Inside The Führerbunker, The Nazi Hideout Where Adolf Hitler Lived, Got Married, And Died In The Waning Days Of World War II

Published March 6, 2024
Updated March 22, 2024

As Soviet troops advanced on Berlin in 1945, Adolf Hitler died by suicide inside his sprawling concrete Führerbunker buried 30 feet beneath the city where he'd spent the last 105 days of his life.

Fuhrerbunker
Theodor Morell And Guards
Hitler With Karl Donitz
Fuhrerbunker Destroyed Couch
Inside The Führerbunker, The Nazi Hideout Where Adolf Hitler Lived, Got Married, And Died In The Waning Days Of World War II
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On January 16, 1945, Adolf Hitler went underground. As the tides of World War II turned against Nazi Germany and its leader, Hitler and his close associates moved into an subterranean command center: the Führerbunker.

There, as Soviet troops moved closer to Berlin, Hitler spent his final days. He gave commands, took meals, and married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. And on April 30, 1945, with the war all but lost, the Führerbunker was where Adolf Hitler took his own life.

This is the story of the Führerbunker, the sprawling underground bunker where Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nazis lived out their final days.

Adolf Hitler Moves Underground

The idea of underground bunkers wasn't new in Berlin. The Vorbunker, an underground air-raid shelter near the Reich Chancellery, had been completed in 1936. It had dormitories, a dining room, a shower, washroom, and a toilet, and was meant as a temporary air-raid shelter for Hitler and other Nazis during World War II.

Vorbunker

Dennis Nilsson/Wikimedia CommonsA map of the Vorbunker, which predated the Führerbunker.

As Allied bombing intensified in the 1940s, however, a second connected bunker called the Führerbunker was constructed in 1944. Twenty-eight feet under the earth, and smaller than the Vorbunker, the Führerbunker was constructed as a command center. It had briefing rooms, telephones, and about 30 rooms, including bedrooms.

Though deep beneath the earth, efforts were made to make the Führerbunker feel hospitable. Expensive carpets lined the floor, art from the Chancellery hung on the walls, and Hitler's favorite portrait of Frederick the Great was affixed over his desk in his private residence.

On Jan. 16, 1945, Hitler and his staff retreated to the bunker. They were soon followed by some of his closest associates including his mistress, Eva Braun, and the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and his family.

Hitler, Braun, and the Goebbels family would find their end there.

Life Inside The Führerbunker

As World War II raged — and moved ever closer to Berlin — life in the Führerbunker could sometimes seem normal. Hitler enjoyed vegetarian meals prepared by his cook, entertained other Nazis, and went for strolls around the Chancellery gardens with his dog, Blondi. As Robert Payne writes in The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, he spent much of his time living underground like he'd spent it above ground: strategizing with his generals.

These strategy sessions often lasted until the wee hours of the morning, as bad news poured in from around the world. At the end of January, Soviet forces crossed the Oder into Germany. In February, the Germany city of Dresden was bombed. In March, Allied forces crossed over the Rhine.

By April, Soviet troops were getting close to Berlin. The city was frequently bombed, which meant that even garden strolls could be dangerous. Hitler retreated to the Führerbunker. On April 20, he celebrated his 56th birthday there. It would be the last one he ever celebrated.

The next day, April 21, the Soviet army reached the outskirts of Berlin.

How Adolf Hitler Died In His Bunker

By April 1945, Adolf Hitler was not a well man. Prone to screaming fits, he had a noticeable tremor in his left hand, suffered from stomach problems, and was taking a number of powerful drugs prescribed to him by his doctor, Theodor Morell. But there were two things that Hitler wanted to accomplish in the next few days: he wanted to get married, and he wanted to die.

Adolf Hitler And Eva Braun

Keystone/Getty ImagesAdolf Hitler and Eva Braun during World War II.

On April 29, 1945, Hitler wed Eva Braun, his longtime mistress. They proclaimed that they were both of Aryan origin, per Nazi law — though there's been some speculation of Hitler's roots — and entered into a marriage that would last just 36 hours.

Hitler then dictated his personal and political last testaments. In an anti-Semitic screed, he wildly insisted that the war was the fault of others and that "posterity cannot place the responsibility... on me."

The next day, April 30, Hitler and his new bride died by suicide. After testing cyanide pills on Blondi, the newlyweds prepared to die themselves. They said goodbye to their staff, then Hitler told his valet, SS officer Heinz Linge: "I am going to shoot myself now. You know what you have to do."

Linge waited outside the door. According to the Washington Post, the sound of the Soviet bombardment above his head was too loud for him to hear a shot. But soon enough he smelled gunpowder.

Inside their room in the Führerbunker, Hitler and Braun had both taken cyanide pills, and Hitler had shot himself in the head. Linge and others, including Goebbels, brought the bodies to the surface. They poured gasoline on the two corpses, then lit them on fire. As Hitler and Braun burned, the men threw up one last "Heil Hitler."

Despite the conspiracy theories about Hitler that lingered, the Führer was dead. Goebbels and his wife Magda shortly thereafter killed six of their young children, and then themselves.

Eight days later, Germany surrendered. Hitler had no known children (the question of Hitler's descendants is something else entirely) and thus his bloodline ended with him. No one picked up his poisonous mantle, and modern-day Germany has worked hard to suppress his ideas.

But what happened to the Führerbunker in the years that followed?

The Führerbunker Today

Fuhrerbunker Sign

A sign at the site of the Führerbunker, erected in 2006, which explains its history and layout.

After the war, Soviet troops attempted to destroy the Führerbunker — with limited success. Some underground rooms remained, largely forgotten until the fall of the Berlin Wall 44 years later.

These were destroyed, though rumors have spread ever since that some parts of the Führerbunker, hidden and sealed, remain intact. The German government had no desire for the site to become a shrine to Neo-Nazis, and so largely ignored it for the next several decades.

Today, there's nothing at the site except for a parking lot. A small sign, added quietly in 2006, gives the bunker's history and displays its layout. But there is no visible structure that anyone can visit. The Führerbunker, where Adolf Hitler wed, died, and ultimately lost World War II, is no longer.


After seeing Adolf Hitler's bunker, the Führerbunker, read about the conspiracy theory that suggests Hitler didn't die in the Führerbunker, but instead fled to Argentina with Eva Braun. Then, check out these photos of the Hitler Youth.

author
Kaleena Fraga
author
A staff writer for All That's Interesting, Kaleena Fraga has also had her work featured in The Washington Post and Gastro Obscura, and she published a book on the Seattle food scene for the Eat Like A Local series. She graduated from Oberlin College, where she earned a dual degree in American History and French.
editor
Cara Johnson
editor
A writer and editor based in Charleston, South Carolina and an assistant editor at All That's Interesting, Cara Johnson holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Washington & Lee University and an M.A. in English from College of Charleston and has written for various publications in her six-year career.