Führerbunker
총통 벙커
Hitler's air-raid shelter and last Führer Headquarters, under the garden of the old Reich Chancellery on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. The name refers to the deeper section completed in 1944 below the 1936 Vorbunker; Hitler moved in on 16 January 1945 and killed himself there on 30 April. In the last weeks of the Battle of Berlin it was the centre of the Nazi regime.
In depth
The complex had two parts: the upper Vorbunker, completed in 1936, and the Führerbunker proper, completed in 1944 2.5 metres lower. The Führerbunker lay about 8.5 metres underground under a concrete roof almost 3 metres thick; its some 30 small rooms held a generator and telephone switchboard, Hitler's study and bedroom and a conference room. Lying below the water table, it needed pumps running constantly.
In April 1945 Bormann, Goebbels and Eva Braun moved in, while the Goebbels family stayed in the Vorbunker. Here Hitler admitted defeat for the first time on 22 April, married Braun and left his testament on the 29th and killed himself on the 30th. On 1 May the Goebbels couple killed their children and themselves, and on 2 May Soviet troops entered.
After the war the Soviets levelled the Chancellery buildings; the bunker largely survived attempts to blow it up until it was mostly destroyed during housing construction in the late 1980s. In 2006 a single information board, designed as a historical record rather than a memorial, was put up at the site.