Traces of Evil: Bavarian International School Trips to Berlin

Site of Hitler's Bunker and New Reich Chancellery

Bavarian International School students at Führerbunker

Site of the bunker and as it appears today during my 2021 class trip with my Bavarian International School students. On April 29, 1945 Hitler wrote his political and personal testament in the bunker thereafter, he and Eva Braun married. The next day they took their lives in Hitler's living and working space in the bunker. Their corpses were poured over with gasoline and burned in front of the emergency exit of the bunker in the garden of the New Reichskanzlei. The following day on May 1, both Joseph and Magda Goebbels took killed themselves just outside the bunkers' emergency exit after their children had probably been killed in their sleeping room in the Vorbunker by the hand of Magda Goebbels with Zyankali. Hans Krebs, last chief of the General Staff of the Army, and the last military commander-in-chief, Wilhelm Burgdorf, were shot in the bunkers' card room. Franz Schädle, chief of the commando commando, also took refuge in the bunker. In the night from the 1st to the 2nd of May the remaining inmates left the bunker. On May 2, General Helmuth Weidling declared the capitulation of Berlin, whereupon the Red Army discovered and took possession of the now abandoned bunker.

Bavarian International School students where Hitler's body cremated

War correspondents shown the grave where Hitler's charred body was alleged to be buried and the site today with my students from the Bavarian International School. Linda Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, determined that the DNA came from a 20- to 40-year-old woman. The skull fragment could have come from Braun, but to know that, the lab would need samples of her DNA. Also, the DNA samples were very degraded, making identification unlikely. Witnesses never reported Braun being shot in the head, Bellantoni said, and she is thought to have died of cyanide poisoning. "This person, with a bullet hole coming out the back of the head, would have been shot in the face, in the mouth or underneath the chin," he said. "It would have been hard for them to miss that."

Bavarian International School students at site of Hitler's chancellery

The view of the site of the Chancellery from the subway station into Vossstrasse taken during my 2018 trip with my Bavarian International School students.

Hotel Kaiserhof in 1938 and the same site today with my students during our Bavarian International School class trip in 2020. hitler nazi

Taxis lined up in front of the legendary Hotel Kaiserhof in 1938 and the same site today with my students during our Bavarian International School class trip in 2020. On November 22, 1943 the hotel was badly damaged by the RAF during an air-raid on Berlin. The ruins ended up in East Berlin after the division of the city and were later completely torn down and in 1974 the North Korean embassy to East Germany was constructed on the site. When in 2001 its successor state, the Federal Republic of Germany, re-established diplomatic relations with North Korea, the latter's embassy returned to the building. Since 2004, the annex on the south half of the site has been leased to Cityhostel Berlin, which currently pays the North Korean regime an estimated €38,000 per month. It was here on February 26, 1932 in a ceremony that Hitler had himself appointed a Regierungsrat in Brunswick for the period of a week, thus acquiring German citizenship. Fest writes how this was "for years his Berlin headquarters;" Irving adds that "[t]his was where Hitler made his command post whenever he was in Berlin." After having lunch "Hitler read newspapers, brought by an aide each day from a kiosk at the nearby Kaiserhof Hotel. In earlier years he had taken tea in the Kaiserhof: as he entered, the little orchestra would strike up the ‘Donkey Serenade,’ his favourite Hollywood movie tune."

bronze statue of Leopold I shown with my students during my 2016 Bavarian International School trip was moved in 2005 to its current location on Wilhelmplatz

The bronze statue of Leopold I shown with my students during my 2016 Bavarian International School trip was moved in 2005 to its current location on Wilhelmplatz on the initative of the Berlin Schadow Society which planned to re-erect the statues of the Prussian military near their historical locations. The bronze copies of the Zieten and Anhalt-Dessau monuments were rebuilt in 2003 and 2005 on the subway island on the transverse axis of the former Wilhelmplatz. The remaining four bronze statues were moved to a new location on the neighboring Zietenplatz in September 2009 after its reconstruction, which began in 2005, was completed. Since 2011, the statues as a whole have been a listed building.