Abhörstation von der NSA / Radar and Field Station of the NSA, Teufelsberg / Devil's Mountain - Berl

by Albert Videt Jensen

This hill in former West Berlin, named after the nearby Teufelssee, rises north of the Grunewald forest. Built by the Allies after World War II from the rubble of devastated Berlin, it belongs to the artificial mounds known as Mont Klamott, Schuttberg, or Trümmerberg. Teufelsberg buries an unfinished Nazi university, commissioned by Adolf Hitler in 1937 and designed by Albert Speer. Due to its resistance to explosives, it was covered with 12,000,000 m³ of debris.
For nearly thirty years, the site served as a premier listening post for the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army Security Agency, intercepting Warsaw Pact communications as part of the ECHELON network. The facility was compromised by a major espionage case involving James W. Hall and Hüseyin Yildirim for East Germany (GDR), uncovered in 1988. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a private real estate redevelopment plan for hotels and residential buildings was initiated in the 1990s but ultimately abandoned after the site was reclassified as a protected natural area. Today, the remnants of this complex offer a striking post-apocalyptic atmosphere just outside the city center.