Flak Tower (Now Hard Rock Hotel) from WWII in Germany 💣 Still Standing - Teach a Man to Fish
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ต.ค. 2018
- Update: Now a Hard Rock Reverb Brand Hotel! Tour an actual WWII German Flak Tower that was used for air defense against Allied Bombers during WWII. These towers still exist and have been repurposed in businesses and a nightclub. This is the Flakturm IV Generation 1 in Hamburg Germany.
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Carbon Steel vs Cast Iron: th-cam.com/video/ATKRNcUA-G8/w-d-xo.html
6:32 For a second I thought it said "Führer Festival".
@@reiryghts639 @yahoo.com
It’s quite depressing how much European history was lost because of World War II...
in Wien, Österreich wurde einer in einen aquazoo "Haus des Meeres" umgebaut
Looks like this tower would be outta nazi zombies
The Germans built them to last and they did last indeed.
Long after we are gone too.
In vienna you will find 3 towers 2 of them still intact. One is a police HQ xD and one a maritime museum ..they say they tried to demo them but it was impossible to break it down.. some parts of the concrete where still wet even 60years after construction.. these things will survive at least another 💯 years..
jak dbasz to masz.
They lasted longer than the Nazis!!!
@@IFist iam sorry to tell you... Nazis still exist... Not the regime though.. but nazis are still among us.. in france, austria,germany.. even israel.. it is so sad that you cant get rid of the idiology...
When the Russians entered Berlin, the Berlin flak towers aimed their cannons down at the Russian troops and tanks. The Russians were never able to get near them. They had to go way around them. They were never taken until after the Germans surrendered.
The USA never invaded Japan either........until after the Japanese surrendered.
ja damit hast du recht das sind krasse gebaude es gibt noch einige in Berlin Aber einige zerstört einige als wohnungen umgewandelt
@@lu77xiaojun37 And the Dodgers didn't beat the Rays in Game 7 of the World Series.
It's also not true. Okinawa was definitely Japan, considered one of the home islands, conquered 400 years ago, and annexed 150 years ago.
@@lu77xiaojun37 maybe not the main islands, but still the smaller japanese islands like Okinawa.
Every anti air gunner's dream is to face ground targets
I was living in Hamburg at the beginning of the 1970s when the authorities decided that they were going to demolish the two flak towers on "Heiligengeistfeld", Budapester Straße in St Pauli (not far from the St Pauli football grounds). All they actually managed to do after an almighty explosion was to break every window in a five-mile radius, and the towers were still standing! In the meantime, they've been turned into cultural centres.
MsG
I’ll have whatever pill John Smith has just swallowed 😳
😄
Lol stupid liberal socialist morons 😂😂
@@panzervalkyrie9299 and what did you smoke today?
We have people in America who think if you blow it up or destroy it, then you've changed history .
I landed on one of those in Medal of Honor: Airborne. It was no joke. That was a tough mission...
Wow and you survived?!
@@panzervalkyrie9299 No, he died!
Thank you for your Gaming Service!
@@homefront3162 Just doing my part.
@@panzervalkyrie9299 Yes Mate, the closest thing to reality this poor delusional fool gets is when his mummy changes his nappy. LOL
I life in front of the Bunker, it's the Feldstraße (Fieldstreet) in Hamburg.
The City often talked about breaking down the Bunker but it's not possible.
They said, the Energie they would need to do it, would demolish all Buildings around it and near by.
It's just not possible.
I'm happy about it because you literally can feel the mystic Energy of the Building and the History behind it.
These mighty war time structures are amazing. Every time I am "somewhere nearby" (I live in the UK) I try to go and see them before they disappear (as a result of some anti-something lobbying and planning decissions, no doubt). I've seen Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, Wolf's Lair remains in Poland, Lorient Submarine Base in France, Peenemünde, but...when I was in Hamburg, I DID NOT KNOW about the tower and went to see the ZOO!... Dammit.
I agree. They’re great pieces of history. Would you tear down the colosseum because Romans made slaves fight to the death in it
@@gabrielmcguoirk6106 - someone will want to now. Don’t give them any more ideas! Some knuckle head in the us has started calling for the removal remove Abe Lincoln statues because he didn’t specifically fight for the freedom of slaves during the American civil war
I was in Duesseldorf. High rise bunkers and flak towers cannot be demolished. The cannot be blown up, it would destroy entire neighborhoods. There is one near the main R.R.Station. Another near a tram line into town. That one has fake windows and window boxes with fake flowers painted on it.
When they said it will last a thousand years they didn’t mean the party it means structural
They should have bought the copyright for nazi theme movies
Well people will talk about the nazis in a thousand years, they were THE major player to change europe forever, without any chance of reversal. Actually 1914-1945 will be seen as one time period, a melodramatic name could be "the death of europe" or smt along those lines, and it would be true because the first world war destroyed the old world and killed millions, draining everyones economy dry. The 2nd World war however sealed the fate, millions upon millions dead and the contient is a smoldering ruin, never to recover fully. Post ww2 the americans marshall plan'd the euros into obedient capitalist puppets and the soviets turned the eastern euros into obedient communist puppets. Nowadays the EU is a joke, our culture is dying and people celebrate it
Only was to survive is to destroy Chinese communists
During the final Battle for Berlin, these were the last structures to fall. The Red Army surged around them, but the occupants finally surrendered not because the structure was in danger, but because the situation re food and ammo was untenable.
Amazing structures for sure
Unfortunately when your castle is surrounded in a siege, you do tend to run out of food before you run out of a defensible position.
The Kommandant of the Humbolthain tower, pulled the pin on a grenade, rather than surrender. When you tour the tower today, they point out the marks on the wall from the grenade.
Here in finland when germans were, they build buildings and bridges. And they are still in use. 😁😁😁
Wow I didn’t know that, it’s quite impressive how long these structures can last with the weather conditions in Finland.
@@MrDerya94 indeed, my hometown germans build "officers club" in 1941. Now Its use to weddings and other stuff. City oulu was main harbour in finland when they maintenence troops in lapland.
@@mampe8898 dam that’s really cool it’s still used for better purposes. Feel really sorry and bad for what happened back in the 30-40’s but we had the same “enemy” the red army. The finish people kicked their ass especially the White Death marksman alias Simon Häyhä. He’s a legend in the western world !
@@MrDerya94 th-cam.com/video/C8yTVRx67bc/w-d-xo.html&feature=share
@@MrDerya94 here is the video off officers club. 🙂🙂
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Hietasaari_Railway_Bridge_Oulu_20160214.jpg
And here is the bridge what i was telling 🙂🙂
One of them was actually demolished, and they decided to not do the same to the others, because it was already too difficult and expensive to destroy the first one
Yeah, german civil engineering
The Berlin Zoo tower I believe
I hope they are never taken down. Learn from history.
Well, they have started to built a tiny park on top of it and ramps for visitors around.
And no, not all Germans have learned from history.
As you can see from the ones voting for AfD.
And in the very special case of the bunker-"make-up"-deal you have another great example how top capitalists just bypass democratic structures.
There were lots of brilliant ideas from the quarters around the bunker how to use/and to change it. They were ignored and now we get the "gardens of Babylon".
Annyoyed regards from hamburg, Germoney
Basically the German government feels it would be too costly and too difficult to demolish them.
@@arnonuhm4022 it's okay, not all Americans have learned from history either, democrats literally were the party of slavery and no one sees how their chains bind with mental slavey now. Many Americans also support neo communist agendas even though we've seen time and time again the failures of it.
I vote for the AfD 😊😊🙌✌️
@@arnonuhm4022
People who vote AfD learning from history, people who vote the other political parties believe the history who is written by the winners.
They can not learn from this bullshit history and condemned to repeat it and they deserve it !
To bad none of the automatic 8.8cm cannons ever made it into preservation.
Agreed
automatic?
holy smokes they were automatic?!
@@gavins9846 only if the soldiers are fast enough :v
*12.8 cm ;)
Needless to try and destroy them....these are well built buildings
Agreed, and built to a purpose.
Imagine a "Mad Max style" after then end scenario movie/tv series about a community making use of one of thease as a fortress base.
Ugly monstrosities.
Germany suffered a great deal of needless destruction.... and the purposeful targeting of the civilian population.
@@robertrishel3685 these places would have been well used after the war
Even in Austria we have this Flak towers/Flaktürme. Especially in Vienna. One of this towers is still used by the Austrian Army. One Flak tower is in Linz on the area of a steel company, named VOEST.🇦🇹🏔🍺🥨🛶🐺
Vielen Dank für die Info. Grüßen aus Holland.
@@mardiffv.8775 👍😺🏔🐝🇦🇹🛶🥨🍺👍
The VOEST was the former Hermann-Göring-Werke
@@andreasmann8956 Exactly
Und wo wäre der am Voest Gelände ??? Noch nie gesehen......
Its good that these parts of history stay visual. Never hide history, never destroy history. If we destroy history it can happen again.
I’ve read somewhere that at the end of the war there were 30,000 plus people sheltering in the towers in order to escape the fighting and presumably the bombing. I would imagine the population was terrified that the Russians may take the city rather than the British who would be more likely to treat the civilians with some compassion.
The brits were responsible for the terrible bombing of Hamburg so they weren't exactly loved in Hamburg.
The people of Hamburg hoped for the Americans but would have literally taken anyone over the Russians.
You reap what you sow
@@haydenskilton
Thanks for one of the dumbest responders on the net.
What are the faults of the children and other civilians who suffered from it. Please think first, then respond.
@@duke6321 Are you talking about the Children and Civilians of London, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool or Coventry?
@@andyt3304
Bombing civilians is a crime. On every side of the north sea.
"Bomber-Harris" was a warcriminal too, not only the german military...
No flak towers was overrun or captured, the Germans simply surrendered...
indeed.
Surrender was sometimes not as funny, as someone might think...The Flakturm nearby my home village nearby Berlin was overrun and surrendered.....it was one of the small towers of the C-type, with a radar device. About 120 civilian persons and about 20 soldiers and firefighters took shelter from the artilery fire in this tower until the Red Army arrives. As the tower was reached by Soviet self propelled guns, they opened fire at every floor regardless of the white flag at the entrance. After that bombardment, the remains of the "defenders" stumbled out and were executed, for whatever reason, at the spot. There is still a little cementary with the massgrave of that poor souls only a few yards away. On this picture, you can see, what 122mm concrete shells did to the tower.
www.teamdochnoch.de/MIXED/news/feb05/050220_IMG_5810.jpg
@Jonathon Coffey No, anti-concrete....:)
@@mikeromney4712 You are correct. My uncle served in the SS. And his uncle served in the Wehrmacht. And my father, their brother-in-law, served in Third Armored. My uncle told me that at wars end he and his squad headed for American lines trying to surrender to the Americans. I didn't understand. He said, ''We were SS. They would shoot us on the spot.''
War is f*cked up as hell. Peace, it's good karma.
@Jonathon Coffey , perhaps a HE round. AP wouldn’t be the right thing to use .
I'm living close to Hamburg. What I can tell you is that they try to built a garden on top of the bunker. I also heard about a small restaurant so you can sit up there and enjoy watching the skyline of Hamburg. Inside the bunker, as you already had seen, is the music store "Just Music". There is also a bar and a stage called "Übel und Gefährlich". Many huge bands played there already. And there is a music studio to record music and teach students called "SAE".
My grandmother spend a lot of time on top of the tower, flak gunner.
if we could capture, through her eyes, what she saw, what she witnessed. that generation. here in the UK we call them THE GREATEST GENERATION.
For real?? Damn
@@gittevandorst620 yes, many women did the aiming, range finding etc.
Really? Wow!
@@davidmarshall1259 truly? of my grands one manned spotlights and the other fought in Asia. I had another great uncle captured in Italy. I am pretty sure all three would have called the flak gunners nazis.
I'm living a few blocks away. I like it what they've done with it. Whether you believe or not I have just good feelings when I think about the bunker. The music theme makes it very likable. It's a part of my home district and I would not want to miss it.
The City also has plans to plant a forest on the top. We'll see if that works :D
Looks like the Night club is on the lower level of the roof. Oder?
th-cam.com/video/oTb5AnhtJeY/w-d-xo.html
Good now tell them to leave tge natsoc stuff alone too. Y'all had hitler overthrown and now you 2 generation from Islamic takeover what BS trade
@@ROOSTER333 keep your Islamophobia for yourself.
@@user-ld6jz8rv7i fuck Islam and the donkey it rode in on.
@@ROOSTER333 relax, there will be no takeover. not by any theocracy, nor any other fascist movement.
Exterior walls were 11 feet thick and the structures had at least triple the steel reinforcing of conventional concrete towers (?). One of the Berlin towers sheltered as many as 30,000 during the final days before the city fell. The amount of time and explosives necessary to demolish these was considerable so a number, like the one here, survive. Thanks for posting!
It's terrible how much History was lost in the fire bombings....
So much about the Germany of old that was lost in the past, never to be learned about or remembered....
As someone who puts tremendous value on history in general, to me, that is one of the biggest crimes of any war.
lol no one cares. its germany. I simply have a strong hatred for germans completely unrelated to the war.
The people cruelly murdered in their millions mattered more than bricks and mortar. The bierkellers were recreated, the bone ash in the fields didn’t come back to life.
The nightclub in there is actually used for concerts as well and hosts popular artists and dj‘s, the good thing is that there is no cell service inside so if you go in, you tend to be there to enjoy the moment giving this once so destructive building significance for the clubbing scene in Hamburg, I’m a local and been there a few times and I love it.
Great local story! Thanks for the input!
"Destructive building". Are you simple minded? These were DEFENSIVE structures designed to shoot down enemy bombers. You know, bombers that were deliberately murdering women and children. The vile english are very proud of this fact. "All the Germans aren't worth the bones of a single british airman" they said. So, whilst the raf cowards hid at night, they killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, on the basis that factories can be repaired but if you kill the workers, the factories are useless.
I live in Hamburg and i go through the Tower everyday xD
I went to that night club once when I used to live in Hamburg. Was an interesting night partying in an old flak tower, that's for sure.
The worst firebombing is history was on Tokyo, March 9th 1945, followed by Hamburg in July 1943 and Dresden, February 1945.
Poor instinct people 😕
😢
Yes, the flak towers are HUGE!! I used to be in that music store quite frequently buying XLR cables when I lived in Hamburg. And they were an odd juxtaposition with what is now a modern city. I’d be driving along and BOOM!!! Giant, faceless, concrete wall - of the smaller towers that were seemingly randomly all over the city (nothing random about them at all). Indeed the flak towers as well as the massive administration buildings in and around city center are ominous reminders of what came before. Great tour! Thank you!
Thanks for the input, very interesting.
Germany is such a beautiful place, i spent 2 years there in the Army in the mid 90's. i want to revisit
I’ve been there twice, and I agree.
dont' forget your prayer-rug
Many things changed since then. But, you are always welcome, here!
I was there for 3 years in the mid 90’s in the Army myself in Ansbach. I will go back one day to visit. What part were you in? I was there from 95-98.
@@bigdaddy7119 NO SHIT, LIVED IN ANSBACH WORKED IN KATTERBACH. 67 t 10. sorry caps
There‘s 6 big intact Flak towers in Vienna and one of them has been turned into a aquatic museum (it‘s possible to go to the top platform for a stunning view), the other ones are still standing.
I'd love to see them all!
I bought a ukulele in that music store last year. I think there’s a club in the basement, and right around the corner is the big fun fair Hamburger Dom. When you are at the fair this makes a big weird backdrop. Ich liebe dich Hamburg
Fun fact: This building was the first TV studio and broadcasting center in Germany after WWII. NWDF TV went on air on July, 1st, 1950 from this building.
That is a very interesting fact, thanks for bringing it into the discussion.
Korrekt.
Dresdin: "Am I a joke to you?"
Copypasta because OP can't see links. For the rest of you here's good images and writeups. cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/firebombing/websitemenu.htm
The city of Hamburg already had ‘good’ conditions for the rapid spread of fire. A heat wave from the summer of 1943 heat wave had dried out much of the city and surrounding plant growth. Hamburg was Germany’s most important industrial center, as well as the largest seaport in Europe.
The allies used the “Window” to bomb Hamburg without counterattack or anti-aircraft losses. This technique consisted of dropping foil strips out of the window of the planes, which would confuse the Germans’ early radar.
On July 24, 9PM the allies bombed Hamburg with high explosive, incendiary, phosphorous and napalm bombs. The resulting firestorm was so powerful that buildings would have flames reaching over 20 feet high.
‘With hurricane force, 150 mile per-hour winds were sucked into the oxygen vacuum created by the fire, ripping trees out by their roots, collapsing buildings, pulling children out of their mothers' arms. Twenty square miles of the city centre burned in an inferno that would rage for nine full days. … The temperature in the firestorm reached 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. There was no oxygen to breathe; whatever was flammable burst spontaneously into flame.’[1]
Effects:
The Royal Air Force alone sent 3,000 bombers in 4 raids on Hamburg, dropping 9,000 tons of bombs.
Affected 22 sq km, 8.5 sq m
Killed estimated 44,600 civilians, 800 servicemen (60k-100k according to the US bomber survey)
Half the city ruined (some accounts over 60%), 2/3 remaining population evacuated - almost 1 million homeless
Mostly affected civilian population, nonetheless 580 industrial centers damaged/destroyed 1.8 months of the city’s output. Normal output was never fully recovered, at best output recovered to 80% five months later.
Fire-fighting (obviously) helpless Hamburg Before the Fire Raids
No air defense because of WINDOW
Dresden was a much more controversial target for civilian-affecting bombing than Hamburg because, to almost all accounts, it really wasn’t industrial at all-such a cultural epicenter, in fact, that it was called “Elbflorenz,” or Florence of the Elbe. (Wikipedia[1] notes that dedicated factories for gunsights, radar and electronics, anti-aircraft shells’ fuses, gas masks, aircraft engines, cockpit parts were located in Dresden or in suburbs; Germany’s claim of ‘no industry’ is almost entirely accepted though.)
There was much war strategy surrounding the bombing of Dresden, implicit and explicit. The Allies were to ‘take advantage of the recently launched Soviet offensive westwards from the Vistula and add to the growing chaos in Germany by disrupting the flow of refugees fleeing in the face of the Soviet attack. At the same time, the western Allies wished to demonstrate to the Soviets at the forthcoming Yalta conference that they were giving them the support of their heavy bombers, and, indeed, at Yalta the Soviets specifically requested help in this form.’[2] The demonstration of strength for the Soviets would also have the benefit of eliminating Germany’s communications center to its Eastern front, noted by Churchill.
In Early 1945, Dresden was crammed full of refugees fleeing westward from Red Army moving eastward from Russia. Firebomb attacks would “create confusion in the evacuation from the east” and “hamper the movements of troops from the west,” and the ensuing chaos might impede the German military.[3]
On the night of 13th February, the Allies bombed Dresden in two waves, three hours apart. Only six bombers were shot down, as German air defenses were weak. The first round of bombing consisted of high explosives, which would expose wooden frames of buildings. The second, incendiary round would ignite everything around it.
1,478 tons of high explosives and 1,182 tons of incendiary bombs (as much as 3,907 total, according to some sources) were dropped by 796 RAF bombers in the first attack.
US sent between 317 and 527 bombers to continue on Feb 14th.
Estimates of those killed vary from 35,000-135,000 (unsure partly because of the refugees in Dresden at the time)
Created a self-sustaining firestorm, over 1500 degrees.
Of 28,410 houses in central Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed. 15 sq km totally demolished-of which there were: 14k homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19 churches, 5 theaters, 50 banks, 31 dept stores, 31 hotels, 62 administrative buildings.
Aftermath: Moral dilemma
Off the record, the Allies had fully intended to bomb the German population, and prevent the dispersal relief supplies. Churchill response, who had supported the operation, said “the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.”
Many Germans did not know the truth about the firebombing of Dresden until decades later. The reason for this is that the Nazi propaganda machine, in its incessant effort to convince the German public of imminent victory, never released accurate facts or pictures of Dresden.
The scene in Dresden was immortalized by Kurt Vonnegut, a captured American soldier, in his novel Slaughterhouse Five.
I'm surprised that a drone hasn't been used to film the top.
@Dianne Flabbot those palm tress up top may be an indicator of something going on....
Drone flight could be restricted there. In germany flying drones is pretty restricted.
My wife and I were inside that tower just before the pandemic. It was late in the afternoon, the doors were locked. A young lady came out and held the doors open for us. The inside had a lot of shops, a large library, modern elevators, modern lights. All very clean. We walked up several floors, could not get up to the roof. access was locked. We asked a German guy for the bunker. He said there is no bunker here. But the flak tower is right over there.
They ruined it, it should have been kept as the original Flakturm IV G.
Why? The failed to protect the city and it`s people. Waste of tax money. All what is left of the third Reich needs to be destroyed.
@@ikelevermann3376 Thats foolish. Art and Architecture from that time period should be preserved. If you erase history, you have nothing to learn from. If you see it that way, every piece of religion has to be destroyed too, every church and cathedral since the church commited horrible crimes too.
@@ikelevermann3376 destroying them would waste more tax money than to use them as something else.
@@fimbulwinter-outdoor true. agree on that. preserve for educational, historical & a reminder that something has happened & people from past & future should learn lessons from it.
@@ikelevermann3376 imagine wasting more tax money because it Was a waste of tax money
Edit: besides they DID protect the people as a bomb/Air raid proof hospital
Thank you for the tour, very interesting !
I'm glad you got something out of it. I made this video 2 years ago, crazy how it is taking off just now.
@@TeachaMantoFish I know right? :-) The power of TH-cam's suggestion alghoritms is a mistery that can bring out some treasures like yours... Did you change some tag lines or what? Anyway, great tour, pity you couldn't get on the top.
@@LoftBits nope. The only thing I can think is that it’s almost exactly 2 years to the day.
There was no protective dome....at all. That is not how the towers work.
During the bombing raids allied bombers had no choice but to fly in dense formations and without evading during the last 2min to get the aim on their target right. This was, for the defenders, the point were they literally "fill the sky with flak". The towers were in the perfect spots to hit in this exact zone with all their heavy batteries. Also the second, smaller tower to every big one was used as the AA command center and radar hub. It was basically the central command for the entire AA defense of the city (Flaktowers + surrounding flakbatteries).
I'm sorry, but these towers were generally avoided by both ground and air forces as they were deemed, too great a hassle to attack. These towers never really saw much action and stood as more of a deterrent. Any allied planes that flew over would have been swiftly annihilated, any ground forces did not have the firepower to eliminate these chunks of stone. A 122mm HE Naval shell from an IS-2 was shot at it and the report stated it had "unobservable damage" 12.8cm, 8.8cm flak on the towers could be angled down to hit ground troops. It was just so much hassle, an unnecessary amount of lives lost and would be a very grueling siege to take these buildings, that everyone took every chance they could to avoid these towers.
@@chaoticroderick1805 No they were not. You cant avoid them. WW2 bomber plains were not able to launch precision bombardments that would make that possible. If they would have actually avoided the fire ring range of these towers, neather Hamburg nor Berlin would have ever been bombed in WW2. Bombers had to be directly above the target while the flag towers could shoot the area of the entre city with no problem. Bomber formations had to enter the flag tower range and killing field to even drop their bombs. It was the most critical part of any bombardment.
Why do you think these towers were build to survive heaviest bombardment with no problem= Because they were in the center of allied bomardment. If you just wanted an elevated aa position you could build it ouside of the city on a hill or make more makeshift buildings. There was a reason the germans put so many ressources in constructing these towers. They were supposed to be at the best spott to disrupt and shoot down allied planes while beeing able to survive any bombing run with no problem.
A bomber formation could evade to a certain degree the flag defenses, but the last mile it has to go streight and hold formation to actually hit its target. That would be the area where the flag towers provided the defenders with the best possible flag barrage. These towers were unavoidable if you wanted to bomb the city they were in.
On ground forces, you are partially right. The towers could be isolated and simply be closely surrounded, because the alavation of the guns made it impossible to actuallyshhot anythign close to the bunker. What the soviets werent able to do though was to breach the heavy walls and doors to properly assault it. They were definitly not avoided though, because if you avoid them you cant conquer the city they are placed in. Their fireing range in the battle of berlin coverted a huge amount of the city. It was more along the lines of ignoring the fire from the towers and just moving on and regulary suppres the towers defenders on top with small arms or artillery fire. The people on top were not very well protected after all. Once the towers ran out of ammo they were just bunkers and observation points for the germans.
@@noobster4779 literally not at the center of bombardment at all, their locations were known, and everything was done to avoid them to the best of their ability, they weren't targets or at the center of it all, the rings weren't perfect, there were spaces in the air they could not reach, that's why other anti air positions were set up as well, to cover areas not covered by the flak towers.
@@noobster4779 and again, rarely ever were these towers even attacked or suppressed by ground forces, it was seen at a waste of resources and men to try to take these towers.
The trees on the balcony probably belong to one of the nightclubs there. If you just want to get on the balcony then there is another Flak Tower in Williamsburg which has a little cafe from which you can get onto the balcony. Also there are some occasional tours with which you can also get onto the roof. The one at the heiligengeistfeld is having a hotel and hopefully also a park build on top of it, so in a couple of years it will also be accessible for the public.
Actually, by far the worst fire bombing ever was on March 9, 1945 in Tokyo where an estimated 100,000 people were killed, with over one million homeless.
I've always wanted to see a movie with the Flak towers at the centre. It would be amazing, like a mediaeval fortress but with 150mm guns
Agreed, that would be an interesting topic. Although bunker movies seem kind of trapped to me.
@@TeachaMantoFish you could have a lot of the action on the roof
@@mikhailv67tv in the nightclub? 😂
128 mm
Thanks for the tour, I live in Denmark and the German Atlantic Wall here is now for the most part falling into the Atlantic Ocean.
What amazing buildings these FLAK towers are. There are also six in Vienna and I hope to visit them one day.
Thanks for the tour... I lived in Germany for many years but never made it to Hamburg. Really appreciate this video.
I envy the Germans. Their posterity has the benefit of seeing real concrete history. A lesson learned of what not to do. Similar to our civil war monuments here in the states. Don't erase history and everything your ancestors fought for or did wrong. You'll just end up repeating their mistakes.
And we still do like every damn day
i absolutely agree. we have the problem here in the UK at the moment where the snowflakes want to rip away all the past. a very shortsighted argument. whether it was right or wrong, what our ancestors did has shaped our today. NEVER erase history. i personally think we should thoroughly embrace our history, on either side of the pond.
@@davidmarshall1259 It's Not about erasing History. There's a giant difference between remembering and honoring.
A Statue of an Warcriminal isn't History, it's honoring.
A Public place named after a Slaver is a sign of honoration, not a worthy sign for an advanced Nation where the former enslaved people have become free members.
Yes, we have to discuss all of these things. We live in a street called after Karl von Einem. This was later changed because people like this should be remembered, but shouldn't be honored.
@@davidmarshall1259 The intent to to erase your history is not on the snowflakes account. They are just the useful idiots who actually go out and do it.
The snowflakes will not be the ones benefitting from anything. When everything is sad and done, their "leadership" will simply dispose them off because they have become either useless or even dangerous to them. It has happened before and it will happen again.
Swastikas and all things nazi are illegal in Germany.
Man I'm jealous of your visit to this monument! Great music you used as well! Great all around view and feel you put into this production, thank you
Thank you for saying it, I’m very glad you got something out of it.
I thought it was Dresden that suffered the most devastating bombing ever.
Operation Meetinghouse was the most destructive bombing raid ever conducted. Killed somewhere around 100k Japanese civilians.
@@brysonflettmc According to a Swiss historian, the bombing raid on Dresden took anything between 350k to 500k lives, as the city was packed to the brim with refugees from Silesia. The rais was deliberately directed at civilians, makiking murderers out of those British and US pilots who participated in the raid. Churchill, Harris and Roosvelt are as much war criminals as Hitler and his cronies.
Actually it was Tokyo
Hamburg was fire bombed unlike Dresden which was hit by high explosives.
@@bluebear6570 you do realise those pilots weren't told what they were bombing right there is interviews of British pilots saying when they found out what they had done they regretted it.
The club Übel und Gefährlich (Nasty and Dangerous) on top of the building is fine. Because the building looks nasty and dangerous at night. I went there a couple of time. You can access one of the "balcony" from the club, were the palm trees are, to smoke or get fresh air and talk. But I cannot remember a way to walk all the way around or go to the very top of the building.
Thanks for the update, it wasn't in my plans to be able to go back when the club was open. I'm glad you answered that.
I met an eldery, close to retirement german migrant on my first job that talked about thease, he had been there when they where active but he didn't serve, to young then I suppose. He talked about other things relationg to the period as well but I remember I saw it as odd that he was talking about germans like he wasn't one of them, like he wanted to distance himself from them.
I had a German g/f they go to great pains to disassociate themselves from the War and especially the NAZI party
I used to live and work in Hamburg....if I am mistaken, this is not too far from St. Pauli Theater Grounds where I watched the FIFA World Cup in Spring 2005. It is HUGE!
Interesting
Good to see the towers being repurposed rather than being torn down.
Two of the three in Berlin were torn down by the victors.
We have another flak tower in Berlin Humboldthain and half of it is still standing on top of the hill. You can visit it and have a great view of some northern parts of the city!
Was there Nov 2019. Sadly could not get access as it was undergoing renovation. A hotel I believe will be its future. Will have to do a return visit.
I’d love to do a tour video of each one and someday I will.
I took some British soldiers on the roof a few years ago when I ran a history study. The guns were twin 128mm autoloaders on each corner emplacement.
I've got an eye witness account from a gunner which I'll post here later
Nice that this tower still stands and is being utilized. Unfortunately the British and their allies managed to demolish the one in Tiergarten in Berlin and severly damage the other two. Sources say that those three towers prevented the allies from comitting the atrocity of fire bombing Berlin.
I think one of the reasons Berlin didn't go up in flames that badly like a lot of other German cities did is that it was a relatively modern city. Berlin basically has been some small towns with only a few thousand inhabitans until the beginning of the 18th century, when the Prussians turned the area into their residential city and began "reshaping" it according to their needs, which meant erecting "modern" stone buildings with thick walls alongside broad boulevards, with gardens and public parks and generally a lot of space between buildings. Berlin was in fact the first German city that fell victim to a minor British air raid during WW2 (August 25th, 1940), but with only small damage (the operation was basically a "show of force" to demonstrate that Berlin was not out of reach for the RAF, after Hitler boasted that no British bomber would ever get through into Germany - needless to say, he was really pissed), while the first area bombardment of a German city with a historical, mostly wooden medieval city center (Lübeck) on March 28th, 1942 resulted in a firestorm that obliterared hundreds of buildings and killed more than 300 civilians.
@@hoppeltrottel7484 It wasn’t wooden buildings in German city centers. They were stone or masonry buildings with wooden roof structures, staircases, joists, trim, wooden furniture in the apartments and gas for heating and cooking stowes. To get a fire storm going, I understand the bombers had to fly in close formation making them much more vunerable to anti aircraft fire. Berlin was never subjected to this kind of massive bombing using incendiary bombs like for instance Dresden, much due to the flak towers. Fires from bombings took its toll anyway from Berlin’s buildings, just like in other German cities.
@@USER351 Wrong,most german bigger cities came from the middle ages with the center built very closely from mainly wooden structures,Fachwerk,several hundred years old .That Center always Was the main target of Butcher Harris' terror bombers .Many thousands of the mainly civilian victims just suffocated because the firestorm destroyed all oxygen.
mjoelnir58 Sorry. Not quite so. They were mostly Jugend style buildings or older masonry structures. You can clearly see that, if you bother to look closely at the pictures and films of the ruins.
The allies had a good reason to stay away from those things from both air and ground, they had four twin-mounted 12.8cm FlaK 40 guns on each G-tower, in addition to eight 4-barreled 2cm FlaK 38 guns. Those 12.8cm guns had a very high effective ceiling, as well as some pretty nasty armor-piercing munitions to destroy armored vehicles. I myself have been searching for a 12.8cm FlaK 40 shell casing, but they are so hard to find in good condition.
Interesting
Walked exactly the same route to get there when I visited in early 2019. Roadworks and building site the same too.
Thanks for your upload. Nice work
Adventures with Gijs. Very glad you enjoyed it.
On the seacoast of New Hampshire, USA there is a coastal 16 in gun battery at Odiorn Point. The gun was scrapped after ww2 but the concrete is still there. There are many tall cylindrical watch and spotting towers nearby. I call them concrete history.
Same on the west coast in San Diego.
this is just my opinion, but I think they should turn this towers into a museum instead of night clubs
I believe Germany is reluctant to turn WWII locations into museums. I agree though, never forget your history.
Great vid really enjoyed it, I had to comment on the very last statue, I think what the artist was going for was a modern version of a classical statue, one that represents humans achieving the ability to communicate across vast distances anywhere on Earth without waiting for months. When we dug up the classical statues in medieval times and were confronted with art and architecture that surpassed the current abilities of the times, it awed those people and inspired them, perhaps this artist was thinking of his statue being found a thousand years later, and if humans had lost the ability to communicate over large distances again, a statue like that would suggest humans of the past once could and inspire them to try.
That is a fantastic interpretation! I wouldn’t have thought of the influence 2 thousand years from now. Great take on it.
I wish there were more photos / videos of the flak towers taken during World War II - they're extremely hard to come by. :(
I found that too during the editing.
Es ist schlimm das sowas nicht in seiner ursprünglichen Form gelassen wird, in anderen Ländern hätte man nicht zugelassen das dort eine Musikschule und oder ein Laden einziehen dürfen. Schlimm.
nowadays it's the home of the infamous "Übel & Gefährlich" -club. It means Sick and Dangerous
Of the 2 in Berlin one was blown to bits after the war. The other one in humboldthain was only partially destroyed and is halfway sticking out of an artificial hill. You can do guided tours through the ruined inside. Its really dope.
All these constructions took place from 1933 to 1945, that is, in 12 years and less. Imagine that the war lasted for 2 more years and Germany made the atomic bomb first.
Actually these were all built during the war from 1940 onwards.
I live on the coast in NJ and there are bunkers all over the place.
Are they tourable?
Just imagine living there during the war, the noise of the flack canons etc, and the flash. If I'm being honest I think it would have been a interesting thing to see.
I agree
I am a WW2 history buff, namely when it comes to fortifications; and a civil engineer. Did a deep research paper back in college about the 3 berlin towers in the closing days of WW2. Truly fascinating structures. Impenetrable reinforced concete monoliths.
I wonder how modern Bunker Busters would fare against these
@@rubenlopez3364 probably really well. The submarine bunkers in west of France at La Rochelle were penetrated by very large allied bombs at closing days of WW2. If this was possible then, then a modern, precision missile attack will take down these old German flak towers.
No, worse fire bombing was Tokyo in 1945. More than 16 square miles burned in one night.
Dresden bombing - between 60 and 100,000 civilians killed in one night and following day
Dresden firebombing was worse than Hamburg but the worst firebombing of world war 2 I believe was Tokyo.
I think you are likely correct.
How about Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
@Ken Shearson Same result, however, worse.
@@stigpalm1922 I didn’t consider those but yeah I see they do actually list them as firebombings but I’m still sure that Tokyo was considered the worst firebombing of ww2 .
@Ken Shearson Correct.
This flak tower in St Pauli, now a great place for musicians: a huge music shop! (and other stuff) I've been there many times while my wife used to work in Hamburg. Funny how those buildings which went trough extreme violent and tough times of History are now places where you can pick up a guitar and take your time to sit around, dream etc.. :) yeah it's nicer to hear noises of people trying drums and stuff rather than cannons, definitely.
I'd like to hear some Berlin Schule synth in those stairwells! I wonder if Tangerine Dream ever got in there back in the day.
Visited this bunker April 2017 when my son lived in Hamburg, fascinating place to explore, Hamburg is Germany most beautiful large city. The following year, my son moved to Berlin,
still lives there today, have spent about 5 months in Berlin over the last 3 years and only seen a fraction of its WW2 history. 80% of Hamburg was untouched, they only targeted the ports,
oil refineries and U-boat pens. Operation Gomorrah July 1943 RAF and USAF killed 58, 000, not the biggest fire storm in history, that belongs to the Americans.
Hiroshima 6th August 1945, 105,000 dead, Nagasaki, 9th August 1945, 120,000 dead. We have learned nothing from these sad events, great video sir.
Intersting stuff. Thank you for watching.
Dresden was worse than Hamburg. Not that it's a race, though...
Also Tokyo saw the worst firebombing ever ("fun" fact)
Tokyo might have looked worse cuz most of the city was made of wood
I went looking for someone else saying this 😂
Yes, thank you.
Most of these amateur WWII historians are really just Nazi Germany historians. 🙄
"OMG Tiger (sploosh)"
What the allies did to those city (Dresde espacially) was a war crime. But the winners wrote History. For Dresde there were absolutely no strategic reason to destroy it with fire. They targeted the civilians with incendiary bomb !
The Germans were hitting London pretty hard don’t forger.
@@jimsheldonswe7846 And it was called a war crime so why when yhe allies did the exactsame thing, it isn't called the same ? In France our city suffered more from the allies bombing than the german occupation.
@@Comissar_Carolus so you were sad to see the Germans go eh? Well a whole lot of Frenchmen were not. You can tell that by the films of people greeting the soldiers as they were liberating the towns. I guess the French themselves had their own way of taking care of the people who wanted the Germans to stay.
@@jimsheldonswe7846 I won't even respond to you... I just said that our monument and cities suffered more with the allies than with the germans.
@ASCALON Stop listening to anglo-saxon propaganda please and read a bit. WWI had litteraly wiped out an entire generation of people and scared for life the others. They did not want another war but when the time came in 1939. There was plenty of soldiers who gladly volonteered. Both for the British and French, the funny war undermine the moral of the soldiers and do not forget that there was lot of communist in France. Stalin ordered them to sabotage industries and undermine even more the moral of the French soldiers. The soldiers fought valiantly but the generals were figthing with outdated strategy. Plus when the politician asked for an armistice. They asked the soldiers to stop the fighting BUT the germans took their time to respond to gain more territory in France. It's in that period of time than the germans made themost prisoner, because the French were told by their generals to stop any resistance. Near Lyon the French did not listen to that order and stopped the germans from aadvancing in the south of France while they were fighting against the italians in the Alp ! I don't know why I'm trying to expain history to some morons who believe everything they read on internet...
The 1945 fire bombing of Tokyo was the worst in WW 2, not Hamburg.
I saw this in the 1970’s. Had to ride to the top on what I assumed was the ammunition hoist; constantly running. You had to jump onto a rising platform and jump off when you got to your floor. It looked like it was used for apartments at that time.
Wow!
Those kind of lifts are called "Paternoster" in german. They were wide spread in multi storey houses until the 70th. New Safety regulations from this time reduced them in Hamburg to only two left they are now under monument protection.
*3:33* I see a person standing on the wall looking to the left.
In a suit!
I love those things , monstrous yet beautiful . Like something from a sifi movie . But ww2 was science horror I guess .
The same Flak Tower (No. III) stands in the Berlin "Humboldthain". An attempt was made to blow it up. But it didn't work. That is why the tower was buried.
I am actually sad that they couldn’t have left them in their first state so you could actually see what is was like on all of the floors
They certainly new how to build
Still do, I’ve work with factories over there.
Lol “absolutely haunting with the german sounds” hahaha give me a break
Shut up.
@@MikeJones-hc1gw Guy is speaking the Truth 😂
I remember that mission.
A sense of where you are and what happened there is sometimes palpable.
@@risrmston5417 exactly! I like to say “the person who pretends to know everything shows me they don’t know the first thing.”
Tokyo had 16 square miles burned to the ground on one night from American B-29 bombers. 100,000 dead. Hard to compete with that grim total.
Seriously, I only watched because of the Just Music Store. I practiced once with a band in another Bunker in Hamburg. It was in the middle of the City and you heard nothing from inside, so the neighbors had no problems with loud music.
I hate what happened to the bottom of the tower, everything is full of graffiti and stickers....
Great American import...
To be honest with the liberal socialists in charge in Germany now it’s lucky they haven’t demolished it. They will certainly never restore them. Sad really. Great part of history. And before any snowflake cries about my comment my great uncle was a navigator in a RAF Wellington bomber in WW2 that went missing over Holland , in total I had 5 close family relatives fight in Allied combat roles WW2.
idk man defacing shit nazis made sounds based to me
@@joaoribeiro2688 remember not everyone in that time was a nazi most of the people were forced to do things
@@germanmemer1434true, but the people responsible for operating the flak towers were most definitely nazis
Thanks for sharing. A very interesting video.
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Worth a visit ,all the rubble of war including the bodies were pushed up the side of these flack towers after the war
We have many leftover Bunkers in my City.
They are used in many ways today, like Bandrooms, Storage space, Mushroom farms, Museums, Event Rooms, some are reconstructed for housing space and some of the big underground bunkers are re-used as underground parking garages.
First time I have seen the insides of one of these.
Concrete work was interesting
''Alarm! Schnelle Kameraden, lasst uns zu den Kanonen aufsteigen! Bewegung! Los! Los!''
Translation: "Alarm! Hurry up, knuckleheads! Last one to the cannon is a rotten frankfurter! Bang a Gong, Get it on! Get LOST! Get LOST! "
RIGHT???
Wow, great passion project to visit and talk about these places. They’d solved so much engineering on the fly back then. Not much of this would have been prefab, they would’ve had their plans and resolved a lot of it on site. Amazing and still has some pre WWII classical architectural features, like the staircase and some of the flooring, although it was reduced to plain cement. It’s tragic what happened with Germany overall, but when they awoke from the nightmare they just re-engineered a new future for themselves.
Great assessment!
My experience with a multi-story bunker (there may have been 88's on the roof back then, don't know?) was in Gladbeck, Germany. We would visit from Holland in the late '60s & the bunker stood on the edge of town, close by a typical small gas station off a main road. I remember walking to the entrance one time while Oma was filling up the DaF. The door was open & it was dark & couldn't see anything. I didn't enter more than a few feet. A long time ago. The bunker is still there from what I gather from images off the internet. Civilization has surrounded the bunker & it now sports a modern paint job.
Graffiti
The fact that Germany has been shamed so much that they've tried to erase any and all remnants of WWll, even buildings that have so much to offer today. It is just ridiculous. These buildings have so much to offer for modern Germany. These buildings were obviously made extremely well and should be utilized for as long as possible.
Even the heavily reinforced concrete U-boat pens that were built by the Nazi Todt Organization in Norway and France are still standing and being used by harbor boats and Coast Guard vessels today! 🇩🇪
@@spreadeagled5654
That's good to hear. Modern Germany has nothing to do with anything in the past. Make it work for you.
@@notsosilentmajority1 , If you have seen the 1981 movies, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “Das Boot,” there are scenes where a replica prop U-boat (the same replica prop U-boat used in both movies) entering and departing an actual, authentic and historic U-boat pen in France. 👍
@@spreadeagled5654
I saw the movie when it first came out so I don't remember it exactly but thank you for the information. It's a great piece of trivia.
According to; www.warhistory.com, Worst fire bombings during WWll; Tokyo @100,000 deaths, Berlin @50,000 deaths, Hamburg @ 42,600 deaths, Dresden @25,000 deaths.
Interesting
Ya, I knew Tokyo was #1 with 100,000.. thanks for listing the rest.... incendiary & phosphorus is literally a hell of a way to die..
@ Total War...!
It set a precedent. Bomb the enemy's cities to purposely murder their families. Wait until the next big war, which will be atomic. The U.S. is especially going to get its comeuppance.
that's a real shame they didn't made a museum to remember the stories of thoses towers....
I'm pretty sure Germany has made a conscious decision to not use these as a tourist attraction for the purpose they were built.
I was taught that Warsaw took the most damage during World War II due to the fact that the city was 90% destroyed.
The greatest war crime in history was the firebombing of Dresden by the Allies.
You are absolutely right.
Thank you!!..I mean, it sucks for them terribly, but I'm glad someone corrected him.
Don’t start a war & cry when you loose. Greatest... YEA RIGHT! How many Russian civilians did Germany kill when they invaded Russia?
@Richard McCaig . Dresden was not a legitimate target and the civilians who were murdered in it were not responsible for the war.
When the Germans declared total war, the allies fulfilled their desire. I for one celebrate Bomber Harris.
How Great to see it,, Thank You for posting it,, A lot More for us to remember!! God Bless You!! and Jesus Loves You !! Ask Him into Your Heart Today !!!
Nancy by night 🤗🤗🤗😂😂😂 that cracked me up 😀 great video 👍🏻
I was living across the street (50 meters away) with a view towards the bunker and visited the art school inside the bunker for 3 1/2 years till around 2018 I believe. I once was up there where the palm trees are. you can get up there when the club which is on the upper floor is opened, however, I think only sometimes they also open up the way to the rooftop though since they sometimes only open up certain parts of the club. What's also interesting is that the empty space around the bunker is where the "Hamburger DOM" is I think 2 or 4 times a year? sometimes there is also a zoo.
also, there is another smaller elevator in the middle which is used by the club and it leads all the way down and you exit through another exit at the bottom which is usually closed. also the club sometimes uses the round staircases for people to enter/exit
when i applied for the school i didn't know it was in the bunker, then on my first day i suddenly stood in front of this bunker...
but they still find bombs around the bunker, i once had to evacuate.