An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
AN AMBIVALENT MILITARY REPOSITORY – PLAN BARRON VS. TITO'S
BUNKERS
Spela Hudnik; University of Ljubljana Faculty of Architecture, Slovenia; [email protected]
Karl von Clausewitz defined war as the continuation of policy by other means. By extension the
Cold War can be defined as warfare by other (non-lethal) means. Nonetheless, warfare it was. And
the stakes were monumental. Geopolitically the struggle, in the first instance, was for control over
the Eurasian landmass and, eventually, even for global preponderance. (Zbigniew Brezinski 1992,
31)
Over the last few decades, the public accessibility and availability of information on defensive military
complexes and government systems in Europe, built during the aggression of WWII and amid fears of
possible attacks during the Cold War, have opened a controversial debate regarding their future. As
John Beck described, “he recent interest in bunkers is linked to the ongoing reappraisal of postwar
modernist art and architecture and its relationship not only to the violence of World War Two but to the
secrecy and passive aggression of the Cold War.” (Beck 2011, 79-80)
The bunkers, as they relate to different strategically planned military defense and security networks,
result from hypothetical defense/security scenarios against a potential enemy. Their underground or
otherwise hidden structures occupied vast coastal, terrestrial, and subterranean territories. Their
typology reveals the propaganda machinery of the production of power and unforeseen fear against
the visible and invisible enemy.
Questioning history and the reinterpretation of military structures in a contemporary socio-cultural
context were the focus of a conference and workshop entitled PLAN BARRON: A future for oblivious
super-resistant bunkers in Lisbon in May. There, military experts, politicians, researchers, professors,
and students discussed the future of the remnants of military structures, their historical and political
context, collective memory, and the meaning of their integration into a more comprehensive European
network to establish a common strategy for heritage consisting of military objects that have remained
unclassified and non-valorized.
The article compares two case studies referring to two military defense systems: Plan Barron's
complex of classic military bunkers or direct sea defense built during WWII, and Tito's ex-Yugoslavian
anti-nuclear bunkers built to protect against mass destruction. There are essential distinctions between
the two periods (WWII and the Cold War), political regimes and situation, defense and security
strategies (sea and land defense), and spatial relations. Examining these contradictions and parallels
leads to solutions for the afterlife of the European military zones, bunkers, and networks as part of
history, urbanism, heritage, and their potential for future activities.
1. THE CONTEXT OF THREATS, VULNERABILITY, AND DEFENSE
STRATEGIES
A fate of endangerment has arisen in modernity, a sort of counter-modernity which transcends all our
concepts of space, time, and social differentiation. What yesterday was still far away will be found
today and, in the future, “at the front door”. (Ulrich Beck, 1995, 65)
Cold War tensions between global political rivals, their competitive relations, and the expansion of
advanced technology resulted in unpredictable global threats, which caused vulnerabilities and risks to
many national political systems/regimes, as remarked by Brzezinski:
The combination of global political scope and proclaimed universality of the competing dogmas
gave the contest unprecedented intensity. But an additional factor – also imbued with global
implication – made the contest truly unique. The advent of nuclear weapons meant that a head-on
war of a classical type between the two principal contestants would not only spell their mutual
destruction but could unleash lethal consequences for a significant portion of humanity. The
intensity of the conflicts was thus simultaneously subjected to extraordinary self-restraint on the part
of both rivals. (Zbigniew Brzezinski 2016, 6)
An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
The uncertain conditions and international political destabilization caused Yugoslavia's domestic
political and economic vulnerability; namely, this was attributed to the deteriorating relations between
Yugoslavia and Russia in the mid-1948 Informbiro period. The intense conflicting interests between
Stalin and Tito led to increasingly divergent objectives and priorities in foreign relations, economic
policies, and even ideological approaches to the developing Communist society, as described by
Brzezinski: ”But the more modern transcontinental Eurasian bloc lasted very briefly, with the defection by Tito's
Yugoslavia and the insubordination of Mao's China signaling early on the Communist camp's vulnerability to
nationalist aspirations that proved to be stronger than ideological bonds. ” (Brzezinski 2016, 88)
Yugoslavia became part of the uncertain ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence
between two superpowers, with the balances shifting yet again as Yugoslavia became a founding
member of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. The threat of intimidation, power, and the
propaganda/disinformation revolving around a possible nuclear war appealed to political and military
forces alike. Emergency plans of a new parallel reality were drawn, as were those of an anti-nuclear
security system that would minimize the risk of catastrophic consequences and nuclear threat. In this
context of uncertainty and risk society 1, Beck argues that “the concept of risk is a modern one. It
presupposes decisions that attempt to make the unforeseeable consequences of civilizational
decisions foreseeable and controllable.” (Ulrich Beck 1995, 98)
From 1950 to 1990, the secret underground nuclear-proof military facilities and restricted control
military zones were united in their mission to save the lives of political and military elites.
In the case of Plan Barron, the threats of political powers and relations during WWII increasingly
concentrated around the ports of Lisbon and the Setubal region, the most vulnerable zones. The
identification of vulnerable areas was based on “the analyses of enemy attack danger zones” and on
the Washington Naval Treaty, which considered that the ports “could be affected by cruisers cannons
fires with a maximum range of thirty-two kilometers.” (Pais, Hoffmann and Campos 2021, 4617). The
design strategy called bombing arc2 anticipated the strategic position of surveillance and defensive
structures along the coast to defend vulnerable zones against the attack.
The proposed military defense/attack strategy was based on camouflage principles and originated
from a collaboration with UK military experts and their advanced technological equipment.
The escalation of conflicts in the last century and the continued ubiquity of large-scale threats was the
common reason for vulnerability in both case studies, where defense strategies had been based on
forecasting attack scenarios and on the interplay of invisibility, fear, and risk.
2. TOPOGRAPHY AS AN URBAN PLANNING STRATEGY
New military tactics in the mid-20 th century resulted in a continuous merging of technology and
geography within the resilient concrete structures known as underground bunkers, which “could
efficiently protect you for a considerable depth from the omnipotence of the new arms.” (Virilio 2008,
38)
Whereas the Plan Barron was the strategic plan of the Atlantic coastal defense system, formed of sets
of eight military batteries operated by the Coastal Artillery Regiment, Tito's bunkers were an
underground anti-nuclear land defense network of twenty-six bunkers spread across the territory of the
six Federal Republics of Yugoslavia and managed by the Federal Secretariat for National Defense
(SSNO) through the Spatial Planning Authority (DUT) 3. In both case studies, the territory operated as a
service referred to as a defense/protection/control system. A defensive system centered around
1
In his first publication in 1986, Beck described the term Risk Society as “an inescapable structural condition of
advanced industrialization” and wrote that “Modern society has become a risk society in the sense that it is
increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that itself has produced.” (Beck, Living in a
world of risk society, 2006, 332-333)
2
“From the midpoints of the vulnerable zones, arcs of circles were drawn, with the radius of this maximum range
(thirty-two kilometers), fixing a dangerous line in the outline of the set of arcs that delimits the space from which
enemy ships can reach the points vulnerable areas. This ‘line’ is called the ‘bombing arc'.” (Pais, Hoffmann,
Campos 2021, 4618)
An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
forecasting potential attack scenarios that were further shaped by interest, fear, and paranoia, was the
construction of politicians, scientists, urban planners, architects, technocrats, and engineers. For
Lefebvre, “the space is produced and reproduced by human intentions.” (Molotch 1993,887)
In the case of Tito's bunkers, the production of the space was left exclusively to the elites, who
“produced spaces to monumentalize their authority or make money” (Molotch 1993, 893) and
embodied a politics of space for the production of new social life. This point could link Lefebvre's
thoughts on the production of new spaces for new society and new life with the strategy of planning
imaginative defensive structures that operate “between science and utopia, reality and ideality,
conceived and lived.” (Lefebvre 1991 (2009), 60)
The spatial planning strategy, or “cold war urbanism,” as referred to by Bennett, “encompasses the
influence of cold war anxieties upon urbanists, their professional discourses, and practices and the
production of built environments shaped by or in service of cold war objectives.” (Bennett 2018,1)
The Yugoslavian government’s strategic planning solutions were large underground defense systems
spanning the territory of all six federal republics that had to be built from scratch. The secret
underground network connected twenty-six bunkers, where topography itself played an essential role
in the natural protection and internal space organization against a possible nuclear attack. The
construction process required large-scale engineering interventions of excavation, even at an altitude
of –280 m, where the thickness of the stone walls ranged from 60 m to 250 m. The challenge was to
transform the territorial interior without visible traces on the external topography.
The new underground architectural complexes, “underground cities”, appeared in restricted military
areas4 that operated under special regime. Alternatively, they were hidden in forests, mountains,
caves, on the outskirts of urban and rural areas, or inside cities underneath existing buildings. Hidden,
hard-to-access entrances were placed in deep forests, remote houses, urban villas, and other
secluded areas..
In contrast, the coastal defense system of Plan Barron's eight military batteries was planned on a
sizeable territorial scale. They were built atop cliffs along Lisbon's Atlantic coast, based on camouflage
principles. They were planned as functional facilities in the form of existing forts or as their replicas, as
camouflage structures immersed in nature, or underground shelters for smooth operations of cannon
machines “that are no longer just receptacles but binnacles…, what gives them this anthropomorphic
character. There is here a close relationship between the function of the arm and that of the eye.”
(Virilio, 2008, 43)
The Portuguese coastline-based facilities and the Yugoslavian underground bunker network present
two different approaches to military defense design strategy, incorporating topography, scale, and
typology, a callback to Virilio's distinction with wartime production and construction, between the
weapon and the building, as well as between topography and new weapons technology “as
mutation[s] of physical territory.” (Virilio, 2008, 38, 58), where anti-nuclear bunkers act as explosive
bodies within the underground constructions.
In both cases, the planning and implementation of war-related building projects demanded complex
and secretive procedures on both the political and military level and involved vetted engineers,
architects, and workers. For over fifty years, they operated under special regimes and conditions,
under constant political and military control.
3
DUT (Direkcija za ureditev teritorija) had specialized design offices in Belgrade, while the execution of the works
belonging to special engineering polygons from Sarajevo, Zagreb, Split, Kraljevo, Belgrade, and Kranj.
4
Restricted military zones were zones of replacement, invisible, controlled, and with camouflaged entrances and
exits. The restricted military areas of Kocevska Reka in Slovenia covered around 200 km 2 of the territory. It is a
project of demolishing entire villages, relocating local populations, of reforestation and construction under a
special regime of the Ministry of Construction, and lastly, it is a project of dead guards and agents. The closed
area consisted of zone A, a secure military zone (Bunker Skrilj, Bunker Gotenica), and Zone B, a restricted
access zone. It had in place a unique regime of security, life, management, and residence. The permission to
access the area had only been granted to registered inhabitants.
An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
3. LUXURY VERSUS SIMPLICITY
As far as we understand the relevance of Tito's bunker network and Plan Barron’s set of military
batteries as an organization of territorial structures, the production of each showcased different
typological sets of autonomous objects:
The bunker is the fruit of these lines of force. It is spun from a network under tension with the
landscape and, through the landscape, with the region in its expanse. It is an invisible and
immaterial network that escapes our gaze and enables the bunker to hide from view and to avoid
shocks. (Virilio, 2008, 44)
The complexity and luxury of Tito's main bunkers 5 presented a new typology of bunkers, an upgrade
from the functional simplicity of military shelter facilities of Plan Barron. Virilio notes that the new war
strategy could establish new urbanism by “creating another planet perfectly inhabitable for man and
not only to the soldier, but that is also the accomplishment of modern war: transforming the Earth into
a pseudo-sum, through a momentary return to a gaseous state.” (Virilio 2008, 39)
Due to the complexity of defense-incorporated technology, command, and control, anti-nuclear military
tactics consisted of bunkers as communication centers, command centers, residency complexes,
naval and air force military bases, so as to ensure protection from all types of possible attacks, and to
facilitate the continuity of governmental communications, living conditions, and services. These
autonomous systems provided external independence for uninterrupted life and work for about three to
six months for 350–500 of the Supreme Commander's Headquarters, i.e., the general staff and the
presidency, as well as their family members.
The concrete architecture, designed as an anti-nuclear compact city, creating a new urbanism of
vertical destruction, ranged from 2,500 m 2 to 6,500 m2 and included luxury residential complexes and
offices with all manner of services: from hospitals, surgery rooms, and congress halls, to luxury salons,
cinema rooms, libraries, high-technological communication centers, as well as the necessary
infrastructure.
Plan Barron utilized new and adaptive existing fortification structures to incorporate, for the purposes
of detection and telecommunication systems, the latest technological projectors and “other
constructions (command post, observation posts, shelters for projectors and other equipment, buried
or submarine cables for data transmission, barracks,…)” (Pais, Hoffmann and Campos 2021, 4618)
Their use was meant exclusively for military staff. This “survival machine of reinforced concrete”, as
Virilio refers to it, is “similar in its constricted space to the submarine, similar in its mass and artillery to
the tank, flown over by flying fortresses – borrowed many of its elements and its accessories from
these machines.” (Virilio, 2008, 41)
If Plan Barron bunkers were used as camouflage to conceal weapons or as defensive bases, Tito's
bunkers functioned as an explosive body, an anti-nuclear protection system with explosives integrated
into the structure of the compensation tunnel.
We can observe the difference in the strategy, function, and organization of bunkers and their
typological features, where one provided restricted shelter for defense services and military staff
exclusively, and the other appeared as a hybrid of defensive and protective accommodation and a
military/residential/working/leisure/service structure for military/governmental users.
5
The typologies of the three main commander bunkers, with the political leadership facilities as a complex system
of labyrinths, differed only slightly in terms of organization, but were generally divided into three main parts/blocks:
the Operational Block, the Residential Block, and the Service Block (Bunker Karas, G1), or Camouflage Part,
Atomic Shelter, and Security Part (Bunker ARK D-0). There was further subdivision into many blocks of various
rooms depending on the complexity of security and operations levels.
An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
4. AMBIVALENT REPOSITORY
“The bunker as a site of power in much of the work discussed is approached not merely as a historical
artifact but as a profoundly ambivalent structure that speaks to contemporary anxieties regarding the
location and accountability of the systems of authority and controls the bunker represents.” (Beck,
2011, 80)
Contribution to the discussion of the repurposing of diverse, ambivalent military reinforcement
structures that appear either as underground, reinforced buildings, or as modern monolithic
architecture, opens the question of their afterlife as an ambivalent repository. In both cases, the
concrete structures must clearly define their future, yet both are in the process of obtaining legal status
or remain under restricted authority. As Bennet declares, the process of demilitarization at the end of
war is “a purgative, destructive process that seeks to either remove or repurpose military structures, to
the extent that they are no longer required for defense.” This decision is evidently problematic, as the
material used is practically impossible to destroy:
Thus demilitarization for these structures is unlikely to be achieved through physical destruction,
instead it must be achieved via repurposing or other semantic stratagems aimed at disrupting their
military connotations. Unless, of course, these places come to be seen as having cultural symbolic
value via those military connotations, and whether as proud patriotic heritage of a time. (Bennett
2019, 2)
The problems posed by their abundance and the undefined status of their purpose, as Virilio declared
in his observation of the modern monolithic military architecture, “which upon to them was simply the
geometric organization of the landscape with its trenches, embankments, towers, zigzag trenches – no
longer suited its purpose,” (Virilio 2009, 38) lead to the disappearance and loss of complexity on both
the macro scale – territory as a landscape –, and micro-scale – a bunker as a territorial object.
The breakup of Yugoslavia in the ‘90s destroyed the macro-scale network system of bunkers. This
created significant differences between them due to the extended secrecy and their post–Cold War
purpose. They are now under the auspices of six countries, different political systems, and are
managed without common dialog or a shared vision of their overall territory. Some are still defined as
exclusive fenced zones under restrictive governmental regimes of defense and interior ministries;
some are abandoned, uncontrolled, or destroyed without legal public access, while others have been
repurposed by different governmental institutions as tourist or cultural attractions: museums, galleries,
art spaces, or even as places for spontaneous use.
In the context of Portugal6, due to the public inaccessibility of secret zones, the situation is that of an
inconsistent territorial system, in terms of both the physical conditions of the structures, as well as their
legal status: “one is sealed and makes part of the foundation's structure of Cascais Hospital, four are
in ruins, one has a small temporary museum, and two were donated to public entities (Institute for
Nature Conservation and Monument to Overseas Combatants).” (Pais, Hoffman, Campos 2021, 4609)
The importance of understanding the sustainable heritage strategy of Plan Barron's future existence
affects not only these structures’ role as industrial techno-cultural-aesthetic heritage, but also as
cultural-natural heritage, “connected with a beautiful military landscape, as a techno-aesthetic
territorial object with a water landscape as a special heritage proposal, a ‘buffer area’ for a climate-
changing period, and a military, continuous cultural landscape along the coast of the Atlantic.” (Pais,
Hoffmann, Campos 2021, 4617)
The process of research, contextualization, and protection of open public access demands complex
action. The primary aim is to converge common trauma, fear, vulnerability, and morality, to
contextualize them within terms of both sensitive territorial questions, as well as architecture, and
further to facilitate social plurality and common experience in the sense of memory and
monumentality, leading “to overcoming of ideas related to violence and nationalism through the
activation of common well-being.” (Pais, Hoffman, Campos 2021, 4626)
6
RAC was deactivated in 1998, and its files were declassified in 2004; the first academic research began in 2015,
opening a new research direction in a completely unresearched Portuguese context. (Pais, Hoffmann, Campos,
2021, 4612)
An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
5. CONCLUSION
Abandoned military bunkers are a significant example of drastic topography transformation brought on
by the demand of war-time defense systems that scattered and occupied large European areas; they
are the ambivalent witnesses of different military concepts, strategies, and techniques throughout the
last century.
Both case studies, Plan Barron and the project of Tito’s bunkers, their significant differences in existing
aspects notwithstanding, offer only a glimpse into an essential understanding of the military history
and historical facts of a highly volatile period in European defense and security forces operations.
Such comparative research and discussions contribute to a more complex understanding of the topic,
specific territorial intervention, its ambivalent appearance, and sociocultural impact, which would
require the European military past to be explored, linked, evaluated, classified, and redefined as a
common agenda for protecting and defining the context of military heritage as a techno culture in a
broader European context.
The conference and workshop PLAN BARRON: A future for oblivious super-resistant bunkers was a
significant contribution to the discussion of the contextual repurposing of military reinforcement
structures in the future. The presentation of the diverse projects of ambivalent structures and
underground reinforced constructions opened the question of their afterlife and confirmed the need for
discussion in a broader professional context. In many cases, the concrete structures lack or are still in
the process of obtaining legal status, and many are under restricted authority.
Due to the extensive secrets, lack of both historical awareness of their existence, and poor access to
information, Plan Barron and the project of Tito’s bunkers are at risk of being erased from history. It is
therefore imperative to open up the process of academic and scientific evaluation to further articulate
their status and future.
6. REFERENCES
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Beck, U. (2006). Living in the world risk society. Economy and Society, 35(3), 329-345.
doi:10.1080/03085140600844902
Beck, U., & Beck, U. (1995). Ecological enlightenment essays on the politics of the Risk Society.
Atlantic Highlands, NY: Humanities Press.
Bennett, L. (2017). Cold War Ruralism. Journal of Planning History, 17(3), 205-225.
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Brzezinski, Z. (2016) Grand chessboard. NY: Basic Books.
Brzezinski, Z. (1992) “The Cold War and its aftermath,” Foreign Affairs, 71(4), p. 31. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.2307/20045308.
Lefebvre, H., & Nicholson-Smith, D. (2009). The production of space. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Molotch, H. (1993). The Space of Lefevbre. Theory and Society, 22, 887–895.
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Pais, M., Hoffmann, K., & Campos, S. (2021, December 10, 4609-4628). Understanding bunker
architecture heritage as a climate action tool: Plan Barron in Lisbon as a "milieu" and as
"common good" when dealing with the rise of the water levels. Retrieved January 4, 2023, Available
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An Abmbivalent Military Repository
Spela Hudnik, Ph.D.
