Heavy History in Berlin

7 min readJul 25, 2018

The most famous street in Berlin is Unter den Linden, literally “under the linden” which refers to the trees which lined the wide boulevard. Tuesday morning I got up early and walked along the street investigating sites steeped in history.

The bare cobblestones of the Bebelplatz stretched out to the south. On the ground in the middle of the square was a glass window looking down on empty library shelves. This was the site of the infamous Nazi book burning of May 10, 1933. A plaque, embedded in the ground, read: “where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people”.

A bit further down from the square was the Neue Wache, a guardhouse that had been a memorial to German war dead since it was built in 1816. The Nazis used it as a backdrop to stage elaborate ceremonies honoring military sacrifice. When you peer in the stark interior today, a sculpture entitled Mother with her Dead Son is positioned under a round opening in the ceiling.

The statue is exposed to the rain, snow and cold of the Berlin climate, symbolizing the suffering of civilians during World War II. I’ve read that when it rains, the building and mother appear to be weeping.

Continuing my walk, the surrounding architecture to me seemed rather cold and imposing. Everything I was looking at today had been painstakingly reassembled from the rubble following the war. Similar to the Kaiser Wilhelm church, evidence of bullets and bombs marked the stone exteriors.

Another important street in the history of Berlin, Wilhelmstraße housed much of the Reich government. Hitler built his new Chancellery here. Today there are monuments and signage marking sites where Nazi official buildings once stood. A few survived the extensive bombing during the war. It was surreal to stand next to doorways and walls shown in the old photos.

On a lighter note, I was amused by a sign along the road which lit up to thank drivers who stayed under the speed limit:

Hitler and his staff moved underground as the Red Army closed in on Berlin in April of 1945. The bunker where he committed suicide is today marked only by a sign next to a mundane parking lot. The Soviets leveled the Chancellery and bunker following the war to erase all landmarks of Nazi Germany.

Perhaps this was completely intentional, but the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is located just down the street from Hitler’s bunker site. After lengthy debate in 1999, the German government established a central memorial site in Berlin to the Holocaust.

There isn’t an official explanation for the design. Almost 3,000 concrete slabs of various heights stretch out forming a dense maze as you descend among them. The walkways are narrow and uneven, throwing off your balance. The blocks are sinister and orderly, similar to the Nazi killing machine. You’re open to interpret the memorial yourself.

I continued down Wilhelmstraße. This area of Berlin was behind the wall. A propaganda mural depicting the joys of socialism stretched across one building. I was struck by how similar the scenes looked to what we see from North Korea.

In stark contrast to the forced joy, you next walk past crumbling remains of a long stretch of the Berlin Wall.

One of the most powerful sites to visit in Berlin is the relatively new (opened in 2010) Topography of Terror museum. The cellar of Gestapo headquarters was excavated and forms the backdrop for photos providing details on how the Nazis rose to power.

I leaned in to examine many of the photos.

There were groups of German students touring the grounds with teachers and guides interpreting the various exhibits.

Two things caught my eye in reference to the United States. The first was a faint American flag painted on a section of the Berlin Wall. The second was a pair of photos purposely set next to each other. On the left, American soldiers killed by the Germans after surrendering and on the right, German solders held by the Americans. The contrast is jolting.

Remember the movie Valkyrie with Tom Cruise depicting Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and the assassination attempt on Hitler? I visited the Bendlerblock, an army office where military resistance to the Nazi regime grew. The memorial offered a solemn look at resistance across German society, including people who tried to hide Jewish neighbors and friends.

Following the failed plot, implicated German generals and von Stauffenberg were executed by firing squad in this courtyard.

One exhibit I found extremely interesting (and topical) was a photo taken of an enthusiastic crowd giving the Nazi salute. Identified in a circle was one man who crossed his arms in defiance and refused to go along. There was no information as to what consequences he suffered.

After a full day of heavy history, I was ready for a break. I escaped to the green Tiergarten and located a hidden Biergarten in the cool shade next to a lake.