This is the special and wonderful property of architecture: when the work has been done, a monument remains. That endures; it is something different from a pair of boots, which can also be made, but which the wearer wears out in a year or two and then throws away. This remains, and through the centuries will bear witness to all those who helped to create it.
Adolf Hitler, following the construction of the Reich Chancellery in January 1939.
I held this ardent belief when I embarked on this study of Hitler’s largest wartime headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. Throughout my years of research I saw myself not as an architect concerned with building towering structures, but an historian eager to construct in words a lasting monument to Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters.
The Wolf’s Lair (Wolfschanze) was the most important German command post built during the Second World War, and the orders that were sent from these secret headquarters inevitably changed the course of the War. Still to this day, many people persistently cloak these headquarters in an atmosphere of gloom to reinforce the image of the frightening Führer who lived there. However, it is my opinion that the legacy left by Hitler at his headquarters is self-evident and requires no exaggerated portrayal. In order to remedy this unnecessary obfuscation I decided to burrow deep and describe events from behind the barbed-wire entanglements of the Wolf’s Lair and analyse each unfolding episode through the eyes of Hitler and his staff.
In writing this study of one of the most interesting military headquarters of the twentieth century, I found the results of my research astonishing, for there was no single comprehensive document which I could consult. I therefore approached the research as a giant puzzle. In order to piece it together I sought not only the printed text of military books, unpublished records, documents, archives, and the advice of military experts in the field, but I dug deep into the contemporary writings of his closest personal staff, seeking to disentangle the truth through letters written by wives, friends, adjutants, private secretaries, physicians, and of course his military staff. I waded through many hundreds of pages of microfilm, scrutinizing information on those that lived and worked at the headquarters. I even went further by advertising in the Gazeta – a Polish national newspaper – appealing for persons that had worked constructing the headquarters site, and at the same time, in Germany, advertised in the paper, Der Freiwillige.
I am aware that some readers may find such a study far from complete, or may even take it as granting a kind of undue recognition to a number of people described in it. But we must know about the motives of those that were present when the momentous decisions were taken if we are to understand those decisions.
The purpose of this volume is to examine life within the Führerhauptquartiere (Führer’s headquarters), where, from behind closed doors inside the wooden hutments and the claustrophobic atmosphere of bunkers, Hitler planned and gossiped with his associates. He was regularly seen taking strolls around the perimeter of what was known as his ‘inner sanctum’, Security Zone I, even stopping to chat familiarly with the Organization Todt workmen that were labouring night and day, building and re-strengthening the many dozens of bunkers and buildings that made up the Wolf’s Lair. As setbacks rapidly turned into catastrophe, Hitler surrounded himself not with his intimate circle of friends, but what he considered were illiterate soldiers. Conversation became confined to the barracks and mess.
Consequently, the pages of this text investigate the manner in which Hitler’s contempt for his war staff grew. It describes how, during the onset of the traumatic German military reverses in Russia, Hitler stood unbowed in the face of the enemy, and how he tried to infuse determination into his generals and friends, despite his rapid deterioration in health.