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Posts tagged with 1945

Wittenbergplatz’s back to life
2024-09-29 16:28:44 UTC
Berlin, Sommer 1945 Photo: US NARA. In this original colour footage we can see the bombed out and ruined U-Bhf Wittenbergplatz’s entrance hall and its original yellow mustard interior walls (built in 1912), following the end of the war and the reactivation of part of the underground train service in…

Death of the Kabarett Wintergarten
2024-05-18 11:18:00 UTC
‘Step into the roaring twenties and experience the vibrant nightlife of Berlin’s Central Hotel and Wintergarten’ The Wintergarten (Friedrichstraße Nr 143-149) was one of Berlin’s best-known variety theatres located in the heart of the city, a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. Owned by Hermann Gebers, this…

Der Hansaplatz-Bezirk
2022-03-14 15:31:00 UTC
[Severe devastation can be seen in this aerial picture of the northern Tiergarten and Hansaviertel district after the war, taken in winter 1945.] Photo: Senatsverwaltung für Bau- und Wohnungswesen Berlin Luftbildstelle. Located in the northwestern Tiergarten, the Hansaviertel was built from the intersection of three main streets in a star-shaped…

Hansaviertel runway
2022-03-03 15:49:00 UTC
‘The take-off was made under hailing Russian fire and as the plane rose to roof-top level it was picked up by countless searchlights and at once breaketed in a barrage of shelling’. – Hanna Reitsch, 29 April, 1945 – Photo: LIFE © Time Inc (115928934). It was mid…

Hot Time in the town of Berlin
2021-10-28 19:06:00 UTC
WAC’s Flak Fortresses Photo: LIFE ©Time Inc_641268. During his visit to Berlin in July 1945, American photographer William Vandivert (1912-1989) took hundreds of pictures of the ruined Nazi-capital. Some of those were starred by a trio of US WACs (Women’s Army Corps) while on tour of the city (a few…

Innsbrucker Platz
2021-10-13 19:07:00 UTC
Der „Tiroler“ Platz [An aerial view of Berlin-Schöneberg district with Hauptstraße running at centre, seen from the railway at Innsbrucker Platz in 1930. The original Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche and its distinctive rounded tower is at top centre.] Photo: friedenau-aktuell.de The Innsbrucker Platz in Berlin was the post-war location of our previous post…

Luftangriffe auf Pergamon
2021-10-08 18:19:00 UTC
Photo: ©Zentralarchiv/Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (ZA 1.1.6./04906). During the research work about Berlin city, its streets and its inhabitants during the war and the air bombings, it is quite common to come across photos that show the ruined state and the damage caused by the war, most of them taken…

Die Amis arrive!
2021-09-16 13:26:00 UTC
Photo by James Jarche/Paul Popper/Popperfoto. Berlin, 1945 Nach Kriegsende: an American Sherman tank is parked in front of a S-Bahn station with a shattered apartment building and a destroyed tram stop background. Next to it, the tank’s crew stand in a relaxed pose and a few metres away a…

Einmann Bunker
2021-08-05 15:41:00 UTC
Time ago, during our research for one Berlin air raid, we found this picture. We have seen it before, but this time we noticed a small interesting detail that captured our attention. Photo by Fritz Eschen. SLUB / Deutsche Fotothek. Taken after the war by Fritz Eschen in May 1946,…

Pergamonmuseum in Berlin: Post 1945
2021-04-11 19:29:22 UTC
Kriegsende und Neubeginn Photo: AC Byers / Hein Gorny / Collection Regard. When World War II ended in Europe in May 1945 and the Third Reich capital was seized by Soviet troops, Berlin’s Museumsinsel was in a desolate condition; most of the buildings were badly hit by air strikes and…

Pergamonmuseum in Berlin
2021-03-31 14:59:00 UTC
Telephos and the Großdeutschland myth Photo: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Zentralarchiv; CC NC-BY-SA If there is a museum of the many that Berlin has that dazzles all its visitors and it is unique in transferring the modern visitor to the Ancient world and mythology, that is Pergamon. From…

Kriegsende!
2020-05-08 19:27:00 UTC
• 8 May 1945 • [Berliner kids playing around an abandoned German Panther Ausf.G ‘bodenständig’ (a dug in tank to defend a strong point in the city) at Weddingplatz on Mullerstraße after the battle, May 1945.] [Photo by Fred Ramage. Getty images.] Berlin: 8-9 May 1945: 75 years ago, Air…

The last visit by a Mosquito
2020-04-23 19:48:00 UTC
[Photo: © raf-pathfinders.com.] [An unidentified air- and groundcrew of RAF No 627 Squadron posing for the camera in front of a Mosquito wooden bomber in Britain. Note the mission bomb log painted on the nose of the aircraft.] This week marks the 75th anniversary of the last strategic air raid…

Steglitz • The Titania-Palast
2019-12-29 18:57:49 UTC
Located at Gutsmuthsstraße 27/28 ecke Schloßstraße 4/5, the Titania-Palast is a cinema-theatre and concerts hall built in the south-western Berlin suburb of Steglitz during the 1920s decade. It was one of the icons of this area, a place of reference to culture life in the German capital The Titania-Palast cinema-theatre…

Berlin unter Bomben • Steglitz (III)
2019-12-09 16:31:00 UTC
After the end of the Second World War and with the Iron Curtain already instaured, and the subsequent division of the city into four sectors, Berlin Steglitz continued its reconstruction work as an essential part of the US occupation zone. But that effort and money went principally to the main…

Berlin unter Bomben • Steglitz (II)
2019-11-17 17:12:00 UTC
[Photo: Getty images.] In the aftermath of the war, Berliners began the long and arduous reconstruction task. From August 2, 1945, the suburb of Steglitz became part of the administrative US sector of the city, in the new division of Postwar Germany decided by the Western Allies and the Soviet…

Steglitz • Der erhängte Soldat
2019-11-02 18:53:00 UTC
[Photo: SZ Photo/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo.]. During the last days of April 1945, when the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ was crumbling in ruins and blood, in most cities and towns were terrible scenes and murders. One of the most repeated scenes found by the victor Allied troops was the execution of German soldiers…

Berlin unter Bomben • Steglitz
2019-10-28 19:46:00 UTC
‘steht nichts’ [Photo: Trustees of the IWM / Tony Redding. Life and Death in Bomber Command. Fonthill Media, 2013.] [Berlin 1/2 March 1943: this night oblique taken by an RAF bomber during the raid shows smoke drifting from fires in the Steglitz area (A) and a concentration of fires around…

‘Cookie’ delivery to Berlin
2019-03-11 17:17:00 UTC
26 million of German people lost their homes during the war, just in Berlin 600,000 apartments were destroyed, half of all houses were damaged and around a third uninhabitable, as much as 16 km² of the city was simply rubble. When the war came to an end in May 1945…

Ruined Berlin in Valery Faminsky’s eyes (II)
2019-02-24 18:50:05 UTC
Second part of the pictures taken by Soviet war photographer Valery Faminsky (1914–1993) during the Fall of Nazi Berlin in May 1945. [Major S L Rogatchevsky, a Soviet medical officer, poses next to a propaganda slogan painted on a wall by SS members during the battle that reads: ‘Berlin stays…

Ruined Berlin in Valery Faminsky’s eyes
2019-02-17 15:01:00 UTC
These pictures were taken by Soviet war photographer Valery Faminsky (1914–1993) during the Fall of Nazi Berlin in May 1945. This archive was discovered recently in Moscow. He photographed the Red Army’s combat from Ukraine to Berlin. Photographer Arthur Bondar heard that the family of Faminsky was selling the album…

The Opera - The Prussian statues
2019-01-28 19:45:00 UTC
This is how the Staatsoper Unter den Linden area looked short time after the end of the war in the summer of 1945: a mass of ruin and rubble [Photo by Hildegard Dreyer. Deutsches Historisches Museum (GOS-Nr. BA010457)] Before the end of World War Two, next to the main entrance…

The Opera - Year Zero and Postwar
2019-01-20 20:34:50 UTC
The reconstruction Following the fall of the Third Reich, 1945 was ‘Year Zero’ for Berlin, and so it was for the Staatsoper. The ancient Opera, renamed at that time as Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, was one of the first historical buildings at the German capital secured against further decay…

The Opera - Reconstruction and Death
2019-01-14 17:07:00 UTC
When the Staatsoper den Linden was severely damaged by British bombs in April 1941, Hitler urgently ordered its reconstruction, as it was one of his favourite buildings from his fanatical devotion to Opera and Richard Wagner’s works [December 1942: Nazi-parade of a guard of honour at Unter den Linden on…

Der Schwarze Tod
2018-11-04 15:59:29 UTC
THE SHTURMOVIK OVER BERLIN AGAIN 1945 - 2018 73 years later, a Soviet Il-2 Shturmovik flies again over Germany during ILA (Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung) April 2018 Berlin air show at Schonefeld airport. One of the outright show stars of this year event was the beautiful Ilyushin Il-2…

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