At the end of the Second World War, the German capital was filled with an underground labyrinth of bunkers. These are the stories of the people who stayed there. In 1940 the National Socialists initiated a bunker construction program. This construction program was intended to suggest security and care to the population, because nobody really expected bomb attacks on the city - a fatal arrogance of those in power. Contemporary witnesses such as Waltraud Süßmilch, then a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Getraude Gerlach, a young doctor, and Rochus Misch, telephone operator in the Führer's bunker, waited in the underground shelters like thousands of others and reported on the oppressive atmosphere behind the meter-thick layers of concrete.
Documentary, Independent
1h 22min
16+
DE
At the end of the Second World War, the German capital was filled with an underground labyrinth of bunkers. These are the stories of the people who stayed there.
In 1940 the National Socialists initiated a bunker construction program. This construction program was intended to suggest security and care to the population, because nobody really expected bomb attacks on the city - a fatal arrogance of those in power.
Contemporary witnesses such as Waltraud Süßmilch, then a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Getraude Gerlach, a young doctor, and Rochus Misch, telephone operator in the Führer's bunker, waited in the underground shelters like thousands of others and reported on the oppressive atmosphere behind the meter-thick layers of concrete.