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Related: About this forumThe real Hitler, death and destruction.
Give me five years, and you will not recognize Germany again.
speak easy
(9,238 posts)Demolishing it was a political decision, but, wrong one.
roamer65
(36,745 posts)There was intense hatred of Japan and Germany in 1945 for all the millions lost and the massive destructions wrought upon the world.
For example, I found a ways back a declassified document that discussed atomic bomb production and future usage.
There WAS a third nuke ready to go and could be dropped as soon as 19 Aug 1945. Subsequent production discussion was whether or not to keep dropping or save them for the invasion in October.
speak easy
(9,238 posts)strongly supported by the city of Nuremberg. That failed - although they took out the columns.
Erasing the evidence is as shameful as the crime - Hitler's Reich Chancellery was built in 11 months with 24/7 slave labour. Speer lived to tell the tale - and boasted about it.
thucythucy
(8,045 posts)Saving and restoring it most likely would have been more expensive than tearing it down and starting over.
Besides which, why save a monument to genocide and megalomania, that essentially glorifies a regime that brought nothing but misery even to the majority of Germans?
speak easy
(9,238 posts)thucythucy
(8,045 posts)I believe the building shown at about 35 seconds is the Chancellery. It looks pretty gutted to me.
The only part of the building that was still usable after Allied bombing attacks were Hitler's personal quarters in one wing of the building. According to the accounts I've read the rest of the building was unusable. And that was before the Russian bombardment and attack--much of the damage this film documents was done in a few weeks at the end of April 1945.
I'm still curious to know why you'd want to preserve this building in the first place. Why would any post-Nazi government in Germany want to occupy the same building as the one Hitler had designed and built and put to use? Why would any European government of any occupied or attacked nation want to meet a German head of state or government in such a building?
To me that would be like retaining the Nazi flag (or the Kaiser's flag). The current German flag is the one used during the short lived revolution of 1848, when Germans came closer to installing a representative democratic government than they would anytime before 1918. The new flag reflected that the page had turned and that the past was being repudiated, however imperfectly.
speak easy
(9,238 posts)Last edited Thu Jul 8, 2021, 02:03 PM - Edit history (2)
The East Germans established one in East Berlin. The Allies never did in US/UK/French zones.
The people of Nurnberg did not want the NSDAP parade grounds left in place; Berliners didn't want the Reich Chancery - which was exactly the reason for keeping them - the 'dark past' set in stone
The Palast der Republik - the DDRs political showcase was demolished in 2006. That 'dark past' was uncomfortable as well.
thucythucy
(8,045 posts)at the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin--I've been there and it's worth a visit or three. As I recall it includes quite a lot of material in its exhibits on Nazi atrocities.
There's also the Holocaust Memorial in downtown Berlin, as well as museums at Dachau, Belsen, and the other major concentration camps, including Sachsenhausen near Berlin. I think these give a more accurate--and far more damning--physical representation of Nazi crimes than the glorified neo-classical pile--the epitome of fascist architecture as conceived of by Hitler and designed by Speer--that was the Chancellery. That is to say: I think German Nazism is better represented by barbed wire and crematoria than by facades of pink and white marble. In addition there are also the memorial stones set up in places of special remembrance--such as the homes of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, that are a day to day reminder of the history. I've been to what was the main camp at Dachau, which has been preserved and includes a museum and archives with a wealth of pictorial, physical, and written material. It makes an incrfedible and sobering impression.
To renovate the Chancellery would have, in my humble opinion, made it into a neo-Nazi shrine. To prevent something like this from happening was why the prison at Spandau was demolished after Hess died.
Anyway, I'm assuming you now are convinced that the Chancellery was indeed gutted.
Bear in mind also that it took how many decades--indeed quite a bit more than a century--for the US to build anything like a museum commemorating the atrocities of slavery, not to mention the genocide of First Americans. And we're still in the process of taking down monuments to slave traders and war criminals like Bedford Forrest and white supremacists like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. However flawed the German response to commemorating its dark history, at the very least they never erected monuments or named universities after the most prominent perpetrators. And as far as I know, there is no German equivalent to putting the architect of the Trail of Tears on our currency.
Have you read "Germany As a Culture of Remembrance" by Alon Confino? It has some interesting discussion on some of these issues. There's also "Sins of the Father" by Jeffrey K. Olick, also worth reading. And for a more personal perspective there is "My Father's Keeper" by Stephan and Norbert Lebert, consisting of interviews with the children of the major Nazis such as Hess, Bormann, Frank, Himmler etc.
The German response to its history has been flawed in many respects.
But then compare it to how the people of America, (and Russia and Turkey, to cite some other examples) have dealt with our own dark chapters, and you'll see that we too have a very long way to go.
Best wishes.
speak easy
(9,238 posts)Here is an arial photo - It looks salvageable to me. The roof is intact in some places. Certainly buildings in a worse condition than that were rebuilt in Berlin.
Whether any effort should have been made to keep it is alternative history. Berliners wanted it gone. The citizens of Nurnberg wanted the parade grounds gone (a Nazi 'shrine' if ever there was one). One lot got their wish, and one did not.
Anyway, best wishes. I have not visited Berlin since the '80s, and, given the manner in which they rebuilt Potsdamer Platz, I won't be going back anytime soon.
Turbineguy
(37,319 posts)have no idea of the price paid by Germans, especially Hitler supporters.