The Reich Underground


During World War Two, the Third Reich launched a massive engineering project in an effort to protect its armaments industry, government officials and material assets. The project was one of the most extensive and ambitious in history and raises many disturbing questions as to the consequences it could have had if the war had ended just a few months later.


The Nazi vision was a labyrinth of concrete bombproof tunnels and factories all over Germany, France and Poland. By 1944, 20% of Germany's armaments were being produced in factories deep underground and additional sites were still under construction right up until the last few days of the war.


There were plans to move vital control centres underground, such as the Luftwaffe headquarters being built in Austria. As the Allies made their way through Nazi-occupied Europe, they discovered miles of underground tunnels and bunkers. In some places tools and equipment were found, as if the workforce had just left for a break - labourers worked round-the-clock on the Fuhrer's subterranean cities.
 
Cities Underground
 
Deep below Berlin, the Third Reich constructed seven enormous underground tunnel systems, spacious enough to accommodate motor vehicles. These connected a series of vast concrete bunkers housing armaments plants and bomb shelters. These shelters weren't built for humanitarian reasons - the Nazis knew they needed to protect their factory workforce to keep production going during the war.


They also planned to protect party officials by constructing shelters and command points in strategic areas. In 1944, work began on a secret subterranean shelter for Hitler and his officers beneath Furstenstein Castle, near Valdenburg. Entrances lead from hidden locations in the castle to bunkers covering 3,200 square metres of floor space deep inside the mountain.


At German eastern military headquarters - the Wolf's Lair, in East Prussia - an extensive system of concrete bunkers was being built to protect the Fuhrer and his generals. At the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler's mountain retreat in Obersalzburg, a maze of tunnels and bunkers were equipped with all the comforts of home, supplies, communication rooms and machine gun posts. Hitler and his officers could have survived deep within the mountain for weeks.