Underground comes back into the light in Berlin

BERLIN — Behind a nondescript steel door next to a busy subway platform, a hidden passage leads to an underground complex straight out of the Cold War: a concrete bunker designed to shelter thousands of people from a nuclear attack.

The chances of World War III breaking out in the German capital seem remote these days, nearly 18 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But the well-preserved bunker remains ready. Storage rooms contain bunk beds, thin blankets and polyester jogging suits for 3,500 people, along with 70 bassinets for infants and several stacks of body bags.

The bunker at the Pankstrasse subway stop in a working-class neighborhood of Berlin is part of a spaghetti net-

work of intact underground shelters dating to the city's tumultuous years during the 20th century. Although Berlin has undergone an extensive urban renewal above the surface since the Wall's demise, the capital has only recently begun re-exploring its subterranean roots.

This year, the Berlin Underworlds Association (www.berliner-unterwelten.de), a nonprofit group founded 10 years ago, is expected to guide more than 100,000 visitors on underground tours. More than 300 bunkers remain from World War II, and while many are filled with debris or blocked from the outside, others are in pristine condition.

Dietmar Arnold, the organization's co-founder, said Berliners had tried hard in the past to move beyond the painful years of World War II and the subsequent division of the city. But recently, he said, there has been renewed interest in how the city coped, including people's memories of being forced to burrow below ground to survive.

"We are really pioneers in this direction in Berlin," he said.

The Berlin Underworlds Association broke a long-held German taboo in June by erecting a marker in the city center that points out the exact location of the most notorious underground site in the city: the Fuehrerbunker, the fortified shelter where Adolf Hitler sought refuge from Allied bombers and then killed himself in the waning days of the war.

For decades, German authorities had sought to conceal or minimize the site, saying they feared it could turn into a shrine for Nazi sympathizers. Until last summer, the only public acknowledgment of the Fuehrerbunker's location was a small placard outside a Chinese restaurant in the vicinity.

"This is one of the most symbolic places in Berlin for the crimes the Nazis committed, and we want to make sure people know the whole truth about it," Sven Felix Kellerhoff, author of a book about the Hitler bunker, said at the unveiling of the marker.

Berlin Underworlds members and other underground enthusiasts said they had struggled for years to get City Hall officials to cooperate with their efforts to re-explore and reopen the capital's tunnels and other hidden spaces.

"We had a lot of fights with the government," Arnold recalled. "They would only let us operate in dirty corners of the city, like we were neo-Nazis."

Arnold said there has been a recent change of thinking at City Hall, which has come to appreciate the tourism potential of Berlin's concrete bowels.

Ingeborg Junge-Reyer, the city senator responsible for urban development, praised Berlin Underworlds for its work. In addition to giving tours of selected bunkers and other sites, the group runs an underground history museum.

"Not many people know how Berlin looks underground, and it is not accessible for the most part," Junge-Reyer said. "But people in Berlin are eager to have a look at tunnels, at vaults, at the history of their city."