Inside Hitler's Guernsey Island Bunkers | With Dan Snow

[Music] guernsey a stunning strategic outpost of the british isles for centuries to anyone visiting today it's clear that an enormous amount of effort was spent on its defense by successive monarchs governments and during the second world war occupiers after germany's successful invasion of the channel islands in 1940 adolf hitler was determined to turn guernsey into fortress of his own i'm dan snow and in this guide i'm going to join local guide amanda johns to explore the remains of hitler's bunkers [Music] so amanda great to meet you good to meet you dan thanks for showing me around your beautiful island what are we looking at today so today we are at one of the gunning placements for battery mirrors and this is part of the extraordinary fortifications built by the germans in world war ii it's just amazing the amount of fortifications that are on our island and this is how it's one of the largest guns that were here hi there dan hi welcome to batch of iris very nice to meet you thank you you too this is an unbelievable concrete footprint is this typical of guernsey well this site is the biggest in the channel islands to be fair really and this is absolutely huge as you can see did this gun ever fire a shot in anger it did but very ineffectively just having a pot shot at enemy ships yeah that's right so it was it was a bit of a waste of money and effort on it as well yes right do you want to take me inside yeah let's do it come on don't see that you're kidding look at this to assert his dominance over the channel islands hitler ordered the construction of the massive mirros battery the four huge naval guns placed here were capable of firing 12-inch shells [Music] yes it is yeah so this is directing people to the first aid point which is uh in the far corner of the bunker wow it's an amazing state of preservation where we going so we have um the eagle and if you look very closely you will actually see that it's drawn out much larger so we have the clear blue eagle but then we have another circle down here with the swastika and if you look out there's pencil lines drawing the wings to be much larger and also if you look at the eagle's head and go a few centimeters either side you see pencil lines of another eagle's head looking in that direction and then what's at the other end so at the far end we have some german artwork um there's no real little translation but it means we march towards england or we go towards england [Music] so that's the naval anchor with the engineers behind with this main label site i've never seen anything like that it's fantastic so this is unique to this particular emplacement thousands of german soldiers were posted to guernsey and 72 of them were stationed here at the mirror's battery tasked with defending the island at all costs it is absolutely massive it is there's a big difference into this area where the crew were accommodated you see patterns on the wall here where you see stencils such as these just to make it feel a bit more homely we've also got um some german text here according to mit which means attention the enemy is listening and that's where the telephone would have been uh would have been mounted will they have to ring her they'll ring home but because they're using the civilian telephone network they didn't want to give any information over that this area here we have four rooms here where the crew would have been sleeping so there was 68 crew men sharing at least four rooms here it would have been quite cozy yeah i think it would be very cozy but i think they'd have been glad they were here and not on the eastern front in russia so these are quite typical of crew rooms for german bunkers they have three tiers of bunks that fold down it's quite tight in terms of their personal space they get hooked onto these chains and this room would have had you know a whole row of bunks all the way around possibly a few wardrobes and just all their personal effects there and then there was a sink for the first aid just by the door so this room would have had wooden paneling just to make things maybe a little bit warmer for them and maybe to deaden the sound a little but when that's all peeled off after the war because the timber was being used full source of fuel immediately post war it revealed some quite interesting information that was inscribed on the wall there's numbers that we see which we believe in german not quite sure what they're doing but there's also a very nice drawing on the board over there which we just period oh wow possibly one of the crew maybe was thinking of somebody back at home yeah anticipating allied retaliation for his occupation of the channel lines hitler also ordered the construction of a vast underground hospital spanning 72 000 square feet capable of withstanding a concerted assault [Music] how many wounded german service personnel could this hospital deal with at full capacity if it was used in a massive emergency at full capacity 800 that when the item was liberated they found 800 bed spaces down here you know unbelievable the tunnel system itself was originally designed to hold reserve troops you know because from where we are you could it's almost a direct road system that takes you down to the west coast those channels would have been excavated by by who the germans themselves but the germans would have overseen all the technical designs and drawings the um how the materials dug up because tunneling is a very specialist engineering work however they would have had a massive resource of forced labor which were brought over to the island we know at the peak there are nearly 6 000 farm workers here so [Music] that just gives you a sense of the task of mining through this rock yeah i mean they would have created a small pilot tunnel and then as they were getting ready to put these sidewalls up in the roof they would have then expanded it at the last minute you can see the tight conditions between the rock plates and the actual concrete above so they would have been working up there they'd have been crawling between the concrete and and the rock face yes and this is one of three main entrants and exits forced labor down here just doesn't bear thinking let's keep heading in yeah so as we're coming down this corridor this is where the patients would have been brought in and as you look around you can see where the overhead pipe work would have been the electrical cables but as we look down you see this lip that's actually been built up around the drains this is where they would have hung the stretchers where they would have washed them down wow you know unbelievable and so this keeps all the sort of blood and gore in one area and wrecking it down the drain single wooden beds in very close proximity to each other and in some walls they would have had bunk beds obviously for the lesser wounded people to be able to get as many people as possible underground in safe conditions obviously these these wards were never filled with wounded men in battle but it would have been terrifying sights and sounds don't know indeed busy yeah and aft shortly after d-day there was a lot of allied air activity around the islands and shipping being attacked and we know from post-war visitors that some of the german naval personnel who are injured offshore from the islands rather than being taken to the german medical hospitals on the outskirts of some people they were actually brought here for treatment at that time it was used it has been used indeed um and perhaps one of the more unusual stories we've in more recent years we've also discovered that the number of children were brought here for dental treatment um no doubt because the local hospital facilities are in such short supply materials and there must be an almost unwritten agreement between the doctors we'll still help your people as much as we can really interesting the channel items were liberated in may 1945 following the general german surrender a major attack on guernsey never took place [Music] although much of what the occupiers left behind was reused as the islanders began the long process of rebuilding the traces of the second world war that remain on guernsey are remarkable [Music] thanks for watching this video on the history hit youtube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated history channel historyhit.tv you're going to love it

Channel: History Hit

Views: 58,033

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, hitler bunker, guernsey island, guernsey island ww2, guernsey island documentary, guernsey island german occupation, guernsey island occupation, ww2 bunker, ww2 bunker exploration, channel island ww2, dan snow documentary, dan snow history hit, dan snow history, channel island bunkers, inside german bunker, guernsey ww2 occupation, ww2 bunkers guernsey, history hit ww2, channel islands occupation ww2, channel islands occupation documentary

Id: Po_us4ptWB4

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022