BERLIN // A vast labyrinth of dank bunkers and air raid shelters from the Second World War and the Cold War lay forgotten under the streets of Berlin for decades until a group of tunnellers opened it up to tell the city's violent story from a new and chilling perspective. The capital was one of the most heavily bombed cities of the Second World War and the Nazis built 1,200 bunkers to protect the population. Around 80 per cent of them were dismantled and detonated after the war under an Allied programme to rid Germany of all military installations. But many remain intact as dark reminders of how the country reaped what it sowed. Germany was first to bomb civilian targets, launching devastating raids early in the war on Warsaw, London and Coventry, and the Allies responded with daily attacks that by 1945 had killed up to 600,000 people and destroyed most of Germany's major cities. The bunkers have been explored by a group led by Dietmar Arnold, a local historian who is lobbying the city government to help preserve a legacy that can teach future generations about the horrors of war. "We lead people through authentic rooms, which makes it far easier to convey history," said Mr Arnold, the head of Berlin Underworlds, which maintains and organises tours of the bunkers.
Some of the guides are pensioners who were born in bunkers under the shuddering impact of bombs that had reduced 90 per cent of Berlin's centre to rubble by the end of the war. Mr Arnold set up the group in 1997 and says visitor numbers have surged in recent years, from 3,000 in 2000 to an expected 150,000 this year, about a quarter of them from abroad. Above ground, the scars of fighting can still be seen everywhere with historic buildings marred by bullet holes and shrapnel damage.
But the claustrophobic, concrete world where crowds of people would cower together night after night wincing at the dull thuds that were wrecking their homes above, adds a fresh dimension to remembering the war. In one bunker, the walls are corroded by quicklime, which was used to dissolve the corpses of those killed in street fighting in the weeks before Berlin fell. One mazelike bunker, a multi-storey shelter under Berlin's Gesundbrunnen subway station, contains a first aid station, helmets, gas masks and vintage machinery such as a pneumatic letter delivery system. Original warning signs and emergency exit routes can still be seen on the grey concrete walls.
The exhibits include a rusty filing cabinet filled with the metal dog tags of forced labourers who were not allowed to take shelter in public bunkers. "Under the Nazi ideology at the time they were classified as subhuman and were not permitted to take a safe bunker space away from a superior human," Mr Arnold said. Around 50,000 people died in Berlin during the war from Allied bombing. Considering the frequency and ferocity of the raids, it was a low death toll, which was explained by the massive bunker building programme ordered by Adolf Hitler in 1940 after the first air raid on the capital, Mr Arnold said. Officially, the public bunkers offered room for 300,000 people but they were usually three times overfilled, meaning that around a quarter of Berlin's population of just under four million had access to relatively safe shelter - a higher proportion than in other German cities, said Mr Arnold. The remainder had to make do with subway stations and the cellars of their homes. But here too, casualties were kept down because of strict Prussian regulations requiring that all buildings in Berlin must have fire walls and reinforced cellar ceilings. Berlin's city government has refused to support Berlin Underworlds financially, saying it prefers to concentrate on preserving historical monuments above ground. It has also been slow to respond to Mr Arnold's application to have several of the bunkers, including a Cold War nuclear shelter, put under heritage protection. Mr Arnold plans to present two newly discovered Second World War bunkers next month and will also be launching a new tour to tell visitors about escape tunnels built under the Berlin Wall. "No one from the city has ever come to visit us to see what we're doing. We can manage by financing ourselves but we expect the city to speed up the approval process so that we can protect these buildings for the future," he said. "We tackle taboo subjects and people initially had their doubts about us as a result, accusing us of being far-right." His group put up a sign in 2006 to mark the site of Hitler's bunker, which lies underneath a car park in central Berlin. "We felt it was high time to put up a notice there," said Mr Arnold, who worked as a consultant on the recent German film Downfall, about Hitler's final days. Berlin's government had been reluctant to mark the site, let alone open it, for fear it may become a shrine for neo-Nazis. Mr Arnold said opening the two-storey bunker where Hitler spent his final weeks and committed suicide would make no sense even if it were allowed. "It's not worth digging it up because the 4.5 metre roof was taken off by construction workers in 1988, when apartment blocks were being built in the area. Only the side walls remain and one would learn nothing from unearthing it," said Mr Arnold. "But it's important to mark the spot." dcrossland@thenational.ae