BERLIN — The former West Germany’s most-secret place — an underground bunker designed to shelter the government in case of nuclear war — officially opened Thursday in its new incarnation as a Cold War museum.
The bunker complex, which includes a maze of more than 10 miles of tunnel, is tucked into the rolling hills west of the former West German capital of Bonn. It originally was dug in 1903 as a train tunnel to France.
The new museum in Ahrweiler, called the Government Bunker Documentation Center, is a memorial to Germany’s division by the Iron Curtain and the fear of a nuclear standoff that gripped the nation.
“This bunker was a part of the system of mutual nuclear deterrence,” said Florian Mausbach, the head of the Federal Authority for Construction and Urban Planning, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “The site can now serve as a place of remembrance, admonition and hope for enduring peace.”
During World War II, the Nazis used slave laborers from the Buchenwald concentration camp to expand the tunnels, and hid rockets in them. A plaque to memorialize those who did the forced work is planned.
West Germany first made provisional plans for an emergency government bunker when it joined NATO in 1955. But it was not until 1960 that work on the bunker began.
By the time the $2.5 billion-project was completed in 1972, it comprised 936 bedrooms, 897 offices and five small hospitals. If there had been a nuclear strike, it was equipped to provide for up to 3,000 people — including the chancellor, president and other high officials — for 30 days.
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