100 Places You Will Never Visit (17 page)

BUNKER PLANS An overhead view of the Führerbunker as it would have looked in operation. The oldest part was the upper section (Vorbunker), completed in 1936 beneath a reception hall at the Reich Chancellery. The complex was extended by the HOCHTIEF construction company as the Second World War approached its final stages.

Key: 1. Kitchen area, 2. Dining area, 3. Goebbels’ family apartments, 4. Hitler’s private rooms, 5. Map room, 6. Conference room.

The Battle for Berlin began in mid-April 1945, by which time Hitler had moved into the bunker. Overcome with paranoia and quite delusional, he clung to the hope that the city might be saved, but there was no realistic chance of escape. Hitler made his final trip to the world above on April 20 to award Iron Crosses to members of the Hitler Youth. Nine days later, he married Eva Braun in the map room before dictating his last will and testament. The following day the newlyweds killed themselves in the bunker, and were cremated in a shell hole in front of one of its emergency exits. The following day, Goebbels and his wife Magda murdered their children and then committed suicide.

By that point, the city was flooding with Soviet forces intent on wreaking revenge on their most bitter of enemies. When Red Army troops uncovered the bunker on May 2, they discovered at least a dozen bodies within its confines. Though they would subsequently raze both the Old and New Chancellery buildings to the ground, the Führerbunker remained largely unharmed except for some flooding.

It was a long-held aim of post-war German governments to ensure the bunker did not become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. In 1947, the Soviets attempted to blow it up completely, but only the separation walls suffered real damage. Much of the bunker lay in land that came under East German governance in the post-war era. Under Moscow’s influence, East Germany did a characteristically effective job of erasing the site from the historical record. Although an attempt to blow up the remaining parts of the bunker ended in failure in 1959, the area became neglected and largely forgotten.

Building works in the locality in the 1980s led to further destruction of the Führerbunker’s concrete canopy, a job undertaken efficiently and without publicity. A further section was discovered during preparations for a 1990 concert celebrating German reunification by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. However, it was promptly sealed up by the city authorities. Subsequent road and building projects (including the construction of housing for regional administrators) further hid whatever still remains beneath the ground. Even the Info Box, one of Berlin’s leading tourist attractions in the 1990s, failed to mention the location of the site, although the attraction itself was within view of it.

As time passes, the argument grows that to recognize what is left of the bunker is not to glorify its chief builder. Other important locations from the war, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau or the Topography of Terror Museum on the site of the former SS and Gestapo headquarters, have proved valuable in teaching new generations about the horrors of the period. What is left of the Führerbunker is uncertain, but it is likely that some sections remain in place, should it ever be decided to open them up for historical study. In the meantime, since 2006 the location has been marked by a simple information board erected in the middle of a drab car park, some 200 meters (660 ft) from the city’s Holocaust Memorial.

1 TYRANT’S END A view of the Reich Chancellery gardens, with an entrance to the Führerbunker visible on the left. It was here, in a crater, that Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, were cremated after they had committed suicide in April 1945.

2 NOTHING TO SEE A nondescript Berlin car park now covers the area containing the Führerbunker’s remnants. There is little to indicate the significant role the site played in 20th century history.

58 Vatican Secret Archives

LOCATION Vatican City

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Rome, Italy

SECRECY OVERVIEW Access restricted: the historical archives of the Roman Catholic Church.

The only entry in this book so hush-hush that it includes the word “Secret” in its name, the Vatican Secret Archives is the repository for many of the most important documents related to the history of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. Although open to accredited researchers, much of the Archive’s contents remains off-limits: critics suggest it hides evidence of numerous dark episodes from the past.

In reality, the word Secretum in the Archive’s Latin name Archivum Secretum Vaticanum has more of a sense of “privacy” than “secrecy”—that is to say, the Archive is the papacy’s private possession. Today it contains somewhere in the region of 85 kilometers (53 miles) of shelving, holding materials that date back to the eighth century.

It was Pope Paul V, in 1611, who commanded the construction of what became the Secret Archives, now located next to the Vatican Museums. The Archives opened on January 31, 1612, with Baldassarre Ansidei as their first custodian. In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte transferred many of the contents to Paris, but most were returned by 1817 following Napoleon’s fall from power. In 1881, Pope Leo XIII took the momentous step of opening up the Archives for scholarly research. Documentation has subsequently been released on a pontificate-by-pontificate basis—at present, access is available to materials dating to the end of Pope Pius XI’s reign in 1939.

In 1980, Pope John Paul II inaugurated an extension to the Archives, a two-story underground bunker beneath the Vatican Museums’ Cortile della Pigna. Providing 31,000 cubic meters (330,000 cu ft) of climate-controlled storage in a reinforced, fire-resistant concrete structure fitted with the latest security features, it is now home to some of the Church’s most valuable documents.

QUIET PLEASE A view of the Reading Room at the Vatican Secret Archives. In the forefront is a letter written by the great Renaissance artist, Michelangelo. Despite creating the astonishing Sistine Chapel ceiling for them, he nonetheless had some frosty standoffs with the Vatican authorities.

Among the Archive’s treasure are documents relating to the bloody period of the Inquisition. It also houses King Henry VIII of England’s petitions for divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the rejection of which led to the foundation of the Church of England beyond papal jurisdiction. (Pope Clement VII may have received as many as 80 petitions on the issue, all bound in red ribbons that some believe are the origin of the phrase “red tape” to indicate excessive bureaucracy).

There is also literature relating to the trial of Galileo in 1633 on charges of heresy (the papacy not being overly keen on his insistence that the Earth was not at the center of the Universe), as well as a letter from Michelangelo complaining about late payment for his painting and decorating work.

However, some outside of the Church accuse the Archives of being too reticent about sharing its history. For instance, many questions have been posed about the Catholic Church’s actions during the Second World War. In 2005, the US-based Coalition for Jewish Concerns even threatened to sue the Vatican unless it produced materials that could identify Jewish children baptized as Catholics to save them from Nazi persecution.

The Church, on the other hand, points to the fact that it is quite normal for deposits in other archives to remain unopened for decades and even centuries in the hope that the passage of time will protect them from the threat of political manipulation. Furthermore, it has sanctioned some early releases, as in 2004 when it opened files relating to the Vatican’s relations with Germany from 1922 up to the outbreak of the war. Pope John Paul II also granted early access to files concerning prisoners of war in the 1939–45 period.

Yet access even to those parts of the Archive that are open is no simple business. All researchers must have a university degree or equivalent, and members of the clergy need a licentiate degree or PhD. Before access is granted, a formal application must be made, accompanied by a letter from a recognized institute or qualified individual in the field of historical research. If there is already someone researching in your particular area of interest, you’ve probably had it.

One group that can command early access to documentation are postulators of sainthood (i.e. those putting forward a candidate for sainthood). This, it must be presumed, is to ensure that the Church’s saints have no nasty skeletons lurking in the cupboard. But even postulators must be granted special access from the Vatican’s secretary of state, and are duty-bound not to divulge any information that they may turn up.

In 2012, an exhibition featuring a hundred documents from the Archives was held in Rome’s Capitoline Museums. It was the first time any of them had been allowed outside of the Vatican. While it was a further step along the road to transparency, the suspicion lingers that the Archives are rather like a giant iceberg—the bits you can see are fascinating, but the really amazing stuff is hidden underneath the surface.

ALL SQUARE A satellite view of the Vatican City highlights St. Peter’s Square and St. Peter’s Basilica, widely regarded as the chief church of the Roman Catholic faith. With a total area of 44 hectares (110 acres) and a population of little more than 800, the Vatican is the world’s smallest independent state.

59 Radio Liberty Building

LOCATION Hagibor, Prague, Czech Republic

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Prague

SECRECY OVERVIEW High-security location: home of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Now into its seventh decade of providing uncensored news to regions where it is in short supply, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has regularly attracted the opprobrium of governments and, increasingly, militant organizations. Because of this, it has been forced to construct one of the world’s most secure buildings to serve as its headquarters.

Radio Free Europe was established in 1950, at the start of the Cold War. Its original aim was to maintain a supply of uncensored news to audiences in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the citizens of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Radio Liberty emerged three years later to broadcast to the USSR. For many years both stations were primarily funded by the CIA, and in 1976 they were merged.

RFE/RL soon became a prime target for governments behind the Iron Curtain. In 1978, for instance, the Bulgarian dissident and RFE contributor Georgi Markov was assassinated in London by Bulgarian secret police, who infamously used a poisoned umbrella to kill him. Three years later, RFE/RL’s Munich headquarters were bombed by the Romanian secret services.

After the collapse of communism around 1990, RFE/RL stopped broadcasting to many of its former territories, but began operations in several new regions, including the states of the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Today, it broadcasts in 28 different languages across 20 countries, to a weekly audience of 25 million.

Having struggled to continue financing its Munich headquarters, RFE/RL moved to Prague in 1995 at the invitation of Czech President Vaclav Havel. Somewhat ironically, the station worked out of headquarters that were once home to the country’s communist party.

However, in 2009 RFE/RL moved again, this time to new, purpose-built premises in the Hagibor district of the city. Designed by Jakub Cigler and Vincent Marani, the five-story headquarters houses 500 employees. It is one of the most heavily protected buildings in the world—a necessity given the station’s ongoing status as a terrorist target. Security provisions include strengthened steel doors and barriers, and under-vehicle surveillance at entrance points. Door codes are even required to gain access between floors. Freedom and liberty, it seems, come at a price.

60 Svalbard Global Seed Vault

LOCATION Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Longyearbyen, Svalbard

SECRECY OVERVIEW High-security location: an underground vault for the storage of plant seeds from around the world.

With the world constantly on the brink of disaster, many countries have taken the precaution of putting seed samples from plants (especially food crops) into secure storage. If a species is unexpectedly wiped out, it can be recreated from deposits held in such seed banks. The Svalbard Vault is essentially “the banker’s bank,” home to backup seed samples from other seed banks scattered across the globe.

While many nations have established seed banks within their own boundaries, they face the eternal question of what happens if whatever destroys a species in the first place also takes out the seed bank. Nuclear weapons or tsunamis are, after all, indiscriminate. The Global Seed Vault, sited some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from the North Pole is, in effect, a vast insurance policy against global catastrophe and the loss of diversity.

Located on Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago (a possession of Norway), the Vault consists of three main chambers, some 120 meters (390 ft) within a sandstone mountain. This location was chosen in part for it remoteness—any would-be intruders would face quite a task to even get to Svalbard, let alone enter the Vault itself. Just as importantly, however, the region is among the most peaceful and politically stable in the world (no doubt because of the relatively small numbers of people). In addition, the area lies 130 meters (430 ft) above sea level, so would likely escape unscathed even in the event of the polar ice caps melting. It also experiences little disruptive tectonic activity and has a permafrost ideal for maintaining the optimum climatic conditions to preserve the seeds.

Opened in 2008, the Vault cost just short of US$10 million to build and is run according to an agreement signed by the government of Norway, the Nordic Genetic Resource Center and the Global Crop Diversity Trust. It receives funding from assorted national governments and international non-governmental organizations. As with other types of safe deposit banks, deposits remain the exclusive property of the depositor and neither the Vault’s management nor the Norwegian government have any claim upon them. However, if a country were no longer to exist for any reason, it is unclear who would then own that nation’s particular deposit.