A Look Inside the Führerbunker, Where Hitler Ended His Reign of Terror

06/11 17:30 - A Look Inside the Führerbunker, Where Hitler Ended His Reign of Terror
The underground Berlin bunker where Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, is no longer there. It was dismantled over the years and finally filled in decades ago. But the photographs remain. The Führerbunker was constructed in 1943 as a vast expansion of an existing air raid shelter underneath the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Its floor was about nine meters under the surface. As the tide of the war turned, Hitler moved into the bunker in January of 1945. In the spring of that year, Americans relentlessly bombed Berlin, and the Soviets advanced on the city, surrounding it by April 25th. Hitler married Eva Braun inside the bunker, then shot himself the next day. Braun took cyanide. Their bodies were taken outside and burned. Berlin surrendered to the Red Army on May second. Only days afterward, LIFE magazine William Vandivert entered the Führerbunker to document it for posterity. Some of the photos had to be taken by candlelight, but the details are clear. Read about the Führerbunker and see Vandivert's images of Hitler's last residence at Rare Historical Photos. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V04744 / CC-BY-SA 3.0) ...