Stauffenberg: A hero in Germany, controversial in Poland

On the exterior wall of the building hangs a sign reading: "Wolf's Lair, July 20, 1944." Inside, Adolf Hitler can be seen leaning over a military map. Wehrmacht officer Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg has just placed his briefcase containing explosives under the table and is about to leave the conference hut. The clock reads 12:35. In seven minutes, the bomb will explode , injuring but not killing the dictator. The reenactment, featuring life-size figures of Hitler and Stauffenberg, is the centerpiece of the new exhibition in the "Wolf's Lair."

The former Führer headquarters, where Hitler had spent more than 900 days since the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, is located in northeastern Poland near Ketrzyn, which was called Rastenburg in East Prussia until the end of the war.

The area, well camouflaged in the dense forests, originally covered 250 hectares with 50 bunkers, two airfields, and a train station. The "Führerbunker," which also housed the Wehrmacht High Command, had almost nine meters thick concrete walls.

Concrete desert as a magnet for tourists

Since the end of the war, the Wolf's Lair has been a field of rubble made of concrete and steel, says tour guide Jaroslaw Zarzecki. Shortly before Soviet troops occupied the site on January 27, 1945, approximately 80 percent of the military facilities were demolished.

The historic site is now a magnet for Polish and foreign tourists. Around 300,000 people visit Wolf's Lair annually, including many Germans.

The popularity of the historic site, which commemorates the German resistance against Hitler, should not obscure the fact that Stauffenberg encounters reservation, if not rejection, in Poland. Even after the democratic transition , which brought about a rapprochement between Germans and Poles , the national-conservative officer remains highly controversial.

A letter insults Poles and Jews

Although the Hitler assassin was honored with a memorial plaque in the Wolf's Lair in 1992 in the presence of his three sons, Polish politicians, not only from the national-conservative camp, make no secret of their distanced attitude.

The reasons for this were explained in detail by the former Polish ambassador to Germany, Janusz Reiter, in 2012. In a much-noticed speech at the Bendlerblock, the then and current Defense Ministry in Berlin, he said of the July 20 conspirators that many of them were incapable of "breaking away from traditional anti-Semitism . Most members of the resistance also stood in the Prussian-Wilhelmine tradition of contempt for Poles and the other Slavic peoples."

The diplomat quoted from a letter Stauffenberg wrote to his wife about Poland: "The population is an unbelievable rabble, very many Jews and very mixed. A people who only feel comfortable under the whip. The thousands of prisoners will do our agriculture a lot of good."

Kaczynski mocks German resistance

This passage serves Jaroslaw Kaczynski's Law and Justice (PiS) party, which governed until December 2023, to defame any attempt to show understanding for Stauffenberg as an anti-Polish act. When outgoing Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski accepted an invitation from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation to attend the Stauffenberg memorial ceremony in July 2015, he immediately came under fire.

"These words testify that this German officer was a racist. He considered himself and the German nation a 'master race,' advocated a crazy racial ideology, and accepted the slave labor of subjugated peoples for Germany," declared the PiS-affiliated "Organization for the Defense of the Good Name" at the time. Komorowski was asked to refrain from attending the commemoration, but he ignored the request.

Was there resistance in Germany?

Kaczynski fundamentally questions the existence of an anti-fascist resistance in Germany . Regarding the "White Rose" organization—a group of young students in Munich who paid for their resistance with their lives—he said its membership was so small that they could all "fit in his study."

Despite the anti-German propaganda of the national conservatives, interest is slowly growing in Germans who dared to stand up to Hitler in a desperate situation.

Steinort Castle as a bridge to the future

For years, committed Germans and Poles have sought to use the tradition of the German resistance of July 20, 1944, as a bridge to the future. They chose Steinort Castle (Sztynort) in northeastern Poland as the location for their activity. The estate had been owned by the German Lehndorff family for 500 years before falling to Poland in 1945 following the border shift. This historic site is linked to the German resistance not only by its geographical proximity to the Wolf's Lair, but also by the person of its last owner: Count Heinrich Lehndorff, who was executed in Plötzensee on September 4, 1944, as a participant in the anti-Hitler conspiracy.

Civil society in both countries has long fought to preserve the dilapidated castle. Thanks to private donations and a grant from the German Bundestag, the deterioration has been halted for the time being. In 2023, a group of experts proposed that the castle be used as an "Academia Masuria" after renovation.

"With its location, its centuries-old history, its authenticity, and its unique charisma," Steinort offers the best conditions for establishing a "Forum for European Dialogue" here in northeastern Europe, says the project's initiator, Bettina Bouresh of the Lehndorff Society.

"We now need a clear commitment from both governments," Cornelia Pieper, the German Consul General in Gdansk, emphasized her position in an interview with DW. The diplomat cites the German-Italian Villa Vigoni project on Lake Como as a model, where political and scientific exchange between the two countries has taken place since 1986. "We need a similar facility here and now for Central and Eastern Europe," Pieper said.

This article was first published on July 19, 2024 and last updated on July 20, 2025.