Berlin has, after more than 60 years, reversed a policy of concealing the location of the bunker where Adolf Hitler shot himself in the final days of World War II.
A large information panel was erected on Thursday near Wilhelmstrasse, above the underground labyrinth where Hitler married Eva Braun hours before committing suicide with her on April 30 1945, ending the Nazis’ 12-year reign of terror.
The so-called Fuehrer Bunker, with its impenetrable walls meant to withstand Allied bombing, was largely destroyed by Soviet troops in the post-war years and a parking lot and an apartment building now stand on the site.
Despite the avid interest of tourists who frequently ask shopkeepers about the location of the bunker, Berlin had refused to mark the site for fear it would become a shrine for neo-Nazis.
But the private organisation Berliner Unterwelten (Berlin Underworlds), which offers tours of the city’s subterranean architecture, won permission from the urban development authority and the state memorial office to put up the sign after years of lobbying.
It describes, in German and English, the chronology of the construction of bunkers beneath Hitler’s mammoth chancellery, from the first air-raid shelters in 1935 to the start of building on the Fuehrer Bunker complex in 1943.
Berliner Unterwelten chairperson Dietmar Arnold said the sober factual description of the bunker on the panel was meant to rob it of the mythic power it had in the city while it was hidden.
“We wanted to demystify the site,” Arnold said, adding that the group had aimed to have the sign in place in time for the Soccer World Cup, starting on Friday, when tens of thousands of visitors will be descending on Berlin. — AFP