When Hitler died in his Berlin bunker on the afternoon of April 30, 1945, his end bore almost no resemblance to what he had imagined for himself. He had once planned an elaborate burial that would rival the great emperors of history, envisioning a monumental tomb designed to become a site of pilgrimage for millions of devoted followers. Hitler was famously obsessed with architecture, dedicating significant attention to major building projects across the Third Reich, from the new Reich Chancellery to the reconstruction of his private mountain residence, the Berghof. When considering his own legacy, he gave extensive thought to the design and style of his final resting place.
Initially, Hitler decided he would be buried beside his parents in a churchyard in a small village outside Linz, Austria. That idea later evolved into a desire to be laid to rest in the Feldherrnhalle, the Hall of Marshals, a memorial to the Bavarian army in central Munich. Munich was the birthplace of the Nazi movement, and the Feldherrnhalle was the site where the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch had ended disastrously amid gunfire and bloodshed. Hitler had already commissioned the Ehrentempel, or Temples of Honor, for the Nazis who died during that failed attempt to seize power by force.
That plan changed once more when Hitler visited Rome in 1938 as a guest of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini arranged a tour of the city’s famous landmarks, from the Roman Forum to the Colosseum. Hitler was fascinated by the remains of the Roman Empire, but one structure in particular captured his imagination: the Pantheon, one of the best-preserved Roman buildings in the world. Originally a temple completed under Emperor Hadrian around 126 AD, the Pantheon has remained in continuous use for nearly 1,900 years, mostly as a Roman Catholic church.
Its most striking feature is its great dome, and the central opening, the oculus, allows sunlight and rain to fall onto the floor below. The building left a deep impression on Hitler when he visited on May 4, 1938. After placing a ceremonial wreath on the Italian royal tombs inside the ancient structure, he asked to be left alone beneath the dome to contemplate the architecture. Hitler believed the Romans were Nordic Aryans, distinct from the modern Italian people, and he held great reverence for Roman buildings and art.
As early as 1925, he had sketched a design for a public hall with a giant dome resembling the Pantheon. It was this inspiration that led to the Volkshalle, an enormous assembly building designed by Albert Speer for postwar Berlin, which was to be renamed Germania. The great hall was intended to hold 180,000 people, though it was never built. The Pantheon also directly influenced the design of the building meant to house Hitler’s tomb.
For further inspiration, he looked to another great European city and another monumental structure: Paris. Hitler made a single early-morning visit to Paris after Germany occupied it in June 1940, spending only three hours in the city he had long wanted to see. He was accompanied by his court architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler, and his favorite sculptor Arno Breker. He visited the usual tourist sites, including the Palais Garnier opera house, which he specifically wanted to see because of his love of opera, the Arc de Triomphe, the Trocadéro for a view of the Eiffel Tower, and the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur.
But one building in particular captivated him: Les Invalides, home to the tomb of Emperor Napoleon I. Napoleon’s remains had been returned to Paris in 1840 from Saint Helena, the Atlantic island where he died in exile in 1821, and the monumental tomb was completed in 1861. Napoleon lies inside an enormous sarcophagus of red Russian quartzite in a sunken crypt set on a base of green granite. His body rests within six nested coffins made of iron, mahogany, lead, ebony, and oak, much like an Egyptian pharaoh.
The sarcophagus is surrounded by twelve statues representing his military campaigns, while a circular mosaic floor records his major victories, including Austerlitz. Visitors viewing the tomb from the gallery above are forced to bow their heads to see it, an unintentional gesture of respect for the dead emperor. Hitler greatly admired Napoleon’s military genius and regarded him as a historical superman. He described the visit to Napoleon’s tomb as the greatest moment of his life and spent several minutes in silent contemplation before the sarcophagus.
That visit gave Hitler a second inspiration for his own burial place. In his mind, Hitler combined the image of the Pantheon’s dome and oculus with Napoleon’s colossal sarcophagus to form his final resting place: an enormous building consisting of two parts. The main structure would be the People’s Hall designed by Hermann Giesler, based on conceptual drawings by Hitler himself. Hitler specified the hall’s dimensions as 240 by 120 meters, and it was to contain a cylindrical vault with a span of 100 meters, surrounded by a two-story colonnade.
According to Giesler, Hitler was to be buried in a building resembling the Roman Pantheon. The design was very simple: a diameter of 40 meters and a height of 40 meters, reachable via a covered bridge from the People’s Hall. A huge staircase would lead to the sarcophagus, and the round dome would be flanked by two statues of spirits bearing the letters of Hitler’s initials, A. H.
At the top of the dome, there would be an opening to allow sun and rain to fall onto Hitler’s coffin. The chosen site was the Wittelsbach Palace, the former royal palace of the Bavarian royal family, which had been severely damaged by Allied bombing. None of this was ever built, but it is notable that Hitler, like many dictators before and after him, wanted to emulate the great empires of the past. As history records, Hitler received no giant mausoleum and no vast hall.
Instead, his remains were placed in a bomb crater and doused with gasoline outside his bunker in Berlin, where the final chapter of his life played out far from the grand vision he had so carefully planned.