Bunker

The day is so beautiful that I already regret buying a ticket for a specific time on the Museum's website. I could have sat somewhere among the grapevines, on a bench, and watched the Ara Valley bathed in the morning light. I still have an hour before the scheduled time, so I get off the train a stop early to walk the entire way under the hill under the vineyards, and then along the road that leads up. There are not many people on the marked path. Here and there, a car passes. A pedestrian shortcut leads to the right. After the last, shorter but steep climb, a plateau opens up in front of me. A building is planted at the foot of a wooded hill.

I managed to order an espresso at the cafe by the entrance. I didn't know what awaited me inside.

Okay, I knew it was a nuclear fallout bunker from the Cold War. The purpose of the bunker was to ensure the state's ability to operate in emergency situations. Or rather, it had to ensure that the German state could continue to function and command the Bundeswehr in the midst of a nuclear Armageddon.

The underground corridors were 17,3 kilometers long. Only 203 meters are accessible to visitors today.

I see people slowly lining up to get in. I pay for a mediocre espresso and head into the bunker. From the entrance counter – I don't know if the term reception is appropriate in this building – we are led by members of the "Old Arvajler" Homeland Association.

In the screening room, a film is being shown about the creation of the bunker, the government's withdrawal from funding it, and finally the conversion of part of the underground into a museum. I sit for a while and watch the documentary.

They call out my group. A nice gentleman, our guide, first tells us that we will only see a small but representative section of what was once the largest underground complex in Germany. Every fifty meters or so he will stop and explain the purpose of the rooms we are seeing.

The official entrance to the bunker is already impressive. We are entering an area where the emergency state administration with a total of 3,000 employees could last at least 30 days without contact with the outside world. A complex water filtration system from two of its own wells, an equally cleverly designed air filtration system. On the surface, which is separated from us by 110 meters of rock, in the event of a nuclear attack, all ventilation ducts would be closed with stone plugs weighing several tons each. Hermetically sealed, the bunker would only breathe through the filters for a few days, when the need for additional air arose.

At the same time, the main entrance door, in front of which we are listening to this story, would close. A steel-concrete door from MAN, weighing 25 tons. I imagine the sound of a siren, the movement of the steel monstrosity and the click of the teeth as they fall into their sockets. Between them, who are behind 25 tons of steel and concrete, and us, an abyss would open. They were given a year's time. We would be burned in the short time it takes for the shock wave to find us.

IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS

Of course, the complex was supplied with its own electricity generators. In the bunker kitchen, I admired the kettles that I initially thought were used to cook soldiers' meals. But the guide explained to us that they were coffee kettles. Its smell must have awakened the entire anthill during the exercises, from the chancellor to the mechanic. Of course, there were supplies of coffee. Oil, flour, sugar. Pasta. Rice. Beans. All kinds of canned goods.

I wondered where the fumes from the kitchen were going. When it's Hiroshima outside, you can't just open the window and let the air in. I don't have time to ask, we're moving on. We're passing the toilet.

Then we get to the part that I initially thought were just regular shower cabins. But they're not. For the moment when someone has to go out onto the radioactive surface and see what the post-apocalyptic world is like, and then come back and tell about it, decontamination showers have been arranged. And they've thought of everything here. Behind the small window that looks into the showers, the military doctor on duty probably observed the bodies of those who had just been on the surface of the earth turned into hell. His duty, probably, was to notice, based on observation, when someone was highly irradiated, so that their hair and parts of their skin were falling off under the stream of water.

To keep the view clear, a wiper was placed on the glass, which would certainly fog up with steam. And that wiper on the window seemed completely surreal. A little funny, a little poignant.

The bunker corridors were intersected several times by additional steel doors. In case one part of the corridor was threatened, the steel door would cut it off. Like a tapeworm shedding its articles. Somewhere the corridors would branch out, only to reconnect again. Just in case a Minotaur came along, like in the cellars of Knossos.

The guide tells us anecdotes from the exercises. A conservative Bavarian MP got lost one morning looking for his office. When he got completely bewildered, he had to ask the staff. They barely explained to him how to find his desk. 936 bedrooms and 897 office rooms. And about 3,300 steel doors that are hard to tell apart.

In addition, there are several levels of corridors. The working level with offices, a meeting place, a command center. On the level with the bedrooms, only the president of the state and the prime minister had the right to a separate room. Although these rooms also looked like prison cells, they really represented a privilege in a situation where the bedrooms had at least four beds.

Placing 3,000 people underground and organizing their lives and work was a real logistical challenge. But in that microcosm, the big world on the surface, abandoned to destruction, was reflected. A dentist's chair. A hair salon. An ambulance. There was even a cinema room. On one board, there is still a repertoire from ancient times: Monty Python - The Life of Brian. Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman. War Games, a film that thematizes a software error as the cause of atomic war. I saw most of those films. At that time, in Yugoslav cinemas, I had no idea that the same films were intended for entertainment in West Germany's elite atomic bunker.

The idea for the bunker was born back in the 1950s, when the German chancellor was Adenauer. The bunker was started during his last term in 1960, construction continued under the next two heads of German government, and was completely completed under Willy Brandt in 1972.

The government abandoned the bunker in 1997, which cost 20 million marks a year to maintain. About 180 people worked continuously in three shifts to maintain and operate the complex. For reasons of secrecy, employees were recruited only from the region and were bound to strict confidentiality.

Interestingly, the core of the bunker consists of tunnels that were dug for the railway at the beginning of the 20th century. Two old railway tunnels were built by the Prussian State Railways in preparation for World War I. The railway was never put into service. After the end of the war and the occupation of the Rhineland, work was suspended. After the withdrawal of the occupying troops in July 1929, construction continued for a while. With the global economic crisis, construction was finally suspended in 1930. But in 1935, mushrooms began to be grown there. It soon became the largest mushroom farm in the Third Reich. The war reduced and then shut down production. Since the war autumn of 1943, military industry companies have been working in the tunnels, protected from Allied bombs. Towards the end of the war, the population fled here, underground, to escape the bombs.

SIMULATION OF THE END OF THE WORLD

Since 1966, NATO-led exercises have been held in the bunker every other year. They involved politicians and military leaders going underground – some ministers actually participated, others were civil servants who were given symbolic titles and positions for the occasion. In real life, they lived in this underground city and did everything that the German government would do after the atomic apocalypse.

On some corners, near the stairs, there is a phone booth. You insert a coin and call: “Hello, is anyone alive?” The command center with electronics from half a century ago looks nice to me. One older man in the group says: “This is like in the Star Trek series!” Now I understand my own reaction. This place must remind me of the Enterprise. The only thing missing is Spock with his pointy ears.

Who would get a ticket to Noah's Ark? First of all, the president and his cabinet, the chancellor and his office, as well as representatives of the upper house of parliament – ​​the Bundesrat. Members of the Bundestag, but in reduced numbers. In addition, there was room for 11 out of 16 ministers. Germany is a very federal country, so all the governments of the then ten states of West Germany would also go down to the atomic shelter. They also thought about the district governments. As for the city governments, there were rooms for 84 out of 327. As well as for representatives of 177 municipalities out of 8,500.

Of course, the headquarters of the secret services, Constitutional Protection, police and border control, radio and television, the federal post office and central bank, ports, Lufthansa, selected hospitals and universities, industrial associations, representatives of corporations and vital production branches would be lowered underground.

In the military area, the five main headquarters of the main branches of the army would receive a ticket to the bunker, as would a number of lower-level commands.

Even half a century ago, it was clear to those in power that the projection of power onto the population was not possible without the media. That is why there was room underground for a small but functional studio with public service cameras.

As our guide explains all this, I imagine a drilled hill full of political elites. I'm sure there are countries that would be happy to borrow a bunker like this, so when their political elite go underground, they'd close all the entrances and swallow the key.

BLUE LEG?

In the nuclear doomsday exercises, NATO used different code names for countries that would be involved in a nuclear conflict. The Warsaw Pact countries were designated as “Orange”. Austria was “Braunland”. Brown land. Bulgaria was “lime peel”. Poland did not fare so well: Dust bin. Sweden was Grey Land. Grey land. Switzerland was Kid stuff. In English, it is a colloquial expression for something that even children could easily do. For example, “whooping cough”. Hungary was given the sonorous name Mercedes Benz. Finland was “White Land”. The Czech Republic did best – Rolls Royce.

I don't know what to think about the code name for Yugoslavia: Blue Leg. Blue leg. It's the name for an exotic centipede. For a certain type of sea crab. It's a slang term in English for an overly intellectual woman, a nerd. And then I come to a term that can be associated with Yugoslavia. These code names come from the eighties. "Blue leg" is the name for Phlegmasia coerulea dolens. For deep vein thrombosis that causes the leg to turn blue. Maybe Tito's left leg, which was amputated in January 1980?

I can hardly believe that this kind of cynicism was present in high military circles. On the other hand, it all sounds very British. I read somewhere that American generals counted the dead differently in the event of an atomic war. A million dead was just one “big body”. It is certainly more practical to say – we destroyed 15 big bodies than to say: “We killed 15 million people”.

Anyway, Yugoslavia was a blue leg on the NATO military map.

THEY WALKED FOR FREE

Since 2008, it has been known that the bunker would only withstand a bomb explosion of about 20 kilotons. That is approximately the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Today we know that as early as 1962, secret reports calculated that the weapon was 250 times more powerful. So it was clear that the complex would collapse in the event of a nuclear attack. But the project was continued for "political reasons."

Three billion then-hard German marks wasted on Noah's Ark, where everyone would drown? It seems that some characteristics of the political caste are universal and eternal.

The government bunker in the Ara Valley was intended to be a completely secret construction project. It could be said that it was the best-kept construction secret in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. At the end of the ballad, it turns out that the only secret that was kept was the complete pointlessness of the project, given its basic purpose.

Complete secrecy was not possible anyway due to the extensive construction work. It should not be surprising then that this undertaking ignited the popular imagination in the surrounding villages and towns. Some talked about an underground luxury shopping mall. Others about an underground brothel. Everyone obviously talked about what they would like to have nearby. There was also constant talk of an underground connection between Bonn, then the capital of the state, and the government bunker. There was even a metro from Bonn to the bunker itself, supposedly.

The East German Ministry of State Security was thoroughly informed about the existence of the bunker and the internal situation. Their spy Lorenz Betzing worked as a foreman in the bunker. He later defected to East Germany, and after the fall of the Wall to the Soviet Union. When he returned to Berlin – the capital of the unified country – he was too old to be tried for high treason, although he had been charged.

I think about the fact that the bunker would not be able to protect the political elite and that the enemy knew this. Taking the main organs of government underground would actually be a suicidal act. If I were the enemy, I would shoot them in the head first.

I emerged from the bunker into a bright day. The white works had found their way to the sunlight. The vineyard hills seemed to tell me with their airy beauty, a complete contrast to the underground from which I emerged, that man is a strange beast. He makes bombs that can destroy the species. Then he builds bunkers, hoping that some, like Noah in the Old Testament, will save his family from the flood. Even though they know that humanity is advancing faster in destructive technology than in protection from it. And that such a bunker is just a walnut shell, not Noah's ark, just an illusion that something can be done.

"I do not know with what weapons the Third World War will be fought, but the one after it will be fought with sticks and stones." This quote is attributed to Albert Einstein.

The flower children, during the very years when the bunker was being built, tried to stop the atomic threat of self-destruction with love. When these children grew up, some of them even came to love the bombs.