Schönewalde, Brandenburg, Germany
East of the famous German Luther-Town Wittenberg and just a few meters from the state border lies the "Linda" special weapons depot. In the event of war, NVA (East German Army) missile troops would have been supplied with nuclear warheads from this top-secret facility.
It might be the commander’s armchair standing alone in the woods, surrounded by stunted conifers and half-sunk into the soft moss. As if still standing guard, it sits before the entrance to a blast shelter that is barely discernible amidst the surrounding greenery.
A "special weapons depot"
Nature has done a thorough job over the past three decades. The Stolzenhain special weapons depot—unofficially known as "Lager Linda" (Camp Linda)—was one of the GDR’s most closely guarded state secrets prior to 1990.
No one was supposed to know what was hidden here in the forest—alongside what is now the B 101 highway at the edge of the Niederer Fläming region—after soldiers from the NVA’s 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Engineer Battalion began fencing off a large area and breaking ground in May 1967. In addition to barracks and garages, they poured two identical concrete storage bunkers into the sandy soil, concealed by the dense tree cover.
However, this secret facility was not intended for the GDR army, but rather for the occupying forces from the Soviet Union—officially referred to as "friends." "Military service in the USSR Armed Forces—an honorable duty for Soviet citizens" and "The Soviet Army is the shield that reliably defends socialism"—these slogans remain visible to this day on two pillars at the outermost checkpoint of the site east of Wittenberg.
Secret name "Object 4000"
The GDR invested around nine million East German marks in "Object 4000"—located less than a kilometer from the border between Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg—a site whose existence is now known only to bunker tourists and enthusiasts of abandoned places.
At the entrance to the Linda special weapons depot, an inscription refers to "military service in the USSR Armed Forces" as "an honorable duty for Soviet citizens."
Up to 200 nuclear warheads—designed for delivery by missiles ranging from the short-range Frog-3 to the long-range SS-23—were stored here. Floor plans from identical depots in Poland, on display at the Cold War Museum in Kołobrzeg, reveal the layout: here, as at the twin facility near Lychen, there were four large halls where warheads stood lined up on small carts.
Greater than that of Hiroshima
The smaller warheads possessed a destructive power slightly greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb, while the larger ones, with an explosive yield of 500 kilotons, were nearly 40 times more powerful.
It was not Soviet launch systems that would have deployed these destructive nuclear warheads. Instead, the two so-called "front-line depot complexes" on GDR soil—intended to supply the National People's Army (NVA)—were guarded and maintained by special units from the 12th Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Defense.
Decisions regarding the allocation of the weapons would have been made in Moscow. The handover to the GDR’s 3rd Army was supposed to take place outside the camp grounds, as not even soldiers from the "brother army" were meant to know where the stockpiles intended for a state of emergency were kept. Within the NVA, only five officers reportedly knew the planned handover locations.
Lethal stockpiles isolated
The fence surrounding the inner security perimeter, which once carried a high-voltage charge.
One can still sense today just how important it was to keep these lethal stockpiles isolated. Behind the outer gate of the walled complex, remnants of the former second security perimeter—which housed the barracks, headquarters, sports hall, and boiler house—are still visible.
Most of the structures have since been demolished; a waste management company now uses the site for temporary storage. Directly behind this stands a second wall—originally secured not just with barbed wire, but with a high-voltage fence. The insulators are now covered in moss, the barbed wire has rusted, and sections of the wall have toppled over.
220 volts, Russian-style.
A training hut still stands along the path leading to the two bunkers of the frontline supply base. These were built at a 90-degree angle to one another so that, in the event of an air raid, at least one storage gate would remain undamaged. Inside, there is a classroom set of GDR-era school chairs, as if the room were waiting for the next guard briefing.
The bunker entrances—flanked by cramped guard shelters fitted with steel doors—are barely noticeable to the casual passerby: these "gates to hell" are concealed beneath a simple corrugated iron roof.
