Berlin: The Nazi Era

Things really started to go bad for modern Germany on February 27, 1933, with a fire at this building.




That's the Reichstag, the building which was originally built to house the German parliament but has only recently retaken that role.

Before the Reichstag fire the country was already in pretty rough shape: they'd surrendered at the end of World War One, had a post-war treaty imposed on them which forced them to disarm and repay massive amounts in war damages, and seen unemployment and inflation rise to astronomical levels, destroying their economy and quality of life.

During the 1920s the population of Germany was full of resentment and bitterness, both towards America, Britain, and France who had given them far harsher peace terms than they had been expecting, and towards their own former government of the Kaiser who had (as the theory went) surrendered the war unneccesarily.

It was this spirit that gave Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists a political foothold. What allowed them to consolidate their power, however, was a fire at the Reichstag a month after the election of Hitler to the chancellorship.




When the fire department showed up, a single man was standing outside with a flaming torch and no shirt. His name was Marinus van der Lubbe and he was a pro-Communist labourer. Worse, he was Dutch.

This is one of the great mysteries in the 20th century, up there with the assassination of JFK. Who burned down the Reichstag? It seems certain that Lubbe wasn't acting alone; there were six fires set simultaneously inside the enormous building. It's possible that he had help from his communist friends, but it's widely believed that the Nazis set fire to the building on their own to create an emergency.

The Reichstag fire was used by Hitler to crack down brutally on the communists within Germany and to pass the Enabling Act, a piece of legislation which effectively made Hitler a dictator.

After Hitler was defeated, the building lay right on the border of the Berlin Wall, just on the Western side. But the West German capital was established in Bonn and the Reichstag sat empty and in ruins.

A democratic parliament only resumed meeting in the Reichstag in 1999, after it was restored. Today it's one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city because of the gigantic glass dome built on top, an obversation deck which is open to the public.



On the first day I arrived in Berlin I was at the Reichstag at 10:30 in the morning, but there was already a huge lineup with about a 2 hour wait.



I came back the next morning right at 8:30 and was one of the first people inside. There's a fairly extensive security check, similiar to getting on an airplane.

After a brisk elevator ride, you come out right at the bottom of the dome.











At the center of the bottom of the dome is a window that looks down onto the parliament chambers. This symbolizes the new era of transparent German government.



Only a few blocks away from the Reichstag is another huge monument of the Nazi era, though only built a few years ago.



This is the Memorial To The Murdered Jews Of Europe, or the Holocaust Memorial. It takes up an entire city block and is sort of a post-modern, abstract monument. But unlike most post-modern, abstract things, I like it.

As you walk through it, the pillars become larger and the ground becomes lower and uneven. Once you're in the middle, it really does feel as though you've completely lost yourself.







Our guide said that some people say it reminds them of a military prison, while others find it reminiscent of the boxcars used to cart off Jews towards the concentration camps. The architect will only say that it was inspired by a visit to a Jewish cemetary near Prague.

It's a fairly impressive memorial and a testament to Berlin's courage in facing down its past.



Only a block away is another historic site.



Breathtaking, no?

Directly underneath this parking lot are the remains of Hitler's bunker where he committed suicide with his newly-wed wife. (By newly-wed, I mean within hours of the suicide). After seeing Mussolini's body dragged through the streets of Italy, Hitler decided he wasn't taking any chances.

The bunker was pretty much completely destroyed after the war ended. They blew holes into the ceiling and let the place collapse in on itself. Now all that stands here are parking lots for apartment buildings and a sign for tourists.



Nearby is the former site of the new Reich Chancellery, the ginormous headquarters Hitler had built for himself. Our guide told us that the building was longer than one of the World Trade Center buildings would have been if you laid it down flat. Hitler commissioned the work to Albert Speer, told him to have it built within a year, and that money was no obstacle. Speer finished the building 48 hours ahead of schedule.

There is really only one Nazi building left standing now, and that's the Luftwaffe headquarters, the HQ of the German air force. A gentleman's agreement was unofficially struck that the respective air forces wouldn't bomb each other's buildings; the RAF headquarters in London was never bombed either.




After the Soviets took over and the communist German Democratic Republic was set up, the building became the Ministry of Ministries, which is the most Orwellian name you could possibly come up with. The building now serves as the Ministry of Finance.

Just behind that building is an open-air museum called the Topography of Terror, which is only open-air until the actual museum is built on the site. This site was chosen because as they were excavating around it, they came across the foundations of the former headquarters of the SS and Gestapo, the notorious secret police of the Nazis run by Heinrich Himmler.

It's a bit surreal to be looking at displays on the history of the German secret police alongside the underground basement of the former headquarters.






And finally there's the Humboldt University and Bebelplatz.

Humboldt was one of the world's great universities before the Nazis took power. Many great thinkers and scientists worked and taught there, including Albert Einstein.



The Nazis' prejudices ran wide and deep, and included the academic elite (many of whom were Jewish). Humboldt was effectively purged of all the professors who didn't conform to Nazi ideology. Many, including Einstein, fled to America. In a delightful bit of irony, a significant number of these scientists were to play large roles in the development of the American nuclear bomb.

Across the street from the university is a large public square called Bebelplatz. On May 10, 1933 the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joeseph Goebbels organized a gigantic book-burning. Over 20,000 books from Humboldt's library were incinerated in the square.

Today a humble memorial is built into the center of the square. It's a glass plate that looks down onto empty bookshelves.



Book burnings haven't stopped. In recent history, governments have organized book burnings in China, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Serbia. Harry Potter books have been publically burnt by Evangelical churches in America. In one of the most notorious incidents, many copies of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses were burnt and bookstores who carried it were threatened with arson when Ayatollah Khomenei of Iran issued the fatwa condemning him to be murdered for crimes against Islam.

There's a small plaque in Bebelplatz by one of the authors who had many of his books burnt on that day, Heinrich Heine. On it is a quote from one his books, reading "Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end". It was written in 1820.




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