Quote:A Cold War relic lies abandoned on top of a mountain made of rubble, built over a Nazi college that couldn't be destroyed after World War II. The gates of the former US spy station are locked and secure, its perimeter sealed by an uncompromising high fence, an angry crisscross mesh of wires that clearly imply “Eintritt Verboten!”
Welcome to Teufelsberg, literally ‘Devil's Mountain,’ a hill reaching 120.1 meters above sea-level, made from an estimated 12 million cubic meters of war rubble (apparently about 400,000 bombed houses) pushed together in the north of the Grunewald forest in West Berlin.
Buried deep beneath is what remains of a planned Nazi military training school designed by Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer. So sturdy was it that attempts by the Allies to destroy it failed, so they covered it with war-rubble instead. There was plenty of it around at the time. Every day, 80 truckloads of 7,000 cubic meters of rubble collected mostly by local women used to arrive. They became known as Trümmerfrauen or ‘rubble women’ for their efforts.
Perched atop this (wo)man-made mound now sits the old abandoned listening or intelligence-gathering stationused during the Cold War by the Americans and British to learn what was going on in Russian-controlled East Germany. It wasn't very discreet; three huge bulbous globes, two radomes perched atop buildings three-stories high and another sitting a further six-stories higher, creating a giant condom-shaped tower.