In the event of war, there are hardly any functioning shelters in Germany. That shows a government inventory. Should we now build new bunkers? Wrong approach, experts say.
Anyone who wants to see a bunker in Germany these days will quickly find themselves in a museum. Probably the most famous example is in the Ahr Valley: From 1971, almost 900 offices and more than 930 dormitories were available there for the Federal Government during the Cold War. The system was never used, today groups of visitors are guided through the “Documentation Site Government Bunker”.
air-raid shelter became an art gallery
After the end of the Cold War, the view prevailed that shelters were no longer needed. In 2007, the federal and state governments decided to no longer maintain public shelters and to gradually dismantle or convert them. High-rise bunkers became residential buildings or underground bunkers became multi-storey car parks. Others just decay.
In the city of Essen alone there used to be around 1,300 air raid shelters, most of which have already been shut down. Not a single bunker in the city is still intact. In Mönchengladbach, a nuclear bunker built in the late 1960s is now used as a public underground car park. A World War II air raid shelter houses an art gallery.
reactivation “possible in principle”
The Russian attack on Ukraine has brought civil defense back into public awareness: A new discussion about bunkers has flared up. And the federal government stopped the decommissioning of shelters and commissioned an inventory. More than a year later, the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks presented its report.
According to this, there are currently 579 public shelters in Germany with space for a total of almost 480,000 people, i.e. only for a fraction of the population. Even these few systems are not ready for use. A reactivation is “basically possible”, according to the Federal Institute, but the time and costs depend on the level of protection the systems are supposed to offer. This ranges from protection against debris and splinters to defense against nuclear hazards.
Warning sirens instead of bunkers
But does it even make sense to reactivate bunkers or build new ones? Michael Voss, Professor of Crisis and Disaster Research at Freie Universität Berlin, is skeptical. “The discussion about bunkers is pure smokescreen,” he criticizes. In principle, such shelters are desirable, but the state does not provide enough money for them. “Given the limited financial resources, we can do more efficient things for civil defense than building bunkers,” says Voss, referring to working warning sirens, for example.
The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) is also cautious. Authorities chief Ralph Tiesler told the “Tagesspiegel” last year: “Building new bunker systems with a very high level of protection costs a lot of money and, above all, a lot of time.” He advocated using existing subway stations or underground car parks as shelters instead.
Crisis and disaster expert Voss also complains that there is no longer any awareness of civil protection in society: “There needs to be a social debate about what civil protection actually means. That is the basis of everything else.” The bunker discussion, he believes, distracts from these fundamental debates.