High bunker

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High bunker in Berlin-Mitte , on the roof a modern penthouse as re-use

A raised bunker is a type of bunker in which the volume of the protected space is wholly or predominantly above the level of the earth's surface . Air raid shelters below the surface level are known as deep bunkers .

History and commitment

High bunkers were built and used mainly in the German Reich before and during the Second World War and still shape the cityscape of many German cities today. Elevated bunkers were preferred when a wet subsoil made the construction of deep bunkers difficult or technically impossible. This is especially true for:

Basically as high bunkers were built:

Economy and protection performance

Breakthrough in the 4.5 m thick ceiling of the Valentin submarine bunker after a bomb hit with the Grand Slam (1945)

With the same degree of protection , high bunkers are cheaper, quicker and can be built with less material than deep bunkers. German investigations in 1940 came to the conclusion that with the same degree of protection and the same number of shelters, an elevated bunker only required one sixth of the material that a comparable deep bunker would have required. The reason for this is the damming effect: the explosion of a bomb that has penetrated the ground near a deep bunker has a much stronger effect than the explosion of the same bomb in the air space near a high bunker, in which part of the explosion energy (pressure wave) is absorbed by the air while the pressure spreads unabated on all sides in the soil and in the water. This allows the walls of a high bunker to be made easier.

However, the maximum degree of protection that can be achieved with high-rise bunkers is limited by the structural wall and ceiling thickness that can be achieved. On the other hand, the degree of protection of underground bunkers can be further increased by deeper construction with a thicker top layer of earth or rock. As early as World War II, high-value targets such as submarine bunkers were successfully attacked with the Grand Slam , a large-caliber penetrator bomb. A high bunker cannot guarantee adequate protection against guided missiles , in particular bunker-breaking bombs such as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator . Therefore, modern bunkers are designed as deep bunkers.

Design and standard constructions

The floor plan of a high bunker can be rectangular, square or round. In contrast to this, high bunkers in Munich often have an octagonal floor plan. High bunkers were mostly built in the form of standard buildings.

A high bunker with only one floor above the surface of the earth is called a flat bunker. From 1941 onwards, this type of construction was only used in exceptional cases in new projects in Germany, as the cost of materials and construction was in poor proportion to the number of protected areas. In addition, the external appearance of the flat bunkers was considered unpleasant, while multi-storey high bunkers could be adapted to the surrounding buildings by means of facade cladding. This definition also applied to underground bunkers. The aesthetic aspect was not a problem there, but the construction costs were even higher. (Guideline of the Speer Department of April 2, 1941)

High bunkers were sometimes given a roof that was not structurally necessary for camouflage, so that from the air they appeared like residential buildings. Another use of a roof or a beveled tip was to repel bombs, as with the Zombeck tower or angle tower . The erection of high bunkers as church bunkers , i.e. in the form of church buildings, also served as camouflage . Due to the high altitude, some bunkers have outside stairs, and outside stairs also allow access to the bunker in the event of the surrounding area being buried by debris .

Reuse

The possibilities of using bunkers are limited by the lack of windows and poor ventilation. In addition, a conversion of the massive reinforced concrete parts of a bunker is tedious and expensive. Typical types of re-use of high-rise bunkers without costly conversion work without changing the massive walls, examples are use as a storage room, as a rehearsal room for bands or even for mushroom cultivation.

Some bunkers are under monument protection. Other bunkers were demolished with considerable effort. There are also some examples of the renovation in order to be able to use the objects for commercial and residential purposes. In Munich in particular, many bunkers were preserved after the Second World War because there was a lack of housing. Therefore there are almost 30 bunkers there. The German Bunker Museum was established in 2014 in the Fichtel and Sachs bunker in Schweinfurt .

Lists of high bunkers

literature

Web links

Commons : Bunker air raid shelter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Working group for troop crew bunkers of the Kriegsmarine (ed.): Table of all known troop crew bunkers and their variants , accessed in May 2014
  2. ↑ Michael Foedrowitz: Bunkerworlds - air raid systems in Northern Germany . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-155-0 , p. 33.
  3. ↑ Dietmar Arnold, Reiner Janick: Sirens and packed suitcases: Bunkeralltag in Berlin Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86153-953-7 , pp. 45–46.