Deathshead's Compound

Deathshead's Compound under attack.

Deathshead's Compound (German: Totenkopf's Basis) is a major location in the MachineGames' Wolfenstein series. It is General Deathshead's Baltic Sea base of operations.

Description

Deathshead's Compound is an island base with the primary facility being a retrofitted medieval castle located off the coast of Germany, close to East Prussia.

General Deathshead designs and manufactures technology for the Third Reich and his purposes in the Compound. The laboratory part of the facility is situated deep inside the base, where Strasse performs the most inhumane advanced experiments. It is fully equipped with automated incineration systems to clean up any organic tissue left by the test subjects.

History

Background

Deathshead's insignia.

The Teutonic Order built the island castle at the beginning of the XV century. Later, the Crusaders used it as a fortress, losing it to Casimir IV Jagiellon. The Swedes occupied the castle during the Thirty Years' War. At some point in the XX century, after the Nazis took power in Germany, General Deathshead came to the island and converted it into his base of operations.

1946 Allied Assault

On July 16, 1946, during Great War, the Allied forces, under the command of the Office of Secret Actions, launched an all out desperate assault on the Compound as a last ditch effort to nullify Wehrmacht's technological advantage by destroying the research base and eliminating Wilhelm Strasse. The raiding party landed on the beach part of the base (Baker Shore) and began incursion on the facility, fighting off Deathshead's forces. The mission ended in total failure, with the remaining Allied soldiers getting captured or killed by General Deathshead.

1960 Kreisau Circle Assault Destruction

Deathhead's Compound destroyed in the nuclear explosion.

In late 1960, the Kreisau Circle mounted another assault on the refitted Compound using Eva's Hammer. Firing the Spindly Torque at the facility, they destroyed a wall section with B. J. Blazkowicz and a rescue party infiltrating the base. Fighting off Compound guards, B. J. found Wilhelm Strasse at the fortress's top, defeating him but ending up gravely wounded. The Circle destroys the facility with the nuclear round.

Aftermath

With the Compound's destruction and the death of General Deathshead, the Third Reich took a colossal blow to its military research program. The atomic explosion destroyed all the latest research and killed many of the elite Deathshead's Commandos.

Trivia

• Like the Kreisau Circle Hideout and the London Nautica, Deathshead's Compound appears more than once in-game, the main difference that being in the prologue, and, with 14 years passing since, its interior gets retrofitted.
• Considering its history and geography, the real-life whereabouts of the base are likely to be in either Bornholm or Rügen, both of which were controlled by the Swedes around the time of the Thirty Years' War. However, Bornholm has never been owned by Prussia, leaving Rügen as the real-life location of the Deathshead Сompound.
• The base map from Wolfenstein: The New Order Panzerhund Edition is named "Wolfenstein," which implies that the facility was initially supposed to be the iconic Castle Wolfenstein.