In a move that could possibly stir furore in Nazi apologists, a German museum is partially rebuilding a bunker where Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler lived during the last days of World War II, shortly before he committed suicide. What was known as the Fuhrerbunker was a large underground concrete complex in Berlin, where Hitler attempted to sustain control over his crumbling empire during the final months of his life. The planned replica of the Fuhrerbunker is expected to open in the summer in the Top Secret Museum in Oberhausen, reported Al-Arabiya News.
“We’re just in the planning stages — the architects are working on it,” said museum director Ingo Mersmann. The museum is being cautious of the bunker’s design in order to safeguard it against controversy and to avoid it from turning into a place of pilgrimage for Nazi sympathisers. To ensure this, the museum will replace Hitler’s portraits, hanging on the walls of the original bunker, with empty black frames in the replica.
“We certainly don’t want to recreate a place for the misguided people who still see him as a hero to come as a pilgrimage. We are planning against that,” Mersmann said. In order to bring the bunker back to life, the museum has utilised maps, historical photographs and plans, along with the reconstructed set for the 2004 German film The Downfall, which showcased the last days of the Nazi regime in Berlin.
The original Fuhrerbunker was Hitler’s last headquarters, where he continued to practice his nationalist policy of aggressive-expansionism, commanding faltering armies that once conquered most of Europe. In April 1946, as the Soviet soldiers marched streets away, Hitler committed suicide with his wife of less than two days, Eva Braun. An officer then burnt their bodies with petrol, placing the remains in a bomb crater.
The current site of the now almost demolished bunker is situated under a car park in the middle of an apartment complex, and is marked by a plaque that reads historical facts. The replica bunker would be reminiscent of the horrors of ethnic ballast that Hitler propagated to preserve the Aryan race and Pan-Germanism.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 21st, 2015.
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