»Wolf's Lair« – Former Führer Headquarters

»Wilczy Szaniec« – Ruiny byłej kwatery Hitlera

Two memorial plaques and an information board on the premises of the former »Wolf's Lair« Führer Headquarters in Kętrzyn in Masuria commemorate Graf von Stauffenberg's failed plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, and honour the »resistance to National Socialism«.

History

The »Wolf's Lair« complex was built for the planned invasion of the Soviet Union; construction was begun in autumn 1940. Bunkers and barracks for 2,000 people were built in the woods near the East Prussian town of Rastenburg. Between Hitler's first arrival at the site on June 24 until November 20, 1944 – with only a few interruptions – the Führer Headquarters was the centre of power of the Third Reich and high command of the military, especially while the war of extermination was perpetrated in the east. The Army High Command and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and others also had headquarters with bunkers in the vicinity. The defeat of the German troops in Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943 was a turning point for the Wehrmacht: German units were now on the retreat from the Red Army. Resistance to the National Socialist regime was forming, also within the ranks of the military and among the aristocracy. 37-year old Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg became the leading figure in a plot to overthrow the regime. Together with other opponents of Hitler, he developed a plan called »Operation Valkyrie«. The main aim was to assassinate Hitler. Stauffenberg had access to the innermost circles of power due to his rank as chief of staff of the reserve army. On July 20, 1944, he carried out the assassination attempt at the »Wolf's Lair« with an explosive charge. Unaware that the attempt had failed, Stauffenberg tried to overthrow the government, yet on the following night his plans were put to an end. A group of officers faithful to the regime arrested the conspirators in Berlin and shot Stauffenberg as well as three others.
In 1945, the southern part of East Prussia, including the partly bombed bunkers of the »Wolf's Lair«, became part of Poland. It took until 1955 for soldiers to clear 55,000 mines and 200,000 pieces of ammunition from the premises. A few years later, the district administration opened the area to tourists. The site has attracted a growing number of visitors since the transformation of 1989/90, and there is now a campsite, several kiosks and a hotel to cater to them.

Rastenburg, 1944, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer, Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Keitel on July 15, 1944, Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1984-079-02

Kętrzyn, 2008, Memorial at the site of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt, Hans Weingartz

Victims

The July 20 plot, organised by Stauffenberg in the »Wolf's Lair« Führer Headquarters, and »Operation Valkyrie« are considered the highest-ranking and most extensive coup attempt of the military resistance against Adolf Hitler's National Socialist regime. About 200 conspirators were executed or pressured into committing suicide.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

It took decades before the courage of those who participated in the July 20 plot was acknowledged in the post-war German states. Today, the date marks an official »remembrance day to the resistance against the National Socialist dictatorship«. Outside of Germany, too, the events are now evaluated in a more balanced manner. Poland, the state with the highest number of victims during the Second World War, was at first reluctant to deal with the heritage of this historic site. In 1992, Stauffenberg's three sons took part in the unveiling of a memorial plaque, which reads in Polish and in German: »Here stood the barrack in which Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg carried out an attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944. He and many others who stood up to the National Socialist dictatorship paid with their lives.« Already in November 1989, German chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Polish counterpart Tadeusz Mazowiecki decided on commemorating the attempted coup in the »Wolf's Lair«, yet it took over two and half years of negotiations before they could settle on the wording of the inscription. In 1994, on the 50th anniversary of July 20, 1944, German president of the Bundestag Rita Süssmuth and president of the Polish Sejm Józef Oleksy laid down wreaths at the site. In the 2000s, a further bronze plaque was dedicated. The bilingual dedication reads: »In memory of the resistance to National Socialism«. The information board, which is located close to the two memorial plaques, only deals with the history of the failed July 20 plot; the history of the »Wolf's Lair« as a historical site of the perpetrators and a centre of power of the National Socialist dictatorship in Europe are not addressed.

Rastenburg, 1944, Interior of the destroyed »conference barrack« following the assassination attempt, Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-025-12

Kętrzyn, 2010, Information board on the July 20 plot, Stiftung Denkmal

Possibilities

Guided tours

Open

The premises are accessible from 8 a.m. until sundown

Contact

https://wolfsschanze.pl/

kontakt@wolfsschanze.pl

+48 (0)89 752 4429

Gierłoż 5
11-400 Kętrzyn

Kętrzyn, 2010, »In memory of the resistance to National Socialism«, Stiftung Denkmal

Kętrzyn, 2010, Remains of the crew bunker in security zone 3, Stiftung Denkmal

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