Pictured: The Führerbunker’s exterior shortly before its destruction.

Given its notoriety as the scene of Hitler’s suicide, the Führerbunker has long generated concerns over its potential to become a shrine for neo[fascist] pilgrims, prompting efforts to contain, hide or destroy the site entirely. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, access to this area was guarded closely by Soviet soldiers.

Then, between 1961 and 1989, the site became further cut off from the rest of the city with the construction of the so‐called death strip — a veritable ‘no man’s land’ that separated the inner and outer sections of the Berlin Wall and ran directly above the bunker.

The symbolism was potent: [Fascism] — like this barren wasteland — was dead; Hitler’s last residence had no significance in a city that was literally rebuilding itself upon a legacy of antifascist resistance.⁶

Under Soviet occupation and then under the GDR, attention turned to fashioning a new architectural identity, one that showcased ideological strength and innovative, modern ways of living. As newly appointed East Berlin mayor Arthur Werner remarked just days after the war, ‘Hitler made Berlin into a city of ruination. We will make Berlin into a city of work and progress’.⁷

While some former [Axis] buildings, including Goering’s Aviation Ministry, were repurposed due to their valuable office space, the Reich Chancellery was considered tainted ground, a space beyond ‘rehabilitation’.⁸ The Chancellery buildings, already heavily damaged by the war, were razed and, between 1947 and 1988, Hitler’s bunker was subjected to repeated demolition operations.

Yet despite these measures, the bunker remained an object of significant public speculation and curiosity. Between 1945 and 1946, it was a destination for a rather privileged set of tourists: Allied leaders, journalists and soldiers who either formed part of officially sanctioned tours of the destroyed seat of [Fascist] power, or who bribed, evaded or called in favours from Soviet guards to access the bunker.

A furtive form of tourism then persisted during the Cold War when thrill‐seeking western tourists used observation platforms in Potsdamer Platz to look over the Berlin Wall and steal a glimpse of the spot where Hitler died.

Today, the bunker is very much on the Berlin tourist trail — even though the only visible clue to its presence is an information board erected in 2006. As visitors vacillate between relief and disappointment at this state of affairs, the Führerbunker becomes the impetus for an ongoing, critical grassroots reflection on handling the difficult heritage of dictatorship.

[…]

Ultimately, the bunker itself remains inaccessible and invisible. It is a space devoid of any detailed exhibition, visitor centre or other conventional trappings of a tourist destination. The fact that people continue to seek it out, therefore, demonstrates two things. First, the macabre fascination with Hitler’s demise cannot be extinguished easily. His fate continues to generate survival myths and it is perhaps no wonder that many people feel drawn to the spot where he was last seen.

As New Yorker film critic David Denby commented while reviewing the 2005 film Downfall, ‘every decade or so […] the dictator has to be hauled out of the ground, propped up and slain again, just to make sure he’s dead’.¹⁶ Visiting the bunker is the physical manifestation of this sentiment. In the process, it illustrates Thomas Laqueur’s principle that ‘becoming really dead […] takes time’.¹⁷