As the monster who was responsible for creating the Gestapo and building the first Nazi concentration camps, Hermann Goering was one of Hitler’s most ruthless henchmen.
Yet nothing could have prepared a team of amateur archaeologists for what they were about to find in the basement of his former home in the Wolf’s Lair — the Nazis’ headquarters in what is now north-eastern Poland.
Set in dense forest, with barbed wire, guard towers and minefields all around, the once-impregnable complex of some 200 houses, bunkers and other buildings was where Hitler and senior Nazis planned the barbarities of the Holocaust and military campaigns such as Operation Barbarossa, their invasion of the Soviet Union.
They destroyed much of the base before fleeing the Red Army in January 1945 and today the mossy ruins are a tourist attraction drawing more than 200,000 visitors a year — among them a Gdansk-based team of German and Polish history buffs.
For years the archeological researchers have been unearthing ordinary items such as crockery and tools. But this month they revealed how, back in February, they entered the ruins of Goering’s once-imposing brick home and noticed a concrete ledge which had at one time supported a wooden floor. While digging for the nails which might have held it together, they found a human skull.
Hellbound and Down 