The Wolf’s Lair

Day 93 & 94  

The marvelous weather the day earlier quickly vanished on day 93 and we were left with a fairly dreary and overcast day in Gizycko. Our original plan was to hire a motorboat and go out on the water for the day, however, the only boats they rented were sailing boats and with little to no experience sailing we remained on dry land. 

The Gizycko Canal.

Gizycko Marina - for a town that got a pretty bad wrap in our guide book, it turned out quite nice.

The rest of the day was therefore spent cleaning the van, recharging batteries, catching up on emails and doing the washing. With that, I will leave day 93 in the annals of history, never to be spoken about again.

Again we woke to some average weather, only this time the rain was coming down a little harder. With what felt like a very uneventful time the day previous, we were keen to hit the road early and make as much out of the day as possible.

Our first stop, was somewhere I had always wanted to go, but never realised was in Poland – The Wolf’s Lair.

We were only about 30 minutes drive from where Hitler based himself for much of his campaign on the Eastern Front and arrived just after 10am to a very damp and quiet parking lot. 

As we climbed out of the van, a Polish lady offered us a guided tour for 60 Zloty, which I thought was a bit steep and was correct when I managed to pick up a guide book of the Wolfs Lair for 10 Zloty in the gift shop. 

Not only was the guidebook very cheap but extremely informative and took us on a very detailed walk of Hitlers Lair. My original expectation of the Wolfs Lair was that it would be fairly small and a complex of underground bunkers – I was wrong on both accounts.

All of the bunkers (light and heavy) were built above ground and the whole area was enormous, covering about 2 km². Bunkers were built above ground and had 8 metre thick walls and 10 metre thick roofs. There were also bunkers within bunkers, with a 50cm gap between walls that was filled with grit to dampen and shockwaves. The grounds also featured two airfields (one onsite and another 5km way), plus a railway line that ran right through the lair.

The guests bunker and where Hitler stayed for a period
of time while his bunker was being refurbished.

Claire standing by a slab of the roof of one
of the bunkers that was blown up.

With the war going badly for Germany on the eastern front, orders were made on 24^th January 1945 to destroy the lair so the encroaching Russian army could not use it. Each bunker was filled with 8 to 10 tonnes of explosives and detonated, rendering it operationally useless. I only say operationally, as you could still make out a good deal of the structures and walk through many of the original corridors – including Hitler’s personal bunker 13.

One of the buildings that was completely flattened was the conference barracks where there was an assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944.  This was only a light bunker so not as reinforced as those with 8m walls and 10m thick roofs. 

It is believed that the assassination attempt on Hitler would have been successful if it had occurred in his heavily fortified location rather than the light bunker, as the shockwaves would not have escaped through the open windows. The meeting was moved to the conference room at the last minute due to works being carried out on his personal bunker. 

Outside the conference bunker where there was an attempt on Hitlers life in 1944.

Outside Goebbels heavy bunker.

It was also quite interesting to see that only a couple of hours after the assassination attempt, Hitler was greeting Musolini to the compound and entertaining him as if nothing had ever happened.

We spent over 2 hours at the lair and it was an extremely fascinating and somewhat spooky place to wander around. After all it’s not everyday that you walk the same path that Hitler, Goring and Colonel Staffenberg did many years ago.

Claire inside the door well of Hitlers bunker.
Photos we looked at later show him
entering and exiting from this exact spot.

The interior of Hitlers bunker.
Could do with a woman's touch I think.

 rom Hitler’s bunker we settled in for a big drive south through Poland heading towards the Czech Republic.  We drove for about 8 hours covering about 500km winding up at a Polish petrol station just off the E75 south of Lodz.  We didn’t need anything fancy, as we were to continue driving the next day so we bunked up next to a few trucks cooked dinner and hit the sack.