The Abandoned Hospital That Once Treated Adolf Hitler’s Wounded Nazis
The Beelitz-Heilstätten hospital complex wasn't always a notorious Nazi hospital. On the contrary, from 1898 until 1930, the Beelitz-Heilstätten was simply a prime example of the Hippocratic oath in action.
Once mainly used as a sanatorium for lung diseases like tuberculosis, the 60-building complex located near Potsdam, Germany eventually turned into a wartime clinic with the onset of World War I.
The now-abandoned hospital was quickly overrun with countless German soldiers who were wounded by powerful new weapons of war, like mustard gas and refined artillery. One soldier treated here was Adolf Hitler.
The future Nazi dictator was temporarily blinded from a gas attack by British forces and was wounded in the leg at the Somme Offensive. While it's unclear which ailment, specifically, brought Hitler to Beelitz-Heilstätten during World War I, what is known is that he eventually designated it as a field hospital during World War II, so it could treat injured Nazis.
When the Soviet Union seized Berlin on May 2, 1945, the clinic fell to Soviet forces and then served their military for about 50 years.
FlickrBeelitz-Heilstätten was left abandoned and mostly unguarded from 1995 to 2015.
The Beelitz-Heilstätten treated Communist party members, disgraced East German politicians, and former Nazis until 1995. Though the facility was left largely abandoned and unguarded after that, a few small sections of the complex were still used for medical research. In 2002, it also served as a setting for the infamous director Roman Polanski's movie The Pianist.
For years, the site was a popular spot for urban explorers. After all, abandoned hospitals make for eerie visits on their own merit, but the thousands of Nazi soldiers who were rehabilitated at Beelitz-Heilstätten added an especially disturbing tenor to its deserted rooms.
Starting in 2015, the site began employing guards to prevent curious teenagers and rowdy criminals from using the abandoned hospital as a place to party. Today's visitors have to make do with a canopy pathway and a guided tour in order to legally experience Beelitz-Heilstätten.
