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Air-raid shelter am Weinberg (Bunker am Weinberg) in Kassel is a World War II air raid shelter built end of the 1930s.
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Air-raid shelter am Weinberg (Bunker am Weinberg) in Kassel is a World War II air raid shelter built end of the 1930s.
Tunnels in the soft limestone of the Weinberg, German for vineyard, were used for storage of ice and beer in the early 19th century. In the late 1930s the German government built air raid shelters in all major cities, and one of them was the Air-raid shelter am Weinberg in Kassel. The shelter was designed for 7500 people. During the war Kassel was targeted several times by large air raids, destroying most of the city. The most severe bombing took place 22/23 October 1943, at that point the bunker was filled with over 10 thousand people. The bunker had a medical section with an emergency room, as well as a military command section with a telecommunications centre.
The bunker was left unchanged, except that most of the equipment was reused shortly after the war. The most severe damage to the bunker was done by an illegal techno party in October 1992. The bunker can be visited by guided tours.
Kassel is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, in central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name, and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020. The former capital of the state of Hesse-Kassel, it has many palaces and parks, including the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kassel is also known for the documenta exhibitions of contemporary art. Kassel has a public university with 25,000 students (2018) and a multicultural population.
A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. They were used extensively in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War for weapons facilities, command and control centers, and storage facilities. Bunkers can also be used as protection from tornadoes.
The Siegfried Line, known in German as the Westwall, was a German defensive line built during the late 1930s. Started in 1936, opposite the French Maginot Line, it stretched more than 630 km (390 mi) from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the western border of Nazi Germany, to the town of Weil am Rhein on the border with Switzerland. The line featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps.
Air raid shelters are structures for the protection of non-combatants as well as combatants against enemy attacks from the air. They are similar to bunkers in many regards, although they are not designed to defend against ground attack.
Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, was subject to 363 air raids during the Second World War. It was bombed by the RAF Bomber Command between 1940 and 1945, the United States Army Air Forces' Eighth Air Force between 1943 and 1945, and the French Air Force in 1940 and between 1944 and 1945 as part of the Allied campaign of strategic bombing of Germany. It was also attacked by aircraft of the Red Air Force in 1941 and particularly in 1945, as Soviet forces closed on the city. British bombers dropped 45,517 tons of bombs, while American aircraft dropped 22,090.3 tons. As the bombings continued, more and more people fled the city. By May 1945, 1.7 million people had fled.
Flak towers were large, above-ground, anti-aircraft gun blockhouse towers constructed by Nazi Germany. There were a total of 8 flak tower complexes in the cities of Berlin (three), Hamburg (two), and Vienna (three) from 1940 onwards. Other cities that used flak towers included Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Smaller single-purpose flak towers were built at key outlying German strongpoints, such as at Angers in France, and Heligoland in Germany.
A submarine pen is a type of submarine base that acts as a bunker to protect submarines from air attack.
During World War II, Braunschweig was attacked by Allied aircraft in 42 bombing raids. On the night of 14/15 October 1944, the attack by No. 5 Group Royal Air Force (RAF) marked the high point of the destruction of Henry the Lion's city during the war. The air raid was part of Operation Hurricane, which was designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Allied bombing campaign. The attack caused a massive conflagration, that might have developed into a firestorm, and resulted in Braunschweig burning continuously for two and a half days from 15 to 17 October. More than 90 percent of the medieval city centre was destroyed, changing the city's appearance to the present day.
The Plymouth Blitz was a series of bombing raids carried out by the Nazi German Luftwaffe on the English city of Plymouth in the Second World War. The bombings launched on numerous British cities were known as the Blitz.
During World War II, the German city of Heilbronn was bombed numerous times by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces. The largest air-raid occurred on December 4, 1944, but Heilbronn was targeted several times before and after until the end of World War II. Altogether, an estimated 7,000 inhabitants of the city lost their lives during bombings.
The Valentin submarine factory is a protective shelter on the Weser River at the Bremen suburb of Rekum, built to protect German U-boats during World War II. The factory was under construction from 1943 to March 1945 using forced labour, but was damaged by air-raids and unfinished by the end of the war. The Valentin factory was the largest fortified U-boat facility in Germany, and was second only to those built at Brest in France.
The Government Bunker(Regierungsbunker) in Germany, officially named Ausweichsitz der Verfassungsorgane des Bundes im Krisen- und Verteidigungsfall zur Wahrung von deren Funktionstüchtigkeit (AdVB), in English: "Emergency Seat of the Federal Constitutional Organs for the State of Crisis or State of Defence to Maintain their Ability to Function" was a massive underground complex built during the Cold War era to house the German government, parliament and enough federal personnel needed to keep the government working in the event of war or severe crisis. Located only about 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bonn, Germany, in the Ahr Valley between the towns of Ahrweiler and Dernau, it was one of the best kept secrets of West Germany. It was built between 1960 and 1972 inside two abandoned railway tunnels that were built as part of the Strategic Railway, maintained and kept in a working condition for about 30 years and decommissioned in 1997. A small part of the once-secret site is now open to the public as Government Bunker Documentation Site, while the vast majority is abandoned and sealed.
The Swansea Blitz was the heavy and sustained bombing of Swansea by the German Luftwaffe from 19 to 21 February 1941. A total of 230 people were killed and 397 were injured. Swansea was selected by the Germans as a legitimate strategic target due to its importance as a port and docks and the oil refinery just beyond, and its destruction was key to Nazi German war efforts as part of their strategic bombing campaign aimed at crippling coal export and demoralizing civilians and emergency services.
During World War II, Leipzig was repeatedly attacked by British as well as American air raids. The most severe attack was launched by the Royal Air Force in the early hours of 4 December 1943 and claimed more than 1,800 lives. Large parts of the city center were destroyed, while factories experienced temporary shortfalls in production, had to move production facilities or even were decentralized.
Stalin's bunker is an air raid shelter located near Samara State University of Culture in Samara, Russia. It is a subterranean bunker complex constructed between February and October 1942. It was the alternative Supreme High Command General Headquarters of the Soviet Armed Forces intended for Joseph Stalin during World War II. Stalin's Bunker is located 37 metres (121 ft) beneath the Kuybyshev CPSU oblast Committee building, 100 metres (110 yd) south-east of the Samara Academy Theater. Stalin's Bunker was declassified in 1990. Now the civil defence museum occupies the former air raid shelter. Air-raid shelters for the Soviet High Command were built also in Yaroslavl, Gorky, Kazan, Ulyanovsk, Saratov and Stalingrad.
The Fichte-Bunker is a nineteenth-century gasometer in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, Germany that was made into an air-raid shelter in World War II and subsequently was used as a shelter for the homeless and for refugees, in particular for those fleeing East Berlin for the West. It is the last remaining brick gasometer in Berlin.
Charlottenburg Town Hall is an administrative building situated in the Charlottenburg locality of Berlin in Germany. It was built between 1899 and 1905 at the behest of the then independent city of Charlottenburg in the Prussian province of Brandenburg.
Acacia Ridge Air Raid Shelter is a heritage-listed former air raid shelter at 174 Mortimer Road, Acacia Ridge, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from c. 1942 to c. 1943 by Allied Works Council. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 6 April 2005.
The bombing of Obersalzberg was an air raid carried out by the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command on 25 April 1945 during the last days of World War II in Europe. The operation targeted Obersalzberg, a complex of residences and bunkers in Bavaria which had been built for Adolf Hitler and other key members of Germany's leadership. Many buildings in the complex were destroyed, though Hitler's residence and the bunker network were only slightly damaged. Two Allied bombers were shot down with the loss of four airmen, and 31 Germans were killed.
The Exzenterhaus is a commercial office building in Bochum, Germany. Designed by architect Gerhard Spangenberg, the building was constructed on top of an air raid shelter built during the World War II era.
51°18′31″N9°29′21″E / 51.30861°N 9.48917°E
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