World War II Day by Day

Berlin, Germany · January 16, 1945

On this date in 1945 Adolf Hitler moved his entourage into the “Fuehrer Bunker” under the Old Reich Chan­cel­lery in Berlin, where he lived and directed the last months of the war in Europe. The bunker—a maze of living quar­ters, con­fer­ence rooms, offices, and utili­ties spreading two stories deep some 25 feet beneath the chan­cel­lery gardens—had been spe­cially built the pre­vious fall prior to Hitler vacating for good his Wolf’s Lair head­quar­ters in Rasten­burg, East Prussia, now in Poland. An aide recalled hearing Hitler say in mid-Novem­ber 1944 that the war was lost, but Hitler soldiered on any­way, moving his head­quarters to the “Eagle’s Eyrie” near Bad Nau­heim in Hessen, from where he directed the Ar­dennes Offen­sive (Battle of the Bulge). Ar­dennes was intended to turn the tide of war by splitting the Allied armies in the west when the Wehr­macht retook the strategically vital Bel­gian port of Ant­werp. After it became clear that his high-stakes Ar­dennes gamble had failed, the Berlin bunker beckoned. Eva Braun, his long-standing girl­friend, joined him there “in this cri­tical hour,” as Minis­ter of Pro­pa­ganda Joseph Goebbels con­fided to his diary. The bunker survived a 900‑bomber raid on Berlin on Febru­ary 3 that destroyed the govern­ment district and partly reduced the Old Reich Chan­cellery to rubble. Several days later Goeb­bels found pas­sage into the bunker “totally blocked with moun­tains of rubble.” On March 19 Hitler issued his so-called Nero Order, his “scorched earth” direc­tive to de­stroy Ger­man infra­structure lest it fall into enemy hands. (Both the Ger­mans and the Soviets had used “scorched earth” in their see-saw battle for con­trol of the Eastern Front.) By this date in the war, how­ever, little of mate­rial value remained in Ger­many after that coun­try had been pum­meled from all directions by land-based artil­lery and in­ces­sant aerial bom­bard­ments. Now Hitler’s closest lieu­ten­ants were drawing away. Reichs­fuehrer-SS Hein­rich Himm­ler and Foreign Minis­ter Joachim von Ribben­trop were in secret con­tact with West­ern powers via Swe­den, shaking Hitler to the core when he dis­covered their per­fidy. When Eva Braun bit into the cya­nide cap­sule and Hitler blew his brains out on April 30, 1945, even Hermann Goering, Hitler’s desig­nated suc­cess­or since June 1941, stood accused of trea­son and, on Hitler’s order, was under house arrest in the Reichs­marschall’s own castle near Salzburg, Austria.

The Fuehrerbunker: Hitler’s and Braun’s Initial Gravesite

Above: 3-D representation of the Vorbunker and the Fuehrerbunker. The Vor­bunker (“forward bunker”) was located behind the large reception hall, or marble gallery, that was added onto the Old Reich Chancellery in 1939. It was meant to be a temporary air-raid shelter for Hitler, his guards, and servants. The bunker was officially called the “Reich Chancellery Air-Raid Shelter” until 1943, when construction began that expanded the complex with the addition of the Fuehrerbunker located one level below.

Left: Taken in July 1947, this photo shows the massive first emer­gency exit of the main bunker (erster Notaus­gang des Haupt­bunkers), or the rear entrance to the Fuehrer­bunker (num­ber 21 in 3‑D repre­sen­tation, above). Hitler and Eva Braun were cremated in a shell hole in front of the emer­gency exit. The cone-shaped structure in the center of the photo served as the exhaust tower and bomb shelter for the guards. An unfinished tower (num­ber 38 in 3‑D repre­sen­tation), a ventilation tower, is partially hidden behind the tree.

Right: A young Soviet soldier stands amid the scattered remains of Hitler’s sitting room (num­ber 26 in 3‑D repre­sen­tation, above), the place of his and his wife’s suicides. On December 5, 1947, Soviet engineers blew up the Fuehrer­bunker. Both ven­tilation towers and the entrance structure seen in picture on the left were destroyed in the blast.

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler