Page 28 - All About History - Issue 186-19
P. 28
From January 1945 Adolf Hitler and his top aides
moved permanently into their underground bunker.
This was the beginning of the end, but what really
happened in those final months under Berlin?
Written by Jonathan Trigg
dolf Hitler – Nazi Germany’s With the failure of the attack – and its baby sister
Führer – was a nomad. From his offensive, Nordwind, to the south – Hitler and
accession to power in 1933 and his entourage made what would become their
throughout the years of war, he final move of the war as they headed northeast
was a dictator of ‘no fixed abode’. and arrived in Berlin on 16 January 1945.
Officially Hitler resided at the Reich Chancellery There, deciding against setting up shop in his
in Berlin, but as the war went on he wandered so-called Führerwohnung (Leader apartment)
across Europe, staying away from the capital on the upper floor of the Reich Chancellery, he
and setting up home at any one of his 20 opted instead for a complex of offices, tunnels
Führer Headquarters (Führerhauptquartiere). and storage rooms that had been constructed
His favourites were the Berghof near almost 30 feet under the Chancellery garden
Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, and the Wolf’s Lair – the Führerbunker.
(the Wolfsschanze) in East Prussia. But as the
war turned against Germany in the autumn
of 1944, he decamped to the Eagle’s Nest (the As Hitler descended the stairs through the upper
Adlerhorst) near Bad Nauheim in Hesse to plan – Vorbunker – level and went through the steel
and oversee his final role of the dice in the blast door down into the newer, lower level,
West: Unternehmen Herbstnebel (Operation few of the 30-or-so staff who went with him
Autumn Mist), the Ardennes offensive that could guess that this would be the dictator’s last
would become famous as the Battle of the Bulge. refuge. He would not leave it alive.
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