Some of the facets of the Third Reich that the Berliners chose to remember or commemorate were many of the buildings and memorials. When we walked through Nazi Berlin, I found it interesting how the Berliners chose to keep up some of the original Nazi buildings, and for some of the buildings they chose to tear it down and replace it with something totally new. They kept the original buildings of The German Resistance Memorial, The Air Force Ministry, and the Gestapo Headquarters. The only building that we saw that had been removed was Hitler’s Chancellery. The Chancellery is now modern and even has restaurants at the bottom of it. They did not want to keep the original building, because they did not want Neo Nazi’s coming there. Hitler intentionally made his buildings and their hallways long, so that people would feel small. In 1943 he started to build the Hitler Bunker, that he later committed suicide in. Today The Air Force Ministry became the council of users planning ministry. They kept the Gestapo Headquarters as it was, and added the Topography of Terror museum next to it. With The German Resistance Memorial, they also put inside the museum those who resisted Hitler’s terror. Hitler had many assassination attempts.
One of the guys that attempted to assassinate Hitler was Georg Elser on November 8 1939. He tried to kill Hitler with a bomb that he put in his pillar while he was giving a speech. Georg Elser was not well educated, which was weird because he made the complicated bomb by himself. He knew that Hitler was preparing for a war, because the indistries changed to only making weapons. Six million people were unemployed during Hitler’s rein and he could not understand why nobody was trying to stop Hitler. Even though Hitler took care of the “ordinary” people, had holiday programs for women and children, Elser knew that it was just a scheme. Everyone was overworked without overtime pay, had trade unions and the Nazi’s treated them so badly. Elser decided the best way to defeated his plan was to kill him. The plot to kill Hitler was unsuccessful because he unexpectedly left early. Many people died and over 60 people were wounded. Elser was arrested for trying to flee the country illegally after the attack. He was imprisoned for five years, but he got out for good behavior. After that he was tortured by the Nazi’s and he told them everything. On January 1945, he was taken to a concentration camp and Hitler ordered to kill him in April 1845. There were many more attempts on Hitler but none of them were successful.
One of the memorials that I thought was interesting, translated to say “you did not bear the shame you defended yourself you have the great eternally awake sign of repentance sacrificing your life for freedom right and honor.” Although I was curious to why they chose to have the statue of the man naked.
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