Hitlers bunker today

Its roof was 2 meters below the hall. 

The second, and deeper bunker (roughly 9 meters below the gardens), was built in 1944, and this is where Hitler and his staff relocated to as the Battle of Berlin raged on. 

This air-raid shelter was the center of the Third Reich’s government from January 16, 1945, when Hitler retreated into the bunker.

It was used until Mai 2nd 1945, when General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defense Area, surrendered to General Chuikov of the Soviet Army.

The bunker was a highly sophisticated product of German war technology.

Its very invisibility today underscores the importance of learning from history rather than preserving its darkest monuments.

Conclusion: Lessons from the Bunker’s Location

The location of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin may now be hidden from sight, but its legacy remains visible in history.

As Soviet forces encircled Berlin, Hitler and his closest aides retreated into the underground shelter. But it was two particular deaths, those of Hitler, 56, and Eva Braun, 33, in that sordid underground bunker on April 30, 1945, that signaled the true, final fall of the Third Reich.

Vandivert was the first Western photographer to gain access to Hitler’s Führerbunker, or “shelter for the leader,” after the fall of Berlin, and a handful of his pictures of the bunker and the ruined city were published in LIFE magazine in July 1945.

I survived. .

The documentary “Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary” (Im toten Winkel”) is partly integrated into the movie.

Only steps away is Peter Eisenman’s famous Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.

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We also offer a free self-guided tour of Third Reich sights in Berlin.

The site is a chilling reminder of how absolute power leads to ruin. However, some chambers and some walls are said to still exist.

The bunker was independent of the Berlin grid as it had its own diesel generator.

When Hitler arrived in the bunker in January 1945 as the Anglo-American air raids became fiercer, he took with him his adjutants and his staff as well as his closest assistant Martin Bormann.

Not long after the two-week battle for Berlin ended, 33-year-old LIFE photographer William Vandivert was on the scene, photographing the city’s devastated landscape and the eerie scene inside the bunker where Adolf Hitler spent the last months of his life; where he and Eva Braun were married; and where, just before war’s end, the two killed themselves on April 30.

Between August 1940 and March 1945 American, Royal Air Force and Soviet bombers launched more than 350 air strikes on Berlin; tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and countless buildings apartment buildings, government offices, military installations were obliterated.

Many historical tours explain its context in detail, often including other nearby World War II sites. Despite the chaos above, official meetings continued until Hitler’s mental state deteriorated. For example, of the fourth slide in this gallery, he wrote: “Pix of [correspondents] looking at sofa where Hitler and Eva shot themselves. Officially known as the Führerbunker, it was constructed beneath the Reich Chancellery and served as Adolf Hitler’s final headquarters.

This underground shelter was not just a military command center; it became the last chapter in the dictator’s life.

Therefore the construction was fairly straightforward and did not need to be too elaborate.

However, as the war progressed salong with the boming of Berlin, so too did the needs of the Fuhrerbunker. A few of those images are republished here; most of the pictures in this gallery, however, never appeared in LIFE. There bodies were burnt in the grounds outside the entrance.

Images of the bunker

For more images of the bunker scroll down and watch our video.

Location

 If you have been to the usual tourist spots in Berlin you may well have passed the location of the Hitler bunker without realising.

It had 30 rooms on 2,700 square feet (250 square meters) and several exits, one to the garden of the New Reich Chancellery, where the parking lot is now. Post-war German governments, especially in East Berlin, wanted to prevent any glorification of Hitler or Nazism.

Yet, the Soviet Union kept much of their findings secret, fueling decades of speculation.

The location of Hitler’s bunker was filled in with rubble, and its access points were sealed. Authorities feared that preserving the site could turn it into a neo-Nazi shrine.

Therefore, the location of Hitler’s bunker was left undeveloped and unmarked for years.

You can see it below:

Should the bunker have been preserved as a bunker?