The Lost Bombproof German Bunkers Of World War One The Great Underground War Timeline

The slaughter of the Somme battlefield in July 1916 has gone down in history as one of the worst disasters of the First World War. New research shows that secret underground fortresses saved the lives of thousands of German defenders, a deadly shock for the attackers. These hidden earthworks made the expected easy British victory impossible and turned the battle into a bloodbath. On the 1st of July 1916 Britain's unique army of patriotic volunteers was destroyed for good. Expecting to walk into German trenches and break through enemy lines, the soldiers had been promised little or no resistance from German troops whose dugouts and trenches had supposedly been obliterated. It was a tragic illusion. It was the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in France which lasted five months. The Newfoundland Regiment Memorial represents the northernmost tip of the Ancre sector of the Somme battlefield. In the distance stands the village of Beaumont-Amel, a German stronghold on the 1st of July 1916 when the British and Commonwealth infantry advanced. Unknown to the attackers, far from being slaughtered in their trenches, the German infantry had survived in their deep dugouts and underground fortresses. Frieder Riedel has studied the battle from the German point of view and has uncovered the secret of how the British were deceived. When the attack came on the 1st of July, as we know, the English suffered the worst losses of their entire history. 20,000 dead on the first day. This was the result mostly of the fact that most of the field constructions were actually underground. Andy Hawkins and Julia Richardson are archaeologists from the Durand Group. With the church of Beaumont-Amel in the background, they have come to examine one of the massive craters left by the British mines of the Somme battlefield. This one had taken seven months to dig. Hawthorne Mine exploded at 7.20am on the 1st of July 1916, ten minutes before the British attack began. The resultant crater was 20 metres deep and 120 metres wide. The explosion killed 30 German soldiers in the redoubt. Infantrymen of the British army were convinced that not a single defender could have survived the previous week's bombardment. And the mine attack, halfway across no man's land, the tragic truth hit home. German machine guns began opening fire, cutting down the lines of infantry, wave upon wave. Called up in reserve, the Newfoundland Regiment barely made it out of the trenches. The Battle of the Somme was the most controversial battle of any in British military history. Two years earlier, in August 1914, the German Imperial Army swept through Belgium to attack France from the north. The Battle of the Marne was a turning point when the units stationed in Paris were deployed by taxi to attack the German right flank. The German generals ordered a retreat and as the units tried to outmanoeuvre each other as they moved north, they left behind them a line of trenches. The Germans usually had the better high ground and the British and French had no choice but to attack to dislodge them. As a line of trenches stretched from the Alps to the North Sea, Britain found itself with too few troops on the ground in France. At the end of 1914, Britain's war minister, Lord Herbert Kitchener, began a massive campaign to persuade young British men to volunteer for the army. Hundreds of thousands, often whole villagers together, rallied to the flag. These Pals regiments were trained and sent to the front. They were the only army of volunteers. They were motivated and well-equipped and the French were happy to leave parts of the front to them as the German army began a build-up in front of their town. Kitchener's volunteer army began arriving in France and Belgium to fight with technologies that were evolving fast. The machine gun and high explosives were changing the face of war. Before the war, these weapons weren't known as machine guns but fast-repeat infantry rifles. So although they had been introduced, they were seen only as support for the traditional magazine-loaded repeat rifles that were being seriously considered. The First World War would probably have become a static war, even without machine guns because the infantry already had massive firepower with these rifles. In February 1916, the German Fifth Army, under the command of the Kaiser's son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, attacked Verdun. The goal was not to take the city but to lure the French armies there and destroy their manpower using artillery. The desperate French chief of staff, Joseph Genfre, asked his British counterpart to attack the Germans somewhere to take the pressure off the Verdun front. General Douglas Haig's choice fell on the Somme area. The attack was planned meticulously, although remotely from the battlefield itself. The British high command had no idea what the German engineers, and one in particular, were building. The surface and underground earthworks worked perfectly. I found a quote from Erwin Rommel, later the general and field marshal, a quote that illustrates this perfectly. Sweat saves blood. It means that if we hide underground, we suffer fewer casualties. And in this, Captain Leiling was a brilliant exponent. On the German side, trenches were built to specific and standardized models and supported by well-placed artillery. Block houses and bunkers, like these in the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt, sheltered men and field artillery pieces from the bombardment by enemy howitzers. In the pre-1914 military theory, there was a clear distinction between field warfare and siege warfare. All the European nations had reinforced their frontiers with more or less strong defenses. Certainly, the two forms of warfare were very different. When the fronts stabilized, this special form of siege warfare was introduced. Many of the weapons and combat methods that were typical of siege warfare became daily practice in trench warfare. Two kilometers south of the Hawthorne crater is a war memorial that best represents the British and French tragedy that was the Battle of the Somme. Andy and Julia have come here to meet Frieda Riedel. Hello. Hi. Nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you. The British and German front lines ran along the rolling hills of the Somme Valley, roughly north to south. The Ancre sector ran from Beaumont-Amel to Thiepval, one of the villages that the British were expecting to take on the first day of the battle. It was the site of ferocious fighting, especially between the troops of the Württemberg Division and the Irish infantry of the Ulster Division. As the Somme battle dragged on over the summer and autumn of 1916, the battle around the village of Thiepval and the Swabian Redoubt entered the realm of the epic. In 1915, as an uneasy balance of firepower settled in on the western front, both sides began making plans to break the deadlock. Despite what the British high command might think, the German defences on the Somme were stronger than anywhere. Frieda Riedel has studied the diaries of German officers in the field to find out what happened on the Somme front and how the Germans took the attacking British by surprise. Artillery officer Armin Stäbler was in London on the 1st of August. He was a businessman and when he began to hear that war was in the air he immediately left to go to fight. He rushed to Dover where he got the first ship to cross the channel and on the 2nd of August he was with his unit at Ludwigsburg. He was assigned to the 26th Field Reserve Artillery Regiment. He left me his diary and a couple of hundred pictures. Frieda's great uncle Armin was an artillery officer during the Battle of the Somme and left a diary and unique photographs of the German army's advance through France and the start of trench warfare. His is just one of the sources Frieda uses to identify the incredible underground earthworks in the area of the Ankara river on the Somme front. The war had started with mobile field artillery providing most of the firepower in support of attacking infantry and cavalry. From the earliest days the power of modern artillery proved devastating leaving thousands of men dead on the battlefield. As the Germans adopted a defensive strategy and dug in the heavy artillery began playing a greater role. Here the Germans were disadvantaged. A weak point of the Germans emerged during the trench war. German field artillery had a shorter range than the French artillery. In a war of movement this isn't really important but in a static situation it was very important. Apart from his great uncle's diary Frieda Riedel has also used other German and allied sources in his research. Furthermore I had other pictures by Armin Staebler that document the Somme battle and above all this Captain Leiling from which I found out that it was he who built these very solid fortifications. These reinforced underground fortresses in the area of the 10th reserve division. Another officer quartermaster Cornelius Bräuninger left behind hundreds of photographs of the trenches around the Somme battlefield that clearly show how the German dugouts were built to the highest standards. He was a witness to the secret underground fortress. Cornelius Bräuninger speaks of it in his diaries as an eyewitness. He was inside it and even described its dimensions. It covered 230 meters in length. Crazy, enormous and according to the report of an American officer I read it could host up to a thousand men. The secret underground fortress was just one structure that the German engineers built to protect their troops from the massed guns of the British and French. For decades the Germans had been planning for siege warfare. And we're sitting on what is the German front lines? Yes. And the British lines are just to our left. To our left, yes, that's it. About 200 meters along the edge of the tree line. Okay, so from your research what was happening here at this time in terms of the Germans in preparation for the events of this area? We are approaching the most interesting secret of the Somme. Absolutely. It was kept as a top secret until the entire war. It was not mentioned in any map and it was huge. A subterranean fortress which had four entrances from the valley of the Ancre. We are just approaching these four entrances and it was 230 meters wide and 12 meters underground. From Beaumont-Amel southwards to Thiepval the 26th Reserve Division under the command of General von Stauden built some of the most formidable defenses ever seen on the Western Front. They ran through the village of Saint-Pierre-des-Viens on the Ancre River where Cornelius Breuningen was stationed. On the 1st of July 1916 the German units were waiting for the attack below ground. The reasons why the Germans would do this undercover fortress is you can keep central functions near the front line. There was for instance a special device to hear the British telephone. You could hear the British telephones for three kilometers. That means everything what happened here was known to the Germans. According to Frieder's research the underground fortress lies just a few meters under their feet. If Frieder is right the massive underground fortress of Saint-Pierre-des-Viens will have had four entrances along this road running along the Ancre River. It's difficult, isn't it? Because walking up here now you see wriggly tins sticking out but it's all been moved around so much and taken out of the farmer's fields and dumped in the bank. But it does mislead you slightly, doesn't it? It does indeed. This looks also as an entrance but we cannot damage the house. The Allied plan was for the French and British to attack along the road between Albert and Papon on the 1st of July 1916 after a week of massive artillery bombardment. The heavy guns were to switch from the first German line to the second at set times. As no resistance was anticipated the British knew nothing of the deep German dugouts. The Kaiser had said, my soldiers aren't moles but General von Soden with great foresight realised that the Germans were numerically inferior which was true. In fact, during the Battle of the Somme the English attacked with 25 divisions but the Germans defended with just five. Horizontal fire from field guns was not able to penetrate the trenches as the trajectory was too shallow. So all sides introduced the Howitzer which changed the face of the artillery barrage. Firing in a high trajectory the shells landed vertically on the enemy position penetrating the trenches and dugouts. The Germans however were quick to understand what the new weapon could do to their defences. This means that there was a clear disadvantage both in artillery pieces and in ammunition and this numerical inferiority had to be compensated for by building very deep and well-designed underground bunkers. As the sun sets Julia, Andy and Friede retire to discuss the implications of the documents they have brought to study the secret fortress. The start of the redesign of the German trenches was an event which took place in 1915. The French, not the British, the French were the enemy opposite the 26th Reserve Division and they attacked with one and a half division 30,000 men here in Saaren. For the first time they used 28 cm Howitzers and every dugout has been destroyed on this. The French gained no success because the Germans had to invest blood to throw back the enemy. In the months before the attack the British concentrated as many Howitzers as were available on the Somme front and a week before the assault began pounding the German trenches methodically destroying them. A major effort was also spent identifying and demolishing enemy artillery to prevent it interfering with the onslaught. So the disposition of the artillery was redesigned to place guns in hidden places in mountains, woods, villages so that the firing positions could not be seen. This way artillery was certainly not unbeatable but it was harder to identify and therefore difficult to destroy. So however much effort you put into an attack the enemy always had a minimal ability to resist the attack and stop it. After the Battle of Seer the Germans decided to redesign their dugouts so as to be less vulnerable to the new terrifying Howitzer shells. There was a staircase going down six or eight meters and on the ground there was a blind passage ending in the soil or in the chalk. Now the dugouts were 8 to 12 meters below ground carved in the chalk with the accommodation of the soldiers no longer directly connected to the staircase and each with two or three exits. The key new features are the fact that the entrance is now on the side facing the enemy so that no stray shell can come directly in. Also the fact that it branches off from the dead tunnel and the multiple exits so that there's less chance of people getting trapped inside. Whatever happened on the surface thousands of German soldiers survived the British bombardment in their deep dugouts. Aerial photographs being used by the Allied forces showed that the German trenches had been obliterated all along the front. By the time Allied troops were in position to go over the top of their trenches there was nothing left of the German frontline trenches and the British infantry expected little or no resistance. Here on the far right of the attack between Beaumont-Amel and Thiepval the first few minutes of the assault proved disastrous. It was a sunny early morning when waves of khaki-clad soldiers of Kitchener's volunteer army walked across no man's land. The Hawthorne mine had been a warning to the Germans that the attack was about to begin and a few minutes later the defenders had occupied what was left of their trenches and opened fire. The way machine guns were used had changed fundamentally over the first two years of the war. First it was a heavy weapon deployed in batteries. Now it was being distributed along the line in support of infantry actions. The fast-firing infantry rifle with magazines of five or six rounds made the frontal charge that had characterized the wars of the 19th century totally suicidal. From Thiepval to Beaumont-Amel the British artillery and the massive Hawthorne mine seemed to have done nothing to the Germans. 12,000 divisions lost 100 men as a result of seven days of nothing. It was just the sentries which were hit in the trenches because the trenches were empty throughout the seven days. When the soldiers came out of their dugouts there was no trench left. Normally a little bit of the barbed wire defense was still there, not everywhere but in the first trench was flattened. The British and Canadian infantry were cut down by enemy fire before they even got midway across no man's land. Cemeteries dotted here and there over the area today show where hundreds of men fell. In all, on the first day of the Somme battle 20,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers died. One unit made amazing progress. The Ulster division was to take the village of Thiepval and the Swabian Redoubt a defensive structure to the west now occupied by a graveyard. They rushed the 200 meters uphill between their trenches which ran along where the treeline stops and the empty defensive structure. The Ulster tower stands as a memorial to the exploit. However, Thiepval and Beaumont-Amel stayed in German hands. With their flanks exposed they were soon surrounded and forced to surrender. The first day of the Somme battle was considered a great German defensive victory. Commanding the 26th reserve division of the German army in the sector from Beaumont-Amel to Thiepval was General Franz von Soden a thorough officer who had the welfare of his men at heart. He called in an engineering genius, Franz Leiling to assist in designing the tunnels and dugouts. Captain Franz Leiling was known both to Cornelius Beuninger and Armin Staebler and is seen in these pictures with his dog. He built no less than three underground fortresses along the front from Beaumont-Amel to Saint-Pierre-d'Ivion. One was in the medieval cellars of the village another stretched under the British lines at Beaumont-Amel but another was particularly large and secret. First I tell you the source where I got it from it's in a design of an American officer who entered this fortress, underground fortress after the war and made this design and it is published in a war guide it has four entrances leading from the slope of the Ancre valley to the center of the system one, two, three, four they could not be seen by the British ground soldiers and they could be seen by the airplanes and what's absolutely interesting is the design of this fortress because I've never seen round passages who are not round by chance but round by design When the Irish regiments swiftly conquered the Swabian Redoubt German soldiers appeared from nowhere trapping the attackers and swiftly retaking the position. The underground fortress built by Captain Franz Leiling was the key to the German victory here on the first day of the Somme battle a deadly surprise for the assaulting troops. German machine gun crews jumped out of their underground dugouts and cut down the British and French soldiers. For the first time tanks were deployed but to little effect. South of the Albert-Bapom road the French made better progress than the British exploiting their long-range artillery in a rolling barrage that continued to rain shells on the enemy even when the infantry were advancing. They reached all their objectives on the first day. This field artillery, light artillery, was designed for mobile warfare where range was not very important because in that kind of war range wasn't as important as mobility of guns and ammunition and the German field artillery was the best but in the static conditions of French warfare the longer range of the French cannons made the difference. We are talking about thousands of pieces. The layout of the Ancre sector of the Somme battle is clear from these aerial images stretching from the Newfoundland memorial to the Thiepval monument. Further north where the memorial to the Newfoundland regiment stands the attacking infantry were also taken by surprise by the German machine guns which they believed had been blown to pieces. Here too under the village of Beaumont-Amel Captain Liling had built an underground redoubt which the massive Hawthorne mine did nothing to destroy. Here too the German soldiers of General von Soden's division survived the bombardment to take the British and Commonwealth troops by surprise. The battle entered its bloodiest phase and the British continued pouring in infantry adopting the rolling barrage and better communications with supporting artillery. On the ground hand-to-hand fighting became even more vicious. Infantry was used to fighting with rifles and bayonets or with machine guns which at the time few soldiers had. So over the course of the spring of 1915 the hand grenade entered into common use. At first most of the hand grenades were handmade. They were made in areas close to the front using improvised designs. Initially they were only thrown by sappers. In fact in Germany they were the specialist in anything technical or that had to do with explosives. However as I said during the first months of 1915 they became a new and practically common part of the infantry weaponry. It was therefore the tactical foresight of General von Soden that saved the lives of his men and made the line under his command impregnable costing the British army 20,000 dead. But where exactly was the secret underground fortress? With the Battle of the Somme that started on the 1st of July 1916 the British army entered a painful learning curve. Command and control systems were improved allowing troops on the ground to make important decisions rapidly according to immediate needs. The British adopted the rolling barrage like the French and better coordination with aerial reconnaissance. The Germans had invested time and effort into building dugouts and underground defences reacting swiftly to the development of new heavy howitzers fully exploiting their local tactical advantage. Here at La Boiselle another 20,000 kilo British mine blew a hole in the German lines just two minutes before the attack. Okay so here we are at the Loch Nogar crater which is the biggest one on the Somme. So just look down at the size of it and just imagine the amount of oil that was thrown out of it, detonated. Well that was the aim of this one unlike the ones that went underneath the target this one was set back in the line mainly because the Germans were so active in their terrain so it was set back slightly off the trenches so the huge amount of spoil that went up would fill the trenches and that would be the attack. It was set two minutes before the attack on the 1st of July to signal two minutes to the attack and that's two charges. I think the first was 30 pounds and the second was 24. So that sounds like 20,000 pounds. 30,000 pounds and 24,000 pounds and I think I remember reading somewhere or a reference to the fact that they put too much or more than they thought they needed just because they were worried about the amount of spoil and they wanted to have the biggest effect that they could go across. It's what they call a fougasse mine so it covers the target. Other mines exploded just before the attack too. One after the infantry had begun moving forward. According to the documentation presented by Friede the circular shape of the underground fortress proved that it was built by expert miners. The designers, the engineers who made this were experienced mining engineers. That's written in the literature. That's true. These mining engineers have experience with underground explosions. Methane gas explosions in the mines and they know what to do with explosion energy. What they do is if there's a grenade hits and digs a hole in the system and it explodes for instance here the energy is let round here and here and the stone of this construction the stones are chalk like the rocks of Dover. The same layer of chalk. And the chalk has a certain behaviour. However the mystery of the location of the Liling underground fortress lingers and there are discrepancies between Andy's and Friede's documents. And let's just have a look now move on and look at Saint-Pierre-du-Vent which is what we were looking at earlier as well. So let's have a look at your plan and I'll show you what we dragged out of the archives and we'll see where we can actually bring these two together. And this is what is in the record as being under Saint-Pierre-du-Vent. And as you can see it sort of says Lilingstollen down here. But it's completely straight. Okay so there seems to be an element of confusion. It matches this image in certain respects in terms of a group of entrances going into sort of dugout situations and of course it comes into the front line as well. Now what's interesting is when the British because the British do get into it because they report it in their records and they actually say that it's in a poor state of repair. Okay and that's probably partly due to bombardment because we're now talking sometime later. Right it's in a poor state of repair but once repaired would be able to hold at least a thousand men. Okay now what we see here definitely couldn't hold a thousand men. Yes. So that's something that's not quite sitting right with us. But one of the big issues is that this entire slope was covered in dugouts. First trench line. Underground tunnel it has a hundred meters. That's what Hauptmann, Captain Lailing did very often. And there's the beginning of this fortress. And it has a direct connection to the first trench which was called Lailing Stollen. So it's possible that in interpretation okay that these entrances which obviously come out on here aren't actually quite where he's got them or that these four come off or that actually what we're looking at there is more in here. Yes yes you know I mean the only way as I think we said on the ground is to get in and look at it and that's the only way you're going to resolve the reality. But nothing really said that the two couldn't exist together. The unsung hero of the Somme battle on the German side was a lowly captain and engineer, Franz Lailing. The battle lasted from July to November 1916 and British and French forces only managed to make six miles progress. The British exploded another mine under Hawthorne Ridge. This time the infantry successfully broke through and occupied the village. During the course of the battle the British learned the hard way how to handle modern warfare. The Germans too understood that outmanned and outgunned their best solution would be to retreat to a shorter line, an even more solid line of defences, the Hindenburg line. During this operation the German high command ordered a number of deportations and the destruction of French villages. Armin Stäbler and Cornelius Bräuninger witnessed these and dissented to no avail. This photo album is a precious treasure of history and for example contains pictures of the first deportations of French civilians from the Somme area. My uncle took photographs showing women, children and old people being loaded onto a train. The Somme battle came to symbolize the life and death struggle of the German empire. Every means was used to bring home the heroic nature of German resistance. This painting by Fritz Mühlbrecht represents the battle of the Somme. This painting obviously also has a message. The troops are tired, several are wounded, even badly wounded. You can see this one may even be dead but they continue to be resilient. This doggedness is symbolized by the man who is standing in the center. He is holding on to his rifle and saying we may be exhausted but not defeated. This painting is by Rudolf Stark. He wasn't an artist, he was a career soldier or rather he wanted to have this career. He was in the choir of the Bavarian army cadets and then he was mobilized and entered the cavalry and fought for several years on the eastern front and then he became a pilot. He was a talented painter and only painted the events he lived through. In the 1918 spring offensive the Germans broke through the lines here and once again recaptured all the terrain lost in 1916. It was their last bid to win the war but having exhausted their resources they were unable to keep up the impetus of attack. On the home front the British blockade was destroying Germany's social cohesion and by 1916 rationing and requisitioning of materials was causing serious upheavals. The war soon invaded all sectors of life in Germany becoming part of the family life of everyone. The British blockade was perceived as something very painful due to the fact that foodstuffs were not reaching Germany. In 1915 the food supply situation was still good but in 1916 real famine broke out. It wasn't only food that was lacking but also clothes because all the textile raw materials were needed for military equipment and clothes. The summer of 1916 was a turning point in the story of the old world. Nothing would ever be the same again. Captain Leiling and Armin were killed later in the war and Cornelius Breuninger fell into depression. Hundreds of thousands of men on both sides died or were wounded on the Somme. German, French and British villagers literally lost an entire generation of men. The suffering at home and on the front changed forever the structure of European society. The underground war was a hidden chapter in the dark history of the so-called war to end wars.