Hitler's Bunker

On Monday, April 30, on the anniversary of the day in 1945 when Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in a bunker beneath Berlin, LIFE.com presents a gallery of photos (many of which were not published in LIFE) from the bunker itself and from the ruined city beyond its walls, taken by LIFE's William Vandivert — the first Western photographer to descend into the bunker.

 

Russian Soldiers and a civilian struggle to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle which once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellary in Berlin,1945.

 

This is a new view of a photograph that appeared, heavily cropped, in LIFE, picturing Hitler's command center in the Berlin bunker, partially burned by retreating German troops and stripped of valuables by invading Russians.

 

 

With only candles to light their way, war correspondents examine a couch stained with blood (see dark patch on the arm of the sofa) located inside Hitler's bunker, 1945.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An SS officer's cap, with the infamous "death's head" skull emblem barely visible. Of this image, Vandivert's notes state simply: "moldy SS cap lying in water on floor of sitting room."

 

 

 

LIFE correspondent Percy Knauth (left) sifts through debris in the shallow trench in the garden of the Reich Chancellery where, Knauth was told, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned after their suicides.

To see the complete collection and read the life story of Hitler, Click Here