Site of Hitler's Bunker and New Reich Chancellery
Site of the bunker and as it appears today during my 2021 class trip with my Bavarian International School students. On
April 29, 1945 Hitler wrote his political and personal testament in the
bunker thereafter, he and Eva Braun married. The next day
they took their lives in Hitler's living and working space in the
bunker. Their corpses were poured over with gasoline and burned in front
of the emergency exit of the bunker in the garden of the New
Reichskanzlei. The following day on May 1, both Joseph and Magda
Goebbels took killed themselves just outside the bunkers' emergency exit after their
children had probably been killed in their sleeping room in the Vorbunker
by the hand of Magda Goebbels with Zyankali. Hans Krebs, last chief of
the General Staff of the Army, and the last military commander-in-chief,
Wilhelm Burgdorf, were shot in the bunkers' card room. Franz Schädle,
chief of the commando commando, also took refuge in the bunker. In the
night from the 1st to the 2nd of May the remaining inmates left the
bunker. On May 2, General Helmuth Weidling declared the capitulation of
Berlin, whereupon the Red Army discovered and took possession of the now
abandoned bunker.
War
correspondents shown the grave where Hitler's charred
body was alleged to be buried and the site today with my students from
the Bavarian International School. Linda
Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, determined that
the DNA came from a 20- to 40-year-old woman. The skull fragment could
have come from Braun, but to know that, the lab would need samples of
her DNA. Also, the DNA samples were very degraded, making identification
unlikely. Witnesses never reported Braun being shot in the head,
Bellantoni said, and she is thought to have died of cyanide poisoning.
"This person, with a bullet hole coming out the back of the head, would
have been shot in the face, in the mouth or underneath the chin," he
said. "It would have been hard for them to miss that."
The view of the site of the Chancellery from the subway station into Vossstrasse taken during my 2018 trip with my Bavarian International School students.
Taxis
lined up in front of the legendary Hotel Kaiserhof in 1938 and the same
site today with my students during our Bavarian International School
class trip in 2020. On November 22, 1943 the hotel was badly damaged by
the RAF during an air-raid on Berlin. The ruins ended up in East Berlin
after the division of the city and were later completely torn down and
in 1974 the North Korean embassy to East Germany was constructed on the
site. When in 2001 its successor state, the Federal Republic of Germany,
re-established diplomatic relations with North Korea, the latter's
embassy returned to the building. Since 2004, the annex on the south
half of the site has been leased to Cityhostel Berlin, which currently
pays the North Korean regime an estimated €38,000 per month. It was here
on February 26, 1932 in a ceremony that Hitler had himself appointed a
Regierungsrat in Brunswick for the period of a week, thus acquiring
German citizenship. Fest
writes how this was "for years his Berlin headquarters;" Irving adds
that "[t]his was where Hitler made his command post whenever he was in
Berlin." After having lunch "Hitler read newspapers, brought by an aide
each day from a kiosk at the nearby Kaiserhof Hotel. In earlier years he
had taken tea in the Kaiserhof: as he entered, the little orchestra
would strike up the ‘Donkey Serenade,’ his favourite Hollywood movie
tune."
The bronze statue of Leopold I shown with my students during my 2016 Bavarian International School trip was moved in 2005
to its current location on Wilhelmplatz on the initative of the Berlin
Schadow Society which planned to re-erect the statues of the Prussian
military near their historical locations. The bronze copies of the
Zieten and Anhalt-Dessau monuments were rebuilt in 2003 and 2005 on the
subway island on the transverse axis of the former Wilhelmplatz. The
remaining four bronze statues were moved to a new location on the
neighboring Zietenplatz in September 2009 after its reconstruction,
which began in 2005, was completed. Since 2011, the statues as a whole
have been a listed building.



Monday June 18
Second Walking Tour
Topography of Terror
Checkpoint Charlie
f
Tuesday June 19
Berliner Unterwelten (09.00)
Berlin Wall
Tour of former Stasi Headquarters
Tour of Bundestag (17.00)
Wednesday June 20
Working visit to Wannsee Conference (11.00)
Visit site of Potsdam Conference
Thursday June 21
Olympic Stadium
Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery
Friday June 22
Karlshorst
Depart Munich Hbf 09.55 Arrive Berlin 14.30