Air Raid Shelter "Dripstone"
The two abandoned high-rise bunkers in the former Jägerslust joint naval camp near Kiel are important reminders of the Nazi era, the Second World War and the post-war era in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The camp was built from 1937 for workers at the Flemhude oil plant, but was later increasingly used as a transit and labor camp for prisoners of war and forced laborers. Part of this complex were two massive high-rise bunkers, which were originally designed as air raid shelters for the camp personnel.
The bunkers - known as “Bunker East"
and “Bunker West” - were planned with almost identical construction methods: with wall and ceiling thicknesses of two meters each and a rectangular floor plan of around 43.3 by 20.4 meters. Nevertheless, there were significant structural differences during the course of the war. While the eastern bunker was largely completed and represented a fully functional protective structure, the western bunker remained unfinished.
Due to increasing material and labor shortages in the final years of the war, only around a third of the planned reinforcements could be implemented in the West Bunker. Visible differences in the execution - such as incompletely cast ceiling areas and missing interior fittings - make this discrepancy visible to this day.
Over the course of the war, the camp itself housed several thousand forced laborers and prisoners of war of various nationalities, including Poles, Belgians, Dutch, Italians, Danes and, from 1943, over 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war. They were deployed to work in the navy and the associated facilities under the most difficult conditions.
After the end of the Second World War, the British occupation authorities initially planned to blow up both bunkers in 1950 to render them unusable. However, due to their proximity to inhabited barracks and safety concerns, this plan was abandoned. Instead, a so-called “defortification” was carried out: parts of the bunkers' ceilings and walls were broken open with pneumatic hammers in order to remove their protective function. The east bunker in particular still shows clearly visible traces of this measure today - partially destroyed ceiling areas, broken open interiors and missing protective layers.
In the post-war period, the camp in Jägerslust continued to be used - initially as a reception camp for German refugees and displaced persons until the late 1960s, and later as accommodation for repatriates and asylum seekers. While the original wooden barracks no longer exist today, some stone barracks and the remains of the two elevated bunkers have been preserved. The east bunker has been better preserved due to its larger completion and still impressively demonstrates the architecture and practicality of National Socialist protective structures. The west bunker, on the other hand, appears more fragmented and impressively documents the increasing scarcity of resources towards the end of the war.
Today, the remaining buildings - including structural traces such as rows of birch trees and the remains of foundations - are part of a memorial landscape that commemorates forced labor, captivity and the history of flight. Historians describe Jägerslust as one of the largest contiguous bunker and camp complexes in Schleswig-Holstein.
To this day, the bunker remains bear witness to civilian and military use, suffering and post-war change - and serve as a reminder to come to terms with one of the darker chapters of North German history.
Visited: March 14, 2021 and Januar 16, 2022
Location: Jägerslust, Germany
Status: Abandoned/Sealed
