Site of the Führerbunker: The Vanished Lair

Why is it significant?

Stand right here on the asphalt of this ordinary residential parking lot beside the modest informational panel on Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße. Look around at the unassuming apartment buildings and green trees.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand right here on the asphalt of this ordinary residential parking lot beside the modest informational panel on Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße. Look around at the unassuming apartment buildings and green trees. It is hard to believe, but directly beneath your shoes lie the shattered, subterranean ruins of the Führerbunker, where Adolf Hitler spent his final one hundred and five days before committing suicide on April thirtieth, nineteen forty-five.

The underground bunker complex was constructed in two phases beneath the gardens of the old Reich Chancellery. The deepest section sat nearly thirty feet underground, shielded by a concrete roof twelve feet thick. As Soviet artillery shells pulverized Berlin above, Hitler and his inner circle lived in twenty cramped concrete rooms with roaring diesel generators.

After the war, Soviet sappers tried to blow up the bunker with tons of explosives, but the massive reinforced concrete ceiling refused to collapse. When East Germany built these apartment complexes in the nineteen eighties, they sealed the remaining chambers, filled them with gravel and dirt, and left the surface as a deliberate parking lot to prevent it from ever becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage shrine.

Only in two thousand and six, ahead of the World Cup, did authorities install this historical sign to demystify the site. Turn east toward Wilhelmstraße.