April 30, 1945
The capital of the thousand year Reich, Berlin, was in ruins, after only twelve years of the Nazi regime. For months, it had been pounded from the air by Allied bombers, and now it was being pounded relentlessly by Soviet artillery, bombers, and tanks. Berlin was completely circled by its enemies, who even now were advancing to within artillery range of the Reichstag itself, lobbing shells that were exploding close enough to shake the building. Remnants of the German forces fought a desperate, last ditch defense, even though they were outnumbered and outgunned, with no hope of doing anything more than slowing down the inevitable onslaught by a few days or hours.
Adolf Hitler's dream of creating a Reich that would endure for a thousand years, obtaining Lebensraum in the East for Germans to expand into, enslaving the "inferior" Slavs of that land, and destroying Bolshevism, a dream that had plunged the world into war and led to the deaths of millions, both in combat and in the planned slaughter of six million Jews that later became known as the Holocaust, had backfired spectacularly, plunging Germany into nightmare. Not only had he failed to destroy Bolshevism, his gamble in launching a two-front war had led to the destruction of Germany, the deaths of hundreds of thousands German civilians and soldiers, and the mass rape of German women in the East by soldiers in the advancing Red Army. His most hated enemy had allied itself with nations that he had only half-heartedly gone to war with, Britain and the United States, and the combination was too much to overcome. Although Hitler could not know it at the time, his folly had not only delivered the eastern half of Germany into the hands of his most hated enemies, but that domination would last 45 years, nearly four times as long as the Third Reich had endured.
The center of Hitler’s governmental district was situated at the Wilhelmstrasse, corner Vossstrasse, some hundred metres south of the Brandenburger Tor.
Here was the place of the Foreign Ministry, the Old Reichskanzlei and - with the house number Vossstrasse 1 to 19 - the New Reichskanzlei, that was constructed by Albert Speer.
Already in 1933 Hitler arranged for building of Air Raid Shelters in the Governance Area. The first segment of his later bunker construction has been completed in 1935, in the cellar of the new built great festival room behind the Reichskanzlei. The thickness of the ceiling was 160 cm at first. Lateron it had been strengthened by 1 m.
The complex called ´Vorbunker’ was in 1943 enlarged by the ´Hauptbunker’. This noticeably lower lying building was ready for occupancy at the beginning of 1945.
The outer walls were about 4 m wide, the partition walls 50 cm, the thickness of the ceiling was also about 4 m. The effective area of about 250 m² was split into 20 rooms. An unpleasant narrowness prevailed.
The main bunker was connected with the Vorbunker over an airlock and stairs. In the Hauptbunker Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun occupied several rooms. Göbbels as well had a workroom and a bedroom here.
The remaining rooms were determined for the guards and the medical attendant. There were also a small and a large conference room, a wash-, machine-, telephone- and radio-room in that complex.
Besides the Göbbels family, other persons, inhabited the Vorbunker during the last weeks of the war.
The conditions in this underground walls downgraded increasingly.
In addition to the disturbing noise caused by steadily running aeration ventilators, there was a cool moistness in the rooms as
Berlin has a very high ground-water level.
The Führerbunker was only one of about 20 air raid shelters of the Reich government in the nearby environment
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