Holocaust, WWII & the Third Reich in Germany

Inaugurated in 1841, Anhalter Bahnhof was one of Berlin’s most important train stations. And known as the Gateway to the South. During the Nazi era, it is estimated some 500,000 people fled the country from here. From 1942 to 1945 over 9,600 Jews were sent from here to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. In the final months of Second World War the building was destroyed. A new museum telling the story of exile will open on this site in 2026.

The WWII bunker on Schöneberger Straße near Anhalter Station was intended to shelter up to 3,000 commuters in the event of an air raid on Berlin. Today it houses the exhibition ‘Hitler – how could it happen’. With text, historic photographs and film, on three of the bunkers’ five levels, the rise of and demise of Hitler is documented in 40 separate displays. The exhibition has the only model of the Führerbunker. This self-guided tour takes between two and three hours.

On the north bank of the Weser River, not far from the river’s mouth, is the largest free-standing bunker from WWII in Germany. During World War II the bunker served as the German Navy’s submarine shipyard. It was still in use by the Navy until 1960. Thousands of people from all over Europe were put to work here. And over 1,100 people died here during the facility’s construction. In 2010 the city of Bremen decided to run the site as a memorial, opening to the public in 2015. An information trail of 25 stations tells the horrific story of the bunker. Guided tours available on Sundays.

The goods platform station of Grunewald S-Bahn is where an estimated 50,000 Jews from Berlin were transported to their death. From here, one of three deportation stations in Berlin, Jewish citizens were deported to labour and concentration camps in Riga, Warsaw, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Theresienstadt. Platform 17, or Gleis 17, has a metal installation that preserves the platform and records the dates of the departures, the number of people and their destinations.

From 1936 to April 1945 Sachsenhausen was used by the Nazi regime as a concentration camp. It mainly held political prisoners, and a number of high profile individuals were interned here. Including the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. The camp was equipped with a medical experimentation centre and a gas chamber, the remains of which can still be seen. After the war this area was in the Soviet Zone, and the camp was used by them to house enemies of the Soviet state from August 1945 to the spring of 1950 – Special Camp Nr. 7.

The State Hospital in Brandenburg an der Havel on Neuendorfer Str. was one of six centres in the country where the weak, ill and handicapped were killed, the so-called Euthanasia Action T4. Brandenburg’s hospital was the first of these killing centres because of its strategic position and ready infrastructure. In the first few months of 1940 some 9,000 vulnerable men, women and children were killed. Much of the site has been destroyed, one surviving building now houses municipal administrative offices, and a memorial centre is housed in an adjacent building.

During WWII 12 million people from around Europe were forced to work in the German economy. Labouring and living under appalling conditions. They were housed in specially constructed camps of barracks. Only one such camp has survived in Berlin, in the south east of the city. Over 400 forced labourers from Italy were among the detainees here. Today the camp is a documentation centre on Nazi forced labour. Poignant and moving exhibitions tell the stories of the men and women incarcerated here and elsewhere in Berlin during the war.

For both symbolic and logistic reasons Nuremburg was chosen by the Nazis as the venue for their part rallies. A total of six rallies were held between 1933 and 1938. The site covered an area of 11 square km and vast structures were specifically build to glorify the leadership and the party. Some of these, such as the Congress Hall, were never completed before the war, others were damaged. But a number of landmarks remain. Part of the Congress Hall houses the Documentation Centre. From where it possible to start a self guided tour of the party grounds.

Hitler’s megalomaniacal plans for a new Berlin at the heart of a Greater Germanic Empire included monumental structures, including an enormous triumphal arch. French forced labourers were required to create a load bearing body to test the soil conditions for the weight of the arch. They built a solid concrete cylinder, 21 m in diameter, 14 m high, and extending 18 m into the ground. A viewing platform allows you to see this sole surviving remains of Nazi urban planning for all angles.

Topographie des Terrors in central Berlin is an indoor and outdoor exhibition space detailing the horrors of the Nazi regime. The site was the headquarters of both the SS and Gestapo. Who not only planned many atrocties here, but so too were prisoners tortured in the Gestapo cellar. Before May 1933 this was the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais. The area was heavily destroyed at the end of the war, but recent excavations have uncovered the cellars and other basement elements.