Tourists flock to Hitler's hideaway 60 years after his suicide

GERMANY: Berlin Letter A trip to Berlin just wouldn't be complete without a visit to the unholy grail of tourist traps: Hitler's bunker. While the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag top the official tourist attraction list, many are equally anxious to find the spot where, 60 years ago today, the dictator killed himself, writes Derek Scally

Few actually find the place because there's so little to see: a private car park for the surrounding east German prefab apartment blocks. In one corner of the site is a playground, another corner boasts an AstroTurf football pitch. And around another corner comes the inevitable walking tour group.

"You are standing above Hitler's bunker, in Hitler's rose garden," says the British tour guide to the American tour group, who stare down at the dandelions underfoot with expressions somewhere between bovine-eyed boredom and mild interest.

In a matter-of-fact tone, the guide regales the tourists with a version of the site's history as lurid as it is brief, and ending with the brief marriage of Mr and Mrs Hitler.

"I have a vunderful idea Eva," says the tour guide in a mock German accent. "Today is the first day of our honeymoon. Let's kill ourselves." The group laughs and moves on, while a woman throws them a dirty look as she hurries in the other direction with a shopping bag in her hand.

Bettina Greutel has lived in an apartment overlooking the site since the blocks were completed in 1990.

"It's getting irritating with the tour groups coming every half hour. They swarm all over the place and the numbers are growing all the time," says Bettina.

She grew up in east Berlin where, she says, no one knew about the history of the site. "I know about the bunker now, but this is my home. They are trying to get people to move out, though. I think they want to put other buildings here, like office blocks."

The prefab apartment complex occupies the former site of Albert Speer's monumental Reich Chancellery. The so-called Führerbunker was built here in 1943, a late addition to the existing bunker complex buried eight metres below the surface with walls of 1.5 m reinforced concrete.

The Red Army made a bee-line for the Führerbunker when they pushed into the city at the start of May 1945. Once they had spirited away the charred bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun, the bunker became a must-see for soldiers, politicians and journalists. The unofficial admission price then was a pack of cigarettes.

The Führerbunker proved to be a wonder of German engineering, surviving two demolition attempts in 1947 and 1959. In 1961, the building of the Berlin Wall left the bunker entrance as a grassy mound in the death strip between east and west.

Even hidden, the bunker was a source of paranoia among the east German authorities, who feared it could let western spies into east Berlin or, worse, let east Germans out to west Berlin.

The state security service, the Stasi, began excavating the site in 1973 and reached the original "Vorbunker" or upper bunker where they found over 15,000 pages of files as well as the bunk beds where Magda Goebbels poisoned her sleeping children. The Stasi covered up the site again once they had established to their satisfaction that no tunnels to the west existed.

Most of the bunker structure was removed, with great difficulty, in 1988 to make way for the apartments.

But the site's notoriety only began to grow after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Hitler's bunker was "discovered" around half a dozen times during nearby post-unification construction work. Various self-publicists demanded the bunker be opened to the public, even though nothing remains underground but part of the bunker walls and the concrete floor. Despite the bunker's notoriety, its history remained sketchy until two years ago, when Berlin journalist Sven Felix Kellerhoff researched and wrote The Führer Bunker: Hitler's Last Refuge.

"I wanted to demystify the place because it's creepy what the tour guides sometimes tell people. I wanted to show there are no hidden passages or hidden floors," says Kellerhoff.

Berlin authorities have decided not to mark the site in any way for fear of attracting right-wing extremists, an approach Kellerhoff criticises. He has called instead for a simple, sober plaque marking what he calls "this non-place".

"It's always a bad idea when you don't offer any clarification.

"Explanation is important, but whether the people take that on board is another matter," he says.

From next week on, the site will be flooded with a new wave of tourists. After 60 years, however, Hitler is no longer the main attraction here.

Just 100 metres from the bunker site is the new Holocaust memorial which, though a contentious structure, may prove to be the best way of decontaminating Berlin's most notorious tourist trap.