Today's post is dedicated to the story of one of the largest bunkers of the German defensive line, the Western Wall, erected in 1938-1940 on the western borders of the Third Reich.
In total, 32 objects of this type were built, which were built to protect strategically important points and roads. Before today only two such bunkers have survived, of which only one B-Werk has survived to this day intact. The second bunker was blown up in 1947 and covered with soil. Only decades later, a group of volunteers took up the restoration of the blown up bunker in order to create it inside the museum. Volunteers have done 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, which is 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-Werk'a were built on Katzenkopf mountain, 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 was beyond repair, unlike its brother.
01. View from Mount Katzenkopf to the village of Irrel.
The B-Werk Katzenkopf was destroyed in 1947 by the French as part of the agreements on the demilitarization of Germany and was in a state of ruins covered with earth for thirty years, until it became clear in 1976 that the explosion destroyed only the upper level of the structure, and the rest of the underground part was not damaged. After that, a volunteer took up the excavation of the object fire brigade Irrel village, through whose efforts the B-Werk was restored and since 1979 has become available to visitors as a museum.
02. The photo shows a preserved part of the ground level with one of two entrances inside, not damaged by the explosion, but changed during the reconstruction process.
All B-Werke were built according to the same typical project, but could differ in details and layout of the interior. The name B-Werk came from the classification of bunkers in the Third Reich, in which the objects were assigned a letter according to the thickness of the walls. Objects with walls and ceilings of 1.5 meters thick corresponded to Class B. 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 facility was officially named Panzerwerk Nr. 1520.
03. Before the explosion, the above-ground level Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 had next view... I marked with dark the part of the upper level destroyed by the explosion.
04. The preserved wall of the left flank with one of the emergency exits. A dummy machine-gun armored tower is visible on the roof. Before the explosion, the object's armored towers were dismantled.
05. To give the object a shape close to the original, the volunteers erected dummies of both machine-gun turrets out of brick and concrete. The roof of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 now looks like this:
06. Each Panzerwerk had a standard set of weapons and armored domes, which I indicated on this diagram. In the course of this photo walk, I will tell you more about them. To date, the only Panzerwerk with surviving armored domes is the B-Werk Bessering.
07. A wooden cross and a memorial plaque were installed on the wreckage of the destroyed part of the object in memory of the dead soldiers of the 39th Infantry Fusilier Regiment (Füssilier-Regiments), who fought in the USSR from 1941 to 1944. The garrison of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 in 1939-1940 consisted of soldiers of one of the battalions of this regiment.
08. In front of the entrance to the Panzerwerk, there is a small park with numerous benches and an excellent view of the Irrel village.
09. The entrance to the structure in the original was a hatch about a meter in height, now in its place is equipped with the usual 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 has undergone 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 entering person.
10. Behind the bend of the entrance corridor there was a pit, 4.6 meters deep and 1.5 meters wide. V Peaceful time the pit was covered with a steel sheet, 2 cm thick, forming a kind of bridge.
11. In the combat position, the steel bridge rose and acted as an armor shield, for which an embrasure was built into it. Such a system made it almost impossible for the enemy to penetrate into the object. In the photo there is a pit in front of the second entrance, located in the destroyed part of the structure.
12. The diagram shows the construction of a similar system in the B-Werk class structures of the Western Wall. Each such object had two entrances, behind which were pits covered with an armor plate. Both entrances led to a common vestibule, which was also shot through through another embrasure.
13. For clarity, I will give a plan top floor... The pits at the entrance hatches are marked with number 22, the general vestibule is 16. In gray I marked the rooms destroyed by the explosion, including: a guard casemate (17), a filter-ventilation casemate (19), a grenade launcher armored dome shaft (21), a casemate flanking the bunker entrances (23) and a number of utility and technical premises. The rooms that survived to one degree or another: machine-gun armored dome (1), observation casemate with observation armored dome (3), command center (4), communication point (5), artillery observation armored dome (6), flamethrower casemate (11), stairs to the lower level (12) as well as several technical rooms and rooms for personnel.
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 picture, you can see a room closed by a mesh door.
15. Behind the grid is the heavily damaged room of the flamethrower casemate and part of the flamethrower barrel. The bank contains the original combustible mixture for a flamethrower.
16. The fortress flamethrower was designed to protect the roof of the facility, in case of penetration by enemy soldiers, as well as for close defense of the bunker. The control of the flamethrower was completely electric, but in the event of a loss of voltage, a manual option was also provided. At one time, the flamethrower spewed 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 fire hell... Then he needed a two-minute pause to charge the 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 towers containing tens of tons of metal were removed from the facility in the post-fall time before the bunker was blown up. Today, brick-concrete dummies are in their place.
19. Developed six-bore towers of the 20P7 type were made by the German concern Krupp and were made of high-strength steel. One such tower cost 82,000 Reichsmarks (today about 420,000 euros). You can imagine how much the construction of the Siegfried Line cost, because there were 32 such objects and each had two towers. The tower's crew consisted of five people: the commander and four gunners. The commander watched from a periscope installed on the roof of the tower for the situation around and commanded fire. Inside the tower were placed two MG34 machine guns, which could be freely rearranged from one embrasure to another, but at the same time could not occupy two adjacent embrasures at the same time. 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 East and Atlantic Wall - two large defensive lines of the Third Reich, more than 800 of them were made in total.
20. In the destroyed part of the bunker there was another armored dome for a 50-mm fortress mortar M 19, whose task was the short-range 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. The photograph shows the numerous effects of the 1947 explosion, in particular the lopsided ceiling that fell 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 inward by air pumps, if necessary, passing through the fwa. Thus, an overpressure was maintained inside the bunker, which prevented the penetration of poisonous gases into the interior. In the event of a power outage, in many places inside the bunker, manual back-up FVUs were placed, one of which you can see in the photo.
24. Ladder to the lower level, behind which is visible the destroyed part of the bunker. To the left of the corridor are the premises of the command center and the communication point.
25. The room of the command center was not damaged by the explosion, but the inside is still empty.
26. From the command center you can get to the observation casemate, which was once equipped with a cone-shaped observation armored canopy of the Typ 90P9 type.
27. The thickness of the armor of this small armored dome was 120 mm. The dome had five slots for circular observation and two optical devices. This is what the observer's place looked like before the explosion of the bunker.
28. This is how it looks at the present time.
29. At the end of the corridor there is another room in which the personnel were housed. This room is located near the destroyed part of the bunker and is also damaged by the explosion.
30. Adjacent to the room is the lower level of the 21P7 type artillery observation armored tower, 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 21P7 turret did not have embrasures, only holes for observation devices and a periscope. The presence of this tower B-Werk Katzenkopf differed from standard project, according to which a similar structure was equipped with two identical six-round machine-gun turrets. This panserverk also had two machine-gun turrets, but the second was located remotely and connected with the bunker of the underground porch.
31. Nothing has survived from the artillery observation tower to this day.
32. The rest of the upper level rooms were destroyed by the explosion. We go down to the lower level.
33. The lower level should be more interesting, as 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), the lower level of a flamethrower installation ( 32), a staircase leading to the Pörn system (33), a fuel storage for diesel generators (34), toilets (36) and a shower room (37), an infirmary (38), a machine room with two diesel generators (39) and a tank with a water supply (41).
Now let's see what is left of all this.
35. In the corridor (35) there is a brace-ladder leading to one of the upper-level rooms.
36. The infirmary room slightly damaged by the explosion.
37. At the end of the corridor was one of the ammunition storage bays, through the wall from which there was an engine room with two diesel generator sets.
38. The bunker received electricity from the 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 the electric drives of the ventilation system, heating resistors, which were electric (while supplemented with ordinary stoves). The kitchen equipment was also fully electric.
39. The diesel generator room also keeps traces of the explosion. Almost nothing has survived from the equipment. / P>
40. Ammunition depot.
41. Remains of a shower room.
42. Toilets.
43. Sewer equipment.
44. In this room (34) was kept a supply of fuel for diesel engines in the amount of 17,000 liters, based on 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 the staple ladder is walled up here
47. One of two rooms on the underground level, which housed beds for the rest of the personnel (29). In the corner of the room there are two original filters from the object's filter and ventilation unit. In total, the bunker had six such filters in case of a gas attack. There is an emergency exit to the surface behind the lattice door. It originally had a completely different design, but as part of the restoration of the bunker as a museum, it was redesigned to fit modern standards security. He is also visible from the outside in photo 03.
48. In the former ammunition storage facilities, there are modest displays designed to compensate for the emptiness that reigns around.
49. Information boards tell about the events of 75 years ago.
50. The room of the kitchen, from the equipment of which only the sink has been preserved. A warehouse for storing food is adjacent to the kitchen.
51. The second of two personnel recreation facilities. Each room had eighteen sleeping places on which the soldiers slept in turns in shifts. In total, the garrison of the bunker consisted of 84 people. Beds like this one were typical of all Siegfried 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, thanks to which it was impossible to get inside the object from the surface. The D-shaped emergency exit barrel leading to the roof of the bunker with a ladder inside was covered with sand. If there was a need to leave the bunker through the emergency exit, wedges were pulled out, blocking valves inside the barrel and sand spilled out into the bunker, freeing the exit to the top. Approximately the same design of an emergency exit was used in Fort Schonenburg on the Maginot Line, only there was gravel instead of sand and it spilled out not inside the fort, but into the cavity inside the trunk.
This concludes the inspection of the lower level. Everything that I have described up to this point was typical of all 32 Panzerwerke built, the differences were only in the details. But the 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 (not to scale in the diagram).
54. Such a ladder leads down.
55. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the bunker and the most ambitious. There is no such space anywhere else inside the object.
56. Initially, it was planned to connect this panzerwerk with the Nimsberg panzerwerk, located a kilometer from it. The plans involved laying an electric narrow-gauge railway between both structures. Thus, both panserverki could form something similar to the forts of the Maginot Line or the objects of the East Rampart. But in 1940, Germany captured France, Belgium and Luxembourg and the need for the West Valley disappeared, all construction works on the defensive line were stopped, including the construction of this postern stopped.
57. To the side of the staircase, there are two posterns located at right angles to each other. The largest one was supposed to connect the two panzerwigs. The smaller one leads to a warhead located away from the main structure and consisting of a machine gun turret and an emergency exit.
58. Scheme of the underground level of the bunker:
59. First, I headed along the smaller porch. Its length is 75 meters.
60. The porch 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 and a device for manual ventilation of the casemate in case of failure or stop electrical system ventilation of the bunker.
62. This is how the device for manual ventilation of the 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 get to the lower level. An emergency exit portal is located in the wall, which has a typical design for such objects. Through a hole in the ceiling, an ascent to the machine-gun armored tower was carried out. This tower was a standard six-frame type 20P7, exactly the same as that installed in the main building. On the wall, you can see fastenings for three beds - in this room the calculation of the tower was located.
65. The tower itself was dismantled, like the rest of the object's armored domes immediately after the end of the war. A concrete dummy has also been erected here.
66. Once again, how it looked in the original:
67. There is nothing more to see, we return back to the fork.
68. Along the way, there is such an opening in the floodplain. Apparently, the plans were to replenish the object with another combat unit, or one of the small bunkers located on this mountain should have been connected to the system. Now it’s impossible to find out.
69. Nice.
70. The ceiling height of the main porch is 3.5 meters. After the cramped interiors of the Panzerwerk, this underground location seems enormous.
71. Inside the unfinished main porch, there is an exhibition of various aerial bombs and shells from the Second World War found in the region. There are information boards on the wall that tell the story of the object and the Siegfried line in general.
72. Here in the wall there is another opening (on the left in the photo), similar to the one we saw in the neighboring porch. But unlike the opening that is located in the porch leading to the armored tower, the purpose of this is known. A railway tunnel is located fifty meters under the bunker. At the time when they began to build this porch to unite both panservices, there were plans to connect underground system passages with a railway tunnel, which is located under the bunker. Thus, it was possible to completely unnoticeably bring up to both bunkers along railroad ammunition and other ammunition. These plans were not destined to come true for the reasons described above.
73. At the end of the porch there is a small water supply casemate. Inside there is a well with a depth of 120 meters and a powerful electric pump that pumps water from the well into the water supply of the bunker.
74. In the place where the porch ends, a small diorama was erected, not related to the bunker.
75. The pump of the bunker water supply system remained in a relatively good condition.
76. Remains of some electrical equipment hang on the wall.
77. Inspection of the object has come to an end and we are heading for the exit.
In the end, 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 left for rotation. After the capture of France, combat duty in the bunker was canceled, the facility was completely disarmed and to be maintained in good condition technical systems only one soldier was left in it to look after the object.
In December 1944, an order was received to prepare the bunker for battle and populate the garrison in it. But due to an acute shortage of people, it was possible to collect only 7 Wehrmacht soldiers and 45 people from the Hitler Youth, aged 14-16 years. In January, they approached the village of Irrel american troops and began heavy shelling of the village and the surrounding area, continuing for several weeks. In February, the Americans took up both panzerwerks, inflicting numerous air and artillery strikes on targets. The demoralized garrison of the Panzerwerk left the facility at night through the emergency exit and the Americans who entered did not find absolutely anyone 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. the bunker was blown up and covered with soil. In this state, he stayed for about thirty years, until in 1976 the local volunteer fire brigade undertook to restore it, who did a titanic work to make the object accessible to visitors.
The First World War was a trench warfare, during which the front line moved infrequently. Many trenches and positions were created on the territory of Belarus, where the German-Russian front was. I often heard about the remains of German positional structures in Belarus, but I have never seen them with my own eyes, and recently I went to look at two German bunkers on the territory of Western Belarus.
There are several photos under the cut.
02. The first building. It looks most like a small bomb shelter from small-caliber shells. The building is very high quality, made of excellent concrete. I think it would be difficult to disassemble this thing even if you wanted to.
03. In the lower part of the concrete floor, metal anti-rollback arcs are visible - they protected from concrete fragments that could occur when a shell hit the roof of the bunker. The inscription above the entrance says that the bunker was built in May 1917 by the Second Battalion, and then, apparently, is the name of the regiment or a larger military unit.
04. The building is disguised in accordance with all the rules of military art with a layer of turf, and most likely it was completely invisible from reconnaissance aircraft of those years.
05. The second bunker has survived no worse and looks like this. Two rectangular openings near the ground were once full-fledged entrances to the structure - the trench that led to the bunker was covered with earth from time to time.
06. The attraction of this bunker is the chic concrete stucco-bas-relief above the entrance. Here is a shield with baroque curls, horns and the inscription "Gärtners Heim", which can be translated as "Garden House" - apparently, this is such a kind of military humor of those years :)
07. These are the structures. They stood for a hundred years, and they will stand as much more.
So, here readers write to me that for a long time in my blog there were no stalkers and posts with a tag, I am urgently correcting myself. Moreover, the topic came across very interesting - not just some abandoned house or factory, but a whole underground bunker during the war.
The bunker is located in the very center of Minsk, on the Svisloch embankment, not far from the famous Trinity Suburb. During World War II, it was a communications bunker designed and laid by the Germans. In the post-war years, these premises were used as a communication system for the Warsaw Pact countries, and since the seventies, the bunker was completely abandoned.
So, in today's post - a story about a secret German war bunker, which almost no one knows about.
To begin with, in more detail about the history of the building. The bunker was built in 1941, after the occupation of Minsk - it was designed by the Germans, and Soviet prisoners of war were directly involved in construction work. The bunker was built on the then sparsely populated outskirts of the city, in the area of the Tatar gardens - now it is already the center of the city.
Not too much is known about the war period in the history of the bunker - we can only say for sure that the bunker was used as a communications center for the Army groups "Center" - in particular, communication with the headquarters in Vinnitsa was carried out through the Minsk bunker and the German offensive on Moscow was coordinated. Communication cables also extended to the area of the present Belinsky Street, where the buildings of the military barracks occupied by the Germans during the war are located, as well as to the area of Karl Marx Street - where, apparently, there were some buildings of the German administration.
In the post-war years, Soviet signalmen were located in the bunker - part of the 62nd communications center was located there, and it worked on captured German equipment (manufactured by the Siemens factory). After the war, the bunker worked for about 30 years, after which it was closed and mothballed - the city grew greatly, and it was necessary to look for a new place for the secret communications center.
02. Now let's see what this whole economy is like. This is how the concrete walls of the bunker look now, partially protruding from the masking embankment. In total, there were three entrances to the bunker - apparently, two main and one evacuation. Two main entrances lead to unconnected rooms.
03. One of the portals to the bunker is apparently an emergency evacuation portals, it is located slightly away from the main structures of the bunker.
04. Another entrance, now welded with steel sheets. A powerful buttress is attached to the entrance wall at an angle of 90 degrees, apparently to give greater strength to the entire reinforced concrete structure.
05. We go inside. The first room is something like a small airlock. However, the "airlock" is not quite the correct term - the bunkers of the Second World War did not yet have radio protection and sealed doors, and were only intended to protect against conventional bombing. In this room, for example, something like a checkpoint for everyone entering the bunker could be located.
06. The main rooms of the bunker are located to the right of the main entrance, there is another metal door - the old type, without hermetic seals and a shutter wheel on a worm gear (turn the wheel - and metal rods go into the walls), there is no such door - just ordinary locks.
07. The bunker is dirty, in some places there is water on the floor - therefore shoe covers from "Khimza" L-1 will not be superfluous)
08. This is a corridor that opens behind a metal door at the entrance. The corridor is 15 meters long, on the left side of the corridor are the doors to the rooms, on the right is a solid concrete wall, this is the outer wall of the bunker facing the street.
09. The bunker rooms have an area of about 12-15 square meters what exactly was in them - now it is no longer possible to say, there are no traces left. Interestingly, the inner walls of the bunker were brick; this is clearly visible on the part of the wall on the left. Also pay attention to the bricks themselves - see, some of them are darkened with soot? Most likely, bricks for the construction of the bunker were collected nearby, in the Nemiga area, from buildings destroyed and burned down by bombing.
10. The old doors in one of the rooms are most likely still German. During the war, the bunker was not damaged in any way and passed into the hands of Soviet signalmen "as is."
11. Stalactites hang from the ceiling of the corridors - I will assume that they were formed not due to direct seepage of water, but due to the long-term formation of condensation - it is very damp in the bunker. By the way, during the war, the bunker did not have own system heating - it was installed special system ventilation and air conditioning, which maintained the required humidity and temperature of 18 degrees in summer and winter.
12. One of the rooms with some kind of metal stool and a half-open door - rusted through. Pay attention that all the walls of the bunker are black - I will assume that these are traces of soot from the fires of marauders who stole non-ferrous metal, burning insulation from the remnants of cable lines.
13. A rusty metal door on the left leads to the transformer room, which was responsible for the electrical supply of the bunker.
14. In the transformer room, you can see through rusted racks with some kind of large knife switches with hardboard handles - most likely, these are the remnants of the very German Siemens equipment that had been standing here since 1941.
15. On the back of the cabinet, you can see some more modern cables wrapped in electrical tape. Most likely, these are traces of the post-war use of the bunker, or even part of some more modern line, for example, temporary lighting, carried out here in the eighties, after the conservation of the bunker.
16. In the far corner of the transformer, part of the still German electrical wiring has been preserved - with massive porcelain insulators of an unusual shape.
17. Apparently - in this room there was once a common electrical connection to the bunker, which provided power to various rooms and lines - an air conditioning system, a lighting system, a communication system, etc.
18. Insulators close-up:
19. Even in the transformer room, there is such a mesh screen of an unclear purpose:
20. The mesh is very old, rusted literally through and through from time and dampness - it breaks off easily, like cookies.
21. Part of the inner wall with brickwork and plaster residues:
22. We leave.
We managed to find such an object in the very center of Minsk - surprisingly, many Minsk residents have not heard anything about it. And I thought - why not make a museum there? Usually such bunkers are located somewhere far away in the forest, but there is a free abandoned bunker right in the center of the city. Part of the museum's exposition could be devoted to the history of the Second World War (machinery and equipment of those years), and part - to the post-war functioning of the bunker (equipment and history from the times of the Cold War).
In my opinion, it could turn out to be an interesting tourist attraction.
What do you think? Write in the comments, interesting.
The second bunker was blown up in 1947 and covered with soil. Only decades later, a group of volunteers took up the restoration of the blown up bunker in order to create it inside the museum. Volunteers have done 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, which is 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-Werk "a" were erected on the Katzenkopf mountain, located close to each other. The second B-Werk Nimsberg, like the B-Werk Katzenkopf, was blown up in the post-war period and was destroyed to such an extent that it could not be restored. differences from their brother.
01. View from Mount Katzenkopf to the village of Irrel.
The B-Werk Katzenkopf was destroyed in 1947 by the French as part of the agreements on the demilitarization of Germany and was in a state of ruins covered with earth for thirty years, until it became clear in 1976 that the explosion destroyed only the upper level of the structure, and the rest of the underground part was not damaged. After that, a volunteer fire brigade from the Irrel village took up the excavation of the object, through whose efforts the B-Werk was restored and since 1979 has become available to visitors as a museum.
02. The photo shows a preserved part of the ground level with one of two entrances inside, not damaged by the explosion, but changed during the reconstruction process.
All B-Werke were built according to the same typical project, but could differ in details and layout of the interior. The name B-Werk came from the classification of bunkers in the Third Reich, in which the objects were assigned a letter according to the thickness of the walls. Objects with walls and ceilings of 1.5 meters thick corresponded to Class B. 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 facility was officially named Panzerwerk Nr. 1520.
Before the explosion, the above-ground level of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 looked as follows. I marked with dark the part of the upper level destroyed by the explosion. 
03. The preserved wall of the left flank with one of the emergency exits. A dummy machine-gun armored tower is visible on the roof. Before the explosion, the object's armored towers were dismantled.
04. To give the object a shape close to the original, the volunteers built replicas of both machine-gun turrets out of brick and concrete. The roof of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 now looks like this:
Each Panzerwerk had a standard set of weapons and armored domes, which I indicated in this diagram. In the course of this photo walk, I will tell you more about them. To date, the only Panzerwerk with surviving armored domes is the B-Werk Bessering.
05. A wooden cross and a memorial plaque were installed on the wreckage of the destroyed part of the object in memory of the dead soldiers of the 39th Infantry Fusilier Regiments (Füssilier-Regiments), who fought in the USSR from 1941 to 1944. The garrison of Panzerwerk Nr. 1520 in 1939-1940 consisted of soldiers of one of the battalions of this regiment.
06. In front of the entrance to the Panzerwerk, there is a small park with numerous benches and an excellent view of the Irrel village.
07. The entrance to the building in the original was a hatch about a meter in height, but now in its place is equipped with an ordinary entrance door of standard height, so that, going inside, you don't even have to bend down. An embrasure is traditionally located opposite the entrance. The design of this part has undergone 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 entering person.
08. Behind the bend of the entrance corridor there was a pit, 4.6 meters deep and 1.5 meters wide. In peacetime, the pit was covered with a steel sheet, 2 cm thick, forming a kind of bridge.
09. In the combat position, the steel bridge rose and acted as an armor shield, for which an embrasure was built into it. Such a system made it almost impossible for the enemy to penetrate into the object. In the photo there is a pit in front of the second entrance, located in the destroyed part of the structure.
The diagram shows the arrangement of a similar system in the B-Werk class structures of the Western Wall. Each such object had two entrances, behind which were pits covered with an armor plate. Both entrances led to a common vestibule, which was also shot through through another embrasure.
For clarity, I will give a plan of the upper floor. The pits at the entrance hatches are marked with the number 22, the common vestibule 16. In gray, I marked the rooms destroyed by the explosion, including: a guard casemate (17), a filter-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 premises.
The rooms that survived to one degree or another: machine-gun armored dome (1), observation casemate with observation armored dome (3), command center (4), communication point (5), artillery observation armored dome (6), flamethrower casemate (11), stairs to the lower level (12) as well as several technical rooms and rooms for personnel.
10. 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 picture, you can see a room closed by a mesh door.
11. Behind the grid is the heavily damaged room for the flamethrower casemate and part of the flamethrower barrel. The can contains the original flamethrower mixture.
The fortress flamethrower was designed to protect the roof of the facility, in case of penetration by enemy soldiers, as well as for close defense of the bunker. The control of the flamethrower was completely electric, but in the event of a loss of voltage, a manual option was also provided. At one time, the flamethrower spewed 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 hell. Then he needed a two-minute pause to charge the 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:
13. All armored towers containing tens of tons of metal were removed from the facility in the post-fall time before the bunker was blown up. Today, brick-concrete dummies are in their place.
The developed six-bore towers of the 20P7 type were made by the German concern Krupp and were made of high-strength steel. One such tower cost 82,000 Reichsmarks (today about 420,000 euros). You can imagine how much the construction of the Siegfried Line cost, because there were 32 such objects and each had two towers. The tower's crew consisted of five people: the commander and four gunners. The commander watched from a periscope installed on the roof of the tower for the situation around and commanded fire. Inside the tower were placed two MG34 machine guns, which could be freely rearranged from one embrasure to another, but at the same time could not occupy two adjacent embrasures at the same time. 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 East and Atlantic Wall - two large defensive lines of the Third Reich, more than 800 of them were made in total.
In the destroyed part of the bunker, there was another armored dome for a 50-mm fortress mortar M 19, whose task was the short-range 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.
14. The photograph shows the numerous effects of the 1947 explosion, in particular the lopsided ceiling that fell into the bunker.
15. The personnel accommodation room is the only fully restored room in the bunker.
16. The facility was equipped with a forced ventilation system in which air was forced inward by air pumps, passing through the fwa if necessary. Thus, an overpressure was maintained inside the bunker, which prevented the penetration of poisonous gases into the interior. In the event of a power outage, in many places inside the bunker, manual back-up FVUs were placed, one of which you can see in the photo.
17. Ladder to the lower level, behind which the destroyed part of the bunker is visible. To the left of the corridor are the premises of the command center and the communication point.
18. The room of the command center was not damaged by the explosion, but inside it is still emptiness.
19. From the command center you can get to the observation casemate, which was once equipped with a cone-shaped observation armored canopy of the Typ 90P9 type.
The thickness of the armor of this small armored dome was 120 mm. The dome had five slots for circular observation and two optical devices. This is what the observer's place looked like before the explosion of the bunker:
20. This is how it looks at the present time.
21. At the end of the corridor there is another room in which the personnel were housed. This room is located near the destroyed part of the bunker and is also damaged by the explosion.
22. Adjacent to the room is the lower level of the 21P7 type artillery observation armored tower, 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 21P7 turret did not have embrasures, only holes for observation devices and a periscope. The presence of this tower B-Werk Katzenkopf differed from the standard design, according to which a similar structure was equipped with two identical six-bore machine-gun turrets. This panserverk also had two machine-gun turrets, but the second was located remotely and connected with the bunker of the underground porch.
23. Nothing has survived from the artillery observation tower to this day.
24. The rest of the upper level rooms were destroyed by the explosion. We go down to the lower level.
25. The lower level should be more interesting, as it was not damaged by the explosion.
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), the lower level of a flamethrower installation (32) , a staircase leading to the Pörn system (33), a fuel storage for diesel generators (34), toilets (36) and a shower room (37), an infirmary (38), a machine room with two diesel generators (39) and a tank with a reserve water (41).
Now let's see what is left of all this.
26. In the corridor (35) there is a brace-ladder leading to one of the upper-level rooms.
27. The infirmary room slightly damaged by the explosion.
28. At the end of the corridor there was one of the ammunition storage bays, through the wall from which there was an engine room with two diesel generator sets.
29. The bunker received electricity from the 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 the electric drives of the ventilation system, heating resistors, which were electric (while supplemented with ordinary stoves). The kitchen equipment was also fully electric.
30. The diesel generator room also keeps traces of the explosion. Almost nothing has survived from the equipment.
31. Ammunition depot.
32. Remains of a shower room.
33. Toilets.
34. Sewer equipment.
35. This room (34) held a 17,000 liter supply of diesel fuel for a monthly autonomy.
36. We move to the second corridor (30) of the underground level.
37. There are also visible traces of destruction from the explosion. The transition to the upper level through the staple ladder is walled up here
38. One of two rooms on the underground level, which housed beds for the rest of the personnel (29). In the corner of the room there are two original filters from the object's filter and ventilation unit. In total, the bunker had six such filters in case of a gas attack. There is an emergency exit to the surface behind the lattice door. Initially, it had a completely different design, but as part of the restoration of the bunker as a museum, it was redesigned to meet modern safety standards. He is also visible from the outside in photo 03.
39. The former ammunition storage facilities are home to modest displays designed to compensate for the void around them.
40. Information boards tell about the events of 75 years ago.
41. The room of the kitchen, from the equipment of which only the sink has survived. A warehouse for storing food is adjacent to the kitchen.
42. The second of two personnel recreation facilities. Each room had eighteen sleeping places on which the soldiers slept in turns in shifts. In total, the garrison of the bunker consisted of 84 people. Beds like this one were typical of all Siegfried bunkers from the smallest to the B-Werke.
43. This room also contains one of the emergency exits to the surface. It had a design, thanks to which it was impossible to get inside the object from the surface. The D-shaped emergency exit barrel leading to the roof of the bunker with a ladder inside was covered with sand. If there was a need to leave the bunker through the emergency exit, wedges were pulled out, blocking valves inside the barrel and sand spilled out into the bunker, freeing the exit to the top. Approximately the same design of an emergency exit was used in Fort Schonenburg on the Maginot Line, only there was gravel instead of sand and it spilled out not inside the fort, but into the cavity inside the trunk.
This concludes the inspection of the lower level. Everything that I have described up to this point was typical of all 32 Panzerwerke built, the differences were only in the details. But the B-Werk Katzenkopf had an interesting feature that significantly distinguished it from the typical project, namely, an additional third level, located deeper than the main structure.
The diagram below clearly shows the structure of the bunker and the lower underground level located at a depth of twenty-five meters (in the diagram, the scale is not respected).
44. Such a ladder leads down.
45. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the bunker and the largest. There is no such space anywhere else inside the object.
46. It was originally planned to connect this panzerwork with the Nimsberg panzerwerk located a kilometer away... The plans involved laying an electric narrow-gauge railway between both structures. Thus, both panserverki could form something similar to the forts of the Maginot Line or the objects of the East Rampart. But in 1940, Germany captured France, Belgium and Luxembourg and the need for the Western Rampart disappeared, all construction work on the defensive line was stopped, including the construction of this postern stopped.
47. To the side of the staircase, there are two posterns located at right angles to each other. The one that was the largest was supposed to connect both panzerwigs. The smaller one leads to a warhead located away from the main structure and consisting of a machine gun turret and emergency exit.
Bunker underground level diagram:
48. First, I went along the smaller porch. Its length is 75 meters.
49. The porch ends with a guard casemate covering the approach to the combat block. There is no armored door, like all armored doors at the facility.
50. Inside the guard casemate there is an embrasure, from which the tunnel and a device for manual ventilation of the casemate in case of failure or stoppage of the electric ventilation system of the bunker was shot.
51. This is how the device for manual ventilation of the casemate looks like. Similar devices were installed at all important points in the bunker.
52. There is also a staircase leading to the combat block.
53. Climbing the stairs we get to the lower level. An emergency exit portal is located in the wall, which has a typical design for such objects. Through a hole in the ceiling, an ascent to the machine-gun armored tower was carried out. This tower was a standard six-frame type 20P7, exactly the same as that installed in the main building. On the wall, you can see fastenings for three beds - in this room the calculation of the tower was located.
54. The tower itself was dismantled, like the rest of the object's armored domes immediately after the end of the war. A concrete dummy has also been erected here.
Once again, how it looked in the original:
55. There is nothing more to see, we return back to the fork.
56. Along the way, there is such an opening in the floodplain. Apparently, the plans were to replenish the object with another combat unit, or one of the small bunkers located on this mountain should have been connected to the system. Now it’s impossible to find out.
57. Nice.
58. The ceiling height of the main porch is 3.5 meters. After the cramped interiors of the Panzerwerk, this underground location seems enormous.
59. Inside the unfinished main porch there is an exposition of various aerial bombs and shells of the Second World War found in the region. There are information boards on the wall that tell the story of the object and the Siegfried line in general.
60. Here in the wall there is another opening (on the left in the photo), similar to the one we saw in the neighboring porch. But unlike the opening that is located in the porch leading to the armored tower, the purpose of this is known. A railway tunnel is located fifty meters under the bunker. At the time when they began to build this porch to unite both panserverki, there were plans to connect the underground passage system with the railway tunnel that is located under the bunker. Thus, it was possible to transport ammunition and other ammunition to both bunkers completely unnoticed by rail. These plans were not destined to come true for the reasons described above.
61. At the end of the porch there is a small water supply casemate. Inside there is a well with a depth of 120 meters and a powerful electric pump that pumps water from the well into the water supply of the bunker.
62. In the place where the porch ends, a small diorama was erected, not related to the bunker.
63. The pump of the bunker water supply system remained in a relatively good condition.
64. Remains of some electrical equipment hang on the wall.
65. Inspection of the object has come to an end and we are heading for the exit.
In the end, 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 left for rotation. After the capture of France, combat duty in the bunker was canceled, the facility was completely disarmed and only one soldier was left in it to maintain the technical systems in order to keep an eye on the facility.
In December 1944, an order was received to prepare the bunker for battle and populate the garrison in it. But due to an acute shortage of people, it was possible to collect 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 powerful shelling of the village and its surroundings, which continued for several weeks. In February, the Americans took up both panzerwerks, inflicting numerous air and artillery strikes on targets. The demoralized garrison of the Panzerwerk left the facility at night through the emergency exit and the Americans who entered did not find absolutely anyone 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. the bunker was blown up and covered with soil. In this state, he stayed for about thirty years, until in 1976 the local volunteer fire brigade undertook to restore it, who did a titanic work to make the object accessible to visitors.
Berlin. April 1945. Red Army troops are on the outskirts of Berlin, and only a few weeks remain until the end of the war.
The command of the Wehrmacht these days goes deeper and deeper deep underground - into pre-built bunkers, where, sitting behind thick concrete walls, German generals, together with Adolf Hitler, give the last orders to the troops ...
Map of surrounded Berlin; the last award order; an ashtray full of cigarette butts; empty bottles of alcohol and Luger on the table of the polished Major General of the Wehrmacht ...
Who knows what he was the last days...
These days, the installation "In the Lair of the Fascist Beast" has opened in the Sheremetyevs' Museum in the Mikhailovskaya Battery of Sevastopol. The installation recreates workplace a German general in one of the Berlin bunkers in the spring of 1945.
The installation uses both authentic items of that time and very exact copies of some exhibits, which, due to their dilapidation, cannot be placed in an open exhibition.
3. Bunkers like this have been built at depths of up to 40 meters throughout Berlin since 1935. The walls were erected with a thickness of 1.6 to 4 meters, and the floors - from 2 to 4.5 meters. The ceiling heights ranged from 2 to 3 meters in different rooms. The outer corners of the bunkers were beveled to disperse the shock wave.
The bunkers were built sealed and provided full protection from the penetration of poisonous gases. Taking into account the possible disabling of the nearest power plants and the destruction of the city power grid, the bunkers were equipped with autonomous diesel generators. The 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 him that the main points were copied - walls, equipment on the walls (ventilation shafts, a phosphor strip intended for orientation in rooms in the absence of lighting). A major general of the Wehrmacht works here, holding a certain position in the headquarters. 
5. Judging by the patches 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 Blood - a very honorable award in the Nazi hierarchy. It was given for participating in the famous Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, which actually began Hitler's path to power. This award was possessed by quite a few people, and it says that the general is one of the longtime associates of the Fuhrer. However, there is no party badge on his uniform, which means that this person never joined the party. Apparently, that is why his position is rather modest, as for a longtime colleague, only a major general (the first general rank in the Wehrmacht) 
6. Order bar, 2nd class cross and a medal for injury. Such a "gold" medal was given for a severe injury or for 5 light wounds. Because an 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, a little lower, under the pistol, is a postcard from the youngest son that came from the front. Directly in front of the general is the paper with which he works. This is the award sheet for Eugene Valo. Eugene Valo was the last 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. In the typewriter, one more award sheet is being fought, but the award, apparently, did not reach the soldier or officer .. 
9. German typewriter "Ideal". It is interesting that on the number "5" instead of the% sign we are used today, there is a CC sign 
10. A soldier's book on the general's desk 
11. An interesting set of objects on the general's table - citron sweets, cotton candy, a lighter, a Cuban cigar, a teapot, playing cards ... 
12. The ashtray is full of cigarette butts, even in spite of the inscription on the wall of the bunker. But these are the last days, and no one cares anymore. On the end of the cigar the inscription - "only for the Wehrmacht" 
13. Cigarettes and matches. On the matches the inscription - One Reich, one people, one Fuhrer. On cigarettes "Sulima" - German excise stamp that time. 
14.
15. There is also a bottle of Bruner Rhine wine, 1940, and a regimental diary that has not yet begun. 
16. Near the telephone - some money, a grenade, a Luger pistol. Judging by the hardly placed cartridges for him, the general thought for a long time about something at that moment. Perhaps over the fact that he only had to load the pistol, and ... 
17. Map of surrounded Berlin by right hand general. It is she who leads him to more and more inevitable thoughts. 
18. The radio station and the general's cap on it. The general could listen to news, both German, and catch a wave of 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 German announcer's speech about the defeat at Stalingrad. 
19. Two grenades are prepared in case of defense during the last assault on the bunker by Soviet troops. 
20. Solid carved leather chair 
21. No less solid table 
22. The last phone conversation general
