Did anyone else watch this program the other night?  It was rather fascinating in a way, and I must admit that I was impressed at the construction of the three giant flak towers in Berlin and how sturdy they were.

Also seeing the miles of tunnels under Templehof airport that housed an aircraft factory was pretty interesting.

Apparently as well one area near the Fuhrerbunker is still fairly clear, though it's now timed for development, and the entryway will be paved over.  I suppose the war historian in me wishes they could open the bunker as a museum, but I can understand the German mindset in getting rid of the traces of Nazism, as well as making sure it doesn't became a gathering point for Neo-Nazi hordes as was feared when Hess died which resulted in the demolition of Spandau prison.

I thought it was a great programme. I didn't realise there was anything like that amount of Nazi era remains left in Germany.

I enjoyed it too.  The sheer scale of the construction was over whelming particularly when you remember that it was the 1930s and that much of current civil engineering technology was yet to be invented.  

Apparently Templeholf Airport is to close in 2008, I really hope the terminal is not demolished as despite the regime it was built under, it is a very impressive building.

Quoted from The Fox

it was the 1930s and that much of current civil engineering technology was yet to be invented.  

Not true.

Read up on Organisation Todt and you'll find that Germany was way ahead of the rest of Europe thanks to this organisation, which began pre-Nazi, but was (like most things) turned to serve that master. Its commercial predecessor began the Autobahn project as far back as 1926, and it only took off in 1933 when Hitler promoted it, and Todt took full advantage.

Organisation Todt was responsible for all the major construction projects which followed, even though Todt died in 1942 (planes crash, suspect assassination) having become Minister of Armaments and Munitions, and succeeded by Albert Speer. Apart from the projects seen in the programme, it worked across the world, and built all the German bunkers, gun batteries, the Atlantic Wall, fortifications in the Channel Islands, the V1 and the massive V2 plant built inside a mounbtain, plus all the repair work needed to buildings, factories, refineries, and new constructions of the same, usually underground.

Probably also fair to say you don't have to be particularly advanced to build in reinforced concrete when you're not building down to save weight and money, in fact, they were building as heavy as they could for defensive structures with walls metres thick - as noted, their problem was getting hold of enough material to make all that concrete.

Money/finance was no problem either, and one thing often overlooked is that these projects had "free" labour in abundance. A bit like the pyramids, these projects were achieved by sheer numbers which could not be afforded commercially, and were enabled by slave labour. Organisation Todt had some 1.4 million labourers at its disposal. The organisation is reported to have employed less than 2.5% of its workforce as German labourers (and these were rejects from military service) - the rest were all slaves conscripted from captured countries (many males from the Channel Islands were taken this way) and from PoW camps. Most of these labourers are reported to have died under the regime.

Reading around the web, it seems I'm not alone in thinking the programme was a little misleading.

I got the impression the makers gave an underlying impression that the information they presented was new, which is not the case. While some of it may not have been widely publicised, or only known to those who have a specific interest, it has been around for a while, and written about, if not filmed or shoved on the internet.

The Flaktürme in particular are rather large not to have been noticed before, but have featured little on the web. After the programme I went looking for some more data, expecting to find more detailed accounts, but found relatively little. The best presentation actually came from a German site, and might as well pass it on:

The Flaktürme

Bear in mind this is a German language site, and the above link is the babelfish translation, which actually works fine, most of the time.

I think this is relevant to this topic. The following text was written by a man, Gustave H. Roosen, who, as a 16 year old schoolboy, served in one of these Flak Towers mentioned here.

Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, an anti-aircraft gun tower with four 128mm twin guns, one per corner of the tower, was for us, the former Monschau High School students, the third and the last posting, after the action in Aachen. We arrived in Hamburg on November 14th, 1944. As a young boy I had grown up in this city and I knew my way around. What a sight Hamburg was now! The Binnenalster was covered with camouflage nets; the main railway station had a covering of straw mats of road width over it; and over the Außenalster a dummy fabrication of the Lombardsbrücke, the Lombard bridge, had been built by means of similar camouflage mats. But the British bombers had already, in July 1943, caused terrible havoc...this was air-raid # 70, the so-called "Gomorrha" enterprise, 41,800 inhabitants lost their lives and 125,000 were hit, as per official statistics. We gathered ourselves in the open country at Rothenbaumchaussee, at that time headquarters for the Luftwaffe. A part of our group was allocated to the Flak-tower in Wilhelmsburg. It was my secret wish to be detailed to the gun crew, and I had the luck to be assigned, and appointed as "K1", responsible for the side-winding of gun "Dora".

It was a pleasure having everything operating by means of servo-motors in contrast to the 88mm gun, which was focused necessarily by means of muscle-power. Here in Hamburg we were constantly on the go. There were hellish battle situations but one had, here especially, the feeling that one could defend one's self. To be sure, we suffered under very difficult battle conditions, because the 128mm caliber ammunition which we were firing came out of a munitions factory which employed "forced labour", and probably also prisoners, who were busy carrying out sabotage. They sabotaged the shell which in the most favourable case was a ruptured barrel, and in the most unfavourable case, an exploding barrel. The rate of fire of our guns was enormous: 7 rounds per minute for each gun meant approximately a total of 4000 rounds per hour...from one flak tower.

The Flak-tower Wilhelmsburg, being built identical with the one in Vienna, Arenberg Park was the latest in the field with regard to security for the gun staff: the staff was rather protected by a bow of a reinforced (steel armoured) concrete roof. The anti-aircraft tower batteries, consisted of two towers. The gun tower, a square solid building made of reinforced concrete with sides of 47 m in length, and a height of 43 m. It was split up inside into eight plus one stories, in which residents from the surrounding neighbourhood, on hearing the early-warning air-raid alarm, could seek refuge in the lower three stories. Our accomodation was on the 8th floor above which was the gun platform. In each corner of the platform stood a twin gun in a roundel, with ammunition bunkers all round. The crew for one twin-gun consisted of 21 gunners. Outside the 7th floor there was also a surrounding balcony on which it had been planned originally to install lighter ack-ack weapons, but during my stay they had never been installed.

The other tower was the fire-control tower, somewhat narrower in design with the FuMG = radar equipment and B1, the normal range finding equipment. At ground level between both towers, which stood at a distance of about 160 m to each other, were huts with a canteen, work-sheds, barber's, cobbler and other facilities. A normal complete camp-atmosphere prevailed throughout.

In March 1945 we had the most devastating air-raids... on the 7th and the 8th, and especially on the 11th of March with carpet-bombing directly beside the tower. Two days later, with release papers, I was officially discharged and moved off to Detmold, to where a part of my family had escaped after being bombed-out in Cologne.

I think this is relevant to this topic. The following text was written by a man, Gustave H. Roosen, who, as a 16 year old schoolboy, served in one of these Flak Towers mentioned here.

Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, an anti-aircraft gun tower with four 128mm twin guns, one per corner of the tower, was for us, the former Monschau High School students, the third and the last posting, after the action in Aachen. We arrived in Hamburg on November 14th, 1944. As a young boy I had grown up in this city and I knew my way around. What a sight Hamburg was now! The Binnenalster was covered with camouflage nets; the main railway station had a covering of straw mats of road width over it; and over the Außenalster a dummy fabrication of the Lombardsbrücke, the Lombard bridge, had been built by means of similar camouflage mats. But the British bombers had already, in July 1943, caused terrible havoc...this was air-raid # 70, the so-called "Gomorrha" enterprise, 41,800 inhabitants lost their lives and 125,000 were hit, as per official statistics. We gathered ourselves in the open country at Rothenbaumchaussee, at that time headquarters for the Luftwaffe. A part of our group was allocated to the Flak-tower in Wilhelmsburg. It was my secret wish to be detailed to the gun crew, and I had the luck to be assigned, and appointed as "K1", responsible for the side-winding of gun "Dora".

It was a pleasure having everything operating by means of servo-motors in contrast to the 88mm gun, which was focused necessarily by means of muscle-power. Here in Hamburg we were constantly on the go. There were hellish battle situations but one had, here especially, the feeling that one could defend one's self. To be sure, we suffered under very difficult battle conditions, because the 128mm caliber ammunition which we were firing came out of a munitions factory which employed "forced labour", and probably also prisoners, who were busy carrying out sabotage. They sabotaged the shell which in the most favourable case was a ruptured barrel, and in the most unfavourable case, an exploding barrel. The rate of fire of our guns was enormous: 7 rounds per minute for each gun meant approximately a total of 4000 rounds per hour...from one flak tower.

The Flak-tower Wilhelmsburg, being built identical with the one in Vienna, Arenberg Park was the latest in the field with regard to security for the gun staff: the staff was rather protected by a bow of a reinforced (steel armoured) concrete roof. The anti-aircraft tower batteries, consisted of two towers. The gun tower, a square solid building made of reinforced concrete with sides of 47 m in length, and a height of 43 m. It was split up inside into eight plus one stories, in which residents from the surrounding neighbourhood, on hearing the early-warning air-raid alarm, could seek refuge in the lower three stories. Our accomodation was on the 8th floor above which was the gun platform. In each corner of the platform stood a twin gun in a roundel, with ammunition bunkers all round. The crew for one twin-gun consisted of 21 gunners. Outside the 7th floor there was also a surrounding balcony on which it had been planned originally to install lighter ack-ack weapons, but during my stay they had never been installed.

The other tower was the fire-control tower, somewhat narrower in design with the FuMG = radar equipment and B1, the normal range finding equipment. At ground level between both towers, which stood at a distance of about 160 m to each other, were huts with a canteen, work-sheds, barber's, cobbler and other facilities. A normal complete camp-atmosphere prevailed throughout.

In March 1945 we had the most devastating air-raids... on the 7th and the 8th, and especially on the 11th of March with carpet-bombing directly beside the tower. Two days later, with release papers, I was officially discharged and moved off to Detmold, to where a part of my family had escaped after being bombed-out in Cologne.

Relevant indeed, the programme we are referring to also detailed the firing rate from the flaktürme, and I think they came up with an even higher number. The flak density above Berlin was so high, Allied bomber had no choice but to fly around them, there was simply no way through, and no defence.

The image they had were superb, and echoed the automation referred to. The shells were stored in huge, and I really do mean huge as in cathedral sized, magazines below the towers, and of course were isolated by multiple doors. The were fed to the guns by elevators which ran in a continuous loop, just like a chain, so that they could keep the guns supplied.

Incidentally, the flaktürme were equipped with the most advanced radar the Germans had. Combined Operation personnel mounted a raid on a similar station on the coast of France and stole the whole thing so that British radar scientists could study it.

That's the first reference I've heard regarding forced labour in something as sensitive as a munitions factory. Presumably they eventually had to do that once all the nationals had been conscripted and sent to the front. We have a series of programmes that cover in detail the overhaul and restoration of various tanks recovered from around the world, at the tank museum in England. During the teardown of recovered German tanks, it's not unusual to find that a the workers sabotaged them on assembly, not so that they wouldn't work, but would eventually fail in the field. Missing, loose, or incorrect nuts and bolts are found, together with gears and shafts that have seen the attention of a large hammer before they were fitted, or were manufactured with subtle defects, that would not have been immediately evident to an overseer.

Seems like a good subject for a book or website, dedicated to something that must have been highly dangerous to do, and if caught, the result would presumably have been fatal, but probably goes largely unacknowledged.

Regarding the radar raid on France, I imagine you'll be talking about the raid on Bruneval Apollo?

This is similar to the earlier post about the Flakturm in Hamburg; this however, is about the AA towers in Berlin.

Defence in Berlin and at Leuna 1944 by Dr. Wolfgang Waldhauer (born 192. Memories of a former Luftwaffenhelfer from the flak tower in Humboldthain in Berlin. The gun tower in the Humboldthain, Berlin, 1944. The tower was painted grey/green and protruded far out over the old damaged trees of the park. On the surrounding balcony of the tower, 2cm flak weapons were mounted on concrete bases. On the upper platform were four twin-barreled guns of 12.8 cm caliber. The base of these guns can still be seen today, in the remains of the partially dynamited south side of the G-Tower Humboldthain, at the level of the 12.8 cm gun platform.  There were also specimens with four barrels, the so-called "Vierlinge".

We never had a chance to shoot though; from our balcony on which the weapons were positioned we stared in astonishment at the first daylight raid of the US Air Force that began on the 4th and 6th of March 1944. We saw how the bomber groups, seemingly unaffected by the thick black ack-ack bursts and the constantly thundering 12.8 twin-barrel guns on all three G-towers of the city, flew on to their target. Glittering swarms of sticks of incendiaries were seen falling along with some high explosive bombs, and north of us a colossal fire and mushroom cloud of smoke. We observed the shooting down of two or three bombers, but from my position on the side of the G-turm, I saw only a parachute sailing down with a colored soldier as a result of the continuously thundering gun fire. He landed right on the L-Turm , greeted us with a great "Hallo".

The big British air-raids at night stopped in the middle of February. But from this time on the fast light-bombers, the "Mosquitos", frequently attacked the sleeping German capital, and naturally each time we had to get out and, quietly cursing, uncover the guns and then idly view the nightly drama high above Berlin. The countless searchlights, which in the clear sky fastened on each individual aircraft with great precision and then passed it on to the next one. The colourfully radiant "Christmas trees" were dropped first, this was probably supposed to feign the beginning of a major air-raid. The powerful loud twin-barrels of the 12.8 cm guns above us produced many twinkling sparks all around the quickly darting silver shining aircraft, that from below appeared like that of our lighter for the gas cooker at home. Nevertheless I never did see a plane shot down, and the bombers disappeared quickly each time after each had dropped its "blockbuster", which came down somewhere with a dreadful roar, followed by a colossal explosion -- once so close, that we, scared out of our wits, went behind the thick protective wall of the balcony for cover.

I experienced so to say, one final shock as far as " hopes of victory" were concerned in August 1944, when I had elevator duty at the Zoo Flak Turm. Accompanied by massive chorus of heel-clicking, Field Marshall Goering appeared at the entrance to the elevator. I  saw for a number of seconds in his gloomy sagging face, something completely different from that in the newsreel in the summer of 1940. And once once while tinkering about with my elevator handle the famous Galland asked me, admittedly somewhat patronizing, " Well laddie, surely you'll want to become a fighter pilot one day ?". I addressed him correctly and answered smartly, in complete honesty, " No, Herr General Inspector, I will stay with the Flak!".

Often, after an air-raid warning alarm had been given (not a civilian 'siren' warning), we observed from our balcony the inhabitants of Berlin who had not yet been bombed-out and lived nearby. The people seeking shelter then filled up the ground floor and the big spiral staircases in the corner towers. Sometimes there could have been several thousands! At the last moment, whenever the heavy flak at the west end of the city just started to fire, we sometimes saw some high ranking officers out of the "Bendler-Block", many with red braid stripes on their trousers, hurry into the tower.

In our entire LwH-time we had never suffered any loss and no one had been wounded.

It makes you realise how flimsy most of our defences were.  

Years ago I went to the Invasion beaches in Normandy and was struck by the massive thickness of the concrete and yet we had managed to smash some of it.

Yes, Bruneval it was. Didn't realise the Combined Ops site had a page for Operation Biting, February 27-28, 1942.

If I recall correctly, it's believed the bunker busters designed by Barnes Wallis would just have been able to damage these structures, although the opportunity never arose. Tallboy and Grand Slam earthquake bombs were 5 and 10 tonne respectively. Their tails caused them to spin and go supersonic during the 20,000+ foot drop. Rather than penetrate the bunker or target itself, their means of operation was to penetrate the ground beside it, then explode and cause a massive cavity beside it. The target, with its foundations weakened by the blast, would then collapse into the hole - this was deemed more effective than attempting to use the bomb itself to destroy the target, although it could be used that way too.

Yes, wasn't it amazing the punishment these reinforced structures could take. To the best of my knowledge, not one of these German AA towers was ever destroyed or permanently put out of action by bombing... i mean during the war of course. I saw one at the Willemshaven naval base back in the early 90's and it was still in remarkably good condition.

That's true, look at the condition a lot of the fortifications on the French coast are still in.  And that program that was on a few weeks back about the raid on St Nazaire showed that the U-Boat pens there were still basically intact.