THE WOLF'S LAIR: Hitler's Headquarters on the Eastern Front - An Illustrated Guide

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Set deep in the heart of the Masurian woods of northern Poland, in what was formally East Prussia, lies a 2.5 square mile complex of ruined bunkers and shelters that once constituted Hitler's WWII headquarters - the Wolfsschanze or Wolf's Lair. With the aid of color photographs, this guide shows the Wolfsschanze as it appears today, with each building and its purpose identified. Colonel von Stauffenberg almost killed Hitler in the summer of 1944 -- that building is still there, its roof sitting on its collapsed walls. Laced with numerous personal accounts of the installation and of Hitler's routines, and supplemented with contemporary images, the Wolfsschanze is brought to life once more.

The Wolfsschanze, however, was not the only military complex in this small part of the Eastern Front. Other WWII complexes on the Eastern Front are profiled. Once Hitler has established his command centre at the Wolfsschanze, in effect the home of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (or military high command), the other branches of the German armed forces and civil authorities quickly followed suit. Just a few miles away, for example, the German Army built its own operational headquarters at Mauerwald - a complex which amounted to an even greater concentration of buildings, many of which remain intact and open to the public. Goring duly ordered that the Luftwaffe's headquarters, code-named Robinson, be built further out near the current Russian border, whilst Himmler's SS headquarters at Hochwald and that for Hans Lammers' Reich Chancellery were situated back nearer the Wolfsschanze.