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..
@@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...
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
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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
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".
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!
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!
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
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.
"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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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!
@@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.
@@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
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.
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
Its a pity you came to Hamburg and didnt visit the other Flak Tower as well which is only a couple of miles away on the other side of the river elbe. Its one of the smaller ones from series 2 but definitely worth a visit. Its now a cultural venue, but when I was young it was an abandoned frightening place. I and some friends had a couple of semi-legal raves inside this place with all the stuff that they left inside after the war. Priceless experience...
You are absolutely correct. It's in my goals to visit them all someday, but to have been so close to another and not gone to see it is a shame. I'll be back...
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.
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.
You should have called some of the businesses inside and I bet they would have give you a tour. The "Übel & Gefährlich" would be that night club. The "Music Store" formerly know as AmpTown would be the music store.
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.
The Bunker! I love that place! It is so much fun to party there and listen to techno music! Haha it is hilarious what it is used for now! Good times partying there :D
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.
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.
12:53 That looks like a "bookbag" that students used to carry their books in. I had one when I went to school in Belgium that looked much the same. When my family returned to the U.S., American kids thought it was weird, but I thought it made much more sense than carrying your books under your arm. Of course, now kids use knapsacks or backpacks.
The tower is now a night club. I love going there BTW. There are also a lot of bunkers all over the city. They were built to protect the population from airstrikes. Just in my neighborhood there are 3 of them. They are massive.
@@TeachaMantoFish only the one located at Heußweg 114, 20255 Hamburg has been cutopen and repurposed. The other ones are just there rotting away (it will take ages I guess). The one in th Flora Park is now a rock climbing wall. The other ones I remember are in Vienna. One it is now an Aquarium (Haus des Meeres) and the other ones are in Augarten also rotting away.
Looking on the first demolition pictures it is belivable that its survived. But on the pictures from 1949 the structural damage was so bad that it is unbelivable that they could save it! The destroyed one is the Zoo Tower in Berlin! Not that one in Hamburg!
@SirDrakeNewcanon: Correct ! It took several times to get these two ZOO (Zoologischer Garten) Flak Bunkers destroyed, the 3rd time with 40 tons TNT. Afterwards a number of lesser demolition explosions were placed and all filled up with "Trümmer" = debris (more than 400.000 cubic meter debris had to be finding a new purpose) to create place for the ZOOs camels, rhinos and the new Bird´s house.
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 !!!
I had to stop this video at 13:17. If you are an enginneering nerd, like myself, you should come and visit. I think the one in this video is the last one standing in Germany, but I could be wrong. There are at least four standing towers left in the Austrian capital of Vienna. It is not until you stand in front of one, that you gain a definite appreciation for their gargantuan size and potential. I have visited those in Vienna several times. One has been repurposed and is open for a small fee to the public. When you get to the top, to the canon platform top, the view of the city is awesome. My favorite one is the last model. These things could survive an atom bomb strike. With walls six meters thick thats easy to believe. My family is from both sides of the Atlantic. I heard first hand accounts from them about the Flak Turem, the Towers, in Vienna. In one, more than ten thousand people sought refuge during the bombing. The plumbing ceased working and the smell was horrible. But despite this, and the terrible overcrowding, the people were happy they were safe from the ariel bombardment. In some cases, when the Russians arrived, they demended the soldiers surrender. And they laughed at the Russians. The Russians fired on these massive structures with their 88 mm cannon which bounced off harmlessly. I was told it sounded like a ping-ping-ping coming from the outside. In at least one case the people inside just waited for the Russians to leave, and then disgarding their uniforms, and wearing civilian clothes they just snuck out. A fully equipped tower could withstand a siege for at least two months. Many of the towers were connected by secret underground messenger tunnels. These were used to pass commands back and information fourth, in addition to food, water, and medicine. Hundreds of children were born inside the Towers. They are excellent examples of brilliant German engineering. If you want an emergency shelter built for the future, take my suggestion. And use either German or Swiss or Austrian engineers. I wish I had one, built deep in the Canadian Rockies. Peace, it's good karma.
@Stefan: There a some more of these flak bunkers still existing, for example HH-Wilhelmsburg, Berlin (Humboldthain) =here are guided tours possible (www.berliner-unterwelten.de/fuehrungen/oeffentliche-fuehrungen/humboldthain-extrem.html). Enjoy it, even Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have been there and seemed to be pretty impressed !
@@veritas_13 Thank you. As soon as my business grants me the opportunity I will come to see that engineering feat. As well as Der Riese in Poland, and another I believe is outside of Prague. Their engineering looks like something a hundred years in the future. Peace.
I have to wonder what the designers would think of their towers being used to house music stores and nightclubs, especially, "Nasty by night"...it actually sounds kind of interesting.
@@thearmoredgeorgian2736 It's actually a very interesting thought...buildings that last forever. one would wonder why all structures are not built in this kind of collective resource style. They do cost an arm and a leg...but they last forever....they will stand longer than the pyramids...but they do cost an arm and a leg.
Ironically, the citizens of Hamburg were not big NSDAP voters in 1933, Hamburg being primarily a blue-collar Socialist/Marxist leaning city. Nevertheless, they still suffered greatly ten years later,
Well, it's a fact that the Western Allies committed horrible war crimes. If you have ever read the testimony of anyone who saw these phosphor bomb induced fire storms, then you would know what I'm talking about. It's a shame that they cannot even admit to their guilt in this day and age. It doesn't matter if Nazi Germany were far worse. It's no excuse. And on top of it all, they allied with Stalin's USSR. The worst of them all.
As accustomed of the Germans the Flak Towers were indeed a piece of very sound engineering! For anyone interested in further reading: Hans Sakkers, Flaktürme. Berlin Hamburg Wien, Fortress Books; Michael Foedrowitz, Die Flaktürme. Berlin Hamburg Wien, Edition Berliner Unterwelten; Michael Foedrowitz, Bunkerwelten: Luftschutzanlagen in Norddeutschland, Dörfler Zeitgeschichte.
good to see these great building still standing. llways will be a reminder of the war. good thing they lasted or things like that would just dissapear.got to give it to them they were great architect's .
In fact, when he made that video, I was still living there. I worked just on the other side of the street of those statues. Man I get all melancholic seeing these places.
He fails in giving a creepy ambiance to the tower...the young fellas walking casually out the building...a night club where the guns used to be deployed.... he should have stayed for the party!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@TeachaMantoFish its a nice aquarium, and its the only aquarium I've been in thats more like a tower than a building. Also the top of the tower has a small museum about ww2 and the holocaust. The tower itself is also cool. The ones in Vienna are less stocky than the German ones and actually look like towers
Ich bin jede Woche daran vorbei gefahren - von "Flaktower" hat nie jemand gesprochen! Just in case: For years I've been passing that building (and we know very well that every attempt to blast it to pieces has failed so far) - but it's the first time that the word "flak tower" has been used! It was never designed for that kind of "torch light" you're trying to show.
Thanks for the interesting video. Suggestion: work on your audio, nobody enjoys chasing volume levels throughout a video. Takes away from an otherwise decent effort.
Yeah, this is one of my older videos. I was still shooting videos and editing on my phone in iMovie. I actually edited this on flight back over the Atlantic. My skills have come a long way since then... Thanks for watching.
Very nice video. Some of the historic images of demolition are from the similar towers in Berlin of which one is still left half covered by debris (today a park next to a rail line that made it difficult to demolish - Flak Tower III Humboldthain
@@TeachaMantoFish It is not demolished, the half that is covered by debris / soil is just a park. The debris came from landfilling with rubble, The one you visited in Hamburg gives a much better sense of the structure.
i watched on a previous youtube channel video about these towers one is being converted into a night club and another is a active power station,solar panal on them
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...
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 .
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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".
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the tour... I lived in Germany for many years but never made it to Hamburg. Really appreciate this video.
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
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 worst firebombing is history was on Tokyo, March 9th 1945, followed by Hamburg in July 1943 and Dresden, February 1945.
Poor instinct people 😕
😢
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I live on the coast in NJ and there are bunkers all over the place.
Are they tourable?
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
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.
Good to see the towers being repurposed rather than being torn down.
Two of the three in Berlin were torn down by the victors.
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.
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!
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
Medal of honour airborne ... Final scene demolishing a flak tower like this ❤️🔥
I watched a game playing vidoe of that too. It didn't look the same inside.
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.
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.
nowadays it's the home of the infamous "Übel & Gefährlich" -club. It means Sick and Dangerous
Its a pity you came to Hamburg and didnt visit the other Flak Tower as well which is only a couple of miles away on the other side of the river elbe. Its one of the smaller ones from series 2 but definitely worth a visit. Its now a cultural venue, but when I was young it was an abandoned frightening place. I and some friends had a couple of semi-legal raves inside this place with all the stuff that they left inside after the war. Priceless experience...
You are absolutely correct. It's in my goals to visit them all someday, but to have been so close to another and not gone to see it is a shame. I'll be back...
Thanks for your upload. Nice work
Adventures with Gijs. Very glad you enjoyed it.
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.
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.
Thanks for sharing. A very interesting video.
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
That spiral stairwell is really nice 👌🏼
German craftsmanship in effect -
Your music makes it sound dramatic but for them it is a repurposed Building and life goes on
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)"
Nancy by night 🤗🤗🤗😂😂😂 that cracked me up 😀 great video 👍🏻
They certainly new how to build
Still do, I’ve work with factories over there.
I think I learned more by watching this video than I did in school. And I'm German, living near Hamburg...
I’m glad you got something from it. 😁
You should have called some of the businesses inside and I bet they would have give you a tour. The "Übel & Gefährlich" would be that night club. The "Music Store" formerly know as AmpTown would be the music store.
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
The Bunker! I love that place! It is so much fun to party there and listen to techno music! Haha it is hilarious what it is used for now! Good times partying there :D
Those towers were epic in the defence of Berlin. Its sad to see germany now become an islamic nation.
@Anonymer Nutzer why is he nazi? Truth hurts doesn't it?
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.
I seriously thought it was gonna be an animation meme with the "I'm still standing" as BGM 😂
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
Nice historical information ,
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.
12:53 That looks like a "bookbag" that students used to carry their books in. I had one when I went to school in Belgium that looked much the same. When my family returned to the U.S., American kids thought it was weird, but I thought it made much more sense than carrying your books under your arm. Of course, now kids use knapsacks or backpacks.
Chester that’s interesting
Thanks for adding to the story
The tower is now a night club. I love going there BTW. There are also a lot of bunkers all over the city. They were built to protect the population from airstrikes. Just in my neighborhood there are 3 of them. They are massive.
Are those repurposed as well or preserved and able to be entered?
@@TeachaMantoFish only the one located at Heußweg 114, 20255 Hamburg has been cutopen and repurposed. The other ones are just there rotting away (it will take ages I guess). The one in th Flora Park is now a rock climbing wall. The other ones I remember are in Vienna. One it is now an Aquarium (Haus des Meeres) and the other ones are in Augarten also rotting away.
I’d love to a video tour if them all. Maybe someday....
Looking on the first demolition pictures it is belivable that its survived. But on the pictures from 1949 the structural damage was so bad that it is unbelivable that they could save it! The destroyed one is the Zoo Tower in Berlin! Not that one in Hamburg!
@SirDrakeNewcanon: Correct ! It took several times to get these two ZOO (Zoologischer Garten) Flak Bunkers destroyed, the 3rd time with 40 tons TNT. Afterwards a number of lesser demolition explosions were placed and all filled up with "Trümmer" = debris (more than 400.000 cubic meter debris had to be finding a new purpose) to create place for the ZOOs camels, rhinos and the new Bird´s house.
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So happy you got something out of it!
The older concret is the stronger it gets... this building is nearly indestructible
there is another interesting bunker in Hamburg Wilhelmsburg. You can get in there and there is a coffeehouse on the roof.
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 !!!
I had to stop this video at 13:17. If you are an enginneering nerd, like myself, you should come and visit. I think the one in this video is the last one standing in Germany, but I could be wrong. There are at least four standing towers left in the Austrian capital of Vienna. It is not until you stand in front of one, that you gain a definite appreciation for their gargantuan size and potential. I have visited those in Vienna several times. One has been repurposed and is open for a small fee to the public. When you get to the top, to the canon platform top, the view of the city is awesome. My favorite one is the last model. These things could survive an atom bomb strike. With walls six meters thick thats easy to believe. My family is from both sides of the Atlantic. I heard first hand accounts from them about the Flak Turem, the Towers, in Vienna. In one, more than ten thousand people sought refuge during the bombing. The plumbing ceased working and the smell was horrible. But despite this, and the terrible overcrowding, the people were happy they were safe from the ariel bombardment. In some cases, when the Russians arrived, they demended the soldiers surrender. And they laughed at the Russians. The Russians fired on these massive structures with their 88 mm cannon which bounced off harmlessly. I was told it sounded like a ping-ping-ping coming from the outside. In at least one case the people inside just waited for the Russians to leave, and then disgarding their uniforms, and wearing civilian clothes they just snuck out. A fully equipped tower could withstand a siege for at least two months. Many of the towers were connected by secret underground messenger tunnels. These were used to pass commands back and information fourth, in addition to food, water, and medicine. Hundreds of children were born inside the Towers. They are excellent examples of brilliant German engineering. If you want an emergency shelter built for the future, take my suggestion. And use either German or Swiss or Austrian engineers. I wish I had one, built deep in the Canadian Rockies.
Peace, it's good karma.
I will visit them all someday, It will be interesting to make a video and your of each one.
@Stefan: There a some more of these flak bunkers still existing, for example HH-Wilhelmsburg, Berlin (Humboldthain) =here are guided tours possible (www.berliner-unterwelten.de/fuehrungen/oeffentliche-fuehrungen/humboldthain-extrem.html). Enjoy it, even Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have been there and seemed to be pretty impressed !
@@veritas_13 Thank you. As soon as my business grants me the opportunity I will come to see that engineering feat. As well as Der Riese in Poland, and another I believe is outside of Prague. Their engineering looks like something a hundred years in the future.
Peace.
Cool video man, thanks!
Glad you liked it.
I have to wonder what the designers would think of their towers being used to house music stores and nightclubs, especially, "Nasty by night"...it actually sounds kind of interesting.
😂😂😂
Happy that their building will be used forever and their engineering lasts
@@thearmoredgeorgian2736 It's actually a very interesting thought...buildings that last forever. one would wonder why all structures are not built in this kind of collective resource style. They do cost an arm and a leg...but they last forever....they will stand longer than the pyramids...but they do cost an arm and a leg.
best Flakturme are in Vienna Augarten, still original condition (sans equipment)
" the worse firebombing in the history of the world ....." an interesting subject with a substandard narrative
Ironically, the citizens of Hamburg were not big NSDAP voters in 1933, Hamburg being primarily a blue-collar Socialist/Marxist leaning city. Nevertheless, they still suffered greatly ten years later,
@@richmerowitz5610 That, to a large extent, is because Hamburg was a major U-boat manufacturing port.
I have always wondered why the firebombing of civilians was not deemed a war crime ?
@@Thundergod001 because history is written by the victor. Bomber Harris is a controverisal figure in the UK.
Well, it's a fact that the Western Allies committed horrible war crimes. If you have ever read the testimony of anyone who saw these phosphor bomb induced fire storms, then you would know what I'm talking about. It's a shame that they cannot even admit to their guilt in this day and age. It doesn't matter if Nazi Germany were far worse. It's no excuse. And on top of it all, they allied with Stalin's USSR. The worst of them all.
Glad to see they're using their history Instead of destroying it
wow was a nice video THX fore that grets from berlin germany
As accustomed of the Germans the Flak Towers were indeed a piece of very sound engineering! For anyone interested in further reading:
Hans Sakkers, Flaktürme. Berlin Hamburg Wien, Fortress Books;
Michael Foedrowitz, Die Flaktürme. Berlin Hamburg Wien, Edition Berliner Unterwelten;
Michael Foedrowitz, Bunkerwelten: Luftschutzanlagen in Norddeutschland, Dörfler Zeitgeschichte.
Brilliant buildings. I love them.
Thank You!
You’re welcome!
good to see these great building still standing. llways will be a reminder of the war. good thing they lasted or things like that would just dissapear.got to give it to them they were great architect's .
It’s nice to see that some places don’t delete there history
Germany tries its hardest to delete this part of their history.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Beside the flak tower is a very delicious little restaurant with good fish meals. And its cheap. But i forgot the name of the restaurant.
Lol I lived for years just 10 minutes walk from that bunker. Good times.
In fact, when he made that video, I was still living there. I worked just on the other side of the street of those statues. Man I get all melancholic seeing these places.
He fails in giving a creepy ambiance to the tower...the young fellas walking casually out the building...a night club where the guns used to be deployed.... he should have stayed for the party!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Sadly, I had to catch a flight. I edited this one my phone over the Atlantic Ocean. 😂
Music students in this school are trained to take a lot of flak
😂😂😂😂. and withstand it
How thick are those walls
these things are still totally badass, 20th century castles
Certainly fascinating in their purpose , construction and the fact that they are still around and in use.
One in Vienna is an aquarium, it's actually really cool.
What makes it so cool? I want to go to more in the future.
@@TeachaMantoFish its a nice aquarium, and its the only aquarium I've been in thats more like a tower than a building. Also the top of the tower has a small museum about ww2 and the holocaust.
The tower itself is also cool. The ones in Vienna are less stocky than the German ones and actually look like towers
Thanks for the video. My personal choice would be to do with out the soundtrack. Kinda cliche and annoying.
It’s how I felt about the building, ominous.
Ich bin jede Woche daran vorbei gefahren - von "Flaktower" hat nie jemand gesprochen! Just in case: For years I've been passing that building (and we know very well that every attempt to blast it to pieces has failed so far) - but it's the first time that the word "flak tower" has been used! It was never designed for that kind of "torch light" you're trying to show.
Not sure what that means, because it is a "flak tower" by design.
Awesome!
Watch the greatest story never told on bichute
Thanks for the vid
Great video!
Thanks! I always wanted to show the inside of one to you all.
Coventry would dispute your comment about Hamburg being subject to the worst fire bombing.
I think post-war planners did more to destroy Coventry than Hitler, it's a soulless concrete carbuncle.
Definitely a place to go if there's zombie apocalypse..
Thanks for the interesting video. Suggestion: work on your audio, nobody enjoys chasing volume levels throughout a video. Takes away from an otherwise decent effort.
Yeah, this is one of my older videos. I was still shooting videos and editing on my phone in iMovie. I actually edited this on flight back over the Atlantic. My skills have come a long way since then... Thanks for watching.
Are the flak towers in your face?
Cause that's all we see in 40% of the video.
I live in Hamburg. We used to take acting classes in that bunker and doing drugs at techno parties after
Sounds like crazy times
Oh, das Stadion am Hochbunker bei den Stadtteilfans!
Very nice video. Some of the historic images of demolition are from the similar towers in Berlin of which one is still left half covered by debris (today a park next to a rail line that made it difficult to demolish - Flak Tower III Humboldthain
Wow! You mean there is still one half demolished? That would be great to see too.
@@TeachaMantoFish It is not demolished, the half that is covered by debris / soil is just a park. The debris came from landfilling with rubble, The one you visited in Hamburg gives a much better sense of the structure.
@@mufflejoy Understood
That spiral staircase is quite something
I agree, seems like some nice luxury design considering it was basically a war bunker building.
i watched on a previous youtube channel video about these towers one is being converted into a night club and another is a active power station,solar panal on them
Interesting
The music makes me feel like I’m watching the movie Halloween
That's why I used it LOL