Interesting facts

At the beginning of the 1930s, dark clouds were gathering over Europe. Czechoslovakia knew that they would be unable to protect their extensive borders in the case of an attack. The country had a protective barrier along its borders, similar to the Maginot Line in France, intended to keep out aggressors. When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the sabre rattling was finally too loud to ignore. In that same year, construction began on the first fortification systems in Petržalka. The new protective barrier was completed in 1938, the year when the Sudeten German territory was integrated into the German Reich. On 10 October 1938, Petržalka assumed its previous German name Engerau and was added to Lower Austria. Now the bunker was located in the German Reich, and before long Adolf Hitler himself came to visit ‘his’ bunker. Half a year later all of the new Slovak republic had become a satellite state of Nazi Germany. The last Jews were able to emigrate thanks to the assistance of the inhabitants of Devín. The protective barrier, with its strongest fortification in Petržalka, was never put to wartime use. Today the B-S 8 Hřbitov bunker is the largest and best-restored bunker in the former protective wall in Bratislava. It was named after the adjacent World War I military cemetery. The organization ‘Let’s protect the Petržalka bunker’ works to keep this place of remembrance alive.