The Third Reich and Nazi Germany are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Take this tour to get familiar with the unparalleled history of the most defining figure and regime of the 20th Century – Hitler and the Third Reich.
1) Gestapo and SS Headquaters
The Gestapo and SS Headquarters in Berlin is the location of an outdoor museum called the Topography of Terror. It is a chilling memorial of one of the most cruel interrogation agencies since the inquisition.
The Gestapo and SS headquarters was the building where people who were regarded as a threat to the Nazi regime were questioned tortured and killed. It was completely ruined during the Berlin bombings of World War II and only the cellars survived. In 1987, a group of students excavated the cellars of the Gestapo Headquarters with their bare hands and the objects they found there forms the exhibits of the outdoor exhibition named Topography of Terror. The museum aims to show the world how people were tortured to death without a fair trial by a totalitarian regime. There is also a covered exhibition complex and a library adjacent to the outdoor display.
The Topography of Terror Museum is a monument to liberty and the aim is to illustrate that democracy and civil rights need to be defended on a daily basis. It chronicles the war crimes committed by the Nazi regime in a blatant abuse of power. A free headset is available at the reception with English language commentary for the benefit of visitors.
Image Courtesy of Flickr and zongo69
2) Goering's Air Force Headquarters
Goering’s Air Force Headquarters also called the Reich Air Ministry is a large building that now houses the German Finance Ministry. It was in here that the German Democratic Republic was pronounced in 1949.
The Reich Air Ministry headquarters was designed by architect, Ernst Sagebiel. It has seven floors and on completion in 1936, it was the largest office building in Europe. The massive structure is 250 meters long with 2,800 rooms. The corridors stretch for over 7 kilometers and there are 17 stairways and 4000 windows. It covers a floor area of 112,000 square meters.
The Reich Air Ministry building is one of the few structures in Berlin that survived the Berlin bombings of World War II almost intact. After the war it was used by the Soviet military as its headquarters until 1948. It housed the main offices of the government during the communist era. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it became the headquarters of the True Hand agency that attempted to rapidly and ruthlessly privatize the former East Germany. Today the building used by the Ministry of Finance is only visible to visitors from outside. A mural glorifying workers rights in a communist state by artist, Max Linger forms part of the façade. At the end of August, the building is open to the public for a day and free guided tours are conducted around the Reich Air Ministry.
Image Courtesy of Wikimedia and Adam Carr
3) Goebbels Propaganda Ministry
When Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Goebbels was initially given no office: the coalition cabinet Hitler headed contained only a minority of Nazis as part of the deal he had negotiated with President Paul von Hindenburg and the conservative parties. On 13 March, Goebbels had his reward for his part in bringing the Nazis to power by being appointed Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Volksaufklärung und Propaganda), with a seat in the Cabinet. The role of the new ministry, which took over palatial accommodation in the 18th-century Leopold Palace on Wilhelmstrasse, just across from Hitler’s offices in the Reich Chancellery, was to centralize Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural and intellectual life, particularly the press, radio and the visual and performing arts.
Image Courtesy of Wikimedia and Beek100
Sight description based on wikipedia
4) Hitler's Bunker
The Führerbunker (German, literally meaning "shelter/bunker [for the] leader" or "[the] Führer's shelter") was located beneath Hitler's New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was in this subterranean bunker where Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun spent the last few weeks of the war and where their lives came to an end on April 30, 1945. In 1959 the East German government also tried to blast the bunker, apparently without much effect. Since it was near the Berlin Wall, the site was undeveloped and neglected until after reunification. During the construction of residential housing and other buildings on the site in 1988–89 several underground sections of the old bunker were uncovered by work crews and were for the most part destroyed. Since 1945 government authorities have been consistently concerned about the site of the bunker evolving into a Neo-Nazi shrine. The strategy for avoiding this has largely been to ensure the surroundings remain anonymous and unremarkable.
Image Courtesy of Flickr and Will Palmer
Sight description based on wikipedia
5) Holocaust-Mahnmal
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims and other victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000 square meter site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", one for each page of the Talmud arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. An attached underground "Place of Information" (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public on May 12 of the same year.
Image Courtesy of Wikimedia and Mazbln
6) Soviet War Memorial
The Soviet War Memorial on Treptower Park in Berlin is a memorial erected for the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin and brought World War II to an end. It was erected four years after the end of the war.
The Soviet War Memorial was erected at the centre of the ruined Treptower Park that was damaged during the Berlin bombings. The monument is a curved covered portico with one central column. A large sculpture of a soviet soldier stands on the central column. The large bronze figure crafted by Soviet sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich depicts a Russian soldier carrying a child and crushing a Swastika beneath his feet. 16 stone blocks surround the statue with inscriptions of military scenes and quotations of Josef Stalin.
The Soviet War Memorial is also the cemetery of over 5000 Russian soldiers who laid down their lives to defeat the Nazi regime. Two stylized Soviet flags at the entrance form the gateway to the park. On the central axis of the monument is a sculpture depicting mother Russia grieving for her lost sons. After the unification of Germany the memorial is being maintained by the city of Berlin. On VE Day the venue plays host to several commemorative events.
Image Courtesy of Flickr and luisvilla