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Mohrenstraße
History is what you make of it.
Case in point: A seemingly average looking subway station; nothing more then a platform in between two tunnels underground.
It was called Wilhelmplatz during the war (I suppose it was named after the street outside of the same name). The station was remodeled after the war by the soviets. It is said that the marble used in the remodel was taken from the ruins of Hitler's Reich Chancellery. The Soviets wanted everybody to be able to walk on the same floors that once was reserved for only the elite of the National Socialist Party (Nazi party).
I don't know if that story is true (it might be, they did use the Chancellery marble in their war memorial in Treptower Park ), but it does sound good.
The truth is that many of those Nazi elite did walk in this place- under very different circumstances...
When Hitler finally committed suicide, the Red Army had the entire central "loop" of Berlin surrounded. The Chancellery (and much of the surrounding city) was in ruins due to constant soviet artillery barrages and an air raid of over a thousand US B-17 bombers days earlier.
Those who were left in the "bunker", high party officials and their families as well as some security forces and building support staff, soon came to the sobering reality that all was lost. Their options were few. To travel outside was virtual suicide due to soviet artillery, and if caught by the Russians, death was certain. Their only option was to try and make it to the West where the American forces were waiting just outside the city.
And the only way to get west was underground.
Wilhelmplatz station was about 100 meters from the bunker. It's tunnel's head west on the U2 u-bahn (subway) line under the city. And this was the path many of the bunker survivors took.
The final retreat of Hitler's thousand year Reich took place in this nondescript subway station.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohrenstra%c3%9fe_(Berlin_U-Bahn)
Click here for all of my "Berlin is poor, but sexy" photos.
See where this picture was taken. [?]
Mohrenstraße
History is what you make of it.
Case in point: A seemingly average looking subway station; nothing more then a platform in between two tunnels underground.
It was called Wilhelmplatz during the war (I suppose it was named after the street outside of the same name). The station was remodeled after the war by the soviets. It is said that the marble used in the remodel was taken from the ruins of Hitler's Reich Chancellery. The Soviets wanted everybody to be able to walk on the same floors that once was reserved for only the elite of the National Socialist Party (Nazi party).
I don't know if that story is true (it might be, they did use the Chancellery marble in their war memorial in Treptower Park ), but it does sound good.
The truth is that many of those Nazi elite did walk in this place- under very different circumstances...
When Hitler finally committed suicide, the Red Army had the entire central "loop" of Berlin surrounded. The Chancellery (and much of the surrounding city) was in ruins due to constant soviet artillery barrages and an air raid of over a thousand US B-17 bombers days earlier.
Those who were left in the "bunker", high party officials and their families as well as some security forces and building support staff, soon came to the sobering reality that all was lost. Their options were few. To travel outside was virtual suicide due to soviet artillery, and if caught by the Russians, death was certain. Their only option was to try and make it to the West where the American forces were waiting just outside the city.
And the only way to get west was underground.
Wilhelmplatz station was about 100 meters from the bunker. It's tunnel's head west on the U2 u-bahn (subway) line under the city. And this was the path many of the bunker survivors took.
The final retreat of Hitler's thousand year Reich took place in this nondescript subway station.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohrenstra%c3%9fe_(Berlin_U-Bahn)
Click here for all of my "Berlin is poor, but sexy" photos.
See where this picture was taken. [?]