For educational purposes
A secret headquarters of concrete and steel is the heart of Hitler’s plans for domination and the key to a Nazi conspiracy - the Wolf’s Lair.
A secret headquarters of concrete and steel is the heart of Hitler’s plans for domination and the key to a Nazi conspiracy - the Wolf’s Lair.
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00:00The military heart of the Nazi war machine.
00:07This bunker was Hitler's nerve center.
00:10A city of concrete and steel, designed to command millions of soldiers.
00:18To control a vast empire, and direct a world war.
00:25Germany as a military machine is now completely and utterly unstoppable.
00:29A base engineered to hide the leaders of the Third Reich.
00:34Within this massive megastructure is just one big nest of Nazis.
00:40And built on a scale to match Hitler's lust for power.
00:44Staggered, absolutely staggered.
00:46This is the story of the Third Reich's center of power, and Hitler's most secret headquarters.
00:53The Wolf's Lair.
01:02The biggest construction projects of World War II.
01:05Ordered by Hitler to secure world domination.
01:10Now they survive as dark reminders of the Führer's fanatical military ambition.
01:15These are the secrets of the Nazi megastructures.
01:24The 20th of July, 1944.
01:31Hitler isolates himself in his two and a half square mile bunker complex.
01:37While his German armies are in retreat.
01:41As his grip on Europe weakens, he withdraws further into his concrete base.
01:46His paranoia grows.
01:51And a group of German rebels plot to turn the bunkers of the Wolf's Lair against him.
02:06Battlefield archaeologist Dr. Tony Pollard is exploring the incredible ruins of Hitler's
02:11top secret headquarters.
02:14This is a massive bunker.
02:16It's looming out of the forest like some sort of Mayan temple.
02:21The complex grew continuously between 1940 and 1944.
02:27This place is expanded.
02:29It's modified.
02:30It's further fortified.
02:33And Hitler was absolutely paranoid about being attacked here, especially from the air.
02:39And we get several phases of extension where more concrete is poured.
02:44The walls are made thicker, the roofs are made thicker, and we're seeing evidence for
02:48that here.
02:52This maze of concrete was the Fuhrer's home.
02:55It's weird to think that Hitler slept here.
02:59And engineered to an astonishing scale.
03:03It has to be totally self-sufficient.
03:06They're essentially building a city in a swamp.
03:16The roots of these headquarters lie in the very first days of the war.
03:21On the 1st of September 1939, Hitler's armies race across the Polish border.
03:29World War II has begun.
03:32The Germans are coming up against a nation which is not militarily strong.
03:37What is projected out are images of Stukas diving on Warsaw, of columns of half-tracks
03:44and armoured cars and tanks.
03:49This early success convinces Hitler of his own military genius.
03:55He begins to ignore the advice of his army generals.
04:00Professor Stephen Remy is an expert on Nazi Germany.
04:03Hitler doesn't trust his military generals.
04:06He's afraid that their loyalty lies with the old German state that he and the Nazis have
04:11overthrown.
04:12Senior German soldiers are traditionally upper-class aristocrats.
04:20And many despise the Fuhrer.
04:22One of the reasons why a lot of the senior officers don't like Hitler is because they
04:25know that in the First World War he never rose beyond corporal, that he's essentially
04:30working class.
04:31And it's nothing short of pure snobbery.
04:35Hitler is becoming paranoid.
04:37He believes the only way to keep control of his generals is to lead from the front.
04:43He leaves the safety of Berlin for the war zone in Poland on his specially designed train.
04:50His train is to a certain extent the nerve centre of the war effort because he's the
04:54Fuhrer, he's the commander and everyone has to come to him.
04:58Two streamlined locomotives pull a convoy of 15 carriages.
05:04Anti-aircraft flak wagons top and tail the train.
05:08At its heart is Hitler's private carriage, followed by the command unit for war conferences.
05:18Hitler is determined to direct the war personally.
05:22Hitler doesn't care how inconvenient it is for everybody else that he wants to be on
05:25this train.
05:27People have to leave the battlefront, traipse across country either by plane or by car just
05:32so that they can be harangued by him.
05:41Poland is conquered by the 6th of October 1939.
05:46It's a stunning victory.
05:48Hitler's next target is France and then Britain.
05:55The Allies' sophisticated planes and bombs make his train vulnerable.
06:05Hitler still wants to be close to the front lines so he demands a new kind of HQ.
06:13He orders a base near the Belgian border codenamed Rocky Nest or Felsenest in German.
06:21All that remains today are photographs and rubble.
06:26Patrick Berry, a former British army officer and expert on fortifications, uncovers the
06:31hidden ruins of Hitler's first bunkers.
06:39This is the Felsenest.
06:40It is completely overgrown, unmarked and been ignored for the last 70 years.
06:47But beneath the trees are the ruins of Hitler's very first fixed wartime headquarters.
06:56The Führer is protected by two rings of high security, swarming with checkpoints and soldiers.
07:04The inner ring is the heart of the site.
07:08Two bunkers with adjacent wooden huts are built for Hitler and his entourage.
07:15Hitler arrives at Felsenest on the 10th of May, 1940.
07:20He orders the attack on Western Europe during the journey.
07:24Early in the morning, the German invasion begins.
07:35This bunker was Hitler's nerve centre.
07:37It was from here that he commanded the invasion of Western Europe.
07:41The bunker was known as Building K, and it consisted of five small rooms named A to E.
07:49Room A is Hitler's office.
07:52His bedroom is just eight feet square.
07:55Hitler's staff occupy the remaining rooms.
07:58At one and a half metres thick of reinforced concrete and sunk into the ground to give
08:05it added protection, this is the rooftop of Hitler's bunker.
08:11Hitler is fearful of attack.
08:13He demands the bunkers be engineered to seal him against the outside world.
08:18You've got three pipes which would have provided the ventilation for the bunker, and obviously
08:22below ground you're going to need fresh air, but crucially you also need, in these bunkers,
08:27they have protection from gas, sealed doors and special filters to clear the air in the
08:31event of a gas attack.
08:33This relates directly to Hitler's own experiences in the First World War, when gas was a major
08:38killer and then the concrete to protect you was probably the best thing you could have
08:42if you were fighting from the trenches.
08:44So all in all, Hitler's stamp is all over this bunker.
08:57The bunker protects the Führer from the war, but at the same time isolates him from his
09:03generals.
09:04His total belief in his own genius grows.
09:08Hitler's command style means that he's reluctant to delegate authority to any of his generals.
09:13By entombing himself in this concrete bunker, Hitler is basically saying other opinions
09:20are not welcome.
09:24Hitler delivers many of his orders from a briefing hut nearby.
09:28This doesn't look like much, but in 1940 I would have just walked through the door into
09:33the bustling epicentre of the Third Reich's war machine.
09:41These old foundations are very historically significant, because inside these walls Hitler
09:46briefed his generals about what was going on in the invasion of France.
09:55Success follows success, as Hitler's military sweeps past his headquarters and across Western
10:01Europe.
10:03By the 6th of June, 1940, the advance has been so rapid that Felsenest is now far behind
10:08the front lines.
10:11Less than three weeks later, France surrenders.
10:16Hitler is triumphant.
10:21The French campaign is another astonishing military victory.
10:32In Hitler's opinion, his command style of leading from the front, from concrete headquarters,
10:37has been completely vindicated.
10:39The Felsenest has proved its worth.
10:45Hitler always sees himself as something of a military leader, but if he did in 1939,
10:49he doubly does so by June 1940, when France surrenders.
10:54It's hard to overemphasise the enormity of this success.
11:03Hitler has now doubled the size of his Nazi empire.
11:07His frontline officers are impressed by his military ability.
11:13One such officer is 32-year-old Catholic aristocrat and father of five, Klaus von Stauffenberg.
11:20Stauffenberg's background is decidedly aristocratic, and on one level you would have thought he
11:24would be suspicious of Hitler, but actually he buys into it, and really the reason why
11:27so many of the aristocratic military elite do kowtow to Hitler is because he's brought
11:34back pride in being German.
11:40Like many Germans, von Stauffenberg fully supports the war, and he is impressed by Hitler's
11:45apparent military skill.
11:47Soldiers like to win.
11:48The bombers will smoke them out of the forest.
11:51If we strike fast, we can cut this ruffle off.
11:55It seems to be quite incredible, and everyone thinks that Germany as a military machine
12:00is now completely and utterly unstoppable.
12:04What they also think is that Hitler is clearly a great war leader, and no one thinks that
12:08more than Hitler himself.
12:11July 1940.
12:13Hitler has conquered Western Europe from specialised command centres.
12:17His next headquarters will expand the concept on a huge scale.
12:24Hitler is convinced massive front-line command centres are vital to his success.
12:29Now he looks east, to Russia.
12:32In 1940, Germany has a peace treaty with Russia, but Hitler has been targeting it from the
12:39start.
12:40He believes that the conquest of Russia will bring Germany vast new territories.
12:45Hitler plans for an epic invasion.
12:47Losing four million soldiers along an 1800 mile front.
12:53The attack will be codenamed Barbarossa.
12:57Operation Barbarossa is a military operation unlike any that has been seen before.
13:01The scale of it is absolutely enormous.
13:05That requires one heck of a lot of coordination.
13:08So he wants a command headquarters as close as possible to the front whilst at the same
13:13time still being safe.
13:18For the impending attack, Hitler needs a base as far east as possible.
13:23He chooses a site near the city of Rustenburg, then in eastern Germany.
13:27Felsenest is the template.
13:30The concept is to bring all the branches of the armed forces around Hitler's headquarters.
13:36This will emphasise Hitler's pre-eminence as the centre of power, planning and control.
13:43The terrain around the base makes it difficult to attack.
13:50This site close to the Russian border was the location chosen for Hitler's eastern
13:55headquarters.
13:56It's a land dominated by forest and lakes, but it's also peppered with swamps.
14:03It would have been a nightmare for any army to attack.
14:10The swamps make building underground bunkers extremely difficult.
14:15In the autumn of 1940, Fritz Todt, the head of Nazi engineering group Organisation Todt,
14:21personally takes charge of the project.
14:24He decides that heavily reinforced structures above ground are the solution.
14:29The budget is 36 million Reichsmarks, an incredible 250 million dollars today.
14:36But it's vital that this work is carried out in secret, because if the Russians spot
14:41what's going on, it would be a disaster.
14:45Amazingly, the chosen site sits directly beneath the daily route of Russia's Moscow to Berlin
14:50airliner.
14:52The forest means it's never discovered.
14:58Work on the Wolf's Lair began in the winter of 1940.
15:01The project would require upwards of 50,000 laborers working in incredibly difficult conditions.
15:08Local people were told it was going to be a new chemical plant.
15:10What they didn't know was that the end result would be one of the Nazis most audacious megastructures.
15:19Soldiers protect German laborers to maintain security for the top secret project.
15:25While construction is underway, Hitler continues to use his train, but he's paranoid about
15:30being attacked from the air.
15:31At the same time that this new Führer HQ bunker complex is being built, he also insists
15:37on building a series of tunnels in which his train can hide and where he can be safe, so
15:43that he can be even closer to the front.
15:46One shelter in the occupied Polish town of Szczepina still remains.
15:51It's capable of withstanding any assault, as tunnel expert Maciej Pienkosz explains.
15:59The train here in Szczepina could hide from any danger, from air raid, shelling or a chemical
16:04attack, as the interior of this shelter is closed off.
16:11In the summer of 1940, nearly 6,000 Polish slave laborers begin construction on the 1,300-foot-long tunnel.
16:22Above us we have three-meter-thick walls made up of reinforced concrete.
16:27The inside of this wall is filled with tons of armored steel, which makes them able to
16:32withstand strikes and explosions of even a half-ton bomb.
16:38Despite taking a year to complete, the massive tunnel is only used by Hitler once during
16:42the entire war, for a meeting with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
16:51By summer 1941, preparations are complete for Hitler's masterstroke, the invasion of Russia.
17:01And the ultimate Führer HQ is ready for occupation.
17:14On the 22nd of June, 1941, Germany invades Russia.
17:24Two days later, Hitler arrives at his newest headquarters.
17:30His military codename is Wolf, so he names it the Wolf's Lair.
17:41The Wolf's Lair represents a massive upscale from the Felsen Nest, probably eight times the size.
17:48You can see natural defenses, trees, swamps, marshes, lakes, and the man-made structures.
17:57What you have are three layers of defense.
18:04An airstrip and rail lines are built for the Führer's personal plane and train.
18:10The entire two-and-a-half-square-mile site is surrounded by 54,000 mines.
18:18Expanding on the Felsen Nest prototype, the base has three concentric rings of security
18:24surrounding Hitler's command center.
18:32Hundreds of troops from Hitler's personal bodyguard patrol the forest, day and night.
18:38Look at this.
18:41It's just a scoop in the ground today, but this is a foxhole, dug by soldiers probably
18:46to accommodate a two-man machine gun unit.
18:49And I can see, stretching out in front of me, here's another one, about three meters
18:54away, exactly the same thing.
18:57And again, over here, these would obviously have been deeper during the war, but you can
19:02still see them.
19:08Russia collapses in the first weeks of the invasion.
19:10The front line moves far away from the Wolf's Lair.
19:16Hitler feels secure in his new base, and so confident of victory that he chooses not to
19:21advance with the troops.
19:23It's a critical error.
19:26His distance from the front and his generals leaves him disconnected, and begins to affect
19:31his decisions.
19:34In September 1941, he orders his generals to stop their advance on Moscow and attack
19:39other Russian cities.
19:41The invasion grinds to a halt, with massive casualties.
19:46Hitler is becoming more and more mistrustful, and he increasingly dominates decision-making
19:50personally.
19:53Determined to wipe out the Russians, Hitler orders the killing of millions of civilians.
20:00Many German soldiers see the order as immoral and dishonorable.
20:05Thirty-four-year-old Klaus von Stauffenberg, a devout Catholic, is one of them.
20:12In May 1942, torn between his loyalty to Germany and his sense of honor, he decides that Hitler's
20:19megalomania is the greater evil.
20:23His resignation would mean death, so he chooses to plot in secret against the Fuhrer.
20:34By the summer, Hitler's armies begin to retreat, chased by huge numbers of Russian forces.
20:40The truth is, Hitler has just bitten off more than he can chew in the Soviet Union.
20:44Hitler's paranoia increases, and he isolates himself further by fortifying the Wolf's Lair.
20:51Fifteen hundred troops now patrol the area, and dozens of additional buildings are added
20:56across the site.
20:58Hitler is the head of the Nazi empire.
21:01None of his generals dare to question him.
21:05All operations revolve around him, but his behavior is increasingly eccentric.
21:11Hitler wakes late at 10 a.m.
21:14Conferences take place when he chooses, regardless of the military situation.
21:18He'd have a session just after lunch, maybe for a couple of hours, where he'd meet with
21:23his senior commanders and discuss the situation, and then perhaps an hour and a half or another
21:27two hours in the evening.
21:29But the rest of the time, he seemed to spend his time relaxing, or, shall we say, entertaining
21:34his company with these long oratories.
21:42In Stalingrad, German forces fight bloody battles in the city.
21:50At the Wolf's Lair, Hitler demands staff attend daily afternoon parties, but a specially built tearoom.
22:04Look, there doesn't appear to be much left of this, but that's the first time on this
22:13site that I've seen ceramic tiles.
22:17And this is the known location of one of these tearooms, and that would certainly be indicative
22:23of either a washroom or a kitchen area, the sort of thing you would associate with a tearoom.
22:30300,000 troops are going hungry in Stalingrad.
22:39But Hitler dismisses reports that interrupt his schedule, no matter the consequences.
22:49And it's really quite a thought to imagine just sat around, shooting the breeze, when
22:55outside of this bubble, all mayhem is breaking out.
23:04Desperate to stay close to the centre of power, the Nazi leadership rush to build their own
23:09bunkers around Hitler.
23:14Hitler's chiefs of staff were very keen to remain close to him.
23:18So Jodl, Keitel, Göring and co. all had their own bunkers here at the Wolf's Lair.
23:25And I like to imagine them having some kind of bunker envy.
23:31My bunker's bigger than your bunker.
23:33But what you have at the end of the day, within this massive megastructure, is just one big
23:41nest of Nazis.
23:44Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Göring constructs a 177,000-cubic-foot bunker.
23:50Inside, a 36-foot-high concrete shell is insulated by a layer of sand, designed to absorb an
23:57explosive blast.
24:00It has survived in remarkable condition.
24:03This is interesting.
24:04See, there's a double-skinned wall here on the side of the bunker, and that's to provide
24:12added protection for a bomb blast outside, so this gap will kind of dissipate the pressure
24:18wave.
24:22Almost 95% of this enormous structure is solid concrete, leaving a tiny living space inside.
24:39I'm on the roof of Göring's personal bunker, and it's cracked.
24:47It looks like a crashed spaceship or something.
24:53On top of the bunker are two anti-aircraft gun emplacements.
25:05There's a circular concrete platform on which the gun would have sat, you can see the holes
25:11for the bolts, the mounting bolts, and it's in a very heavy concrete turret with little
25:21cubby holes in the side which would have stored ready-to-use ammunition.
25:29A defensive position to protect against ground assault faces the forest.
25:34What we have here is a very simple form of fortification, very typically German.
25:41This is a Tobruk turret, and I'm very pleased to see it's still got its mount, because this
25:47would have had a machine gun mounted on this rail, and there would have been two men in
25:53here, one operating the gun, one feeding the belt of ammunition, and the gun would have
25:56turned 360 degrees on this iron ring.
26:02The giant bunkers are obvious even within the forest, so ingenious camouflage is used.
26:08What they would have done is take camouflage nets with artificial leaves on them, strung
26:14them out from these hoops, both across the roof and into the trees, making this structure
26:20blend into the natural vegetation.
26:26February 1943.
26:29Germany is defeated at Stalingrad.
26:32In July, Hitler hastily orders a counterattack from his bunker in the Wolf's Lair.
26:37It's crushed, and Germany is under threat like never before.
26:43Hitler is entirely responsible for the failure of Barbarossa.
26:46They weren't ready for it, they didn't have enough manpower, it was a step too far, it
26:50was entirely his idea, and it was a failure.
26:53For the first time, the Wolf is vulnerable in his lair.
27:02Hitler's isolation in his bunker complex has led to a series of terrible military decisions.
27:08Germany is under assault.
27:10The Fuhrer's paranoia is stoked by fear of air attacks.
27:14He orders a new mammoth bunker built for himself.
27:18By late 1943, Hitler's spending more and more time at the Wolf's Lair, to the point
27:24where it's the only part of Germany he's still familiar with.
27:27And it's at this time that he introduces a new phase of modifications to the site.
27:32And they include his own designs for his own personal shelter.
27:38Construction begins on a massive structure, 200 feet long and 120 feet wide.
27:4523 feet of concrete divided by a layer of sand will surround the Fuhrer on all sides.
27:52Inside Hitler's living space will be a tiny 9 by 11 feet.
28:08His staff are astonished by the scale of the building work.
28:13It's incredible what they achieved in such a short time.
28:29Hitler's personal bunker is the biggest building on the site.
28:33And looking at it, you can understand why contemporaries compared it to an Egyptian
28:39tomb.
28:40And especially if you take a peek inside, you can see how thick the walls are here.
28:46And I think it's probably a reflection of his state of mind.
28:51The war's starting to go badly for Germany, and he's becoming more and more isolated.
28:57And I think this is a kind of manifestation of that decline.
29:06Although its exact layout has never been fully verified, the bunker contains a warren of
29:37This is absolutely staggering.
29:42I've found a way into the back of Hitler's air raid bunker.
29:49And look at it.
29:50It's just concrete, but it looks almost geological.
29:55But the amazing thing is that that level down there is the accommodation level.
30:03You can see the fragments of a room there.
30:08But all of this above me, and it must go up eight meters or so.
30:15It's difficult to tell, but incredibly high above me is the top of the structure.
30:21And all of that is roof with this tiny living space beneath it.
30:31And I think what we might be looking at here, see you've got these girders dropping down
30:37from the roof.
30:38I think we might have a two-level roof with an open space, a gap between the two, supported
30:46by these girders.
30:48And that would provide some extra protection if a bomb comes through the top.
30:53It would dissipate the shockwave.
30:56This gives a very good idea of the way this thing was meant to operate.
31:02But staggered, absolutely staggered.
31:05This final stage of the Wolf's Lair uses material desperately needed elsewhere for the war effort,
31:12including enough concrete to build the Empire State Building three and a half times over.
31:18The massive fortifications only help Hitler's complete withdrawal from reality.
31:23I'm still picking my way through the remains of Hitler's bunker complex.
31:29And the scale of the thing is phenomenal.
31:32And he distrusts people so much that he draws up a list of those people who were permitted
31:40to come and have lunch with him.
31:42And the picture is one of increasing paranoia and isolation.
31:50That isolation from the war has led Hitler to make appalling military decisions.
31:55Von Stauffenberg has experienced the results personally, losing a hand and an eye in battle.
32:02He and a network of sympathisers are plotting Hitler's downfall.
32:07It's a choice between two evils, action or inaction.
32:13He's a soldier first and foremost.
32:15And he has a sense of honour.
32:17And what he sees in the Eastern Front, the atrocities, really, really shock him.
32:22You know, you don't go around mass murdering people.
32:24That's not part of the deal at all.
32:26And so he's even more determined than ever that Hitler has to be brought down.
32:32The war is being lost.
32:34And von Stauffenberg is convinced that Germany can only be saved if Hitler is killed.
32:42I sincerely believe God has assigned me this mission.
32:47I will devote myself to it entirely.
32:50We must gather information about military forces in the Berlin area.
32:55He wants a peace treaty with the Allies that leaves Germans in control of Germany,
32:59the country unoccupied and the Nazi party eradicated.
33:04Stauffenberg needs a plan to overthrow the Führer, but access to him is virtually impossible.
33:11Hitler is massively protected and it's extremely difficult to get a means of killing him anywhere close to him.
33:19As the wolf's lair grows, Germany shrinks in the face of the Russian advance.
33:29The 6th of June, 1944, D-Day.
33:33The Americans and British land in France.
33:36It's a decisive blow to Germany.
33:41But defeat is imminent.
33:44Von Stauffenberg must find a way to kill Hitler before Germany is crushed.
34:03Stauffenberg's problem is that Hitler keeps changing his travel plans at the last minute
34:08and has avoided numerous assassination attempts by doing so.
34:11So Stauffenberg needs to target him in a fixed location.
34:16Despite its immense security, von Stauffenberg decides that the wolf's lair is the only viable target.
34:23He plans to turn the isolated headquarters against the Führer.
34:28But there's another problem.
34:30Stauffenberg is excluded from Hitler's inner circle.
34:33Until the middle of July, when he gets an extraordinary break.
34:42Von Stauffenberg is promoted to a post that gives him permission to attend Hitler's conferences at the wolf's lair.
34:51Stauffenberg now has the access he needs.
34:55He decides to personally carry out the attack and detonate explosives at a meeting with Hitler.
35:01The plan hinges on using the wolf's lair's massive engineering against the Führer.
35:06If von Stauffenberg can detonate the bomb inside a concrete bunker, the explosion will kill everyone inside.
35:16On the 20th of July 1944, von Stauffenberg is ordered to a briefing at the wolf's lair.
35:25This is his chance.
35:31The bomb's 30-minute fuse has been armed.
36:01Colonel, please.
36:15Not the Führerbunker?
36:17It's too hot.
36:20Please.
36:22He's told that the meeting has been moved from a concrete bunker to a lightweight brick hut.
36:28A well-ventilated and thin-walled building could limit the bomb's destructive power.
36:33But it's too late to turn back now.
36:51He must improvise and find a way to get the bomb as close to Hitler as possible.
36:58Would you please place me close to the Führer?
37:00I have trouble hearing due to my injuries.
37:03Yes, come in.
37:16Another officer unknowingly carries the bomb inside.
37:20The Second Army, that's no use.
37:22The objective now is to keep the Soviet troops occupied so long it finishes.
37:28The bomb is placed just six feet from Hitler.
37:33I told General Mannerheim that the interests of the German people and the Finnish people
37:38are identical.
37:39Here is Colonel von Stauffenberg, mein Führer.
37:44Mein Führer.
37:48The Russian positions are here and here.
37:52We need to prevent the Romanian oil fields from falling into Russian hands.
37:59Von Stauffenberg claims he has to make a telephone call and leaves the room.
38:09It has been almost 30 minutes since he armed the bomb.
38:13That's the truth now.
38:16The enemy currently stands, we cannot prevent it.
38:32Where's Stauffenberg?
38:33It's his turn.
38:38General von Stauffenberg has brought the war to the wolf's lair and to the wolf himself.
39:06In the aftermath of the explosion, panicked Nazis race to locate Hitler.
39:13Von Stauffenberg bluffs his way past security.
39:18He's convinced he has succeeded in killing Hitler and heads to Berlin to seize control.
39:24Four officers are dead, but Hitler is alive.
39:33The briefing room is a pretty lightweight structure.
39:36It's got brick walls, windows, it's well ventilated, very much in contrast with the heavy concrete
39:42bunkers elsewhere on the site.
39:44And it's that architectural difference which foils the assassination attempt.
39:50Footage filmed just after the explosion reveals the damage.
39:55When the bomb goes off, there's somewhere for the explosion to go.
39:59It blows out the windows, it knocks down walls.
40:02It dissipates the blast.
40:04If this meeting had happened in the heart of one of those solid bunkers as had been
40:09the original intention, there would have been nowhere for the blast to go.
40:12It would have been amplified as it bounced off the walls and back in again.
40:16If that had happened, there can be no doubt that Hitler would have been killed.
40:20It's one of the great ironies that the wolf's lair saved his life, but not in the way he
40:25intended.
40:26By the time that Sorn Stauffenberg arrives in Berlin, he knows that the bomb has gone
40:33off, but it becomes increasingly apparent that Hitler hasn't actually died.
40:40Hitler's injuries are minor, but his narrow escape has left him enraged.
40:46For all its concrete and layers of security, the wolf's lair proved to be defenseless against
40:51one man with a bomb in a briefcase.
40:55The investigators quickly realized that von Stauffenberg left the meeting early.
41:00Those who are loyal to Hitler start to realize what is going on.
41:05The coup is undone very quickly.
41:08Hitler's troops track the ringleaders to Berlin's army headquarters.
41:14Von Stauffenberg and his fellow plotters are dragged out into the courtyard from where
41:19they are operating the plot and summarily executed on the spot.
41:29In the following weeks, 600 suspected conspirators are arrested and publicly tried by Nazi judges.
41:41Only 200 are eventually executed.
41:50At the wolf's lair, Hitler watches the films of their deaths for his own pleasure, but
41:54he ignores the catastrophic situation in the war.
41:59By the end of August, the Russians are less than 60 miles from the base.
42:04It's all very well having an impregnable bomb-proof forward headquarters, but if the area in which
42:09it sits is overrun, then it's no good to anybody.
42:12The greatest flaw of the wolf's lair is that it's only safe if Germany's armies are victorious.
42:19Ultimately, no fortress, however strong, could protect Germany from the catastrophe that
42:24Hitler had led it to.
42:34On the 8th of November, construction finishes on Hitler's enormous personal bunker, but
42:40he spends only 12 days inside it.
42:43With the Russians entering Germany, the war is closing in around him.
42:54In November 1944, Hitler left the wolf's lair for the last time along this railway.
43:02He spent over 800 days in residence, longer than at any other place during the war.
43:09The Russians were hot on his heels, but they simply circumvented the place on their way
43:13to Berlin.
43:14And it wasn't until January 1945 that the Germans got round to trying to demolish it.
43:21Local people describe huge chunks of concrete flying through the air as the charges were
43:26blown.
43:27The wolf's lair was history.
43:35The wolf's lair was meant to be Hitler's impregnable fortress, and the command centre from which
43:40he'd conquer the world.
43:42But ultimately, no base, however big, could protect Hitler from his own flaws, paranoia,
43:49and military incompetence.