BENDLERBLOCK - BERLIN
Nazi Resistance Memorial & the Valkyrie Plot Executions
World
War II might have ended a year sooner had they succeeded, with a few
million
lives
saved. On July 20, 1944 a group of German Army officers
and political figures attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, when Colonel
Claus Graf von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in the “Wolf’s
Lair” Führer headquarters in East Prussia. The bomb exploded,
but Hitler was saved by a thick conference table leg which protected
him from the blast. Within mere hours, the top conspirators were ordered
executed and within days and weeks hundreds would follow, including
the "Desert Fox" General Irwin Rommel. This perhaps lesser known story
of the Second World War
has recently
been
depicted
in the
film “Valkyrie” with
Tom Cruise sporting an eye patch, playing the real life Von Stauffenberg,
who lost an eye in North Africa. Parts of the movie were filmed on some
of the actual locations in Germany, particularly the Bendlerblock in
Berlin, where Von
Stauffenberg
was executed by a firing squad in the courtyard along with other high
ranking principals General Friedrich
Olbricht, Albrecht von Quirnheim and Werner von Haeften, while General
Ludwig Beck committed suicide in his office.
Some
visitors to Berlin seeking a look at the past ask “where
can I see WWII stuff” or sights of Nazi history. There
actually isn’t really much of it left in Berlin. What wasn’t
leveled by allied bombs or blasted by Russian tanks was bulldozed or
left to
collapse during the East Germany GDR. The Reichstag has its new glass
dome (see Visiting
the Reichstag). The Berlin Technik Museum has some
war years aircraft (see Berlin
Technik Museum), and some remains of the basements of the
SS and Gestapo headquarters on an empty lot where buildings used to
stand with a newly opened photo and document exhibit (see Topography
of Terror). Of
all that’s
gone, the Bendlerblock, on the street now
named after the most prominent conspirator, still remains. And strikingly,
it’s not promoted in tour guides that much.
The
Bendlerblock was part of an office building complex first constructed
between 1911 and
1914 to house the German Imperial Navy. Grand Admiral
Von Tirpitz had his office there until 1916. After World War I, the complex
of offices were taken over by various elements of the German war ministries,
with the Bendlerblock building remodeled in its current form by 1938.
It was here that General Ludwig Beck, Olbricht and von Stauffenberg
with offices in the east wing transformed
a plan to suppress the revolt of forced laborers codenamed “Valkyrie” into
a plan for a military coup against Hitler and the Nazi leaders, whom
the conspirators considered were leading Germany to ruin.
German Resistance Memorial
The
Bendlerblock, still an active office building, now houses the “Resistance
to National Socialism” exhibition on the second floor, taking up
historical rooms with 26 themed sections of more than 5,000 documents
and photographs
covering the motivations and actions of the secret resistance to Naziism.
There are collected dossiers on the histories and personal
stories of the individuals involved, from Army Generals to private citizens.
Most
of the material is in German, but there are English descriptions to
the exhibits.
Understanding how the Nazi movement took hold in Germany
and why there wasn’t more public resistance is still one of the
more murky mysteries of human behavior. Visually striking here are
the historic posters of Nazi propaganda, which perhaps give only a
clue. The
swift executions of hundreds involved with the Valkyie plot is perhaps
another.
Visiting the German Resitance Memorial at Bendlerblock
Entrance
to the German Resistance Memorial Exhibit at the Bendlerblock is free,
open during business hours. In the courtyard where the executions
took place is a strikingly stark memorial of a bronze statue of a
young man with hands bound, facing a long stone block where a firing
squad
would have been and a wreath (hung during an annual memorial ceremony)
around a plaque dedicated to those who were executed there, with
the inscription "Here died for Germany".
The Bendlerblock memorial is located on
Stauffenbergstrasse 11-13 (renamed from Bendlerstasse in 1955) just
south of the Tiergarten (see Memorial to Murdered Jews),
about
four
blocks west from the Potsdamer Platz (with the Sony Center), and almost
directly across the street from the elegant Maritim (see Berlin
Maritim Hotel). © Bargain
Travel Europe
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German
Resistance Memorial
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See Also:
CHECKPOINT CHARLIE WALL MUSEUM
DRESDEN'S FIREBOMED FRAUENKIRCHE
TIPI AM KANZLERAMT - CABARET TENT THEATER
KAISER WILHELM MEMORIAL CHURCH
