The 1933 – 1945 Tour. (Happy Days are Here Again!)
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After organising the visit to the battlefields (with help from Micky), I made a snap decision to combine this with a visit to Berlin to meet up with the wife and some friends. They got cheap flights via Easyjet. I was going to ride there (and back, hopefully!) However, there was over two weeks of time between the two. How to fill that up? I decided eventually to head for Silesia (German before 1945 but now in Poland). I ended up taking in a fair few locations connected to WW2 and events before it so I thought I’d do a ride report linking these together in this report. The 1933 – 1945 Tour!
After saying cheerio to the others, I headed for Wewelsburg, just east of the Ruhr. My route took me by autobahn and right through Dortmund and the most heavily congested parts of the German road network! And the weekend was coming up! Is filtering illegal in Germany? One German guy on a Kawa 1400 seemed to think so. Every time I passed him by filtering through the jams, he caught up with me, flat out, several minutes later! None of the drivers seemed to object to me filtering, many even moved over to let me past but he seemed to find it irritating!
There were two reasons for choosing Wewelsburg:
1. The castle there is now a youth hostel. OK, I admit it, I’m a cheapskate but German hostels (jugendherbergen) provide reliably good accommodation, showers etc a decent breakfast (always loads of cold meats, boiled eggs, fruit etc and PLENTY of coffee) and you can book them ahead on t’internet.
2. The castle at Wewelsburg has a history. More about that shortly.
When I arrived, it was snowing! Did I mention how cold it was? Much the same here apparently, or so the wife told me. However, I was not the only biker there. A group from Dortmund arrived. They were out for the weekend (the roads are good in the area) and I spent some of the evening having a drink with them and watching them wince at my attempts at German. Unusually, there were no English speakers among them.
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So why Wewelsburg then? Remember the plot of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark? Mad Nazis in search of antiquities and the Ark of the Covenant in particular? Well, Speilberg was not so far from the truth. Have a look here …
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Spot anything above the door of the guard post? Yep. SS runes. Shortly after the Nazis took over in 1933, Reichsfuhrer SS, Heinrich Himmler chose Wewelsburg as the very epicentre of his empire. Imagine a combination of Camelot and the Knights of the round table, castle Dracula and David Icke, yon weird guy who wore the lilac track suits and you have got Wewelsburg. The SS used it as a training academy cum racial research station, complete with its own “round table” room in the basement of one of the towers.
This is what the whole complex might have looked like, had the Nazis won the war. Horribly overpowering architecture but of course, that was the whole point:
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One of the residents was Dr Walther Darre, the SS chief racial theorist. He wrote this little best seller about how the Aryan race grew in the past …
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The SS sponsored archaeological digs aimed at proving the link between the German people (or those among them who were Aryans) and a pre-historic master race. The SS organisation responsible for this was the Ahnenerbe. The Ahnenerbe organised archaeological and anthropological jollies to Tibet. So you see, Spielberg was not far off the mark!
In short, these people were bonkers! But dangerously bonkers.
In case you were wondering, there was a local concentration camp which provided slave labour for the planned re-construction of the castle and the village of Wewelsburg. Hundreds were worked, starved or beaten to death. One of the Commandants was this wee beauty, Adolf Haas
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Anyway, you can find out all of this and more, if you visit. The former SS guard barrack has been turned into a museum detailing all this. Some interesting stuff there. For example, the SS re-settled 900 000 Aryan settlers into conquered areas of Eastern Europe by 1944. It’s not a big stretch of the imagination to work out what happened to the original inhabitants! Nor what was likely to happen to these settlers once the Red Army re-captured the territory.
And that's my one nagging doubt about the museum. It does not actually focus on these realities. As a result, I suspect it has become a bit of a shrine for Neo Nazis. When I was there, a couple of guys with short hair and bovver boots nipped through the various exhibits, presumably on there way to Himmler’s round table. That would explain why photography is banned there and the CCTV monitoring within.
There is a reminder however, in the form of a war cemetery a couple of miles from the village. As you can imagine, the castle was a target for Allied forces and fighting took place between them and SS and Wehrmacht units. The castle was gutted by fire, started by the SS themselves of course, to cover up what took place there.
Some of the combatants were pretty young, little more than schoolboys, most of whom would have been dragooned into service although some might have been ardent Nazis. Of course, civilians were caught up in the fighting too. Think of the movie "Fury" and you might get some idea, I suppose.
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The top ribbon says : "When all bothers are silent."
More to follow.
After organising the visit to the battlefields (with help from Micky), I made a snap decision to combine this with a visit to Berlin to meet up with the wife and some friends. They got cheap flights via Easyjet. I was going to ride there (and back, hopefully!) However, there was over two weeks of time between the two. How to fill that up? I decided eventually to head for Silesia (German before 1945 but now in Poland). I ended up taking in a fair few locations connected to WW2 and events before it so I thought I’d do a ride report linking these together in this report. The 1933 – 1945 Tour!
After saying cheerio to the others, I headed for Wewelsburg, just east of the Ruhr. My route took me by autobahn and right through Dortmund and the most heavily congested parts of the German road network! And the weekend was coming up! Is filtering illegal in Germany? One German guy on a Kawa 1400 seemed to think so. Every time I passed him by filtering through the jams, he caught up with me, flat out, several minutes later! None of the drivers seemed to object to me filtering, many even moved over to let me past but he seemed to find it irritating!
There were two reasons for choosing Wewelsburg:
1. The castle there is now a youth hostel. OK, I admit it, I’m a cheapskate but German hostels (jugendherbergen) provide reliably good accommodation, showers etc a decent breakfast (always loads of cold meats, boiled eggs, fruit etc and PLENTY of coffee) and you can book them ahead on t’internet.
2. The castle at Wewelsburg has a history. More about that shortly.
When I arrived, it was snowing! Did I mention how cold it was? Much the same here apparently, or so the wife told me. However, I was not the only biker there. A group from Dortmund arrived. They were out for the weekend (the roads are good in the area) and I spent some of the evening having a drink with them and watching them wince at my attempts at German. Unusually, there were no English speakers among them.
So why Wewelsburg then? Remember the plot of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark? Mad Nazis in search of antiquities and the Ark of the Covenant in particular? Well, Speilberg was not so far from the truth. Have a look here …
Spot anything above the door of the guard post? Yep. SS runes. Shortly after the Nazis took over in 1933, Reichsfuhrer SS, Heinrich Himmler chose Wewelsburg as the very epicentre of his empire. Imagine a combination of Camelot and the Knights of the round table, castle Dracula and David Icke, yon weird guy who wore the lilac track suits and you have got Wewelsburg. The SS used it as a training academy cum racial research station, complete with its own “round table” room in the basement of one of the towers.
This is what the whole complex might have looked like, had the Nazis won the war. Horribly overpowering architecture but of course, that was the whole point:
One of the residents was Dr Walther Darre, the SS chief racial theorist. He wrote this little best seller about how the Aryan race grew in the past …
The SS sponsored archaeological digs aimed at proving the link between the German people (or those among them who were Aryans) and a pre-historic master race. The SS organisation responsible for this was the Ahnenerbe. The Ahnenerbe organised archaeological and anthropological jollies to Tibet. So you see, Spielberg was not far off the mark!
In short, these people were bonkers! But dangerously bonkers.
In case you were wondering, there was a local concentration camp which provided slave labour for the planned re-construction of the castle and the village of Wewelsburg. Hundreds were worked, starved or beaten to death. One of the Commandants was this wee beauty, Adolf Haas
Anyway, you can find out all of this and more, if you visit. The former SS guard barrack has been turned into a museum detailing all this. Some interesting stuff there. For example, the SS re-settled 900 000 Aryan settlers into conquered areas of Eastern Europe by 1944. It’s not a big stretch of the imagination to work out what happened to the original inhabitants! Nor what was likely to happen to these settlers once the Red Army re-captured the territory.
And that's my one nagging doubt about the museum. It does not actually focus on these realities. As a result, I suspect it has become a bit of a shrine for Neo Nazis. When I was there, a couple of guys with short hair and bovver boots nipped through the various exhibits, presumably on there way to Himmler’s round table. That would explain why photography is banned there and the CCTV monitoring within.
There is a reminder however, in the form of a war cemetery a couple of miles from the village. As you can imagine, the castle was a target for Allied forces and fighting took place between them and SS and Wehrmacht units. The castle was gutted by fire, started by the SS themselves of course, to cover up what took place there.
Some of the combatants were pretty young, little more than schoolboys, most of whom would have been dragooned into service although some might have been ardent Nazis. Of course, civilians were caught up in the fighting too. Think of the movie "Fury" and you might get some idea, I suppose.
The top ribbon says : "When all bothers are silent."
More to follow.