Underground secrets of the Third Reich. Underground factories of the Third Reich

It seems that Akunin’s blog has this inscription: “good is lost.” So, I, of course, am not Akunin, but after writing a recently completed big novel, I also have a lot of all sorts of near-historical goodness left, mainly related to the Third Reich, and so that it does not disappear, I will continue to post it little by little. Maybe someone will be interested :)

I already had a post about the Hohenlichen hospital, where some Nazi bosses escaped from their duties, with a bunch of photos (in fact, I have 20 times more of these photos), and there was something else under the tag “history” and “Germans”, about Metgethen, it seems (maybe I’ll return to it later, although there scary tale), and today I’ll write about Fürstenstein Castle.

What is actually interesting about this castle? Fürstenstein is a real Nazi Castle with Mysterious Dungeons, like in some computer toy of the “great Nazis,” and around it, in the mountains, the Germans dug up and built even more interesting things during the war.

The castle is located on the territory of Poland, in Lower Silesia, the Polish name of the castle is Książ. The Germans called him Fürstenstein.

Gates.

Fragment of the courtyard.

This is what the castle might have looked like in the 40s(the photo is modern, taken from a Polish forum, I don’t know what the hanging of these banners was timed for, maybe for the filming of some film, and the inscription under this photo read: “And a special version for the fascists for whom we are so famous” ( although I’m not sure that I was able to correctly translate and understand the second part of the sentence :))

On one Polish site, some wonderful people posted an incredible cloud of old photographs of Książ and even older landscapes and lithographs of him. Here are some, and from the paintings it is clear that either over the course of one and a half to two centuries the castle hill had subsided greatly, or simply the romantic perception of the artists of that time went off scale)))

The first mention of the castle dates back to the 13th century, and today Książ/Fürstenstein is one of the important tourist attractions in Poland. In 1941, the Nazis confiscated the castle from the Hochberg family, one of the richest Prussian dynasties, which owned the castle since the beginning of the 16th century. The Nazis unceremoniously expelled the venerable widow Hochberg from the castle, not least because her sons fought on the side of the Allies. The unfortunate widow died two years later, and the Nazis started a grandiose construction project in the castle and surrounding areas, new traces of which Polish researchers are still finding to this day.

Hochberg family, early 1920s.

In 1943-44. A large bunker was built under the castle for Adolf Hitler. According to some researchers, the entire castle was supposed to be used as one of Hitler’s residences; it was significantly rebuilt for this purpose (and the ancient interiors were so damaged along the way that the Poles then restored the castle for several decades, and the Germans also stole all the collections collected by the Hochbergs, for example, nothing remains of the castle’s huge library). The bunker was two levels (but in my novel I added a little levels, hehe, and expanded their purpose. Well, what’s wrong, the Nazis could well have managed to destroy the most important thing before the arrival of the Red Army, right?;)). The bunker was built (and those structures that will be discussed later), naturally, largely with the help of concentration camp prisoners, in particular, prisoners were brought from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The first level of the bunker (marked with brown lines on the plan below) was at a level of 15 meters, the second level - at a depth of 53 meters (the concrete part of the bunker is marked in gray, carved into the rock in black). Yes, actually, the past tense is inappropriate here, since the bunker still exists. The first level seems to allow visitors, but the second level houses seismological measuring equipment from the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Layout of a two-level bunker; The mines are marked in blue.

Pre-war photographs of the castle interiors:

According to information posted on one of the Polish websites, before the arrival Soviet troops The Nazis really destroyed a lot, and it seemed like they even wanted to blow up the castle itself.

But what’s even more interesting is that not far from the castle, to the southeast, in the Owl Mountains, there are much larger underground structures left after the Nazis, and it is possible that the bunker under the castle was somehow connected with this huge complex in the mountains - according to According to the plans, it was even supposed to be connected to it by an underground passage.

This complex quite rightly received the name “Riese” - “Rize” (German “giant”). Why this truly gigantic system of mostly underground, but also above-ground structures was needed - historians are still guessing. Many underground rooms are completely or partially blocked, many are still simply unknown, and every now and then new evidence is found in the forests of the Owl Mountains that the Nazis were building something truly grandiose there. It is quite possible that a huge underground plant was supposed to be built there. By the end of the war, all remaining German military industry

Because of the bombing, it crawled “underground.”
Some of the researchers suggest that these dungeons could provide accommodation and work space for both the leaders of the Third Reich and ordinary civilian and military personnel; others believe that this entire complex was intended for the secret mass production of chemical and bacteriological weapons. Another version says that many underground structures of the “Giant” complex, destroyed completely or partially before the arrival of the Red Army, however, have disguised and still unknown sections of the underground, where documents related to the “Giant” project are still located to this day, as well as possibly museum collections, jewelry and money. And although enthusiasts are constantly combing the surroundings of the castle, none of the above versions have yet been confirmed :)
So in the novel I put forward my version, partly borrowing one myth-like apocryphal story about secret Nazi developments)))

What is known for certain is that “Giant” was one of the largest and most expensive projects of the Third Reich.

Some evidence of the scale of the construction started by the Nazis was left by people who occupied far from the lowest places in the hierarchy of Germany at that time. “The plan, which we criticized again and again during these months, was the construction of a new, more extensive Fuhrer Headquarters in Silesia ... Its territory was supposed to include the Fürstenstein castle, which was in the possession of the Prince of Pless. Hitler insisted on his instructions and ordered its construction to continue by forces of concentration camp prisoners under the leadership of Speer. During the year, I visited this site twice, and I got the impression that I would not live to see its construction completed. I tried to convince Speer to influence the Fuhrer in order to stop this construction. impossible, expensive work continued for some time, although every ton of concrete and steel was urgently needed in some other places.". ()

And Reich Minister of Armaments Albert Speer recalled in his memoirs: “In 1944, Hitler ordered the construction of two underground Headquarters in the mountains of Silesia and Thuringia, for which it was necessary to mobilize hundreds of mining and explosives specialists and thousands of workers, indispensable at military facilities... On June 20, 1944, I reported to the Fuhrer that... on complex of bunkers called “Giant” near Bad Charlottenbrunn - 150 million marks... One complex of “Giant” absorbed more concrete than was used for all public air-raid shelters in 1944." ()

I will not write in detail about all the objects of the “Giant” complex discovered to date, because it will take up a lot of space. I will show only the most remarkable photographs and comment on them a little. The photographs were taken by modern Polish researchers.

The map below shows the approximate location of the complex's facilities, and Fürstenstein Castle (Książ) is marked in the upper left corner..

Part of the complex is open to visitors, and, as can be seen from some photographs, something like a museum has even been created there :)

This is what one of the entrances to one of the underground complex facilities open to visitors looks like:

Modern plans for a couple of objects(researchers do not rule out that this entire farm could be connected with each other by underground passages, they are simply either filled up or simply have not yet been discovered. Or maybe they did not have time to build them) The premises flooded with water are marked in blue:

One of the complex's corridors open to visitors(this is approximately how I imagine it was there under the Nazis. Deadly lighting and the hum of ventilation. By the way, the depth of some ventilation shafts reaches 30 meters!)

More corridors. Some, apparently, remained unfinished.

Entrances to the underground complex may look like this:

Stacks of bags of petrified cement. They've been lying there for 70 years.

There are also remains of ground-based structures in the mountains - their purpose cannot be determined precisely; Polish researchers conventionally call some of them “officers’ mess”, “power station”, etc.

For example, this design - I don’t even dare to judge its possible purpose)))

When writing this post, materials collected by Igor Osovin were used

Where did the gold of the Third Reich go?

The question of where the gold of the Third Reich disappeared comes up every now and then during the next political campaign to save cultural property, protect or revise the historical heritage in Europe. According to the decision of the Crimean Conference, representatives of all Allied troops had the right to material compensation. However, the fact that the regulations for the disposal of trophies were not fully spelled out in the documents subsequently had a negative impact on their return to Germany or to the historical copyright holders. This problem especially affected objects of art: paintings, sculptures, small forms, precious jewelry, interior design.

The fate of the “trophy” German gold, like other mysteries of the Third Reich, is shrouded in darkness.

It is believed that most of it was exported to the United States and England. But after the war, the Soviet Union also inherited a lot of cultural and material assets, a huge part of which was confiscated by Hitler’s army during the military campaign in other countries. According to legend, many of Germany’s “war trophies” subsequently came into the possession of the USSR and are still kept in the hidden collections of Russian museums. This assumption is debatable. But even the actual actual numbers are quite impressive.

German trophies in Soviet carriages

To collect German gold in the USSR, there were special trophy brigades. Their members traveled around liberated Germany and took everything from food to factories and jewelry to the territory of the Soviet Union. From the territory of the Third Reich, the Red Army removed about fifty thousand cars, more than 60 thousand musical instruments, 180 thousand carpets, about half a million radios, almost 950 thousand pieces of furniture, under 600 wagons of porcelain and other utensils, more than 150 wagons of furs and expensive fabrics. The amount of exported gold, platinum and silver was estimated at 1.38 billion rubles. Museum valuables fit into 24 carriages.

In total, in the first 6-7 post-war years, about 900 thousand objects of art came to the USSR. According to the fund " Cultural heritage Prussia", more than a million items of "trophy" are today stored in the territory of the successor to the Soviet Union, Russia. Of these, about 200 thousand items have museum value. The Russian side talks about 250 thousand objects of art. Austria, Greece, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands are demanding the return of valuables from Russia. But the issue of cultural treasures and the gold of the Third Reich today is a painful one for everyone, since one repatriation campaign entails a reaction throughout the “museum world.”

A huge part of the displaced valuables ended up in the United States and, it is believed, in England. Back in 1943, representatives of these allied countries created the MFAA organization (Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program) to search for treasures of the Third Reich hidden in salt mines and castles. In the ranks of this organization there were competent experts in the field of art who determined cultural value specific exhibits. With their help, gold was allegedly discovered in many vaults, the lion's share of which was subsequently moved to the United States. Thus, in the Kaiserod mine in Merkers in April 1945, about 400 paintings from various Berlin museums, gold from the Reichsbank, as well as gold and jewelry from concentration camp victims were found.

“Greetings” from the forties: unfound dungeons of the Third Reich

Many treasures of the Third Reich, having been found, turned out to be undisclosed. In addition, some of them remained hidden from prying eyes. Because after World War II, searchers and researchers found out that there were many secret bunkers in Nazi Germany. In total, Hitler's army created about seven underground structures, which, like the secret bases of the Third Reich, were of strategic importance and were hidden from the eyes of outsiders. For example, in the forests of the Schwarzfald there was an underground headquarters “Tannenberg”, from German “spruce mountain”. On the mountainous right bank of the Rhine, the “Felsennest” (“rocky nest”) was cut into the rocks, and on the border between Belgium and France the “Wolfschlücht” (wolf gorge) was laid.

Partial dungeons of the Third Reich have been discovered. But it cannot be said that today their search is over.

During the construction or laying of communications, to this day, previously undisclosed secrets of the dungeons of the Third Reich sometimes make themselves felt. For example, in 2009, due to a giant whirlpool, coastal strip in the German city of Nachterstedt. The cause of the collapse was considered to be subsidence of soil over mined out and flooded coal mines. But in 2010 it became known that there was a secret dungeon of one of the military production facilities of the Third Reich. According to declassified British archival documents, the plant produced toxic substances and housed gas storage facilities.

An underground city with a railway - why was the Werewolf built?

One of the most mysterious and mystical rates, “Werewolf” (“Werewolf”), was located in the Vinnitsa region in Ukraine. The 4,000 prisoners who built this facility were destroyed immediately after the rate went into effect. Following them, German specialists who were aware of information about the construction of Werfolf communications also went to their graves. That is why it was possible to create such a mysterious atmosphere around this dungeon of the Third Reich.

Werwolf was a real underground city. On several floors there were many objects located here, from many of which multi-kilometer tunnels went towards other settlements, some from railway rails. After the retreat of the German troops, the headquarters was blown up, and some premises remained unexplored. In the sixties and eighties, many expeditions went here and examined the accessible walls, including using echolocation methods.

According to one of the scientists who participated in scientific trips to examine Werfolf, behind the reinforced concrete shell was hidden a certain structure made of a huge amount of metals, including precious ones. Almost immediately after he published them in the Trud newspaper, legends began to circulate that it was in Werwolf that the “Amber Room” was hiding. According to other assumptions, they could also have been stored here. secret developments Third Reich, for example, bacteriological or chemical weapon. But until the room is opened, the mystery of the “werewolf dungeon” remains unsolved.

Ksenia Zharchinskaya

What is hidden in the dungeons of a former secret Nazi factory recently discovered in Austria? Maybe manufacturing laboratories atomic weapons?

In an underground tunnel. Photo: ZDF

Landslides are a common occurrence in Austria and its mountainous regions. In some cases, they are so powerful that as a result, houses are destroyed and large areas of forest are destroyed. Frequent rains in the foothills are the main, but not the only reasons for this. Soil collapse also occurs in places where underground there is a gigantic network of underground tunnels and bunkers stretching for tens of kilometers - former military factories of the “Third Reich”.

Austrian find

These secret underground factories are one of the Nazis' most ambitious projects. Work on creating a new “miracle weapon,” which was supposed to turn the tide of a long-lost war and bring victory to the Third Reich, did not stop there until the very surrender of Nazi Germany.

According to experts, the largest object of this kind in Austria was an underground complex codenamed Bergkristall (“Mountain Crystal”). The total area of ​​its mines and adits is, presumably, almost 300 thousand square meters. Late last year, the entrance to this underground labyrinth was discovered by the film crew of an Austrian documentary filmmaker Andreas Sulzer(Andreas Sulzer) in the vicinity of the town of St. Georg an der Gusen, about 20 kilometers from Linz.

What secrets are hidden in this dungeon? Photo: ZDF

Filmmakers worked there on a project about the V-1 and V-2 rocket program. The film was shot at the request of the German television company ZDF. Its creators tried to restore details of the biography of the SS Obergruppenführer, General Hans Kammler, responsible for the Third Reich missile program.

Prisoners at construction

Some experts believe that it was in these underground laboratories that work was carried out to create atomic bomb. There are grounds for such assumptions: the level of radiation here today exceeds the norm.

According to other historians, the network of labyrinths found by Austrian filmmakers was primarily occupied by the Nazi underground factory B 8 Bergkristall, where, in particular, the world's first turbojet military aircraft, the Messerschmitt ME262, were produced.

According to documents found during archival research, a military facility near St. Georg an der Gusen was built in 1944. It was built by forced laborers from of Eastern Europe and prisoners of the nearby Mauthausen concentration camp.

According to the Austrian historian Johannes Sachslener(Johannes Sachslehner), the results of whose research are cited by the weekly Spiegel, of the 60-70 thousand prisoners involved in the facility in St. Georg an der Gusen, about 10 thousand died - due to the harsh working conditions and ill-treatment. In total, the number of those who died during the construction of Nazi underground factories was about 320 thousand people, scientists believe.

No documentation

By order of the Austrian authorities after World War II, most of the Nazi underground tunnels (at least their entrances) were filled with concrete or filled with earth. But a number of labyrinths were simply freed from equipment, the dismantling of which was carried out by representatives of the victorious powers, and some of them began to be rented out. Austrian farmers used the dungeons, for example, to store agricultural machinery and grow mushrooms.

Most of the labyrinths are walled up. Photo: ZDF

But over time, water began to seep through the vaults of the underground halls, they became damp and began to collapse, and repairs required considerable funds. The land on which Austria's network of former Nazi secret sites is located is managed by the Austrian Federal Real Estate Company (Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft, BIG). Total we're talking about about 150 tunnels. It’s not clear what to do with them. Even just using these land It is dangerous for residential or office development: the risk of landslides is too great.

A 10-kilometer tunnel where, presumably, the most secret weapon Third Reich, almost completely walled up. Only two kilometers of the labyrinth remained untouched. BIG prohibits excavations there due to increased radiation. But there is no documentation related to the object. According to Andreas Sulzer, based on information obtained from the archives, it was taken out in 1955 by the command of the Soviet troops stationed here at that time. There is no access to it now.

September 8th, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

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

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

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

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

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16. Fundamental structure!

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

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

17.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

41. Dembel inscriptions Soviet soldiers- a common picture at such objects.

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

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

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

Video to better convey the atmosphere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

51. We mark this place as our next goal.

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

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

54. We descend back to the ground.

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

56. Steep stairs to the upper two levels.

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

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

We cross a picturesque clearing.

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

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

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

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

62. Basement level.

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

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

65. Ideal German brickwork is recognizable at first sight.

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

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

68. The canopy was probably used Soviet army, otherwise it would have been overgrown with dense forest long ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

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

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

photo: Stas Sikolenko

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

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

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

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

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

77.

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

78.

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

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

79.

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

80. This is what this staircase looks like now.

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

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

83.

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

85. Not for people with a fear of heights.

86. A couple more pictures from the tower.

87.

88. Entourage technogen.

89.

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

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

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

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

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

Already 70 years ago, the last shots of the Second World War died down, and its horrors and mysteries still haunt us. One of the still unsolved secrets of the Third Reich is the underground fortifications and laboratories built by the Nazis on the territory of Poland and modern Kaliningrad, former Königsberg.

In the north of Poland's western border with Germany, where Berlin is just a stone's throw away - no more than a hundred kilometers - there is underground city. The enormity of this structure amazes viewers with its size, but this is only a third of the construction planned by Adolf Hitler. Bunkers, train stations and even railways stretch for tens of kilometers at 50-100 meters underground, and the deepest mines are lost in kilometer-long darkness. Accurate map the city has not been found, and now the diggers have drawn up only a rough plan of passages and tunnels that go beyond this plan into nowhere. The dungeon was originally built by medieval knights and served as a shelter in cases of sieges of their castles. German builders of the 20th century tried to turn it into a particularly fortified line of defense: the city’s casemates were built from heavy-duty materials that were not afraid of collapses or explosions. Construction was stopped when the decision was made to attack rather than defend.

No less amazing are the underground buildings under Royal Palace Kaliningrad, the construction of which began in the 17th century and was brought to perfection by the rulers of the Third Reich. Kaliningrad tunnels lead from the city center far beyond its borders. It was in them that the German top-secret laboratory worked in the early 40s of the last century. Everyone knows Hitler's commitment to the occult sciences and his cherished dream of creating an ideal nation in its perfection. This is exactly what the Koenigsberg underground organization of scientists and fans of their field did. Their work appears to have brought some tangible results, as there is authentic evidence of some unusual phenomena that took place at that time within the city. Thus, it is known for certain about the appearances and the same instant disappearances of an entire company of soldiers, dressed in the fashion of other eras and acting as if according to a given program. And to this day, Kaliningrad residents sometimes encounter “ghosts” of SS men simply on the streets or in developed photographs. What are these - the restless souls of the fascists or, perhaps, the world's first time machine, invented by them almost 100 years ago? This still remains an unsolved mystery. But the fact remains that there are many unexplored areas of Kaliningrad dungeons, secret rooms and trap rooms, into which amateurs who decide to study them on their own find themselves.

Polish and Kaliningrad underground bunkers not the only ones of their kind: the Nazis built something similar in various territories they conquered. There is an assumption that it was the dungeons of the Third Reich that hid both some military units that disappeared without a trace, as well as countless treasures looted by the Nazis during the war.