Rare and unseen 1945 photos of Hitler's bunker and Berlin, destroyed

LIFE has posted a powerful series of rare and unpublished photographs shot by William Vandivert, 33, the first Western photographer inside Adolph Hilter's Führerbunker. Vandivert was on the scene shortly after Berlin fell in April of 1945. This is Hitler's inner sanctum inside the bunker, "partially burned by retreating German troops and stripped of valuables by invading Russians." "Hitler's Bunker And The Ruins Of Berlin" (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

• [Mister44]

  You know who else had a bunker in Berlin… oh… wait…

• [YamaraTheGod]

  Looks like a great place to furiously remove your spectacles.

  • [Preston Sturges]

    He really hated windows Vista.

• [Preston Sturges]

  The Berlin  bunker was pretty cramped, probably under 3000 q ft and had a couple dozen people staying there, so Hitler only had a few small rooms.  Hitler actually spent most of the war in a bunker of the Wolfs Lair off a railroad siding deep in a forest in modern Poland.  The whole Feuher gig came with surprisingly few perks. 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf's_Lair

• [JonS]

  what does ‘rare’ mean in the context of the internet?

  • [Ipo]

     infrequent; occurring far apart in time; unusual; uncommon
    unusually great; unusually excellent; admirable; fine

    Have you seen these pictures often before, or are they not particularly cool?

    • [JonS]

      Seen them before? They already covered that sense. The relevant bit FTFA reads “a powerful series of rare and unpublished photographs.” So, no; I haven’t seen them before, because they were – until now – unpublished. But rare as in uncommon? Not anymore. There’s an infinite supply of these photos now.

      Hmm. ‘unusually great’ is an interesting definition. I guess that does cover it, even though it’s not a very common use of the term. ‘A rare talent,’ in the sense of being especailly good at something that a lot of people can do passably well, is about the only use I can think of off the top.

      • [Ipo]

        I used the internets to find these definitions. 
        You asked.

      • [OtherMichael]

         How about “rare” as in “there are almost no other similar photographs in existence, other than the infinite number of digital duplicates of these photographs.”

• [Eark_the_Bunny]

  RARE is somewhere between RAW and MEDIUM RARE.

• [Justin Forposting]

  Holy Crap, this is surprising!    LIFE is still in business?