Hitler’s Hideout - Into The Wolf’s Lair (Northern Poland & Berlin #41a)

The moment it was first mentioned I knew we would be going there. "It" was the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze) and "there" was deep in the woods of northern Poland. My travel companion asked if during our time in Poland we could possibly visit it. As soon as I received his request in an email, the die was cast. I decided right then that this daytrip would be part of our destiny. The reason was obvious. Hitler and the Nazis are repulsive, yet they have an almost mystical allure for history buffs. It is as though you can’t believe that such evil could have ever existed in Europe, particularly in a nation as progressive and developed as Germany.

The Wolf’s Lair is one of those places that seems like it was made for a movie, rather than reality. Site of a failed assassination, highly secretive, a crazed dictator railing against the world in a bunker for weeks on end. All the right stuff for a blockbuster movie or in the case of Valkyrie with Tom Cruise, a very bad one. A movie could never do just to the drama and madness that went on at the Wolf’s Lair. Could such a place really have ever existed? Of course, it did, but sometimes you must see it, to truly believe it.

Blending In - Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The Wolf’s Lair was the main military headquarters of Adolf Hitler for the Eastern Front during World War II. Like Hitler, the Wolf’s Lair’s fame has been enduring. It is one of the few very few places where a bit of light is cast into the darkest period of European history. For a millisecond, there was the tantalizing possibility that Hitler would be assassinated. That could have changed the course of history. Instead, it was a near miss that sealed Germany’s destruction and the eventual division of the country. There are very few World War II sites that can compete in importance with the Wolf’s Lair for significance to the war’s outcome.

Hitler had several forward headquarters for conducting the war against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. The Wolf’s Lair was the westernmost of his eastern headquarters. Hidden in a near impenetrable forest, it had excellent cover both on the ground and from the air. The forest canopy is thick in this part of Poland. The Germans made it even thicker by setting up camouflage netting to keep any would be bombers from discovering what amounted to Hitler’s eastern hideout.

The Germans also painted the bunkers and structures to blend in with the natural colors. On top of bunkers trees were even planted. Finding the Wolf’s Lair proved impossible for the Allies while Hitler was staying there. Traveling to the site is still difficult today. There is no easily accessible public transport. Visitors either must use their own vehicle, a rental car or go on an organized tour. For this reason, I assumed that the site's remoteness would mean that there would be few visitors. I could not have been more wrong.

Finding Cover - The Middle of Nowhere

The location of the Wolf’s Lair appealed to planners because it could be hidden. This was a matter of life and death. Hitler’s life was constantly threatened. That was especially true in occupied areas in the east. That meant security needed to be as tight as possible. Hitler took all kinds of precautions throughout his life to ensure his personal security. There is a reason Hitler was never assassinated, much of that had to do with his cautiousness. The Wolf’s Lair needed to be highly secure and intensely secretive. In that regard, it was a stunning success. There are no big cities nearby. The nearest village is Gierloz, which has a total of 24 inhabitants. The nearest larger town is Ketrzyn with a population of 27,500. If not for the Wolf’s Lair, the region would be just another part of rural Poland, that very few people, other than locals and nature enthusiasts would ever visit.

The woods in this part of northern Poland are thick, to the point that they induce a sense of claustrophobia. Foliage covers everything. The humidity is high, the ground low and swampy. Nature conspires to make the dank climate visible. For instance, moss covers wood, rocks and even concrete. For nature lovers, this is wonderful. Hiking trails, lakes and wildlife can be found in abundance. That the beauty of this natural landscape was the setting for one of the most sinister forces in European history is the darkest of ironies.

The natural surroundings, except as cover for the Wolf’s Lair, were lost on the Nazis. They wanted to bend nature to their needs. Hitler did enjoy the endless croaking of frogs. He was said to have become upset after they became collateral damage when German forces killed off swarms of mosquitos by pouring oil on nearby ponds. More frogs were soon brought in to satisfy the Fuhrer. Nevertheless, Hitler spent little time outside despite suggestions that he should do so by his personal physician. Hitler was not exactly enamored with the great outdoors in this part of the Reich.

Suspect Terrain – Shadow & Sensational Cachet

Sweating it out in the summer or enduring bone chilling cold in the winter was not what Hitler had in mind, but he only had himself to blame for being sequestered in the woods of Northern Poland. Hitler’s ambition to provide the German people with Lebensraum (living space) taken from Slavs in the east led to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Like all the fevered dreams of this madman it would end in catastrophe. The ideal and the reality of living space could not have been more different. All Hitler got for his trouble was glamping in a mildewy bunker while looking at lines on a map showing the Red Army creeping ever closer.

And if that was not bad enough, he only dodged death by a hair’s breadth when the assassination attempt by Claus Von Stauffenberg almost made him history. There are few places that have more shadowy and sensational cachet than the Wolf’s Lair. This is one of the main reasons my friend and I had to see whether it was as bad as advertised. There is no substitute for experience, even if that experience means standing in a remote stretch of woods on suspect terrain. The Wolf’s Lair was calling.