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Part of a telephone switchboard from Hitler's Headquarters at the Wolfsschanze, East Prussia, 1944 (c)
Adolf Hitler's Supreme Command Headquarters, nicknamed the 'Wolf's Lair', was located in woodland near Rastenburg in East Prussia (now Poland). It was a complex of bunkers fortified by barbed wire and minefields. Built in 1941 for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, it was abandoned in 1944 when Russian troops approached East Prussia.
The names on the telephone switchboard include Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Hermann Göring, chief of the German Airforce, Wilhelm Keitel the Commander-in-Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW), Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, and Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler's Secretary. All of these men were indicted war criminals and wanted by the Allies for crimes against humanity. The telephone exchange is a fitting reminder of a tyranny that launched the deadliest war in human history and a policy of industrial mass murder.
NAM Accession Number
NAM. 1992-10-113-1
Copyright/Ownership
National Army Museum Copyright
Location
National Army Museum, Conflict in Europe gallery
Object URL
https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1992-10-113-1