household waste... Ironically, the eastern brand has outlived the western brand, so to speak. By this point, the Germans were already using the euro.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

Bunker in bunker

Inside the storage bunker there was another one for the personnel. He had more serious protection and had all the life support systems. After nuclear attack this bunker in the bunker could work offline for 30 days. In the event of a military conflict, the shipment of ammunition here could begin within 70 minutes after receiving the order.



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

What to do?

A private owner wanted to use the bunker for storing mining waste. The business is profitable, but the authorities revoked the already issued permit. The bunker hung, as they say, as a dead weight. Plans to set up an underground disco here were seriously considered, but they were abandoned. Dance in adits, the construction of which claimed the lives of several thousand concentration camp prisoners?



Secret bunker near Halberstadt

P.S.

We talked about the memorial complex on the site of the former Langenstein-Zwiberge concentration camp in a separate report. An interview with retired lieutenant colonel Hans-Joachim Buettner can be found at the link at the end of the page.

I went on business in and as they say, taking this opportunity, I visited a couple interesting places... One interesting photographically (about him next time), and the second one historically. Today I will tell you about him. The photos are boring (I, in general, consider May the most not photogenic month of the year), but the tragedy of the unfolding here in the Great Patriotic War events are simply amazing.

The scale of the fighting between the Volga and Don rivers demanded that Germany increase the supply of soldiers and weapons to the front. Having captured the unit in July 1942, the German troops were unable to take the junction railway station and the rail track to the south was closed to them. Berlin specialists under the leadership of the railway genius and favorite of the Fuhrer, Secretary of State Ganzenmüller, decided to straighten him: to quickly build a railway 25-30 kilometers on the already occupied territory from the village of Gnyloye through Petrenkovo, the Pakholok farm, past Yarkov, Mikhnovo with access to Evdakovo-Kamenka. Already in August, they began to build a single-track, which would have allowed the Nazis to have reliable road space. In the area of ​​the construction of the railway line, the Germans organized 14 concentration camps. The Nazis fenced off the former stables and pigsties with barbed wire and drove there almost 30 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers taken prisoner near Kharkov.

A German bunker has been preserved in the village of Rotten. The control point of a strategically important site was located here. railroad... From here, the Nazis had to control the passage of trains on. I decided to find him and see what was left of him.

02 ... After asking the local residents about the location of the bunker, I leave for the outskirts of Rotten. The village got its name from the nearby "rottenness", so in the old days they called the place where, as a result of open independent springs, a permanent slushy and wet vast place was formed. The houses of the Blizhnee Stoyanovo farm are visible behind the meadow.

03 ... During the construction of the road, the Nazis relied exclusively on gratuitous power. All equipment - wheelbarrows, stretchers and shovels. People are like draft animals. The "International" ruled all: Germans, Magyars-Hungarians, Italians, traitors from ours. The exhausted and recumbent were forced to load into trolleys. They were pushed along freshly laid rails, accelerated downhill. At the end of the track, the trolley overturned. The bodies were rolling downhill. Who died, who was shot. The corpses were buried right there in the embankment. The road became a mass grave. Now only embankments and many kilometers of yar are left of it.

04. From Rotten, an old settled road embankment leads with a steppe ravine to Petrenkovo ​​and beyond. I myself did not go further, but according to the locals, there it is less noticeable. Somewhere overgrown with trees, and somewhere plowed under the fields. V Soviet time it was not customary to remember the prisoners of war - Stalin declared them traitors.

05 ... During the construction of this road, prisoners were forced to work up to 18 hours a day. They fed millet with water, gruel, sometimes cooked rotten horse meat. Every day in one camp alone, up to 50 people died of hunger and disease. According to local residents, the remains of thousands of Soviet soldiers and officers are hidden along 35 kilometers of the road. Photo found in the archives of Hungary by Voronezh historians Sergei and Mikhail Filonenko and published in the book "Psychological War on the Don":

06 ... And here is the bunker itself under a small mound. In the background is the Russian Malt company. More than sixty brewing companies are the clients of Russian Malt, among them: Efes, Heineken, Baltika, Vena, PIT, Bochkarev. Where the forest is visible, there is a stream (see photo below), in which fish and crayfish were found before the plant was launched (June 2004), and now waste from the plant is dumped. However, today we are not talking about that.

07 ... The height of the embankment above the concrete floor is about 3m. There are two entrances.
First:

08 ... Second.

09 ... Inside, as expected, there is a total destruction and a trash heap. That and look still plunging somewhere.

10 ... One of the rooms is divided into 4 small compartments.

11 ... The guys from prospeleo.ru (links, as usual at the bottom of the post), who came here in 2010, drew a three-dimensional plan of the bunker. They also expressed doubt on their website that this was a German bunker, due to its strange layout. Someone from the local told them that this was a former collective farm vegetable store. This is so, after the war, the bunker was really adapted for economic needs, but even later (already in the era of state farms) it was rebuilt as an omshannik (a place for wintering bees). Hence, a bunch of "extra" partitions.

12 ... The bunker is now empty. Occasionally, NTV specialists come (by the way, who gave wide publicity to this place), spelestologists and other people interested in history for one reason or another (there is a whole thread on the forum of black diggers dedicated to this place).

13 ... But more often children look into it. And not just to play war or even smoke a cigarette in secret, but more often just to relieve themselves. There is a trail along which schoolchildren take a shortcut to school. They don't like the bushes outside - it's somehow quieter in the bunker.

14 ... I got out and stumbled upon the ventilation duct. I breathe fresh air, I think how quickly we forgot our history. Maybe instead of dusty school class was the museum worth doing here? Let it be closed and open once a year on May 9, but still not a toilet. In the same Ostrogozhsky district, there are Magyar cemeteries (if you haven't seen, look), the Hungarians take care of their soldiers even in a foreign country, but what about us ?!

15 . « The Ostrogozh-Rossosh operation went down in history as Stalingrad on the Upper Don. 86 thousand captured soldiers and officers in two weeks - these are colossal numbers"(S. Filonenko, Doctor of Historical Sciences).

16 ... By the beginning of 1943, the "Berlinka" was ready, but the rapid advance of our troops disrupted Hitler's plans. The road worked for about 2.5 - 3 months. When the Ostrogozh-Rossoshan operation began, 14 German echelons passed from Kamenka, and after that the bridges and the canvas were blown up. After that, the sleepers were dismantled. They say that they were useful in the construction of the Stary Oskol - Rzhava branch, along which they supplied our troops with everything they needed in the Battle of the Kursk Bulge. The remaining materials were selected by local residents for the restoration of the destroyed economy. That foreign iron to this day serves people - a load-bearing beam on the roof of the basement, a corner stand-up in the barn ... It is impossible to return only those thousands of builders - prisoners of war, and do not even remember by name. They fell nameless.

1943 German map with railway marked.

17 ... Cones wandering around on a leash along the embankment, nibbling the grass. I went up to him. The sun is hot, summer is ahead ...
How scary it must be when there is a war ... At such moments I invariably think that all my problems and fears are absolutely nothing in front of the horrors that people who survived that war saw and the pain and suffering that those who lie in this land experienced ...

18 ... For about 10 minutes I talked about the bunker with a local peasant. Much in this reportage is taken from his words.
He himself refused to be photographed, so as a keepsake of our conversation, I have only a photo of his dog.

19 ... Ride a little through the village. The rotten one arose back in 1684. The first settlers were the Cossacks of the Ostrogozhsky Cossack regiment, who had previously lived in the suburban settlements of Peski and Novaya Sotnya. Soon after the liquidation of the Cossack regiment (1765), a census of the population of the Ostrogozhsky district was carried out. According to this census, the population of Rotten was 388 people. For a long time, the residents of Gnilov remained parishioners of the Peskovskaya and Novosotenskaya churches, according to their former place of residence, and in 1832 they built a small stone prayer house, and Rotten began to be called a settlement, which became part of the Dalnepolubyanskaya volost. The population began to increase rapidly, small handicraft establishments appeared - tanneries, bricks, butter mills, and a grain mill. In 1880, 1123 people already lived in Rot. In the same year, a service began in a new stone church that had been under construction for almost 40 years. The construction of the temple began in 1834 by the diligence of the peasant Anna Nikitichna Klimenkova and the wanderer Luka Ignatievich. The church is two-storied, stone, beautiful stately architecture. The upper throne is consecrated in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and the lower one - in honor of the Kazan icon Holy Mother of God... The parish was consecrated in 1846 by Archbishop of Voronezh Anthony Smirnitsky.

20 ... Nothing more interesting was encountered along the way.
Perhaps this environmentally friendly garage.

21 ... Yes, I almost forgot about the river.

22 ... An unnamed tributary of the Quiet Pine.

23 ... There is a 15 km / h speed limit sign near the bridge due to its accident rate.
It looks okay, but upon closer examination I see that rotted sleepers lie at the base of the bridge.

24 ... A strange combination of metal and wood, considering that the top is paved with asphalt.
I don’t know if these sleepers have anything to do with the Berliner.

25 ... Further, on the advice of local residents, I went to the Siberian farm.
On the way we met a small abandon. He did not stop.

26 ... On the outskirts of the farm mass grave Soviet prisoners of war, found by the search engines of the "Don" association.
The chapel was recently installed.

23 ... This is the first concentration camp "raised" in the Voronezh region.

24 ... The searchers found 15 medallions among the exhumed remains. One contained a pen from a pen, most were empty, only five with questionnaires. So far I have been able to read four names. These are privates Grigory Ryabinin, Ivan Glukhov, Zakhar Bandurka, Gorat Astrosyan. They are listed as missing in the archives of the Ministry of Defense.

25 ... In more detail, with interviews with eyewitnesses of terrible events, I recommend watching the film "The Roads They Didn't Choose".
He is amateur but very good.

26 ... In order to slightly smooth out the possible heavy sediment in the shower caused by reading the post, I will finally show you an interesting house that I saw on my way back home in the village of Elevatorny. The artist lives in it and decorates it as best she can.

27 ... And the neighbors' garages too.

28 .

29 ... Peaceful sky above your head!

Huge armada of Allied bombers literally leveled the German industrial areas to the ground. To preserve production, the Nazis had to hide it underground, building cyclopean structures. the site selected the five largest bunkers that the Germans built during World War II.

Giant for Hitler

The word Riese is translated from German as "giant", and it was he who was chosen by the Nazis as the code designation for the project to create a network of huge underground bunkers between 1943-1945. They were located on the territory of the Owl Mountains and Ksi Castle in Lower Silesia, formerly Germany, now the territory of Poland.

Rzeczka complex. Photo: wikipedia.org

It is assumed that Project Riese was built as one of the giant weapons factories, but there is no documentary evidence that survived the Second world war, makes historians still argue about the purpose of this huge structure. Some sources suggest that all structures were part of the Fuehrer's headquarters.

In total, several huge complexes were built, which were to be connected by tunnels. The approach of the Red Army prevented the Germans from completing the construction of the complex. By this time, nine kilometers of underground tunnels with an area of ​​25,000 m2 and a volume of 100,000 m3 had been laid.

The tunnels were supposed to connect the following objects: Ksi castle, Rzeczka complex, a bunker inside the Włodarz mountain, structures inside the Osówka mountain, tunnels inside the Gontova mountain, a bunker inside the mountain near the village of Mittelberg, a complex in the Sobon mountains, Jedlinka Palace and factories in Hluszyca.

"Giant" was one of the most ambitious and expensive projects Third Reich. Many underground rooms are filled up in whole or in part, many are still simply unknown, and now and then in the forests of the Owl Mountains they find new evidence that the Nazis were building something truly grandiose there.

Bauvorhaben 21

Another secret Wehrmacht dungeon, which was intended to house the V-2 missiles, with which the Germans fired at the capital of England. The development site was an abandoned quarry near the French village of Wieserne in the Pas-de-Calais department.

The Germans planned to build a giant reinforced concrete dome 5.1 meters thick and 71 meters in diameter, weighing 55,000 tons. Such a structure was invulnerable to conventional aerial bombs.

Under its protection, a huge underground complex for refueling and prelaunch preparation of V-2 missiles with a system of tunnels with a total length of 7.4 km was to be built, along which it was planned to lay a railway line leading to launch sites in the quarry itself.

The expected rate of launching V-2 missiles from under the dome was 30-50 missiles per day. Hitler wanted the construction to begin work in 1943, but this did not happen.

Having learned what danger Bauvorhaben 21 poses, the allies threw all their forces to destroy it. Their constant attacks slowed down the progress of the work. For example, in May 1944 alone, construction was interrupted 229 times due to constant air raids. Despite this, the dome was not damaged, but the surrounding buildings and construction equipment were destroyed cleanly.

Desperate to destroy the dangerous structure, the Allies launched a series of attacks in June and July 1944 using the new Tallboy 5-ton seismic bombs. These bombs accelerated to supersonic speed and pierced the ground to a depth of 30 meters before detonation, producing the effect of an artificial earthquake. Although none of them were able to break through the dome, all construction sites were destroyed, making further work impossible.

Bauvorhaben 711

Bauvorhaben 711 is the name of a WWII military underground built by the Nazis in 1943-1944. It was supposed to house a battery of V-3 cannons for shelling London.

It was originally codenamed Wiese ("Meadow") or Bauvorhaben 711 (Building Project 711) and was located in the commune of Landretun-le-Nord in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France.

The complex was built mainly by German workers who were previously employed in large engineering and mining enterprises. The most difficult work, which did not require high qualifications, was performed by concentration camp prisoners and prisoners of war.

The complex was a network of tunnels dug under a chalk hill, connected to five inclined ramparts. They were equipped with special V-3 guns. This name hides an ultra-long-range gun - Hochdruckpumpe ("Hohdrukpompe") - a 150-mm multi-chamber artillery gun, also called "High pressure pump", or, in soldier's slang, "Centipede".

Two batteries, each consisting of 25 guns, could fire 600 rounds per hour (75 tons of steel and explosives) and literally bombard the entire coast of England with shells.

Work on Bauvorhaben 711 was canceled after the Allied landings in Normandy. Soon, on September 5, 1944, the complex was captured by the 3rd Infantry Division. The allies did not meet any resistance - the Germans left the once secret structure in advance.

Keroman submarine base

This huge structure, built in 1941-1942, consists of giant reinforced concrete hangars, capable of protecting thirty submarines from any weapon that existed at that time. The base is located at the tip of the Keroman peninsula in the port of Lorient (Brittany, France) with access to the Bay of Biscay.

The last bunker was “Keroman III”, its construction lasted from October 1941 to January 1943. This allowed the creation of seven more docks, they had direct access to deep water and could be used as "wet" or dry. The docks were 170 m long, 135 m wide, 20 m deep; each dock was equipped with an overhead crane. The concrete roof was over 7 m thick.

Between January 14, 1943 and February 17, 1943, Allied aircraft dropped as many as 500 high-explosive bombs and more than 60,000 incendiary bombs on Lorient. But all to no avail, they could not cause severe damage to such massive fortifications. After the war, Lorient was used by French submarines as a protected repair base until 1997.

Bunker Eperleck

The construction of this structure was associated with Hitler's obsession with the weapon of "Retribution". A large underground complex was intended for prelaunch preparation and refueling of V-2 missiles. The bunker was supposed to be able to house up to 100 missiles and produce enough liquid oxygen to launch 36 missiles daily.

This is a German bunker in the north of France, on the territory of the Eperleck commune (Pas-de-Calais department). It consisted of three rooms. Its main part was 92 meters wide and 28 meters high. There was an oxygen plant and a hall for prelaunch preparation and assembly of missiles delivered from the warehouse. The upper tier of the bunker was only six meters underground, so its walls were seven meters thick. Up to 108 disassembled missiles could be stored in the central part of the bunker.

Intense bombing by the British and American Air Forces in 1943 resulted in partial destruction of the structure, and as a result, construction was stopped.
The second room of the bunker was a fortified railway station, where trains were unloaded, delivering missiles, warheads and fuel tanks to the complex. The third element of the bunker was an underground power plant with a capacity of 2,000 liters located separately in the north. with. and capable of generating up to 1.5 MW of energy.

When the allies discovered the construction of the bunker, they could not determine its purpose, but decided to destroy it just in case. On August 27, 1943, 187 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers attacked the construction site.

During the half-hour bombardment, a total of 368,910-kilogram bombs were dropped. The Allies finally finished off the German weapons on July 17, 1944, when they first used their new weapon - the 5-ton Tallboy bombs.