Sites outside central Berlin

Wannsee

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)

Site of the Wannsee Conference, a meeting of senior Nazi officials of the Nazi German regime, held on 20 January 1942 to inform senior Nazis and senior Governmental administrators of plans for the "Final solution to the Jewish question."

Of the fourteen participants invited and sat around this table discussing the logistics of mass murder, eight held doctorates or comparable university degrees.

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.

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.

Tempelhof aeroport

Left: Hitler and Goering at Flughafen Tempelhof in 1932.
Right: Hess, Hitler and Goering on Tempelhof Field, May Day from the Nazi book Life of a Leader.

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

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.

Sans Souci

Potsdam

 The main entrance of the Cecilienhof Palace, where the Potsdam "Big Three" meetings were held. On the left, the Flags of the USSR, United States and United Kingdom are flying over the entranceway as Soviet officers serve as guards. Photographed during the conference.

 The conference room then and now

There remained a great deal of unfinished business. The future of Germany, discussed at Yalta, was not decided by the documents of surrender. The settlement in Eastern Europe was not resolved. The war with Japan was not yet over. The three wartime allies agreed to meet for a conference in which they could explore the many political issues left over from the defeat of the Axis powers. The date agreed upon was July 15. Stalin persuaded his allies to add to the symbolism of surrender by meeting in Berlin. The site chosen was Potsdam, home of Prussian militarism. Zhukov was once again asked to find a suitable venue. He chose the Cecilienhof, a former palace of the Prussian royal family. Other villas were requisitioned for the thousands of officials who followed in train behind their heads of state. Zhukov organized the refurbishment of thirty‐six rooms and an assembly hall in the palace. By request Truman’s headquarters were painted blue; Churchill asked for pink; the Soviet delegation chose a stark white. No circular conference table large enough and in one piece could be found in Berlin, so the Lux furniture factory in Moscow was asked to build one in time for the conference.

Overy, Russia's War

Fort Hahneberg

Fort Hahneberg was completed in 1886 and put to use two years later as one of four forts to defend Berlin on the west side. It ended up being the only one built. The Reichsadler above the entry remains when it was used during the Third Reich. The website for the site is: http://www.forthahneberg.de/cms/website.php

The shooting of the film Inglourious Basterds at Fort Hahneberg and more images of the Fort set to the music of Edvard Grieg.

Fort Hahneberg was used as the hideout forest for the Basterds. As an aside, the title of the movie has to have the swastika removed because the display of Nazi iconography is illegal in Germany. The "Offizielle deutsche Website" has been censored too. Under the German law there ARE exceptions which allow the use of "unconstitutional symbols" for artistic and educational purposes but Universal Pictures obviously didn't find it worth the effort.

Schöneweide

The last well-preserved former Nazi forced labour camp is located in Schöneweide, located at Britzer Straße 5, Berlin-Schöneweide. In the Second World War it served as one of the more than 3,000 mass housing sites dispersed throughout the city for forced labourers. The camp was ordered to be built for 2,000 workers by the “General Building Inspector for the Reich capital” (Generalbauinspektor für die Reichshauptstadt) in close proximity to large armament industries. It included 13 stone barracks for housing. Civil forced labourers and forced labourers of various nationalities, Italian military internees as well as female concentration camp prisoners lived here. A well-preserved residential barrack referred to as ”Barrack 13” has been open for tours since the end of August 2010. In 2000 a compensation program was set up to help out the 2.3 million surviving forced labourers, which is probably both too little and too late.
Website: http://www.ns-zwangsarbeit.de

Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen

During a field trip with students in 201. The camp was used between 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in 1945, and then used by Russians in the Soviet Occupation Zone as a NKVD camp until 1950. It now operates as a museum.

Main entrance. In Sachsenhausen,

some 6,500 were confined at the outbreak of the war. Shortly thereafter, in September 1939, 900 Polish and stateless Jews from the Berlin area were taken to the camp; at the beginning of November, 500 Poles were interned. At the end of that month, 1,200 Czech students were added, and approximately 17,000 persons, mainly Polish nationals, were admitted as in- mates in the period from March to September 1940. Despite the high number of new inmates, the camp population here too stabilized at the level of roughly 10,000 prisoners. That was because of the high mortality rate as well as the transfer of large numbers of Poles to Flossenbürg, Dachau, Neuengamme (in the Bergedorf section of southeastern Hamburg), and Groß-Rosen.

Sofsky (35) The Order of Terror

Observation points then and now; since the torching of a barracks by neo-Nazis, security cameras have been installed throughout the site.

The mortuary and infirmary, showing the autopsy table.

The Russians, accompanied by Polish soldiers, chanced upon Sachsenhausen concentration camp as they moved to invest Berlin. The camp was in Oranienburg, and the fall of that former royal borough brought it home to Hitler that his days were numbered. There were just 5,000 prisoners left in Sachsenhausen of a population that had reached 50,000. The rest had been taken on 'death marches.’

MacDonogh (58) After the Reich - The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation

More and more Berliners had been taking the risk of listening to the BBC on the wireless and even dared to discuss its news. But power cuts were now creating a more effective censorship of foreign broadcasts than the police state had ever achieved. London had little idea of the great Soviet offensive, but its announcement that Sachsenhausen- Oranienburg concentration camp had been liberated just north of Berlin gave a good idea of Red Army progress and its intention to encircle the city. The indication of the horrors found there was also another reminder of the vengeance which Berlin faced. This did not stop most Berliners from convincing themselves that the concentration camp stories must be enemy propaganda.

Beevor (274) Berlin: The Downfall 1945

This communist memorial on the left remembers only political prisoners (hence the red triangles), and only those imprisoned by the Nazis as opposed to the Soviets who used the camp for an additional five years. A mass grave from that time was found in 1990. The prisoners on this memorial, far from appearing emaciated, are made to look superhuman in their resolve in a fascist stance the Nazis themselves would have approved of.

Stalin's son Yakov Dzhugashvili served as an artillery officer in the Red Army and was captured on 16 July 1941 in the early stages of the German invasion of USSR at the Battle of Smolensk. The Germans later offered to exchange Yakov for Friedrich Paulus, the German Field Marshal captured by the Soviets after the Battle of Stalingrad, but Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying "I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant". According to some sources, there was another proposition as well, that Hitler wanted to exchange Yakov for his nephew Leo Raubal; this proposition was not accepted either. Until recently, it was not clear when and how he died. According to the official German account, Dzhugashvili died by running into an electric fence in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was being held. Some have contended that Yakov committed suicide at the camp, whilst others have suggested that he was murdered. Currently, declassified files show that Dzhugashvili was shot by a guard for refusing to obey orders. Whilst Dzhugashvili was walking around the camp he was ordered back to the barracks under the threat of being shot. Dzhugashvili refused and shouted, "Shoot!" The guard shot him in the head.

• Revealed: how Stalin's brutal massacre at Katyn shamed his PoW son into suicide
• Documents Shed Light on Stalin Son's Fate

In Sachsenhausen, the SS set up a combined liquidation facility close to the crematorium, “Station Z,” after the last letter in the alphabet. Station Z included a Genickschußanlage, a shooting pit, a gas chamber, and a multiple gallows with block and tackle. The structures had been kept low intentionally so as to block visibility and prevent anyone from looking in over the wall. The first provisional gas chambers in Birkenau were outside the camp, set up in former farmhouses. But the modern crematoria were built in close proximity to the camp. They were surrounded by barbed-wire fences and shielded from view by barriers of willow trees. Flower beds lent the facilities an innocuous air. The zones of death were disguised areas beyond the round of everyday camp routine. No one had access to them except the Sonderkommandos—the corpse carriers and oven stokers. The zone of death was taboo, a place of mystery where the power to kill could unfold unhindered.

Sofsky (54) The Order of Terror

Ravensbrück

 Himmler visiting the camp and the same site today

Berlin 1939-1945 Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery

This is one of two Commonwealth cemeteries in Berlin, the other being the World War I Berlin South-Western Cemetery in Stahnsdorf, Brandenburg. This CWGC was established in 1945 as a central burial ground for aircrew and prisoners of war who were interred in the Berlin area and in East Germany.

There are also 260 burials from the post-war British Occupation Authorities staff, including my Great-Grandfather to whom I paid my respects before going on to the Olympiastadion. Of the wartime burials, about 80% are aircrew, killed in action over Germany whilst the remainder are prisoners of war. I have another site dedicated to the CWGCs of Ypres and the Somme at Echoes of War.

Olympic Stadium

Left: Rare colour footage of the Games of 1936
Right: In this video introduction to the Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936, American Jewish athlete Marty Glickman, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield, exhibition curator Susan Bachrach, and German Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann reflect and remember the 1936 Olympic Games as more than history.

The Olympiastadion was one of the few buildings that survived not just in a recognizable form, but almost untouched after the Second World War. It only suffered the impact of machine gun shots. The most significant battle around the Olympiastadion was in April 1945 when the Soviet army fought to capture it. This was during the great final battle of the Second World War in Europe, with the total invasion of Berlin as the Allies' target.

The illustration on the right by Georg Fritz is from the book Strassen und Bauten Adolf Hitlers published by the German Labour Front in 1939

Standing in front of the stadium. The clock on the left tower remains, but the sun-style swastika has been removed.

As a growing China increasingly becomes emboldened in its attack on basic human rights, its architecture reflects ideas from another totalitarian regime as shown here on Chunxiu Road in Peking where this building with its twin columns and circular building was directly inspired by the Berlin stadium. In fact, the Chinese specifically chose Albert Speer Jr. to design the plan for access to the Olympics complex, focusing on the construction of an imposing avenue, which connects the Forbidden City and the National Stadium, aka Bird’s Nest.

“His Beijing axis is reawakening old memories,” declared Die Welt. “Wasn’t there a legendary . . . north-south axis, planned by the elder Speer for Hitler’s new Berlin? Is his son to copy him or rather outdo him?”“I think it is fascinating that the son of a Nazi is rebuilding Beijing. Chinese people probably don’t know it, but Hitler was actually a great artist and his architectural vision for Berlin immense,” said Mi You, a 24-year-old architecture student.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2241705.ece

Nazi-era statues, such as Karl Albiker's discus thrower and relay racer, are among the disputed works that are still permitted to surround the stadium. The Olympiastadion was designated to play the final match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup which had been exactly 70 years after the 1936 Summer Olympics. Peter Steinhorst, chief technician on the project, said to the BBC: "Whenever you enter, you will still know this was the site of the 1936 Games. You will pass all the old Nazi sculptures." "The history is there, the totality of the buildings is there. The whole Nazi landscape has not disappeared", added the sports sociologist Günther Gebauer. "There are towers like in a fortress, and people who come will always ask where the Führer sat." Germany's Interior Minister Otto Schily, who attended the opening party, concluded: "The stadium recalls the dark elements present in its creation."

In the Bell tower at the western end of the Reichs Sportfield planted amid the tiers of the Maifeld stands, was the Olympic bell. From its peak could be observed the whole city of Berlin. During the games, it was used as observation post by administrators and police officials, doctors and the media.was the Olympic Bell. On its surface were the Olympic Rings with an eagle, the year 1936, the Brandenburg Gate, the date 1.-16. August and a motto between two swastikas: I call the youth of the world[1] and 11. Olympic Games Berlin - although the games was 10th (Summer) Olympics, but the Games of the XI Olympiad.The Bell Tower was the only part of the Reichssportfeld that was destroyed in the war. The Third Reich used tower's structure to store archives (such as films). The Soviet troops accidentally set its contents on fire, turning the tower into a makeshift chimney. The structure emerged from the fire severely damaged and weakened.In 1947 British engineers demolished the tower, however reconstructed it faithfully in 1962. The Olympic Bell (which had survived the fire and remained in its place in the tower) fell 77 metres and cracked and has been unable to sound since then. In 1956 the bell was rescued, only in order to be used as a practice target for shooting with anti-tank ammunition. The old bell survives to this day and serves now as a memorial, featuring an half-heartedly de-nazified swastika still...

The opening ceremony with the Canadian team on the right giving an hearty Hitler salute.

Adolf Hitler at May Day celebrations in Olympic stadium at 1939

Hitler's personal standard

Entrance building of the Olympia-Stadion (Olympic stadium) subway station, built for the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Left: Opening Ceremonies

Right: The prologue to the film Olympia, the 1938 film by Leni Riefenstahl documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin she briefly appears here, uncredited, as the nude dancer). The movie was produced in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker (Festival of the People) and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty). It was the first documentary film on the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became industry standards but which were groundbreaking at the time, were employed, including unusual camera angles, smash cuts, extreme close-ups, setting the railway tracks on the stadium to shoot the crowd and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political content. Nevertheless, the film appears on many lists of the greatest films of all-time, including Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies." Of course there has considerable argument as to whether this film should be considered Nazi propaganda like her earlier Triumph of the Will. Whilst the entire 1936 Olympics has been derided as the "Hitler Olympics" and was unquestionably designed primarily to showcase the accomplishments of the Third Reich, and to this extent any film accurately documenting the proceedings would come off as something of a propaganda film, Riefenstahl's defenders have pointed to her close-up shot of the expression on Hitler's face when Jesse Owens, an African-American, won a gold medal, as showing a tacit dissent from Nazi racial supremacy doctrines. Other non-Aryan winners are featured as well. Noted American film critic Richard Corliss observed in Time that

The matter of Riefenstahl 'the Nazi director' is worth raising so it can be dismissed. [I]n the hallucinatory documentary Triumph of the Will... [she] painted Adolf Hitler as a Wagnerian deity... But that was in 1934–35. In [Olympia] Riefenstahl gave the same heroic treatment to Jesse Owens...

Haus des Deutschen Sports

The Haus des Deutschen Sports was taken over by British Forces in 1945 and kept as a sports and leisure complex for service personnel until their departure from Berlin in the 1990s. The photo on the right shows it today

 

Situated on a stone pillar near the Haus des Deutschen Sports at the Olympiastadion Complex.

History repeating itself

The "Olympic Torch Run", now revered as a seemingly-ancient tradition, was devised by Riefenstahl for these games and this film in conjunction with the German sports official Dr. Carl Diem.

Blue-kitted Chinese thugs shoving British police aside in London in order to force the torch through.

Fittingly, the Chinese were actually selling Nazi flags during the Games! I myself Kept the Tibetan flag hidden away in a corner of my classroom in Peking at the same time.

The shameful awarding of the Games to another totalitarian regime that shows outright contempt for the concept of human rights led me to leave Peking during the Games and spent a week outside the Chinese embassy in London (up to Hebden Bridge) doing what none can do anywhere in China- freely demonstrate and express one's view- which so many fought and died to ensure others could.

Links to Groups Fighting Chinese Fascism today:

• British Biannual Report on China
• China Information Centre
• China Live Organ Harvesting Report
• Chinese Human Rights Web
• Chinese Modern Torture Methods
• Forced Labour in China
• How many does China execute?
• Human Rights in China
• Massive protests & riots in China
• Religion / Belief persecution in China
• Reporters attacked in China
• Speech suppression in China
• Ten essential facts about China
• The Epoch Times
• The Ministry of Truth
• Torture methods used by China police
• US Congressional Report on China
• US State Department Report on China