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Monday, May 07, 2007

Strange Towers of the Third Reich


"QUANTUM SHOT" #48


Not just phallic symbols of power;
they actually served a practical purpose.


These concrete towers were unique AIR RAID SHELTERS of Nazi Germany, built to withstand the destructive power of WWII bombs and heavy artillery. Their cone shape caused bombs to slide down the walls and detonate only at a heavily fortified base.

Cheaper to build above ground than to dig bunkers, they were quite effective, as it was possible to cram as many as 500 people inside. Plus the "footprint" of such tower was very small when observed from the air, so it was very hard for the bombers to ensure a direct hit.


(photo credit: Ivo Schenk. This tower you can even visit)

First appearing in 1936, they were quickly dubbed "cigarette stubbs" or "sugar beet heads". Officially they were called Winkeltürme (Winkel Towers)- after their architect Leo Winkel of Duisburg. Winkel patented his design in 1934, and in the following years Germany built 98 Winkeltürme of five different types.


(photo credit: Norbert Hämmerling)

Hitler was quite impressed by Winkel's concept and blueprints, and ordered full engineering and production support. They were meant to be shelters for factory workers and railroad personnel, to be placed mostly in heavily industrial areas, such as Giessen.
Here is a cut-away view:


(image credit: Michael Grube, Lost Places.De)

Some towers could accommodate as many as 500 people, and consisted of several floors, twisted in a spiral:




(images credit: M. Niehues)

Every floor had some simple furniture:
(interior photos courtesy Michael Grube, Lost Places.De)



Entry was through a hatch door:



The shelter was secured with a heavy lock:





"The Winkelturm in Stuttgart, a Type 2, is in the Feuerbach rail area. The cone shape was designed to defeat bombing attacks by deflecting bombs off the top and sides, toward a reinforced area around the base. However, a Winkelturm of this type in Bremen suffered a direct hit by U.S. bomb in October 1944, which exploded through the roof and killed five people inside."








(images credit: A. Glasner)

Focke Wulf and even Daimler Benz factories got some towers, more than 34 were built around steel plants and rail centers, and quite a few were designated for the German Command itself.






(images credit: A. Glasner)

Cone shaped towers were complimented by the "Dieter" towers, hexagonal or somewhat mushroom-shaped:



Some towers had a flat roof, which was used as a platform for anti-aircraft guns and powerful searchlights.







Today these towers are often considered an eyesore, so the locals turn them into town museums, or even bus stops:



or they try to paint them into something cheerful:



I personally think that their weird and haunted look (combined with a bizarre monumental nature) make them good, though ghastly, reminders of the WWII past.



Sources and further reading: Third Reich Ruins, Luftschutz Bunker, Michael Grube, Lost Places.De
Photography by
- "Fernaufklärer", Fotos Darmstadt
- Alexander Gläsner, Fotos Duisburg-Wedau
- Michael Foedrowitz, Berlin
- Thomas K., Berlin, Fotos Zossen-Wünsdorf


Permanent Link...
Category: Architecture,History
Related Posts: WWII German Tank Manuals

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COMMENTS:

20 Comments:

Anonymous Charles Betz said...

Strange, architecture reminds me somewhat of the anthroposophical buildings like the Goetheanum...

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Blogger Peter Haslam said...

As always interesting finds

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Anonymous Richard said...

Among your pictures is a tower in Vienna I live quite near by. I've always liked it for its gloomy, threatening look, and in summer it always gave nice shade to the people hanging out in the park it's in. Unfortunately, time has worn it down, and last year it threatened to collapse. While there had been plans by a company to turn it into a data-center, I don't think it'll last that long. Right now they are just trying to stop it from collapsing.

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Blogger Maat C said...

Check out this one. One huge ugly block. http://www.technik-kultur.de/wiki/index.php?title=Bunker_-_zweckentfremdet
It held 18.000 people and is still maintained as an emergency shelter.
It is across the street from where I live. It is now called the Mediabunker and is used by Photostudios, a music shop and bands for practice rooms. It also has a club at the top.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Someone should have put these towers up hitler's ass.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very interesting. I am surprised someone hasn't turned one into a house of some kind.

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Blogger 1jonboy said...

Dude great blog that architect Leo Winkel should of designed the World trade Center. I hope you can visit my website ONLINE SHOPPING MALL
best regards John

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Anonymous NTS said...

As a child i was always interested by the german bunkers in the channel islands such as these

http://www.festungguernsey.supanet.com/Fortification.htm

cheers for the post

NTS

http://notstraight.wordpress.com/

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Anonymous IgorD2 said...

We have couple of those towers in Sarajevo too, I know about them since I was a child but newer know the purpose of those old buildings. Looks exactly the same as those on pictures.

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Anonymous Stickman said...

Hello,
I recall seeing these in the railyards near Kaiserslautern too. I also remember seeing one in Vienna - I'm not sure if it is the one you posted, but it had building built around it. It was almost like they were mushrooms that had grown up around a tree or something

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Anonymous fragforfun said...

Hehe, the one they turned into a bus stop (with the Loto-Sign in front of it) is actually located in my hometown of Stuttgart in Germany (Stuttgart-Feuerbach). My father always told me how he had to hide there and in other shelters when the bomb alarm went off during the last months of war...

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Anonymous Michael W said...

A tower that is used for antiaircrfat guns and searchlights would not seem to be a safe refuge in an air raid...

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Blogger major said...

They look like rocket ships skyward pointed, poised to lift off. But they are the opposite; heavy, not light, built to stay, not go.

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Blogger Avi Abrams said...

I like the analogy...

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Blogger Andy said...

I often went passed the one in Feuerbach, but I never could figure what it was. I'll have to go and look again... Thanks!

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Anonymous Motorcycle Guy said...

Wow those things are interesting. That is definitely a fun bit of useless knowledge.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Useless knowledge? I find them to be a facinating and somewhat hidden aspect of the war. We all know about Londoners hiding in the tubes during the Blitz, but no one seems to remember how badly Germany was bombed. This goes to show Germany's way of protecting it's people.

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Blogger discreto said...

i wonder if there was any specifical order in the position asignated to people. i mean, upper floors seems much more dangerous than base. and taking in account that if u come first, the latest people entering the tower would push you up, its a potetial crisis. what u think? anybody knows about behavior in shelters in WWII?

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Anonymous Cora said...

A tower of this type (locally known as "Spitzbunker") survives to this day in Bremen. It is located next to what used to be a car and truck factory up to the 1960s, so I suspect it was intended for the workers. Nowadays, it sports advertising for an oil company.

I have always liked this bunker, because it looks like a rocketship. Whereas the enormous concrete cubes scattered throughout the city are just ugly, even if they commission artists to paint the walls.

Most municipal authorities are not exactly happy about huge slabs of concrete occupying real estate that could be used for better purposes. But those bunkers were built to withstand bomb hits and often did, so they are very difficult to demolish.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent! Could we also see the existing Fascist architecture that was built in Italy by the Fascists?

Did Franco build any in Spain?

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  • Great shots as usual
    Read more

  • Absolut great shots.

    Have a look here for some more pics of a crane incident:

    http://home.planet.nl/~willysplekje/Berging%20BKF%20kraan%20Strandheem%20Opende/home.html

    (Mobile crane was hired to lift a sunken dredging-boat, but then flipped over so something really big was needed to get the other crane out)
    Read more

  • Gravity is the only reason anything falls!! Cranes fall over primarily due to two major factors. The most important being improper set up the second being operator error which is due largely to a lack of quality training and a push in the industry to have these machines do more than they were designed to do.
    Ultimately these machines when properly maintained, inspected and operated in a safe manner by people who have been sufficiently trained will perform exactly as designed over and over again without mishap. It is not the equipement that is so fallible but the people who run them.
    Read more

  • Irony (n).: The excavator arm sticking out of the hole in the ground like some kind of post-apocalyptic monument. Also, the bulldozer picture is funny in a Hitchhiker's kind of way.
    Read more

  • i think most modern cranes are equipped with GPS reporting systems, that communicate back to the manufacturer where and when they were overloaded. so they can avoid the operator saying 'it was a light load....honest'!
    Read more

  • of course they fall because of lousy opperators. cranes are great machines and makes things much easier. anyway, about gravity - curtains in the last picture hangs like in normal windows, not like it should, if it was'nt fake :)
    Read more

  • First off great blog, it's one of the sites I visit daily!

    But the pictures in this post of the hanger being filled with foam, are actuallly of the fire suppression system. It is designed to fill the hanger with fire retarding foam in the event of a fire.

    gtrz Nils
    Read more

  • Was going to comment the same thing Nils said, the system released the foam by accident.

    Nice pictures nevertheless!
    Read more

  • Your blog is awesome.

    However, the pic with the turret, isnt that a plane beeing de-iced?
    Read more

  • I believe the first twelve pictures are fire-suppression foam tests / accidents. Then there's a shot of a pressure-rinsing system, a de-icing rig, and a flight crew scraping snow / ice off their aircraft.

    Aircraft doused in fire-suppression foam aren't squeaky-clean. The stuff dries to a nasty film and can damage finishes, wiring, exposed bare metal, etc.
    Read more

  • I've seen the photos of the fire-retardant foam incident before, but they're great photos and loved seeing them again. From memory the base is a USAF base in California and most of their aircraft were parked outside ready for training exercises. The day happened to be a fairly windy one as well. Also, the foam used is extremely corrosive. Naturally, most of the planes were touched by the foam, so all aircraft need at least a wash, and the ones closer to the hangar needed deeper maintenance.
    Read more

  • Brilliant photographs!! How fun.
    Read more

  • I believe that the foam pictures are the result of fire-supressing foam. As seen in the pictures it suffocates the source before it can do any significant damage. I'm not sure how well it works as an aircraft cleaner, though I'm sure it takes quite a while to clean up.
    Read more

  • Fun photographs, but from personal account (I am former USAF member), this is fire foam. "Bird baths" are more like a hose-rigged gantry that the jets drive through for their post-flight washes.
    Read more

  • The very first photo happened like this: The hangar was equipped with a device for mixing soap concentrate and water for mopping the floor. The manager shouted to the man doing the work, "Don, turn off the machine." Don hears, "Don't turn off the machine." Thus, you get what we have here. It was a case study in the human factors course I got in the Air Force. There is also a picture of the hangar before it happened.
    Read more

  • As for the string of photos from the hangar full of foam: That was a test, the intent was to operate the system momentarily to check its operation. Obviously, no-one planned that the system would refuse to shut off, hence the people on the maintenance stands climbing to save their hides. There is a video somewhere of it all happening.
    Read more

  • Thank you Jim, great info!
    Read more

  • The foam pictures are actually from an Air Force base just east of Rapid City, SD. You guys are right in that they were running a test 'fire' on the newly automated system when the system wouldn't shutdown. There are also pictures of one of the cameraman's truck parked outside that had his windows down, and after they opened the hangar doors to let the foam pour out it filled and covered the truck. I have the full set of pics on an external harddrive somewhere.
    Read more

  • Haha! When did the incident happen at Ellsworth? I'd lived there 14yrs and hadn't heard of it. Love the B-1 very much. :D

    I collect nose art of the b-1b lancer, trying to find images of all the various work. So when I saw the b-1b in the first image, I tried to determine which one it was. :P
    Read more

  • This is one great blog. I read most of the stuff here. Great article!
    Read more

  • wow. I'm surprised the Canadian military hasn't snapped up some of those retired A-90's, they must be going for a deal.
    Read more

  • I am totally blown away by these intrepid Russian (Soviet Union? Eastern bloc?)engineers--I had no idea these kinds of planes existed.

    Thanks for another fantastic and informative post!
    Read more

  • Great article, but just for clarity's sake it should be stated that the ship in the last two pictures is clearly a hydrofoil, which is nothing at all like the ground effect aircraft the majority of the post describes.
    Read more

  • Great job and a good theme. And thanks for the mention.
    Read more

  • The VVA-14M was actually used in the video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
    Read more

  • The ekranoplan program and other commercial WiG (Wing in Ground-effect) projects were effectively scuttled by the discovery that rogue waves were not only real but much more common than had been believed, rendering cargo or passenger WiG vehicles at risk of destruction due to their inability to climb out of ground effect, where either a ship or a true aircraft would be able to survive/avoid the wave.
    Read more

  • Thank you for this rogue wave info... makes sense.
    Read more

  • The photo of the Orlyonok carrying "2 tanks" is looks like a BTR-60, an Armored Personal Carrier (APC, a battlefield taxi). The important distinction being that an APC is smaller and weighs about a quarter what a tank of that era weighed (10 tons vs 40). Important when considering the Orlyonok's carrying capacity.

    Pet peeve of mine when people call every rolling metal box a "tank".

    This has been your Internet Pedant comment for the day.
    Read more

  • Schwern - loved the comment, thanks. Info added.
    Read more

  • I am still baffled by the lack of interest in these sort of craft...

    The ability to increase shipping efficiency by unheard of numbers through the use of some large scale WIG would have a very profitable effect. Also, Russia achieved these feats during the Cold War, and mostly through their great insight into aeronautics. Despite what many may want to believe, Russian aircraft have generally always surpassed their western counterparts, only finding themselves beaten in ability when financial situations become involved (that being something the U.S. never had a problem with).

    As for the crashes of ekranoplans that may cause many to hesitate their development, the poor avionics (something that Russia, during the Cold War, severely lacked) can be a good reason of crash. A western avionics system, I would imagine, could greatly improve the safety and performance of ekranoplans.

    In the end of it all, it just leaves me confused as to why ekranoplans suffer this fate, I suppose this money people would gain just isn't enough to break down those West-East cultural boundaries. The Cold War is over people, please, get over it for the sake of much of scientific progress...
    Read more

  • Sadly, your Youtube video no longer works.
    Read more

  • Replaced the video, thanks
    Read more

  • I'd never heard of these! They are so cool! I wish someone would start a line of plastic models (like the cars and airplanes I put together as a kid) of all of these - I'd certainly get into them (age 59, female, yes - geek). What an opportunity to provide some history and background with the model building instructions...
    Read more

  • HA HA i wonder how it must feel for the mom to have a spiny hedgehog comg out of their...well you know what.

    just wanna say great site! i visit everyday and ure site is like my source of entertainment and knowlegde everyday keep up the great work!
    Read more

  • Hedgehogs are indeed neat little pets. On occasion, we host a guest 'hog here in the office.
    Read more

  • Wow!! I never saw baby hedgehogs before.
    Read more

  • awwwwh. still: look like foreskin with spikes to me.
    Read more

  • You've done it. You've beaten cuteoverload.com for cuteness of hedgehogs.
    Read more

  • oh i am flattered
    Read more

  • OMG they were so cute I've never seen baby Hedgehogs ..I wish I could hold one, too bad they get big and then you dont find them cute anymore..lol...
    Read more

  • They are so adorable. I should know. I breed hedgehogs. So baby hedgehogs are a common sight in my house. YOu can visit my hedgehog website at hedgehogs4u.com. I am located in NC and I do not ship, so if you are interested please do not ask me to ship my hedgies. Thankyou!!!
    Read more

  • I've never seen them when small before!! they like ugly no-fur dogs ^^

    well, I'm from the north of Spain and i've hosted some hedgehogs at my garden, most of them as big as a hand or more. They never stayed with us mora than a few weeks but returned many times, no meaning about our german Shepard dog (they ate his food!!)

    Once we found a really small one, not so bigger than the displayed on the article but with developed spikes. He probably was left by his mom. We tried to feed him but he died in 2 weeks.

    The are wild animals; can´t hold in a place and have to live on their own, doing what they want, going where they feel like to.

    Nice article! Wonderful site! I follow you daily.

    PS: nice trick to touch them: rub them from head to back, they will relax spikes.
    And remember, no snails or slugs at home with a hedgehog around!
    Read more

  • Hey Avi, what part of Canada are you from? I, myself, am from Vancouver. As far as blogs are concerned, I think I have some material on my blog that might be of interest to you every so often (I think you know that already, though). And it is exciting that you're getting 50,000 pageviews a day. I believe, of course, that if you simply provide good content, people will know where to get the goods.
    Read more

  • We're from Calgary, and visit Vancouver quite often. Please write to the email provided, we'll stay in touch. I'd like to provide a place where people can submit and enjoy simply the best content in the universe ;)
    (... not counting digg and reddit, of course)
    Read more

  • The Iranian women's air force rocks my socks off. As far as the "Women Keep Your Virtue" video is concerned, I'm posting that tonight. That's bloody awesome.
    Read more

  • Ditto. That Harry Enfield piece was awesome! Comedy at its best. Thanks Avi!
    Read more


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