A few days ago I read the post about the man-made mountain of jars and was reminded about the WW2 debris mountains in Germany, called Schuttbergs. These were places where the rubble from bombed buildings was shoveled and loaded onto trucks and disposed away from the city centers. Heavily bombed cities like Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin, etc. have their own
man woman-made Schuttbergs. The majority of the debris clearing workers were women (Trummerfrauen or rubble women), since German men were in short supply after the war.
Berlin has one of the most notable debris mountains named Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) located in what was once West Berlin. It stands 394 ft above sea level and is composed of 98 million cu yds of debris. It took 20 years to build the non-natural hill. In addition, 180,000 trees were planted on Teufelsberg.
During the Cold War, the Teufelsberg was occupied by American and British forces. Also a listening post was utilized by the NSA to spy on Soviet bloc countries. In the 1950's, a ski jump was opened and remained in existence until the late 1990's.
Today the Teufelsberg is no longer a spy station, but an out of the way tourist stop. It is a forest with hiking trails and access to the abandoned listening post.
