DVD020 - The Fuehrer Bunker 1935 - 1942

Imagine descending the stairs into the darkness, pushing your way through the heavy doors, and marching into the Führer bunker, deep under Berlin. It is the place where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler spent his final days -- the subject of numerous books and films. But virtually impossible to visit. Until now.

Adolf Hitler's bunker comes alive in a new digital 3D reconstruction of the facility that served as the Nazi's underground HQ during the final days of World War 2. This fascinating "virtual tour" shows the construction of the Bunker from it's planning phase in 1935 through to it's extension in 1943. The New Reich's Chancellery and it's system of underground air raid shelters is also shown. Filmmaker Christoph Neubauer and his digital animation company Keystone Animation team studied hundreds of photographs and plans, recently discovered among the files of the former East German Secret Service, to gather as much information as possible about the construction and layout of the Fuehrer Bunker. They compared them with first-hand accounts in memoirs and diaries of those who had used the bunker during the war. This unprecedented program will finally answer many questions and help to demystify what it was like to be in Hitler's last refuge during the last days of World War 2.

New DVD Shows what it was like inside Hitler's Bunker

Der Spiegel says of the DVD: "The Führer Bunker (1935-1942)," offers the most realistic recreation yet of Hitler's bomb shelter -- a perfectly pixilated representation of every imaginable nook and cranny of the dictator's last residence. The creator, Christoph Neubauer, hopes that his new video will fix what he sees as repeated misrepresentations of what Hitler's bunker actually looked like. Contrary to contemporary depictions that show Hitler spending his final days in a dark and dank cellar, Neubauer says his research shows the German leader lived quite the life in his underground lair. Most previous presentations of Hitler's lair, Neubauer says, seem ""frighteningly superficial." The proportions are wrong, the ceiling height is off, the doors and airlocks falsely positioned. In the recent movie "Downfall," which tells the story of Hitler's demise, the Führer and his henchmen are seen to be living in a dank, dark cavern with concrete walls, water seeping through the floors and surrounded by poor lighting. This image has only been further propagated "not because it is true, but because that is how Germans want to continue to imagine Hitler's end," Neubauer says. "I understand the need to do that, but it's not how things looked." Blame the Stasi. In the 1970s, the filmmaker explains, a crew ran electrical wires down into the dilapidated bunker and installed spotlights to photograph their findings. The eerie lighting that resulted has made it into future visual retellings. Mud, rot, mildew and cement prevailed in the popular mind. ""The walls were not bare concrete," Neubauer says, "there just was not any plaster left after they were left soaking for decades."

Details: Germany 2007, Color, 50 Minutes, English/German Language