8. What was the purpose of the Jonastal tunnel system?
When the United States Army occupied the Jonas Valley it liberated the concentration camp at Buchenwald, the first such camp encountered by the Americans. Twenty-five tunnels were found by the Americans, dug into the walls of the valley, which were not completed and were not in use. Nor was construction still underway when the Americans arrived in the area, it had been abandoned sometime earlier. The Americans turned the area over to the Soviets as part of their zone of occupation, and the area was classified as a military training ground first by the Soviet army, later by the East Germans, and finally by the German army following reunification. American documents regarding the site were classified and remain so in the 21st century.
The mysterious nature of the tunnels led to speculation that they were intended for a variety of uses. One popular theory is that they were built to support research into the development of an atomic bomb, another that German scientists were to use (or actually used) the tunnels while performing experiments on the development of fission and fusion reactors. Another theory is that the tunnels, which are near Ohrduf, a city with excellent railroad connections and facilities, were intended to house Nazi loot. Speculation that work on a missile designed to reach the United States was conducted in the tunnels was also rife. Finally there are those who believed and continue to believe that the German UFO program needed the tunnels and the isolation of the area to work on the Nazi UFO, inspired by a captured alien vehicle. In truth, the tunnels were never completed, according to official reports of the troops which found them.