Hitler's Wolf's Lair - A great place to take the kids

As promised, here are pictures from Hitler's Wolf's Lair! It was very eerie standing in the same places where Hitler spent so much of his time. All in all, he spent close to 900 days of the war at this particular location. He had secret headquarters all over Europe... but this was the main one, created as HQ for the eastern front when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Many notorious Nazi leaders stayed here as well such as Goring, von Ribbentrop, and Borrman. Himmler had his own headquarters not too far away (but we didn't make it over there). The Wolf's Lair is in an ideal discreet location... in a heavily forested area in the northeast of Poland... difficult to detect from the air. It was used until 1944 when the Soviets began to push the Germans back. The Nazis, fearful that the Soviets would use it, blew it all up, but the bunkers were so incredibly thick that many of the remnants are still there.Our very knowledgeable tour guide. He speaks Polish, German, Russian, and English (sort of). I understood about 25% of what he said, so hopefully I report the facts right :)
Our guide describing the layout of the land. The entire complex was about 2.5 square miles... huge!
Guiding us through the forest...
We had to stick to a very clear marked path lest we wandered off and stepped on a land mine! Seriously, since the complex was abandoned by the Nazis, thousands of land mines have been discovered and our guide says they still discover them from time to time!
This is a monument commemorating the Poles who lost their lives clearing the mines after the Germans deserted. According to our guide, the Soviets started out doing it, but lost so many guys that they said forget this, make the Poles do it!
And this was a very cool part of the tour. This panel describes the assassination attempt on Hitler, made famous by Tom Cruise in Valkyrie (which now we are dying to see). Doesn't the guy in the top left corner kind of look like Tom Cruise? He was a handsome staff officer, Claus von Stauffenberg, who carried out the attempt. He placed a bomb in a suitcase on the floor near where Hitler was sitting during a staff meeting, but unfortunately, someone inadvertently moved the suitcase away from Hitler, saving his life. The bomb destroyed the building, wounded several (including Hitler) and killed four Nazis. Too bad the plot failed, because according to our guide, if Hitler had been killed and the war had prematurely ended, 20 million lives would have been spared. Poor von Stauffenberg was caught and executed that very night.
Caroline, an enthusiastic emerging history buff
The very spot of the assassination attempt
So, onto the bunkers. This picture isn't very clear, but it depicts how incredibly strong these bunkers were. The living area is at the center of the picture, and surrounding it is the concrete "inner bunker" and surrounding that is the "outer bunker" all in all 8 meters thick of reinforced concrete.
One of Hitler's bunkers. For security purposes, he changed bunkers every couple months.
See how massive it was? And camouflaged. We could go into parts of it, but many areas were forbidden because it was dangerous.
The Nazis did try to dynamite the complex, but the edifices were so strong that they couldn't be completely destroyed. Check out the rebar from this blast. We could see rebar wrapped around some of the trees from the blast.
Our guide told us that there were up to 10,000 Germans here at one time (although wikipedia says 2000). In any case, most of them were either manual laborers or security personnel. Hitler had hundreds of body guards. They were all there to support Hitler and 30 members of his cabinet who lived there. When I was a 7th grade history teacher and taught about the atrocities of Hitler a student would invariably ask me, "Why didn't someone just kill Hitler? Then all the problems would be solved!" Now after seeing firsthand the pain staking effort that went into protecting the Fuhrer, I feel like I can better answer this question!