Third Reich & WWII History 3-Hour Walking Tour Berlin

The Reichstag, from the 1933 fire to the battle of 1945

The walk begins at Friedrichstraße station beside the Tränenpalast, the former border hall of the divided city, and reaches the Reichstag within a few minutes. Completed in 1894 as the parliament of the German Empire, the building burned on the night of 27 February 1933, an event the new Nazi government used to suspend civil liberties and crush its opponents within weeks of taking power. In April 1945 Soviet troops fought their way floor by floor through the ruined building, and the photograph of the red flag raised on its roof became the image of the end of the war in Europe.

Your historian explains both events on the lawn in front of the building and points out the glass dome added in 1999, from which visitors today look down into the parliament chamber; inside, Soviet soldiers' graffiti has been preserved on the walls. The stop lasts about fifteen minutes, and the guide can tell you how to book the free dome visit for another day.

Brandenburg Gate and the Soviet War Memorial

Walking through the Brandenburg Gate, built in 1791, you follow the route of the torchlight parade with which the Nazi party celebrated taking power in January 1933; the gate later stood inside the border strip from 1961 to 1989. Just beyond it, on the avenue through the Tiergarten, stands the Soviet War Memorial, built within months of the war's end in 1945 using stone from the demolished New Reich Chancellery and flanked by two tanks and two guns that took part in the battle for Berlin.

The memorial is one of the most unexpected sights on a Berlin WWII walking tour: it stood in the British sector for the whole Cold War, guarded by Soviet soldiers who came through the Wall each day to change shifts. The historian uses the two sites together to explain how propaganda, war and division are layered on a single stretch of road. Allow about twenty minutes for both.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

South of the gate the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe fills a city block with 2,711 concrete slabs on uneven ground; it opened in 2005 after years of public debate about how Germany should remember the Holocaust in the centre of its capital. The slabs rise as you walk in until they stand above head height, and the sound of the city fades. Beneath the field an information centre documents the victims by name and family; it is free to visit if you return after the walk.

The guide walks the group into the memorial for around fifteen minutes and explains the thinking behind its design, the choice of the site beside the former ministry quarter and the stories of individual families recorded in the centre below. It is the quietest stop of the morning, placed deliberately before the walk reaches the sites of the regime's offices a few streets away.

The Führerbunker site and the former New Reich Chancellery

Behind the memorial, among apartment blocks built in the 1980s, a car park marks the site of the former Führerbunker, where the dictator spent the last weeks of the war and killed himself on 30 April 1945. The bunker lay beneath the garden of the New Reich Chancellery, a vast building completed in 1939 on Voßstraße as the showpiece of the regime; it was damaged in the battle, demolished by the Soviets and its stone reused for their memorials. Only an information board, placed in 2006, identifies the spot.

The Führerbunker site tour Berlin visitors search for is exactly this stop: there is nothing to see, which is the point, and the historian explains why Germany chose to leave the site unmarked for so long. You hear about the plans for the imperial capital that was never built and the final days of the siege. Around fifteen minutes here, mostly listening.

Wilhelmstraße: the Aviation Ministry and the former ministries

Wilhelmstraße was the government street of Prussia, the Empire and the Third Reich, and the walk follows it past the sites of the Propaganda Ministry and the Reich Chancellery to the one major Nazi building that survived: the former Reich Aviation Ministry, completed in 1936 as the largest office building in Europe at the time. It was spared by bombing, served as the East German House of Ministries, where the uprising of 17 June 1953 began, and now houses the Federal Finance Ministry; a mural from 1952 and a memorial to the uprising face each other at its corner.

The historian uses the long stone facade to explain how the regime's ministries worked and how the same building passed through dictatorship, division and democracy. A short walk from here leads along the surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall on Niederkirchnerstraße to the final stop. Allow about fifteen minutes on this street.

Topography of Terror, where the walk ends

The Topography of Terror stands on the site of the headquarters of the Gestapo, the SS and the Reich Security Main Office on the former Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, from where persecution across occupied Europe was directed between 1933 and 1945. The buildings were destroyed after the war and the ground lay empty beside the Wall until the cellars were excavated in the 1980s; the present documentation centre opened in 2010, with an outdoor exhibition in the excavated trench and a permanent exhibition indoors. Entry is free and the centre is open daily from 10:00 to 20:00.

The walk ends here after about three hours, and most travellers on a Topography of Terror tour stay on for an hour to see the exhibition on their own; the historian gives an introduction so you know where to start. The longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall in the city centre runs along the edge of the site, and Checkpoint Charlie is a five-minute walk away.