by Mark Felton
This was to be Hitler’s showpiece headquarters for the campaign in the West and no expense was spared. Incredibly, the local villagers who lived below the Castle in Ziegenberg do not appear to have realized that it was now a Führer Headquarters. The Germans kept the secret well, using labour that was brought into the area to complete the building work.2 As far as locals were concerned, Kransberg Castle was just another military installation during a time of war. The castle was extensively renovated and seven concrete bunkers disguised as half-timbered cottages were built in the grounds. These were connected with extensive underground bunkers which in turn were themselves connected with the main castle by tunnels. But when Hitler visited the site he rejected it as too luxurious and not in keeping with his image as a simple and frugal leader. He was particularly worried that after the war his loyal disciples would visit the castle as a kind of shrine and be dismayed to find out that their beloved Führer lived in such opulent surroundings while they suffered air raids and food shortages. Hitler demanded a different headquarters on a more modest scale.
The Adlerhorst would not be used until 1944, when Hitler finally moved in to direct the Ardennes Offensive, but although mothballed for the time being the site nonetheless still had to be carefully protected. Speer modified the complex for use by the Luftwaffe as their HQ for Operation ‘Sealion’, the planned invasion of Britain in 1940. After Hitler cancelled Sealion the castle was used as a recuperation centre for wounded German soldiers and as a private retreat for the corpulent Luftwaffe leader Hermann Göring.3
Hitler’s RSD commander, Johann Rattenhuber, provided nineteen of his men to guard the Adlershorst complex, plus 106 military policemen – a considerable use of resources to guard an ‘empty’ headquarters. This activity served as a useful distraction from Hitler’s real HQ, the considerably more basic ‘F’ or ‘Felsennest’ (Mountain Nest) that was occupied at Rodert near the town of Munstereifel, 35km southwest of Bonn and only 45km from the Belgian frontier.
At the Felsennest, Hitler took over an already existing site that consisted of some anti-aircraft positions and a few wooden huts. Engineers built catwalks between the buildings so that Hitler and his officers did not have to wade through mud, renovated the existing structures, put up security fences and gates, and built some small bunkers and air raid shelters. Hitler’s personal bunker was very small. It consisted of one room that he could use for meetings and military briefings plus a modest bedroom, bathroom, bedrooms for Keitel, adjutant Schaub and one manservant, and a kitchen.4 ‘Jodl, Dr Brandt, Schmundt, Below [Luftwaffe aide], Puttkamer [naval aide], and Keitel’s adjutant were in a second [bunker]. The rest had to be accommodated in the nearby village.’5 But the headquarters was in keeping with Hitler’s simple nature, and importantly it reinforced his own image of the straightforward and frugal leader.
The complex was ready for Hitler to move in on 16 December 1939 but the Führer did not finally arrive at his new headquarters until the afternoon of 9 May 1940 when the Führersonderzug pulled in at Euskirchen Station. The next day the German invasion of France and the Low Countries commenced.
One of the major concerns for the Germans was a British or French airborne assault on Felsennest. To counter this possibility strong anti-aircraft batteries were established throughout the area and the FBB formed a 234-man guard company that was split between Rodert, Munstereifel, Kreuzweingarten and the Felsennest. But such a small number of troops would not have proved very effective in a serious emergency. Local garrison troops were also to be used in the event of an attack by the British or French.6 No such assault was ever contemplated or planned by London or Paris.
Once again, Hitler found himself in the front lines following his close calls during the Polish Campaign. The danger came not from paratroopers but from British and French aircraft. An air raid warning system had already been installed in the region before the war, and Allied aircraft often overflew the Felsennest on their way to attack other targets in Germany. On 25 May the HQ flak battery engaged an enemy aircraft overhead and the next night several batteries fired on aircraft in the vicinity. One plane was hit and bombs were dropped close to Hitler’s HQ. Just after midnight on 27 May the batteries shot down a British bomber. On the night of 10/11 August British aircraft dropped leaflets over the Felsennest – RSD men at first light hastily cleaned these up before Hitler saw them. The next night incendiary bombs fell on a nearby airfield. Overflights, flak and occasional bombings continued right through August and September 1940. Hitler remained unconcerned and stated that he wished to move his headquarters further west behind his rapidly advancing armies.7
The FBB sent a detail forward to try and locate a suitable location while Fritz Todt was sent to the Maginot Line east of Avesnes to inspect recently captured bunker systems. These were judged to be unsuitable for Hitler’s use. FBB commander Oberstleutnant Thomas and Dr Todt settled on a location at Bruly-de-Pesche, 25km northwest of Charleville, Belgium. Three large huts were swiftly built – one for Hitler, one dining hall and one for a section of the OKW high command staff. The site was codenamed ‘Waldwiese’ (Forest Meadow). The local village’s inhabitants were forcefully relocated and the FBB protection unit, most of Hitler’s staff, adjutants and bodyguards moved into the vacated buildings. Hitler arrived on 6 June 1940 and the HQ was immediately renamed ‘Wolfsschlucht I’ (Wolf’s Gorge I). Hitler routinely used the name ‘Wolf’ for his military headquarters, and, indeed, during the so-called ‘years of struggle’ he had called himself by this name. His own Christian name Adolf was a variation of the Old German name ‘Wolf’. He also saw himself as a lone wolf – a rather childish fantasy in the eyes of many of his enemies. Even one of his sisters took the surname ‘Wolf’ in an attempt to live incognito during and after the war.
Wolfsschlucht I was once again a painfully simple collection of wooden huts and damp bunkers. The name would be used again in 1943–44 when Organisation Todt workers built a Führer Headquarters complex near Margival, France. Wolfsschlucht II was on a grander scale than the first attempt and incorporated a huge tunnel for Hitler’s train that could be sealed with bombproof blast doors. But Hitler only used his new HQ for one day, 17 June 1944, during the Battle for Normandy.8
In 1940 Führer HQ was moved from Wolfsschlucht I to Installation ‘T’ (Tannenberg) located in a dark spruce forest on Kniebis Mountain near Freudenstadt in Germany’s Black Forest. Hitler arrived there by plane on 28 June. The site was difficult to protect as the thick forest impeded patrols by FBB, RSD and SS-Begleitkommando.9 The HQ consisted of a few damp bunkers and air raid shelters and was in many regards a prototype for the later Wolf’s Lair, also located deep in a thick dark fir forest. Hitler didn’t spend much time at Tannenberg, visiting Strasbourg and some First World War battlefields.10 On 5 July Hitler returned to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the campaign on the Western Front virtually completed. Headquarters moved to the Adlerhorst at Kransberg Castle to begin preparations for the invasion of Britain. They left Kransberg Castle on 25 November for Berlin after Operation Sealion was cancelled and Hitler’s interest turned to the Soviet Union. On 12 December 1940 Felsennest was turned over to local army command.
Hitler visited the west again between 12 and 25 April 1941 when the Führersonderzug was parked outside a tunnel south of Wiener Neustadt near Monichkirchen – this mobile headquarters was code-named ‘Frühlingssturm’ (Spring Storm). To protect Hitler from possible air attack the train’s two locomotives were kept fully steamed up and ready, at a moment’s notice, to shunt the train into the long tunnel.11
Hitler returned to the Western Front in June 1944, shortly after the D-Day landings in Normandy. His headquarters for his short visit was Wolfsschlucht II near Margival in France. He flew to Metz aboard his personal Condor aircraft on 16 June and then travelled by motorcade through the early hours of 17 June to his conference with General-feldmarschalls Gerd von Rundstedt and Rommel, his two Western Front commanders. The Führer’s safety when airborne was assured by the g
rounding of all Luftwaffe aircraft along the route and an order that no German anti-aircraft batteries would be permitted to open fire. It should be noted that by this stage of the war Hitler was taking a considerable risk still travelling by air because the Allies had managed to achieve almost complete aerial superiority over Western Europe.
The meeting with von Rundstedt and Rommel was deeply acrimonious, Hitler blaming them for their failure to force the Allies back into the sea at Normandy. They first had lunch together. Hitler watched as his special vegetarian food was tasted for him before eating any himself. Two RSD officers stood behind Hitler’s chair, their faces hard and their eyes constantly scanning the Führer’s lunch companions. Rommel told Hitler that in his opinion the German Army would collapse in France, as well as in Italy, and Hitler should end the war as soon as possible. An air raid alert forced the group underground into Hitler’s personal air raid shelter. Hitler was due to visit Army Group B front headquarters at the Chateau of La Roche-Guyon on 19 June but Hitler had suddenly departed for Germany on the night of the 17th. The reason for this was the impact of a brand new V1 flying bomb on the headquarters at Margival that night. V1 launches against London had begun on 12 June and by the 15th over 500 of these primitive cruise missiles were being launched daily. One malfunctioned and landed on Führer Headquarters, frightening Hitler enough that he decided to return to Germany and from there take his personal train back to his Eastern Front headquarters at the Wolf’s Lair.
Hitler came West once again on 11 December 1944. His personal train arrived at Giessen Station in Hesse where a fleet of armoured Mercedes took him and his party to the Adlerhorst, the command complex that had been built several years before adjacent to Kransberg Castle. Although Hitler had previously refused to use the complex, complaining that it was too luxuriously appointed, by December 1944 he required a large headquarters base with excellent communications and a co-located army high command facility for the forthcoming Ardennes Offensive. His other Western Front headquarters were none of these things. The Eagle’s Eyrie was the only Führer Headquarters in the West that met these criteria and so preparations had been made for Hitler’s arrival.12
The Adlerhorst consisted of seven large ‘cottages’ set in a heavily wooded compound beyond Kransberg Castle’s main entrance. In reality, each cottage was in fact a large two-storey concrete bunker that was disguised to look like a typical ‘Fachwerk’ or half-timbered wooden cottage. Although constructed of concrete with walls 3 feet thick, the second storey included fake dormer windows with flower baskets under a sloped tiled roof. The interiors of the bunkers were kept simple, as befitting Hitler’s personal taste. They were furnished in traditional German style, with oak floors, pine wall panelling, functional brown leather furniture, wall lamps, wall hangings depicting hunting scenes or Teutonic battles, and deer antlers.13
Haus I was the Führer’s personal bunker. The decoration and furnishings were not embellished in any way. Haus II was also known as the “Casino”, a German military term for an officers’ mess. It consisted of a lounge and a café on the ground floor with bedrooms on the first floor. An entrance to the bunker below gave access to a secure situation room and communications centre outfitted with radio transmitters and Enigma coding machines. The Casino was connected to the Führerbunker by a short covered walkway so that Hitler could stay out of the elements.14
Haus III was occupied by a section of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German High Command – OKW) and was the residence of the commanding general. At various times this building housed Generalfeldmarschalls Gerd von Rundstedt, Albert Kesselring and Wilhelm Keitel as well as Reichsmarschall Göring and Generaloberst Alfred Jodl.
Haus IV was known as the ‘Generals’ House’ and was used by second echelon general staff, for example Hasso von Manteuffel, Ferdinand Schörner and Heinz Guderian.
Haus V was occupied by a section of Dr Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry while Reich Ministers and very senior Nazi officials including Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg and Robert Ley used Haus VI. The final cottage, Haus VII, was known as the ‘Wachhaus’ and was the largest of the seven. It housed Hitler’s adjutants, bodyguards, personal secretaries and housekeeping staff. This building was connected to Kransberg Castle, as we have seen already previously converted into a secure army headquarters complex, by an 800-metre long tunnel.
The largest building in the Adlerhorst complex was called the Kraftfahrzeughalle (Motor vehicle hall) and this was located in the village below Kransberg Castle. It housed the armoured Mercedes limousines used by Hitler and his henchmen as well as fire engines, buses and ambulances. There was also Fachwerk-style accommodation for the families of personnel working at the Adlerhorst.
The entire site was carefully guarded, with disguised concrete guard bunkers covering all approaches and a network of anti-aircraft batteries sited around the surrounding hills. Above the Castle, located to the north in the hills, was a disguised Wehrmacht depot that housed additional army units for the defence of the Adlerhorst.
Hitler would use the Eagle’s Eyrie between December 1944 and January 1945 during the Ardennes Offensive, his last gamble in the West. The Adlerhorst became Hitler’s last field HQ after the abandonment of the Wolf’s Lair to the advancing Soviets. The Commander-in-Chief West, Gerd von Rundstedt, moved into Kransberg Castle in October 1944 in preparation for the coming offensive, but when Hitler arrived by train at the Adlerhorst on 11 December, von Rundstedt and his headquarters moved forward to near Limburg in Belgium.
On the morning of 15 December Hitler hosted a planning conference to discuss the Ardennes operation attended by von Rundstedt, Keitel, Jodl and Gunther Blumentritt and the ground commanders including von Manteuffel and Sepp Dietrich. Many of these top commanders didn’t even know of the existence of the Adlerhorst and before they had arrived they had been driven in an SS bus on a long and circuitous route through the mountains to deliberately confuse them about the headquarters location.15
After Christmas 1944 Hermann Göring arrived and took up residence inside the Castle. It was at a briefing inside Haus II that the Reichsmarschall destroyed his relationship with Hitler after he suggested, in light of the evident failure of the Ardennes offensive, that Hitler seek a truce with the Allies through neutral Swedish contacts. Hitler flew into a rage and threatened to have Göring placed before a court martial and shot.
On New Year’s Eve, 31 December 1944, Hitler made a rare radio broadcast to the German people before going to Haus I to welcome in 1945 with his close intimates including Bormann, Dr Dietrich and two of his secretaries, Traudl Junge and Christina Wolf. Two inches of snow had fallen, giving the Castle and the surrounding pine forest a pretty and festive aspect. Hitler’s Austrian dietician, Constanze Manziarly, had laid out a buffet and there were chilled bottles of Mosel-Sekt.
Whilst Hitler was preoccupied with the Ardennes Offensive, Generaloberst Heinz Guderian, Chief of the General Staff of the Army, had visited the Adlerhorst on several occasions trying in vain to warn Hitler of the growing Soviet threat on the Vistula River south of Warsaw. Intelligence summaries suggested that in the predicted main assault areas the Red Army would outnumber the Germans by 11-to-1 in men, 7-to-1 in tanks and 20-to-1 in guns. Hitler rubbished the intelligence and refused to transfer divisions east.
At 4.00am on 1 January 1945 Hitler attended a conference in Haus II to discuss his counter-offensive in the West, Operation North Wind. Launched at midnight, the counter-offensive ran out of steam by 25 January 1945 when it became clear that Germany had lost the battle and in the process used up its last remaining reserves of manpower and equipment. Also on 1 January Guderian attended another meeting with Hitler where he continued to plead for the transfer of forces east before it was too late. Hitler only permitted the transfer of four divisions, and promptly ordered them to Hungary instead of the threatened sectors of the front.16
On 9 January Guderian was back at the Adlerhorst, pestering Hitler again about the Eastern Front. At this time Hit
ler’s great offensive in the west was faltering, and Hitler flew into a rage, refusing to transfer divisions or even to consider permitting exposed German formations to pull back to more defensible positions. It was at this point that Guderian made his famous remark: ‘The Eastern Front is like a house of cards. If the front is broken through at one point, all the rest will collapse.’17
On 15 January, with the western campaign virtually ended and with increasing signs of an imminent Soviet assault across the Vistula, Hitler left the Adlerhorst for the last time. As he was leaving aboard his train, one wit among his staff pointed out that ‘Berlin was preferential as a headquarters; it would soon be possible to travel from there both to the eastern and western front by suburban railway.’18 Apparently Hitler actually laughed. He had probably been encouraged to move out of the Adlerhorst not only by the obvious failure of his offensive in the West and by the imminent Soviet onslaught from the East, but also by another close call with death. On 6 January an RAF Lancaster bomber, possibly in trouble, jettisoned a huge Blockbuster Bomb over Ziegenburg, the town that lay at the foot of Kransberg Castle. The late-war Blockbuster, known to the RAF as the ‘Cookie’, was the largest conventional bomb used by any of the Allied air forces. It was packed with 12,000-lbs of Amatol high explosive and designed to level entire city blocks with one strike. One bomber crew recorded that when they dropped one into the centre of Koblenz the tremendous explosion damaged their Lancaster flying at 1,800 metres. The explosion at Ziegenburg, which was not densely populated or built-up, killed four civilians, wrecked the local church and caused extensive damage to surrounding houses. If the bomb had landed on the Führerbunker Hitler could conceivably have been killed.
Chapter 5
The Führer’s Squadron
‘But for the war, I might have spent the rest of my life in an office.’