an afternoon with Hitler

On Monday, I felt sufficiently relaxed and rested that I decided to start being a tourist. I'd paid a whirlwind four-day visit to Rhea in Berlin two years ago, where I saw a few of the sights, but to get a more in-depth view of the city I decided to do a couple of walking tours.

Helen, who I had met during orientation for the English camps (she was one of the instructors) was also in Berlin with her father so we decided to meet up and do the Third Reich tour of Berlin - Nazi Germany. The tour was run by Jared, a very enthusiastic and very knowledgeable American guide and there must have been about 30 of us at least on the tour.

Jarred took us by foot and bus to a lot of the major sites of Nazi Germany history, starting with the bombed-out Memorial Church, which was damaged in an air raid during World War II. The church was not restored and the remains of the church serve as one of many World War II memorials.

We then boarded a bus to East Berlin, where the battle of Berlin took place and saw bullet holes in buildings and learnt about the events that took place during the final battle of the war.

We visited the site of the Air Defence Ministry, where the Lufftwathe co-ordinated the Battle of Britain and Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, buildings which are still used today for various governmental purposes. It was a strange feeling to stand in front of these buildings which once served a very different purpose, and seeing people going in and out, carrying out their everyday business in these sites which played such a huge part in history.

Possibly the most chilling part of the tour was the 'Topography of Terror', a street where Himmler's SS and Getapo headquarters were located. 

Berlin history three-fold - in the back, an example of a typical building erected during Hitler's rule. He wanted all buildings to be uniform and plain, intimidating, imposing. Few of these buildings survived WWII. In the middle, a one of the longest remaining sections of the Berlin Wall. In front, the foundations of the SS and Gestapo headquarters.

An outdoor and indoor museum, the Topography of Terror focuses on the cellars of these buildings, as the buildings themselves were demolished during the war. The tiled cellar of the Gestapo building, where many political prisoners were tourtured and executed,is a sobering site, and the exhibitions which run the length of the Topography of Terror give context to these buildings and provide a very brief overview of the history of Nazi Germany.

Indoors, the information is much more detailed, walking you through the events of Third Reich rule chronologically, and broken down into sections about before Hitler's rule, the formation of the SS and Gestapo, political prisoners, concentration camps and the events of World War II. One could spend hours in there, and as we only had 20 minutes, I came back the next day on my own for a more in-depth look.

We also visited a number of memorials, the most sobering being the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a 4.7 acre site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs of varying height arranged in a grid pattern on an undulating field, somewhat resembling a graveyard.

(Pic from Wikipedia)

Tthe grandest was one of the three the Soviet memorials, which was erected only months after the capture of Berlin. It is flanked by tanks and features a huge statue of a Soviet soldier atop a curved wall. It's also a burial site of around 2,000 fallen Soviet soldiers.

(Pic from Wikipedia)

We visited the site where Operation Valkyrie came to an end after a botched assassination attempt on Hitler, and spent some time at the exact location of the bunker where Hitler spent his final days and committed suicide, and learned an in-depth account of the last few days of his life.

The tour finished in front of the Reichstag, the site of the Reichstag fire in 1933, which was a turning point in the establishment of Nazi Germany as it was used as evidence by Nazis that the Communists were plotting against the German government. The president at the time, at the urging of Hitler (who had just been sworn in as chancellor), instituted mass arrests of Communists, including all of the Communist parliamentary delegates. With their bitter rival Communists gone and their seats empty, the National Socialist German Workers Party went from being the minority tomthe majority and thus allowed Hitler to consolidate his power.

The building was essentially destroyed during the Cold War, but was reconstructed in the 1990s afger the German reunification and was officially reopened in 1999. It again houses the German government (Bundstag).

The tour was so interesting, and it made me wish I'd paid more attention in History at school. It's amazing to see so many memorials and monuments pointing to World War II, it seems that Germany is determined not to forget the atrocities that were committed during the war. The Jewish memorial is right next to the Reichstag, serving as a warning to all the politicians who travel past it each day the consequences of abusing power.