Führerbunker

The Führerbunker lay beneath the garden of the Reich Chancellery, inside Defence Sector Z, and was Adolf Hitler's headquarters for the battle. On 20 April, his birthday, he was woken there at 9am with news of the front and made his last public appearance in the garden above it, presenting medals to boys of the Hitler Youth. After walking his dog Blondi in the Chancellery garden on 23 April, he returned to the bunker for good.

Life underground

By 22 April the walls were cracking under the repeated bombing and dust filled the air of the tiny conference room, where Hitler was the only one to sit. Food and alcohol were plentiful, and drunkenness was common at every rank. That day Hitler broke down at the midday briefing, said openly for the first time that the war was lost, and declared that he would kill himself rather than be captured. Magda Goebbels arrived that evening with her six children, and she and Joseph Goebbels stayed to the end.

For all it had cost, the bunker could not run a battle. Its signals were so poor that by 26 April its staff were ringing civilian flats chosen at random from the telephone book to ask what was happening outside, and on 29 April the balloon carrying the radio-telephone link to army headquarters was shot down, cutting the bunker off.

Summons and verdicts

On 23 April General Helmuth Weidling was ordered to the bunker to answer charges of defeatism, and was made commander of the Berlin Defence Area the next day. The same day Göring's telegram arrived, and Martin Bormann had little trouble persuading Hitler that it was treason; Albert Speer also came to see him for the last time. On 24 April Wilhelm Mohnke was appointed battle commandant of the district that held the Chancellery and the bunker. Weidling's plan for a breakout was rejected at the evening conference of 26 April, and on 27 April Hermann Fegelein, found drunk in a flat off the Kurfürstendamm, was brought back and stripped of his rank.

The last days

In the early hours of 29 April Hitler married Eva Braun in the bunker; that night he learned of Mussolini's death. The events of 30 April are still disputed in detail, though who was present is well documented. Hitler said goodbye to his staff after lunch, and at around 3:30pm a single shot was heard. Heinz Linge, Otto Günsche, Erich Kempka and others carried the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun up to the garden and burned them in a shallow depression outside the bunker.

On 1 May General Hans Krebs went to Vasily Chuikov with news of Hitler's death and returned with the Soviet demands. At around 8:30pm Joseph and Magda Goebbels took their own lives, after arranging the poisoning of their six children. That night Mohnke and Bormann led the remaining survivors out in three groups. By 2 May the area was largely empty of combatants, and those taken in the bunker and the Chancellery were handed to SMERSH for interrogation. The later Soviet accounts of hard fighting for the Chancellery that day were, the account concludes, greatly exaggerated.