page_title: Vorbunker
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: Vorbunker / Events
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Karte Führerbunker, genauere Beschreibung weiter unten English: Map of the Führerbunker, see legend below
context_page_description: The Vorbunker was an underground concrete structure originally intended to be a temporary air-raid shelter for Adolf Hitler and his guards and servants. It was located behind the large reception hall that was added onto the old Reich Chancellery, in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. The bunker was officially called the "Reich Chancellery Air-Raid Shelter" until 1943, when the complex was expanded with the addition of the Führerbunker, located one level below. On 16 January 1945, Hitler moved into the Führerbunker. He was joined by his senior staff, including Martin Bormann. Later, Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels moved into the Führerbunker while Magda Goebbels and their six children took residence in the upper Vorbunker. The Goebbels family lived in the Vorbunker until their deaths on 1 May 1945.
context_section_description: The first air-raid drills for the Berlin central government district, which included the Reich Chancellery, occurred in the autumn of 1937. The protocol for the drills stated, in part:
  To carry out the air raid drills, a precise regulation is required for the three office buildings, Wilhelmstraße 77, Wilhelmstraße 78 and Voßstraße 1 ... The officials and residents of Wilhelmstraße 78 and Voßstraße 1 can go to the substitute shelters in Wilhelmstraße 78 and Voßstraße 1. The inhabitants of the Reich Chancellor House, Wilhelmstraße 77, will use the shelter under the ballroom.
  The only residents of Wilhelmstraße 77 were Hitler and his bodyguards, adjutants, orderlies and servants. It is unknown if the Vorbunker was used before January 1945. Hitler transferred his headquarters to the Führerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945, where he (along with his influential private secretary, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann and others) remained until the end of April. Thereafter, the Vorbunker was used by various military officers and housed men from Hitler's personal bodyguard. In April 1945, as the Battle in Berlin raged on, Joseph Goebbels showed his strong support for Hitler by moving his family into the Vorbunker. He occupied a room in the Führerbunker which had recently been vacated by Hitler's personal physician, Theodor Morell. Two rooms in the Vorbunker were used for food supply. Constanze Manziarly, Hitler's personal cook/dietitian, made meals in the kitchen, which was equipped with a refrigerator and a wine store.
  On the evening of 1 May 1945, Goebbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be crushed in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide. 
  Afterwards, Goebbels and his wife went up the stairs to ground level and through the Führerbunker's emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery. There are several different accounts on what followed. According to one account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself. Another account was that they each bit on a cyanide ampule and were given a coup de grâce immediately afterwards by Goebbels' SS adjutant, Günther Schwägermann. Schwägermann testified in 1948 that the couple walked ahead of him up the stairs and out into the Chancellery garden. He waited in the stairwell and heard the "shots" sound. Schwägermann then walked up the remaining stairs and outside. There he saw the lifeless bodies of the couple. Following Joseph Goebbels' prior order, Schwägermann told an SS soldier to make sure Goebbels' was dead. The soldier fired into Goebbels' body, which did not move. The bodies were then doused with petrol, but the remains were only partially burned and not buried.
  At 01:00 on 2 May, the Soviets picked up a radio message from the LVI Panzer Corps requesting a cease-fire and stating that emissaries would come under a white flag to Potsdamer bridge. Early in the morning of 2 May, the Soviets captured the Reich Chancellery. General of the Artillery Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, surrendered with his staff at 06:00. Down in the Führerbunker, Chief of the Army General Staff General Hans Krebs and Hitler's Chief Adjutant Generalleutnant Wilhelm Burgdorf committed suicide by gunshot to the head. Johannes Hentschel, the master electro-mechanic for the bunker complex, stayed after everyone else had either committed suicide or left, as the field hospital in the Reich Chancellery above needed power and water. He surrendered to the Red Army as they entered the bunker complex at 09:00 on 2 May. The bodies of Goebbels six children were discovered on 3 May. They were found in their beds in the Vorbunker; the clear mark of cyanide appeared on their faces.
caption: 3D-Model of Führerbunker (left) and Vorbunker (right)
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "955", "Image ImageLength": "810", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2011:05:21 01:12:17", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9214", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "955", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "807"}