Mamerki – and as Gareth knows I love a good conspiracy…

But today I had four. In a bunker, hidden deep in the woods of NE Poland, the site of some secret WW2 activities that, wait for it, included;

  1. The supposed site of the plundered amber room, worth half a billion at today’s prices. All we know is that after the war, the Amber Room was never seen in public again, this compounded by the destruction in 1968 of Königsberg Castle suggests it “has to be out there”.
  2. Die Glocke, which means “The Bell” and according to some researchers, was supposed to be a prototype of a machine for controlling magnetic field and gravitation, enabling the Nazis to journey in time.
  3. The UFO project, where the Germans flew a saucer shaped craft (Haunebu III) to carry 40 troops and fly and Mach 10 in silence. Not surprisingly it was a secret weapon of the Third Reich (Wunderwaffe).
  4. And lastly, a secret subterranean complex for the construction of U Boats that then allowed onward transport via a series of interconnected locks via the Mazurian Canal leading to the Baltic sea and overcoming the 110 meter drop.

All I know is these bunkers are pretty amazing, massive structures that are slowly being reclaimed by nature and won’t be moved in a hurry, and remember as Michael Barkun says, conspiracy theories rely on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles; nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected.

Mamerki Bunkers

Kåfjord Memories

Somewhere in Norway, I pulled over into the side of a minor dirt road, skirting past the fjords on the lead up to . The sun was shining and rain had long since passed, there was not a sign of a single other vehicle for miles around and I drifted into lay by next to the Tirpitz Museum – thinking it was closed I tried the door only to startle a young man who’s summer job was welcoming the occasional lost traveller – I remember the day like it was yesterday, a strange array of twisted metal and shell casings, plus well restored photographs of the attacks by the RAF and midget submarines from the Royal Navy, plus a well restored snow camouflaged 80 year old BMW bike…Best bike ever!

La Coupole

Hewn from the soft chalk, I wandered on my own through rough cut tunnels and chambers carved through the rock by labourers overseen by the German Army, the sound of running water never far away and despite the outside heat in the open air there was a cold chill and damp which quickly penetrated down through my jacket into my bones. An eerie place, yet I could not help but be in awe of the massive civil engineering efforts that were delivered at a cost of 1000’s of lives to create La Couple. The huge bunker was built by the Todt Organisation between 1942 and 1944 and was the base for launching the V2 rockets against London. The complex was bombed mercilessly by the Allies and the scars of the high explosive detonations can be seen in collapsed chambers and offset concrete caps and arches. La Coupole was abandoned during the summer of 1944, after the Normandy landings and is now slowly being reabsorbed back into the tranquil french countryside.

La Coupole