Ostwall, ZGS14 Fuchsbau and
driving a russian tank
Sooo.... in july this year I went with a friend to Poland and
eastern germany to check out some cool old bunkers.
We traveled on the first day to Poland, about 600km and I totally
underestimated the shitty conditions of Polands roads: Ruts galore!
Now that was fun to drive.
Ahead we went and quite accidentally we stumbled upon the first
bunker we were about to check out - the officially open bunker
system which was part of the interconnected system of the
"Ostwall", a huge 32km (yes thats more then 20 miles!)
underground fortification system - all interconnected...
So we went in with a guided tour.
Tthis is how those bunkers look undestroyed - compare with the
later ones...
We had to climb down some stairs to about 20-30m underground. A
tad bit scary, but nothing im comparison what we would have to go
through later...
deep down below.... two level underground barracks. Not completed
as you can see. The whole complex was only done to about 30%.
We checked out the underground installations for more then 2 hours,
but most pictures are pretty repetetive, so i'll skip them for now.
However we exited the bunker back to bright sunshine.
It was pretty cold down there, we were happy to have our jackets
with us. the polish kids were freezing their asses off down there
;)
After this we chatted with the tourguide (thanks to my friend
Robert who speaks polish well) and got some posters to bring back
to germany for the next day. Also we got a cool map for the area
with all other bunkers in it. And lots of warnings that entering
them is forbidden and dangerous. But in case you need to see for
yourself... Well we went to check out a small system called
"Werkgruppe Schill" which is a miniature edition of the
big bunker system - only 1km long, two bunkers and one underground
barrack interconnected, but seperate from the big system. Sounds
good? It sure did to us. So we went to the bunker in the forests.
After about half an hour of searching
(hard to find!) we finally found it. Looks quirte different from
the undestroyed one, doesn't it?
This is where we faced some problems - climbing down through the
bunker to the lower levels proved difficult - no handrails except
some ropes, wet floors, trash... One step to the side and we would
fall down about 20m. On concrete and metal spikes. Not fun.
it was pitchblack down there, so we brought a lot of lights. LED
headlights, small Maglites and LED Maglites as well as these LED
torches, that illuminated a 3-4meter circle around us. It was
still scary as fuck down there with water running and not much
other sounds. Eery.
We found out where the running water sound came from - after 60
years this bunker had still a working sewer!
On we went and we entered the underground barracks to find
lots of rooms, tons of dangerous holes in the ground and some
remains of people who have partys in here. And of course old WW2
era inscriptions on the walls. Checking out a mysterious hole in the
ceiling.
Getting through the tunnel proved
to be somewaht difficult at times. You can see how we had a rather
limited space at times. Here half of the tunnel was filled up with
sand.
You can notice how a lot of the metal parts of the bunker has been
carefully removed. Not for safety reasons but to recycle the
metal. Feels very weird... Walking through the tunnels proved
difficult since sometime nice little things like this hung down
from the ceiling.
(Robert provides a very nice scale
model for the Diesel tank.)
We checked out the rest of the
rooms of the bunker, especially the engine room with the rest of
the Dieseltank. To provide energy to the bunker, there used to be
a big ship diesel engine running here, powering electrical
generators. All that is left of it is the tank and the foundations
of the generator sockets. Judging by the size of the tank, it
probably was able to run a pretty long time. Yet again, as in all
other rooms: Most metal was gone, removed after the war.
(Foundations of the generators.
Inbetween a bench, probably left here from some party going on.)
What hit us as strange was the lack of a
ceiling in this room. We were not sure if this was intentional, or
if the ceiling was never supposed to be here. However there was a
door leading to this ceiling less area over the generators - so
something should have been there?
(Inspecting a hole through a wall between
the upper rooms.)
One of the rooms in the pper level was hard
to reach since the ceiling in the generator room is missing. So
someone decided to break a hole through the wall to provide access
to that room. We peered through the hle to see everything the room
contained: Nothing. Absolutely nothing - the room was as empty as
all the other rooms. Interesting to see though is that for the
walls inside the barracks they used bricks and mortar instead of
concrete. Probably to save costs. Stronger walls were not used
since the barracks were not intended to be a fighting position.
(Illuminating one of the long
tunnels in the system. On the floor you can spot the small
chemical lights we used to indicate our position and ways inside
the bunker. Of course we removed them later on our way out. A
smart idea so we can later track, where we were already and which
way to take.)
After thorougly inspecting the barracks, we
went over to the second bunker. Again it took us a while to get
there through the second tunnel and it was as dark as everywhere
else in the system. So we left again some chemical lights onthe
ground to keep a trail for us. Despite having a basic map with us,
navigation in the total darkness of the unker was not easy.
(Nice to see how to dark it really is in those bunkers. I took
a quick snapshot into one of the tunnels from the barracks. Hard
to see, that this tiny speck of light is actually my friend
Robert, a mere 20m away from me.)
AWe continued our way to the other bunker and arrived there,
noticing that it was never fully finished. A lot of the contrete
was not pured. Nevertheless we started to climb up the stairs to
the top level of the bunker. We read, that there should be an exit
reachable from there. Unfortunately the stairs were worse then the
ones from the first bunker, more slippery, no railing, and
generally in worse condition. The stairs leading then to the top
floor of the bunker were completely gone and replaced by an
incredible unsafe construction. No way we would climb out here,
dangling over a 20m steep fall. This convinced us to not risk
anything and rather climb back to the bottom of the shaft, through
all the tunnels, the barracks and back through the first bunker to
the outside. A long walk, but the safer option.
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(Excellent built street - for the
early 20ies. Road has been unchanged for 80 years. The horrible
cobblestone forced me to drive only with 10mph and even that was a
challenge.)
Back at the hotel we checked out
the room. Basic, but sufficient for us. And incredibly cheap. We
unpacked our minigrill, went to the parking lto, had a beer and
started the BBQ. Just half an hour later the local poluice showed
up and started questioning us, if we had heard about a fire around
here (the grill was covered in meat at the time, hidden behind a
bush from the street and not giving up any smoke, so....) - no we
haven't. And that it was not allowed to have an open beer in
public anymore. Ooops, we put the beers away, apolgized and they
went their merry way, trying to locate the big, evil fire... I was
very happy that my ploish speaking freidn was with me - this could
have gone awfully wrong.
We had our second beer then way
more stealthily in the car, ate up and launched my two Xtwins,
that I brought along for some model plane fun on the parking lot.
A while later we went to bed, since the next day we would hit the
road early again to go to eastern germany and check out the Stasibunker ZGS14...
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