10 Things US Soldiers Did to Eat, Sleep & Survive Digging Hitler's Secret Tunnels
Grace Sullivan
728 views
Twelve hours inside a rock tunnel. Back to a freezing barrack on starvation rations. Then twelve hours more.
In February 1945, 350 American prisoners of war arrived at Berga an der Elster, a sub-camp of Buchenwald. Many were picked because German officers believed they were Jewish. Their job was to dig 18 tunnels into a mountain for Hitler's underground synthetic-fuel plant.
The easy picture is an ordinary POW camp, with Red Cross parcels and a long wait for the war to end.
That isn't what happened.
The bread held sawdust and sand. War crimes investigators later estimated daily food intake at under 500 calories. Water came from a contaminated well, sometimes half a liter a day. One medic went from 145 to 87 pounds (66 kg to 39 kg) in the space of a few months.
In this video: what the men actually ate, and what was baked into the bread; how they found water when supply ran out; where they slept, two to a bunk, with one small stove per barrack; what twelve-hour shifts inside the Zikraer Berg looked like, with no masks, helmets, or gloves; the illnesses that followed; and the small acts that kept some of them alive: a shared piece of bread, a circle of men standing between a guard and a Jewish comrade.
The shafts inside the mountain are silent today.
This is how the men who dug them survived.
🔔 New videos every week. Subscribe for the untold stories of how soldiers actually lived through history's hardest battles.
Independent & educational history. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any government or armed force. Some footage and imagery may be illustrative or AI-assisted and is used to represent events described in the narration.
📚 HISTORICAL SOURCES (referenced in this video)
Cpl. Anthony Acevedo: private diary kept in captivity (Army medic)
Cpl. Richard Lockhart: oral history, Pritzker Military Museum & Library
Pvt. Henry Freedman: interview, Digital Library of Georgia
U.S. Army War Crimes Branch: post-war investigation reports on Berga
U.S. National Archives: microfilm record M1079 (Army investigative files)
German construction archives: Schwalbe V project records
All footage, images and recordings belong to their respective owners and are used under their stated licenses or as fair-use commentary/education. Contact us for credit updates or removal.
10 Things US Soldiers Did to Eat, Sleep & Survive Digging Hitler's Secret Tunnels
Grace Sullivan
728 views
Twelve hours inside a rock tunnel. Back to a freezing barrack on starvation rations. Then twelve hours more.
In February 1945, 350 American prisoners of war arrived at Berga an der Elster, a sub-camp of Buchenwald. Many were picked because German officers believed they were Jewish. Their job was to dig 18 tunnels into a mountain for Hitler's underground synthetic-fuel plant.
The easy picture is an ordinary POW camp, with Red Cross parcels and a long wait for the war to end.
That isn't what happened.
The bread held sawdust and sand. War crimes investigators later estimated daily food intake at under 500 calories. Water came from a contaminated well, sometimes half a liter a day. One medic went from 145 to 87 pounds (66 kg to 39 kg) in the space of a few months.
In this video: what the men actually ate, and what was baked into the bread; how they found water when supply ran out; where they slept, two to a bunk, with one small stove per barrack; what twelve-hour shifts inside the Zikraer Berg looked like, with no masks, helmets, or gloves; the illnesses that followed; and the small acts that kept some of them alive: a shared piece of bread, a circle of men standing between a guard and a Jewish comrade.
The shafts inside the mountain are silent today.
This is how the men who dug them survived.
🔔 New videos every week. Subscribe for the untold stories of how soldiers actually lived through history's hardest battles.
Independent & educational history. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any government or armed force. Some footage and imagery may be illustrative or AI-assisted and is used to represent events described in the narration.
📚 HISTORICAL SOURCES (referenced in this video)
Cpl. Anthony Acevedo: private diary kept in captivity (Army medic)
Cpl. Richard Lockhart: oral history, Pritzker Military Museum & Library
Pvt. Henry Freedman: interview, Digital Library of Georgia
U.S. Army War Crimes Branch: post-war investigation reports on Berga
U.S. National Archives: microfilm record M1079 (Army investigative files)
German construction archives: Schwalbe V project records
All footage, images and recordings belong to their respective owners and are used under their stated licenses or as fair-use commentary/education. Contact us for credit updates or removal.