Some want to see one of the last surviving pieces of Hitler's former power hub in central Berlin be replaced by apartments and offices. City officials want to demolish a Nazi-era bunker that sits on a vacant lot where the New Reich Chancellery once stood, arguing that new housing outweighs preserving a structure that could attract extremist sympathizers. Preservationists are pushing back, reports the BBC.
Dietmar Arnold of the Berlin Underworlds Association—amateur historians "who run highly successful tours of other wartime bunkers in the city," per the Spectator— calls demolition "absolute madness," describing the bunker as one of the final physical traces of the Nazi leadership's headquarters and a key site for understanding the regime's end. He proposes turning it into a museum and memorial in cooperation with the Holocaust Museum, saying too much of both Nazi and Communist-era history has already been erased.
The bunker, which housed the Reich Chancellery staff, has 5.5-foot-thick concrete walls that Arnold suggests could support new construction above. The Jerusalem Post reports the bunker's entrance "is hidden beneath a mound on an empty lot in a prime area" of the city. Berlin's State Monuments Council has also voiced concern about the plans. The Post notes this bunker is separate from the Führerbunker in which Hitler committed suicide; that sat about 325 feet away.
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