Footsteps of WWII · Berlin & eastern Germany
Site of the Führerbunker
Bunker · 16 Jan–2 May 1945
The story
Hitler moved into the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden in January 1945 and directed the last months of the war from there. The main bunker's floor lay 8.5 metres underground. On 29 April he married Eva Braun, and on 30 April 1945 both killed themselves in his study; their bodies were burned in the garden above. Soviet troops reached the bunker on 2 May. The Soviets and later the East German authorities demolished the Chancellery and most of the bunker, and flats and a car park were built over the site in the late 1980s. Nothing of it is visible.
What to look for
A car park and blocks of flats at the corner of Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße and In den Ministergärten. An information board put up by Berliner Unterwelten in 2006 explains the bunker's layout and fate. It is two minutes from the Holocaust memorial.
Plan your visit
Public street, free and open at all times; there is nothing to book. Combine it on foot with the Holocaust memorial and the Topography of Terror.
Things change, so check opening times before you travel.
Nearby sites
- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe · under 1 km
- Topography of Terror, Berlin · under 1 km
- Soviet War Memorial, Tiergarten · under 1 km
- Reichstag, Berlin · under 1 km
- German Resistance Memorial (Bendlerblock) · 1 km
- Soviet War Memorial, Treptower Park · 7 km
All 160 sites in Footsteps of WWII →
Footsteps of WWII: Europe 1939–1945
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The whole Second World War in Europe, from the first shots at Westerplatte on 1 September 1939 to the German surrender in May 1945: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne, Stalingrad, Berlin and the camps, in 15 areas from Britain to Russia.
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