Fortress front Oder-Warthe-Bogen

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The Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen , even fortress in the Oder-Warthe-Bogen , popularly Ostwall called, was one since mid-1934 by the German Reich heavily fortified line of defense km about 120 built, east of Berlin from the River Warta in the north to the Oder in South leads.

plan

history

Cavity system in the A 62 building
Cusp line on Panzerwerk 717 of the Scharnhorst group
York group of works

The construction of this facility could begin at this early point in time (1934), as the German Reich was not subject to any contractual restrictions in the east, as was the case in the west through the Peace Treaty of Versailles . Taking into account the delivery times for the armor, the construction time was estimated at seven years, the costs for the entire project should amount to 600 million Reichsmarks .

The east wall was planned as a 110 km long, fortified area with a depth of two to three kilometers, very similar to what was also implemented a few years later for the west wall . Some of the bunker constructions are therefore very similar to those of the Siegfried Line, while others are much more extensive. The fortress front consists of numerous bunkers and hydraulic engineering facilities such as B. dams and moats. Roads that led through the so-called main battlefield were provided with armored barriers, swing bridges and tipping roller bridges - tipping roller bridges made it possible to tilt the bridge body and roll it into a space below the road.

Since the political situation had changed in 1939 so that the protection of the imperial border to the west was classified as more urgent, the expansion of the fortress front Oder-Warthe-Bogen was stopped. Fortress construction personnel and armored components were diverted to the west in favor of an accelerated expansion of the western wall . Of the planned 160 structures, only about 60 were completed. With the construction of the Atlantic Wall , weapons and communications equipment began to be dismantled in 1942.

The focus of the east wall is the central section, which begins in the south with the so-called Burschener Loop near the village Burschen (Polish: Boryszyn) and extends from there about twelve kilometers to the north. In the central section, the bunkers are connected by a system of underground tunnels (hollow passages). The main lines of this tunnel system were bombproof and designed for single-track light rail traffic and pedestrian traffic in double rows. The track systems were built by the Bochumer Verein für Gußstahlfabrikation AG (BVG). In this underground system there are train stations, workshops, machine rooms and barracks. The total length of the underground system is around 32 km.

In 1944, the war situation made it necessary to restore the defense capabilities of the fortress front. So until January 1945 u. a. As part of the Barthold company and by the Reich Labor Service, field positions were excavated, wire obstacles and several ring stands erected. This made it possible to build a continuous fire front for machine guns.

On January 28, 1945, the first attack on the central section took place, which the Red Army broke through after three days in the area of ​​the Tirschtiegelstellung . Also on other sections, such as B. the group of works Ludendorff and in the southern areas around Möstchen , there was considerable resistance. Recent research shows that the front withstood three days here too. The front could only be overcome by a bypass movement north of the Meseritz- Wander road and north of Schwiebus . Some tank factories were "ignored" by the Red Army , and Volkssturm men entrenched there were only asked to surrender between April and May. Because not everyone followed the instructions, the tank works were destroyed without being cleared.

See also

literature

  • Christel Focken: Ostwall. The forgotten fortress front "Oder-Warthe-Bogen" . Helios, Aachen 2006, ISBN 3-938208-23-6 .
  • Günter Leibner: The fortress "Oder-Warthe-Bogen" . Haupt, Buchholz 2000, ISBN 3-00-005988-1 .
  • Sonja Wetzig: Ostwall. The forgotten fortress front in the Oder-Warthe bend . Podzun-Pallas, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 1999, ISBN 3-7909-0662-X .
  • Janusz Miniewicz, Bogusław Perzyk: Mie̜dzyrzecki rejon umocniony (German: The fortress front Oder-Warthe-Bogen ). Militaria Bogusława Perzyka Publishing House, Warsaw 2012, ISBN 83-900868-0-8 (Polish).
  • Uwe Klar, André Vogel: Focus "Ostwall" - The fighting over the fortress front Oder-Warthe-Bogen in winter 1945. Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2015, ISBN 978-3-86933-127-0 .

Web links

Commons : Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Albert Molt: The German fortress construction from the Memel to the Atlantic 1900–1945 , ISBN 3-86070-905-4