Ardennes

12 September

Following the eighteen-day conquest of Belgium in June 1940, officials working for Adolf Hitler were ordered to clear an area forty kilometres in diameter near the French border.

The inhabitants of the affected villages were given twenty minutes to gather their belongings and told they could never return.

Deep in the forest near Brûly-de-Pesche, Hitler established a command post from which the terms of Belgium’s surrender were drafted and the subsequent invasion of France directed.

Today, the original bunker remains, along with two reconstructed Austrian-style chalets. These served as modest living quarters, in stark contrast to the occupier’s grandiose ambitions.

Looks like the kind of thing you see on The Modern House website...

I was told of the pervasive sense of unease inside the tiny, claustrophobic concrete bunker, intended as a refuge in the event of air raids.

It is certainly unsettling—but you are not standing in a space that once sheltered Hitler himself, as it was never used. The dense woodland of the Ardennes provided such effective cover that it attracted neither RAF nor US Army Air Forces attention, remaining undetected until after the war.

An hour-long, self-guided walking tour is excellent value at €6. It also highlights the bravery of the local resistance and their efforts to disrupt Nazi operations.

If you want to learn more, visiting in person is really the only option—the website is among the worst examples of tourist information imaginable.