Berlin

Got up and ran again today with the Regos. We must have been feeling our oats because we decided to run a loop instead of our out-and-back - big mistake. We ran in the Tiergarten (German for Animal Garden) which was great: lots of wide unpaved running paths through green trees, manicured lawns, flowers, and canals. The air was brisk and it had just rained. Little bunny rabbits were hopping around. All was good for our run. Unfortunately, we made a fatal assumption that the Tiergarten is square and after three left turns we should have been heading home. We weren't. We were actually running away from our hotel. And to make matters worse, the monument that we saw on our street when were heading out was actually on several streets, including the one we were on, because it was at the hub of a wheel of streets. Eventually we figured out which direction to head and made it back to the hotel with about twice the time and distance under our belts that we had bargained for.

After breakfast we headed out with a new guide and bus driver. John the driver had gone to Munich for another tour and John our guide had gone back home to Italy and another tour. For Berlin we have Michael at the wheel and I believe Heike as our guide, but don't quote me. First stop was the Memorial to the German Resistance at the Gedenkstatte Deutscher Widerstand. This is in the courtyard of the German Army Reserve headquarters from WWII. From here, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg helped orchestrate the plot to assasinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazis. He failed to kill Hitler with a bomb at Eagle's Nest and the entire plot crumbled. Most of the conspirators were captured, tortured and executed. Tom Cruise played von Stauffenberg in the recent film Valkyrie which depicted the coup.

Continuing with the capture, torture and execution theme, we next traveled to the site where the SS and Heinrich Himmler's headquarters were. The SS were elite units in the Nazi regime and along with the Gestapo were the leading perpetrators of most of the atrocities of that time. The Germans have created an open-air exhibition entitled the Topography of Terror that depicts the rise of this organization and the evil it perpetrated in Hitler's Germany. One of the sidlines here was different than I remember reading. The SS and the Gestapo rounded up the German resistance organization, Red Orchestra, in mid to late 1942 and executed most of them. I thought the Red Orchestra was a part of the Soviet spy network. Apparently so did the Germans. I guess I'll have to go back and read the book again.

Our final stop looking at the darkest parts of Nazi Germany was at Hitler's bunker. This was Hitler's heavily fortified underground office and living area during the last days of the war. He and his wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves here on April 29, 1945. When the Soviet's captured the bunker and found Hitler's remains, they kept most of the details tightly guarded. They covered over the site and made it such that you wouldn't even notice it passing by. They wanted no spark of the Nazis to be rekindled here. After reunification, it was believed that so many people knew about it that they might as well put up a small information plaque. That is all that stands there today.

We stopped at many more places today in Berlin, several relating to the Cold War and the Wall. I'll blog them in another post. Got to get some shut-eye.