Location: Margival, 10 km North- East of Soissons, Aisne department Map
Wolfsschluct II (gorge or ravine of the wolf in German) or simply W2 is an abandoned headquarters of Adolf Hitler during World War II. Wolfsschluct II was part of series of buildings constructed for the leader of Third Reich that became known as Fuhrerhauptquartier. It was carried out by 12000 workers under supervision of organization Todt. Hitler intended Wolfsschluct II as a headquarters for Operation Sea Lion, invasion of Great Britain in 1940, however the construction of the site began only in 1942. The site was chosen for important communication lines that already existed on this site and also because Adolf Hitler fought in the vicinity of the future bunker during World War I. The site was supplied by a tunnel that is also found nearby. Adolf Hitler used it briefly between June 16 and June 17, 1944 as a meeting place with Field Marshal Rommel and von Rundstedt about Normandy Front that was opened by the Allies on June 6, 1944. After the end of the war this complex of military bunkers was destroyed and abandoned. The area around Wolfsschluct II was used by French and NATO forces. In the 1990's it was abandoned by the military and its possession was turned to three municipalities. Wolfsschluct II is situated in a town of Margival, 10 km North- East of Soissons, Aisne department.
Its planning dates back to 1940 and it was to be used to house the
German headquarters intended to coordinate the planned invasion of Great
Britain, but its actual construction, led by the Organization Todt, did
not really begin until 1942. Its buildings The main ones are located in
a deep fault where the Soissons-Laon railway passes, in the immediate
vicinity of a six hundred meter tunnel (in order to possibly accommodate
the Führersonderzug, the Führer's special train). It was initially made
up of about thirty large bunkers but also wooden pleasure chalets: it
was surrounded, as closely as possible, by a first protective belt made
up of bunkers, casemates, and steel bells housing anti-aircraft guns.
tanks, DCA and machine guns, and a second belt, further away, with more
dispersed defenses and located several kilometers away, these two lines
of defense being responsible for preventing a land or air attack. The
many underground chalk quarries in the region are also used, especially
for storing ammunition.
The choice of the site, not far from
places where Hitler had fought during the First World War, seems to have
been determined by the presence of a tunnel to accommodate his Amerika
command train, the tunnel is equipped with armored doors in April 1944
But also because of its equal distance between Le Havre and Dunkirk, the
bulk of its construction not really starting until September 1942 after
the Canadian raid on Dieppe. The site mobilized more than 12,000 people,
mainly requisitioned workers over a period of eighteen months.
The name of the site takes up the "theme of the wolf" dear to Hitler.
Some of its headquarters were thus named: the Wolfsschanze (“the Den of
the Wolf”, in Rastenburg in East Prussia) or the Werwolf (“the
Werewolf”, in western Ukraine). There is also a Wolfsschlucht I located
in Belgium at Brûly-de-Pesche near Couvin, less than 100 km northeast of
Margival from where Hitler oversaw part of the Battle of France in June
1940 and a Wolfsschlucht III remained unfinished and built around the
railway tunnel of Saint-Rimay, in the Loir-et-Cher, near the station of
Montoire-sur-le-Loir, the city where the interview between Pétain and
Hitler was held. October 1940.
From March 1942, the land became a
German military zone and the inhabitants of Margival and
Neuville-sur-Margival were evacuated; the population of the surrounding
villages is the following month.
About ten days after the Allied
landings, on June 17, 1944, Hitler, accompanied by Jodl and his General
Staff, went for the first time to Wolfsschlucht II in order to make a
point with Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel on the evolution of the
Normandy front. Rommel almost persuaded him to go the following days to
his headquarters at the castle of La Roche-Guyon, about 150 km west of
Margival, hoping to make him better appreciate the situation on the
front. But, on June 17 at 4:30 a.m., a V1 flying bomb having deviated
from its trajectory exploded near the Wolfsschlucht II on the land of
the Saint-Guislain farm near the village of Allemant three kilometers to
the east. east of the Führerbunker. In the afternoon, squadrons of
Allied bombers flew over the region and bombed the Laon station, about
twenty kilometers to the northeast. These events convince Hitler to
leave W2 at 8 p.m. It was also on June 17 that Hitler summoned General
Heinneman and Colonel Walter of the 65 CA of the Luftwaffe to the W2 to
congratulate them on the V1 offensive on London. The decisions taken at
the Margival conference brought no improvement to the situation of the
Wehrmacht during the Battle of Normandy.
Briefly succeeding
Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge, Marshal Model occupied
Wolfsschlucht II from August 19 to 28, when he took command of the
Western Front, but he had to evacuate it fairly quickly in the face of
the Allied advance. Soissons is liberated on August 29. Learning that
Choltitz had not obeyed his order to burn Paris, Hitler requested on
August 26 that all V1 and V2 be launched on Paris. But it was General
Speidel, one of the still free conspirators of the July 20, 1944 attack
on Hitler, who received the order at Wolfsschlucht II, and did not
transmit it to Marshal Model, who was absent that day. .
From
1944 to 1993
After the war, the site served as a camp for the French
Army then housed a NATO command center (NATO2) from 1952 to 1966 before
being used again by the French Army (from 1968 to 1988) for commando
training (CEC No. 6). In 1993, as part of the Armies 2000 plan, the
French Army abandoned the camp: ownership of the site was returned to
the three municipalities in 2009 after all sales projects failed because
the site was looted and in ruins.
Since 1993
In 2007, an
association of Laffaux, ASW2 (for "Association for the safeguard of the
W2"), was created to promote the history of the site and it organizes
guided tours there.
Since 2007, the “Aisne club 44” association
(created in March 2003) has also been involved in safeguarding the site
after the reopening of the roads using public works machinery and the
creation of car parks. On request, it organizes visits to several
buildings it has owned since 2015.
Since February 5, 2014, the
blockhouses have been listed as historical monuments. One of the three
municipalities where the "W2" right-of-way is located,
Neuville-sur-Margival, has divested itself of several plots by returning
them to individuals and to one of the associations which promote the
former camp .