Central Berlin WWII tour (self-guided tour)

Central Berlin WWII tour: Göring’s Ministry of Aviation

• Adress: Wilhelmstrasse 97, Berlin
• opening hour: Always open
• U2 Mohrenstrasse

This Building was contriucted betwren 1935 and 1936, to house the Ministero of Aviation of Hermann Göring. It was built by Ernst Sagebiel in the typical National Socialist style. It escaped serius bombing during the Second World War and was restored. In 1950 a 18 metres long murale was aced under the pillars. It hard bene created by artista Max Lingner showing the Socialist idea of a bright future.

Battle of Berlin: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche Berlin

• Adress: Breitscheidplatz, Berlin
• opening time: everyday 9-19
• S+U Zoologischer Garten

The old church was built in 1890 but was bombed in 1943. At the and of the Second World War It was decided to rebuilt It Be aise the entrambe hall, the altar, and the baptistry were still intanto. The new church in now part of a bigger complex adding together old and new building. At the entrance of the new church, on the right side visitors can see the famous Cross of Nails, made by Nails coming from Coventry Cathedral

Central Berlin WWII tour: Memorial Adolf Eichmann’s Office

• Adress: Kurfürstenstraße 115/116
• opening time:Always open
• S+U Zoologischer Garten + Bus 100

In this area was located the office of Adolf Eichmann, Bureau IV B4 of the Reichs Central Office for Jewish Emigration and Relocation, This office was sadly famous and responsible for the deportation of millions Jews and the murder of quite all of them in the Concentrati on camps during the Second World War. The building was demolished in 1961 but a pannel is remembering what happened in this area about 80 years ago. To know something more about the conferenze of Wannsee where he was invited, have a look here

Battle of Berlin: Topography of Terror

• Adress: Niederkirchnerstraße 8
• Opening time: everyday 10-20
• S1-2 Anhalter Bahnhof

At the beginning the exibition was considered a short term one, but in 1992 Germany decided to trasform it in a permanent exibition exactly where the old Reich Security Main Office and prisons were before the Battle of Berlin. Hitler had created in the 1920’s the so called SS of the Nazi Party, led Heinrich Himmler since 1929. It was considered an elite troop totaly loyal to Hitler, guaranteeing his personal security. Very soon the SS became an independent structure of the Nazi Party. These people arrested and put in prisons all those that were considered dangerous for the Party. In front of the Memorial a 200mt long part of the Berlin Wall

Central Berlin WWII tour: Memorial for the Sinti and Roma of Europe

• Adress: Simsonweg
• opening time: always open
• S+U Zoologischer Garten + Bus 100

This monument situated next to the German Reichtag is dedicated to the memory of the 220,000 Sinti and Roma peoples killer by the Nazis.The memorial was designed by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan and is formed by a dark, circular pool of water at the centre of which there is a triangular stone that the badges that Sinti and Roma had to wear in the concentration camp.  Around the pool iswritten the poem ‘Auschwitz’ by Roma poet Santino Spinelli,

Memorial Offices Operation T4

• Adress: Tiergartenstraße 4
• opening time: always open
• S1-2-25 Potsdamer Platz + 8 minutes walk

Aktion T4 was a campaign of mass murder organized by the Nazis, The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, the address of the Chancellery department that was involved in this organization. The plan was to select patients “sick and in critical medical conditions” and then administer to them a “mercy death”. The killings took place from September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945 and involved 275,000 to 300,000 people. To remember this mass murder a German national memorial to the people with disabilities murdered by the Nazis was buildt in 2014 in Berlin It is located where more than 60 Nazi bureaucrats and doctors worked in secret for the “T4” programme to organise the mass murder.

Battle of Berlin: Ruins of Anhalter Railway Station

• Adress: Askanischer Platz 6
• opening time: always open
• S1-2 Anhalter Bahnhof

Memorial “Trains to Life – Trains to Death”

• Adress: Georgenstraße 14/17, Berlin
• opening time: always open
• S Friedrichstraße station

This is the name of a bronze sculture done by architect and sculptor Frank Meisler, installed outside the Friedrichstraße station The sculpture rappresents two groups of children. One group is a pair of children symbolizing those saved by the Kindertransport, which brought 10,000 Jewish children to safety in the United Kingdom and other countries. The other group consists of five children, who represent the 1,600,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children brought by Holocaust trains to the concentration camps and then killed. Meisler himself was one of the Children saved by the Kindertransport.

Battle of Berlin: Pallasstrasse Air-Raid Shelter

• Adress: Pallasstraße 28, 10781 Berlin
• opening time: Always open outsider
• U Klistpark

In Germany there was particolar type of bunkers called Hochbunkers that were considered really safe against bombing.These Air raid shelters were usually built upwatd and made by concrete blocks. It was considered much easier and cheaper than the underground ones. One of the largest Is the Hochbunkers in Pallasstrasse buildt betwren 1943 and 1945 by slave labours and was used as telegraph and telephone centre. The American tried to male in Blow up but being in the middle of many othet Building they decide to leave It. during the Cold War decide to modernize it, in case the population could need It again. Today the bunkers is partially covered by a moderna building called Pallaseum

Victory Column

The Victory Column was First located in front of the Reichstag Parliament. In 1938–39, following Hitler’s plans to transform Berlin into a world capital callled Germania, the column was moved just over 1.5 km to its present location. In that period a new section was added, raising the column to a height of 67 metres. The Victory Column survived the Second World War and can be today visited.

Battle of Berlin: Fúhrer Bunker

The so called Führerbunker was an air+raid shelter located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex where Hitler took up residence on 16 January 1945. This underground building became the centre of the Nazi regime until the end of War. Hitler married Eva Braun there on 29 April 1945, and 40 hours after they committed suicide. The Bunker has bern destroyed and It Is now a parking-place

Babelplatz

On 10 May 1933, studente and professors of the Nazi German Student Union burnt books as part of a nationwide action “against the un-German spirit”. The books were chosen according to blacklists made by the librarian Wolfgang Herrmann. To Remember what happened here, in 1995 Germany decided to build a monumento dedicated to the burning called The Empty Library. It is a public memorial by Israeli sculptor Micha Ullman. The memorial is set in the middle of the square, and contains a collection of empty White subterranean bookcases.

German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin

• Adress: Stauffenbergstraße 13 – 14
• opening time: Mo-Fr 9-18 Sat- Sun 10-18
• U1Kurfürstenstraße + 10 min. Walk

The German Resistance Memorial Center was open in the area in which the attempted coup of July 20, 1944 took Place. It provides informations and great pictures about all the attempted to organise a Resistance against the National Socialism of Hitler. It show the individuals and the groups that took any actions against the German Dictatorship from 1933 and 1945. Many rooms are dedicated to the Jewish men and women Who resisted to the persecutions, and Who helped them to survive.

Johann Georg Elser Memorial

This memorial remembers the carpenter Johann Georg Elser Who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a time bomb on 8 November 1939. The attack failed, and Elser was arrested and closed in a concentration camp. Shortly before the end of the Second World War he was killed in the Dachau.

Central Berlin WWII tour MAP

Central Berlin WWII tour: OTHER WWII TOURS

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Central Berlin WWII tour (self-guided tour)⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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