17 November 2022 - PULPIT ROCK TOWER

 

PULPIT ROCK TOWER 

G'day folks,

Welcome to the only one of New Hampshire's original 14 World War II watchtowers to survive in near-original condition. 

In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the U.S. government built 14 concrete observation towers along the New Hampshire seacoast to defend the Portsmouth Harbor and the busy military industry facility at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Pulpit Rock Tower stands alone as the only one of these wartime watchtowers that to exist in near-original condition today.

The eight-story tower rises 73 feet tall above the shore, with an observation platform on the top level.  Soldiers stationed at the base end station would wait in watch for enemy ships. They would triangulate the ship’s coordinates with the other watchtowers and report the position to the gun batteries at Fort Dearborn to properly aim the heavy guns.

 

The tower has 12-inch-thick reinforced concrete walls and a concrete spiral staircase inside. While in use, it had electric lighting and a dedicated telephone line to Fort Dearborn (now Odiorne Point State Park). Today, it is one of those inconspicuous landmarks that locals drive past everyday and wonder what it may have been used for. It was also recently named one of the “Seven to Save” endangered historic properties in the state of New Hampshire.

6 November 2022 - THE HEROINE OF DUNKIRK

 

THE HEROINE 

OF DUNKIRK

G'day folks,

The "Heroine of Dunkirk" rescued over 7,000 Allied troops during the historic World War II evacuation. 

In May of 1940, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops found themselves stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. The German forces had cut them off and surrounded them, leaving them trapped between their encroaching enemies and the sea. All hope seemed lost, until a fleet of over 800 civilian boats and ships were mobilized in a miraculous rescue effort to evacuate the stranded soldiers.

The civilian fleet was able to rescue around 338,000 trapped Allied soldiers from the hands of the advancing German forces. Over 7,000 were transported across the channel by a single vessel, the PS Medway Queen paddle steamer. The ship’s role in the historic rescue earned it the well-deserved nickname of the “Heroine of Dunkirk.” Its service was so well respected that when the person contracted to scrap the ship found out its history, he refused to finish the job.

 

One of 20 paddle steamers that participated in the evacuation, the Medway Queen made seven trips, more than any other small vessel. On its last trip, while alongside the dock in Dunkirk, one of the ship’s paddle boxes was badly damaged in a collision with a destroyer that had been displaced by the force of an explosion. Medway Queen limped home carrying 400 members of the French rearguard.

The ship wasn’t destined to be a wartime vessel. It was built in 1924 in Troon, Scotland, for use as a ferry. It served on the Medway and the Thames Estuary before being requisitioned in World War II as a minesweeper. However, it was the ship’s role in the Dunkirk evacuation that earned it a place in British maritime history.

After the war, the ship returned to civilian use until 1963, when it was due to be scrapped in Belgium. However, when the ship breaker heard that Medway Queen had taken part at Dunkirk, he refused to continue with the job. The ship was sold and used as a floating restaurant and nightclub on the Isle of Wight until it was replaced by a bigger vessel in 1970. Under private ownership, the hull started to leak and the ship sank in the River Medina in 1978, where it remained until it was recovered in 1984.

After nearly two decades, the ship was eventually restored to its former glory in 2013.  Although mobile, Medway Queen is now tied up as a museum ship alongside Gillingham Pier. It’s the last remaining mobile estuary paddle steamer in the United Kingdom.

1 November 2022 - UNDERGROUND GERMAN MILITARY HOSPITAL - GUERNSEY

 

UNDERGROUND GERMAN

 MILITARY HOSPITAL 

- GUERNSEY -

G'day folks,

This underground hospital complex was constructed by slave laborers during the German occupation of the Channel Islands. 

Between the years of 1940 and 1945 hundreds of slave laborers working under the direction of German occupying forces dug 7,000 square meters in underground tunnels beneath Les Naftiaux in the British territory island of Guernsey.

 

The laborers, men and women of numerous nationalities, many of whom died in the tunnels’ construction, used explosives, drills, hand tools, and their bare hands to carve these tunnels from solid rock. The subterranean complex was intended for use as a German military hospital and ammunitions storehouse.

By the time construction ceased at the onset of the D-Day invasion the hospital complex was large enough to house 500 patients and included facilities such as an operating room, X-ray room, dispensary, laboratory, and staff quarters, as well as a cinema, central heating plant, and kitchen. In addition to the three main entrances, the ventilation shafts were equipped with stairs and ladders so they could double as emergency exits.

 

For all its planning, after three years of construction the hospital was only in use for around three months during the summer of 1944 when German casualties of the D-Day invasion filled all available wards. Hospital operations were eventually moved above ground when it became clear that the tunnels’ damp, dark atmosphere was not conducive to recovery. The ammunitions storage facilities fared slightly better, serving their intended purpose for around nine months.

Although much of the remaining equipment was removed by Allied forces in 1945, some remnants of the hospital’s wartime use remain, including hospital beds, kitchen and heating equipment, and signs in German posted throughout. The tunnels are privately owned by Joyce Browning who opened them to the public in 1954.

29 October 2022 - NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP MEMORIAL - FRANCE

 

NAZI CONCENTRATION 

CAMP MEMORIAL 

 - FRANCE -

G'day folks,

Today, this former Nazi concentration camp stands as a poignant memorial to the victims of fascism, and a warning from history. 

Surrounded by the picturesque forests of Alsace sprawls a sinister leftover of the Nazi occupation of France, the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. Prior to the arrival of Nazi occupying forces, this area was commonly used by local Alsatian people as a popular spot for picnics during summer and in winter such activities as skiing and sledging, however, the German invasion of France put an end to all that. 

 

The geology of the area had been identified as being of great strategic interest to the Nazis even before their invasion of France, due to the pink granite that could be mined there. (This type of granite was a favored building material of the edifices and monuments of the Nazi period).

The remoteness of this site had also been recognized as an “ideal location” for a concentration camp. In 1941, after the invasion and occupation of France, Natzweiler-Struthof was constructed on the personal orders of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.

Natzweiler-Struthof was a camp used primarily for the internment of political opponents of the Nazi regime in the German-occupied territories of Western Europe such as captured French, Dutch, Belgian and Scandinavian resistance fighters. It was also to be the final destination of British spies and agents of the S.O.E. who had been captured and interrogated.

Such prisoners were classified by the Nazis as being “Nacht und Nebel” (“Night and Fog”), because upon arrest by the Gestapo or SS they would be sent directly to a concentration camp (thus “vanishing into night and fog”) without their families having ever being informed of their whereabouts. These measures were intended by the Nazis to prevent resistance figures from being made into “martyrs” and to discourage popular support for resistance, which they greatly feared.

 

Prisoners sent to Natzweiler-Struthof camp would either be immediately executed or worked to death slowly through starvation over an extended period in which they were forced to produce war munitions or to labor in the mining of granite, which would then be sent by rail back to Germany.

As the Nazis began to face defeat and the Allied forces pushed eastward into the Alsace region, the camps were largely abandoned. Prisoners were evacuated and sent on a death march into Germany to the larger camps of Auchswitz and Dachau.

From 1941 to 1944. approximately 52,000 prisoners ended up in Natzweiler-Struthof camp. Some 22,000 met their deaths here, including the famous French resistance leaders Andree Borrell and Charles Delestraint and S.O.E agents such as Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden, and Sonia Olschanezky.

A famous survivor of the camp was the Slovenian writer Boris Pahor who wrote poignantly of his experiences as a prisoner at Natzweiler-Struthof in his moving autobiographical novel Necropolis, published in 1967.

 

28 October 2022 - KALAVRYTA SACRIFICE MEMORIAL - GREECE

 

KALAVRYTA 

SACRIFICE MEMORIAL 

- GREECE -

G'day folks,

Here is a solemn reminder of the infamous World War II war crime that massacred almost all the men in a small Greek town. 

In October 1943, Greek People’s Liberation Army guerrillas captured 77 German soldiers on a patrol mission, following an ambush in the mountains outside Kalavryta, southern Greece. After negotiations for a prisoner exchange failed, the captives were executed in a local ravine, with only two making a lucky escape undetected. 

In response, commanding General Karl Von Le Suire ordered Unternehmen Kalavryta, a guerrilla cleanup operation that  included terrible reprisals aimed at the local civilian population. Troops from the 117th Jaeger Division, a unit with previous counter insurgency experience in what was then occupied Yugoslavia, converged to the town of Kalavryta from all directions, burning and looting 50 villages along the way and executing 143 male civilians.

 

Upon reaching Kalavryta on December 13, 1943, the soldiers began setting the town ablaze. They then gathered the town’s entire population at the schoolyard and separated them in two groups. All able men age 13 and upward were led to a hill outside the town, while women, the elderly, and small children were locked inside the schoolhouse. 

At noon, the schoolhouse was set on fire with over 200 people inside, while at the hill, the soldiers began executing the 461 men by machine gun fire. The action was coordinated by flares, so the men would die in full view of the burning town, and within earshot of the screaming women, children, and elders, now surrounded by flames. While the execution was taking place on the hill, the panicked, choking prisoners managed to smash through the school’s doors and escape in a frantic stampede, while others threw their children outside the windows of the burning building to save them. 

 

Only 13 men survived the execution, injured or hiding under the bodies of the dead, while soldiers roamed the hill, delivering the coup-de-grace. After the soldiers’ departure, the escaped women, children, and elderly reached the blood-soaked hillside, where they discovered the grim fate of their male relations. Without any tools or farm animals left in their looted households, they began dragging the bodies to the cemetery nearby or digging shallow graves with their hands. 

Today, a solemn memorial complex stands on the hill where the execution took place. It includes a large cross, ossuary, the harrowing sculpture of a lamenting woman of Kalavryta, as well as some on-the-spot graves that remained on site since that day. The Kalavryta schoolhouse has been converted to a museum displaying everyday and personal items that survived the town’s destruction, as well as photos and eyewitness accounts that testify to the atrocious conduct of the 117th Jaeger Division.   

7 September 2022 - WW11 AIR RAID SHELTERS & TUNNELS - BERLIN

 

WW11 AIR RAID 

SHELTERS  & TUNNELS

 - BERLIN -

G'day folks,

A tour of underground Berlin takes you through WWII air raid shelters and tunnels used to smuggle people out of East Germany. 

It’s a strange feeling to come into a dark, half-blasted bunker, see parts of stairways and cables hanging out of the wall and walk through rubble in between holes that go several meters down into the ground. It’s eye-opening to crouch down in an air raid bunker and experience how it must have felt when the situation was for real.

 

These are just a couple of examples of the unique experiences offered at Berliner Unterwelten (Subterranean Berlin). The museum offers tours of some of Berlin’s most important underground structures, such as bunkers, abandoned subway stations, air raid shelters dating back to World War II and tunnels for smuggling people out of East Germany during the Cold War.

Berliner Unterwelten was founded in 1997 to explore, document and preserve the city’s subterranean architecture. The organization’s base is in a former air raid bunker in the Gesundbrunnen subway station, now a museum—the Unterwelten Museum (Subterranean Museum)—that offers various tours through Berlin’s underground.  The bunker was cleared and reconstructed by the group and transformed into a museum while maintaining its original character. Hiding on four floors below Berlin are dozens of bunkers, tunnels, walkways, canals, the route of a pneumatic postal system, storage rooms, bomb and ammunition storage, and abandoned subway stations.

Berlin, so full of history above ground, has a lot to tell in its subterranean areas as well. There are exhibits about everything from air raid bunkers to the removal of rubble from the destruction during World War II. Berliner Unterwelten found a huge file system about slave workers during the war in a forgotten bunker, helped the former workers to receive reparation pay and have an exhibition about slave workers in Berlin. Found objects such as ammunition, grenades, gas masks, etc. are on display as well. There is an exhibition about Hitler’s “Germania,” his utopian vision to rebuild Berlin. (The exhibition shows that the project was not, of course, a utopia after all.) 

 

Berliner Unterwelten also works to preserve subterranean areas. They have dug and cleared out many locations, including half-destroyed bunkers, and opened them to the public. Several different tours are offered, including underground bunker hospitals, mother-and-child bunkers, flak bunkers, subterranean factories, examples of subterranean escape routes from East to West Berlin, flak towers, an underground prison, Cold War bunkers for nuclear war and a tour through the Schwerbelastungskörper, a heavy tower built to test the possibilities of erecting Germania on the sandy ground of Berlin. 

26 September 2022 - MEDIEVAL FRESCOES REVEALED DURING WW11

 

MEDIEVAL FRESCOES 

REVEALED 

DURING WW11

G'day folks,

When occupying Nazi troops detonated a mine below, medieval frescoes were revealed in this small cliff-side hermitage in Italy.  

The Eremo di San Cataldo (Hermitage of Saint Cataldus) is built into a steep cliff by the road connecting Contigliano to Cottanello in the region of Sabina, northeast of Rome.

Its origins are unclear, and some historians believe that it could date back as far as the 10th century, a time when the nearby Abbey of Farfa controlled the region. However, it is first mentioned in the 16th century, along with the attribution to Saint Cataldus, seventh-century Bishop of Rochau and patron saint of the southern city of Taranto. The reason for this connection is obscure, and many theories have been discussed as to why this saint was chosen.

The present staircase to the site was built in 1888, along with the main road. It leads to the church, the only structure that survives today, partially dug into the rock.

 

The church plan is rather simple, with a vestibule and a frescoed chapel with an altar made of the famous local red marble from Cottanello (which was also used in the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican), crowned by an upper floor with a bell tower.

The 11th- and 12th-century frescoes were discovered by chance after 1944, when the Germans detonated a mine on the road below, shattering the plaster holding Baroque frescoes that had been painted over them in the 17th century. The older, more valuable frescoes beneath include a remarkable Redeemer fresco, on the left side of the chapel, painted in a very Byzantine style. A Greek tau symbol painted in the fresco has been attributed to St. Francis, who traveled widely in Sabina, where he founded four monasteries. 

14 August 2022 - HITLER'S EXPLOSIVES FACTORY

 

HITLER'S EXPLOSIVES

 FACTORY

G'day folks,

Hidden in the forest are the crumbling, graffiti-covered remains of the factory where most of Germany's explosives were produced during World War II. 

During World War II, the Wehrmacht produced many of their explosives at a factory in the town of Bobingen in southern Germany. Run by the arms company Dynamit AG, the Fasan explosives factory was built in the 1930s. In 1939, a new facility was built in the forest near the village. The factory is long abandoned, but its crumbling walls still stand among the trees, where they are being slowly reclaimed by nature.

The original factory, known as Fasan I, was located on the eastern bank of the river Wertach. The secondary facility, Fasan II, was across the river in the western area, a railway bridge that can still be seen today was built. The two plants were scattered across the premises to avoid larger damages in case of an accidental explosion, and also to hide it from aerial reconnaissance by foreign adversaries. 

 

Fasan I consisted of 65 buildings and was originally only a testing facility designed to check out a large-scale industrial production of explosive materials, Fasan II consisted of only 25 buildings for the later mass production. During World War II, Fasan was used to produce hexogen, an organic compound that was used to create powerful explosives. In 1945, up to 300 tons of hexogen were produced per month at Fasan.

After the arrival of the U.S. Army in 1945, the factory was closed down. Today only one of Fasan II’s factory halls is publicly accessible—the remains of Fasan I are located on private property. 

Since then, nature has taken over of the former factory hall: Trees grow up from the floor through the ceiling and cover the roof.  Graffiti covers the walls and the explosive-resistant concrete partitions that divide the hall into three sections. The first two are partially exposed by daylight through the broken ceiling. For the third section a flashlight is required, especially as sometimes it is filled with ground water.