SS Lager Botn Guard Tower. 1/35
- Inka
- Nov 9
- 3 min read
Recently I was sorting through some old pics on my computer and found a folder with photos of this POW camp guard tower diorama I had made many years ago.
At the time I was working on the local museum telling the story about the POWs the german occupiers brought to the region.
One day I saw photos taken of some of the camps during the liberation, and knew that I had to make a 1/35 scale miniature of a specific camp at some point.
I didn`t have the space or economy to undertake such a project at the time, so instead I decided to construct a watchtower and section of the fence. Like that I would at least have a template for how to make the towers needed for a camp diorama in the future.
I spent several weeks planning, researching, measuring and executing the build, and I remember it was late autumn turning to winter and I sat up long into the nights enjoying working on the project.
I made a jig for cutting the tiny planks and beams, and stuck them together with strong PVA glue and the tower slowly took form with a final height on nearly 30 centimeter.
The stairs were a nightmare to build, but in the end I managed to get the steps angeled correctly and in a perfect distance to eachother.
Inside the hut I made a hatch in the floor, a storage box in the corner. I hung binoculars, a flare gun, a coffee mug and a field telephone on the wall, laid up an electrical cable made of sewing thread, and scratchbuilt the searchlight from scrap plastic and foil from around the workbench. I had planned to have a LED inside the light, but for some reason I can`t remember I didn`t.
The barbed wire fence wasn`t very easy to make either. I reached out to a company (RGM) which produced scale barbed wire, told them about my project and got a good price for several meters of miniature spiky wire.
When this arrived I drew up a template and began bending, cutting and gluing the fence together. The spikes on the wire were sharp and pointy, so the whole thing became a bloody affair, but in the end I had a nice section of POW camp fence attached to birch tree poles made from floral sticks.
The groundwork was the easiest part of the project. Lots of glue, white paint, and a sprinkling of micro balloons made the scene look like a hard polar winter. The walkway for the guards was made to look icy using epoxy (in retrospect I would use something else today coz it yellowed a bit through the years).
I had chosen two figures from a Dragon kit. Both dressed in the heavy sheep skin coats the germans issued to their soldiers on parts of the northern- and eastern fronts. I painted them with Vallejo acrylic colors, and placed one of the guys as a lookout in the tower, while the other fellow was patrolling the walkway.
Now I could finally attach the roof on the tower and add a few last details such as icesickles hanging from the edge of the roof, snow on parts of the tower, and a yellow death head sign on the barbed wire fence.
I named the diorama "SS Lager Botn" after the camp Yugoslav partizans were sent to in the valley where I grew up. This was a horrible camp where the prisoners were to be exterminated through hard labour and abuse.
I wrote another article about that camp which you can read here: https://www.hobbyhistorica.com/post/nacht-und-nebel
For years I had the diorama in my display cabinet, but a few years ago a museum contacted me wanting to buy some dioramas for an exhibition they were making. So now the dio got a new life in a museum, something which I am very proud of.
Having had the diorama on my mind the last few days again now, has reignited my desire to build a full camp in scale 1/35. The technology with 3D printing today would solve many of the ideas I want to incorporate into it, I just have to find a museum that want to fund it first :D
Thanks for reading. Enjoy your day!
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