Talk:Wolf's Lair

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'Former' province[edit]

"... at the time of operation this area was part of the former German province of East Prussia."

-- Wrong. At the time (7-20-44) the area was part of the German province of East Prussia. It became the former province of East Prussia when East Prussia was split between the Soviet Uniona and Poland in 1945. Sca 18:31, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 23:51, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wolfsschanze → Wolf's Lair — I'm wondering why this article is under the German name, when there is a standard English name for this location. Regardless of whether the English name is an accurate translation of the German original, "Wolf's Lair" is the standard name used in every Engish text I've ever come across. As this is English Wikipedia, the article should be under the English name, with a redirect from the German. Ed Fitzgerald t / c 16:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Wolf's redoubt[edit]

PLEASE NOTICE!!!: It is only in US (and not the entire English speaking world) the place is labeled "Wolf's Lair" (Where did the 'lair' come from??`).

The name of the place (get use to it US) is "Wolf's redoubt"

There is no such thing as "Wolf's lair". At least not related to WW2 and Adolf Hitler.

Regards

Henrik Ørsted, Denmark — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.184.30.205 (talk) 04:06, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At Google "Wolf's redoubt" +Hitler makes 10 hits for me, and "Wolf's Lair" +Hitler makes 225.000 hits. Skogs-Ola (talk) 10:23, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's true that Schanze generally means fortification, not lair or "redoubt" (the latter being a little-used word). However, the use of "Wolf's Lair" has become so commonplace in English that there's little point in being pedantic about it. To me, it makes more sense to simply use the German word Wolfsschanze. Sca (talk) 15:13, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Allied knowledge?[edit]

The Wolfsschanze was a huge complex served by road, rail and airfields. (I've seen it.) Each Nazi bigwig had his own bunker. It was widely known among German government and military officials. I find it hard to believe that the Western Allies were unaware of its existence through the entire war.

I've never understood why they couldn't find it and bomb it to smithereens — rather than bombing cities. At least by 1944, if not considerably earlier, they had the capability of bombing such a target; witness the devasting R.A.F. attacks on nearby Königsberg in late August 1944.

Hitler himself was well aware of its vulnerability to air attack. I've added three quotations from Traudl Junge's memoirs to show this. (I also added the German and English editions of her memoir to 'Sources,' with page numbers.) If anyone has any information regarding the Allies' failure, or perhaps unwillingness, to attack the Wolfsschanze, it would be interesting to see it.

Similar questions could be asked regarding the Berghof (residence), Hitler's Bavarian aerie, where his entourage spent long periods during the war. Junge also writes of repeated air-raid warnings there late in the war, but says the Allied planes, chiefly U.S. bombers based in Italy, flew on "to their destinations," i.e. German cities. It wasn't bombed until April 25, 1945, twelve days before the surrender of German forces on May 7. Why not?

And what about Hitler's special trains, known as the Führersonderzug? (See: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrersonderzug.) They were equipped with multiple flak (AA) batteries and given top priority on the Reichsbahn. One would think that Allied fighter-bombers — which by the end of the war were busily attacking anything that moved on German roads and rails — could have targeted these as well, but according to Junge their guns were never fired except in practice.

Sca (talk) 15:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. I don't think the Allies had the ordnance that would do much damage to the Wolfsschanze bunker complex - I guess the two options would be Tallboy through the roof or directly beside a bunker, or vast numbers of incendiaries to suck out the oxygen locally. Tallboys would need to be dropped from 4 miles up, so were useless against a small target such as a bunker, and sealed bunkers could probably be self-sufficient in air for several hours. As for avoiding softer targets such as the Berghof, I imagine the entire focus of Allied bombing missions at that time was to assist advancing ground forces, so a mission against Hitler's holiday home means one less chance to help the advance? Little grape (talk) 15:21, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Wolf's Lair/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

needs more citations. most of the appropriate info is in Kershaw, but there are others.

Probably should have a cultural reference to the movie Valkyrie (2009?). Punctuation should be inside the quotes. Footnote reference outside the punctuation (and outside ending quotes, if applicable).

--Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:43, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 23:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 10:49, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Map[edit]

Wolf's Lair with post-1945 borders
Postwar border changes, Germany and Poland

Ideally, a map for the infobox would show the location of the Wolf's Lair and the postwar border changes that put it in Poland. Such a map would combine these two.

⇔

However, the map at right would be an improvement over the map of postwar Poland removed as chronologically erroneous – if someone can figure out how to insert it in the infobox. Sca (talk) 16:29, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ideally, there should be two maps featured here, one showing location of Wolfsschanze in East Prussia in the autumn of 1940 (for historical accuracy), and a second map showing location of Wolf's Lair in present-day Poland for those who would like to visit it one day on their travels. – Two maps are better than no map. Poeticbent talk 18:56, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the map at right does show its location in present-day NE Poland, but with with the pre-1945 German names at least conveys the notion that the area formerly was German. There's already a good photo in the infobox, so I don't think there's room for two maps there. Sca (talk) 20:45, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

'Lairs of wolves'[edit]

I deleted this note...

This article is about the World War II German fortified command post. For the lairs of wolves, see wolf.

...because its advice to go the wolf article seemed absurdly obvious. One would hardly expect to learn about the lairs of actual wolves in an article about a WWII military headquarters, would one?

My edit was reverted by Beyond My Ken as "worthwhile." What's worthwhile about it? Sca (talk) 20:57, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem unlikely to me that a reader might want to learn about the habitats of wolves, and type in "wolf's lair". Redirecting them to the proper article seems worthwhile to me.
Any particular reason you're approaching this trivial issue in such a confrontational manner, and felt the need to bring it to the talk page? We're both long-term editors (you have a year on me) who should certainly respect each others' opinions. If other editors agree with you that the hatnote is not useful, then it can be removed per consensus, but in the meantime it doesn't seem like a question to get excited about. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:11, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Your revert struck me as arbitrary and illogical. Still waiting to hear what's worthwhile about the note. Sca (talk) 18:51, 24 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That it would be helpful to a reader is what's worthwhile about it, and the reader is who we're here to serve. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:11, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The reader who goes to "Wolf's Lair" to learn about wolves and reads in the first sentence that it was "Adolf Hitler's first Eastern Front military headquarters in World War II" – but still wonders why the article says noting about the domiciles of wolves? I'm all for serving the reader, but this is ridiculous. Sca (talk) 01:44, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in agreement with Beyond my Ken. It's not unreasonable to type "wolf's lair" into wiki search expecting something about actual wolves, and that situation is exactly what the hatnote is for. (Hohum @) 02:18, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes,. it's not so much that they won't recognize off the bat that the article isn't what they wanted, as much as it it telling them where the information they want will be found. This is the general function of hatnotes throughout Wikipedia. Sca's logic would lead us to removing all hatnotes as "unnecessary" (as indeed many are, and when they are unhelpful or truly unnecessary, I remove them. I don't believe that is the case here.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:31, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree because lair is not a word normally used in expository English. It has semi-literary connotations of danger and wildness. In looking for info about where wolves hide out, most people would use a more neutral and common word, such as burrow, den, hideout, nest, etc. (Besides which, it's really a mis-translation of Schanze ("fortification"), but that's another issue.) Sca (talk) 15:24, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Lair is *not* unusual usage in English. (Hohum @) 15:37, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say it was an obscure word, just that it's probably not a word most people would think of to denote a wolf's place in the wild.
  • Net search: Den, 20.2 million hits; nest, 12.2 million; lair, 6.9 million. ((I didn't run searches on wolf's den, nest, lair, etc., in order not to draw hits for the Wolfsschanze, translated here as Wolf's Lair.)
  • Further, the word lair does not appear once in the Gray wolf article, to which wolf redirects. Thus, the hatnote directing readers to wolf for info "For the lairs of wolves" is erroneous. Sca (talk) 16:02, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6.9 million to 20.2 million is hardly low enough to consider it unlikely to be used. So the hatnote would be justified. It's frequency of use in an article seems irrelevant. If I ask people without an interest in history what "wolf's lair" is, hardly any are going to say Hitlers headquarters. I'm not going to be beating this particular horse any more. (Hohum @) 16:09, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Red Army arrival[edit]

It's long been a moot question whether the Allies knew about the Wolfsschanze while it was Hitler's HQ. A more limited question though is, when the Red Army discovered the place, two days after it had been blown up, did their units and officers on the ground realize what they had found? Did they see that it was not just any bunker complex, but a very special one, and who had lived there? 188.150.75.162 (talk) 21:24, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Seating position[edit]

"Hitler invariably sat in the same seat between Jodl and Otto Dietrich..."

No, he didn't. A big point of all Hitler biographies is the fall-of-1942 conflict with Jodl and other military advisors, where a sore Hitler ended up taking his meals alone or with the secretaries. The "Führer table" arrangement was never restored. 2A02:AA1:162F:CDC3:4CCE:A3BC:3D98:8A9D (talk) 16:17, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maps[edit]

I have reinstated the two maps in the infobox that were rather cavalierly removed by Sca several years ago, apparently on the grounds that they don't show the historic borders, but rather the modern ones. Well, of course they do! That is where the Wolf's Lair is now. A locator map would be a bit confusing if it only showed the reality that existed in the 1940s. The more localized upper map at least shows the old German names for the towns and cities in the region, and if it helps, you can pretend that the one border shown there is not there (all that territory was German until 1945). Though it may have been in Germany during the time when it was a significant security installation, the Wolf's Lair is nowadays unequivocally (since 2+4) in Poland. I'm sorry if that ruffles any feathers, but that's how it is now. Kelisi (talk) 06:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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