A forgotten nazi-era monument in a forest in northwest Germany

After the end of World War II, the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler's dictatorship shocked the world.

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Images of the extermination camps became a stark symbol of the crimes of National Socialism. Therefore, after the war, the Allies carried out a denazification campaign in Germany to prevent the resurgence of the totalitarian movement that had inspired those crimes. All monuments from the nazi era were either demolished or stripped of their swastikas, the emblem of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

Today, it is very difficult to see a monument with a swastika in Germany. In fact, that symbol is illegal in the country and is classified as a crime under Article 86a of the German Criminal Code. However, in a forest in Emsland, in northwestern Germany, there is still a nazi monument that retains its swastikas, although they are visibly chipped away. It is a kind of altar that includes a swastika on each side (both covered with a black diamond of paint) and an emblem of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service), an organization created by Hitler's dictatorship in 1935 with the theoretical aim of employing Germany's numerous unemployed in construction projects.

In reality, the Reichsarbeitsdienst ended up being a means of indoctrination in nazi ideals, using highly militarized labor camps where nazi symbols were part of daily life immersed in that totalitarian ideology and which included neo-pagan rituals that perhaps explain this curious altar. The German YouTube channel Simply_Adventure has published a video showing this monument and explaining what was done in this labor camp, of which few traces remain (the video is in German; you can activate automatic English subtitles in the player's bottom bar):

You can see here some screenshots from this video, in which we see the monument and the forest that now grows in the place where that Nazi labor camp used to be, demolished after the war.