A private museum in Berlin has opened a full-scale replica of Adolf Hitler’s bunker, where he spent the final days of World War II. The project is being criticized by some parties.
As many readers will know, the “Führerbunker” was a partially subterranean complex of bunkers and air-raid shelters in Berlin, the capital of Germany, near the Reich Chancellery. Construction of the complex began before the war and continued right up until 1944.
Hitler had many headquarters where he and his top people sheltered throughout the course of the war, but the Berlin complex was the last, and it was where he came to the final end of his war, and of his life.
On 16 January 1945 Hitler made the Führerbunker his residence. It became the command center of the crumbling Nazi regime until the end of World War II in Europe. At the end of April 1945, Hitler married his long-term partner, Eva Braun, shortly before they committed suicide together.
The replica went on display on recently in a renovated air-raid shelter located about 2 km (1.25 miles) from the location of Hitler’s actual bunker. The original bunker was destroyed years ago.
Wieland Giebel, the curator of the Berlin Story Bunker, says that the museum is not presenting a “Hitler show.”
The replica can only be viewed on a guided tour. The tour begins in a shelter that was designed for 3,500 people but was holding 12,000 by the end of the war, The Telegraph reported.
Nearby museum Topography of Terror, which documents Nazi war crimes, called the reproduction showmanship.