Inside the Wolf’s Lair, the hidden forest headquarters where Hitler directed the war

Masuria, Poland (CNN) — The narrow road through the Masurian countryside winds alongside shimmering lakes and mossy swamps. It passes through sleepy villages filled with steep-roofed houses that, even on a warm summer’s day, look ready for deepest winter.

This region of northeastern Poland is known for outdoor recreation. It’s a destination for hiking, horseback riding and other pursuits that thrive in clean air and boundless countryside. A peaceful escape.

Suddenly, the road dives into a thick forest. Birds chirp high in the branches of deciduous trees. The scene is bucolic, but the setting is deceptive.

An abandoned railway track appears first. Then, ruins begin to emerge from the foliage.

These peaceful country roads have led to somewhere dark: The Wolf’s Lair — a vast, secluded complex where Nazi leader Adolf Hitler planned major military campaigns of World War II, and where an assassination plot nearly altered the course of the war.

Choosing the forests and marshes of Masuria to establish a headquarters was a strategic calculation for the Nazis. Having invaded Poland at the outset of World War II in September 1939, Germany now claimed this region — part of East Prussia — as its own.

As he embarked on his aggressive strategy to push farther east with an invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler needed a nerve center close to the border with the USSR. Operation Barbarossa, one of the largest military invasions in history, would begin in summer 1941.

The area east of the small town of Kętrzyn, then known as Rastenburg, worked well. A railway line built decades earlier facilitated the construction, and the forest provided natural protection. More importantly, it was just 50 miles, or 80 kilometers, away from the Soviet border.

Charged with the momentum of the early days of conflict, the Nazis worked fast. The German Third Reich’s main military engineering contractor, Organisation Todt, deployed teams to the forests, aided by forced labor from prisoners of war — mainly from Poland and France.

In June 1941, with the planned invasion just days away, the Wolf’s Lair was completed, and Hitler moved in.

A forest fortress

The Wolf’s Lair was never intended to be just a military base — it was a well-developed stronghold that was also designed as a comfortable place to live for the German war machine’s senior figures. A forested retreat.

And it wasn’t only meant for Hitler. Once it was up and running, Nazi top brass, including Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Keitel, moved in to live alongside the dictator.

“The Wolf’s Lair became an unofficial capital of the Third Reich,” says Grzegorz Opala, a history enthusiast who now guides visitors around what remains of the facility.

The scale matched Hitler’s ambitions. In total, 50 bunkers and 70 barracks were constructed. The bunker walls were made of concrete, about 20 feet, or six meters, thick. The complex spanned almost one square mile and included two airfields and a railway station. Extravagant additions included a tea house, a casino and a cinema.

An elaborate system of natural camouflage — masking nets, trees and moss-covered bunker facades — protected the Wolf’s Lair from air raids. More than 50,000 landmines encircled the complex.

Its history as Hitler’s HQ ended on January 24, 1945, when the Germans detonated the bunkers while retreating from the advancing Red Army. Ironically, many structures survived the blast, proving the quality of construction.

Like many Nazi remnants on Polish territory, the Wolf’s Lair was left to rot. After the fall of communism, it was developed into a tourist site. In 2017, the Polish government took control and carried out major renovation work to preserve it as a place of historical significance.

Today, the Wolf’s Lair attracts around 300,000 visitors yearly.

Eerie open-air museum

Even with sunshine dappling through the greenery, it is difficult to ignore the scale of the crimes planned and directed from the Wolf’s Lair. Pivotal events in world history were decided within its concrete walls — not just Operation Barbarossa, but many other major World War II military operations. Decisions central to the Holocaust were discussed and coordinated here.

That feeling of unease lurks along the paved tourist trail as it wends through the cement skeletons of barracks and overgrown bunkers. It lingers in the dark corridors, the cracks in the walls, the reflections on the stagnant water in the abandoned fire pond.

Nature has taken its course at the Wolf’s Lair. There are stalactites hanging from the ceiling in the windowless SS command post. A family of trees grows straight from the stone inside Martin Bormann’s air shelter ruin. Moss covers the gargantuan Hitler bunker, an overgrown ruin reclaimed by the forest.

Without knowing the macabre history, it’s easy to imagine these bleak structures as the remnants of some ancient civilization.

Today, entry to most of the bunkers is off-limits to visitors as they’re no longer structurally safe. But there are some where limited access to the gloomy corridors is still permitted. These include Bormann’s air raid shelter and bunker, which houses a small cave-like exhibition. It’s also topped by an observation platform that offers a view of the ruins from above.

Daily routines of a dictator

Hitler spent a total of about 800 days in the Wolf’s Lair, and a visit here offers insight into the banal routines that punctuated the Führer’s life, even as war and mass murder unfolded across Europe.

“When Hitler came to the Wolf’s Lair, he was very ill, suffering from insomnia, rheumatism and gastric problems,” says Opala, the tour guide.

The dictator’s days here began with breakfast. Then, he reviewed the German press to read reports about the air raids on German cities.

“After the press review, Hitler would spend one hour with his dog, Blondi, a German shepherd,” Opala recounts. The vision of the war criminal responsible for the deaths of millions of people walking his dog in this forest is a haunting one.

The Wolf’s Lair was also a meeting ground for officials from the Axis powers, including Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

“Mussolini was at the complex three times. Many marshals from Hungary, from Bulgaria came to visit the Führer here,” continues Opala. “Hitler would invite guests to the tea house when the situation on the Eastern Front was good.”

The dictator’s day usually ended with a late call to his longtime companion Eva Braun — the woman who would share his fate when he died by suicide in another bunker, the Führerbunker in Berlin, on April 30, 1945.

Operation Valkyrie

Most visitors to the Wolf’s Lair linger at object number 3. Today, it’s only a collection of stones, but it was once the site of the main conference room. It was here that Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb secreted in a briefcase.

The assassination attempt targeting Hitler and his inner circle was organized by a group of high-ranking Nazi officers who were alarmed by the German army’s mounting failures on the front and frustrated by their leader’s tyranny.

“Operation Valkyrie” was carried out on July 20, 1944, when von Stauffenberg entered the complex with the briefcase bomb to attend a military conference with Hitler and 20 officers. He placed the explosives under the table and left the room, under the pretense of making a phone call.

The bomb went off at 12.42 p.m., killing three people but leaving Hitler only slightly injured. The coup’s aftermath saw more than 5,000 people executed, including von Stauffenberg. It also deepened Hitler’s paranoia and changed how the meetings in the Wolf’s Lair were held.

“After the assassination attempt, all officers sat on the chairs, and behind them were people from the SS with machine guns,” says Opala.

Of more than 40 failed attempts to kill the dictator, the Wolf’s Lair plot came the closest to succeeding. It was depicted in a 2008 film, “Operation Valkyrie,” with Tom Cruise playing von Stauffenberg.

Dark tourism

While it is essentially a semi-destroyed ruin from World War II, the Wolf’s Lair has today been extensively developed to transform it into a fully fledged tourist attraction. There are well-marked pathways, and each building has a number and an information board alongside. It’s possible to rent a handy audioguide or hire a tour guide for a more immersive experience.

At the end of 2024, a hotel and restaurant were added to the complex as part of the large-scale modernization effort. Eating pierogi (traditional Polish filled dumplings) and spending a night next to such an eerie collection of abandoned Nazi bunkers is an unusual spin on the concept of dark tourism.

It’s not without controversy either. As far-right groups surge in Europe, concerns about the tourist development of the grim Nazi site have been voiced by historians.

But for most visitors, Hitler’s former HQ is a place of reflection and memory. It provides a rare insight into the inner workings of the devastating Nazi war machine and the personal life of its main ideologist.

Beyond the site, the surrounding countryside offers a welcome contrast. Here, the thousands of lakes that define the Warmia and Masuria region can be found, sparkling in the sunlight.

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