Führerbunker
The Führerbunker sat roughly 8.5 metres beneath the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, a fortress of concrete so thick that its roof alone measured nearly 3 metres. Adolf Hitler moved in on the 16th of January 1945, and for the next three and a half months, this sealed, damp corridor network became the seat of the Nazi regime. Outside, the Red Army was closing in. Inside, conferences ran until five in the morning. How does the most powerful and destructive government in modern European history come to depend on a room smaller than a modest house? And what happened in those final hours when it was clear that nothing, and no one, was coming to help?
Hochtief, the construction company, built the lower Führerbunker section in 1944, and the final bill came to 1,349,899.29 Reichsmarks. That precision is striking for a structure conceived in wartime urgency. The older Vorbunker, the forward or upper section, had been completed back in 1936, sitting 1.5 metres beneath the cellar of the old Reich Chancellery at Wilhelmstrasse 77. The newer Führerbunker was sunk considerably deeper, positioned about 2.5 metres below the Vorbunker to the west-southwest, and protected by approximately 4 metres of concrete around its roughly thirty small rooms.
The two shelters connected by a stairway set at right angles, and could be sealed off from each other by a bulkhead and a steel door. Because the deeper bunker sat below the water table, pumps ran continuously to hold back groundwater. Electricity came from a diesel generator. A radio set with an outdoor antenna, a telex, and a telephone switchboard completed the communications suite. By the closing weeks of the war, Hitler was getting much of his news from BBC radio broadcasts and from couriers, a sharp measure of how degraded the command structure had become.
Hitler's private quarters were in the lower section. By February 1945 they had been furnished with high-quality pieces taken from the Chancellery above, along with several framed oil paintings. A large portrait of Frederick the Great hung on one wall. The rooms themselves were modest: a sitting room that doubled as an antechamber, a study, a simply furnished bedroom, and next to it the conference or map room where the situation briefings took place.
On the 16th of April 1945, the Red Army launched the Battle of Berlin, and by the 19th of April they had begun to encircle the city. Hitler made his last trip to the surface on the 20th of April, his 56th birthday, emerging to the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery to award the Iron Cross to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. That same afternoon, Soviet artillery bombarded Berlin for the first time.
Inside the bunker, the atmosphere had grown oppressive long before that. The space was crowded. Air raids came daily. Hitler mostly kept to the lower level where it was quieter and he could sleep. His dog Blondi was one of the few reasons he left for short strolls in the chancellery garden. His senior staff, including Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels, had arrived in April. Goebbels' wife Magda and their six children were sheltered in the upper Vorbunker. Among the support staff were Hitler's secretaries, including Traudl Junge, a nurse named Erna Flegel, and Sergeant Rochus Misch, who served as both bodyguard and telephone switchboard operator.
On the 22nd of April, Hitler was told at his afternoon situation briefing that General Felix Steiner's forces had not moved to carry out the ordered attack on the Soviet salient. He fell into a tearful rage. For the first time he stated openly that the war was lost, and he blamed his generals. He announced he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself. Two days later, the Red Army had consolidated their encirclement of the city, and no force on the outside was capable of breaking through.
On the 28th of April, Hitler learned that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had been quietly pursuing surrender negotiations with the Western Allies through Count Folke Bernadotte. Hitler considered this treason. Himmler's representative in Berlin, Hermann Fegelein, was court-martialed for desertion and shot. Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest.
That same day, General Hans Krebs made what would be his last telephone call from the bunker, speaking to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at Fürstenberg. Krebs' message was stark: relief had to arrive within 48 hours or all would be lost. Keitel promised to press Generals Walther Wenck and Theodor Busse. Meanwhile, Bormann wired Admiral Karl Dönitz that the Reich Chancellery was, in his words, "a heap of rubble."
Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim, summoned from Munich to take over command of the Luftwaffe from Hermann Göring, flew out of Berlin that same evening alongside test pilot Hanna Reitsch in an Arado Ar 96 trainer. Before departing, von Greim was ordered to direct the Luftwaffe against Soviet forces that had reached Potsdamer Platz, a city block from the bunker. During the night, General Wenck sent word to Keitel that his Twelfth Army had been forced back along the entire front. The attempt to relieve Berlin was formally abandoned. Krebs sent a detailed radio query to General Jodl in the early morning of the 30th of April asking for the positions of Wenck's spearheads, the Ninth Army, and General Rudolf Holste's corps. Jodl's reply confirmed each was either bogged down, surrounded, or on the defensive.
Hitler married Eva Braun just after midnight between the 28th and the 29th of April, in a small civil ceremony inside the Führerbunker. Immediately afterward, he took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Goebbels, and Bormann witnessed and signed those documents at approximately 04:00.
On the morning of the 30th of April, SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke told Hitler he could hold the centre government district for less than two more days. General Weidling informed him the defenders would run out of ammunition that night and requested permission to break out. That permission came at around 13:00. Hitler shot himself later that afternoon, at approximately 15:30; Eva Braun took cyanide. Their bodies were carried outside in blankets and burned, in accordance with Hitler's own instructions.
Goebbels became Head of Government and Chancellor in accordance with Hitler's last will. At 03:15, Goebbels and Bormann radioed Dönitz to inform him of Hitler's death and notify him of his new role as Head of State. General Krebs spoke with Soviet General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the 8th Guards Army, around 04:00 on the 1st of May; Chuikov demanded unconditional surrender. Krebs lacked the authority to agree and returned to the bunker. That late afternoon, Goebbels had his six children poisoned in the Vorbunker. He and Magda left the bunker at around 20:30. The bodies of the six children were discovered on the 3rd of May, found in their beds with the clear marks of cyanide on their faces.
Johannes Hentschel, the master electro-mechanic responsible for the bunker's power and water systems, stayed after everyone else had left or died, because the field hospital in the Chancellery above still needed electricity and running water. He surrendered to the Red Army when they entered the bunker complex at 09:00 on the 2nd of May.
On the 4th of July 1945, American writer James P. O'Donnell entered the Führerbunker after giving a Soviet guard a pack of cigarettes. He was among the first outsiders through, and in the weeks that followed, soldiers, politicians, and diplomats moved through the corridors in numbers. Winston Churchill visited the Chancellery and bunker on the 14th of July. That month, Life photojournalist William Vandivert photographed the interior.
Investigators from the Western allies noted a bloodstain on Hitler's bed frame. According to historian Mark Felton, a British officer suggested Hitler might have been shot in bed, with a less bloody death occurring on the sofa. On the 11th of December 1945, the Soviet Union permitted a limited joint investigation of the bunker grounds, with two representatives from each Allied nation watching Germans dig up soil at the site where Hitler's remains had allegedly been exhumed the previous May. When the representatives returned the following morning, an NKVD armed guard met them, accused them of removing documents from the Chancellery, and no further outside investigations were permitted for years.
The Soviets ran their own inquiry. In May 1946, forensicist Piotr Semenovsky examined the bunker study and found blood stains on the sofa, possible traces on the wall, and blood in corridors and on the upper walls of the stairwell leading to the emergency exit. Semenovsky concluded these were caused by Hitler's blanket-wrapped body being carried outside, and that the blanket had become blood-soaked in transit. A detailed Soviet site survey, including measurements, took place on the 16th of May 1946. In December 1947, the Soviets attempted to destroy the bunker with explosives; only the separation walls were damaged.
Between 1945 and 1949, the Soviets levelled the outer ruins of both Chancellery buildings as part of a deliberate effort to remove the landmarks of Nazi Germany. The East German government began a further series of demolitions of the Chancellery structures in 1959. Because the Führerbunker site sat close to the Berlin Wall, it remained undeveloped and neglected for decades.
During construction of residential housing and other buildings in 1988-89, work crews uncovered several underground sections of the old bunker complex and mostly destroyed them. The emergency exit point, which had opened into the Chancellery gardens, ended up beneath a car park. Government authorities treated the site as something to be made anonymous: the surrounding buildings were part of a deliberate strategy to keep the location unremarkable.
On the 8th of June 2006, during the run-up to the FIFA World Cup, a single information board was installed at the corner of In den Ministergärten and Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße, about three minutes' walk from Potsdamer Platz. The board included a schematic diagram of the bunker and was designed to read as a historical record rather than a memorial. Rochus Misch, one of the last surviving people who had been inside the bunker during Hitler's final days, attended the ceremony. Some sealed corridors of the bunker still exist beneath that quiet corner of Berlin. In 2025, blood from the sofa in Hitler's study was used by Turi King of the University of Bath for DNA analysis, confirmed as Hitler's by comparison with a relative's DNA.
Common questions
When did Hitler move into the Führerbunker?
Hitler moved into the Führerbunker on the 16th of January 1945. He remained there until his death on the 30th of April 1945, making it the seat of the Nazi regime in the final months of World War II in Europe.
How deep underground was the Führerbunker?
The Führerbunker was located approximately 8.5 metres beneath the garden of the old Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Its roof was made of concrete nearly 3 metres thick, and approximately 4 metres of concrete protected its roughly thirty small rooms.
Who married Hitler in the Führerbunker?
Eva Braun married Hitler in the Führerbunker just after midnight between the 28th and the 29th of April 1945, in a small civil ceremony. Less than 40 hours later, both died by suicide inside the bunker.
What happened to the Führerbunker after World War II?
The above-ground Chancellery buildings were levelled by the Soviets between 1945 and 1949. The underground complex largely survived until 1988-89, when construction work uncovered and mostly destroyed the excavated sections. Some sealed corridors still exist beneath a car park in central Berlin.
Is the Führerbunker marked or open to the public?
A single information board was installed at the corner of In den Ministergärten and Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße on the 8th of June 2006, about three minutes' walk from Potsdamer Platz. The board contains a schematic diagram and was designed as a historical record rather than a memorial. The remaining corridors are sealed off from the public.
How much did the Führerbunker cost to build?
The construction cost for the Führerbunker totaled 1,349,899.29 Reichsmarks. It was built by the Hochtief company as part of an extensive programme of subterranean construction in Berlin begun in 1940, with the lower Führerbunker section completed in 1944.
All sources
5 references cited across the entry
- 3episodeBack in the BunkerMark Felton — 2023
- 4bookTen Days to DieMichael A. Musmanno — Doubleday — 1950
- 5newsHitlers letzte Reise19 July 1992