See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy PERKIN AMALARAJ, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER Published: 15:05 BST, 1 July 2026 | Updated: 15:10 BST, 1 July 2026
Berlin is preparing to demolish a Nazi-era bunker and turn it into flats, sparking a major furore.The New Reich Chancellery, in the heart of Germany's capital, was severely damaged in the Battle of Berlin - towards the end of WW2 - before it was torn down by Soviet forces in 1949. Little remains of Adolf Hitler's chancellery, the seat of his power, in Berlin except for a bunker, which is still visible in a patch of wasteland. Berlin's housing minister, Christian Gaebler, said that this too must go. He told BZ, a German newspaper: 'We are not standing in the way of new housing developments just to preserve a bunker that might then even become a place of pilgrimage.'But others believe that destroying the bunker would be 'absolute madness.'Dietmar Arnold, chairman of the Berlin Underworlds Association, told the BBC: 'It is a site of the perpetrators. It was the power centre of Nazi Germany, Hitler's New Reich Chancellery, and these are the last remains.'He has suggested working with the Holocaust Museum to turn the site into a memorial site, with an exhibit detailing the end of the war: 'So much history has been destroyed here in Germany, both Communist history and Nazi history. We can't keep doing that.' The New Reich Chancellery was the seat of Adolf Hitler's (pictured) power It was destroyed towards of the end of WW2 during the Battle of Berlin The city is proposing new flats to be built on top of the area in which the bunker is currently locatedArnold told the broadcaster that the bunker was in a very good condition when he last visited in 2007. He said that the 12,900 sq. ft. complex is intact, and that the walls and ceilings are nearly 6ft thick. As a result, he believes it might be possible to build on top of the bunker without demolishing it. Last year, the Berlin State Monuments Council disagreed with plans to tear it down, stating the bunker had 'significant historical value.'It added: 'The New Reich Chancellery was the planning centre and starting point of World War Two and also symbolises the catastrophic end of the Nazi regime.'In view of its potential significance as a historic monument, its state of preservation and its inclusion on the list of listed buildings should be assessed by the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments.'The bunker at the heart of the debate is not the infamous Führerbunker, where Hitler and Eva Braun took their own lives after Berlin fell to the Allies. This lies around 400ft to the north. It was instead used by people who worked in the Reich Chancellery. Following the end of WW2, it was turned into a hospital.
