The discovery of Joseph Goebbels' bunker underneath the site of the planned Holocaust memorial in Berlin is posing a dilemma for the German authorities.

There have been calls for the bunker to be integrated into the memorial, but there are fears that it could become a shrine for today's neo-Nazis.

German soldiers are thought to have been the bunker's last inhabitants

Building work on the site has been stopped while officials try to reach a decision.

The three-room bunker was found by construction workers clearing the site for the planned Holocaust Memorial near Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin.

The three-hundred metre square structure was connected to a house belonging to Goebbels -- Hitler's propaganda chief -- that was destroyed during the war.

Both he and his family committed suicide in and around Hitler's bunker during the closing days of the war.

Joseph Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda chief during WWII

Some other Nazi bunkers have been filled in or demolished -- including Hitler's Berlin hide-away -- because of the risk of them turning into shrines to Nazism.

However, Dietmar Arnold, an historian from the Berlin Underworld Society says that the bunker could help as a reminder of Germany's past

"It's important to save these bunker systems for the next generation. To remember the time of war and the time of Nazism."

The Berlin authorities are due to make their decision before the end of the week.
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