The Locations of TBA - Berlin, Nazi Germany

Welcome to Part 5 of our little feature series about the locations of The Burning Ages: Wolf Hunt.

Today, we are looking at a key place of the narrative: Berlin, 1940. The first time a location in Berlin is featured is when the Germany military intelligence service 'Abwehr' learns of the sinking of the British heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire. The so-called Bendlerblock is a series of buildings, some of them housing the Ministry of Defence, some adjacent ones housing the Abwehr. Nowadays it's primarily known as the location where the conspirators of the Valkyrie plot were shot.

'Bendlerblock' District, Abwehr Secret Service HQ, Berlin, Nazi Germany

26 July 1940, 10:13 Hours

Colonel Hans Oster knocked on the polished oak door until a soft voice from within called him inside. He opened it, stepped through and closed it again in one smooth motion, entering the spacious personal office. Oster was a tall and slender man, exceeding 6'2", sporting still full gray hair at the age of fifty-two years which he wore smoothly combed backwards. The son of an Alsatian pastor of the French Lutheran Church was a sociable man whose open face and honest smiles made it easy for him to find new friends and get into conversations with complete strangers. This had been an important factor when he had been recalled from involuntary retirement due to a matter of indiscretion going back to 1932, and he soon had put all his energy into his new task within Germany's rapidly expanding military secret service, the Abwehr.

The "Bendlerblock" in central Berlin; among others, it was the
seat of the Abwehr, the German Military Intelligence Service.

In many regards, the man he now faced sitting behind a desk, appearing far too massive compared with its user, was his complete opposite. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was small, bordering on tiny with his height of only 5'3”. The gray-haired man with his thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes was calm, almost introverted, and whereas Oster could - and did - easily entertain a whole soiree on his own, Canaris preferred reading to talking and found such social happenings to be at best a necessary evil. In fact, had his position not demanded a certain amount of public appearances from him he would willingly have spent that time working. For Wilhelm Canaris favored bringing his work home with him, and he spent the better part of his time on it even on holidays. Where Oster was the smiling face of the two of them, Canaris was the brain. Unlike his deputy, Canaris had been born into a wealthy family, and where the colonel had made his early career with the artillery, Canaris had in his heart always remained a Navy man, despite his intimate knowledge of and experience with the intelligence gathering profession earlier in his career. What united the two men, however, was their resistance against the Nazi regime. Both had taken active preparations to oust Hitler from power before the Munich Agreement of 1938 and had even been in contact with Britain's MI 6 secret service, but ever since then their hands had been bound by the Nazis' string of unbelievable successes.
A large portrait of the Greek naval hero Constantine Kanaris adorned the wall behind the diminutive man. The head of the Abwehr had long believed to be related to that man, a belief which had turned out to be wrong. Still, he kept friendly contacts to Greece since he spoke the language fluently, as was the case with English and Spanish and two other foreign languages. He looked up from a pile of reports when the colonel stopped in front of his desk, the colonel's army clothes contrasting with his own deep blue admiral's uniform. “Good morning, Hans. The daily intelligence summaries?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, Herr Admiral. Much of the usual fare, but there are a couple of pieces of news I found intriguing,” Oster answered. The two were not on a first-name basis with each other, but their political convictions and their common field of work - as well as the necessary trust they had to place in each other as head of the organization and deputy - had made them into as close friends as both their psyches allowed. Oster moved to the map of the northern hemisphere and the Atlantic that covered the wall to the right of Canaris' desk. Without being asked, the small admiral opened his desk and handed him a handful of pins. The colonel took them with a grateful smile and placed them some distance off the western Irish coast. “These mark several attacks on British ships that supposedly happened already on the 23rd. The first is a merchantman, some steamer weighing 6,000 GRT that beached itself near the town of Dingle in south-western Ireland. Our contacts in the Republic swear the ship's captain told them he and his ship had been held hostage by a German raider that - and here comes the juicy part - dropped paratroopers on them who used bullet-less guns to subdue them all.”
Canaris frowned at that but motioned his aide to continue.
“I would have dismissed that had it been a solitary report by a civilian. However, as it turns out that very captain had issued a mayday call, and ships of the Royal Navy had been sent to investigate the matter.” He handed Canaris the transcript. “And that beached steamer carried the survivors of one of those ships sent to investigate. Our sources are clear that they are from a ship called HMS Javelin, a destroyer. And those sailors claim they had to abandon ship after a flying torpedo gutted their engines and set the ship on fire.” Oster's grin had something of an excited schoolboy telling an implausible but entertaining story.
“A 'flying torpedo'? Honestly, Oberst Oster, are you certain the British aren't just playing us for fools here?” Canaris voice was calm but drenched in skepticism.
The tall officer nodded levelly. “Under normal circumstances that would've been my first impression, too. But it's the third piece,” his finger pointed to the third pin, “that makes this puzzle really what it is, Herr Admiral. This message is from the F.d.U. West.” Like all military organizations the Wehrmacht had developed a great love for acronyms. F.d.U. West designated the leader of the submarine forces in the West, mainly those operating from captured French ports. “U-34 attacked and sunk - and here it comes - 'an abandoned and burning British County-class' heavy cruiser. The very same cruiser is mentioned in a longer radio message between a freighter which took in castaways three hundred and sixty miles north-east of Londonderry.” He pointed at the city in Northern Ireland.
“We deciphered that message?” Canaris' thick eyebrow rose quizzically.
“No, Herr Admiral. Our listening post at St. Nazaire caught it. The message was transmitted in the clear from an American freighter.” He handed Canaris the sheet of paper. “And it also mentions that the cruiser was hit by 'silver flying torpedoes'.”
The Admiral's eyes flew across the printed lines, and he furrowed his brows before he put it aside. “So a supposed German raider appears out of thin air, captures and holds this ship, this Shelbyville, for nearly two days, keeps the whole crew under deck. And then, just as mysteriously as he's appeared, he vanishes again, but not before cutting up and robbing most of the ship's cargo. And as if that wouldn't be enough, he leaves them with a note to rescue the survivors of a destroyer he's sunk some twenty miles away from their position.” Canaris shook his head. “Oster, this sounds like a fairytale to me. And if my memory doesn't play tricks on me, we don't have a ship operating in those waters!”
His deputy nodded as if he had expected that comment. “I made my inquiries with the Seekriegsleitung, and they confirmed that none of our surface units was anywhere near those waters. But someone sunk those ships, sir.”
The two so different men both silently stared at the pins on the map for a while.
“Make further investigations, Oster,” Canaris quietly told his deputy, and the usually so talkative colonel simply nodded, grabbed his filing folder and left the room, leaving the small admiral alone with his thoughts. “Interesting. Most interesting.”
Someone was cutting a path through the Royal Navy, and that someone was heading north. Right now it was just a phantom, but it would be nothing but prudent to keep that knowledge in the back of his head. Who knew what it might be good for one day? [Full Scene, Chapter 10, Wolf Hunt]

The second glimpse we get of Berlin is when Cpt. Hallwinter joins Admiral Canaris and is brought there by airplane.

Berlin in the 1930s.

Berlin! The city was nothing as he remembered it. His Berlin, the Berlin he knew certainly had flair, but it was a monumentally ugly city shaped by the experiences of the war, of thirty years of partition and of a building boom in the 1990s which had spent billions with no regard to enduring aesthetics. This Berlin was different. During the flight he had imagined it as a dark city full of bombastic Nazi architecture, with groups of SA and SS everywhere and the Gestapo knocking on every second door while people moved along the streets and sidewalks with the looks of hounded deer on their faces. However, the Berlin he witnessed now as Canaris and his two remaining guards drove him first to the Abwehr HQ and then back through the city and into the outskirts was nothing like this. Yes, there were marble obelisks and plenty of pillars adorned with the ever-present damned swastika, and flags with the same symbol turned the public alleys into oceans of red, white and black, but the city itself...! He whistled to himself as he stared outside the car's windows with open eyes, not realizing the close look that Abwehr head Wilhelm Canaris gave him with his deceivingly tired eyes. Berlin was teeming with life, and it was beautiful! Houses built in the Gründerzeit and Art Noveau styles of the late 19th and early 20th Century, some of them seven stories or taller, lined the prominent and wide alleys, with neoclassical official and commercial buildings standing out between them as separate and yet matching pieces. His Berlin had been a bland mess of concrete and faceless housings. This one was visually captivating, despite the still high number of men in various uniforms. And the streets were teeming with people! [Wolf Hunt]

Hallwinter is taken to Canaris' private mansion in the suburbs of Berlin. The capital of the Reich back then had more than 4 million inhabitants, a number it never again reached after the war.

One of many mansions in the Grunewald district,
distinguishing it as one of the wealthy quarters of Berlin.

They left the center of Berlin and drove for the less metropolitan areas. Even here the old Prussian wealth of the city was obvious, maybe even more so when after a while they entered the bourgeois residential areas of Berlin-Schlachtensee at the edge of the Grunewald Forest. Here, mansions with large gardens and lakefront views dominated the scene, and instead of the teeming masses of inner-city Berlin it was a picture-book example of stereotypical German upper-middle class tidiness. Cars lined the narrow cobblestone road, and after a while they stopped in front of a wrought-iron fence behind which a yellow country residence from around the turn of the century overlooked the narrow lake behind. [Wolf Hunt]
It is here that the plans for the coup are drawn, and here that the conspirators meet for the first time to be convinced by Hallwinter and the knowledge of future events he has. But it isn't the only place they convene. In fact, the plotters chose another location, one where they hid in plain sight.

The New Reichschancellery, designed by Albert Speer.

The wide steps in front of the neo-classicist façade of the massive seat of the Führer of Germany were empty except for the common honor guard of a handful of SS men in spick and span black uniforms and white belts and regalia. By then it was around noon and the often hectic bustle between the chancellory and the ministries and party organization headquarters sprawled all over Berlin’s governmental district had died down, as it did every day around that time. After all, it was lunchtime, as one SS man’s groaning stomach quite audibly made clear. With little happening around the few men the sounds of the city receded into the background, creating a sphere devoid of noise in the wide spaces around the New Reichschancellory. For once, one could even hear the voices of birds, even if it were only the croaks of crows and the erratic songs of sparrows. But the idyll vanished as suddenly as it had begun. [Wolf Hunt]

Matters move ahead when Hitler arrives in Berlin, forcing the conspirators to make a move.

Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.

The giant unmistakable concrete crescent of the capital's airport stood in unusual silence. Most day to day activities had ceased. Guards had taken up positions along the large half circle where normally passengers would disembark from Lufthansa planes, and normal traffic had either been rerouted to other airfields or put into waiting loops. Like birds, they circled in the gray sky above. For several aching long minutes nothing seemed to happen. Then, like a crow manifesting right out of the morning mist, a large four-engined airplane emerged from the overcast sky above the city of four million people. Slowly, almost gracefully, it descended towards the concrete fields of Tempelhof, like an eagle made from polished steel, its cockpit and engine nacelles contrasting the shine in a black color that seemed to soak up all light. Large tires touched the solid ground with short, abrupt creaks, bounced back once or twice before finally finding their footing. The airplane slowed down, rolling almost gently towards the waiting motorcade of black limousines and convertibles. One last time, its four engines howled as if to herald its arrival, and its tail fin straightened, displaying the large, black swastika on it before the machine finally came to a halt. 'Immelmann III', Adolf Hitler's personal Focke-Wulf FW 200 'Condor', had arrived. [Wolf Hunt]

Long-set plans are put in motion, and some of the uptimers have come along to help them succeed. A company of special forces soldiers from the 21st Century lend the plotters their aid - and their firepower.

A Combat Exosuit Concept. TBA exosuits
look different, but follow similar concepts.
Art by ~flyingdebris, DeviantArt.

Then, as one, two combat exoskeletons jumped off the back of the trucks. Distraught, the men around them stepped back, and the guard detail instinctively tensed. Easily a head taller than even the tallest man, and with shoulders matching those dimensions a strange coldness emanated from the two machines. Hydraulics hissed and electric servos began to whirr as they rose to their full height after the drop, towering like black knights above the scene. Armor plating, joints, 'faces', even the weapons: it was all a deep black that seemed to suck up the sunlight. The only colors other than black were the unit patches on each machine's right shoulder, showing a white specter wielding a scythe, and the small red dot under the stubby weapon mounted on its left shoulder. They stepped forward. [Wolf Hunt]

Exoskeletons are a fairly new addition to the battlefield, being barely out of their infancy. Developments had been underway since the early days of the 2000s, with most of the breakthrough work having been done by American and Japanese companies. By 2024, most advanced countries militaries employ them at least in limited numbers. Individual concepts, load-outs and capabilities do differ, but the general principle is the same: a powered and crewed combat suit, autonomous for a limited amount of time and protected against small arms fire. Depending on model, producer and capabilities, combat exosuits (unloaded) cost between $950,000 and $3.2 million USD (dollar value of 2010). Lockheed-Martin & Raytheon are working on merging science fiction and reality completely by working on a concept armed with a HE laser and over-the-horizon capabilities. The image above comes probably the closest to that very idea.

The German exoskeleton - the Kürassier - is armed with a short-range 20mm cannon able to fire AP, HE and fragmentation rounds. Main armament is an MG-3 derivate, for which the exosuit carries 3,000 rounds 7.62mm NATO ammonition. It's full motion emulation also allows limited close quarters and hand-to-hand capabilities.

With a fire battle ensuing and modern guided firepower thrown around, the formerly so spick and span New Reichschancellery soon is in dire need of a new paintjob.

Like a blackened memorial, the pillar-lined entrance to the New Reichschancellory rose out of the smoke and dust. [Wolf Hunt]

In fact, the historical picture doesn't do the destruction justice. Much of the building's front would've been blown away, with only the entrance remaining relatively intact and unscathed. But whereas the seat of government is a target for obvious reasons, other places featured are "on the list" for more practical considerations. Located where it is, the Hotel Adlon is a 5-Star address with a commanding position along Berlin's East-West and North-South axis.

The Hotel Adlon in the later 1920s.

Situated at the corner of the wide Wilhelmstraße street and the Unter den Linden avenue, the Hotel Adlon was one of the best addresses in Germany's capital. Not even the start of the war had been able to change that, and with the defeat of France the peculiar clique of nouveau riche party apparatchiks, old Prussian colonels with monocles and twirled mustaches, slightly out-of-their-best-age dames wearing old jewels around their necks and young lapdogs in their hands, and what few remnants of the former Russian nobility remained had returned to the prestigious place. But aside from the exclusive clientele there was another point that gave the location special importance. The commanding building stood at a lynchpin of the capital's traffic infrastructure, controlling the east-west axis as well as the northern approach to the governmental district, and with that, the seat of the Nazis' power. Whoever held it could throw a wrench into the works at will, and with only a handful of men to boot. [Wolf Hunt]

Ironically, the Adlon's international flair seemed to have had a repelling effect on most of the Nazi leadership, since they usually convened in a more "Völkisch" location. Nonetheless, this aura wasn't enough to prevent the building from the massive battle damage it suffered in the Battle of Berlin (both historically and in Wolf Hunt). It was rebuilt to its former glory in 1997 and is still in business.

And this concludes our little feature series. I hope you enjoyed the glimpse into the world of Wolf Hunt!