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That sense of confinement, that feeling of not being free. You're like an animal in a cage. And that smell of fear. I can't forget it. Bunkers. Are these massive concrete structures places of safety or reminders of fear? What did it feel like to run inside as bombs fell? And when people came out again, was anything still the same? There were small children. People were afraid and crying. You didn't know when or how you'd get out or what you'd find when you did.
God Almighty, I've not been in a shelter since I was eight or nine or 10, and it's a weird, weird feeling. I know what my grandfather went through, and what's happening now is terrifying. Wherever you look, here in or outside Europe, countries are all rearming. So there's much tension in the world, much like the period before the first and second world wars. There was supposed to be a pickaxe there so you could hack your way out if you were buried. Terrible. Just one madness after the other.
It's like a horror movie. But unfortunately, this isn't TV and it's not a nightmare that ends when you wake up. Bunkers, places of fear, but also of refuge in times of war. In Germany, they reached their peak during the Second World War. When Allied bombs fell on Munich in 1943, those who could ran for shelter into one of the city's dozens of public bunkers. We all basically ran, everyone for themselves. I put on my shoes and took off. My name is Robert Sidonada. I was born in Munich on November the 17th, 1929.
Inside, conditions were often harsh, but compared to the destruction outside those concrete walls, bunkers were still seen as the safest place to be. As air raids became more frequent and devastating, the rush to the bunkers intensified. By the end, according to reports, people were often lined up outside, unable to get in. People wanted to get in. They came from all the houses and apartment buildings and were afraid they wouldn't even make it inside. And while this bunker here was still under construction, someone fell and the others were pushed from behind. Panic broke out.
Eight people were trampled to death Today the Noairbag bunker is no longer accessible. This was the house for Baker Bul. This is where our local baker, Mr. Bul, our neighbor, lived. That's where it happened. vlog. I know what my grandfather went through and what's happening now is terrifying. Wherever you look, here in or outside Europe, today, bunkers have reemerged in our collective consciousness. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a surprise attack that caught the country largely
unprepared. Once again, civilians sought refuge in public places underground. I felt almost paralyzed. It was a new reality, something I'd never experienced before. My name is Karina. I'm a freelance journalist and teach German as a foreign language here in Odessa. That first air raid alarm, those sirens, it's a memory I'd really rather forget. I was terrified. I almost had a nervous breakdown because I didn't know where to go. At the start of the war, there were very few reliable bomb shelters in Ukraine.
Many spaces had to be improvised, quickly turned into places of refuge. They were overcrowded. And that smell of fear, the angst, that smell, how can I explain it? Of confinement. I can't forget it. We're living in the 21st century. But this war is taking us back. Modern bunkers as we know them today emerged in the early 20th century. During the First World War, soldiers were locked in a brutal, drawn out conflict. They dug trenches and built simple underground shelters for protection. At first, there was little concrete, just earth, wood, and sometimes corrugated iron.
The bunkers that he experienced weren't actually bunkers. They were underground tunnels and dugouts like the ones coal miners built in France. As the war went on, stronger defenses were needed. The first small concrete bunkers appeared known as pill boxes. They were compact, heavily reinforced, and placed at key positions along the front. During this trench warfare, people began to build the first fortified positions. A prerequisite for the construction of bunkers was the development of reinforced concrete. My name is Mark Bugen. I'm professor of regional modern history and public history at the European University of Fensborg.
Finsborg. Reinforced concrete, steel bars embedded in solid concrete made these structures far more resistant. The bunker had arrived. It quickly became a mainstay of modern warfare. At the time, air power was still limited. Planes couldn't fly very far, and cities weren't yet the main targets. Bombs usually fell just beyond the front lines. After the war, things changed. Across Europe, countries began building massive defensive systems designed to deter attack and control how a future war might unfold. France built the Majino
line, Germany the west wall and Italy the Alpine wall. In Nova near Badenbaden, the Nazi regime ordered a bunker to be built into the hillside. It became part of the vast defensive network the allies called the Sigf freed line. The construction of the bunker was shielded from the street by tall straw mats. That was all we knew. It was all top secret. Felton. My name is Conrad Felton. I was born in and I live here in Bonbarden in Nova. On clear days, mainly in the summer of 44, heavy bomber formations would often fly across the sky.
They glistened high up like little silverfish. And my mother had told me, "When the planes come, you must pray." Sophia became interested in history as a young girl. An article from the 1950s. This is what the bunker entrance looked like back then. I'm Sophie Hildnner. I'm 25, an archavist and the granddaughter of Conrad Welton. The two of us give tours of the bunker. The bunker was intended less as a shelter, but rather as a communications and command facility within the west wall. At first, bunkers were purely military structures used at the front. They were not yet designed to protect civilians.
Once it became clear that aircraft and bombing technology had advanced to the point where they could cause massive destruction in cities, people began to think about using the bunkers for the civilian population as well. That's when civilian air raid protection began. Cities started building bunkers, places where people could hide from the bombs. Early on, there were also spike bunkers or air raid shelters that looked like small rockets. The idea was that a bomb would slide off rather than exploding, falling to the ground and causing relatively little damage. But these bunkers could only hold a few
people and were relatively expensive to build, so they were quickly replaced by box- shaped bunkers. Soon, bunker construction expanded rapidly. After Germany launched the Second World War, the Nazi regime introduced the so-called Fer emergency program. Concrete structures rose above and below ground. Massive visible symbols of protection. Bunkers became part of Nazi propaganda. The message was simple. There was no need for fear. The regime would protect its people. The Nazi leadership was determined to avoid the mistakes they believed had led to defeat in the First World War. a collapse of morale on the home front.
That was the central goal of the Nazis and the military to prevent defeat by keeping public morale consistently high. Within a year, about 1,000 bunkers were built in Germany, capable of sheltering 400,000 people. Compared to the total population, that was a relatively small number. But at the time, this was the largest bunker construction program the world had ever seen. Many of these bunkers were built by forced laborers and prisoners of war under brutal and inhumane conditions. They generally made up 70 to 80% of the workforce, but were barred from the bunkers during air raids.
They had to take shelter in trenches where a direct hit offered virtually no chance of survival. Jewish concentration camp prisoners were also forced to build bunkers. This was part of the systematic persecution and exploitation carried out by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. I think what I remember most in Germany is that once I saw Hitler, that's the thing that remains in my memory. My name is Henry Fer. I had to flee Germany as a child. I went to live in Swansea in Wales. Now I live in Jerusalem with my family. I was with my father in the street and there were crowds of people on either side and the street was empty and there was a convoy of cars and there was
an open car and there was a man standing in it and everybody stuck out their hands and said hi Hitler and what I remembered it was my father made me stand and do this so we wouldn't stand out in the crowd is the only ones. In September 1939, just before the war began, Henry Foner's father made a difficult choice. He sent his son to safety in England. Like thousands of other Jewish children, Hines Lisvitz, as he was then known, arrived in the port city of Heritch. I came on the Kinder Transport.
One day, I found myself on a train leaving Berlin. I cannot remember saying goodbye to my family. It's it's completely blocked out. These are the labels that we had around our necks in the Kinder Transport of the numbers on the reverse side which I don't think we that's instead of a passport. We didn't have passports. I ended up in a strange country with strange people with a strange language. When we got there to high street station in Swansea, the people who were supposed to be receiving these refugee children were there and amongst them were Mr. and Mrs. Fer who took me who became Uncle Morris and Auntie Winnie afterwards.
Henry's father believed his son was safe in Wales. But soon the war reached Britain. Nazi Germany launched a campaign of air raids. The Blitz, targeting cities and infrastructure in an attempt to force surrender. We sheltered underneath the staircase of the house at first and then we had a big garden and in the garden was a garage built into the hillside. They put sandbags in front of the doors and there were bunk beds inside. In contrast to Germany, the British government focused less on large bunkers and more on smaller local shelters. The government encouraged private citizens to build small bunkers in their gardens with the idea that bombs would slide off their tapered structure and
the whole family that lived in the house would fit inside. If you didn't have a garage to turn into a shelter, there were other sorts of shelters. There were Anderson shelters and there were Morrison shelters. The Morrison was like a dining table made of huge steel pieces and you went underneath it. And the other was a shelter you buried in your garden and put soil on top. After devastating attacks on London, German bombers turned to other targets. In February 1941, they struck the city of Swansea. It was an industrial town with a port and u it was heavily bombed. There was a period of 3 days which was called the 3-day blitz in February 1941.
The town was in flames and all the grown-ups went up the hill to see the town burning and just left me and the dog and the bobbers were falling. You could hear them and the dog was scared and I was scared and the dog jumped up into the bed and we hugged each other until the grown-ups came back. So it was um scary experience but everybody went through it and that's the way things were. Mostly we just lay in the bunks and slept until they all clear and then came out. I wouldn't say without fear but yes this is exactly what we did cuz it was school the next day. Sometimes you'd go to school and the teacher would come and
say, "Little Johnny got killed last night. I'm sorry to have to inform you and now we'll carry on with algebra." There were no psychologists or psychiatrists or this sort of thing happened. We came to Israel in 1968. The first time I was in a shelter in Israel was a few weeks ago when I went to visit a friend. The very warning sounded and they have a shelter. So we all went to the shelter. That was a strange experience. I've got to say um was quite a big shelter. Had a bed in it and we sat on the bed and I thought, God almighty, I've not been in a shelter since I was 8 or 9 or 10. And it's a weird feeling.
Unlike in Israel, the Gaza Strip has no purpose-built civilian shelter system. During air strikes, many Palestinians seek refuge wherever they can, in schools, hospitals, damaged buildings, or basement. While armed groups make use of underground tunnel networks, the civilian population has little protection from the attacks. Constant air strikes don't just destroy buildings, they also place enormous psychological strain on the population. The same holds true in Ukraine. Sometimes we have 6, 7, 8, or 10 alarms a day. It varies. But when we have, say, 8 or 10, we think we can't take this anymore. We're not going down to the shelter anymore. We can't live like this.
When bombings happen again and again every night, you have to go back down to the basement or the bunker. That's just incredibly exhausting. My name is Haida Glazmir. I'm a psychologist and psychotherapist and work at the University of Leipzig. One of our main areas of focus is the scientific examination of the consequences of wars and traumatic experiences during wars. Even back then there were people who said, "I'm staying at home come what may." In most countries, only a fraction of the population would find space in public shelters. During the Second World War, many Germans relied on reinforced basement shelters in residential buildings.
I was also a firefighter at the school. Every school boy had to do night duty and one day shift on the weekend. At 6:00 p.m. I was able to go home. The following night, the school burned down. Operation Gamora, carried out by British and American forces in July 1943, was one of the most devastating air raids of the war. More than 30,000 people were killed in the Hamburg firestorm. Marian Ingram, who is Jewish, still remembers the Inferno. She was just 7 years old at the time.
A bomb fell on the roof where we lived on Hasselprasa. Our bed was catapulted across the apartment, all on its own. Everything, bookcases, cabinets, toppled over. Nothing was left standing. Marian Ingram. My name is Marian Ingram. I'm 89 years old. I was born on November 19th, 1935 in Hamburg. My mother wet some woolen blankets in the bathtub and wrapped them around us. We tried and we managed to make our way down the stairs. They were badly damaged. The railing was gone. My mother held my hand. And outside we saw buildings burning and
bombs falling. We reached a bunker and my mother took the iron handle and knocked on the door. The block warden opened it and told us we couldn't come in. We were Jews and Jews were not allowed in air raid shelters. My mother tried to persuade him and said he had to let us in, but we were forced to flee through the streets. We were terrified we'd get hit by bombs, shrapnel, splinters. Things were exploding all around us. The air was filled with debris, building stones, and there a massive fire, an incredibly hot fire, and an unbelievable wind.
During the night of July 27th to 28th, 1943, more than 100,000 incendiary and high explosive bombs fell on Hamburg, igniting massive fires in the densely built city. The extreme heat triggered a firestorm with powerful winds feeding the flames and spreading destruction. I'm part a few memories have stayed in my being. I never mentioned the from the one was of people whose entire bodies were on fire. They feel mentioned. Many people who looked exactly like human candles. Marian Ingram and her mother wandered through the city in desperate search of safety. At some point, we were in a bomb crater. a very deep crater. At some point, I
passed out. I don't remember how long we were in that bomb crater. They told me that I suffered from terrible smoke inhalation. Almost miraculously, Marian and her mother survived. As the war drew to a close, the German military was no longer able to hold back the advancing Allied forces. French troops were moving toward Bodenboden. The house next door was struck by an artillery shell. We felt the tremors through the floor. We never knew when we would be hit. The fear was very real. Then a kind of mass exodus began. Women with baby carriages, pillows under their
arms. I still remember that. My mother filled bottles with milk from the cows for us. And I carried a pillow under my arm. I was seven and a half years old. And then we headed toward the tunnels. There was a bunk bed here and I climbed up into the top bunk. Someone covered me with a carpet. For a moment, everything was quiet, though you could still hear children We spent the whole night praying. In the morning, we went back outside. The sun was shining. It was beautiful April weather.
Everything was completely still, and we went home without knowing what had happened. Some days later, we learned that the French troops had passed us by. Allied forces advanced deeper into Germany, forcing it to surrender unconditionally. When the Americans arrived on the second day, the day after the troops marched in, I went up to the knock. At the entrance to the bunker, there was a Sherman tank. One of the soldiers reached inside the tank and pulled out a bottle of cognac. And then Did the bunkers serve their purpose?
Large parts of German cities lay in ruins. And yet many of these massive concrete structures were still standing like silent giants in a devastated landscape. In some cases, the Allies rendered the bunkers unusable after 1945. But for many, that wasn't the case. It was too costly to destroy the bunkers. Some of the surviving bunkers were repurposed, used as warehouses, emergency shelters, or even television studios. In Hamburg, a high-rise bunker has been turned into a cultural hub. At the same time, many politicians wanted these structures gone. For them, bunkers were reminders of a past they wanted to erase.
The focus was mostly on demolition. Very few people considered leaving the bunker standing as memorials. For many Germans, bunkers were tied to a past they preferred not to revisit. Memories they wanted to forget or push aside. The postwar period was a surprise to me. No one talked about the fact that the Nazis that Hitler wanted to kill the Jews. And it was just as if it had never happened at all. And during that time, I turned 17 in New York City. I left Germany and was overjoyed to be gone. in York. In New York, I quickly got involved in the civil rights movement and that ensured my emotional and mental health that I didn't I have to say this in English.
I'm nobody's victim and I don't ever want to be a victimizer on this. That's my attitude towards life. I plan to fight my entire life fighting for justice for all people who are treated unjustly. After the war, Germany was split in two. In both West and East Germany, silence was common. Silence about Nazi crimes and silence about personal wartime experiences. Even decades later, only a few people began to break that silence. It was a taboo topic. My grandfather never really wanted to or never really did talk about it until about 15 or so years ago.
Yes, we actually wanted to. Everyone knew that everyone had participated in it. We call this conspiratorial silence. In simple terms, people who lived through these experiences often stay quiet because they don't want to burden their children or other relatives with such terrible things. And the children often don't ask because they don't want to force anyone to talk about it. These were deeply traumatic events and that includes the experience of the bunkers. The classic mental health condition that can develop from this kind of trauma is post-traumatic stress disorder. For some, memories of the bunker never faded. With post-traumatic disorders, triggers can reactivate the memories.
We wanted to get on the subway like everyone else and it was extremely crowded. It was very, very crowded. And my grandfather suddenly had a panic attack. There was just too many people in that enclosed space. At first, we didn't understand why he was so nervous and upset. But after a few minutes, we realized what was happening for a very long time. The psychological impact of the trauma of the war, for example, in the bunker, but also in other contexts, was rarely talked about. That silence lasted for decades. Postwar society primarily focused on the crimes of the Nazi era. And it's quite a balancing act to somehow grapple with the enormous crimes that were committed as well as the impact on one's own
population. That didn't happen until much later. For decades, bunkers were seen as leftovers from another era. Then, almost without warning, that feeling shifted. What once felt unimaginable is now starting to feel like a real threat. Could bunkers be on the way back? Peace, the kind of peace we've experienced over the past decades, has already begun to feel less certain. And people who follow the news are aware of that. In everyday life, we see new kinds of threats, attacks through our computers, sabotage of critical infrastructure, drones appearing in our airspace that don't belong there.
I'm Martin Fos. I head the crisis and disaster research center at the Free University of Berlin. As a social scientist, I studied the entire spectrum of human failure, including civil defense. In 2022, the German government took stock of its existing shelters. The result, around 579 public bunkers remain with space for fewer than half a million people, none of them are ready for use. So should Germany decide to build new bunkers, it's understandable that people feel the need to do something concrete, something visible that signals we're not defenseless. And concrete quite literally stands for that. You can go inside and think these walls are thick.
I'm safe here. The question is whether that still makes sense in today's reality. This is not a new debate. With the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, bunkers gained new importance. Once the East West conflict broke out into open conflict, ideas for reusing the bunkers resurfaced. Of course, in West Germany, rearmament began in the 1950s. Conrad Felton was among the first generation of conscripts. I was drafted in 1957. And then on January the 7th, 1959, I boarded a military train to Coblence.
During our final training exercise, we fired live rounds at Russian cardboard targets. That's when we started exchanging some uneasy looks. A nuclear arms race began between East and West and with it came the constant threat of nuclear war, especially for people living in the divided Germany. There were also repeated calls on politicians to build even more bunkers to ensure greater protection. There were also many politicians who were quite sympathetic to this idea, but it usually failed due to the cost.
Instead of building new bunkers, attention turned to those that already existed. But the nuclear age brought new challenges and expectations. During the Cold War, the tunnel was expanded into a protective bunker, specifically a nuclearproof shelter. In other words, a nuclear war was being anticipated. In 1962, the United States discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and responded with a naval blockade. After tense negotiations, the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles. A nuclear catastrophe was narrowly avoided, but the fear remained and with it renewed attention to nuclearproof bunkers.
During the Cuban missile crisis, the nuclear threat suddenly felt very real in Germany. In Dortmund, officials even carried out a test with several hundred people trying to figure out what would actually happen in a nuclear war and how the population would respond. The first days felt strange, but then it felt cozy with plenty to eat. What was the worst part? The cramped space, not enough food. We got through it brilliantly. It was fun. The worst bit was probably the thirst. We didn't have enough to drink.
It was nice. After that, it became clear there wasn't much anyone could actually do. Trying to prepare only made people more anxious. So, in the end, tests like this were no longer carried out. You don't win votes with civil protection. And that's because protecting people also means telling them you are at risk. That's not something people like to hear. They expect politicians not just to warn them, but to reassure them, too. Fear of nuclear war spread on both sides of the divided Germany. In East Germany, many believed they could end up on the front line. The government responded with drills, bunker construction, and propaganda, but the fear never really went away.
In West Germany, a different question emerged. How could the state keep functioning after a nuclear attack? Near Availa, a massive top secret bunker was built inside former railway tunnels designed to hold up to 3,000 people. East Germany prepared as well. Deep underground in Brandenborg, the Honka bunker was constructed. An isolated command center built to survive nuclear war with its own infrastructure and sealed systems. In the end, someone has to be left to continue the war. Cynical as that may sound, the West German bunker was meant to keep the state running. It even included a chamber for an emergency parliament and space for the chancellor, the cabinet, the parliament, the constitutional
court, and the leadership of the military and central bank. at first. They tried to build the bunker in the R Valley in secret. They didn't want people to feel exposed while the government appeared to be protecting only itself. But details eventually became public and resistance grew. Peace activists protested outside the bunker, seeing it as part of a system preparing for war. The movement peaked in West Germany in the early 1980s with mass demonstrations against nuclear weapons. In East Germany, people also called for disarmament,
often under the protection of the church through vigils, prayers, and quiet protests. My first impression is that over the past few decades, we've pushed aside our need for protection. We grew comfortable in the post-war period in the peace movement. There was also a belief that civil protection was already a kind of preparation for war. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was seen as the start of a new era. Germany was reunified. The Soviet Union collapsed. Decades of Cold War confrontation suddenly felt like history. With the end of the Cold War, many felt the nuclear threat had disappeared and that air raid shelters were no longer needed.
My grandfather was part of the local historical society. Since he lived nearby, it made sense for him to take over the guided tours, especially because he'd already collected so many eyewitness accounts about the bunker. From the 1990s onwards, bunkers were increasingly seen as outdated and expensive to maintain. Many were repurposed, others were sold off. There has effectively been no civil defense since then. No protection of the population from military attacks, no real shelter capacity. Saying there might still be space for 500,000 or 600,000 people doesn't mean much when those places aren't maintained at all. In reality, we have nothing. That was the situation after 1989. We dismantled even the few capacities we had because
we thought we wouldn't need them anymore. After all, we were surrounded by friends. In Germany, that's changed dramatically since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now, the question is, how much warning would we actually have? How much time would I have to reach a bunker? During the Second World War, people often had about 15 minutes with modern weapons. And if Russia deployed hypersonic missiles, they'd reach Germany within about 2 minutes and with devastating explosive force. So bunkers might no longer offer much protection. When the sirens go off, every second and every minute counts, but the nearest shelter for me is about 15 minutes away, and often these are just underground parking garages. There aren't many real bunkers.
So, will bunkers make a comeback in Germany and elsewhere as well? I wish they were relics of the past, but I'm afraid that's not the case. For many years, bunkers were mostly seen as historical sites. That too is starting to change. On the last tour, people actually asked, "Could this bunker be used as a bunker again?" No one used to ask that. It was always about turning it into a museum. Now the question is whether it could function as a shelter again. So clearly it's on people's minds. End of pipe. For me, the bunker is the end of the road. Today's threats are far too complex. We need to rethink protection altogether, not just in physical terms. That requires a broader debate, not a narrow focus on concrete shelters.
There's war everywhere. And everywhere we have to find a way, something we can do. I come away with the hope that change is still possible. Why do we still have to worry about bunkers today in the 21st century? How? Why? Honestly, it leaves me speechless that young people today still have to deal with this. We should be much further along. We should have learned from the first and second world wars. And yet there's been war in Ukraine for years now.
We live two lives now. One underground when the siren sound and one above ground. And life underground is something you never really get used to.
