The Downfall

Berlin, April 1945. A nation awaits its downfall. In the streets of the capital, urban warfare rages. Hitler has barricaded himself in the Führerbunker of the Reich Chancellery with a few generals and closest confidants. Among them is Traudl Junge, his private secretary, who does not want to abandon him.

While outside the situation escalates further, the Red Army advances, and desperate scenes unfold in the explosion-ravaged neighborhoods, Hitler experiences the collapse of the Third Reich behind bunker walls. Although Berlin can no longer be held, the Führer refuses to leave the city. He wants, as architect Speer puts it, "to be on stage when the curtain falls." But Hitler is not on stage. As the weight of the lost war crashes down on his people, the Führer stages his exit in the bunker. Just hours before their joint suicide, he marries Eva Braun.

Instead of the final victory, there comes the end, but even that is prepared down to the last detail. After he and Eva Braun take their lives, their bodies are burned in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Many of his loyal followers also choose to end their lives. Goebbels and the remaining generals continue to refuse to accept the unconditional surrender demanded by the Russians. As the situation becomes increasingly hopeless, Magda Goebbels kills her six children in the bunker with poison before she and her husband also commit suicide.

Shortly thereafter, Traudl Junge and a few others manage to escape through the Russian encirclement at the very last moment...