Fuhrerbunker

The Fuhrerbunker is best known as the place where Adolf Hitler committed suicude with his wife Eva Hitler (Eva Anna Paula Braun) at the end of World War Two. Eva killed herself through taking a capsule of cyanide and Hitler shot himself in the mouth while biting into a cyanide capsule.

The Fuhrerbunker, translating as "The Fuhrers Shelter" is a complex of underground bunkers built in Berlin, Germany under the gardens of the old Reich Chancellery building at Wilhelmstraße 77.

The bunker had 30 small rooms in total built in two levels, the first of which was built in 1936 and the second completed in 1943.

The Fuhrerbunker was protected by concrete walls that were around four metres thick so they could withstand a strong barrage and also had exits into the Chancellery and an emergency exit into the Chancellery gardens.

After the war the Soviet Union tried to blow up the Fuhrerbunker but only managed to damage the seperation walls. The East German government tried to blow up the bunker in 1959 but again did not cause much affect.


Images attributed to Das Bundesarchiv