By late 1943 Germany was so depleted of manpower that many areas of
the front had virtually no troops to defend it. One of the remedies
was to build a series of forts, blockhouses or bunkers like this to
report on suspected soviet activity in the vast open spaces of Russia
and the Ukraine. They were magnets for partisan activity and barely
able to defend themselves. On the long retreat from Russia the German
army was to gather them up and reincorporate their troops into regular
units. In many cases when the German army troops arrived at one of
these deathtraps it was too late. Guy Sajer in his book The Forgotten
Soldier tells what happened when his unit reached several of these
bunkers.
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