Beauty and the Beast

 

The Mazurian Lake district in north east Poland is one of Europe's great secrets, despite being one of the country's premier holiday destinations.  I've been there a few times, including a week's sailing with some friends during which I managed to break my elbow (but wasn't aware of it for a couple of days.....a story for another day!) and each time I've discovered more to like.

The countryside itself is stunningly beautiful, comprising rolling, densely forested hills, carved out by the glaciers' retreat at the end of the last Ice Age.  The land is agriculturally rich, with mile after mile of corn and sunflower fields, and pasture land where cows and horses and sheep roam.  Going in the late summer, in August, when the sun is shining from a cloudless blue sky and the temperature rising to the high 20sC is to see the land at its best.  Fleets of combine harvesters roll through the fields, harvesting their crops, and the network of narrow winding roads that serve the region are sometimes blocked by traffic tailbacks following patiently (give or take) behind slow moving tractors hauling flat wagons piled high with big rolled hay-bales.  Atop telegraph poles and farm-cottage chimney stacks and lower trees are big unruly stork's nests, their occupants surveying the passing traffic carelessly, and preparing to set out on their long winter migration to Africa. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you may see a group of half a dozen or more of them, strutting around in the freshly cut fields on their spindly legs, squawking at each other, for all the world as if they are discussing when to leave and what route to follow - which indeed they may well be: who knows?  By September, they are all gone, to return in the following spring.

As you drive along the roads, enjoying the ever changing greens of the forest branches that often arch over the road in a living canopy, you will see on one side or the other a lake, big or small, its crystal clear water sparkling invitingly in the sunshine, the forest often coming right down to the water line.  Little villages are scattered around, built on the lakeshore, many with campsites and kayaking centres and raggedy old buildings housing little shops and restaurants serving delicious regional cooking and strong beers at sensible prices.  Many of the lakes are linked by a network of rivers and canals that allow kayaks and bigger boats to navigate between them in an endless procession (at least in summer).  

The region has an area of roughly 10,000 sq.km, and has 2,000 lakes, dwarfing its English counterpart.  It is an idyllic part of a country that has many other beautiful regions - notably its Baltic coast, with lovely sandy beaches and a chain of vibrant resort towns and villages stretching from the German border to that of the Russian Kaliningrad enclave; its mountain ranges, the Beskidy and high Tatras, bordering the Czech Republic and Slovakia that offer good skiing; and of course the vibrant historical cities of Warsaw and Kraków, Poznań and Gdansk - and the more I see of it, the more I consider it the jewel in Poland's crown.

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But it has its darker side, too, as do many places in this historically most embattled European country.  For years, Mazury was an integral part of the old Prussian empire, and a battleground in its wars with Russia and Austro-Hungary, and the old Royal Poland.  For the last two decades of the 18th, the entire 19th, and first two decades of the 20th centuries, Poland itself didn't exist, having been dismembered and Partitioned by those three Empires.  It had a brief resurrection between the First and Second World Wars, although Mazury remained part of greater Germany (Prussia) and shared its ethnicity, before being overrun in 1939 by Nazi Germany from the West and Stalinist Russia from the East, and Mazury only returned to Poland by a gradual process as its demographic evolved during the post-War years.

There are memorials scattered throughout the region, and here and there small and well-tended cemeteries commemorating its past.  I recently visited one on a quiet Mazurian road, kilometres from the nearest town of any size, at the peak of a small hill surrounded by forest and cornfield.  It was small, less than half the size of a football pitch - perhaps not much bigger than a penalty area - , dating from the First World War, and a plaque advised it held the remains of German and Russian troops. 

There were less than 50 stone crosses arranged neatly, all bearing the names of the German victims, the officers at the bottom end and sheltered by trees overhanging the graves, the other ranks at the top closest to the quiet road and open to the sun and elements.  In the centre was a tall engraved cross, and in one corner, by the officers, a life sized statue of the Virgin and Child.  Not a single cross bore a Russian name.  But the place was clean, the grass recently cut short, and surrounded by a freshly  painted tubular steel waist high fence with an entry gate and well maintained steps.  Inside there were a couple of park benches facing each other either side of the central monument.  It was a peaceful place, and as good a resting place for the poor sods buried there as I could think of.

Later that day we went to an altogether darker place, that came close to changing the course of history one sunny day in August 1944.

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By then, the course of the War had turned decisively against Hitler, the D-Day landings had happened and British and American troops were en-route to Berlin. In the East, the Russian Army was advancing through what is now Lithuania towards Poland and on to Berlin - it had already reached Warsaw, where it parked on the river and watched the slaughter of the failed uprising play out tragically on the opposite bank. The writing was on the wall, and the madman retreated with henchmen like Göring and Himmler and Bormann to his Eastern fortress, the Wolf's Lair, to plan the final defence of the Reich. Meanwhile, a group of senior staff officers led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a decorated war hero maimed in battle and confined to desk duties, was planning to overthrow Hitler, seize power and sue for peace. The plan culminated in von Stauffenberg attending a staff briefing with Hitler and other leaders at Wolf's Lair carrying with him a bomb. The assassination attempt failed, Hitler was only lightly wounded, von Stauffenberg and his staff officer, who had attended with him, captured and executed the same day. He was just 36 years old. Over the ensuing weeks, the co-conspirators were all systematically hunted down and shot or hung, frequently with their families, wives and children, in a brutal act of revenge. It has been estimated that nearly 5,000 people died as a result.

What has this to do with Mazury, this idyllic forest and lakeland? Simply this: the Wolf's Lair is situated deep in the forest close to a small village called Gierloż, itself 8km from the Mazurian town of Kętrzyn (then known by its Prussian name of Rastenburg).

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Wolfsschanze, to give it its German name, remains hidden away and off the main tourist routes through Mazury. It's down side roads, at least the route we took, currently under repair and covered with loose gravel and dirt, almost unmade roads, that meander through the forest past isolated hamlets and farms. You arrive at the front gate abruptly, round a bend in the road, at a cross roads marked with a big sign announcing your arrival. The road from the opposite direction may be better....

You are in the middle of the forest - the open fields receded a few kilometres back. Turn right and you are at the entrance of what is now a good museum, and pay your admission fee (car, two adults, one child, 65zl - call it £10), pull in and park: there is ample space. There is a wooden shed that rents headsets with a guided tour in about four languages and the usual guidebooks (again in multiple languages), and next to it a big sign that gives a detailed map of the site and its position in relation to the immediate area and more generally Germany c.1944.

The site covers an area of some 8 sq.km of forest, while the headquarters complex itself covers some 2.5 sq.km. It's a big place. The complex contains nearly 30 separate buildings, including offices, canteens, troop barracks and a railway station, as well as half a dozen concrete monstrosities that were the personal bunkers of senior Nazis like Himmler and Göring and Bormann, with the biggest of them all reserved for the Führer himself.

When the site was abandoned ahead of the advancing Russians, German troops were tasked with destroying the site and used high explosives to do so, and by and large did a pretty good job: most of the buildings are reduced to piles of rubble, though the bunkers, especially Hitler's, are still outwardly largely intact though badly damaged. The forest is reclaiming its own now: many of the wrecked buildings are being covered in a carpet of ivy and grass and weeds, and trees and bushes are growing from their damaged roofs.

The network of paths that wind through site have been re-surfaced and the stroll round them all takes the best part of two hours. We only did the highlights (or maybe lowlights?), in particular the Hitler bunker, which is the size of a parish church with walls several feet thick. I wandered around taking my photos, as did everyone else, and found myself trying to imagine the place crawling with Nazi stormtroopers, staff cars, supply trucks and so on, rather than the crowds of generally solemn tourists. I wondered how many people had died during its construction: how many slaves worn out and shot when their strength failed; how many local girls brought in to satisfy the whims of their Nazi "masters" and then discarded like so much trash. And how many millions more in concentration camps and gas chambers and on battlefields as a result of the plans devised and ordered there under the summer sun and autumn rains and winter snow......

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It's an interesting but ultimately fruitless exercise, to consider how the world might be now had the assassination attempt been successful instead of a failure. With Hitler and his henchmen dead or fleeing (probably), presumably Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin would have accepted a German surrender and negotiated a settlement. At least it would have saved another 9 or 10 months of slaughter across Europe, and hence saved countless lives.

Perhaps the Russian rampage West would have been halted in its tracks, and prevented the country's annexation of so much of Eastern Europe, the evils of the Iron Curtain and terror of the Cold War. Perhaps many of the region's current ills, in places like Poland and Hungary and the former Yugoslavia could have been avoided, the nationalist rantings of the grey and dangerous old men currently in power strangled at birth by a more meaningful and equitable post-war settlement. Maybe the European Union, born out of the chaos of re-building the Continent, would not have been needed.

The memories of what plans were hatched by the beast Hitler amid the beauty of the Mazurian forest all those years ago, and their human and financial cost, are already fading, just as the scars of the construction and subsequent destruction of the Wolf's Lair are being covered by nature's own healing process. In another 100 years, assuming the climate crisis hasn't put an end to us all, it will all be gone, a distant memory of times gone by. 

The stuff of legend.....