We headed off from the Krutyn Piecek campsite and soon found a great second hand market to check out. 

It had amazing things like gas masks, old kitchen stuff including crystal and silver. Sadly there were a few Jewish menorahs.

I bought a silver spoon. Lisa got a traditional decorated wooden plate.

Then it was on to the Mamerki Bunkers just over an hour away up towards the Russian border. The Nazi bunkers there from WWII are still mostly complete as the Nazis didn’t have time to destroy them before the Russians arrived. 

We arrived in the car park beside a very large mass of concrete. After a van lunch we went into the bunkers. 

The complex was Mauerwald – General Headquarters of the German Land Forces 1941- 1944.

Approximately 250 buildings, including 30 reinforced concrete bunkers were constructed in the years 1941-1944 for the needs of 40 of the most important generals and marshals, 1500 Wehrmacht officers and servicemen, that remain undamaged till now.

Mauerwald [Mamerki in Polish] were the headquarters for the attack on the Soviet Union – the biggest military operation of the Second World War, codenamed “Barbarossa”.

The bunkers were constructed as small rooms with a corridor into them. There are then 2 large 2 metre layers of concrete over the top.  Then the outsides were roughened up to encourage moss to grow and vegetation to grow on the top. All paths were covered in camouflage netting so that it all looked like a forest from above. The allies didn’t find it until the Russians arrived. 

The first bunker still had a lot of communication equipment. 

We then went into another 2 bunkers.

We went to another section across the road with many more bunkers. Some were empty with water on the floor. 

We came to the museum where we learned a lot about life here and what happened. 

The Nazis were developing new flying weapons including what would have been the first jet. Also a flying saucer type thing with an ‘anti gravitational device ‘ that sounds like science fiction and is still known only to the military apparently. 

Hitler visited here only 4 times – even though Wolfs Lair where he spent his time is a short distance away.

Then it told us all about the attempted assassination of Hitler by Colonel von Stauffenberg and a group of conspirators planned here at Mamerki. Von Stauffenberg took a briefcase of explosives to a meeting with Adolf Hitler and many others at the Wolfs Lair. He placed the briefcase under the table next to Hitler. He was summoned to take an urgent phone call – as planned – and left the room. 

However someone else in the meantime moved the briefcase to the other side of a solid wooden table leg. This took a lot of the blast away from Hitler and he received minor injuries. However 4 others died from the blast. 

All the conspirators were rounded up and shot that evening .

The conspirators did it as they had recognized they were going to lose the war. If they had killed Hitler they wanted to do a deal with only the eastern allies to end the war but wanted to retain Polish, Austrian, Alsace and eastern territory that they occupied. They would keep on fighting on the western front intending to capture more Russian territory.

They would also keep on killing the Jews. Non-territorial demands included such points as refusal of any occupation of Germany by the Allies, as well as refusal to hand over war criminals by demanding the right of “nations to deal with its own criminals.” So it wasn’t really a bad thing that the plot failed.

We then found a reconstruction of the Amber room which was a stunning 18th-century chamber made of six tons of amber panels, gold leaf, and mirrors, often called the eighth wonder of the world.

In 1716, Prussian King Frederick William I gave the room as a gift to Russian Tsar Peter the Great to solidify their alliance. Workers later installed the masterpiece in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1755.

Nazi troops looted the room from the Catherine Palace in 1941 during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Soldiers packed the precious panels into crates in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad) by 1944. There were photos – this is a recreation.

The original room completely vanished during the final battles of World War II in 1945 and remains one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries today. We have been to the tunnels in the Owl Mountains where it was suspected to be, but it still hasn’t been found. 

Going outside we went to the huge observation tower.

Myself, Glenn and Lisa went up while seeing rain showers approaching. It was a long way up – around 20 flights of stairs. Thankfully it was worth it as we got great views from up there. 

There was a mock submarine at the bottom- why?

We then drove on to our next destination Wolf’s Lair where we were staying the night in the camper park.

We parked next to Amanda and Graham Munro originally from Scotland and now Lancashire. They have the same Coachman motorhome that Anne and Grant have and are in the online Coachman group. We had a good chat finding out they were travelling for 8 months before returning to the UK.

We got a fire started in the fire pit and had bbq chicken and sausages for dinner. 

Amanda and Graham had joined us so we heard about their travels.

We enjoyed toasting marshmallows on the fire.

All too soon it was 11pm and the campsite was silent apart from us!  That was a late night for us!