The v1 v2 rocket site at Peenemunde

Walk along the Baltic coast to the site of the rocket testing plant in peenemunde 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Beat to Powerful Podcast, a travel blog taking you down the crisscross paths of a century worth of warfare. I'm your tour guide, Martin Lambert, and for the past 20 odd years I've looked after people and taken them to the battle sites of the First and Second World War. However, I've decided to take my own path, and through this blog I can teach you how to travel to those sites that not many people get to see. Hello and welcome to Peter Battlefield. This week we're visiting an army testing range at Pinemunde in Germany, located on the Baltic coast. We see so much rich history. This trip was on the bucket list, and I'd spent a week in Berlin and planned this for a just a little bit of a getaway to the coast, to see a site which not many people will get to visit due to how remote it is within Germany. And it was a lovely walking day. I want to give you a bit of an opportunity to perhaps use this as a trip out if you are staying in Germany, perhaps you're in Berlin and you want to go a little bit further afield and experience something a little bit different. You can go there for the day from Berlin, and it will be a lot like the journeys we did to in Poland to the uh Great Escape of Staleglow III. It is a little bit out of the way, but you could do it from Berlin in a day, taking a train from Central Station and then changing through several different trains to come up to Pinamunda. And sadly, when I travelled there, it was the time they were doing engineering works, so it was quite an extended journey. You're looking between two and a half and three and a half hours to get to Pinamunda, and I actually stayed the night in Karlshagen. So I had the morning in Berlin, a night in Karlshagen on this beautiful coast, which I'll get onto in a bit, and then a day wandering around Pinnamunder and then straight back to Berlin. But you could do it a day. But Karlshagen and this area of Germany, located on the Baltic coast, it is a beautiful place to go and visit. Perhaps a place where Belgian tourists, German tourists will go and have their bit of rest and relaxation, and when I turned up there, it was one of the most chilled-out places you've ever seen. Beautiful pine forests and white sand that goes on for miles. So perhaps a nice little weekend away in Karlshagen and Pinamunda. But Pinnamunda was founded in 1937 on the sleepy little peninsula, which was a fishing town, and today they still hold that tradition of fishing, and there's some beautiful restaurants you can go to and try some of the local fare. And it would be an army research centre where, over the course of time, the rocket technology would be discovered and it would put the first things up into space. And we think of the rocket and jet engine age in the post-war period all just being created during the Second World War. All the way in the 1930s, man and since the dawn of time, man has always tried to strive further and see beyond and get up into space. And it this museum does teach you about the race of rocket technology in that prior period. But let's get started on with the walk. So, going from Carlshagen station, I'd recommend you walk along the beach and see the beautiful sands and the sea leading out into the Baltic. And here is where some of the first testing of the rockets would occur. Over the sand dunes, they tried to attempt with a V1 rocket, and many would die in this area. It's quite a marshy peninsula, and from the early days it had forced labour camps, and there are two concentration camps located in the area. These aren't the huge concentration camps that we'd think of, like Dachau or Auschwitz. These are the smaller labour camps with no more than a couple of a hundred prisoners, which were shipped out from the prisoner the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Auschwitz and Neuingammer. And you'll come to a place where you can see a fence, which is actually an airfield, which was created by Lutphoffer in the 1930s. You take a left and you go through a beautiful pine forest, and then you'll come to a road, and then you'll start to see signs for the Pinamunda site, and then you're greeted by the original gatehouse to the site. It's just a concrete platform, but from this you start to get the information boards which will take you around your tour of the peninsula. Instead of going forward into Noyungamma, and you'll be you can follow the train line into town if you don't want to do the longer walk, you can just follow the train line into town and you'll come into the town of Pinamunda. But we take a right and we walk past the old train station. Now, due to the the way the war effort went, this actually created the holiday resort that it would be. They needed to bring the more raw materials in and the staff, so an S-Bahn was created, and we walk past the original S-Bahn station platform where prisoners and other items from the site came and went. We then wander around the corner and we keep going on, and you'll start to see the bunkers built into the woods, and there is an amazing air raid shelter just located on the corner before you turn into Penunda, which you can have a little look around, and it's quite rare to find these sites open. I know there are sites all over Germany you can go into, but this one I found quite interesting to wander around one of the air raid shelters from the site, and of course it would be a site targeted by Allied bombing. We then carry on walking, and you start to see the marshland to the left and the right. The rocket held positions of the V1s, those famous vengeance weapons, the buzz bombs, the doodle bugs, had a hydraulic ramp, which the piston for it weighed 150 kilos and would be shot out along with the rocket, discarded. Many of the forced labourers would have to search through these areas to try and locate those 150 kilo lumps, and many died due to drowning and malnutrition and mistreatment in the marshes along here. And we carry on, and to the left hand side we'll see a large lake. Now, in July 1943, a Lancaster Bomber would crash on this site. We know exactly who the crew are, and they knew what had crashed there. But the crew were never found, and they remembered at the Running Mead Memorial to the Missing. And I'd like to take a point to thank the International Bomber Command Memorial up in Lincoln for their help and assistance whilst researching many of the air crew, which you'll hear about in other podcasts. But on this site is where Lancaster Cross crashed during Operation Crossbow. Operation Crossbow from July and August 1943, thanks to the Polish resistance giving the information about these sites, would see the site come to its end. It'd been there since 1937, but once the Allies could find it and it was within a nice close shooting range, the site would have to close up and move deeper into Germany. And it was thanks to these men that perhaps the war effort was slowed just that little bit, and we could get the ultimate Allied victory. We keep carrying on and we come to the air base. It's only a small airfield, and it does have a museum. We've got to remember that this area was occupied by the Soviet Union in the postwar period, and a MiG stands outside the front of it. But it would be here where one of the greatest escapes of a concentration camp would occur, when nine Russians, on their way back from working in the site, took a plane and landed back in Russia, and when we get to the Pinummer Memorial, we can listen to more of that when we go from there. We then carry on and will come to the site of the Falmer Pinnamunda concentration camp. In the early 2000s, volunteers from all over the world came here and excavated this site. There are some of the guard rooms and a couple of the platforms for the buildings, but it is just some bricks and a wood, but it reminds us of the horrors what happened with the forced labour in these areas, and we can't forget about those forced labourers. Nearly twelve million people would be taken from occupied Europe and forced to work for the Nazi war machine. Then we can just make out in the distance the towers of the factory of the Pinamunda site. But on the left hand side is a chapel, and it's a lovely wooden built chapel, and it looks almost like a garden house. Within these grounds here were the was the land where the civilians of Pinamunda, who would be moved out in the 1930s, and obviously the site would be bombed by the RAF during the Second World War. But still families live in this area, and it has rebuilt itself as a tourist destination, with boat trips and seafood sold all around. And as we come to the right hand side, we can see the mass site of the power station of Pinamunda. A practice V 2 rocket, although it's known as an Agaret 4, and that was what it was prior to its listing as a V2 rocket. You enter the site and you're in the command bunker. It'll cost you about 15 euros to go in, but I've got to say it is well worth it. We then go out into the main yard, and you're surrounded by different things to see. We have a V1 rocket ramp with a V1 stated on it. Now this wasn't made this was made in Germany, but this has actually come from France. There were hundreds of V1 ramps placed all over France, but not many of them were actually used, and I think it was only a very small percentage of those that were used in France and Belgium. And I don't actually believe a but a V1, if I remember rightly, ever left the belt ever left Belgium. But it was brought from France and via the Dutch and brought here to the site where these things were created. We see the black and white aggregate four, and we get a scale and a size of these Russian of these V-2 rockets which rained down on London during the tail end of the Second World War and all over Europe, of course. 22,000 V-1 rockets would be fired, but only roughly 5,000 V2s would be fired, and it just shows at the tail end that even though over-engineered as the Germans have always been, they couldn't quite get them out. And then there's an S-Bahn carriage, which tells you the story of the movement of moving prisoners, and you get to see what the old S Bahn looked like, and it reminds me of what my mum and my nan used to talk about when they travelled through Germany in the post-war period. The site was shut down in 1943, and most of the engineering work would be moved to places like Nordhausen and the Mittelbaudora site. But here not one single rocket would fire in anger. The Germans had come to the conclusion that this was something that was needed, but it wasn't of a military standing. It was more of a terror weapon on the on the civilian populations of Europe. Though in Antwerp in 1944, many British troops would be killed by V-2s raining down on the city of Antwerp. And even in one of our favourite places that we keep going back to in Ypres, in October 1944, even though the town had been liberated, a V 2 rocket landed on a school, killing many. We go into the main hall, but I've just got to say, before we go into the main museum, on the right hand side there's a little cafe. Do go in there. There is an information film, and the films go on for 40 to 50 minutes and they are all in German. But we can see in one of the workshops some of the items that have been found on the site, and also a liberator engine from one of those who cracked from the American bombers that crashed in the area. That's well worth seeing. We then enter the site of Pinamunda, the first part of the power station which the coal power power station which helped work to build the scientific site. The museum then goes through the rise of the rocket race all over Europe and how the V two rocket would destroy London in those first early days. We can see an original part of the site and worked within this powerhouse. And then we learn of the history of the V-2s and what happened. And then we have a hall of nations which tells us the stories of those who fought for the Germans and those who fought against from all nations. And then we go into how the rockets that were discovered on this site had become part of Operation Paperclip, where German scientists were gathered up by all sides and made to work to try and work and get that first person into space. And many people will talk about Leica, that Russian dog that went up into space. But the French also fired a cat up there, which I found quite interesting. Then in the long haul, we can read the history of Germany from the pre-Nazi period all the way up to the modern day and how this country was affected by fascism. And that's on this museum on three floors, and it gives you quite a good insight into how the rockets were created, how the space race formed, and also how close we were to perhaps being overthrown by the Germans' mass weapons. Once you're done there, you can go into the power station. Now sadly, on the day I got there, it was very windy. But there is a viewing platform right on the roof, and it gives you a should give you, I haven't seen it, but should give you a full experience of the local area and to see what this beautiful peninsula looks like. But it was also quite nice to walk around a power station. You can see this huge industrial building, and I always love these net these mega structures because we can see the pure industry that went into it. We also learn about the history of the site with how the locals were affected and how the fishing town would be completely destroyed, and also how Operation Crossbow would stop this site in its tracks. You then exit the site, and there's if you've taken children with you, there's loads of things to do. There's glow-in-the-dark gulf, an upside-down house. But going there in March, it wasn't the high of the season, so quite a lot of stuff was shut. We can go onto the sea line, there's a couple of little ships there. There's also a Soviet U-boat, which I didn't get a chance to go in because it was shut. But you could do an entire day of wandering around this area. But as you wander deeper into the area there where there should be loads of cafes open with lovely seafood and things for you to eat, but sadly they were shut. We can see one of the other power buildings and you see some of the old structures and see how the scale of this site was. The trains are every hour from Pinnerman to station. However, if you go on the Deutsche Bahn website and you can book pre-brook your tickets, and I'd highly recommend this. Have a look, be careful because sometimes the train tickets, your connections going back to Berlin may involve may in turn going on an ice train, which will cost you an extra 50 quid. So pick your tickets, pick your time. Now, if you're a little lost for time, go to the Toy Museum just opposite the site, and it's only about a four-minute walk from the train station. This smelt like my nan's house. My nan was German and born up in Berlin, and when I was very tired and there was nothing else open, I thought I'd go in there for a coffee, and I had some lovely coffee in Apple Strudel, and of course enjoyed a lovely curry verst when I was in there. One of those old home foods which I always enjoyed. This has been a very short walk around the area, but hopefully it inspires you to do these trips, and over the next couple of weeks you'll hear tales of the things just outside Berlin that I did on that week. Going to a First and Second World War cemetery and seeing other sites within Berlin. We have covered the ten best sites I but I believe in Berlin, but after the week I spent there, there's even more to see. So I hope you enjoy. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this, please share and like it and put it on social media. You can also buy us a coffee. Link is in the show notes. And if you've got any questions you want to ask for the future episodes or perhaps some ideas, please email beattobattle at gmail.com. Thank you and good night.