Fantasy Non-Fiction – Hitler In His Wolf’s Lair Bunker (Northern Poland & Berlin #41c)

When I was in junior high school, my friends and I would sometimes sit around discussing the headlines we saw on the cover of Weekly World News, a tabloid sold in local supermarkets. There was nothing quite like waiting in the checkout line to purchase a Mars Bar and availing yourself of fantastical tabloid tales. If you ever believed in aliens, then the Weekly World News was for you. Even if you did not believe in aliens, the Weekly World News had something for you. Elvis was still alive. Bigfoot roamed the land while you slept. The Garden of Eden had been located. Outlandish headlines for mostly fictionalized stories were a hallmark of the publication. My all-time favorite stated that Adolf Hitler was hiding out in Carlsbad Caverns. How Hitler got to New Mexico and decided the cave would make a good hiding place was beyond me. Exactly where the Fuhrer might be hiding in a cave that has hundreds of thousands of visitors per year defied the imagination, that is unless you had an overactive imagination. Teenagers always have overactive imaginations. We loved Weekly World News.

Perceived & Invisible Enemies - The Fuhrer Fulminates

Little did I know that Weekly World News was onto something with their Hitler tale. While Hitler most certainly was not hiding out in Carlsbad Caverns during the 1980’s - mainly because he had been dead for forty years - he did spend an inordinate amount of time during the last few years of his life living a mostly subterranean existence. Rather than natural caves, he preferred manmade ones. I did not realize just how much time Hitler spent underground until my travel companion and I visited the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze), his headquarters in northern Poland from June 1941 to November 1944. This was Hitler’s home away from home. He spent more time at the Wolf’s Lair than anywhere else during the war. And most of that time was spent in his bunker. This was not because he enjoyed the place, by all accounts he led a gloomy existence. Instead, it was out of military necessity.

Hitler wanted to be as close to the Eastern Front as possible to manage the campaign. The Wehrmacht probably wished he had stayed in Berlin and shown much less interest in strategy since Hitler’s disastrous decisions ensured their defeat. Hitler could not have gotten much closer to the front than the Wolf’s Lair. Prior to the start of Operation Barbarossa, the complex was a mere 50 kilometers from the prewar border with the Soviet Union. This would seem to be a little too close for comfort, but Hitler was well protected. The SS enforced the strictest security. Meanwhile, Hitler spent much of his time confined to his bunker obsessing over the war. The stories are legion of Hitler railing for hours against real and perceived enemies. He would fulminate about the war’s conduct while staff, military leaders and Nazi officials sat through harangues that often went on until the early hours of the morning.

Graveyard of Nazism - Among The Ruins

Hitler and bunkers are synonymous. This is mainly for two reasons. The first is that he ended his life in the Fuhrerbunker beneath bombed-out Berlin on April 30, 1945. The second is that the German film Downfall brought Hitler’s descent into madness during his final days in the bunker to life. Those who have seen the film, will always have an image of Hitler shaking like a leaf in the concrete encased world where he had imprisoned himself. It is easy to see how his already narrow mind narrowed even further in this suffocatingly claustrophobic world. Hitler’s view of reality became increasingly skewed, sending him spiraling into delusion. This is not news to anyone who is familiar with what went on in the Berlin bunker. What I found surprising while visiting the Wolf’s Lair was that Hitler’s life in the subterranean world started here rather than in Berlin.

Deep in the woods of northern Poland, Hitler’s sinister dreams of German superiority began their demise.?This makes the Wolf’s Lair an unofficial graveyard of Nazism. The ruined bunkers are tombs that come in all shapes and sizes. The Germans did their best to dynamite the bunkers prior to the Red Army’s arrival, but they did not have the time to totally obliterate them. Most of the bunkers are still standing today. They are in various states of ruin, but each of the bunkers was so large that they mostly survived attempts to destroy them. Dilapidated, dank, and reeking of failure, these austere symbols stand silent, but speak volumes about the Third Reich’s collapse. The entire complex existed to perpetuate the greatest military failure in world history. It is hard to imagine just how awful the situation was at the Wolf’s Lair, but we should try.

A Contradictory Figure - Pure Evil & Utterly Absurd

Let us imagine for a moment having to spend hours in a damp and humid room while Hitler bared his bad teeth and repulsed a captive audience with his halitosis and uncontrollable flatulence. Standing outside Hitler’s massive bunker at the Wolf’s Lair, it is hard to know what to make of a man who was pure evil and utterly absurd. Something tells me that these two opposite perspectives of Hitler’s conduct at the Wolf’s Lair are mutually compatible. One informing the other. Hitler was undoubtedly a megalomaniac and as such his ego had to be satisfied. Thus, he had the largest bunker.

While Hitler’s persona dominated the proceedings at the Wolf’s Lair, his bunker did not dominate the premises. The entire complex was 2.5 square kilometers, with 80 structures and 4,200 people working there. This was more town than village. The Wolf’s Lair had its own railway line, post office, and cinema. The insufferably vain Herman Goring even had his own tea house. This was basically little Berlin deep in the woods of the wild east. And nothing could be wilder than Hitler sequestered in his ginormous bunker obsessing over Germany’s dwindling prospects of military victory.

Besides what little is left of the building where Hitler was nearly assassinated, his bunker is the most popular site at the Wolf’s Lair. Visitors walk around every side of it, as though they are inspecting it for any sign of the sinister which might remain. I am sure most people are like me and wonder what it must have really been like inside. Judging by everything I have read; it was an experience that even Hitler’s acolytes would never care to repeat. They were stuck in a bunker with a madman whose behavior would put the Weekly World News to shame. Hitler hiding in Carlsbad Caverns is a ridiculous story, but no more absurd than what went on at the Wolf’s Lair.