If 20th century history is your passion, Berlin is possibly the best city in Europe to visit. There is an enormous array of Berlin World War 2 sites, as well as sites linked with the early Nazi period and the Cold War from 1945 to 1989.
In this article I show you the best of the World War 2 sites in Berlin. They include rare remnants of Nazi architecture, from the stadium that hosted the 1936 Olympics to the beginnings of their unrealized gargantuan capital Germania. There are also a number of prisons and a concentration camp where the Nazis tortured and murdered their victims, and several memorials and exhibitions at significant locations around the city.
Other sites include the iconic bombed-out Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the venue of the Wannsee Conference where the ongoing annihilation of Europe’s Jews was discussed in January 1942. It’s a sombre, often harrowing experience visiting these places, reading individuals’ stories. But I found great solace in a tiny workshop where a few bling and deaf Jews were saved by the owner of a brush factory, humanity shining through in one of the darkest times in history.
Berlin World War Two Sites – Best Places To Stay
martas Hotel Berlin Mitte – great boutique hotel close to Museum Island, and several World War II and Berlin Wall sites
H4 Hotel Alexanderplatz – excellent 4-star close to the famous square and TV Tower
NH Collection Mitte am Checkpoint Charlie – great choice around the corner from the famous checkpoint and popular Museum across the street
Topography of Terror
This exhibition focuses on the Nazis’ crimes across Germany and occupied Europe, carried out by the SS (their paramilitary arm) and Gestapo (secret police). It’s located on the site of the central office of both organisations, the Reich Security Main Office, on what was formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.
When I first visited the exhibition, it was all sheltered in the open air – a well-written and curated guide to these organisations, the Nazis’ rise to power and use of violence against any opponents, dissenters and, ultimately, anyone they deemed racially inferior and unworthy of life.
A new building was added in 2010, and this now houses much of the exhibition. If you’re new to – or are introducing someone to the subject of the Nazis and their crimes, this is a very good place to begin.
Hitler’s Bunker Site
Hitler, his partner (and eventual wife) Eva Braun and various senior Nazis spent their last few days hidden in the Führerbunker below the New Reich Chancellery. After Hitler and Braun committed suicide on 30th April 1945 their bodies were burned, and the site was levelled by the Soviet Red Army after the end of the War. The intent was to obliterate key Nazi sites, thereby avoiding the chance of them becoming places of pilgrimage for future Nazi followers.
In this they well and truly succeeded. The first few times I visited Berlin, there wasn’t even a marker for the site – you found out through reading about it, or by word of mouth.
Since then, an information board has been placed there, on the corner of Gertrud-Kolmar-Strasse and In der Ministergärten, on the edge of a car park.
Getting there: The closest station is Mohrenstrasse, on the U2 line. It’s also roughly halfway between Potsdamer Platz and Unter den Linden S- and U-Bahn stations, roughly 100 metres from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
One of the most famous Berlin landmarks, this vast Memorial was installed in 2005 on a site between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz.
It’s the work of Peter Eisenman, and (to me at least) resembles a large, tightly packed cemetery. There are over 2,700 concrete slabs, or stelae, with several pathways criss-crossing the site. It’s a very effective Memorial, conveying the overwhelming scale of the losses suffered and crimes committed. There is also an excellent information centre underground, accessible via the east side on Cora-Berliner-Strasse.
The Nazis also persecuted other groups who didn’t conform to their warped ideology. There are also memorials to the Sinti, Roma and gay people who were also sent to the camps to be murdered. The latter memorial – a stark cube with a small video screen showing a film – is just across Ebertstrasse from the Memorial to the Jews.
Getting there: Mohrenstrasse U-Bahn, Potsdamer Platz or Unter den Linden (S- and U-Bahn).
Jewish Museum Berlin
The largest Jewish Museum in Europe is also one of the best museums in Germany, a fascinating journey back through the history of Jews in the country.
It’s housed in two very different buildings – an 18th-century Baroque palace and, next door, a stark zig-zag-shaped You can only access the latter via the older Kollegienhaus building. modern building completed in 1992 by Daniel Libeskind. You can only access the latter via the older Kollegienhaus building.
The modern building includes a series of ‘Voids’, empty spaces where you’re left to imagine the terrible fate of Germany and Europe’s Jews. The most effective of these is the Memory Void, with an installation called Shalekhet (‘Fallen Leaves’) by Menashe Kadishman. The floor of the large space is covered with around 10,000 metal discs, each with holes for eyes and a mouth, often seemingly contorted in expressions of agony.
You can walk across these faces, and this is where it really hits home. With each step the faces make loud clanking noises, reverberating around the tall chamber. When Faye and I visited we felt we were intruding somehow, disturbing the peace and silence, almost as if we were inflicting pain ourselves. It’s possibly the most thought-provoking installation I’ve ever visited.
Getting there: U-Bahn to Hallesches Tor (U1, U3, U6) or Kochstrasse, then a 600-metre walk from each. Otherwise bus 248 stops close by.
Aktion T4 Memorial, Tiergartenstrasse
The Nazis’ genocidal crimes weren’t confined to the Jews, Sinti and Roma – they also murdered tens of thousands of their own citizens whom they deemed unworthy of life. This included people with disabilities and mental illnesses, who didn’t live up to the Nazis’ ideals of Aryan racial purity. So in 1940 they began a euthanasia programme spread across six sites in Germany.
The scheme – named Aktion T4 after the address from which it was administered, Tiergartenstrasse 4 – officially ran until 1941. In this period, over 70,000 were murdered, some by lethal injection, others in gas chambers. Death certificates with false causes were issued to the victims’ families.
The scheme continued unofficially until the end of the war, with a far higher number of victims. The Memorial, a simple transparent piece of blue glass embedded into the concrete, was put in place in 2014. It’s outside the Berliner Philharmonie concert hall, a few minutes’ walk from Potsdamer Platz.
There’s an excellent memorial exhibition at the Pirna-Sonnenstein murder site a few miles from Dresden – check out my Things To Do In Pirna guide for more information.
Getting there: Potsdamer Platz U- and S-Bahn are 500 metres away (via Ben-Gurion-Strasse). Otherwise bus 200 stops across the street from the Memorial.
Strasse des 17 Juni – Germania
Hitler wanted to transform Berlin into Germania, the mega-capital of the Nazis’ presumed Thousand Year Reich. He intended to raze most of the city to the ground, replacing it with his megalomaniac vision writ immense in stone, with some of the biggest structures in the world.
Fascist-era architecture was meant to impress and intimidate, though much of the time it would make you wince at the monstrous tastelessness of it all. Hitler wanted to build the Volkshalle (People’s Hall) with a dome 16 times the volume of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He also wanted to build a Hall of Mirrors over twice the length of that at Versailles, where the hated Treaty of 1919 was signed.
Hitler appointed architect Albert Speer to work on the project, which didn’t get very far. The most substantial progress made was the main East-West Axis, which included what is now Strasse des 17 Juni, immediately to the west of the Brandenburg Gate. The Victory Column (Siegesäule), which was originally located close to the Reichstag, was moved there, in the middle of the Tiergarten.
The only other built remnant is a giant test structure, which was erected to find out whether the ground below would support such a vast weight. It was built on what would have been the corner of the colossal Triumphal Arch, but the ground subsided considerably more than was considered safe. Hitler’s invasions of neighbouring countries across Central and Western Europe then put paid to any further attempts to build his vast capital.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser Wilhelms Gedächtniskirche)
This church in former West Berlin became one of the most potent symbols of the city after World War Two. Much of the 1890s Romanesque Revival church – much inspired by the Münster in Bonn – was destroyed in a bombing raid in November 1943, with much of the church’s spire surviving. This became affectionately known as ‘The Hollow Tooth’ in the years following the War.
The original tower was kept, and a new church (with accompanying tower) were built next to it. The octagonal church is a wonderful surprise – concrete, steel and glass outside, but a beautiful deep blue inside, thanks to the rich stained glass, said to be inspired by that in Chartres Cathedral in France. The new church and tower are nicknamed Lipstick and Powder Box by Berliners.
While inside the church look out for the Stalingrad Madonna, a charcoal drawing made by a German soldier while hiding in Stalingrad in 1942. A copy of this is held in both Coventry Cathedral in England – destroyed in a bombing raid in 1940 – and a church in Stalingrad. A cross of nails, standing near the entrance – was donated by Coventry Cathedral in a gesture of reconciliation in support of future peace.
Getting there: Kurfürstendamm U-Bahn lines U1 and U9.
See Also: The 9 Best Churches in Berlin To Visit
Bebelplatz – Book Burning Memorial
Bebelplatz is the site of the infamous burning of books by the Nazi German Student Union. Supposedly supporting ‘discipline and decency in the family and the nation’ the students – and some of their professors – set about burning any works by blacklisted authors from Karl Marx to Heinrich Mann and Sigmund Freud to Rosa Luxemburg.
There are two elements to the Memorial. The first is a plaque with a quote by Heinrich Heine, part of which translates as, ’Where they burn books, Ultimately they will burn people as well.’
There is also an underground library with empty white bookshelves, representing the 20,000 texts banned by the Nazis. It’s a hugely effective installation, the work of Israeli artist Micha Ullman, and put in place in 1995.
Getting there: U5 to Museumsinsel, or buses 100 and 300 to Staatsoper
House of the Wannsee Conference
The Holocaust of Europe’s Jews was well under way before this meeting on January 20th 1942. Held in secret at a villa near the Wannsee lake in the southwest outskirts of Berlin, the meeting of senior Nazis planned the ongoing mass-murder of Jews across occupied Europe, which by this point had mainly been carried out by Einsatzgruppen murder squads, mostly in the former Soviet Union.
Among those attending was Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, and Adolf Eichmann, whose recorded minutes used vague, euphemistic terms to conceal the mass murders being planned.
The ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ had been decided prior to the Conference at Wannsee. The meeting was essentially updating different Nazi and government agencies, and getting them on board for what was to follow.
At the time of the Wannsee Conference, death camps were being built in occupied Poland. The ‘transport east’ discussed at the meeting meant murder at one of these camps.
In the House, the meeting room is set out as it was on the day, with Eichmann’s minutes displayed in glass cases. An additional exhibition describes the Holocaust across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Getting there: S7 S-Bahn to Wannsee, then bus 114 from outside the station to the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz stop.
SA Prison, Papestrasse
The Nazis were always a partly militarized movement, relying on their uniformed thugs to mete out violence on anyone they felt deserving of it. The first of these organisations was the SA – the Sturmabteilung or ‘Stormtroopers’ also known as the Brownshirts. They accompanied Hitler to rallies from the early 1920s, and played a role in the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the SA were used to attack and often incarcerate political opponents. They took over many sites around Berlin for this purpose, including this former Prussian railway troops in the south of the city, which they used as a prison. This was run by a division of the SA called the Feldpolizei (FePo, or Field Police).
Few traces remain of these SA sites around the city, but the building is well preserved. Some graffiti scratched by prisoners onto walls remains, as does a silhouette of a Jewish prisoner, David Wiener-Trisker.
Getting there: S-Bahn to Südkreuz, then a 5-minute walk via the General-Pape-Strasse exit.
Blindenwerkstatte Otto Weidt
Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind is one of the most remarkable stories from World War Two Berlin. This businessman – who had an early interest in anarchist politics – recruited numerous blind, visually impaired and hearing-impaired Jewish workers for his brush-making business. He also helped them by paying bribes, and obtaining forged identities, paperwork, food, and hiding places around Berlin.
There are many parallels with the more widely known Oskar Schindler, who saved over a thousand Jews. He was able to continue his operation because his brushes and brooms were made for the Wehrmacht – making them ‘essential for the war effort’.
Weidt had plenty of contacts, including local police who tipped him off about round-ups and deportations by the Nazis. He also went to Auschwitz to save one of his workers.
The small museum tells the story of the Workshop, including its workers, some of whom managed to survive the war with the help of Weidt and his network of helpers.
Getting there: S-Bahn (trains S3, S5, S7, S9) to Hackescher Markt, or Tram M1 to S Hackescher Markt. The Workshop Museum is on the first courtyard on the left as you walk up Rosenthaler Strasse away from the S-Bahn.
Anne Frank Centre
The Anne Frank Centre can be found on the same courtyard as the Workshop for the Blind mentioned above.
The Museum tells the terribly poignant story of Anne Frank, the Dutch schoolgirl forced into hiding with her family to avoid the Nazis. Most of Amsterdam’s Jews had been deported by 1942, but the Frank family and other fugitives survived well into 1944. They were eventually betrayed, and Anne and her sister were to die at Bergen-Belsen the following year, just before the end of the War.
Only their father, Otto, survived, and he was eventually given the secret diary she had kept during their years in hiding. The exhibition includes a copy of her handwritten diary, and focuses both on her writing and the historical context of the dark times in which she lived.
The Centre is popular with school groups, and if you’re planning to introduce your children to the subject of the Holocaust, this is an excellent place to start.
Getting there: same directions as for the Blind Workshop above.
Bundestag (formerly Reichstag)
The former Reichstag is more a part of the Nazi story than the Second World War. It was burned down in 1933, shortly after the Nazis rose to power, and it’s believed that they used the fire as a pretext to clamp down on political opponents and consolidate their hold on power by banning any opposition under the Enabling Law.
Although it was a shell in 1945, it was considered one of the most important targets of the invading Red Army as they advanced through the city. Some of the Soviet soldiers’ graffiti has been preserved on the walls.
The building was then rebuilt after the War, with the addition of the glass dome designed by Norman Foster, which is free to enter. This is one of the top things to do in Berlin, and commands some amazing views of the city and skyline.
Olympiastadion
It’s not strictly a World War Two site, but the Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium) is a massive part of Nazi German history. It was the venue for the infamous 1936 Olympics, when American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals, making an utter mockery of Nazi claims of racial supremacy in the process.
The Olympiastadion – which was remodelled in the early 2000s, with the addition of much of the present roof – hosted the World Cup Final in 2006. It’s also a concert venue, and it hosts its first NFL regular-season game in November 2025.
Fascist architecture in Europe was meant to be imposing, but it mostly tends to be pompous, ugly and overblown. The Olympiastadion is the one building from the period that I’ve visited which actually carries it off. I happened to visit on the last matchday before it was closed for remodelling in 2000, and walking into the vast bowl behind one of the goals, it was an impressive sight.
Tickets to see the home team, Hertha Berlin (officially known as Hertha BSC), are pretty easy to come by, especially as they’re in Bundesliga 2 – Germany’s second division – at the time of writing. If you can’t get to see a game, you can visit the Stadium and walk around the arena at your leisure. You can book your Olympiastadion tickets here.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Sachsenhausen was the closest Nazi KZ (concentration camp) to Berlin, 20 miles north of the city in Oranienburg. Opened in 1936, it was used to incarcerate political prisoners and prisoners of war, and was used as a testing ground for methods of killing multiple prisoners – which included gas vans and, later, a gas chamber.
Over 30,000 prisoners were killed at the camp, many by execution, but thousands also succumbed to the appalling living and enforced working conditions there. Around 10,000 of these were Soviet POWs, murdered by the Nazis in 1941. High profile internees there included Yakov Djugashvili, eldest son of Soviet dictator Stalin (who also knew a thing or two about horrendous camps with forced labour), former French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, and pastor Martin Niemoller.
Sachsenhausen was also the base for a Nazi wartime operation to flood the UK and US with fake banknotes. A team of expert forgers, led by Jewish prisoner Salomon Sorowitsch, was assembled by the Nazis, and they managed to perfect Bank of England notes, even working out the algorithm for serial numbers on the notes. The forgeries were so good that the Bank of England had to issue notes with a new design after the War. The 2007 movie The Counterfeiters documents this fascinating story.
The camp is one of the easiest day trips from Berlin, the journey taking an hour from the centre.
Getting there: Take S-Bahn S1 train to Oranienburg, then bus 804 or 821 to Gedenkstatte. The 804 leaves the S-Bahn station at 19 minutes past the hour, and the 821 runs hourly in the afternoon.
Berlin World War 2 Sites – Final Thoughts
I hope you’ve found this article informative. You could easily spend a week visiting these sites – and another week visiting the many Berlin Cold War sites. There are simply so many places to see.
If you’re interested in this period of history, I’ve written several more articles on places to visit, including the wide-ranging World War 2 Sites In Germany. Take a look at my guide to the Nuremberg Nazi Sites, including the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds. This is one of the few places in Germany where you can see a lot of Nazi-era architecture, and its intended gargantuan scale.
There are also some fascinating Prague World War 2 Sites, especially the Reinhard Heydrich Assassination Site a few miles from the city’s historic centre. An hour or so north of Prague, visiting Terezin Concentration Camp is a sombre experience, a holding camp where Jews were held before their deportation to death camps like Auschwitz.
If you’re travelling to London, I suggest checking out my article on the best World War 2 Sites in London, which includes locations such as the superb Churchill War Rooms, the Second World War battleship HMS Belfast and the Imperial War Museum London.
For a broader view of many less-known sites around the continent, take a look at my article on Off The Beaten Path World War 2 Sites In Europe.
For more articles on Berlin, check out my guides to Photographing Berlin, Berlin Landmarks and Churches in Berlin.
For a more extensive choice of articles on Germany, take a look at my Germany Travel Guide.