- Maybach I and II
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Maybach I and II were a series of above and underground bunkers built 20 kilometres south of Berlin near Zossen, Brandenburg to house the High Command of the Army (in Maybach I) and the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (in Maybach II) during the Second World War. The complex was named after the Maybach automobile engine.
Contents
Maybach I
Maybach I was a built between 1937 and 1939 as the threat of war loomed. The complex consisted of twelve three storey buildings above ground designed to look from the air like local housing, and two floors of interlinked bunkers with two foot thick walls below. Later in the Second World War the site was further camouflaged by the use of netting.
Maybach II
Maybach II completed in 1940 was of the same design with eleven surface buildings.
World War Two
During 1945 the site was heavily bombed by both the British and Americans including a raid on 15 March that injured Chief of the Army General Staff Hans Krebs[1].
Midday 20 April the OKH evacuated to Eiche near Potsdam and OKW to Krampnitz, and the Russians arrived in afternoon finding the site empty apart for four German soldiers. The two Maybach bunkers were blown up by the Russians in late 1946 although the above surface building survived.
References
- ^ Beevor, A (2003) Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, P151
External Links
Categories:- Military units and formations established in 1938
- Wehrmacht
- Nazi Germany
- German High Command during World War II
- World War II sites
- Nazi architecture
- Forts in Germany
- Fortification
- Bunkers
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