Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/HARDWARE_022_PI Those of you who have been around for a long time will remember that we were able to take you deep into some Second World War bunkers thanks to an effort by the TimeGhost Army. You can see our on the road series at the Maginot Line here: ruclips.net/video/8RFRBM7yacE/видео.html Read our code of conduct before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Because the vehicle production plans where done the german model of many small bussines that all work together to make a single product which takes a larger amount of time and the giverment until 1943 did not want to break that model just how they did not ration as many things as possible. All to keep morale as high as possible. The bunker production was done by the militairy that would make sure to get all production material and then start working. If the german industry was done by a single company like the bunkers were done by the militairy then the vehicle production would have been streamlined. It would however have come with its own set of problems.
@@crunchbuttsteak8741 that makes it even worse. They could have let their architects go insane with tailor-made bunkers everywhere and it wouldn't have costed much more, but vehicles need interchangeable parts.
A very interesting fact about the about the Berlin Zoo flak tower is that it was so well-constructed that in 1947, after the German capitulation, British Army engineers were unable to destroy the tower with 25 tons of dynamite. It took two more attempts over another year for British engineers to finally destroy the tower with 35 tons of dynamite in 1948.
All around Vienna there are still several flak towers to be found. According to Wikipedia they were not blown up due to nearby housing. Nowadays it would be possible but they are under protection now.
@@DontKnow-hr5my Because having giant towers taking up space in a city is generally not a great thing, better to knock it down and use the space for city stuff. But when it takes to much effort. well guess they can stay there.
My Grandfather served in one of the flak towers in Berlin and he was responsible for keeping the radars working because the heavy flak needed targeting solutions.
"Basically indestructable" is right! The Zoo Flak Tower at Berlin proved to be invulnerable to the Soviets' 203mm howitzers - the most powerful artillery they had. After the war, the Allies tried to blow it up with explosives. It took them three tries, finally succeeding on the third attempt, in an operation that used 35 tons of explosives!
the allies tried to blow up the big flakbunker in hamburg after the war. all they achieved was blowing out all the windows in the surrounding city. today the bunker houses a musicstore, a club and another venues. by the time humanity is long gone, this bunker will still be standing were he was build
I live only a few hundred meters from an old German bunker. It was a regional command bunker for the defense of the north sea coast in Denmark. All the entrances are locked now, and the earth bunkers surrounding it haven't fared so well, but the main tower is basically untouched by time, and is used as a lighthouse nowadays. The actual command stuff happened in the basement, and there are pictures of it and the layout on the information boards that have been put up around it.
In the region I live in germany the smallish park of the city is filled with a huge bunker network. sadly the entrances are blocked and the bunker was left to rot but... still a cool little secret a surprising amount of people don't know about
Ah that would explain why the Germans held out so long in the “Atlantic Pockets”. I always wondered why and know I now. The Germans used super bunkers and used them effectively against the Allies. Very good video. Keep up the good work.
I think its interesting that some of these flak towers made the Soviets think twice about attacking them during the battle of Berlin. This was mostly due to their ability to turn their guns downward as well as having walls so thick that they would be more trouble than they were worth
That was probably a deliberate design decision. If you install gun ports so you can shoot downward, the enemy can shoot upwards and put rounds in your flak tower. Plus how would that have looked to the population who'd been told repeatedly they were safe from invasion.
If you happen to be in Lorient, I recommend the visit of the Keroman submarine base, which has a couple of nice museums and guided tours. It also has a (water-flooded) tower specifically designed to train submariners to escape their submarine at depth in case of problems. Unrelated funfact: the small peninsula of Keroman (Kerroman) is named in the celtic breton language to indicate an ancient roman settlement (ker) which happened to be where the submarine base was built (even though by that time, not even ruins subsisted).
Very interesting episode! I would love to hear more about the Flak Towers built in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna. One of the towers in Vienna actually serves as the emergency shelter for our government.
@@wanfaichiu3465 was going to recommend that exact video, it’s great. those bad boys were so insanely overbuilt that the soviets often literally just bypassed them entirely
My great-grandmother (who was still around until a few years ago) married in a bunker during an air raid. Pretty bad stuff. Those things mostly still stand - right next to my elementary school in Bremen we had a WW2 Bunker, that the theatre group was using (for it is absolutely 100% soundproof). We were in there a couple of times, the thickness of the walls is really impressive when you walk into it.
Going through Uni for civil engineering made me appreciate just how impressive these bunkers are. When you start looking at the rebar spacing and concrete thickness it’s just difficult to fathom
There is flak tower in Breslau just couple hundred meters from my house. It was used as night club and fireworks shop in the '90, and now hosts modern arts museum.
Now you need to do a special on Barnes Wallis ( of dam busting fame ) and how he designed bombs specifically to destroy those bunkers and/or render them unusable, such as the Tallboy and the Grand Slam...
Its worth also noting that the allies' largest bomb, the Grand Slam, was created to defeat these structures. Rather than attempting a direct hit, the idea was for the bomb to impact near enough for the immense shockwaves imparted into the ground to literally shake the bunker apart, hense its nickname, The Earthquake Bomb.
Though it’s probably too late for a video I would enjoy a video discussing how the Soviets moved their industry east beyond the Urals and what that actually looks like.
For those interested to see more about the specific types of Atlantikwall fortifications, I highly recommend the “Regelbauten Atlantikwall Typology” field guide by the late Rudi Rolf. It’s very well-researched and features schematic plans for almost every known conceptual and operational standard bunker designs, used all over the occupied territories.
Hi, you forget to mention the Uboat harbors in France were ocupied by forced working labor. The majority of them died in there in very hard conditions. These harbor were very similar to the death camps!! When the allies captured them, they were horrifying discovering these. Please forgive my bad english, I m french... Love your video. Thxs
There's a flak tower in Vienna which is now hosting an aquarium and zoo! I visited a few years ago and took in the wildlife and the history on the same day.
Apparently a literally massive concrete tower makes for excellent thermal fluctuation balancing vessel, perfect for reducing costs of the water's temperature regulation!
The most famous Flak Tower in Hamburg (Feldstraße) hosts a few dance clubs at the moment, and there are plans to turn the structure into a sort of "hanging gardens" in the future. It was impossible to blow it up after the war without severely affecting civilian living quarters nearby, so it became part of the city landscape
Having grown up on the westcoast of Jutland, the German bunkers were always there, reminding us of the occupation and military purpose of what we would later call home: It was a link in the chained together bulwark against continental counter-invasion from the Allied Powers. No matter what region of the coast you visit, you will find them, evenly deployed every 500 meters or so along all the sandy beaches that meet the North Sea. They have been mostly closed off to stave off vandalism, but in all other ways, the decision seemly was to not spend resources maintaining the fortifications of a past enemy nor to tear them down. They stand but for the sands of time, and these remnants of war and suffering will be with us for a long time as a reminder of the enemy that was. I cannot help but also be reminded of the enemy within, for the same impulses of protecting your home that may lead one person towards peace could lead another towards hatred. These foreboding structures, built by a people that today we Danes count among our closest international friends, remind me of how vital it is to be vigilant for the sake of our humanity. We can forge lasting legacies... and never in my 29 year long life has it felt as vital to push for lasting peace. Thank you to all at Time Ghost, who work every week to make our past more concrete, pun intended. Never forget.
We have a lot of these bunkers scattered around Guernsey, the island I live on. We and other Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles that were captured by the Germans during WW2.
I tried doing a college research paper on comparing air-raid shelters between Britain and Germany. I had to shift my topic to air raid precautions, but I’d be interested in seeing how a multilingual team like timeghost might be able to make the substantive comparison that I could not.
I worked near the Flak tower in Berlin Humboldthain, the area around it has been remodeled into a park, mostly made of what’s left from the destroyed houses, the bunkers mostly disappeared into little hills. It’s a quite idyllic place nowadays and I liked climbing those bunkers to enjoy my lunch on top together with a great view.
A random bunker story: I spent part of my youth in a small village in the Netherlands called Grave (which is a derivate of 'to dig', linked to the works needed to construct the late medieval fortress that was there, it is not meant to say 'final resting place'. Myth has it, that it was misspelled 'Grafe' on purpose on Allied staff maps, in order not to afflict morale. Likely not true though). Later, we will see it back in the hour by hour coverage of 'Market Garden' (I hope ^^ ). The Germans built a small bunker there to cover the bridge over the river Meuse. It's still there. Some time in the late 70s, someone painted on it, in big bright white letters: 'Zimmer frei' ('Rooms for rent' in German) as a little joke at the expense of visiting German tourists.
This is the kind of stuff I enjoy hearing about. While watching the weekly episodes or even the WaH series, it's sometimes easy to forget that life did go on in occupied Europe. A lot of people still woke up in the morning, ate breakfast and read the news, then went off to work to later come home and spend time with family before going to bed to start it all over again the next day. Some of those same people are the ones who constructed these kinds of fortifications.
I actualy have a german bunker around 500 meters away from my home the steel door is gone and it is filled half way up with sand but it is still in very good condition you can still see the bullet holes, and there is a small plaque about the assault on the bunker and who died there
When I went to France they took us to Omaha beach. A lot of the people I was with stayed on the beach for some reason but I went to the hills to look for bunkers. First one I found looked exactly like the one in the thumbnail. Minus the cannon. Though you could see the grooves for the cannon on the floor.
I'm born and live in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK which was the only one of two places in the UK the Germans occupied and we still have German bunkers scattered all around our coast line. They are fun to explore and are a reminder of what life was like during WWII
I would like to see damage done to bunkers on or near the beaches of Normandy. Were they taken by naval bombardment or overwhelmed by the troops? Also, Japanese gun emplacements along beaches were constructed using local materials such as palm logs and highly camouflaged. Could you do a special on them?
About Normandy bunkers: Most were ignored (too far away from the fighting), many were bombed silent (especially those without sill plates outside the bunker itself - for all the "regelbau" the German army bunkers would not be proof against near misses - a bomb nearby could get in under the bunker and tip it over just a little, meaning the artillery could no longer be shifted or aimed in any reasonable way, while marine bunkers sill plate would extend outwards to give them a greater footprint and also set off bombs before they have managed to get in under the bunker) Many were also not built yet, and trying to finish the work under constant bombing didn't work well. Resistance had also been taught the trick of adding sugar to the mix which slows down setting time, even if the actual effect of this is uncertain. "Alerte sur le Mur de l'Atlantique Le titre original de cet ouvrage est: Alarm i Atlantvallen" is a good book on the topic if you know French or maybe Swedish. It describes such things as the commando raid against a coastal fortification that had already been emptied out through bombing (the guns having been dragged out - and then pointed in the wrong direction). A couple of the bunkers were useful, and in most of those cases the artillery was outside hiding in a bush (and firing from there) while the bunkers were attracting all of the bombs.. (The book also has some interesting comparisons between what coastal artillery coverage the allies thought they were sailing into, compared to the comparatively minimal artillery the axis defenders actually had in place)
I've visited bunkers on the beaches near Pointe du Hoc, France. If I remember correctly, most were perfectly intact though there were massive holes in the ground around them due to naval artillery or aerial bombings. The coastal batteries on top were of course destroyed during the invasion, but the bunkers themselves were not.
I once worked with a woman who crewed a gun on a flak tower in Berlin. She once saw a downed British Lancaster sweep past the top of her tower, so close that she made eye contact with the pilot just before he was killed. That story has stayed with be for near fifty years.
Nice video. The Ambrose book D-Day noted a limitation of them. When one of the battleship's shells hit the cement bunkers on the beach, the bunker might remain intact, but the vibration and pressure, according to the book, would kill the soldiers inside.
I visited Pointe du Hoc in Normandy few years back. There are German bunkers in the middle of field full of huge dents made by naval artillery. Few bunkers had gotten direct hits, but those were just scratches.
The American Rangers that took Pointe du Hoc were amazed to find there were no guns. Just telphone pole fakes. They had to go about a mile inland to find the guns and disable them.
My late father was an civil engineer and officer of the engineer troops in WW2 and he built a few of those bunkers. He explained to me that those bunkers were made of an hard, reinforced inner concrete shell, with a thick layer of not reinforced soft concrete on top. A bomb would dig in and exhaust its energy by blowing the outer layer away and not cracking the inner one. These damages could also be easily repaired.
It is episodes like this that really make this channel so fun to follow. In addition to the standard format, pretty much weekly I get to sit and learn about something I never even thought about.
These ww2 specials(green background) need to be placed into a playlist, I’ve only just seen these as I normally follow your content using the playlists as it’s easier to keep track of what I’ve watched Keep up the good work, loved the Great War series, loving this series just as much
I have been in the Gun emplacement in the thumbnail. It's in very good condition but the inside ( and the gun shield ) are full of shrapnel gouges that would have meant the end of the gun crew. As it was , that emplacement and the others near it were taken by British commando force that simply ran through the minefield behind it. They cleared the emplacements but didn't have anything to blow up the guns so they left after a while. The Germans reoccupied them soon after but abandoned them when they realised they would be surrounded if they stayed. The guns did fire on ships but scored no hits. They never thought to actually shell the beaches which would have been a nightmare for the troops down there. I'm not even sure they had enough depression on the guns to do that.But , impressive as they were, the bunkers weren't a wall, just a fence. Once over run or bypassed the Allies found that there was no depth to the defences.
A friend in the Channel Islands had one on his land. His father wanted to blow it into a quarry (granite) to make room for more glasshouses on his farm. I watched the explosion and the bunker dropping about 80ft onto a granite surface. - it bounced. It still needed to be blown apart to clear it away. They were VERY strong structures.
My buddy owns two WWII civilian air raid shelters in Germany when the government started selling them off. It was his dream for many years since they were pretty much locked off after the war, I went over to tour some of the bunkers and it was really a time capsule with logs written on the walls and things furnaces with german markings right where they left them. Anyway he turned one into a warehouse and had to cut a doorway for a garage door and that was a monster job. I went back a few years later to check out his work progress and saw the cross section of the wall. It was super thick with that poured concrete and filled all over with rebar. It was all built to last because it was all like new and a bear to cut though. But he was able to make a flat out out of the top floor and have a great spot to have a party on the roof.
I hope when you guys get to the D-Day special you show a map of where the German bunkers are on each beach (they are easy to find via google). I am hoping you show this because so many people think all 5 of the beaches on D-Day were like Omaha beach in "Saving Private Ryan". Omaha beach was like that and the allies knew it would be like that going into D-Day because they could see the areal photos showing how much more well defended Omaha beach was then the other beaches. That is also the reason that of the 5 beaches Omaha beach was the only beach that had 2 divisions dedicated to taking it over (with a 3rd in reserve). The Allies knew going into D-Day that the majority of their casualties on the beaches would happen at Omaha beach.
@Vinny D-day will be an incredible amount of coverage, you won't be disappointed. And to help our production immensely, please consider joining the TimeGhost Army by pledging a memorial for our D-Day coverage www.patreon.com/join/timeghosthistory
@@WorldWarTwo I already am a member on TimeGhost on Patreon. I have been since the first week you guys created the account. I have convinced 4 different friends to join up as well.
you made a mistake the bunkers were not built around prefabricated concrete blocks, that would only create weakspots where the blocks meet. they were built around prefabricated steel elements, like "schartenplatten" wich have a hole for a machinegun, or cast steel turrets.
Step one- build ridiculously heavy front doors that will take at least 10 minutes to cut through when the heroes inevitably lock the entire garrison outside
Some of the civilian “Bunker” in German cities still remain today. I know Hannover very well and several still exist there as some have proved so difficult to demolish and remove! One big one in Hannover-Herrenhausen took them years to remove. Novel alternative solutions have been to turn them into trendy dwellings and even youth clubs in Hannover.
In the german city of Bonn they turned an WW2 civilian Bunker into an Apartment Building some years ago. They really cut windows in the thick walls to let in some daylight. My Grandfather ran for shelter in this Bunker, back then when he was a teenager and Bonn was bombed.
In my eyes this makes way more sense than blowing the whole stuff up... i mean... no one would doubt the stability, so why not keep it like this and just update it a bit? I´ve read of few bunkers under towns which were filled with concrete to prevent people from getting in...
loving the subtle side swipes against the imperial measurement system. Always talking about thickness in meters while showing the matching centimetre numbers.
we still have a german submarine base called Dora in my city of Trondheim, its now used as and archive and some other stuff, they couldnt blow it up after the war in fear of damaging our medieval cathedral because of the quakes
I know 3 "HIGH BUNKER" in my hometown, one of them was my vocational school for 3 years, the second was in the middle of the city center and serves as a furniture store because it is relatively cheap to regulate the humidity in the bunker and the third has been a Beverage shop for decades where the operator save the money for cooling because even in the hottest summer it is "pigs cold" in there
Ik I'm late but after so many other RUclips videos of just robot voices talking about stuff it's so nice to listen to a human and have them even talk with there hands! Good video I'm gonna subscribe
THANK YOU David!! We're very glad you found our channel no matter how late, and I hope you'll check out our many other hardware specials as well as our weekly episodes following the war. Thanks for joining us & stay tuned
Will you do videos on the Grand Slam and Tall Boys? As they were developed to counter these bunkers and they (can't remember which type) also sunk Tripitz and disrupted both submarine and V2 production
"On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with 12,000-pound (5,400 kg) "Tallboy" bombs scored two direct hits and a near miss which caused the [Tirpitz] to capsize rapidly." The RAF were thoughtful enough to record the attack on film and the videos are available on RUclips.
In Belgrade, Serbia, occupation German forces have constructed several big air raid shelters and the bridge that still serves the purpose. Air raid shelters were sotiated on now ex railway station and were unique in construction. Their roof was in pyramid shape. All the bombs coming from above were simply sliding and exploding on the ground next to the shelter.
We have quite a number of bunkers here in Bremen, they look quite awesome, for some people actually converted most of them into high profile apartment buildings. Turns out unaltered bunkers can go for just a few hundert thousand euros on ebay, so in case you are interested...
Once again. Great content. I've been on some bunker and flak tower tours in Berlin (Gesundbrunnen station). Fascinating. As an aside, on my bucket list is to party at the old bunker in Hamburg, now called Uebel & Gefaehrlich. I think that would be very cool. Proud to be a Captain in the TG Army
We have several submarine bunkers in my hometown. They are so thick and sturdy, removing them is considered too expensive. Instead they are repurposed for industrial and commercial buildings. Rumor says the concrete is still wet inside the thickest walls.
The Dutch coast is still partially lined with bunkers that made up the Atlantikwall. After the war and the return of German tourists, some bore the text ‘Zimmer frei’ (room to let)🙂
Many of the bunkers and the associated tunnels were accessible to us then teenagers during the 1950s and many a flat battery was extinguished during our exploration. But towards the late 50s most were demolished as erosion of the then coast / dunes made the structures too dangerous as they began to slide down the dune face. We, locals thought that this danger to visiting German tourists was a bit of poetic justice.
In the past few years I have visited the flak towers of Vienna and the submarine pens at St. Nazaire. Very impressive structures that were hardly damaged due to their stout construction.
Flak towers were notoriously hard to demolish (the ones that actually were demolished). Like others wrote before me, the Berlin Zoo tower took several blasting attempts. When trying to demolish a building, if it isn't destroyed in the first blast, this is pretty much the worst outcome, because then there is no way to tell how stable it is. The demolition crews had to to enter the huge and possibly unstable tower, and then drill into it to place the explosives for the next attempt. This is a genuinely scary job.
In Britain in 1940 the British were also building bunkers/pillboxes (obviously not as grand as what was going on in Europe) for a possible invasion of the UK. In what was known as Stop-lines , the plan was to slow the German advance with Anti tank cubes and anti tank ditches with the longest being the GHQ line which ran from my home town Bristol to south London. There are still many small pill boxes doted all over the country and usually around big cities and the coastal areas.
i guess my cardboard bunker i bulit for my son to play in is subpar. Damn german enginers....... I should have hired them to build one. but my son still has fun playing with his dinosaurs and unicorns in it. :) Lots of Luv, Thanks for another awsome video, and all your crews hard work at putting out these great episodes.
I've witnessed the german bunker regelbau first hand. I've visited some of the bunkers on the D-day beaches in Normandy France, soaked in the history and was totally absorbed by it all. Some years later I visited the bunker museum near Frederikshavn, Denmark, 1600 km's to the north. Here I saw identical bunker constructions down to every detail: The narrow passage by the entrance covered by strategically placed openings for the defenders to shoot through, the layout of rooms inside and even the pipings. It was quite surreal to discover that I could navigate through the latter because I'd been inside the ones in France.
Great video! Any plans on covering the Atlantic Wall when we get closer to D-Day? We are after all talking about fortifications all the way from Northern Norway to the Spanish border. That's a lot of steel and concrete!
living in brest and having lived in lorient, i can tell you that both are still standing and in use, for exemple the one in brest is used by the french marine forces, and the one in lorient is so big that it house many many thing, from museums to nightclub. When the french governement thought of destroying the lorient base it was discovered that the ground would rise from 30 to 50 cm(form a feet to 1 and half feet aprox), but it never happened, and so both bases are still there, and i can tell you it is much more impressive in reality than in picture...
The bunkers that was built was so good, most of them are still existing, many had to be given up destroying, and those which nature hasn't taken over, has been taken over by humans, as secure deep storage, datacenters, culture centers, submarine work shops, and museums. It's mind boggling.
i once took part in a bunker tour along the rhine river (westwall) the germans had multible types of bunkers who would allways be put so they would cover eachother , they were gas proof and allways had an emergency exit they could built them very fast another thing is altho the regelbau gave a general idea of how the bunker looked like , they were locally changed up to suit the material aviable and the landscape ofcourse
Once spent a few weeks for NATO exercises on a Danish airbase that started as a Nazi airbase. There was a huge command bunker and numerous ancillary bunkers. I’ve been curious about Nazi bunker construction ever since. Thanks for a very interesting episode.
While the civil engineering behind German bunkers was first-rate, the 'secret sauce' to their fortifications was the construction principle of 'continuous pour' for the concrete. Through the use pre-made molds and panels surrounding the rebar, the _entire_ bunker was cast in concrete *all in one go* ...regardless of the size of the bunker. _That_ was the reason why German WWII fortifications were nigh on indestructible.
Super interesting! Well done, havent seen this info anywhere else in documentaries or youtube. And very interesting that they will one day be the only thing left of WW2.
My grandfather was taken by the arbeidseinsatz to work on the submarine bunkers in Brest, he loved Bretons but disliked any and all germans till his death.
I once visited a German Bunkersystem in east Germany, and one guy asked why nobody does anything to get rid of the Nazi Stuff. The Tourguide explained that a lot of the Nazi Bunkers are being used by demolition engineers as practice fore explosives. He showed us a tunnel, made by explosions, and explained that since 1950 to 2015 (date of the visit) the Engineers already managed to move 12 meters. So in 65 years the got 12meters quit impressive.
My father told me most Germans were not likely to retreat to bunkers on the Siegfried Line (and others)as they were dead trap he served in a he 84th infantry
Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/HARDWARE_022_PI
Those of you who have been around for a long time will remember that we were able to take you deep into some Second World War bunkers thanks to an effort by the TimeGhost Army. You can see our on the road series at the Maginot Line here: ruclips.net/video/8RFRBM7yacE/видео.html
Read our code of conduct before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Have you seen Tino- Struckman's Lost Battlefields? It would be a great You Tube collaboration.
I find it ironic that they were standardizing bunkers to incredible levels, yet their vehicle production plans were the complete opposite.
Probably because the bunkers didn't need as many specialized parts and shit
@@crunchbuttsteak8741 And there is probably less need for innovation
Because the vehicle production plans where done the german model of many small bussines that all work together to make a single product which takes a larger amount of time and the giverment until 1943 did not want to break that model just how they did not ration as many things as possible. All to keep morale as high as possible. The bunker production was done by the militairy that would make sure to get all production material and then start working. If the german industry was done by a single company like the bunkers were done by the militairy then the vehicle production would have been streamlined. It would however have come with its own set of problems.
@@crunchbuttsteak8741 that makes it even worse. They could have let their architects go insane with tailor-made bunkers everywhere and it wouldn't have costed much more, but vehicles need interchangeable parts.
@@RK-cj4oc very interesting answer
A very interesting fact about the about the Berlin Zoo flak tower is that it was so well-constructed that in 1947, after the German capitulation, British Army engineers were unable to destroy the tower with 25 tons of dynamite. It took two more attempts over another year for British engineers to finally destroy the tower with 35 tons of dynamite in 1948.
All around Vienna there are still several flak towers to be found. According to Wikipedia they were not blown up due to nearby housing. Nowadays it would be possible but they are under protection now.
I heard because of the time and wasted resources destroying just one, they basically said screw it and didn’t bother w the others in the city
Why did they blow it up in the first place? Seems like a huge waste, especially with the cold war on the horizon
@@DontKnow-hr5my Because having giant towers taking up space in a city is generally not a great thing, better to knock it down and use the space for city stuff.
But when it takes to much effort. well guess they can stay there.
@@charchadonto That wasn't a consideration here. It was about taking away any possible fortifications.
My Grandfather served in one of the flak towers in Berlin and he was responsible for keeping the radars working because the heavy flak needed targeting solutions.
Is he still alive?
@@RK-cj4oc No, he died roughly 30 years ago.
@@comsubpac Ahm condolences.
That's an amazing piece of family history, thank you for sharing a bit about him here. May he rest in peace.
Wa..was he ... You know ..that type of guy???
"Basically indestructable" is right! The Zoo Flak Tower at Berlin proved to be invulnerable to the Soviets' 203mm howitzers - the most powerful artillery they had. After the war, the Allies tried to blow it up with explosives. It took them three tries, finally succeeding on the third attempt, in an operation that used 35 tons of explosives!
Yeah not only that but it withstood years of aerial bombardent and weeks of 24/7 artillery barrage , when I read it I was "how is this even possible"
the allies tried to blow up the big flakbunker in hamburg after the war. all they achieved was blowing out all the windows in the surrounding city. today the bunker houses a musicstore, a club and another venues. by the time humanity is long gone, this bunker will still be standing were he was build
@@lz1094 the music store didn't survive covid. it's now a bouldering gym. On top of it there is a hotel being built.
If the allies somehow managed to capture the gustav gun intact, they probably would’ve used it to crumble the flak towers like an oreo cookie
The bunkers here in bonn are remodeled to Apartments
I live only a few hundred meters from an old German bunker. It was a regional command bunker for the defense of the north sea coast in Denmark. All the entrances are locked now, and the earth bunkers surrounding it haven't fared so well, but the main tower is basically untouched by time, and is used as a lighthouse nowadays. The actual command stuff happened in the basement, and there are pictures of it and the layout on the information boards that have been put up around it.
The bunkers in Denmark are always a joy to explore
In the region I live in germany the smallish park of the city is filled with a huge bunker network. sadly the entrances are blocked and the bunker was left to rot but... still a cool little secret a surprising amount of people don't know about
The Führersbunker. Best place to witness Steiner's glorious counterattack, that will put everything in order.
where is Fegelein in your comment?
Steiner's must have been really good at counter attacking, the charges levied on him during the Nuremberg Trials were dropped.
And Heaven forbid the counterattack fails. I can't imagine how Hitler would react.
Somewhere out there, Steiner's army is still waiting for the perfect timing of his glorious counterattack...
@@kleinweichkleinweich I am here, Mein Failure!
Ah that would explain why the Germans held out so long in the “Atlantic Pockets”. I always wondered why and know I now. The Germans used super bunkers and used them effectively against the Allies. Very good video. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Daniel! We look forward to seeing your name every week, please stay tuned
it was even that bad, that the allies just ignored the channel islands beqause of said bunkers.
I think its interesting that some of these flak towers made the Soviets think twice about attacking them during the battle of Berlin. This was mostly due to their ability to turn their guns downward as well as having walls so thick that they would be more trouble than they were worth
That was probably a deliberate design decision. If you install gun ports so you can shoot downward, the enemy can shoot upwards and put rounds in your flak tower. Plus how would that have looked to the population who'd been told repeatedly they were safe from invasion.
If you happen to be in Lorient, I recommend the visit of the Keroman submarine base, which has a couple of nice museums and guided tours.
It also has a (water-flooded) tower specifically designed to train submariners to escape their submarine at depth in case of problems.
Unrelated funfact: the small peninsula of Keroman (Kerroman) is named in the celtic breton language to indicate an ancient roman settlement (ker) which happened to be where the submarine base was built (even though by that time, not even ruins subsisted).
Ive been in Lorient, and its very, very Impressive... Even for modern standards.
Are they similar to those in St Nazaire?
Very interesting episode! I would love to hear more about the Flak Towers built in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna. One of the towers in Vienna actually serves as the emergency shelter for our government.
“our” holdup
Military History Visualized has a video on this topic
ruclips.net/video/6jgvkzD8d3k/видео.html
Military history visualized produced some videos about flak towers
Yes, please do an episode covering the stories of the Berlin Zoo Flak tower
@@wanfaichiu3465 was going to recommend that exact video, it’s great. those bad boys were so insanely overbuilt that the soviets often literally just bypassed them entirely
My great-grandmother (who was still around until a few years ago) married in a bunker during an air raid. Pretty bad stuff. Those things mostly still stand - right next to my elementary school in Bremen we had a WW2 Bunker, that the theatre group was using (for it is absolutely 100% soundproof). We were in there a couple of times, the thickness of the walls is really impressive when you walk into it.
Going through Uni for civil engineering made me appreciate just how impressive these bunkers are. When you start looking at the rebar spacing and concrete thickness it’s just difficult to fathom
There is flak tower in Breslau just couple hundred meters from my house. It was used as night club and fireworks shop in the '90, and now hosts modern arts museum.
Now you need to do a special on Barnes Wallis ( of dam busting fame ) and how he designed bombs specifically to destroy those bunkers and/or render them unusable, such as the Tallboy and the Grand Slam...
A cynic would say Lindy omitted mentioning this in order to garner a lot of Comments pointing this out.
@@donjones4719 ooo I like your thinkin’
@@donjones4719 "Lindy"??? Are you mixing up Indy with Lindy Beige!
But he did point out that these bunkers could not be destroyed by anything AT that time. The "super" bombs came later.
Its worth also noting that the allies' largest bomb, the Grand Slam, was created to defeat these structures. Rather than attempting a direct hit, the idea was for the bomb to impact near enough for the immense shockwaves imparted into the ground to literally shake the bunker apart, hense its nickname, The Earthquake Bomb.
Has it ever been used?
Were they not intended to explode deep underground and create an underground cavern into which the structure above would collapse?
@@neilbuckley1613 No. They were impact fused.
@@terranceaddison4599 many times in WWII.
@@terranceaddison4599 they were used to sink the Tirpitz and many of the craters they left can still be seen today.
Though it’s probably too late for a video I would enjoy a video discussing how the Soviets moved their industry east beyond the Urals and what that actually looks like.
They talked about it in this episode ruclips.net/video/qZ17bAMttTI/видео.html
I think there is one
@@ryanwagner656 if there is one could you please provide the link? Thanks.
Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of train cars.....
Looked like a lot of forced labor
Why doesn’t my family get this excited when I bring up esoteric WWII topics? I could talk about this stuff all day! Great channel!
Thank you Amadeus! Keep telling your family about the show, they'll come around!
For those interested to see more about the specific types of Atlantikwall fortifications, I highly recommend the “Regelbauten Atlantikwall Typology” field guide by the late Rudi Rolf. It’s very well-researched and features schematic plans for almost every known conceptual and operational standard bunker designs, used all over the occupied territories.
Hi, you forget to mention the Uboat harbors in France were ocupied by forced working labor. The majority of them died in there in very hard conditions. These harbor were very similar to the death camps!! When the allies captured them, they were horrifying discovering these. Please forgive my bad english, I m french... Love your video. Thxs
There's a flak tower in Vienna which is now hosting an aquarium and zoo! I visited a few years ago and took in the wildlife and the history on the same day.
Apparently a literally massive concrete tower makes for excellent thermal fluctuation balancing vessel, perfect for reducing costs of the water's temperature regulation!
The most famous Flak Tower in Hamburg (Feldstraße) hosts a few dance clubs at the moment, and there are plans to turn the structure into a sort of "hanging gardens" in the future. It was impossible to blow it up after the war without severely affecting civilian living quarters nearby, so it became part of the city landscape
In Wien beherbergt ein Flak Bunker ein Aquarium und ein Café one Topp.
My next garden project. Thank you for the blueprint.
Good luck Finn!
"They've thought of everything to protect those submarine pens."
"What about earthquakes?", says Barnes Wallis.
Funny part, the submarines bunkers were the only ones that the Barnes Wallis bombs didn't destroyed.
Having grown up on the westcoast of Jutland, the German bunkers were always there, reminding us of the occupation and military purpose of what we would later call home: It was a link in the chained together bulwark against continental counter-invasion from the Allied Powers. No matter what region of the coast you visit, you will find them, evenly deployed every 500 meters or so along all the sandy beaches that meet the North Sea.
They have been mostly closed off to stave off vandalism, but in all other ways, the decision seemly was to not spend resources maintaining the fortifications of a past enemy nor to tear them down. They stand but for the sands of time, and these remnants of war and suffering will be with us for a long time as a reminder of the enemy that was.
I cannot help but also be reminded of the enemy within, for the same impulses of protecting your home that may lead one person towards peace could lead another towards hatred.
These foreboding structures, built by a people that today we Danes count among our closest international friends, remind me of how vital it is to be vigilant for the sake of our humanity. We can forge lasting legacies... and never in my 29 year long life has it felt as vital to push for lasting peace.
Thank you to all at Time Ghost, who work every week to make our past more concrete, pun intended.
Never forget.
We have a lot of these bunkers scattered around Guernsey, the island I live on. We and other Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles that were captured by the Germans during WW2.
thanks for the tutoriel i will build my fort noe thank u
Same here. I will build an impenetrable line of fortifications
Building a nazi bunker after RUclips removed dislikes
🤣
I tried doing a college research paper on comparing air-raid shelters between Britain and Germany. I had to shift my topic to air raid precautions, but I’d be interested in seeing how a multilingual team like timeghost might be able to make the substantive comparison that I could not.
I worked near the Flak tower in Berlin Humboldthain, the area around it has been remodeled into a park, mostly made of what’s left from the destroyed houses, the bunkers mostly disappeared into little hills.
It’s a quite idyllic place nowadays and I liked climbing those bunkers to enjoy my lunch on top together with a great view.
A random bunker story:
I spent part of my youth in a small village in the Netherlands called Grave (which is a derivate of 'to dig', linked to the works needed to construct the late medieval fortress that was there, it is not meant to say 'final resting place'. Myth has it, that it was misspelled 'Grafe' on purpose on Allied staff maps, in order not to afflict morale. Likely not true though). Later, we will see it back in the hour by hour coverage of 'Market Garden' (I hope ^^ ).
The Germans built a small bunker there to cover the bridge over the river Meuse. It's still there. Some time in the late 70s, someone painted on it, in big bright white letters: 'Zimmer frei' ('Rooms for rent' in German) as a little joke at the expense of visiting German tourists.
It's actually a Dutch pre-war bunker.
@@basslaats8889 Never realized that. All the more welcoming to Germans, I guess ^^
I learn german and I gave a little snort when I saw your comment
This is the kind of stuff I enjoy hearing about. While watching the weekly episodes or even the WaH series, it's sometimes easy to forget that life did go on in occupied Europe. A lot of people still woke up in the morning, ate breakfast and read the news, then went off to work to later come home and spend time with family before going to bed to start it all over again the next day. Some of those same people are the ones who constructed these kinds of fortifications.
You should show the rest of the complexities of the U-Boot bunkers too, it was quite something in operation.
As a union rodbuster, I found this extremely interesting. Seeing the photos of the rodbusters at work is fascinating
I'm a former union carpenter who did a lot of formwork. I too found this episode very interesting.
I'm amazed at how well the Normandy bunkers have stood up to the ravages of time after 80 years.
I actualy have a german bunker around 500 meters away from my home the steel door is gone and it is filled half way up with sand but it is still in very good condition you can still see the bullet holes, and there is a small plaque about the assault on the bunker and who died there
Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
_And where is it?_
@@letoubib21 in the netherlands the peel
@@kevinhekers2380 _Thank you!_
When I went to France they took us to Omaha beach. A lot of the people I was with stayed on the beach for some reason but I went to the hills to look for bunkers. First one I found looked exactly like the one in the thumbnail. Minus the cannon. Though you could see the grooves for the cannon on the floor.
I would also love to hear about the underground factories, "Mittelwerk" or Project Riese.
Go check out Tino Struckman over at the Lost Battlefields channel. He has visited and filmed in both of these and many others.
100% lotta salt mines and caves
You'll probably hear about them from Sparty on ''War Against Humanity.''
I like this being straight to the point without wasting minutes on stupid intros or advertising
I'm born and live in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK which was the only one of two places in the UK the Germans occupied and we still have German bunkers scattered all around our coast line. They are fun to explore and are a reminder of what life was like during WWII
Sending much love to you all for putting the New Zealand flag in the prime spot on the wall in this vid! 🇳🇿❤️
I would like to see damage done to bunkers on or near the beaches of Normandy. Were they taken by naval bombardment or overwhelmed by the troops? Also, Japanese gun emplacements along beaches were constructed using local materials such as palm logs and highly camouflaged. Could you do a special on them?
About Normandy bunkers: Most were ignored (too far away from the fighting), many were bombed silent (especially those without sill plates outside the bunker itself - for all the "regelbau" the German army bunkers would not be proof against near misses - a bomb nearby could get in under the bunker and tip it over just a little, meaning the artillery could no longer be shifted or aimed in any reasonable way, while marine bunkers sill plate would extend outwards to give them a greater footprint and also set off bombs before they have managed to get in under the bunker)
Many were also not built yet, and trying to finish the work under constant bombing didn't work well. Resistance had also been taught the trick of adding sugar to the mix which slows down setting time, even if the actual effect of this is uncertain.
"Alerte sur le Mur de l'Atlantique Le titre original de cet ouvrage est: Alarm i Atlantvallen" is a good book on the topic if you know French or maybe Swedish.
It describes such things as the commando raid against a coastal fortification that had already been emptied out through bombing (the guns having been dragged out - and then pointed in the wrong direction). A couple of the bunkers were useful, and in most of those cases the artillery was outside hiding in a bush (and firing from there) while the bunkers were attracting all of the bombs..
(The book also has some interesting comparisons between what coastal artillery coverage the allies thought they were sailing into, compared to the comparatively minimal artillery the axis defenders actually had in place)
I've visited bunkers on the beaches near Pointe du Hoc, France. If I remember correctly, most were perfectly intact though there were massive holes in the ground around them due to naval artillery or aerial bombings. The coastal batteries on top were of course destroyed during the invasion, but the bunkers themselves were not.
0:42 the flowers set the bunker decor off nicely
I once worked with a woman who crewed a gun on a flak tower in Berlin. She once saw a downed British Lancaster sweep past the top of her tower, so close that she made eye contact with the pilot just before he was killed. That story has stayed with be for near fifty years.
Nice video. The Ambrose book D-Day noted a limitation of them. When one of the battleship's shells hit the cement bunkers on the beach, the bunker might remain intact, but the vibration and pressure, according to the book, would kill the soldiers inside.
Imagine if the Iowa-class were there as artillery support, their super-heavy shells would have made quick work of those bunkers
I visited Pointe du Hoc in Normandy few years back. There are German bunkers in the middle of field full of huge dents made by naval artillery. Few bunkers had gotten direct hits, but those were just scratches.
The American Rangers that took Pointe du Hoc were amazed to find there were no guns. Just telphone pole fakes. They had to go about a mile inland to find the guns and disable them.
My late father was an civil engineer and officer of the engineer troops in WW2 and he built a few of those bunkers. He explained to me that those bunkers were made of an hard, reinforced inner concrete shell, with a thick layer of not reinforced soft concrete on top. A bomb would dig in and exhaust its energy by blowing the outer layer away and not cracking the inner one. These damages could also be easily repaired.
"Protect your bonker with a bunker!" - actual WW2 German army slogan
....not really, I just made it up
What mad is that when I spent a week in Berlin, the hostel I stayed in was right next to one of the Flaktowers.
It is episodes like this that really make this channel so fun to follow. In addition to the standard format, pretty much weekly I get to sit and learn about something I never even thought about.
These Specials are great! Thx for all you guys do! Love the channel.
I'm reading "The Fall of Berlin 1945" right now, so I'm reading about those flax towers and Hitler's bunker. Thank you for this episode!
These ww2 specials(green background) need to be placed into a playlist, I’ve only just seen these as I normally follow your content using the playlists as it’s easier to keep track of what I’ve watched
Keep up the good work, loved the Great War series, loving this series just as much
WAW! These german bunkers are very impressive. Thanks, Indy & crew, for this special "Special"!
Thank you for watching, Rabih R!
Fascinating, as always. I love it when you do stories on parts of the war I never read about.
I have been in the Gun emplacement in the thumbnail. It's in very good condition but the inside ( and the gun shield ) are full of shrapnel gouges that would have meant the end of the gun crew. As it was , that emplacement and the others near it were taken by British commando force that simply ran through the minefield behind it. They cleared the emplacements but didn't have anything to blow up the guns so they left after a while. The Germans reoccupied them soon after but abandoned them when they realised they would be surrounded if they stayed. The guns did fire on ships but scored no hits. They never thought to actually shell the beaches which would have been a nightmare for the troops down there. I'm not even sure they had enough depression on the guns to do that.But , impressive as they were, the bunkers weren't a wall, just a fence. Once over run or bypassed the Allies found that there was no depth to the defences.
A friend in the Channel Islands had one on his land. His father wanted to blow it into a quarry (granite) to make room for more glasshouses on his farm. I watched the explosion and the bunker dropping about 80ft onto a granite surface. - it bounced. It still needed to be blown apart to clear it away. They were VERY strong structures.
My buddy owns two WWII civilian air raid shelters in Germany when the government started selling them off. It was his dream for many years since they were pretty much locked off after the war, I went over to tour some of the bunkers and it was really a time capsule with logs written on the walls and things furnaces with german markings right where they left them. Anyway he turned one into a warehouse and had to cut a doorway for a garage door and that was a monster job. I went back a few years later to check out his work progress and saw the cross section of the wall. It was super thick with that poured concrete and filled all over with rebar. It was all built to last because it was all like new and a bear to cut though. But he was able to make a flat out out of the top floor and have a great spot to have a party on the roof.
Vic I'd call that a happy ending for a bomb shelter.
I hope when you guys get to the D-Day special you show a map of where the German bunkers are on each beach (they are easy to find via google). I am hoping you show this because so many people think all 5 of the beaches on D-Day were like Omaha beach in "Saving Private Ryan". Omaha beach was like that and the allies knew it would be like that going into D-Day because they could see the areal photos showing how much more well defended Omaha beach was then the other beaches. That is also the reason that of the 5 beaches Omaha beach was the only beach that had 2 divisions dedicated to taking it over (with a 3rd in reserve). The Allies knew going into D-Day that the majority of their casualties on the beaches would happen at Omaha beach.
@Vinny D-day will be an incredible amount of coverage, you won't be disappointed.
And to help our production immensely, please consider joining the TimeGhost Army by pledging a memorial for our D-Day coverage www.patreon.com/join/timeghosthistory
@@WorldWarTwo I already am a member on TimeGhost on Patreon. I have been since the first week you guys created the account. I have convinced 4 different friends to join up as well.
@Vinny Yes! THANK YOU so much for your & your friends' support!
you made a mistake
the bunkers were not built around prefabricated concrete blocks, that would only create weakspots where the blocks meet.
they were built around prefabricated steel elements, like "schartenplatten" wich have a hole for a machinegun, or cast steel turrets.
He never said any of the concrete was prefab. Only a reference to prefab "roof supports".
At 12:20 that looks like "degenerate art" being protected.
Always enjoy these!
Step one- build ridiculously heavy front doors that will take at least 10 minutes to cut through when the heroes inevitably lock the entire garrison outside
Having a huge Metal Of Honor: Airborne flashback as I always love playing final Flak Towers level.
Some of the civilian “Bunker” in German cities still remain today. I know Hannover very well and several still exist there as some have proved so difficult to demolish and remove! One big one in Hannover-Herrenhausen took them years to remove. Novel alternative solutions have been to turn them into trendy dwellings and even youth clubs in Hannover.
In the german city of Bonn they turned an WW2 civilian Bunker into an Apartment Building some years ago. They really cut windows in the thick walls to let in some daylight.
My Grandfather ran for shelter in this Bunker, back then when he was a teenager and Bonn was bombed.
In my eyes this makes way more sense than blowing the whole stuff up... i mean... no one would doubt the stability, so why not keep it like this and just update it a bit?
I´ve read of few bunkers under towns which were filled with concrete to prevent people from getting in...
loving the subtle side swipes against the imperial measurement system. Always talking about thickness in meters while showing the matching centimetre numbers.
One of the Flak Towers in Hamburg got bought and renovated
now its used for concerts its pretty awesome
Regelbaus are like Look-up tables, very simple but efficient method.
we still have a german submarine base called Dora in my city of Trondheim, its now used as and archive and some other stuff, they couldnt blow it up after the war in fear of damaging our medieval cathedral because of the quakes
Still a lot of bunkers near my home along the Dutch coast. All part of the Atlantikwall...
I know 3 "HIGH BUNKER" in my hometown, one of them was my vocational school for 3 years, the second was in the middle of the city center and serves as a furniture store because it is relatively cheap to regulate the humidity in the bunker and the third has been a Beverage shop for decades where the operator save the money for cooling because even in the hottest summer it is "pigs cold" in there
" Regelbau" I definitely heard "Lego-bau" had to backup and listen a second time with the caption.
Ik I'm late but after so many other RUclips videos of just robot voices talking about stuff it's so nice to listen to a human and have them even talk with there hands! Good video I'm gonna subscribe
THANK YOU David!! We're very glad you found our channel no matter how late, and I hope you'll check out our many other hardware specials as well as our weekly episodes following the war. Thanks for joining us & stay tuned
Extremely well made video. Good job man I was captivated the whole time
Thank you!
Will you do videos on the Grand Slam and Tall Boys? As they were developed to counter these bunkers and they (can't remember which type) also sunk Tripitz and disrupted both submarine and V2 production
that's in the future, this is 1943
"On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with 12,000-pound (5,400 kg) "Tallboy" bombs scored two direct hits and a near miss which caused the [Tirpitz] to capsize rapidly." The RAF were thoughtful enough to record the attack on film and the videos are available on RUclips.
In Belgrade, Serbia, occupation German forces have constructed several big air raid shelters and the bridge that still serves the purpose.
Air raid shelters were sotiated on now ex railway station and were unique in construction.
Their roof was in pyramid shape. All the bombs coming from above were simply sliding and exploding on the ground next to the shelter.
We have quite a number of bunkers here in Bremen, they look quite awesome, for some people actually converted most of them into high profile apartment buildings. Turns out unaltered bunkers can go for just a few hundert thousand euros on ebay, so in case you are interested...
Once again. Great content. I've been on some bunker and flak tower tours in Berlin (Gesundbrunnen station). Fascinating. As an aside, on my bucket list is to party at the old bunker in Hamburg, now called Uebel & Gefaehrlich. I think that would be very cool.
Proud to be a Captain in the TG Army
We have several submarine bunkers in my hometown. They are so thick and sturdy, removing them is considered too expensive. Instead they are repurposed for industrial and commercial buildings. Rumor says the concrete is still wet inside the thickest walls.
The Dutch coast is still partially lined with bunkers that made up the Atlantikwall. After the war and the return of German tourists, some bore the text ‘Zimmer frei’ (room to let)🙂
Many of the bunkers and the associated tunnels were accessible to us then teenagers during the 1950s and many a flat battery was extinguished during our exploration. But towards the late 50s most were demolished as erosion of the then coast / dunes made the structures too dangerous as they began to slide down the dune face. We, locals thought that this danger to visiting German tourists was a bit of poetic justice.
In the past few years I have visited the flak towers of Vienna and the submarine pens at St. Nazaire. Very impressive structures that were hardly damaged due to their stout construction.
maybe a special episode on the Type VIIC U-Boats with and emphasis on Das Boot, a good ww2 movie
This is why I loved listening to "D-Day from German Eyes" books 1 and 2. They talked a lot about their emplacements and fortifications.
Flak towers were notoriously hard to demolish (the ones that actually were demolished). Like others wrote before me, the Berlin Zoo tower took several blasting attempts. When trying to demolish a building, if it isn't destroyed in the first blast, this is pretty much the worst outcome, because then there is no way to tell how stable it is. The demolition crews had to to enter the huge and possibly unstable tower, and then drill into it to place the explosives for the next attempt. This is a genuinely scary job.
In Britain in 1940 the British were also building bunkers/pillboxes (obviously not as grand as what was going on in Europe) for a possible invasion of the UK. In what was known as Stop-lines , the plan was to slow the German advance with Anti tank cubes and anti tank ditches with the longest being the GHQ line which ran from my home town Bristol to south London. There are still many small pill boxes doted all over the country and usually around big cities and the coastal areas.
i guess my cardboard bunker i bulit for my son to play in is subpar. Damn german enginers....... I should have hired them to build one. but my son still has fun playing with his dinosaurs and unicorns in it. :)
Lots of Luv, Thanks for another awsome video, and all your crews hard work at putting out these great episodes.
I've witnessed the german bunker regelbau first hand. I've visited some of the bunkers on the D-day beaches in Normandy France, soaked in the history and was totally absorbed by it all. Some years later I visited the bunker museum near Frederikshavn, Denmark, 1600 km's to the north. Here I saw identical bunker constructions down to every detail: The narrow passage by the entrance covered by strategically placed openings for the defenders to shoot through, the layout of rooms inside and even the pipings. It was quite surreal to discover that I could navigate through the latter because I'd been inside the ones in France.
Great video!
Any plans on covering the Atlantic Wall when we get closer to D-Day?
We are after all talking about fortifications all the way from Northern Norway to the Spanish border. That's a lot of steel and concrete!
living in brest and having lived in lorient, i can tell you that both are still standing and in use, for exemple the one in brest is used by the french marine forces, and the one in lorient is so big that it house many many thing, from museums to nightclub. When the french governement thought of destroying the lorient base it was discovered that the ground would rise from 30 to 50 cm(form a feet to 1 and half feet aprox), but it never happened, and so both bases are still there, and i can tell you it is much more impressive in reality than in picture...
The bunkers that was built was so good, most of them are still existing, many had to be given up destroying, and those which nature hasn't taken over, has been taken over by humans, as secure deep storage, datacenters, culture centers, submarine work shops, and museums. It's mind boggling.
They made the toughest bunkers, and also the toughest bunker buster... The schwerer gustav!
i once took part in a bunker tour along the rhine river (westwall)
the germans had multible types of bunkers who would allways be put so they would cover eachother , they were gas proof and allways had an emergency exit
they could built them very fast
another thing is altho the regelbau gave a general idea of how the bunker looked like , they were locally changed up to suit the material aviable and the landscape ofcourse
Once spent a few weeks for NATO exercises on a Danish airbase that started as a Nazi airbase. There was a huge command bunker and numerous ancillary bunkers. I’ve been curious about Nazi bunker construction ever since. Thanks for a very interesting episode.
Thanks for watching, Doug. I'm sure that was quite an interesting few weeks.
While the civil engineering behind German bunkers was first-rate, the 'secret sauce' to their fortifications was the construction principle of 'continuous pour' for the concrete. Through the use pre-made molds and panels surrounding the rebar, the _entire_ bunker was cast in concrete *all in one go* ...regardless of the size of the bunker.
_That_ was the reason why German WWII fortifications were nigh on indestructible.
The amount of resources and manpower allocated for bunkers are just mind blowing
Great work!!!! Thanks all the team for the effort and magnificent quality delivered!!!
All the best from Rio Grande do Sul, South Brazil!!!!
My favourite part of this show is, that the flags are always rotated. So, they've always got they're own time in the spotlight
Super interesting! Well done, havent seen this info anywhere else in documentaries or youtube. And very interesting that they will one day be the only thing left of WW2.
Thanks for watching, Chris!
My grandfather was taken by the arbeidseinsatz to work on the submarine bunkers in Brest, he loved Bretons but disliked any and all germans till his death.
I once visited a German Bunkersystem in east Germany, and one guy asked why nobody does anything to get rid of the Nazi Stuff. The Tourguide explained that a lot of the Nazi Bunkers are being used by demolition engineers as practice fore explosives. He showed us a tunnel, made by explosions, and explained that since 1950 to 2015 (date of the visit) the Engineers already managed to move 12 meters. So in 65 years the got 12meters quit impressive.
My father told me most Germans were not likely to retreat to bunkers on the Siegfried Line (and others)as they were dead trap he served in a he 84th infantry
When Indy said they're outfitted with wireless I thought he was talking about the Internet for a second lol