home Medicines from A to Z A couple of German bunkers from the First World War. Secret citadels: Nazi bunkers that became known only after the war

A couple of German bunkers from the First World War. Secret citadels: Nazi bunkers that became known only after the war

Today's post is dedicated to the story of one of the largest bunkers of the German defensive line, the West Wall, built in 1938-1940 on the western borders of the Third Reich.

A total of 32 objects of this type were built, which were built to protect strategically important points and roads. Before today Only two similar bunkers have survived, of which only one B-Werk has survived intact to this day. The second bunker was blown up in 1947 and covered with soil. Only decades later, a group of volunteers took up the task of restoring the blown up bunker with the aim of creating a museum inside. Volunteers did a huge amount of work to restore the bunker and today it is available for visiting to anyone interested in military history.

B-Werk Katzenkopf is located on the top of the mountain of the same name, located near the village of Irrel, a couple of kilometers from the border with Luxembourg. The facility was built in 1937-1939 to control the Cologne-Luxembourg highway. For this purpose, two B-Werks were built on Mount Katzenkopf, located close to each other. The second B-Werk Nimsberg, like the B-Werk Katzenkopf, was blown up in the post-war period and destroyed to such an extent that it could not be restored, unlike its brother.

01. View from Mount Katzenkopf to the village of Irrel.

B-Werk Katzenkopf was destroyed in 1947 by the French as part of the agreements for the demilitarization of Germany and lay in a state of ruins, covered with earth, for thirty years, until in 1976 it turned out that the explosion had destroyed only the upper level of the structure, and the rest of the underground part was not damaged. After this, the volunteer fire brigade of the village of Irrel took over the excavation of the site, through whose efforts the B-Werk was restored and since 1979 has become available to visitors as a museum.

02. The photo shows the preserved part of the ground level with one of the two entrances inside, not damaged by the explosion, but changed during the reconstruction process.

All B-Werke were built according to the same standard design, but could differ in details and interior layout. The name B-Werk comes from the classification of bunkers of the Third Reich, in which objects were assigned a letter according to the thickness of the walls. Class B corresponded to objects with a wall and ceiling thickness of 1.5 meters. In order not to give the enemy information about the thickness of the walls of the structures, these objects were then called Panzerwerk (literally: armored structure). This object was officially called Panzerwerk Nr.1520.

03. Before the explosion, the above-ground level of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 had next view. I marked the part of the upper level destroyed by the explosion as dark.

04. The preserved wall of the left flank with one of the emergency exits. A dummy armored machine gun turret is visible on the roof. The facility's armored turrets were dismantled before the explosion.

05. To give the object a shape close to the original, volunteers built dummies of both machine-gun armored turrets from brick and concrete. Now the roof of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 looks like this:

06. Each Panzerwerk had a standard set of weapons and armored domes, which I have indicated in this diagram. During this photo walk I will tell you more about them. Today, the only Panzerwerk with surviving armored domes is the B-Werk Bessering.

07. On the rubble of the destroyed part of the object, a wooden cross was installed and Memorial plaque in memory of the fallen soldiers of the 39th Fusilier Infantry Regiment (Füssilier-Regiments), who fought from 1941 to 1944 on the territory of the USSR. The soldiers of one of the battalions of this regiment formed the garrison of Panzerwerk Nr.1520 in 1939-1940.

08. In front of the entrance to the Panzerwerk there is a small park with numerous benches and an excellent view of the village of Irrel.

09. The entrance to the structure in the original was a hatch about a meter high, but now in its place there is an ordinary Entrance door standard height, so you don’t even have to bend down when going inside. An embrasure is traditionally located opposite the entrance. The design of this part underwent significant changes during the restoration of the blown up bunker. Initially, the floor was much lower and the embrasure was located at the chest level of the person entering.

10. Around the bend in the entrance corridor there was a hole 4.6 meters deep and 1.5 meters wide. IN Peaceful time the pit was covered with a steel sheet, 2 cm thick, forming a kind of bridge.

11. In a combat position, the steel bridge rose and acted as an armored shield, for which an embrasure was built into it. Such a system made it almost impossible for the enemy to penetrate inside the facility. The photo shows a hole in front of the second entrance, located in the destroyed part of the structure.

12. The diagram shows the structure of a similar system in B-Werk class buildings of the Western Wall. Each such object had two entrances, behind which there were pits covered with armor plate. Both entrances led to a common vestibule, which was also shot through another embrasure.

13. For clarity, I will give a plan of the upper floor. The pits at the entrance hatches are marked with the number 22, the general vestibule is 16. Gray I identified the premises destroyed by the explosion, including: a guard casemate (17), a filter and ventilation casemate (19), a grenade launcher armored dome shaft (21), a casemate flanking the entrances to the bunker (23) and a number of utility and technical rooms. Premises that have survived to one degree or another: a machine-gun armored dome (1), an observation casemate with an armored observation dome (3), a command center (4), a communications point (5), an artillery armored observation dome (6), a flamethrower casemate (11), a staircase to lower level (12) as well as several technical rooms and personnel rooms.

14. Now let's look at the preserved part (more precisely, the partially preserved part) of the upper level of the bunker. In the center of the photo you can see a room closed with a screen door.

15. Behind the net there is a heavily damaged flamethrower casemate and part of the flamethrower barrel. The jar contains the original flammable mixture for the flamethrower.

16. The fortress flamethrower was intended to protect the roof of the facility in the event of enemy soldiers penetrating it, as well as for the close defense of the bunker. The control of the flamethrower was completely electric, but in the event of a power failure, a manual option was also provided. At one time, the flamethrower ejected 120 liters of a fiery mixture, spraying it through a special nozzle and turning hundreds of cubic meters of space in a given direction into fiery Gehenna. Then it needed a two-minute break to charge new mixture. The fuel reserves were enough for 20 charges and the range of the flamethrower was 60-80 meters. The installation was located on two levels, its diagram is shown in the figure:

18. All armored turrets, containing tens of tons of metal, were removed from the site in the post-war period before the bunker was blown up. Today, in their place are brick and concrete dummies.

19. Six-recessed towers of type 20Р7 were developed by the German concern Krupp and made of high-strength steel. One such tower cost 82,000 Reichsmarks (about 420,000 euros today). You can imagine how much the construction of the Siegfried Line cost, because there were 32 such objects and each had two towers. The turret's crew consisted of five people: a commander and four gunners. The commander observed the situation around him from a periscope installed on the roof of the tower and commanded fire. Two MG34 machine guns were placed inside the turret, which could be freely rearranged from one embrasure to another, but could not simultaneously occupy two adjacent embrasures. There should always be a minimum gap between them - one embrasure. The thickness of the turret armor was 255 mm. Towers of this type were also used on the Eastern and Atlantic Walls, two major defensive lines of the Third Reich, and more than 800 of them were produced in total.

20. In the destroyed part of the bunker there was another armored dome for the 50-mm M 19 fortress mortar, whose task was the close defense of the Panzerwerk. The range of the mortar was 20-600 meters with a rate of fire of 120 rounds per minute. The diagram of the mortar armored dome is shown in the figure.

21. In the picture you can see numerous consequences of the explosion of 1947, in particular the ceiling that was lopsided and collapsed into the bunker.

22. The personnel accommodation room is the only fully restored room in the bunker.

23. The facility was equipped with a forced ventilation system in which air was forced inside by air pumps, if necessary passing through the FVA. Thus, excess pressure was maintained inside the bunker, which prevented poisonous gases from penetrating inside. In case of power loss in the network, manually operated reserve fuel units were placed in many places inside the bunker, one of which you see in the photo.

24. Stairs to the lower level, behind which the destroyed part of the bunker is visible. To the left of the corridor are the command center and communications rooms.

25. The command center premises were not damaged by the explosion, but the inside is still empty.

26. From the command center you can get into the observation casemate, which was once equipped with a cone-shaped observation armored cap of the Type 90P9 type.

27. The armor thickness of this small armored dome was 120 mm. The dome had five slits for all-round observation and two optical instruments. This is what the observer's position looked like before the bunker exploded.

28. This is how it looks now.

29. At the end of the corridor there is another room in which the personnel were located. This room is located near the destroyed part of the bunker and was also damaged by the explosion.

30. Adjacent to the room is the lower level of an artillery observation armored tower of type 21P7, which was designed to accommodate artillery observers with optical rangefinder devices. Thus, the bunker could also be used for aiming and adjusting artillery fire. Unlike the machine gun turret, the 21Р7 turret did not have embrasures, only holes for observation devices and a periscope. By the presence of this turret, the B-Werk Katzenkopf differed from the standard design, according to which a similar structure was equipped with two identical six-embrasure machine gun turrets. This panzerwerk also had two machine-gun turrets, but the second one was located remotely and was connected to the underground tunnel bunker.

31. Absolutely nothing has survived from the artillery observation tower to this day.

32. The remaining rooms on the upper level were destroyed by the explosion. We go down to the lower level.

33. The lower level should be more interesting, since it was not damaged by the explosion.

34. At the lower level of the structure there were: ammunition depots (24, 25, 40), a kitchen (27) with a food warehouse (28), barracks for personnel equipped with emergency exits to the surface (29, 31), a lower level of a flamethrower installation ( 32), staircase leading to the turn system (33), fuel storage for diesel generators (34), toilets (36) and shower (37), infirmary (38), engine room with two diesel generator sets (39) and tank with a supply of water (41).

Let's see now what's left of all this.

35. In the corridor (35) there is a ladder leading to one of the rooms on the upper level.

36. The infirmary room was slightly damaged by the explosion.

37. At the end of the corridor there was one of the ammunition storage warehouses, across the wall from which there was an engine room with two diesel generator sets.

38. The bunker received electricity from an external network; diesel generators served only as a backup source of electricity in the event of a loss of voltage in the power cable. The power of each of the two four-cylinder diesel engines was 38 hp. In addition to lighting, electricity was needed for electric drives of the ventilation system, heating resistors, which was electric (and was supplemented by ordinary potbelly stoves). The kitchen equipment was also completely electric.

39. The diesel generator room also contains traces of an explosion. Almost nothing has survived from the equipment./p>

40. Ammunition depot.

41. Remains of the shower room.

42. Toilets.

43. Sewage equipment.

44. In this room (34) a supply of fuel for diesel engines was stored in the amount of 17,000 liters, with the expectation of a monthly autonomy.

45. We move to the second corridor (30) of the underground level.

46. Traces of destruction from the explosion are also visible here. The transition to the upper level through a ladder ladder is bricked up here

47. One of two rooms on the underground level, which housed beds for resting personnel (29). In the corner of the room there are two original filters from the facility’s filter and ventilation unit. In total, the bunker had six such filters in case of a gas attack. Behind the grated door is an emergency exit to the surface. It was originally of a completely different design, but as part of the bunker's restoration as a museum, it was remodeled to meet modern safety standards. It is also visible from the outside in photo 03.

48. The former ammunition depot houses modest displays to compensate for the emptiness that reigns around.

49. Information stands tell about the events of 75 years ago.

50. A kitchen room, only the sink remains of its equipment. Adjacent to the kitchen is a warehouse for storing food.

51. The second of two rooms for rest of personnel. Each room had eighteen beds in which the soldiers slept in shifts. In total, the bunker garrison numbered 84 people. Beds like the one in this picture were typical of all siegfried line bunkers from the smallest to the B-Werke.

52. This room also contains one of the emergency exits to the surface. It had a design that made it impossible to penetrate into the object from the surface. The D-shaped emergency exit shaft leading to the roof of the bunker with a ladder ladder inside was covered with sand. If there was a need to leave the bunker through the emergency exit, the wedges blocking the valves inside the barrel were pulled out and the sand poured out into the bunker, freeing the exit to the top. Approximately the same emergency exit design was used at Fort Schonenburg on the Maginot Line, only there was gravel instead of sand and it spilled not into the fort, but into a cavity inside the trunk.

This completes the inspection of the lower level. Everything that I have described up to this point was typical for all 32 Panzerwerke built, the differences were only in the details. But B-Werk Katzenkopf had interesting feature, which significantly distinguished it from the standard project, namely an additional third level, located deeper than the main structure.

53. The diagram below clearly shows the structure of the bunker and the lower underground level, located at a depth of twenty-five meters (the diagram is not to scale).

54. There is a ladder leading down like this.

55. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the bunker and the largest. There are no such open spaces anywhere else inside the facility.

56. Initially, it was planned to connect this panzerwerk with the Nimsberg panzerwerk, located a kilometer away. The plans called for an electric narrow-gauge railway to be laid between both structures. Thus, both panzerwerks could form something similar to the forts of the Maginot Line or the objects of the Eastern Wall. But in 1940, Germany captured France, Belgium and Luxembourg and the need for the Western Wall disappeared, all construction work on the defensive line was stopped, including the construction of this postern.

57. Away from staircase two posterns diverge, located at right angles to each other. The larger one was supposed to connect both panzerwerks. The smaller one leads to the combat block, located away from the main structure and consisting of a machine gun turret and an emergency exit.

58. Layout of the underground bunker level:

59. First, I headed along the smaller one. Its length is 75 meters.

60. The turn ends with a guard casemate covering the approach to the combat block. There is no armored door, like all armored doors at the facility.

61. Inside the guard casemate there is an embrasure from which the tunnel was shot through and a device for manual ventilation of the casemate in the event of failure or stoppage of the bunker’s electrical ventilation system.

62. This is what a device for manual ventilation of a casemate looks like. Similar devices were installed at all important points in the bunker.

63. There is also a staircase leading to the combat block.

64. Climbing the stairs we find ourselves on the lower level. There is an emergency exit portal in the wall, which has a design typical for such objects. Through a hole in the ceiling, access was made to the machine-gun armored turret. This tower was a standard six-ambrasure type 20Р7, exactly the same as that installed in the main building. On the wall you can see fastenings for three beds - the tower crew was located in this room.

65. The tower itself was dismantled, like the rest of the armored domes of the facility, immediately after the end of the war. Now a concrete dummy has also been built here.

66. Once again what it looked like in the original:

67. There’s nothing more to see here, let’s go back to the fork.

68. Along the way there is such an opening in the back. Apparently, the plans were to replenish the facility with another warhead, or one of the small bunkers located on this mountain was to be connected to the system. There is no way to know now.

69. Beautiful.

70. The ceiling height of the main postern is 3.5 meters. After the cramped interior of the Panzerwerk, this underground location seems simply huge.

71. Inside the unfinished main postern there is an exhibition of various WWII bombs and shells found in the region. There are information plaques on the wall telling the history of the site and the Siegfried Line as a whole.

72. Here in the wall there is another opening (on the left in the photo) similar to what we saw in the neighboring postern. But unlike the opening that is located in the turn leading to the armored turret, the purpose of this one is known. Fifty meters below the bunker there is a railway tunnel. At the time when they began to build this postern to unite both panzerwerks, there were plans to connect underground system passages with a railway tunnel, which is located under the bunker. In this way, it was possible to transport ammunition and other ammunition into both bunkers completely unnoticed by rail. These plans were not destined to come true for the reasons described above.

73. At the end of the terna there is a small water supply casemate. Inside there is a well, 120 meters deep, and a powerful electric pump that pumps water from the well into the bunker’s water supply.

74. In the place where the postern breaks off, a small diorama has been built, which is not related to the bunker.

75. The bunker water supply pump has been preserved in relatively good condition.

76. The remains of some electrical equipment hang on the wall.

77. The inspection of the facility has come to an end and we are heading to the exit.

Finally, a few words about the history of this building. Combat duty at the facility began in August 1939 and lasted until May 1940, when France was captured. Service at the facility lasted from four to six weeks, after which the garrison went on rotation. After the capture of France, combat duty in the bunker was canceled, the facility was completely disarmed, and in order to maintain the technical systems in good working order, only one soldier was left in it to look after the facility.

In December 1944, an order was received to prepare the bunker for battle and move a garrison into it. But due to an acute shortage of people, it was possible to gather only 7 Wehrmacht soldiers and 45 people from the Hitler Youth, aged 14-16 years. In January, American troops approached the village of Irrel and began heavy shelling of the village and surrounding area, which continued for several weeks. In February, the Americans set to work on both panzerwerks, inflicting numerous air and artillery strikes on the targets. The demoralized garrison of the Panzerwerk left the facility at night through the emergency exit and the Americans who went inside found absolutely no one there, after which they blew up the entrances to the bunker so that no one could use it, and in 1947, as part of the demilitarization of Germany, all the metal was removed from the bunker and the bunker itself The bunker was blown up and covered with soil. It remained in this state for about thirty years, until in 1976 the local volunteer fire brigade took on its restoration and did a Herculean job to make the object accessible to visitors.

Berlin. April 1945. Red Army troops are on the outskirts of Berlin, and there are only a few weeks left until the end of the war. The Wehrmacht command these days is going deeper and deeper underground - into pre-built bunkers, where German generals, together with Adolf Hitler, sitting behind thick concrete walls, give the last orders to the troops...
Map of surrounded Berlin; last award order; an ashtray full of cigarette butts; empty bottles from under the liquor and Luger on the table of the polished Major General of the Wehrmacht...
Who knows what his last days…

(Total 23 photos)

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1. These days, in the Sheremetyev Museum, in the Mikhailovsky Battery of Sevastopol, the installation “In the Lair of the Fascist Beast” was opened. The installation recreates workplace a German general in one of the Berlin bunkers in the spring of 1945.

2. The installation uses both authentic objects of that time and very accurate copies of some exhibits, which, due to their dilapidation, cannot be placed in an open exhibition.

3. Bunkers like this one have been built at depths of up to 40 meters throughout Berlin since 1935. The walls were erected from 1.6 to 4 meters thick, and the floors from 2 to 4.5 meters. Ceiling heights ranged from 2 to 3 meters in different rooms. The outer corners of the bunkers were made beveled to disperse the shock wave. The bunkers were built hermetically sealed and provided complete protection against the penetration of poisonous gases. Taking into account the possible disabling of nearby power plants and the destruction of the city power grid, the bunkers were equipped with autonomous diesel generators. A heating system, as a rule, was not provided. Normal temperature could only be provided by heating the air supplied to the ventilation system.

4. When creating the installation, Hitler’s bunker was taken as a basis. It was from it that the main points were copied - walls, equipment on the walls (ventilation shafts, phosphorus strip intended for orientation in rooms in the absence of lighting). A Wehrmacht major general works here, occupying a certain position at headquarters.

5. Judging by the stripes and awards, this person is associated with the National Socialist Party of Germany and has services to the Reich. The red ribbon on the right breast pocket means that the general is a Knight of the Order of the Blood, a highly honorable award in the Nazi hierarchy. It was given for participation in the famous Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, from which Hitler’s path to power actually began. Quite a few people received this award, and it indicates that the general is one of the Fuhrer’s long-time associates. However, there is no party badge on his uniform, which means that this person never joined the party. Apparently, this is why his position is quite modest, as for a longtime ally, just a major general (the first general rank in the Wehrmacht)

6. Order bar, 2nd class cross and medal for wounds. Such a “gold” medal was given for a serious wound or for 5 minor ones. Because award with a swastika, which means it was received in the Second world war.

7. On the table we see a number of objects that were with the general in his last days. On the right side of the table is a photograph of the eldest son - a submariner, just below, under the pistol - a postcard from youngest son, coming from the front. Directly in front of the general is the paper he is working with. This is an award sheet for Eugene Valot. Eugene Valot was the last to be awarded the Knight's Cross, Germany's highest award, for the Battle of Berlin. The documents are ready, all that remains is to sign. And the date is April 29, 1945.

8. Another award sheet is being punched out in the typewriter, but the award, apparently, never reached the soldier or officer..

9. German typewriter "Ideal". It’s interesting that on the number “5”, instead of the % icon we are used to today, there is an SS icon

10. A soldier’s book on the general’s desk

11. An interesting set of items on the general’s desk - citron candies, a pack of cotton wool, a lighter, a Cuban cigar, a teapot, playing cards...

12. The ashtray is full of cigarette butts, even despite the inscription on the wall of the bunker. But these are the last days, and no one cared anymore. The inscription on the stub of the cigar reads “only for the Wehrmacht.”

13. Cigarettes and matches. The inscription on the matches is One Reich, One People, One Fuhrer. On Sulima cigarettes there is a German excise stamp of that time.

16. Near the telephone set - some money, a grenade, a Luger pistol. Judging by the scantly displayed cartridges for him, the general was thinking about something for a long time at that moment. Perhaps over the fact that all he had to do was load the gun, and...

17. Map of surrounded Berlin by right hand general It is she who leads him to more and more inevitable thoughts.

Wehrmacht bunker in the center of Minsk

Despite the fact that almost 70 years have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Belarusian land preserves the time stamps of that time. One of them is located in the very center of the Belarusian capital, at the intersection of Kommunisticheskaya and Storozhevskaya streets - right on the embankment of the Svisloch River. Both from Pobediteley Avenue and from the Trinity Suburb, Minsk residents and guests of the capital can clearly see the building of the Moscow-Minsk Bank. But few people know that at its foot sticking out of the ground... are reinforced concrete fragments of one of the largest German buried communications centers that have survived to this day. According to retired Colonel Ivan Zaitsev, who served in the Belarusian Military District, for almost 30 years after the war, part of the 62nd communications center was located in this bunker.

A few words about the hero of this article, without whose story I would not have been able to learn in such detail about such an unusual historical place.

Retired Colonel Ivan Zaitsev - honorary signalman of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus in literally this word. His experience and knowledge can be the envy of everyone, apparently, which is why he still, even after resigning, continues to work at the 62nd node.

The Oryol boy was brought to Belarus by army fate. After training, he served in Shchuchin in the aviation unit in a communications company. Still during conscript service I decided to become an officer, graduate from some aviation communications school, fortunately my health allowed it. But the order came to the unit from Gorky, from the tank school. Ivan was used to following orders - he went to Gorky. And I was incredibly surprised when I learned that there was also a communications school in this city...

After graduating from the Gorky Military School of Communications Technicians, he was sent to Belarus, to the 62nd communications center, where he went through all the steps of the career ladder - from a young, beardless technician to a chief. It was there that he was awarded the Order of the Red Star - for installing new equipment at the site and for organizing the ZAS service.

I still remember that team with warmth, we had a special atmosphere,” says Ivan Ilyich. - And part of the elements of the 62nd was the former German underground bunker times of the Great Patriotic War. At that time, the troops were receiving new sets of ZAS, there was a lot of work. After all, the node was used at the command level. Large-scale exercises were often held, and all communication with the countries of the Warsaw Pact Organization went through us. At the same time, the headquarters of the communications center was located at the headquarters of the Belarusian Military District, and in the bunker there was part of the radio equipment and even at first two transmitters - a kind of mini-radio center.

The appearance of a German bunker in the area of the Tatar vegetable gardens of Minsk is shrouded in mystery. It is only known that its construction was started by the Nazis immediately after the occupation of the Belarusian capital in 1941. Then it was the outskirts of the city. The protected bunker was designed by the Germans and built by Soviet prisoners of war. Hitler’s troops were rushing to Moscow, so through this node the Army Headquarters “Center” immediately established contact with headquarters in Vinnitsa.

According to Ivan Zaitsev, the bunker was equipped with the latest Siemens automatic telephone exchange at that time, including some equipment for maritime communication centers, which were used by Soviet signalmen for their own purposes for almost thirty years after the end of the war. High-capacity cables went to the German garrison in Masyukovshchina, to German institutions that were located in the area of now Belinsky and Karl Marx streets. After the war in the 1950s, the Minsk Suvorov Station was powered from the bunker with a separate cable. military school and later - the headquarters of the Belarusian Military District. Communication lines from the headquarters of the BVO and the house of the commander of the district troops, military units and formations, military hotels and other military institutions also converged here.

The bunker itself was a one-story underground room with three entrances. Ivan Ilyich drew such a plan from memory. In the center there is a long and wide corridor. In some rooms there were transmitters with receivers, long-distance communication equipment, in others there were cabinets with telephone sets and boxes with cable entries. Rooms - area 20 square meters each. The unit could be powered autonomously with electricity - from German diesel power plants located in the same place.

Was very interesting system ventilation,” says Ivan Ilyich. - There was no heating in the bunker at all, although both in winter and summer the ventilation exhaust pipes constantly maintained a temperature of approximately plus 18 degrees Celsius. There were no radiators, it always seemed cool. True, there was a lot of moisture, so German equipment boxes and cabinets for storing communications equipment were equipped with rubber seals.

There is one unusual story connected with this place in the official biography of retired colonel Ivan Zaitsev. Minsk at that time was an intermediate city for flights of military and military aircraft of the USSR to the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. They often landed at the Machulishchi airfield, where the 121st Guards Heavy Bomber and 201st Air Defense Fighter Aviation Regiments were stationed.

As retired Colonel Ivan Zaitsev recalls, in early December 1972 it became known that negotiations between the leaders of the USSR and France - Leonid Brezhnev and Georges Pompidou - would be held in Minsk, or rather, in the new residence of the Secretary General near Zaslavl. The military began hastily preparing for the arrival of high-ranking guests: all dilapidated buildings at the airfield were demolished, the garrison territory and the road to Minsk were renovated. The 404th relay station was installed near the bunker, which provided instant communication with Pyotr Masherov's dacha. Through the cables of the communication center located in the bunker, foreign television journalists sent programs to their countries.

On January 11, 1973, Brezhnev arrived in Minsk from Moscow by train, Georges Pompidou with those accompanying him and journalists arrived in two Caravel planes from France. The weather then worsened: it snowed during the day and froze at night. Therefore, it was decided to use heat engines on the runway around the clock. Not trusting the regimental guard, by order of the commander of the BVI troops, an officer guard was formed to guard two French aircraft. But this did not save us from the emergency.

At night, the “conscript” driver of a vehicle from the OBATO fighter regiment fell asleep while clearing a strip right behind the wheel and ran into the “Caravelle,” says Ivan Ilyich. - Today we can talk about this political incident with a grin. And then it was a national emergency. It turned out that the soldier had been driving continuously for two days and had hardly slept during this time. As a result, he was not only released from arrest, but also placed in the infirmary of the garrison medical unit for a week under the supervision of doctors. And the entire command, from the battalion to the head of the military department of the KGB of the BVI, was demoted.

The early 1980s were politically turbulent. In response to NATO deployment strategic forces It was decided to erect a “defensive shield” on the western borders of the USSR. From the node, underground cables were laid to the lines of the Ministry of Communications, and a connection was made to the state network. It was assumed that in the event of the outbreak of hostilities at the site, the 7th Signal Brigade of the Supreme High Command, stationed in Gomel, should come to this place. The area around the bunker allowed military signalmen to deploy both equipment and tents.

However, after just a couple of years, the life of the bunker came to a standstill. The city expanded close to its walls. It was decided to install new military communications equipment in a different place...

I remember that next to the bunker there was a barracks in which workers of the communications center previously lived,” recalls retired colonel Ivan Zaitsev. - And then it was demolished and the Belarus Hotel was built in this place. IN last years On the eve of the collapse of the USSR, the bunker was used as a warehouse for storing communications equipment.

Today the German bunker can still be seen in photographs of the open joint stock company"Bank Moscow-Minsk" - its parking lot is located above the premises of the former communications center. Not far from the central façade entrance stands one of the exhaust pipes. All three entrances to the bunker are sealed with metal doors, access is closed. He is waiting for a new owner...

From the editor

In general, in 1941 - 1942. Wehrmacht sappers built a whole network of bunkers and pillboxes in Minsk, which were supposed to control the main highways of the city. This concrete chain began in the area of Chelyuskintsev Park, keeping under control a giant stalag where tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were kept and the strategic Minsk-Moscow highway, the main supply route for Army Group Center, passed through. The bunker has survived to this day in the courtyards of houses along Independence Avenue in the area of the Gabrovo restaurant. The next bunker with machine gun nests and a crew room is located nearby: it also controlled a strategic highway, and you can see it in the courtyard of an antique store known to Minsk residents. Other links in the chain of Wehrmacht casemates have not survived to this day, although old-timers remember them in the Komarovka area and the current Victory Square. A unique round bunker, topped with an armored cap and invulnerable to air bombs of that period, remains a landmark of Minsk. Judging by its location, it was part of the system of Wehrmacht security bunkers crossing Minsk from east to southwest, but it belonged to the SS. This monster, which was then located on the territory of the Minsk ghetto, was supposed to suppress all encroachments from within and without, and its heavy machine guns also held at gunpoint the road leading to the prisoner of war camps in Drozdy and Masyukovshchina. You can still see the bunker near the Planet Hotel.

There were undoubtedly other bunkers, but they were mostly razed to the ground in the 1940s. If our readers have any information about these ominous artifacts from the times of war and occupation, we will be happy to publish their information.

Berlin. April 1945. Red Army troops are on the outskirts of Berlin, and there are only a few weeks left until the end of the war.
The Wehrmacht command these days is going deeper and deeper underground - into pre-built bunkers, where German generals, together with Adolf Hitler, sitting behind thick concrete walls, give the last orders to the troops...
Map of surrounded Berlin; last award order; an ashtray full of cigarette butts; empty bottles of alcohol and a Luger on the table of the polished Major General of the Wehrmacht...
Who knows what his last days were like...

These days, the installation “In the Lair of the Fascist Beast” has opened at the Sheremetyev Museum in the Mikhailovskaya Battery in Sevastopol. The installation recreates the workplace of a German general in one of the Berlin bunkers in the spring of 1945.
The installation uses both authentic objects of that time and very accurate copies of some exhibits, which, due to their dilapidation, cannot be placed in an open exhibition.

3. Bunkers like this one have been built at depths of up to 40 meters throughout Berlin since 1935. The walls were erected from 1.6 to 4 meters thick, and the floors from 2 to 4.5 meters. Ceiling heights ranged from 2 to 3 meters in different rooms. The outer corners of the bunkers were made beveled to disperse the shock wave.
The bunkers were built hermetically sealed and provided complete protection against the penetration of poisonous gases. Taking into account the possible disabling of nearby power plants and the destruction of the city power grid, the bunkers were equipped with autonomous diesel generators. A heating system, as a rule, was not provided. Normal temperature could only be ensured by heating the air supplied to the ventilation system.

6. Order bar, 2nd class cross and medal for wounds. Such a “gold” medal was given for a serious wound or for 5 minor ones. Because The award has a swastika, which means it was received during World War II.

7. On the table we see a number of objects that were with the general in his last days. On the right side of the table is a photograph of the eldest son, a submariner, and just below, under the pistol, is a postcard from the youngest son, which came from the front. Directly in front of the general is the paper he is working with. This is an award sheet for Eugene Valot. Eugene Valot was the last person to be awarded the Knight's Cross, Germany's highest honor, during the war. The documents are ready, all that remains is to sign. And the date is April 29, 1945.

8. Another award sheet is being punched out in the typewriter, but the award, apparently, never reached the soldier or officer..

9. German typewriter "Ideal". It’s interesting that on the number “5”, instead of the % icon we are used to today, there is an SS icon

10. A soldier’s book on the general’s desk

11. An interesting set of items on the general’s desk - citron candies, a pack of cotton wool, a lighter, a Cuban cigar, a teapot, playing cards...

13. Cigarettes and matches. The inscription on the matches is One Reich, One People, One Fuhrer. On Sulima cigarettes there is a German excise stamp of that time.

14.

15. Here is also a bottle of Rhine wine brand Bruner, 1940, and a regimental diary that has not yet been started.

17. Map of encircled Berlin on the general’s right hand. It is she who leads him to more and more inevitable thoughts.

18. Radio station and a general’s cap on it. The general could listen to news, both German and catch the wave of the Allies. In the installation you can listen to several messages - several speeches by Hitler, Churchill's speech about England's entry into World War II, a speech from a German announcer about the defeat at Stalingrad.

19. Two grenades were prepared in case of defense during the last assault on the bunker by Soviet troops.

20. Good quality carved leather chair

21. An equally good table

22. The general's last telephone conversation

I was traveling on business and, as they say, took the opportunity to visit a couple interesting places. One is interesting photographically (more on that next time), and the second is historical. Today I’ll tell you exactly about him. The photographs are boring (in general, I consider May the most unphotogenic month of the year), but the tragedy that unfolded here during the Great Patriotic War events are simply amazing.

The scale of the fighting between the Volga and Don rivers required Germany to increase the supply of soldiers and weapons to the front. Having captured the part in July 1942, 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, State Secretary Hanzenmüller, decided to straighten it out: quickly build a railway 25-30 kilometers in the already captured territory from the village of Gniloye through Petrenkovo, the Pakholok farm, past Yarkov, Mikhnovo with access to Evdakovo-Kamenka. Already in August they began construction of a single-track, which would allow the Nazis to have reliable road space. In the area where the railway line was being built, the Germans organized 14 concentration camps. The Nazis fenced off the former stables and pigsties with barbed wire and drove almost 30 thousand people there. Soviet soldiers and officers captured near Kharkov.

A German bunker has been preserved in the village of Gniloye. The control point for a strategically important section of the railway was located here. From here the Nazis had to control the passage of the trains. I decided to find him and see what was left of him.

02 . Having inquired with local residents about the location of the bunker, I leave the outskirts of Gnily. The village received its name from the nearby “rotten place”, which was the name in the old days for a place where, as a result of open independent springs, a permanent slushy and wet vast place was formed. Behind the meadow you can see the houses of the Blizhnye Stoyanovo farm.

03 . When building the road, the Nazis relied exclusively on free force. All equipment - wheelbarrows, stretchers and shovels. People are like draft animals. Everyone was ruled by the “international”: Germans, Magyars-Hungarians, Italians, traitors from among us. Those who were exhausted and bedridden were forced to be loaded into trolleys. They pushed along freshly laid rails and accelerated downhill. At the end of the journey the trolley overturned. Bodies rolled downhill. Who died, who was shot. The corpses were buried right there in the mound. The road was becoming a mass grave. Now all that remains of it are embankments and a many-kilometer ravine.

04. From Gniloye, an old subsided road embankment leads like a steppe beam to Petrenkovo and beyond. I didn’t go any further myself, but according to the locals, it’s less noticeable there. Somewhere it was overgrown with trees, and somewhere it was plowed into fields. IN Soviet time It was not customary to remember 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 us millet with water, gruel, and sometimes boiled rotten horse meat. Every day, in one camp alone, up to 50 people died from hunger and disease. According to local residents, along 35 kilometers of the road the remains of thousands of Soviet soldiers and officers are hidden. 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 . But under a small hill is the bunker itself. In the background is the malting plant of the Russian Malt company. The clients of Russian Malt are more than sixty brewing companies, among them: Efes, Heineken, Baltika, Vienna, PIT, Bochkarev. Where the forest is visible, there is a river flowing (see photo below), in which fish and crayfish lived before the plant was launched (June 2004), and now waste from the plant is being dumped. However, today we are not talking about this.

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

08 . Second.

09 . Inside, as expected, there is total destruction and garbage. You'll soon end up getting into trouble somewhere else.

10 . One of the rooms is partitioned 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 expressed doubts on their website that this is a German bunker, due to its strange layout. One of the locals told them that this was a former collective farm vegetable storage facility. This is true, after the war the bunker was indeed adapted for economic needs, but even later (already in the era of state farms) it was rebuilt into an omshannik (a place for wintering bees). Hence there are a lot of “extra” partitions.

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

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

14 . I get out and come across a ventilation duct. I breathe fresh air, I think how quickly we forgot our history. Maybe instead of a dusty school classroom, a museum should be made here? It may be closed and opened once a year on May 9, but still not a toilet. In the same Ostrogozhsky region there are Magyar cemeteries (if you haven’t seen them, take a look), the Hungarians take care of their soldiers even in a foreign country, and what about us?!

15 . « The Ostrogozh-Rossoshan operation went down in history as Stalingrad on the Upper Don. 86 thousand captured soldiers and officers in two weeks 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 trains passed from Kamenka and after that the bridges and road surfaces were blown up. After which the sleeper rails were dismantled. They say that they were useful in the construction of the Stary Oskol - Rzhava branch, along which our troops were supplied with everything they needed in the battle on Kursk Bulge. The remaining materials were collected by local residents to restore the destroyed farm. That foreign iron still serves people to this day - as a load-bearing beam on the roof of a basement, a corner riser-support in a barn... Only those thousands of builders - prisoners of war - cannot be returned and not even remembered by name. They fell nameless.

German map from 1943 with the railway marked.

17 . A horse on a leash wanders nearby along the embankment, nibbling the grass. I approached him. The sun is shining, summer is ahead...
How scary it must be when there is war... At such moments I invariably think that all my problems and fears are absolutely nothing compared to the horrors that were seen by people who survived that war and the pain and suffering that those who lie in this land experienced .

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

19 . I drove around the village a little. Rotten arose back in 1684. The first settlers were 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 Ostrogozhsky district was carried out. According to this census, the population of Gnily was 388 people. For a long time, the Gnilovo residents remained parishioners of the Peskovskaya and Novosotenskaya churches, at their former place of residence, and in 1832 they built a small stone prayer house, and Gniloye began to be called a settlement, which became part of the Dalnepolubyanskaya volost. The population began to increase rapidly, small handicraft establishments appeared - leather, brick, oil press and grain milling. In 1880, 1,123 people already lived in Gniloye. That same year, services began in a new stone church that had been under construction for almost 40 years. The construction of the temple began in 1834 with the diligence of the peasant woman Anna Nikitichna Klimenkova and the wanderer Luka Ignatievich. The church was two-story, stone, with beautiful majestic architecture. The upper altar is consecrated in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and the lower altar in honor of the Kazan Icon Holy Mother of God. The parish was consecrated in 1846 by Archbishop of Voronezh Anthony Smirnitsky.

20 . There was nothing more interesting along the way.
Except this environmentally friendly garage.

21 . Yes, I almost forgot about the river.

22 . An unnamed tributary of the Quiet Pine.

23 . The bridge has a speed limit sign of 15 km/h due to its accident risk.
Everything looks okay, but upon closer inspection I see that at the base of the bridge there are rotten sleepers.

24 . A strange combination of metal and wood, considering that asphalt is laid on top.
I don’t know if these sleepers are related to Berlinka.

25 . Next, on the advice of local residents, I went to the Sibirsky farm.
On the way we encountered a small detour. I didn't stop.

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

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

24 . Among the exhumed remains, searchers found 15 medallions. One contained a pen; most were empty, only five with questionnaires. So far we have managed to read four names. These are privates Grigory Ryabinin, Ivan Glukhov, Zakhar Bandurka, Gorat Astrosyan. In the archives of the Ministry of Defense they are listed as missing.

25 . For more details, with interviews with eyewitnesses of the terrible events, I recommend watching the film “The Roads They Didn’t Choose.”
He's amateur, but very good.

26 . In order to slightly smooth out the possible heavy aftertaste in my soul 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!

Diagnostics and diseases. Medicines from A to Z

A couple of German bunkers from the First World War. Secret citadels: Nazi bunkers that became known only after the war