Berlin at War (26 page)

A Berlin street scene: Unter den Linden in the

summer of 1940 – normality reigns.

Girls of the BdM spread flowers across

the road to welcome Hitler back to the

capital after the fall of France.

Crowds gather to watch a parade

of victorious troops in July 1940:

‘They yelled and yelled until

they were hoarse.’

The dream:

Speer’s plans for the

Great Hall, which

would have dwarfed

the Brandenburg

Gate (
left
) and the

Reichstag (
centre
).

The reality:

the lawns of the elegant

Gendarmenmarkt in

the heart of Berlin

being ploughed up

for cultivation, 1942.

‘Radio must reach all or it will reach none’: passers-by pause on a Berlin street to listen to the latest announcements broadcast via loudspeaker.

Flag-waving children leave Anhalter Station in the autumn of 1940 en route to the KLV camps.

Not all of their fellows were so enthusiastic.

Berlin Jews wearing the

Judenstern
: at a stroke, their public

humiliation was complete.

The Levetzowstrasse synagogue: used as a transit

camp from October 1941, it was the last stop

for many Berlin Jews en route to their deaths.

Working for the enemy:

French forced labourers

at Siemens in 1943.

A fourteen-year-old Ukrainian

forced labourer in a Berlin factory

in 1945. He would have endured

far harsher conditions than his

Western European counterparts.

A public shelter

in the capital in

1942: ‘Nobody

said a word,

but we could

feel the fear.’

The calm before the

storm: a Berlin cellar

in September 1940,

complete with

reinforcing beams,

placards and

wooden benches.

brutality made stone

113

quarry that had supplied much of the stone used to pave the streets

of Vienna, while that at Sachsenhausen, outside Berlin, was host to

the largest brickworks in the world. The camp-quarry at Flossenbürg

in northern Bavaria, meanwhile, was the source of much of the white-

flecked granite that was foreseen for use in Berlin, especially in the

construction of the Soldiers’ Hall.44 Even as the rebuilding of Berlin

was superseded by the demands of the war and in effect suspended

from around 1942, the production of granite and bricks continued

unabated. Thus, the Germania project was not only central to the

Nazi aesthetic; it also played a vital role in the establishment and

maintenance of the concentration camp network. Nazi architectural

planning, it seems, had meshed perfectly with the interests of the SS.

The rebuilding of Berlin also left its mark on the city’s civilian popu-

lation. Most Berliners who were affected were treated decently. Marianne

Meier’s family, for instance, was evicted from their home on

Schellingstrasse, just to the south-west of Potsdamer Platz, on 1 September

1939 – the day war broke out. They were informed that all removal

arrangements and costs were to be covered by the state, and were offered