Winkeltürme

Winkeltürme 

In some German cities such as Wünsdorf or Gießen it is possible to find some of the peculiar structures known as Winkel Towers or Winkeltürme that were built in the country during World War II. Its function was to serve as a shelter against aerial bombardments (being able to shelter up to five hundred people) and to a lesser extent against heavy artillery.

Designed and patented by Leo Winkel (from whom it takes its name) in the early 1930s, however, similar ideas had already been expounded by other inventors a decade earlier, even for the same military purpose. Early designs also contemplated possible uses of the towers in peacetime as warehouses or water tanks.

The peculiar phallic appearance of such towers had a very specific purpose in bomb protection. The idea was that the conical shape would repel the free-falling projectile (like bombs dropped from airplanes) and make them fall on the ground at the foot of the tower, where the greater thickness of the structure would resist the explosion to a greater extent. In any case, their tall, slender shape made them difficult to distinguish visually from the air, and it was even more difficult (if not virtually impossible) to make them an intended target.

Most of these towers were built near factories and industrial areas for the protection of workers. For example, the tower near the railway workshops in Darmstadt was 32 metres high, fifteen floors and space for 530 people and the thickness of the concrete at the bottom reached three metres. However, the usual size was a little smaller, with 20 or 25 meters in height, between eight and ten meters in diameter and walls that varied in thickness from just under one meter to two meters as the common maximum measurement.

Although most of these towers were demolished by Soviet troops at the end of the war, today some of them are preserved in ruins or demolished, lying on the ground, and a few can still be seen standing in good condition.

In addition to the less popular but curious Winkel towers, Nazi Germany had a large number of anti-aircraft bunker towers used by the Luftwaffe, the German air force, to counter air attacks on key locations. These other more conventional towers, called Flaktürme (Flak towers), in addition to having weapons, also served as shelters for dozens and even hundreds of people thanks to their reinforced concrete construction and walls up to 3.5 meters wide, even more solid than the "light" Winkel towers next to them. They were considered indestructible, not so much because of their magnificent construction, which would hardly have withstood direct hits from Allied bombs of the caliber of the Grand Slam that were used to destroy even denser constructions, but mainly because bombers avoided approaching these towers precisely because of the anti-aircraft armament they housed and which made them extremely dangerous for aircraft.