London: Poland has put up for rent Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair, the massive fortified base where the Nazi leader spent much of the war time and the scene of a famous assassination attempt, the ‘Telegraph’ reported las week.
Anybody willing to pay the asking rent of 90,000 pounds a year can take over the 13-hectare site in a secluded forest in eastern Poland, which during the war lay in German East Prussia.
From 1941 to the end of 1944, the Wolf’s Lair was the nerve centre of the Nazi war machine owing to its proximity to the Eastern Front.
The Polish Forestry Service, the owners of the camp, started looking for a tenant after the old 20-year lease expired, the newspaper said.
Hitler and his henchman built huge bombproof bunkers at the site that also housed 2,000 staff and security personnel.
Although retreating German forces dynamited most of the bunkers in November 1944, their shattered shells remain a prime tourist attraction with some 180,000 visitors a year.
The Wolf’s Lair was also the scene of the July 1944 assassination attempt when a bomb concealed in a briefcase by Count Claus von Stauffenberg just failed to kill Hitler during a staff meeting.
Hitler’s life was saved by a chance decision to hold the meeting in an outbuilding rather than in the usual confines of a bunker, and by the fact the briefcase was moved away from the Nazi leader seconds before it exploded.