Various Sites in Berlin (1)

Wehrmacht HQ, Site of July Plotters' Execution (Bendler Block)

Tour of the Bendler Block (left) and trailer for the Tom Cruise ego-project Valkyrie for which the bendlerblock provided the controversial location.

The building in 1942 and now. The Bendler Block, site of Hitler's speech of February 3, 1933, on "Lebensraum in the east," is best remembered as the centre of the attempt to overthrow the National Socialist regime on July 20, 1944. The coup instantly collapsed, and Hitler dispatched various forces to round up the plotters and the plot organisers. Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, and Lieutenant Werner von Haeften were caught late in the evening and summarily executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendler Block (the War Ministry building). Hitler ultimately oversaw the purge and execution (in some cases, accompanied by show trials) of some 5,000 persons he believed were implicated in the plot. All were known opponents of the Nazi regime. Many were tortured to death. Some were hanged by the neck using piano wire. Stauffenberg and the other plotters are remembered in modern Germany as heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance and today the courtyard in the centre of the Bendler Block is dedicated to the memory of the officers executed here on the night of July 20, 1944:

Memorial in the courtyard inside the former Wehrmacht HQ where Von Stauffenberg was shot after his unsuccessful plot.

In the courtyard below in the dim rays of the blackout-hooded headlights of an Army car the four officers were quickly dispatched by a firing squad. Eyewitnesses say there was much tumult and shouting, mostly by the guards, who were in a hurry because of the danger of a bombing attack – British planes had been over Berlin almost every night that summer. Stauffenberg died crying, ”Long live our sacred Germany!”

Shirer (958) Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg's office within with the swastika motif remaining on the parquet, and the memorial to the members of the July Plot shot without.

The photo on the left was taken the day after the summary executions. You can see the mound of sand left over from construction work in front of which the the condemned men stood before being shot down. The photo on the right shows the ϟϟ and Wehrmacht.

Zhukov's turn at the end of the war whilst nearby damage from the battle of Berlin left untouched.

Berlin Victory Column (Siegessäule)

Designed by Heinrich Strack after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian war, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873 Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870/1871), giving the statue a new purpose. In 1939 the Nazis relocated the pillar to its present location at the Großer Stern (Great Star), a large intersection on the visual city axis that leads from the former Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace) through the Brandenburg Gate to the western parts of Berlin. At the same time, the pillar was augmented by another 7.5 meters, giving it its present height of 66.89 meters. The monument survived World War II without much damage. The relocation of the monument probably saved it from destruction, as its old site in front of the Reichstag was completely destroyed in the war.

[B]y by 28 April, troops of the 3rd Shock Army, advancing from the northern districts, were in sight of the Siegessaule column in the Tiergarten. Red Army soldiers nicknamed it the `tall woman' because of the statue of winged victory on the top. The German defenders were now reduced to a strip less than five kilometres in width and fifteen in length. It ran from Alexanderplatz in the east to Charlottenburg and the Reichssportsfeld in the west, from where Artur Axmann's Hitler Youth detachments desperately defended the bridges over the Havel. Weidling's artillery commander, Colonel Wohlermann, gazed around in horror from the gun platform at the top of the vast concrete Zoo flak tower. `One had a panoramic view of the burning, smouldering and smoking great city, a scene which again and again shook one to the core.' Yet General Krebs still pandered to Hitler's belief that Wenck's army was about to arrive from the south-west. Beevor (340)  Berlin: The Downfall 1945

Before the war with the Eiserner Hindenburg in front and after. The monument fell within the French section of Berlin, given them when the British realised they were growing bankrupt from the war and required assistance.

The French perpetrated a few acts of childish spite: they mutilated a few inscriptions on the Siegessäule – or Victory Column – in the Tiergarten, which commemorated German triumph in the Franco-German War, and festooned it with French tricolours. In Schwanenwerder they found a fragment of the Tuileries Palace which had been burned down by the Paris Communards in 1871, and removed a high-minded panel that talked of the fate of nations. The Germans themselves did not waste much time on the French – they realised they were second-division conquerors.

MacDonogh (123) After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Between 1890 and 1905 and immediately after the war. Completed in 1895 by architect Franz Schwechten as a 'gift' to Germans from Kaiser Wilhelm II, serving as a memorial to his father Wilhelm I. The church was partially destroyed during a bombing raid in 1943. Following the war, several different options for the church's redevelopment were considered, including the construction of a new church made from glass in the old church's ruins, and also its complete demolition and replacement with a new structure. Eventually it was decided to leave the ruined tower as a memorial to the futility of war, (or specifically to remember German civilian victims killed in British retaliatory bombings) and create a new church around it with a breathtakingly ugly building next to it for some reason. The new church was consecrated on May 25, 1962 - the same day as the new Coventry Cathedral.

The 3.5km-long Kurfürstendamm (Ku’damm for short) is a ribbon of commerce that started as a bridle path to the royal hunting palace in the Grunewald forest. In the 1880s, Bismarck had it widened, paved and lined with fancy residential buildings. On Breitscheidplatz, its eastern terminus, the landmark Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) stands quiet and dignified amid the roar. Allied bombs left only the husk of the west tower intact; it now contains the Gedenkhalle (Memorial Hall) whose original ceiling mosaics and marble reliefs hint at the church’s prewar opulence. The adjacent octagonal hall of worship, added in 1961, has intensely midnight-blue windows and a giant golden Jesus floating above the altar July 19, 1945 and standing in front and inside, next to the Cross of Coventry which has a prominent place in the Memorial Hall of Gedächtniskirche. On 14 November 1940 the Germans obliterated the city centre of Coventry including its Gothic cathedral from the 14th and 15th century. Already in January 1941 the people of Coventry held mass again in the burnt out church, having rebuilt an altar from rubble, and using charcoaled beams as the holy cross and made a cross with three hand-forged nails they found in the rubble. On 7 January 1989, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Memorial Hall, the Nail Cross of Coventry was given to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche as a gift where it remains as a reminder of peace and reconciliation.

Plötzensee Gaol (Strafgefängnis Plötzensee)

Less than two weeks after Col. Stauffenberg’s bomb had nearly killed Hitler, eight of his principal co-conspirators stood show trials at the Volksgerichtshof before Roland Freisler. The outcome, of course, was foreordained as orders had come down from on high to make the deaths as degrading as possible; this batch, convicted August 7-8, was hanged naked this day at Berlin’s Plotzensee Prison on thin cord and suspended from meathooks while cameras rolled. From what I've read, the executioner went out of his way to make the ordeal as degrading as possible, a task he apparently relished. The resulting film was delivered to Hitler’s bomb-damaged Polish outpost for his amusement, and used as a warning to army officers forced to watch.
The eight killed in this way were Robert Bernardis, Albrecht von Hagen, Paul von Hase, Erich Hoepner, Friedrich Karl Klausing, Helmuth Stieff, Erwin von Witzleben and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg. Hundreds more would follow, both at Plotzensee and throughout the Reich where persons distantly connected to the plotters and various miscellaneous resistance figures were swept up in the purge.

The prison was built between 1869 and 1879 near Lake Plötzensee in Charlottenburg off Saatwinkler Damm. During the NS era, over 2,500 people were executed including members of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle), Kreisau Circle (those accused of the plot against Hitler's life on 20 July 1944 at the Wolfsschanze), Czechoslovakian resistance fighters, and various others declared to be 'enemies of the state' by the Volksgerichtshof ("People's Court").At the entrance has been built a memorial wall "To the Victims of Hitler's Dictatorship of the Years 1933–1945."

Once inside Plötzensee, the prisoners were allowed only time to change into prison garb. One by one, in accordance with prison drill procedures, they crossed the courtyard in wooden shoes, under the ever-present gaze of a camera, and entered the execution chamber through a black curtain. Here, too, a camera recorded their every step as they arrived and were led to the back of the chamber to stand under hooks attached to a girder running across the ceiling. Floodlights brilliantly illuminated the scene. A few observers were standing around: the public prosecutor, prison officials, photographers. The executioners removed the prisoners handcuffs, placed short, thin nooses around their necks, and stripped them to the waist. At a signal, they hoisted each man aloft and let him down on the tightened noose, slowly in some cases, more quickly in others. Before the prisoner's death throes were over, his trousers were ripped off him... Every detail was recorded on film, from the first wild struggle for breath to the final twitches.

Hitler had already "eagerly devoured" the arrest reports, information on new groups of suspects, and the statements recorded by interrogators. Now, on the very night of the first trials and executions, the film of the proceedings arrived at the Wolf's Lair for the amusement of the Führer and his guests. The putsch, he announced to his assembled retinue, was "perhaps the best thing that could have happened for our future." He could not get enough of watching his foes go to their doom. Days later, photographs of the condemned men dangling from hooks still lay about the great map table in his bunker. As his horizons shrank on all sides, Hitler took great satisfaction from this, his last great triumph.

Fest (302-3) Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of the German Resistance

 The execution chamber at Plötzensee Prison showing the guillotine that was used to behead most victims until the sheer number of executions during the Third Reich made it impractical. Today there is a memorial inside the gaol commemorating those executed by the Nazis, dedicated on September 14, 1952. All that remains now is the execution shed, a small brick building with two rooms, where the victims were either hanged or beheaded. Cadavers of the condemned would be delivered to the anatomical institute at Humboldt University (below) to be used for dissection under supervision of Professor. Stieve.

From an article in Der Spiegel about executions here:

(translated by Pete26 at Axis History Forum)

The severed head fell into the basket, eyes wide open. Because the body was not strapped to the guillotine bench, the body could move freely after decapitation. The torso reared up, the legs twitched and threw off the wooden clogs. The blood spurted out of the severed neck in a high arc into the drain.

In this place of execution, everything represented the power and glory of the Nazi state. The executioner and his three assistants in black suits, the prosecutor and pastor in back robes, the clerks in green uniforms, the prison doctor in a white coat, the guests in uniform. On the table were two candles in tall candle holders. At this place of death ruled law and order, and each step was determined by the protocol. For the guests there were tickets and a note: "At the execution site the German greeting (= Hitler's salute) is to be avoided." The condemned were expected to behave according to the protocol too : "Calm and composed." Only rarely did the condemned fight back. Says protestant pastor Hermann Schrader:"I remember no one who has cried, screamed, or resisted."

From the command "Executioner, do you duty" to " Mr Prosecutor, the verdict is enforced", it took only 20 to 25 seconds in peacetime, and during the war only 7 or even 4 seconds, to carry out the execution. For every execution, a form A5 has been filled out. Of many of over 3,000 who died in this place there is not even a photograph. The oldest victim was a worker 83 years old, the youngest just 17. Forty one couples were executed here and they were not even allowed to say last words to each other. Mothers, who gave birth while in prison, were not spared. A total of 250 women were beheaded.

An old shoemaker cut the hair of the condemned short the night before the execution to expose the neck for the blade. The old man did his duty without emotion and with some kind of satisfaction. For each police sergeant who led the condemned from the cell block to the execution shed, there was a reward of eight cigarettes per person. The executioner's assistants (one was a blacksmith by former profession) always threw two corpses into one coffin. Because a person without the head takes up less space, the coffins were 20 centimetres shorter than usual and sprinkled with sawdust to soak up the blood. And what happened to the guillotine? It was dismantled and delivered to the administration of the Soviet occupation zone shortly after the war.

Along Unter den Linden

Left: "BANNER OVER BERLIN - A BRIGHT, SUNSHINY DAY, WITH UNTER DEN LINDEN IN GALA DRESS By far the most conspicuous is Germany's swastika-emblazoned flag. The Zeughaus (Armory) at right, begun in 1694, is now a military museum and Hall of Fame. It holds Hindenburg's death mask and busts of famous warriors and statesmen, as well as weapons, armour, and uniforms from the Middle Ages to the World War. Here, too, is Napoleon's hat, found near Waterloo!" From a National Geographic article in the February 1937 issue titled "Changing Berlin." The right shows the street after the war.

Café Kranzler on Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße during its heyday, immediately after the war, and in its current incarnation.

Prince Heinrich Palace (Palais Prinz Heinrich) and Humboldt University (Humboldt-Universität)

On April 6, 1933, the Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) proclaimed a nationwide "Action against the Un-German Spirit", to climax in a literary purge or "cleansing" ("Säuberung") by fire. Local chapters were to supply the press with releases and commissioned articles, sponsor well-known Nazi figures to speak at public gatherings, and negotiate for radio broadcast time. On April 8 the students association also drafted its Twelve Theses, deliberately evoking Martin Luther; the theses declared and outlined a "pure" national language and culture. Placards publicized the theses, which attacked "Jewish intellectualism", asserted the need to "purify" German language and literature, and demanded that universities be centres of German nationalism. The students described the "action" as a response to a worldwide Jewish "smear campaign" against Germany and an affirmation of traditional German values.
In a symbolic act of ominous significance, on May 10, 1933 the students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of "un-German" books, presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. On the night of May 10, in most university towns, nationalist students marched in torchlight parades "against the un-German spirit." The scripted rituals called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged and unwanted books into the bonfires with great joyous ceremony, band-playing, songs, "fire oaths," and incantations.
Not all book burnings took place on May 10, as the German Student Association had planned. Some were postponed a few days because of rain. Others, based on local chapter preference, took place on June 21, the summer solstice, a traditional date of celebration. Nonetheless, in 34 university towns across Germany the "Action against the un-German Spirit" was a success, enlisting widespread newspaper coverage. And in some places, notably Berlin, radio broadcasts brought the speeches, songs, and ceremonial incantations "live" to countless German listeners.

Goebbels's original address broadcast on German radio

In front of the the Royal Library, now the seat of the Faculty of Law, is this memorial by Micha Ullmann. When viewed at an angle, one can see empty shelves capable of holding 20,000 books. When viewed from above, all one sees is their own reflection. Both views are meant to remind us of the events that transpired and the people responsible for them.

In 1821, Heinrich Heine, a German poet of Jewish origin, had written in his play Almansor:

"Wo Bücher brennen, da brennen bald auch Menschen."
(Where they burn books, people will be burned last.)

Across the street is the statue of Hermann von Helmholtz in front of the main building, the entrance of which is little changed from the time it was the setting for a Nazi rally.


Neue Wache

Me with the 1.Kompanie ϟϟ Adolf Hitler en guarde and my students after the war

Left: Hitler, followed by Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg and Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring, walking several paces behind Hindenburg in front of the building. Right: Hitler in 1935 from the Nazi book Life of a Leader

Originally built as a guardhouse for the troops of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the building has been used as a war memorial since 1931. The Nazis used it as an Hall of Fame for Heroes.

The photo on the right shows 100 Italian Ballila blackshirts marching past with the Hitler Youth Leader in front of the column with the Fascist commander of the unit.

As it appeared in 1945.

Inside, during the war and today where it has a memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism located directly under the building's oculus, exposing it to the elements to further represent the suffering of civilians during the war. The memorial itself with its Christian-like pieta of mother and dead son would hardly seem appropriate to non-Christian victims.

Zeughaus

In 1828 and today

Located next to the Neue Wache, the former Armoury is now the National History Museum. It was where Baron Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff attempted to assassinate Hitler when he, Goering, Himmler and Keitel were due to be present at the Heroes’ Memorial Day (Heldengedenktag) ceremonies on March 21 1943 at the Zeughaus. Here was an opportunity to get not only the Fuehrer but his chief associates. As Colonel Freiherr von Gersdorff, chief of intelligence on Kluge’s staff, later said, ”This was a chance which would never recur.” He had been selected to handle the bomb, and this time it would have to be a suicidal mission where the colonel would conceal in his overcoat pockets two bombs, set the fuses, stay as close to Hitler during the ceremony as possible and blow the Fuehrer and his entourage as well as himself up. On the evening of March 20 he met with Schlabrendorff in his room at the Eden Hotel in Berlin. Schlabrendorff had brought two bombs with ten- minute fuses. But because of the near-freezing temperature in the glassed-over courtyard of the Zeughaus it might take from fifteen to twenty minutes before the weapons exploded. It was in this courtyard that Hitler, after his speech, was scheduled to spend half an hour examining an exhibition of captured Russian war trophies which Gersdorff’s staff had arranged. It was the only place where the colonel could get close enough to the Fuehrer to kill him. Gersdorff later recounted what happened:

The next day I carried in each of my overcoat pockets a bomb with a ten-minute fuse. I intended to stay as close to Hitler as I could, so that he at least would be blown to pieces by the explosion. When Hitler... entered the exhibitional hall, Schmundt came across to me and said that only eight or ten minutes were to be spent on inspecting the exhibits. So the possibility of carrying out the assassination no longer existed, since even if the temperature had been normal the fuse needed at least ten minutes. This last-minute change of schedule, which was typical of Hitler’s subtle security methods, had once again saved him his life.

Shirer (917-918) Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

Lustgarten, Old Museum and Berlin Cathedral

The Lustgarten ("Pleasure Garden") is in central Berlin, next to the Dom and had often been used as a parade ground and site for mass rallies. During the Weimar Republic, it was frequently used for political demonstrations with frequent rallies held by Socialists and Communists. In August 1921, 500,000 people demonstrated against right-wing extremist violence. After the murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 1922, 250,000 protested in the Lustgarten.
In fact, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (381) that

In Berlin, after the War, I was present at a mass-demonstration of Marxists in front of the Royal Palace and in the Lustgarten. A sea of red flags, red armlets and red flowers was in itself sufficient to give that huge assembly of about 120,000 persons an outward appearance of strength. I was now able to feel and understand how easily the man in the street succumbs to the hypnotic magic of such a grandiose piece of theatrical presentation.

William Shirer records in Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich (3) that

On Sunday, January 29, a hundred thousand workers crowded into the Lustgarten in the centre of Berlin to demonstrate their opposition to making Hitler Chancellor. One of their leaders attempted to get in touch with General von Hammerstein to propose joint action by the Army and organized labour should Hitler be named to head a new government. Once before, at the time of the Kapp putsch in 1920, a general strike had saved the Republic after the government had fled the capital.

In February, 1933, 200,000 people demonstrated against Hitler: shortly afterwards public opposition to the regime was banned. Under the Nazis, the Lustgarten was converted into a site for mass rallies. In 1934, it was paved over and Hitler would address mass rallies of up to a million people there. By the end of World War II in 1945, the Lustgarten was a bomb-pitted wasteland. The German Democratic Republic left Hitler's paving in place, but planted lime trees around the parade ground to reduce its militaristic appearance. The whole area was renamed Marx-Engels-Platz. The City Palace was demolished and later replaced by the modernist Palace of the Republic on part of the site.

The statue beside Hitler is still there; photo taken 2007

Video of Hitler speaking at the Lustgarten when, at noon on January 30 1936, a large crowd of SA men marched up in the Berlin Lustgarten, with Goebbels leading them, shouting their battle cry: “Fuehrer befiehl! Wir folgen!” Hitler began his speech with the following words:

Men of the SA! National Socialists! Party Comrades! When we take a retrospective look today, it does not end in the year 1933, but must go back further. What was a moment of surprise back then for many who did not know our Movement, was for us and for you, my Old Fighters, but the hour of fulfilment. There were many, particularly outside Germany, who may have been amazed on January 30 and in the following weeks and months at the miracle which had taken place before their very eyes. Yet you, my comrades, and I had together awaited this hour for a decade, had believed in it and placed our hopes in it. For us, it was not a surprise but rather the culmination of fourteen years of hard fighting. We set forth not blind, but seeing and believing. And thus when I look back on that day I am gripped with a deep gratitude, gratitude to those who enabled me to experience this day three years ago. Today they are gathered here from throughout the German Reich as the pioneers and banner bearers of our Movement, the two eldest from each storm troop. They all experienced first-hand the evolution of our Movement, the evolution of its struggle, its fight and its conquests. And I myself stood over this fight for fourteen years. I conducted the fight for fourteen years; I also founded this SA and, in its ranks and at its fore, led the Movement onward for fourteen years. I have come to know you. And I know: everything you are, you are through me, and everything I am, I am through you alone.

Hitler ended his speech with the following “battle cry”:

And I would like to ask you to join me once again in uttering the battle cry for what means most to us in this world, for which we once fought and struggled and triumphed, which we did not forget in the time of defeat, which we loved in the time of need, which we adored in the time of disgrace, and which is sacred and dear to us now in the time of victories. Our German Reich, our German Volk, and our one and only National Socialist Movement: Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

In front of the old museum

Photographs taken from a National Geographic article from February 1937 entitled "Changing Berlin". The caption for the left reads: "MAY DAY MASSES JAM THE BERLIN LUSTGARTEN TO HEAR ADOLF HITLER SPEAK. Decorated with the swastika sign and guarded by troops, the speaker's stand appears in the far background, on the broad steps of the Old Museum. At the right appears a corner of the Berlin Cathedral. The Maypole, decorated with bunting and swastikas, represents a revival of an old folk custom formerly observed chiefly in the rural districts." That on the right reads: "OLYMPIC GAMES OPEN AT BERLIN WHEN THE 'TORCHBEARER' RUNS UP WITH FIRE CARRIED FROM SOUTHERN GREECE- Greek girls kindled the first flame by the heat of sun rays at the Temple of Zeus, at Olympia. Relay runners, about 2,900 in all, bore the torch for some 1,800 miles through Athens, Sophia, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and Dresden, and then to the Lustgarten in Berlin."

During the 1936 Olympic Games and the area today, taken from atop the Berlin Cathedral.

The Stadtschloss, serving as the principal winter residence of the Hohenzollerns, was damaged by Allied bombing in the war . Although possible to repair at great expense, the palace was demolished in 1950 by the German Democratic Republic authorities, despite West German protests. Following the reunification of Germany, it was decided to rebuild the Stadtschloss.

It appears that this was a target of Marinus van der Lubbe days before he set fire to the Reichstag with the dire historical consequences. A report of this fire was published on 27 February, 1933:

  It has only now become known that a small fire broke out on Saturday in an office room on the fifth floor of the Berliner Schloss, which was quickly put out by a fireman stationed on the premises. The origin of the fire is not yet fully explained. But it is thought to have been an act of incendiarism. One hour before the fire started, the caretaker had made his round through the Schloss and had even passed through the room. At the time there was nothing suspicious to be seen. Soon afterwards the room was in flames. Investigation showed that there was a burning firelighter on the window-sill, and another under the window and also on the steam pipes.  The police investigation has not yet been concluded.

Berlin Cathedral

Less than a week after becoming chancellor, Hitler came here to attend a funeral service for SA Sturmführer Maikowski and Senior Police Officer Zauritz, both of whom had been shot in political riots following the torchlight procession of January 30.
It was also here that Göring held his wedding ceremony to Emmy Sonnemann:

Thirty thousand troops lined the route as he drove past in an open car awash with narcissus and tulips. Associated Press correspondent Louis P. Lochner wrote to his daughter: “You had the feeling that an emperor was marrying.” “A visitor to Berlin,” echoed the British ambassador, sitting in the diplomatic gallery facing the floodlit marble altar, “might well have thought . . . that he had stumbled upon preparations for a royal wedding.”
Insensible to Nazi party feelings, Göring had insisted on a religious ceremony (although he granted the Reich bishop, Müller, only five minutes for his sermon). The wedding album shows Hitler standing bareheaded behind him in the cathedral, his postman’s hat nonchalantly upended on the floor beside him, his hands clasped in their familiar station below his belt- buckle. Göring’s hair was neatly smoothed back, a broad sash dividing the areas of saucer-sized medals covering his chest. As the newlyweds emerged from the cathedral, two hundred planes flew overhead, followed by two storks released by an irreverent Richthofen Squadron veteran.    Irving (223)

During the 1936 Olympic Games and standing at the site in 2007.

During WWII the cathedral had been bombed by the Allies and badly damaged. After a provisional roof was installed to protect what remained and reconstruction started in 1975. The restoration of the interior was begun in 1984 and in 1993 the church reopened. During reconstruction, the original design was modified into a simpler, shorter form.

Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper)

During the Third Reich, members of Jewish origin were dismissed from the ensemble. Many German musicians associated with the opera went into exile, including the conductors Otto Klemperer and Fritz Busch. During the Third Reich, Robert Heger, Herbert von Karajan (1939-1945) and Johannes Schüler were the "Staatskapellmeister".

 On the evening of  12 April, the Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance. Albert Speer, who organized it, had invited Grand Admiral Donitz and also Hitler's adjutant, Colonel von Below. The hall was properly lit for the occasion, despite the electricity cuts. `The concert took us back to another world,' wrote Below. The programme included Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Bruckner's 8th Symphony - (Speer later claimed that this was his warning signal to the orchestra to escape Berlin immediately after the performance to avoid being drafted into the Volkssturm) - and the finale to Wagner's Gotterdlimmerung. Even if Wagner did not bring the audience back to present reality, the moment of escapism did not last long. It is said that, after the performance, the Nazi Party had organised Hitler Youth members to stand in uniform with baskets of cyanide capsules and offer them to members of the audience as they left.

Beevor (188-9) Berlin: The Downfall 1945

After the war and today, and video from a school fieldtrip conducted in 2009.

Rotes Rathaus

This is the site where Hermann Göring married Emmy Sonneman on April 10, 1935, with Hitler acting as best man. The building was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II and rebuilt to the original plans between 1951 and 1956. The Neues Stadthaus, which survived the bombing and had formerly been the head office of Berlin's municipal fire insurance Feuersozietät in Parochialstraße served as the temporary city hall for the post-war city government for all the sectors of Berlin until September 1948. Following that time, it housed only those of the Soviet sector. The reconstructed Rotes Rathaus, then located in the Soviet sector, served as the town hall of East Berlin, while the Rathaus Schöneberg was seat of the West Berlin Senate. After German reunification, the administration of reunified Berlin officially moved into the Rotes Rathaus on 1 October 1991.

The fiercest fighting broke out in the city's centre on April 29. The Town Hall was assaulted by the 1008th Rifle Regiment (commander Colonel V.N. Borisov) and the 1010th Regiment (commander Colonel M.F. Zagorodsky) of the 266th Rifle Division.
Captain M.V. Bobylev's battalion was set the mission of breaking through to the Town Hall and capturing it jointly with Major M.A. Alexeyev's battalion supported by tanks and self-propelled artillery. Our men were met by such a strong avalanche of fire that further advance along the street was simply impossible.
It was decided to break into the Town Hall through the walls by breaching them with explosives. Under enemy fire, the sappers blew in the walls one by one. The smoke had not had time to disperse before assault groups rushed through the breaches and cleared the building adjacent to the Town Hall from the enemy after hand-to-hand fighting.
Tanks and self-propelled guns were committed to battle. Firing a few shots they smashed the heavy wrought-iron gates of the Town Hall, breaching the walls whilst setting up a smokescreen. The whole building was engulfed in think smoke.
Lieutenant K. Madenov's platoon was the first to break in. Privates N.P. Kondrashev., K.Ye. Kryutchenko, I.F. Kashpurovsky and others acted bravely together with the daring lieutenant. Every room was fought for.
Komsomol organiser of the 1008th Rifle Regiment's 1st Battalion, Junior Lieutenant K.G. Gromov, climbed up on the roof and, having thrown down the Nazi flag on the pavement, hoisted the Red Banner. Konstantin Gromov was granted the title Hero of the Soviet Union for heroism and courage displayed in these battles.       Marshall G. Zhukov, 1974

Speer's plans for Germania

From the "Mythos Germania: Shadows and Traces of the Imperial Capital'' in Berlin, this was the model that was built for the movie "Der Untergang"and later used in the movie "Speer & Er" with some additions. It shows the re-planning of Berlin by architect Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler which was to be renamed Germania. The plan was to make a North/South axis with a triumphal arch and the so-called Great Hall at the northern end of the avenue.

Berlin 1950

Stills from David Barsalla's Final Year Project on BA ANIMATION at Bournemouth University: Germania Project (2003-04) 

Albert Speer's Lampposts

Pretty much all that's left of Speer's mark on Berlin: a double row of lampposts along the Strasse des 17. Juni designed by him. Around half of the original 703 of these lamps survived the second World War. An original design by Speer, approved by Hitler himself...

Russian Embassy

In 1938 and with students in 2011. In 1837 Tsar Nicholas I bought the building which housed the embassy and served as the Royal residence of the Tsar and his family. It was vacant during the Great War after which it reopened as the embassy of the newly-formed Soviet Union. After Operation Barbarossa the ϟϟ sealed off the building and Soviet citizens in Berlin were exchanged for staff members of the Reich embassy in Moscow. During the war it then served as the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories under Alfred Rosenberg. Gauleiter Dr. Meyer and Reich Office Director Dr. Leibbrandt from the ministry attended the Wannsee Conference in January 1942; later that year the building was bombed. After the war the USSR built a new building on the site and moved its embassy into it in 1952.
Incidentally, it was near this site on the afternoon of May 7 1866 that Ferdinand Cohen-Blind shot Bismarck twice from behind after the latter had just reported to King Wilhelm and was walking home. Bismarck spun around and grabbed his attacker, who was able to fire three more shots before soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Guards rushed up and took him into custody. Bismarck continued on his way home. Later that night, he allowed the King's physician, Gustav von Lauer, to examine him. Lauer noted that the first three bullets had only grazed Bismarck's body and the last two had ricocheted off the ribs and had caused no major injuries. Some sources claim that Bismarck was saved because he had worn a bulletproof vest.

German soldiers across the road in 1945 and as the embassy appears today.

The Lenin bust on the Behrenstrasse side of the embassy has recently been removed

Various other embassies

The Swiss Embassy near the Reichstag was used as Soviet Red Army HQ during the battle for Berlin. This building is in fact the only one to emerge intact after the war.

The Spanish embassy which was constructed through Speer's Office of the Inspector-General for buildings and which shows a similar style favoured by the Nazis. It reopened in 2003 after war damage was repaired and fascist symbols removed.

The embassies of Italy and Japan respectively. The Italian was the first to have been completed in the Tiergarten in 1938. It was rebuilt in the 1990s but kept its fascist symbols. According to David Irving in his book Göring: A Biography, this was the site of one of Goering's greatest humiliations,

when he saw the fabulous decoration that he coveted, the diamond-studded Collar of the Annunziata, bestowed at the Italian embassy upon his smirking rival [Ribbentrop]. He took it as a deliberate slight and raised hell at every level up to the king of Italy, being mollified only by the award, twelve months later, of the identical Collar in consolation.

The Japanese embassy on the right too maintains its symbols of fascist ideology a reminder of the man-made tsunami it had launched upon humanity beginning in 1931 which required two atomic bombs and countless allied lives and suffering to put an end to. On November 24, 1937 Hitler attended a reception here, given by the Japanese Ambassador Mushakoji in Berlin on the anniversary of the Anti-Comintern Pact.

The former Embassy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at Rauchstraße in 1938 and today, where it serves as the offices of the German Council on Foreign Relations ( Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, DGAP). The building was completed in 1938/39 by Werner March, the architect of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, as the diplomatic mission for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The property at Rauchstraße 17 was owned by the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family until 1938. The family was forced to sell the property to the German Reich for 170,000 reichsmarks shortly before they emigrated. The property at Rauchstraße 18 was handed over to the German Reich in accordance with a 1940 expropriation resolution. Until the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, Ivo Andric, who would later win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was stationed in the new building as Yugoslav ambassador. Afterwards, the building was used by German Reich and party officials. After Germany’s surrender in 1945, the building was given back to the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav military mission resided in the building until 1953, when it moved to Grunewald.  Beginning in 1953, the building housed the Supreme Restitution Court of the Allied Forces in Berlin. On June 29, 1964, the court accepted the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family’s reimbursement claim and ordered the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia to cede a co-ownership share in the building.

Alte Kommandantur

The Berlin Garrison and headquarters of Lt. General and Berlin City Commandant, Paul von Hase, later executed for his role in the failed July Plot of 1944. The building was heavily damaged during the war and destroyed in order to make room for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DDR. In 1995, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of East Germany itself was demolished in order to recreate the Werderscher Markt area. This has become extremely controversial:

Missing landmarks have reappeared at either end of Unter den Linden, from the commercial ventures of the Adlon Hotel on Pariser Platz (built 1905–07, rebuilt 1997) to Bertelsmann’s Berlin offices behind the newly recreated façades of the Alte Kommandantur Haus (built 1653, thoroughly remodelled 1873–74, and rebuilt 2001–02). The latter proudly flaunts the address Unter den Linden 1 on its bogus neo-Renaissance front while its sleek modern glass and steel interior literally pops out behind. Bertelsmann, masquerading as a nineteenth-century aristocratic mansion, will soon be joined by the Schloss and, just a bit to the south, a few hundred feet along the Spree canal, by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Bauakademie, the architecture school he designed in the 1830s. Of all the projects realised and proposed, this last is the most debated among Berlin’s architects, who hold out faith that somehow its reconstruction can escape the prevailing sense of ersatz luxury and Disneyfication of Berlin’s historical centre that the Adlon and Bertelsmann ventures exude.

The Berlin Journal, Spring 2005

Von Hase before Freisler's "People's Court" on August 8, 1944. Lt. General von Hase (among others) was found guilty and hanged later that day at Ploetzensee Prison.

'New' Synagogue and former Jewish Hospital

Construction of the 'New Synagogue' started in 1859 and was completed 7 years later. The design by Eduard Knoblauch, in a neo-byzantine style with Moorish influences, was complicated by the asymmetrical shape of the plot. State of the art construction techniques were used to construct the galleries and 50m high gilded dome.During the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom on 9-10 November 1938, the synagogue was desecrated by the Nazis, Neue Synagogue Domeand it was destroyed in 1943 by allied bombing. The building was finally demolished in 1958 but it wasn't until after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the reconstruction started on Oranienburgerstrasse. In May 1995, the reconstructed synagogue was finally completed, triggering a revival of the whole Scheunenviertel district. It is now a lively district with many restaurants and cafés.

The Jewish Synagogue, shown in 1870 on the left, three years after the war centre, and today on the right, was miraculously saved from destruction during Kristallnacht by the chief of the local police station, Wilhelm Krutzfeld. When he arrived at the scene, he presented the building charter showing that the synagogue had been opened by Otto von Bismark himself. Mindful of Hitler's admiration of Bismark, the forger of modern-day Germany, the mob dispersed and a fire brigade was able to save the building from destruction.

The interior in 1866 and after its gutting in 1938.

As late as 1935, the Berlin tourist map issued by the Pharus firm marked the presence of the New Synagogue in Oranienburgerstraße with a miniature depiction of the building, just as it did other key attractions like the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Cathedral. Stars of David pinpointed the locations of other synagogues nearby. In the 1936 edition, not only had the building vanished, so too had any indication that synagogues still existed in the area. The physical destruction of the synagogues that was to follow in 1938 was thus preceded by their symbolic disappearance from tourist literature. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that these changes occurred as a result of direct intervention on the part of the regime. Map publishers were instead reacting to the vague command to work in tune with the ideals of National Socialism.

Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich (61)

Plaque on the wall of the building exhorting never to forget. Today the New Synagogue houses the Centrum Judaicum, dedicated to documenting Jewish culture and acting as a bridge between eastern and western European Jewry.

The Jewish Hospital used by the Gestapo from 1941-43 as assembly point for Jews being deported. Once a top Berlin facility, it gradually became a clearinghouse for Jews facing transport to the camps. The Nazis apparently wanted the Jews healthy before sending them off to die. According to its website, it "is the only institution in the whole of Germany to survive the Nazi terror and is the oldest still-existing establishment founded on a concept developed by people of Jewish belief." This hospital was the subject of the book Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis by Daniel Silver, a lawyer and former general counsel to the CIA.

Tiergartenstraße 4

The headquarters of the Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil- und Anstaltspflege and the site today, taken over by a graffiti- covered husk of rusted metal intended to symbolise something intentionally left vague and meaningless.
Shortly after the start of the war, Hitler signed an order, backdated to 1 September 1939, authorising the systematic killing of mentally and physically handicapped adults and children. Authorisation to direct the program was given on Hitler’s personal stationary to Philipp Bouhler, head of the Führer’s Chancellery, and Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician. The code-name of this secret program, “Aktion T-4,” derived from the address of the building here on Tiergartenstrasse 4, from which the program was directed. Killings of deformed children had already started before the war. The killings, now extended to adults as well, were conducted by lethal injection or carbon monoxide gassing at several sites disguised as hospitals or nursing homes. These killings marked a further escalation of the eugenic practices that had begun with the Sterilisation Law in 1933.

As early as 1935, [Hitler] told a senior Nazi medic that 'if war should break out, he would take up the euthanasia question and implement it'. In fact, he did not even wait for the war. In July 1939 he initiated what became known as the Aktion T-4. It was, he said, 'right that the worthless lives of seriously ill mental patients should be got rid of. Here, as with the persecution of the Jews and Gypsies, the regime encountered little popular resistance and some active support. In a poll of 200 parents of mentally retarded children conducted in Saxony, 73 per cent had answered 'yes' to the question: 'Would you agree to the painless curtailment of the life of your child if experts had established that it was suffering from incurable idiocy?' Some parents actually petitioned Hitler to allow their abnormal children to be killed. Apart from the Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen, whose sermons against the euthanasia programme in July and August 1941 led to a temporary halt in the killings, only a handful of other individuals openly challenged 'the principle that you can kill "unproductive" human beings'. Others who objected turn out, on closer inspection, merely to have disliked the procedures involved. Some wished for formal legality - a proper decree and public 'sentencing'; others (especially those living near the asylums) simply wanted the killing to be carried out less obtrusively.                 Ferguson(264-5)  The War of the World

Despite the secrecy of the programme, it was impossible to conceal killing on such a scale, as relatives demanded explanations for the sudden and unexpected deaths of their loved ones. Increasing numbers of complaints and demands for criminal investigations made it necessary to inform the Reich Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior of Hitler’s secret order which led to Hitler’s decision to end the program on 24 August 1941 after more than 70,000 patients had been killed. Killings especially of handicapped children continued in secret, however, until the end of the war. Under the code-name “Aktion 14 f 13” the killing program was also extended to Jewish inmates of concentration camps in Germany. Many of the T-4 personnel were transferred to occupied Poland where they supplied the technical expertise for the systematic killing by gas of approximately three million Jews in the extermination camps set up for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.