Friedrichstraße
Before and after the war
Gauarbeitsamt
Outside Friedrichstraße station at the intersection of Georgenstraße and Friedrichstraße is this bronze statue representing the contrasting fate of children during the Nazi era by architect and sculptor Frank Meisler, who travelled himself with a 1939 children's transport from Berlin-Friedrichstraße
to England. Five figures in grey look to one side, symbolising the suffering of those deported to concentration camps to meet an early demise. Two lighter bronze figures gaze in the other direction representing those Jewish children whose lives were saved by the Kindertransport to England. More than two million children lost their lives from 1933 to 1945 through the tyranny of the Nazis. London stockbroker Nicholas Winton, moved by the fate of Jewish refugees, worked with his fellow Britons to bring the first rescued children to the UK. These Kindertransporte were an attempt to protect the youngest victims of the Nazi dictatorship. These rescue missions allowed some 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia to escape deportation and find refuge in children's homes or with English families in London. The first train left Berlin's Friedrichstraße station with 196 children on board on 30 November 1938.
The Regionaldirektion Berlin-Brandenburg der Bundesagentur für Arbeit as it appeared when it served as the administration building for Fritz Todt's Armaments Ministry and today, where it serves as the state labour department. The eagle remains unmolested, overlooking the capital still.
Post office on Knesebeckstraße 95, showing Reichsadler above door
Finanzamt Charlottenburg
Built between 1934 and 1940 to a design by Heinrich Wolff to house the central bank , the Reichsbank became the Finance Ministry and later headquarters of the Central Committee of the East German Communist Party. As shown in the photo on the right, there remains today a reichsadler designed by Kurt Schmidt-Ehmen over the doorway of the Finanzamt Charlottenburg on Bismarkstraße in Berlin, the swastika covered by the address number.
Schloss Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg Palace is the largest palace in Berlin and the only royal residency in the city dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family. During the Second World War the palace was badly damaged but has since been reconstructed.
Amtsgericht, Wedding
The Reichsadler remains on the front façade of the Amtsgericht in the Berlin suburb of Wedding.
Reichspolizeischule für Leibesübungen von Schirmer/Götze Hohenzollernring
Denkmal der nationalen Erhebung
Reichsadler dating from 1935 by Max Esser at Lüdenscheider Weg 2-4 near Haselhorster dam within a children's playground.
A reichsadler at the post office on Hindenburgdamm
Lichterfelde Barracks
Hitler in 1935 and the site today
Photoshopped then-and-now with the LSSAH at their barracks at Berlin-Lichterfelde 1938
Lichterfelde Barracks
Göring’s
old military academy at Lichterfelde would be the main execution site
of those SA killed during the so-called 'Night of the Long Knives' in
1934. As Bullock relates in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Goring, who had been made a general by Hindenburg to his great delight at the end of August 1933, once in power gravitated naturally towards the side of privilege and authority, and was on the worst of terms with the Chief of Staff of the S.A. He began to collect a powerful police force 'for special service', which he kept ready under his own hand at the Lichterfelde Cadet School near Berlin (290).
In Berlin the executions, directed by Goring and Himmler, began on the night of 29-30 June and continued throughout the Saturday and Sunday. The chief place of execution was the Lichterfelde Cadet School, and once again the principal victims were the leaders of the S.A. (303)
A view from the redesigned Finckensteinallee entrance. Two monumental figures guarded the entrance, the so-called Reichsrottenführer. In the centre is when the Americans used the base and as it appears today.
Both
entrances to the indoor swimming pool are still flanked today with two,
four metre- high granite figures symbolising the "German man" and the
"German woman" designed by Professor Hass.
German Reich Railways Central Office
Through Gleichschaltung, the Nazis placed the rail network under direct government control on 10 February 1937, adding swastikas to the Hoheitsadler on the railcars. Here, at the back of the central office of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, is the stone emblem- a winged wheel- although the swastika relief at the base has been removed.
The chemist's on Potsdamer Platz in 1941 and today
Karstadt Department Store
Located on Hermannplatz, where Kreuzberg meets Neukolln, Karstadt was one of the most revolutionary buildings to be constructed in Berlin before the War. Opened in 1929 as Europe's biggest department store, it had its own underground station and art deco twin towers that were strikingly reminiscent of a Manhattan skyscraper. Wartime bombs left little of its original grandeur intact, yet it was promptly rebuilt and is still one of Berlin's most popular department stores. The ϟϟ used its twin towers as an observation post as four separate Soviet armies entered the city.
Petty crime skyrocketed as the inhabitants of Berlin turned to looting as a survival strategy. One of the looters' targets was the huge Karstadt department store on Hermannplatz. Thousands of people crammed into Karstadt, grabbing everything in sight but especially food and warm clothing. The store supervisors eventually let them get away with whatever food they could find, though they tried to prevent them taking anything else. Later, after driving the remaining civilians out, the ϟϟ, rumoured to have had 29 million marks' worth of supplies in the basement, dynamited the store to prevent the Russians from appropriating its contents.
Bahm (140-1) Berlin 1945 - The Final Reckoning
Only one wing of the original building survives, on the southwest corner as seen in the photo above.
There has been a dramatic account of the looting of the Karstadt department store in the Hermannplatz, where queuing shoppers had been blown to pieces during the first artillery bombardment on 21 April. According to this story, ϟϟ troops allowed civilians to take what they wanted before they blew the place up. The explosion was said to have killed many over-eager looters. But in fact when the ϟϟ Nordland Division took over the store several days later, they did not want to blow it up. They needed Karstadt's twin towers as observation posts to watch the Soviet advance on Neuk6lln and the Tempelhof aerodrome... The twin towers of the Karstadt department store provided excellent observation posts for watching the advance of four Soviet armies - the 5th Shock Army from Treptow Park, the 8th Guards Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army from Neukolln and Konev's 3rd Guards Tank Army from Mariendorf.
Beevor:
The Palast Hotel
The Palast Hotel before and after the war and in its current incarnation
Eichhornstraße in the 1930s and today, near Potsdamerplatz
Two underground statios then and now. Left: Opened as "Hasenheide" in 1924, the name changed to "Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz" in 1933 and to "Gardepionierplatz" in 1939. In 1947 the station received the name Südstern. Right: Frankfurter Tor station is situated under Frankfurter Tor, a large square. Built in 1930 it, was first named Petersburger Strasse. After World War II it was named Besarinstrasse (Besarin was the first Soviet commander of Berlin). 1958 it was again renamed to Frankfurter Tor.
Reichspostministerium (Postal Ministry)
The Reichspostministerium, during the reign of National Socialism, had authority over research and development departments in the areas of television engineering, high-frequency technology, cable (wide-band) transmission, meteorology, and acoustics (microphone technology). In 1942, the armed postal security service was subsumed into the Schutzstaffel (SS); this was just one more step in the national socialization of the Deutsche Reichspost.
Fehrbellinerplatz
Fehrbellinerplatz
Just after the war
Entschädigungsbehörde in the Wilmersdorf district was built in 1935-36 by the architect Philipp Schaefer as an office complex for the Rudolf Karstadt department store chain; the Nazi-era reliefs are still present.
What's now Rathaus Wilmersdorf at Fehrbelliner Platz 4 was the site of the first British HQ from 1945 to 1953- 'Lancaster House' - which had earlier served as the the former centre of Nazi military administration.
What's now Rathaus Wilmersdorf at Fehrbelliner Platz 4 was the site of the first British HQ from 1945 to 1953- 'Lancaster House' - which had earlier served as the the former centre of Nazi military administration.
The military train took the soldiers into Charlottenburg Station, which was their introduction to the city, if they were not lucky enough to fly into Gatow. British soldiers in Berlin wore a flash on their sleeve. It was a black circle rimmed with red – ‘septic arsehole’ they called it. British Control Commission’s headquarters in Berlin was in ‘Lancaster House’ on the Fehrbelliner Platz. George Clare described it as a ‘concave-shaped grey, concrete edifice’ in the style of Albert Speer. Under the British Control Commission there were detach- ments in each of the boroughs under British control, together with a barracks and an officers’ mess. There were messes all over the British Sector. When George Clare reappeared in officer’s garb on his second tour of duty, he was assigned to one on the Breitenbach Platz which was large and lacked social cachet, and resembled a Lyons Corner House. British Military Government was a large yellow building on the Theodor Heuss Platz. This was the former Adolf Hitler Platz in Charlottenburg, the name of which was changed to Reichskanzlerplatz until it was realised that Hitler too had been chancellor. On the other side of the square was the Marlborough Club, where officers could be gentlemen. For the Other Ranks there was the Winston Club.MacDonogh (254-255) After the Reich - The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
Schiller Theatre
From 1937 to 1938, the theatre was extensively rebuilt for the city of Berlin by Paul Baumgarten. Baumgarten simplified the façade and the auditorium considerably, changing the appearance of the theatre with respect to the New Objectivity of the 1920s, but also in line with the prevailing monumental architectural trend of National Socialism. A government box was incorporated. The sculptors Paul Scheurich and Karl Nocke and the painter Albert Birkle were involved in the conversion. The theatre was destroyed in an air strike on 23 November 1943. From 1950 to 1951, it was rebuilt for the city of Berlin according to plans by the architects Heinz Völker and Rolf Grosse.
Site of Reichpost TV Studios 1935 - 1938
Recently uncovered footage, long buried in East German archives, confirms that television's first revolution occurred under the Third Reich. From 1935 to 1944, Berlin studios churned out the world's first regular TV programming, replete with the evening news, street interviews, sports coverage, racial programs, and interviews with Nazi officials. Select audiences, gathered in television parlours across Germany, numbered in the thousands; plans to create a mass viewing public, through the distribution of 10,000 people's television sets, were upended by World War Two. German technicians achieved remarkable breakthroughs in televising live events, including near instantaneous broadcasts of the 1936 Olympic Games. At the same time, the demand for continuous programming opened up camera opportunities far less controlled, and more candidly revealing, than Third Reich propagandists would have liked (an interview with a bumbling Robert Ley is particularly embarrassing). In its stated mission - to imprint the image of the Führer onto every German heart - Nazi television proved a major disappointment. But its surviving footage - 285 rolls have been found so far offers an intriguing new window onto Hitler's Germany.
Karl Liebknecht Haus
The Karl Liebknecht house was the party headquarters of the KPD between 1926 and 1933. It carried the names of a joint founders of the KPD who were murdered on 15 January 1919 by members of the free corps. The period photograph shows a parade of SA and ϟϟ supporters on 22 January 1933, shortly before Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, to intimidate their opponents. Within the month the building was searched and renamed the Horst Wessel-Haus.
On February 24, Goering’s police raided the Karl Liebknecht Haus, the Communist headquarters in Berlin. It had been abandoned some weeks before by the Communist leaders, a number of whom had already gone underground or quietly slipped off to Russia. But piles of propaganda pamphlets had been left in the cellar and these were enough to enable Goering to announce in an official communique that the seized ”documents” proved that the Communists were about to launch the revolution. The reaction of the public and even of some of the conservatives in the government was one of skepticism. It was obvious that something more sensational must be found to stampede the public before the election took place on March 5.
Shirer (170) Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich
The communist party was outlawed and its members killed or sent to the concentration camps.
Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels at Horst Wessel's grave January 22, 1933.
Hitler had planned a major demonstration for the 22nd of January in memory of the late Kampfhed (fight song) composer and SA Sturmführer Horst Wessel, which was to impress upon the Reich capital that his fighting formations, the SA and the SS, were so strong and fear- inspiring that they could march unhindered through the ‘red’ quarters of Berlin, past the Karl Liebknecht Haus (the Communist headquarters) and across the Bülowplatz.Everything went according to schedule. There were no serious disruptions to the rank and file of the 35,000 SA men marching through the streets. Following the parade, a memorial ceremony was held at Horst Wessel’s grave at the Nikolai Cemetery, where Hitler made the following remarks:Every Volk which struggles to the fore from utter misery and defeat to cleanse and liberate itself also produces vocalists who are able to put into words what the masses bear in their innermost hearts. It is thus that the powerful Volksbewegung, the Movement of Germany, has also found the voice able to express what the men in rank feel. With his song, which is sung by millions today, Horst Wessel has erected a monument to himself in ongoing history which shall prevail longer than stone and bronze.Even after centuries have passed, even when not a stone is left standing in this great city of Berlin, one will be mindful of the greatest German liberation movement and its vocalist.Comrades, raise the flags. Horst Wessel, who lies under this stone, is not dead. Every day and every hour his spirit is with us, marching in our ranks.Donarus (219-220) The Complete Hitler
Today the grave at St. Nikolai-Friedhof in Berlin-Friedrichshain is slowly disintegrating. The grave here is shown alternately honoured and desecrated on the 70th anniversary of his murder in 2010.
Wessel's song, the melody of which was possibly taken from Etienne Nicolas Méhul's opera Joseph or from the naval song Königsberg-Lied, became the co-national anthem of Germany along with the first stanza of Deutschlandlied. The song was first performed at Wessel's funeral. Banned in Germany, it can be heard by clicking here.
Städtische Krankenhaus am Friedrichshain
This was the hospital where Horst Wessel succumbed to his injuries and received the status of Nazi martyr in February 1930. When the Nazis took power, it was renamed in October 1933 the Horst-Wessel-Krankenhaus.
Horst Wessel Platz
Horst Wessel Platz has since been renamed Rosa Luxemburg Platz.
The Volksbühne and the Kino Babylon in 1929 and today. Of the former, a commentator for the British Union of Fascists in the organisation's newsletter Blackshirt for 30 January 1937 wrote how he had been particularly impressed by the way the the People’s Stage put on plays at affordable prices.
Gasthaus Zum Nußbaum
This was the site of a mythic political battle for Berlin in 1929, when Horst Wessel and his SA Troop ventured into the heart of the Communist stronghold of the Fischerkietz district. It was here at the Zum Nußbaum that Wessel forced a crowd of Communists to step aside, allowing him to declare the area free of the "Red Menace."
Anhalter Bahnhof
Gasthaus Zum Nußbaum
Anhalter Bahnhof
The station after the war
Built in ferro-concrete, with three storeys above ground and two below, its walls were up to four and a half metres thick. Pine seats and tables had been provided by the authorities, as well as emergency supplies of tinned sardines, but neither lasted long when both fuel and food were in such short supply. The Anhalter bunker's great advantage was its direct link to the U-Bahn tunnels, even though the trains were not running. People could walk the five kilometres to the Nordbahnhof, without ever being exposed.Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS
The conditions in the bunker became appalling, with up to 12,000 people crammed into 3,6oo square metres. The crush was so great that nobody could have reached the lavatory even if it had been open. One woman described how she spent six days on the same step. For hygienic Germans, it was a great ordeal, but with water supplies cut, drinking water was a far higher priority. There was a pump which still worked outside the station, and young women near the entrance took the risk of running with a pail to fetch water. Many were killed, because the station was a prime target for Soviet artillery. But those who made it back alive earned eternal gratitude from those too weak to fetch it for themselves, or they bartered sips for food from those who lacked the courage to run the gauntlet themselves.
Antony Beevor (280-281) Berlin: The Downfall 1945
On this street from was located the Race and Settlement Main Office of the ϟϟ ((Rasse-und Siedlungshauptamt, RuSHA), the Nazi office that dealt with racial
matters. Established in 1931, RuSHA was designated as an ϟϟ Main Office
in 1935. The office's tasks included
doing research and providing instruction on race issues, including special
training courses for elite Nazi groups; making sure that ϟϟ men and their
wives were racially pure; carrying out the resettlement of ϟϟ men in Nazi-occupied countries as part of the global Nazi plan for expanding the German
Reich throughout Europe; and encouraging them to settle on farm lands near
cities. RuSHA's staff included many determined and industrious young men
who either had medical or some other professional eligibility. Some were later
promoted to senior ϟϟ positions.
The RuSHA began evicting landowners from their homes and settling
Germans in their place in mid-1939. RuSHA offices established in the parts of
Poland annexed to the Reich were in charge of confiscated Jewish- and
Polish- owned land. In 1940 RuSHA came up with the plan to "Germanise"
Poles who had the appropriate racial qualities. Possible candidates were
screened and interviewed by "race experts and qualifications examiners."
These experts also checked out the racial authenticity of Poles who registered
themselves as "ethnic Germans" (Volksdeutsche). In addition, RuSHA made
plans to "Germanise" the Ukrainian people.
The bombing raid on Berlin on 3 February 1945 destroyed almost all buildings in the Hedemannstraße and in the southern Friedrichstrasse. 
Next door had been where Goebbels as Gauleiter founded the weekly Nazi battle sheet Der Angriff in 1930. Also with offices here were the party house management of the Hitler Youth and the Gau-Rundfunkstelle broadcasting site.
Goebbels, whether the party was under ban for short periods or not, began to spread the party message through Der Angriff (“The Attack”) where he simply put his stump speeches on paper. It is in this paper that one can find the clearest exposition of where Nazism stood on the Weimar Republic. In Goebbels’ thinking: “We are an anti-parliamentary party and we reject for good reason the Weimar Republic.... We go into the Reichstag in order to obtain the weapons of democracy.... We become Reichstag deputies in order to paralyze the Weimar mentality with its own help.”
Schloss Bellevue- The Presidential Palace
The Presidential Palace in March 1941 during the visit of the Japanese Foreign Minister in Berlin. Hitler had used the building as the site for the museum of ethnography, before being renovated as a guest house for the Nazi government in 1938. On May 31 1931, Hitler toured the Bellevue Castle which
had by then been transformed into an official guest house for prominent
foreigners hosted by the Third Reich. Professor Baumgartner had
supervised the refurbishing of the facilities. Hitler displayed particular
interest in the rooms assigned to foreign dignitaries. In spite of his
ambitious intentions, these rooms were destined to serve only a second-
rate clientèle, insignificant politicians from the various Balkan states,
because of the increasing isolation of Germany internationally.
During World War II it was severely damaged by strategic bombing and the 1945 Battle of Berlin, after which it was refurbished substantially in the 1950s. The photo on the extreme right shows German First Lady Bettina Wulff apparently giving the Hitler salute from the steps. Franc Rennicke, a member of the far right NPD party who made an unsuccessful bid to become president himself earlier in 2010, sent the photo to prosecutors. “For decades the so-called German greeting has been outlawed and thousands of people have been taken to court for making it,“ wrote Rennicke. “The photo of her outside Schloss Bellevue in Berlin clearly shows her making this banned gesture.“
During World War II it was severely damaged by strategic bombing and the 1945 Battle of Berlin, after which it was refurbished substantially in the 1950s. The photo on the extreme right shows German First Lady Bettina Wulff apparently giving the Hitler salute from the steps. Franc Rennicke, a member of the far right NPD party who made an unsuccessful bid to become president himself earlier in 2010, sent the photo to prosecutors. “For decades the so-called German greeting has been outlawed and thousands of people have been taken to court for making it,“ wrote Rennicke. “The photo of her outside Schloss Bellevue in Berlin clearly shows her making this banned gesture.“
Hitler inspecting a guard of honour shortly after assuming full power in 1934 and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, leaving the presidential palace on the right after meeting with Hitler in March 1939.
Treptower Park
The most impressive monument to the Red Army is the vast war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin, built between 1946-1949 to commemorate the 20,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the battle of Berlin in April-May 1945 in the heart of Treptower Park close to former East Berlin's embassy quarters. In fact, it remains perhaps the only public display of a swastika in Berlin, albeit in the process of being smashed (although it is illegal to display any Nazi symbol here in Germany, even for anti-fascist purposes).
The entrance, 200 metres long and 100 meters wide leads to six bronze-cast wreaths measuring around ten metres in diameter.Beside the pathways friezes have been erected with reliefs displaying war scenes and historical moments. On each of these is a quote from Stalin.
The most spectacular element of the memorial is towering up in the rear end of the park on a grassy hill. It is a mausoleum on which a ten to twelve metre high bronze statue is placed depicting a bareheaded, heroic, Soviet soldier wielding a sword and standing on a smashed swastika, into which the sword is deeply cut. On his left arm he is carrying a child while staring out over the plaza.
Martin Luther Memorial Church
This church, built in 1929 in the Bauhaus style, comes complete with interior decoration from the Third Reich although there are bare patches where swastikas, illegal in Germany since 1945 have been ripped out. There is an image of a Nazi storm trooper side by side with Jesus Christ carved into the pulpit, the entrance is lit by a chandelier in the shape of an iron cross and the organ was used to stir the spirits at a torch-lit Nuremberg rally.
“There was a bust of Adolf Hitler in the nave,” Isolde Boehm, dean of the church, said. “A carved face of Hitler has been replaced by one of Martin Luther. There is even a rumour that the church was supposed to be called the Adolf Hitler Church.”
There is no other church in Germany so obviously from the Third Reich era. In the 1930s two thirds of the parish of Martin Luther Memorial were Nazi Party members. Their babies were baptised in a wooden font, which still bears the image of a storm trooper, and they married to music played by an organ that helped to create the dark atmosphere of the Nuremberg rallies. In 1932 the Protestant church came under the influence of a Nazi movement called the "German Christians" -- called "stormtroopers of Jesus," by the group's leader and founder Rev. Joachim Hossenfelder. In 1933 Hitler forced regional Protestant churches to merge into the Protestant Reich Church which, based on Nazi ideas of “positive Christianity”, portrayed Jesus as an “Aryan” and eliminated the Old Testament.
During the war Alfred Rosenberg conceived a new National Reich Church which would replace the Bible with Mein Kampf. Until 1942 bells embossed with the swastika called the Nazi faithful to church on Sundays. Then the bells were melted down and made into cannon.
Parishioners and priests are trying to raise the €3.5 million (about $US4.2 million) needed to rescue the church from collapse. Sources: Der Spiegel and The Times on Line
Arch with stone carving of helmeted stormtrooper
Wooden frieze carved into the side of the pulpit depicting Jesus standing next to a helmeted German soldier and Aryan women and children.
Heavy Load Testing Body
Messegelände
The Berlin Messe is an exhibition hall Goebbels had built in 1936-37. The swastikas returned in 2007 to accommodate Tom Cruise's movie Valkyrie.
Amongst the 26 halls covering 160.000 m² is the Deutschlandhalle
The Deutschlandhalle is an arena in the West-end neighbourhood of Berlin, inaugurated on 29 November 1935 by Adolf Hitler. It was built primarily for the 1936 Summer Olympics when the boxing, weightlifting and wrestling competitions took place here. Hitler spoke to 20,000 volunteers here at the opening rally of the Winterhilfswerk Winter Relief Project on October 5, 1937. Heavily damaged by air raids in 1943, the Deutschlandhalle was rebuilt after World War II and since 1957 has served as a multi purpose arena and sports venue, in the last years primarily for ice hockey, but also for indoor soccer and again for boxing.
The interaction between leaders and people had secured that, particularly in times of anxiety, National Socialists could appeal to the people in order to receive from it their new marching orders.
From Hitler's speech at the dedication of the Deutschlandhalle, 29th November, 1935
It was here that, on 19 February 1938, test pilot Hanna Reitsch demonstrated the first indoor flight in the arena with a Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter. The photo on the right shows the model at the Deutsches Museum in Munich with swastika painted over.
Karlshorst
Where the war officially ended. No British or American flags are present today to honour those who made the victory possible.
Karlshorst
WannseeZhukov found a two‐storey building at Karlshorst in eastern Berlin that had once housed the canteen of the German military engineering school. There, at a little before midnight on May 8, the Allied representatives gathered. New surrender documents had been drawn up in Moscow and hurriedly brought there by Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor at the Moscow trials in the 1930s, who had become deputy minister for foreign affairs. Hours were spent trying to reconcile Soviet and Western versions. The text was typed and re‐typed on a small portable machine by candlelight, following an electric power failure. At last, exactly at the stroke of midnight, Zhukov led the representatives of the other Allied powers, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, General Carl Spaatz and General de Lattre de Tassigny, into the hall. They sat at a long green table, and the German military leaders were ushered in, led by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s headquarters chief of staff. Keitel struggled to maintain his dignity. His face was blotchy and red, his hand shook. As he walked to the table to sign the surrender his monocle dropped from his eye and dangled by its cord. He had, Zhukov later recalled, ‘a beaten look’, though other witnesses thought the Germans ‘arrogant and dignified’. At exactly forty‐three minutes past midnight the ceremony was complete. Zhukov made what Stalin regarded as a dull speech for such an historic day, then hosted a night‐long banquet, which ended with the Soviet generals, including Zhukov, dancing in the tradition of their country.Overy (277) Russia's War
The Wannsee Conference was convened on 20 January 1942 by the second-highest ranking ϟϟ leader Reinhard Heydrich in a luxurious villa taken over by the ϟϟ in the wealthy Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Its purpose was to announce the launching of the “final solution” of the Jewish question in Europe to leading government and party bureaucrats and to secure their cooperation in this project. Historians have not been able to determine with absolute certainty just when Hitler made the decision for systematic genocide. On 31 July 1941, six weeks after the ϟϟ Einsatzgruppen began murdering Soviet Jews in coordination with “Operation Barbarossa,” Heydrich was delegated the task of drawing up plans for “a total solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe”. It seems almost certain that he was given the green light to implement these plans by October 1941, when Jewish emigration was prohibited throughout Europe and preparations for the deportation of German Jews were put into place. Euthanasia “experts” had already been transferred to occupied Poland to set up the facilities for mass killings by poison gas. The ruthless racial and ideological war against the Soviet Union provided the conditions under which a systematic extermination program could be launched without generating wide publicity.
The Conference had originally been called for December 8, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the launching of the Soviet offensive against the German siege of Moscow forced a postponement. The minutes do not openly describe the killing programme, but none of the high-ranking participants from the various government ministries could have been in any doubt what Heydrich meant when he said that the remnant of Jews who survived forced labour would have to be “appropriately dealt with.” Adolf Eichmann, the specialist on the “Jewish question” in the Reich Security Main Office run by Heydrich, provided the population statistics, which overstated the number of Jews in Europe by some two million. Much of the conference was taken up by the question of whether Jews of mixed ancestry (Mischlinge) and Jews in mixed marriages were to be included in the “final solution.” The ϟϟ was forced by considerations of public morale to respect these distinctions in Germany itself. In the occupied areas, however, the Nazis made no exceptions for part-Jews or Jews in mixed marriages.
Stackelberg & Winkle The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts (345-346)
Of the fourteen participants invited and sat around this table discussing the logistics of mass murder, eight held doctorates or comparable university degrees.
The start of the 1984 German television production Die Wannseekonferenz
which presents the conference in real time. Directed by Heinz Schirk
with a disturbing performance of charm and calculation by Dietrich
Mattausch as Heydrich, the film is based on records and minutes kept of
the conference, spoken by unnervingly convincing actors in carefully
reconstructed surroundings and wearing meticulously authentic uniforms. Wannseekonferenz appears the better movie with Conspiracy
coming across as a flashy imitation, although watching both films is
instructive. Both have the same people attending the conference, but how
each attendee is portrayed at the conference is strikingly different.
Most of the attendees in Conspiracy
(except for Dr. Klopfer) are viewed as flawed intellectuals, but full
of grace, charm and manners (which makes a nice stark comparison with
what they are discussing). Almost all of the attendees in Die Wannseekonferenz
(except for the female secretary) are shown as crude, corrupt pigs that
differ with each other only as to how to divide their 'power'. It would
be interesting to research the 'real' Major Lange. The crude drunken
Major Lange of Die Wannseekonferenz seems more likely to be butchering the Jews of Riga than the soft spoken, charming, well-mannered Major Lange of Conspiracy.
A tour of the house, left, and scene from the BBC / HBO television film Conspiracy which
dramatises the 1942 Wannsee Conference which features Kenneth Branagh
as Reinhard Heydrich, Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, and Colin Firth
as Wilhelm Stuckart.
Tempelhof aeroport
Left: Hitler and Goering at Flughafen Tempelhof in 1932.
Centre: Hess, Hitler and Goering on Tempelhof Field, May Day from the Nazi book Life of a Leader.
Right: History of the site. After the Nazis took power, Albert Speer was tasked with planning the reconstruction of Berlin. Among the first projects the Nazis undertook was the renovation of Berlin's Tempelhof International Airport, which began in 1934. Tempelhof was dramatically redesigned as the gateway to Europe, and became the forerunner of today's modern airports. Indeed, the airport halls and the neighbouring buildings are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and Tempelhof has been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations. However, although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II.
The Nazi enlargement of Berlin's Tempelhof aeroport grandiosely demonstrated their aims at enlarging Germany's influence in Europe. The airport's eagle design clearly conveys that "the Eagle of Germany" would again take to the skies, to fly higher than ever before. Coupled with other Nazi architectural accomplishments, like the 1936 Olympic Stadium, and Nuremberg Zeppelin Tribune, were assuredly profound propaganda victories for the Nazi regime.
Centre: Hess, Hitler and Goering on Tempelhof Field, May Day from the Nazi book Life of a Leader.
Right: History of the site. After the Nazis took power, Albert Speer was tasked with planning the reconstruction of Berlin. Among the first projects the Nazis undertook was the renovation of Berlin's Tempelhof International Airport, which began in 1934. Tempelhof was dramatically redesigned as the gateway to Europe, and became the forerunner of today's modern airports. Indeed, the airport halls and the neighbouring buildings are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and Tempelhof has been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations. However, although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II.
The Nazi enlargement of Berlin's Tempelhof aeroport grandiosely demonstrated their aims at enlarging Germany's influence in Europe. The airport's eagle design clearly conveys that "the Eagle of Germany" would again take to the skies, to fly higher than ever before. Coupled with other Nazi architectural accomplishments, like the 1936 Olympic Stadium, and Nuremberg Zeppelin Tribune, were assuredly profound propaganda victories for the Nazi regime.
A decapitated reichsadler in front of the aeroport with how it originally appeared on the roof with victorious Red Army soldiers, May 1945
The Nazi eagle, shorn of its swastika, still remains
The swastikas return to allow Tom Cruise to make his move Valkyrie
