– The Abyss Advent Calendar opens doors every day that would otherwise remain closed. In the 15th episode we go down to the Palmenhof bunker. In 1945, the Nuremberg Nazi leadership controlled the hopeless battle against the US armed forces from here.
Damp, dark basements have what it takes to make people shudder. The Palmenhof bunker in the southwest of Nuremberg's old town can reinforce the feeling when you consider what happened here during the Second World War: From here, the Central Franconian Nazi leadership waged the hopeless battle against the overwhelming forces of the US Army .
For our Advent calendar of the true crime podcast “Abysses,” we look behind an otherwise closed door every day in 24 episodes. In the current episode we descend into a lost place, the so-called Palmenhof bunker, which played an important role for the National Socialists in Nuremberg.
A tunnel that began in the basement of the police headquarters on Schlotfegergasse leads us into this historic complex. First Police Chief Inspector Roland Faulhaber has studied the topic intensively and opens the heavy steel door for the Advent calendar.
Bloodbath in the bunker
The facility was expanded into a bunker in the early 1940s. In the last years of the war, the then Gauleiter Karl Holz, a fanatical National Socialist, had the command post set up here. Today the facility is largely empty and there is no longer any technical knowledge from that time. However, on some walls there are still original wall motifs, symbols of the National Socialist regime with swastikas.
The US Army finally took the imperial city of Nuremberg on April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler's birthday. While the victory celebration was taking place upstairs, a bloodbath began in the bunker below. A few days later, Allied soldiers found the bodies of high-ranking Nazi officials there.
Roland Faulhaber reports from the scene of the incident, around ten meters below the city, what happened here in the last days of the war.
Day after day, otherwise closed doors are opened in the Abyss Advent Calendar. The 15th episode of the series is now available wherever podcasts are available.
