Last Days in the Bunker Trivia Quiz

Answer: To make sure the cyanide capsules Himmler had given him were effective

Many of the cyanide capsules that were made during the war were produced in concentration camps, which made the possibility of sabotage a problem. (This is why many people who chose cyanide as their method of suicide also shot themselves simultaneously.) Hitler wanted to make sure that the supply Himmler had left for him was pure, so he tested them out on his beloved Alsatian. Blondi's six puppies, as well as Eva Braun's Scottish Terrier, were all shot.

Answer: It has never been conclusively proven

In the 2004 movie "Downfall" (which is an AMAZING movie, I highly recommend it), Magda Goebbels is shown giving her children a drink she had told them was a "medicine", so that they would not get sick in the bunker. This drink apparently had some sort of sleeping agent in it.

When the children were asleep, she was shown placing cyanide capsules into their mouths and locking their jaws together to crush them. However, since no one else was in the room, it cannot be said that this is how they died. Cyanide was somehow involved, as autopsies on the children produced the smell of bitter almonds often associated with cyanide poisoning. No needle marks were found on the body to indicate any kind of injections.

The eldest child, Helga, was found to have extensive bruising on her upper arms, leading some to believe she was awake and alert and had to be held down while her "execution" was carried out.

In the movie, she is shown begging her mother not to give her the drink, then crying for her father as she was manhandled by her mother and an SS doctor and forced to swallow it. Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge said she strongly suspected that Helga knew something was going to happen to her and her siblings, noting that something in Helga's eyes told her she was weary of how much time she and her siblings had left.

Answer: His two secretaries and his dietician

In her memoirs, Traudl Junge stated that she, her fellow secretary Gerda Christian, and Hitler's dietician Constanze Manziarly were present with Hitler at his last meal. She stated she felt disturbed by the fact that the three women could barely touch their food, while Hitler shoveled his meal into his mouth as if he were starving.

After the meal he thanked Manziarly for her delicious cooking, and announced "It is time", meaning he and Eva were ready to say their goodbyes and carry out their suicide pact.

Answer: Smoked cigarettes

Hitler was a vegetarian and a teetotaler who never smoked. (There was a massive official anti-smoking campaign in Nazi Germany). Those in his entourage who did smoke, including Eva Braun, made sure to carry mints or menthol pastilles around to mask their breath. When Hitler's adjutant Otto Guentsche (a smoker himself) announced that he was dead, a good portion of the Bunker's occupants lit up. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

Answer: Rochus Misch

Born in 1917, Hitler's phone operator Rochus Misch has survived his stint in the Bunker. Wilhelm Mohnke, the Commander of the defense of the Reichs Chancellery, died in 2001 at the age of 90. Gerda Christian, one of Hitler's last secretaries, died in 1998 at the age of 84 in Duesseldorf. Walther Hewel, Ribbentrop's 'man in the Bunker', is thought to have committed suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule while simultaneously shoothing himself in the head a few days after Hitler's death.

In his memoirs, Dr. Ernst-Gunther Schenck stated that Hewel told him Hitler had made him promise he would kill himself.

Answer: Hanna Reitsch

Hanna Reitsch was a highly gifted test pilot for the Luftwaffe, and the only woman awarded the Iron Cross First Class. After being forced by the Polish out of their home in Hirscheburg, her father killed her mother, sister, sister's children, and himself in the final days of the war. She had flown to the Bunker in order to die with Hitler, but he ordered her out so that her companion and lover, Robert Ritter von Greim, could take command of what was left of the Luftwaffe. Although she was banned from flying after the war, she went on the set numerous gliding records. Greim committed suicide on May 24, while being held in Salzburg, Austria. His final words before swallowing his cyanide: "I am the Commander of the Luftwaffe, but I have no Luftwaffe."

Hans Krebs, Chief of the Army General Staff, shot himself in the Bunker along with General Wilhelm Burgdorf, after sharing one last cigarette together.

Helmut Weidling, Commander of the Berlin Defense Area, negotiated a ceasefire with General Vasily Chuikov on May 2, effectively ending the Battle for Berlin. He died in Soviet captivity in 1955.

Artur Axmann, who had taken over command of the Hitler Youth from Baldur von Schirach in 1940, escaped the Bunker with Martin Bormann, and lived until 1996.

Answer: Hermann Fegelein

Fegelein was Himmler's aide as well as Eva Braun's brother-in-law through his marriage to her sister Gretel. When Hitler found out that Himmler had been secretly conducting surrender negotiations with the Western Allies, he flew into a rage and vented his anger on Fegelein, who he suspected was aware of his superior's actions. Fegelein had left the Bunker and was found with his mistress (whom the omniscient Martin Bormann was convinced was a British spy), wearing civilian clothes and carrying large amounts of cash from different countries and some of Eva's jewelry. Eva's pleas to Hitler for his life fell on deaf ears, and he was shot in the gardens of the Reich Chancellery. Gretel gave birth to a daughter she named Eva, after her aunt. Eva Fegelein committed suicide in 1975.

Karl Gebhardt was Himmler's personal physician. Convicted at the Nuremberg Doctor's Trial for his inhumane experiments on inmates at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz, he was hanged in 1948.

Julius Schaub was another of Hitler's adjutants, and was put in charge of burning all of Hitler's papers at the Berghof and his Munich apartments in the last days of the war. He died in 1968.

Armin Lehmann was a courier for the Hitler Youth who survived the war and emigrated to the United States, where he still lives today.

Answer: Dr. Ernst-Robert Grawitz

Grawitz had advised Himmler on the use of gas chambers in the camps, and conducted horrific experiments on inmates involving the intentional infliction of gangrene-inducing bacteria. Fearing for himself and his family, he asked Hitler that he be allowed to leave the city, but Hitler refused. He stated that future generations would "thank him" for his contributions to the medical community. Grawitz then left the Bunker, put on his best uniform, sat down to dinner with his wife and three children, and pulled the pins from two grenades he had procurred.

Dr Stumpfegger, who allegedly helped Magda Goebbels kill her children, was either killed or committed suicide alongside Martin Bormann during their escape from the Bunker. Their remains were found side-by-side in the early 1970's.

Dr. Hasse administered the cyanide to Hitler's dog, then returned to work on the wounded soldiers and civilians who had been pouring into the Bunker in the last days. Suffering from both tuberculosis and a pneumothorax, he was captured by the Russians and asked by them to identify the bodies of the Goebbels children. He died in Soviet captivity in 1950.

Dr. Schenck, a member of both the Wehrmacht and SS, volunteered to work in the Bunker and helped Dr. Haase perform over 100 surgeries, mainly amputations. His role as a doctor during the Reich had been research into food supplies for the armed forces. Although he was condemned in 1963 for possible experimentation on Concentration Camp inmates, no hard evidence was given to link him to anything. He died in Aachen in 1998.

Answer: Heinrich Mueller

Heinrich ("Gestapo") Mueller was last seen after the arrest and execution of Hermann Fegelein. Several theories have sprouted over the years regarding his whereabouts. Some attest he was killed during one of the mass breakouts from the Bunker, but no body found was ever identified as his. Others say he escaped to South America along with several other high-ranking Nazis with the help of the "Odessa" network. Another theory is that he was employed in the United States by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) after the war, mainly for his extensive knowledge of Communism (He was supposedly used to spy on the Russians, as the Cold War was beginning). To this day, his exact fate is still a mystery, although strong evidence suggests that he did indeed work for the USA after the war, even though he was listed the Number 2 "Most Wanted Nazi" by the Allies, after Bormann.

Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's right hand man, escaped after the war using a fake Red Cross passport. In 2004, through the usage of sophisticated facial recognition software and photographs covertly taken of him, he was positively identified as living in Syria under the name "Georg Fischer". Because of the limited access the US has to the country, it cannot be proven whether or not he is still alive. He did, however, give an interview in which he stated he was proud of what he had done and would do it again, going so far as to say "I just wish I could have thrown more Yids into the fire."

Walther Rauff, who engineered the mobile gas vans used in the death camps, lived in Syria alongside Alois Brunner before escaping to Chile. Several attempts were made to extradite him, but both Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet's governments rejected them all, stating he had lived as a "peaceful citizen". When he died unrepentant in 1984, several fellow escaped Nazis attended his funeral, sending him off with the Nazi salute. (Footage of this was shown on a documentary called "Hunting Nazis...it's very disturbing.)

Aleksandras Lilekas escaped to America and led a quiet suburban life until tracked down by Nazi hunters. The evidence used against him, a paper bearing his signature that called for the death of a 6-year old girl in the Vilnius Ghetto of Lithuania, facilitated his deportation.

Answer: Housing and a playground were built over it

When the old and new Chancelleries were levelled by the Russians in 1945, the Bunker survived, although it was partially flooded. Separate attempts to completely blow the Bunker up in 1947 and 1959 were made, but caused only minor structural damage. After the reunification of East and West Germany, residential housing was built on the area. During construction, some small sections of the Bunker were found and succesfully destroyed.

In 1990 the remaining areas of the Bunker were reopened and extensively photographed.

Although the exact location of the Bunker had been kept secret for years to prevent it from becoming a shrine to Neo-Nazis, in 2006 a plaque with an outline plan of the Bunker was placed near Potsdamer Platz to mark the location. Rochus Misch attended the ceremony.

The nephew of former Hitler Youth courier Armin Lehmann has the only remaining photograph of Hitler in the last hour of his life and refuses to release it.