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!

The Lapland War

Riding south from Ravaniemi on the E75, I spotted a small side turning leading east marked Tervola and slipped quickly of the rough north south route, into the unknown. The brilliant sunshine glimmered of the the new bridge over the Kemi, as I stopped in the shade of the Kirk. Finland’s wartime past is not widely publicised but knowing the Russian pacts and advance from the east and the Finnish resistance and the earlier Lapland War, the number of German and Finnish war graves with similar dates reinforces the strategic importance of this river crossing in 1944.

The Bridge at Tervoia The battle for Tervoia