Kaserne Vogelsang

THE ABANDONED MILITARY SITE IN GERMANY

This is Kaserne Vogelsang, a secret city of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. This project was completely paid by the DDR, but built by the Soviet troops. The plant was completed in 1952. The Red Army left in 1994.

After the end of the Second World War this site, north of the village Vogelsang, became an important site for the Red Army. The Soviets began clearing and building on the 2000-hectare site in 1951. Eventually a barracks town was constructed hidden in the woods. The military town was capable of housing 15 thousand people, including both military personnel and their families. The town was self-contained and off-limits to non-essential personnel. It contained a theater, shops, offices, a gym, a school as well as several medical facilities. During the Cold War, it was the third-largest Soviet base inside East Germany.

The R-5 ballistic missile

Forces stationed at the base included the ’25th Tank Division’ and its ‘162nd Tank’ and ‘803rd Motor Rifle’ regiments. But the most important was the ‘1702nd Anti-aircraft missile regiment’. In early 1959 Soviet nuclear missiles, 20 times more powerful than Hiroshima, were set up here, primed to be fired at targets including London and nuclear bases in eastern England. Vogelsang was equipped with twelve of the ‘R-5 Pobeda‘ nuclear missiles, capable of being launched from a mobile launcher placed in one of the four tennis-court sized sites already outfitted to handle the larger ‘R-12 Dvina’. Other similar sites were set up at Fürstenberg Havel and Lychen.

Soviet military records state that the R-5 were withdrawn in August 1959. But records obtained after the fall of East Germany suggest that they could have been here until 1967. From the early 1960s, the site became the headquarters of the 25th Tank Division.

With the withdrawal of Russian Army troops in 1994, as a result the military town was partly demolished, with the remainder allowed to decay back into the woods. Due to the many ammunition residues in the soil, access to parts of the site is forbidden. Today it is a beautiful and eerie place, in contrast it is hard to believe that nuclear terror could have been unleashed from these woods.

I visited the old Soviet town ‘Kaserne Vogelsang’ in 2020. Today, most of the site is demolished. Follow this link for more Soviet bases.

Built 1951
Abandoned 1994
Demolished 2022
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