In 1940 Adolf Hitler He ordered the construction of a secret military headquarters in the remote town of Kętrzyn, located in northeastern Poland, to prepare for his invasion of the Soviet Union. Until 1944, Hitler and other Nazi leaders, including Hermann Goring -second in command-, spent several months in Wolfsschanze, also known as the “Wolf’s Lair”.
Eight decades later, a macabre discovery was made there: a group of archaeologists from the Latebra Foundation discovered five dismembered skeletons, all of them without hands or feet, after more than five years of excavations. The bodies belong to three adults, an older child and a baby.
The engineer Adrian Kostrzewa He was the one who found the first skeleton. He commented that one day he was digging under the floor of what was the house of Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe (air force of the Nazi regime), when he found something that he believed to be a pipe. Upon inspecting what was found, he observed that it was a human skull.
After that first discovery on February 24, the Polish team of archaeologists called the police, who immediately unearthed the remains of the other four people.
Kostrzewa indicated that, according to the police investigation, due to their obvious age, the skeletons are probably before 1945.
During the years of excavations, archaeologists recovered small objects such as uniform buttons, tools and machinery parts. According to Kostrzewa, this can help “uncover the truth about what happened at this place.”
The 30 volunteers from the Polish Foundation agreed that they had never seen anything similar: “It’s a sad story.”
“You would never expect things like that in a place like this… the most guarded in the Third Reichtaken by the Russians after the war,” he declared Dominik Markiewiczanother member of Latebra, Reuters.
“We didn’t know at all what we were dealing with. Were they some occult rituals of Third Reich fanatics? We have no idea (…) It was an unusual burial with strange characteristics. Without clothes, without hands or feet. And there were also minors, so we don’t know what happened there. And the complex, the house, the villa of Hermann Göring are also very revealing,” she added.
As detailed by archaeologists National Geographic, the remains were found a few centimeters from the surface, right next to the pipe network of the former Nazi military barracks. So they estimate that if they were buried before Göring moved, construction workers would have found the bodies and left them where they were.
The Latebra Foundation’s discoveries were later investigated by local agents and a Kętrzyn forensic doctor. According to him, the skeletons seem to belong, due to their age, to the “interwar” years. between 1918 and 1939. He also pointed out that the poor condition of the bodies makes it impossible to determine the cause of their death.
“It’s creepy,” Kostrzewa acknowledged.
In this way, the Foundation’s next step will be to take samples of the remains and, through radiocarbon dating, establish approximately when the people died. Likewise, the researchers stated that they will also use other methods to try to determine who these people were, and thus be able to shed light on the mystery that revolves around this macabre discovery.
Until then, it’s all speculation as to why they were buried beneath the Wolf’s Lair. The theory that they could be victims of some type of occult ritual within the Third Reich has emerged among many speculations, although without concrete evidence to support this hypothesis. The uncertainty over whether the skeletons date from World War II or were buried there at a later date adds another layer of mystery to the case.
Despite not having participated in the excavation work and subsequent investigations, the Polish war historian Paweł Machcewiczfrom the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish National Academy, suggested that the remains could be those of workers forced to build the Wolf’s Den complex.
Nevertheless, This theory clashes with the presence of a newborn. Kostrzewa, on the other hand, considered that, based on what was found, the five skeletons would be members of the same family: “That is the most probable idea.” And she added: “Far less likely is that someone would make a building right on top of an old cemetery.”
The historian Robert Trabafor his part, said to National Geographic Little research has been done in the Wolf Guard, so it should not be surprising if new discoveries are made in the future. Regarding the discovery of the five skeletons, he maintained that it adds more mystery to the history of the former Nazi barracks: “It hides many enigmas and problems.”
During the Nazi era, the complex not only had the headquarters where Göring lived, but also had nearly 200 buildings, including bunkers, shelters, barracks, a power plant and even a railway station. In addition, it had more than 2,000 employees at the time it became the Nazi headquarters to carry out Operation Barbarossa for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Despite having hosted the Third Reich for so long, the Wolf’s Lair, hidden in thick forests, It was the site of Hitler’s failed assassination attempt. by the colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944.
Known as Valkyrie Planwas orchestrated by civilian and military conspirators who sought to end the Nazi regime in order to negotiate the end of World War II with the Allied powers. The Führer, however, survived with minor injuries.thanks to a huge oak table in the conference room.
The explosion killed four people, three of them officers, and injured more than 20.
Those responsible, led by Colonel Stauffenberg, were arrested and executed.
During the Cold War years the place was practically ignored, but with the fall of communism in Poland in the 1990s it was opened to tourism, and today it attracts thousands of people a month.
