We first wrote about the mysterious underground facilities in the Sowie Mountains on July 13, 2003, attempting to discover what the gigantic structures were meant for. Then, on April 11, 2004 we tried to trace the fate of the people who built them, and on Jan. 23, 2005 we searched for the documentation concerning the work carried out in the area. Now it's time to take another look at the postwar history of the Sowie Mountains.

In late April or early May 1945, a Polish Army unit commanded by Cpt. Włodzimierz Furyk caught several members of the SS near Zgorzelec in Lower Silesia. During interrogation, the men were revealed to be security guards for a convoy comprising three trucks which had been abandoned in a mined forest clearing.

Once the trucks had been brought in from the minefield, the Polish soldiers saw what was inside-crates containing maps and plans for above-ground and underground works, including fortifications, in the regions of Warmia-Mazuria, West Pomerania and Lower Silesia, including in such cities as Stargard Szczeciński, Kętrzyn, Kędzierzyn, Wrocław, Wałbrzych, Nowa Ruda, Zgorzelec, Walim (in the Sowie Mountains) and many other localities. This was complete or near complete documentation.

Following orders, Furyk sorted the documentation and passed it on to the military/wartime commands of the following cities: Szczecin, Legnica, Wrocław and Cracow. His role wasn't over, though, because as soon as military activities had ceased, he was present at the first survey and removal of landmines by Soviet sappers in Kłodzko and Wałbrzych.

How do we know this, if the information is not found in the captain's testimony from 1968? In 1964, a research expedition by the Chief Commission for the Examination of Nazi Crimes in Poland was sent to the Sowie Mountains, headed by Dr. Jacek Wilczur. At the time, the press wrote about it extensively and called for any living witnesses from the war years to come forward. Those that did included Furyk (who retired after the war) and Second Lt. Jan Radek (who worked for the Public Security Office/Security Service at that time). The former had been responsible for taking over the documentation in 1945, while the latter had been responsible for filling in the gaps and verifying the documentation in 1947.

That the press wrote about the finding and researching of the documentation in 1964 is surprising to say the least. First of all, because it took place in a totalitarian state, and secondly, because it was officially sanctioned. It happened even though there was censorship in Poland, and the research work involved representatives of the military and the special services.

The fact that Furyk's and Radek's testimonies were published compromised the special services. This isn't changed by the fact that reading the texts, you can tell attempts were made in successive articles to cover the matter up and distract the public's attention from it. To this aim, for example, a telegram was sent to Werner von Braun himself (the man who developed the V-2 rocket), who settled in the United States after the war, asking him what he knew about the underground structures in the Sowie Mountains. The reply finally came, and it was exactly what had been expected-nothing.

As for the documentation, in 1964 Furyk mentioned that maps of the underground areas in Walim (a town in the Sowie Mountains; in this case he meant the whole region around it) also encompassed the castle of Książ, the mine in Nowa Ruda and the city of Kłodzko. There is also a very interesting mention on the links between the Sowie Mountains and such places as the town of Kahla in Thuringen. What went on in Thuringen during the war?

Near the town of Kahla, in the massif of the limestone mountain of Walpersberg, next to the village of Grosseutersdorf, a huge subterranean factory was being built to assemble Messerschmitt Me-262 Schwalbe (Swallow) jet fighters, code name "Lachs." The facility was being built by Flugzeugwerke Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (abbreviated to REIMAGH). This special state-owned company employed foreign forced laborers, a small number of prisoners of war (mainly Soviet) as well as German workers, who accounted for most of the specialists involved. Near the end of 1944, there were close to 13,000 people working for the needs of this facility, mainly foreigners, and a separate group of about 1,200 forced laborers employed by the Todt Organization. There was enough time to start up production only on a limited scale. Final assembly work was done in bunkers above ground.

The idea for and implementation of the underground factory/assembly plant near Kahla is almost identical with those adopted in the construction of facilities in the Sowie Mountains, where the Schlesische Industriegemeinschaft AG, or Silesian Industrial Community, was established. The testimony from 1964 mentions that specialists and workers specialized in building subterranean structures were sent from Kahla to Walim.

Meanwhile in the Sowie Mountains, in 1944 a branch of the Friedrich Krupp factory was moved from Essen to a closed-down linen factory in Głuszyca. This plant was supposed to do the final machining of parts for the Me-262. It was said tentatively after the war that a large underground aviation plant or missile factory had been planned near Walim, and there were suggestions that the location was the underground chambers hewn in the northeastern slope of Mt. Włodarz (German: Wolfsberg) range.

Analysis and comparisons of aerial photos and maps of the regions around Kahla and Walim as well as maps of the underground (what was actually completed and can be seen) reveal a striking similarity between the two structures. If this is so, then one can risk the hypothesis that a subterranean factory similar to the facility near Kahla in Thuringen was being built near Walim. This idea was probably abandoned at some point, for reasons as yet unknown, and the already excavated chambers were made part of the underground headquarters being prepared next to them (this facility was referred to as "Göring's headquarters;" remembering the Kahla facility built by REIMAGH, this suggests this place had originally been planned with a similar purpose in mind).

In the Jonastal valley in Thuringen, near the town of Ohrdruf, construction on a second underground headquarters, code name Olga, started in 1944 (like Riese in the Sowie Mountains, this was part of the Sonderbauvorhaben III project covering all the headquarters). This underlines yet again the striking resemblance between the Sowie Mountains and southern Thuringen.

Available bits of information, including witness testimony, a small number of documents, aerial photographs and geophysical surveys suggests that when the Germans were converting Książ castle into a residence for Adolf Hitler and his close associates and building the underground premises, they dug a train tunnel leading from the railway siding in nearby Lubiechów. In the Sowie Mountains, they most probably managed to connect some of the underground complexes under Mt. Włodarz, and also worked on creating an underground link between Książ and the Sowie Mountains (approx. 20 km). Also in the Sowie Mountains, next to the Riese underground headquarters, they built or converted other subterranean structures into facilities that could hold factories and warehouses.

Once the war ended, thanks to specialists and the documentation that was recovered, all these facilities were stripped of all fittings and raw materials within a few years, and then blown up. It seems a key role in this was played by the Field Search Enterprise set up by the Polish military and the security services. This enterprise was probably provided with the documentation from the convoy of 1945, and completed the destruction in 1948-50.

Somewhere is the only surviving trace of all this documentation-German documents concerning the facilities and the people linked to them, and Polish documents from the plundering, as well as some small fragments of the subterranean facilities, not demolished for some unknown reason. Will we ever be able to find these materials?
Piotr P. Lewandowski

The author is a student of the Law and Administration Department of Warsaw University, and for several years has been carrying out research in an attempt to explain the mystery of underground military facilities in Lower Silesia. He is currently preparing his latest expedition to the region. The Voice is the media patron of this project.

For more information, e-mail: wars98@wp.pl

The Sowie Mountains with their highest peak, Wielka Sowa (1,015 m above sea level), are an imposing massif stretching 25 km westward from the Bystrzyca River valley to Srebrna Pass, which separates them from the Bardzkie Mountains. Made up of gneiss rock whose age is estimated at approx. 3 billion years, they are one of the oldest mountain ranges in Poland. They are in the form of a compact block with relatively even peaks and steep slopes. The upper regions of these mountains are overgrown by thick spruce forests and some beech.