Vorbunker

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.

[8] The accommodations for Hitler were moved to the Führerbunker, and by February 1945 it had been decorated with high-quality furniture taken from the Chancellery, along with several framed oil paintings.

The first air-raid drills for the Berlin central government district, which included the Reich Chancellery,[10] occurred in the autumn of 1937.

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.

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.

[15] 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.

[16] 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.

[16] 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.

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.

[17] 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.

[21][22] 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.

[25] In 1974, 1.5 meters (4.9 ft) of water was pumped from inside the bunkers, and the East Germany Stasi conducted a survey of the interior of the Vorbunker and took external measurements of the Führerbunker.

[26] During the construction of residential housing and other buildings on the site in 1988–89, several underground sections of the bunker complex were uncovered by work crews.

[33] On 8 June 2006, during the lead-up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup, an information board was installed to mark the location of the bunker complex.

The board, including a schematic diagram of the bunker, can be found at the corner of In den Ministergärten and Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße, two small streets about three minutes' walk from Potsdamer Platz.