History buffs will soon have a chance to pick up an item guaranteed to make rival collectors green with envy: Czech World War II bunkers.

Officials at the Defense Ministry announced plans July 26 to sell 7,000 bunkers built on the nation's borderlands in the years leading up to World War II. The bunkers were supposed to be a bulwark against a feared Nazi invasion but were ultimately never used and many have been padlocked since the 1940s.

"The bunkers are useless property for the Army," said Jan Pejsek, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry. "They haven't been part of the Czech defense plan since the 1950s. At the same time, they are so sturdy they don't require much maintenance."

When, how and for what price the bunkers will be sold has yet to be determined. Pejsek declined to set a price range for obsolete bunkers, which in other countries have been used to store food or grow mushrooms. Defense officials said they could go to the highest bidder, but it's unclear if they would be auctioned, and under what rules, except that only Czech citizens will be eligible to buy. But some bunkers will be granted to municipalities and historical clubs free of charge, Pejsek said. "Some might change hands next year," he said. "Others might not be sold until 2008 or 2009."

Since the Army joined NATO in 1999, defense officials have been working to create a leaner, more modern military. Professional soldiers replaced conscripts this year and since 2000, property worth 45 billion Kc ($1.8 billion), including barracks, airports and warehouses, has been transferred to other government bodies or sold at pennies on the dollar.

One obstacle to selling the bunkers — squat concrete blocks lying in and around forests, mountains and fields — is that they must be recorded in local land registries before they can pass into private hands. "Most of them don't officially exist," says Andrej Círtek, head spokesman for the Defense Ministry. "It will take months, maybe years, to record them."

Around 7,000 "light" bunkers and 200 "heavy" bunkers were built in the mid-1930s along the German and Austrian frontiers, including lands near the Czech–Polish border, then the Czech–German border.

The self-contained light bunkers are sunk a few meters into the ground. With four walls, a roof, firing slits and little elbow room, they offer just enough space for a handful of soldiers to fire on the enemy.

The heavy bunkers — some two stories high — were designed to house hundreds of soldiers, weapons and officers. Meant to be connected by tunnels up to 60 meters (197 feet) deep and several kilometers long, most of them were unfinished when the Nazis invaded in 1938.

"Their purpose was to hold off the Germans for 10 to 12 days while the Czechoslovak Army was mobilized," said Miroslav Kejzlar, chairman of an association that runs a museum in the Stachelberg bunker outside Trutnov, north Bohemia. The associaton leases five heavy and 15 light bunkers.

"Soldiers were convinced they were going to fight," Kejzlar said. But then Britain, Germany and France signed a pact Sept. 29, 1938, in Munich — without Czechoslovakia present — ceding the Sudetenland to Hitler in the hopes of forestalling war. "During the night, the Munich Pact was signed. The next day orders came to surrender and clear out weapons caches."

In 1989, Kejzlar and seven friends cleaned the main Stachelberg bunker, painted it gunmetal gray, and drained tunnels that run 50 meters below. Set in the foothills of the Krkonose Mountains, the bunker looks like four short, stocky grain silos welded together. It was the only bunker finished in a planned 3.5-kilometer chain of 11 bunkers. Across the country, only about 200 of 1,500 planned heavy bunkers were built by the time the Germans invaded.

"Since the system was never finished," Kejzlar said. "The bunkers never had a chance to protect the country from an invasion."