ABSTRACT
After the failure of the Ardennes offensive to deliver a decisive victory in the west, Hitler returned to Berlin on 16 January 1945 and took up residence in the Führer bunker buried 15 metres deep behind the Reich Chancellery building. The bunker was an extension of the original Chancellery air raid shelter completed in 1936 and hastily added to during the autumn of 1944. The bunker consisted of two floors connected by a spiral staircase. On the upper floor were the kitchens and staff accommodation. In April, four of the rooms were cleared to accommodate the Goebbels family. On the lower floor was Hitler’s living quarters, with an adjacent room for Eva Braun, a conference room, switchboard, surgery and a tiny office for Martin Bormann, secretary of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s intermediary with the outside world. The bunker was painted throughout in battleship grey and was reported by all who entered it to be a damp, dismal and depressing place. Hitler had rejected the offer of more comfortable living accommodation in the Wehrmacht headquarters bunker at Zosson or the Luftwaffe bunker at Wannsee. After the assassination attempt of 20 July 1944 he refused to trust the Wehrmacht, only feeling safe in the confines of his own bunker surrounded by his personal SS guards who rigorously screened and searched every person who entered his presence. A warren of adjacent bunkers housed Bormann’s staff and other essential Chancellery personnel. Above ground, few buildings in Berlin were left undamaged owing to the nightly attentions of RAF Bomber Command. The old Imperial Chancellery was largely in ruins, but the new Chancellery standing alongside was comparatively undamaged. Here Hitler still maintained his operations room and directed his daily Führerlage, or military briefings, attended by Chief of the General Staff Heinz Guderian and other senior staff.
