Forst Zinna – A Soviet Ghost Base in Germany

The area of Jüterbog, about one hour driving south of downtown Berlin, boasts a long military tradition since well before the Cold War. Yet the most astonishing density of military installations in this region was reached in the years of the Third Reich, and later in the decades of Soviet occupation, lasting until the early 1990s.

Many chapters of this website are devoted to the subject of Soviet occupation in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), with portraits of many military bases over its former territory (see for instance this chapter, and links therein). These either belonged to the NVA, the armed forces of the GDR, or the Red Army of the Soviet Union, which retained a significant military presence in the GDR all along the Cold War, despite this country being formally independent.

This chapter deals with one of such military bases, Forst Zinna. This base stands out in the East German panoram, due to the intriguing history of the place on one side, but also thanks to the plenty of interesting sights you may find there (as of mid-2019) – whereas many other similar abandoned installations have been wiped out by local governments, sometimes to be converted into something else.

The large military base at Forst Zinna was founded at the dawn of the Third Reich in the mid-1930s, and named after the führer, Adolf Hitler. The core was constituted by a set of solid multi-storey buildings, aligned along at least four parallel rows about a third of a mile in length, built in a typical old-German style. These hosted barracks and training rooms, used by an artillery and transportation school. There were also many service buildings, like canteens, sport and administration facilities. The base was operated by the Wehrmacht until the end of WWII, when the region was conquered by the Red Army. Thanks to its design, featuring large halls and common spaces, it was selected immediately after WWII to host an academy for future German functionaries of the yet-to-be-founded GDR (or DDR, the German acronym for the GDR).

The place was decorated and refurbished reflecting the style of the new communist owners and the cultural paradigms enforced by Stalin. Just before the latter’s death, in February 1953 the academy was transferred, and Forst Zinna was handed over to the Soviet army. They further enlarged the base, adding storage areas, small farms for food production, technical buildings, plus over the years some new housing.

The end of the story is similar to many military areas in the GDR. The Soviets finally left, the bases were too many for reunified Germany in a post-Cold War scenario, so most of them were either demolished, converted or forgotten. Forst Zinna has been largely demolished, but some of the buildings, built before the end of WWII, are reportedly registered as landmarks. The whole area is sitting in the wild vegetation and is not really looked after, but much is still there and makes for a mysterious memento of past vicissitudes Germany managed to survive. To the war historian and urbex fanatic as well, Forst Zinna has really much in store.

Photographs in this post were collected during two long visits in July and August 2019.

Sights

The base occupies a roughly square area, with a side about .8 miles long. For making the description easier, its premises can be divided into four ideal sectors.

The barracks area to the southwest, where you also find an easy access to the base, is populated with the oldest buildings, erected well before WWII. These comprise living quarters, school-like buildings, canteens, administration buildings, at least one gym, a theater, an open-air movie theater, a prison, and more. There are also a couple of clearly distinguishable Soviet-built apartment buildings, much more recent and taller than their neighbors.

To the north of the base you can find a sizable area which likely hosted a huge deposit for vehicles, as well as other technical facilities. Here demolition works have stricken hard, and today only a few buildings are still in place. Yet these include what appears as a centralized power/hot water supply plant, as well as large services for the troops, which make for interesting pictures.

In the third sector to the northeast, a large U-shaped technical building hosts a unique room with Soviet memorabilia. In this area you can find also a swimming pool, a football field with nice Soviet murals, and much dumped military material. Also here demolition works must have been carried out at an early post-Soviet stage, as vegetation has already grown over the debris.

Finally, to the west of the perimeter but next to it, you can find a ghost monument from soviet times.

You can find aerial pictures of the Forst Zinna base in this chapter.

Southwestern Area – Most of the Barracks and Older Buildings

Accessing the base via the southwestern corner, you immediately meet the the first original buildings from the pre-WWII period. They are painted in a nice dark yellow.

From the pics you can appreciate the length of the blocks in this part of the base. Among other spectral items, former notice-boards for activities in the base, like the movie theater, or for the latest news.

The perimeter is marked by a concrete wall running very close to one of the rows of buildings. The walls appear decorated with didactic explanations of something technical.

Entering the buildings, you may find tons of derelict memorabilia items, including hand-written registers, book covers, etc., all in Russian. Something in no shortage in the base is surely restrooms! There are really many.

The actual function of the buildings needs to be guessed, but some must have been used as schools – or even kindergartens – at least in Soviet times, when modern housing was added to the base also for the families of the troops. This theory maybe supported by the type of decoration you sometimes find in these buildings.

Walking in some of the taller yellow buildings, likely hosting also some living areas in the years of operation, you soon perceive the style is clearly pre-Soviet – too elaborated for USSR standard, and typically German. The age of the buildings can be judged also by the heating system, based on tiled stoves fed with coal. Traces of coal can still be seen in the corridors, where the stoves were loaded!

The stairs are particularly nice in style. You are not encouraged to climb upstairs, especially in those buildings were the roof is leaking. Under the roof you can appreciate the wooden structure supporting the external tiles.

Some rooms of these buildings used to host other services, like for instance a – likely – tailor, or uniform shop, as you can see from the furniture and from the explanatory sign.

Close to the southwestern corner of the base you can find two twin apartment buildings in a typical shabby Soviet style, possibly dating to the 1970s.

The size of the apartments is incredibly small! They are apparently small one-room unities, with an extra-small kitchenette and a microscopical bathroom. On the plus side, all have a balcony on the facade.

Leftovers of the original furniture are abundant here – as you may see, everything is extremely poor quality. In some of the bathrooms you may find some stickers decorating the wall, and even traces of toilet paper holders!

The ‘Soviet ghost’ aura here is extremely intense, as everyday items can be found everywhere, like the troops had just left. In the backyard of these buildings you can find remains of a playground, broken bicycles, and even traces of hanging wires!

Just ahead of these buildings, you can see a mystery one-storey tunnel structure made of a set of progressively smaller sections – making it look like a weird ‘telescopic building’. It is clearly from a relatively late age, maybe one of the last additions to the complex.

One of the blocks adjoining the taller buildings to the south is a small (likely) elementary school, with a nice indoor gym, as well as a fenced outdoor playground. Soviet playground designers made extensive use of old tires. Here they are even painted in bright colors!

North of the school, you meet an array of smaller buildings along the perimeter of the base, but their function remains to guess.

The long rows of yellow barracks are interspersed with areas or buildings dedicated to special functions. For instance, at some point you can find a rather large open-air training area, with many types of ladders, balance axes, leapfrogs and more training rigs still in place, albeit completely surrounded by wild vegetation.

Another item is apparently a school building, with a typical academy-style front facade, and classrooms inside. By this building there is also a kind of small firefighting post (not sure), which includes a cylinder bell with a nice sound – really weird, complementing the unreal silence of this place!

There are at least two large canteen buildings. In the first you find very big kitchen rooms, with large ventilation hoods and stoves still in place.

There are also storage rooms, some with wooden trays, maybe for bread, or maybe for putting trays after lunch.

In the second canteen, even larger, you can find also remains of a Soviet decorated wall, with traces of writings and small paintings.

Other special buildings, close to one of the canteens, include a nice greenhouse.

There is also a relatively large open-air movie theater, with a covered stage and uncovered seats for the public. The benches are gone, but their legs remain. The machine room to the back is in a really bad shape.

To one side of the open-air movie theater you can find one of the strangest items in the base. It is an area severed from the others by a serious barbed-wire fence – still difficult to go through! In this kind of ‘private garden’ you can find two explanatory signs in Cyrillic, and what appear to be gym gear for fight training. There is also as a small monument – or a grave? – composed of a glass obelisk planted on a delimited area on the ground.

Even weirder, the adjoining building features very small windows… an exploration of this building allows to clarify its purpose – it used to be a prison, the small windows being on the sidewalls of the cells! There are four cells at least, with peepholes in the doors. Everything very similar in style to the Soviet prison in Karosta, Latvia, except you can’t experience the thrill of sleeping in ‘safely’ – see this post!

Not far from the fenced courtyard you can find a naive wall painting portraying two tanks transported on railway trolleys. One of the troopers has been stricken by an electric shock, as apparently his rifle touched the high-voltage cables over the railway – oh no!

There are also sport-themed murals on a fence. A building nearby looks like a garage for a small vans or for cars, maybe a mechanics shop or similar. There is also a storage room with nice wooden paneling.

The garden + prison ensemble may be interpreted as a military-police-run part of the base, likely an unwelcoming sector of the installation in its heyday! Not far you can find also an academy building with large halls, including a former gym. The vocation of the place is witnessed by a sport-themed mural.

Another special building close by the mystery quarters probably used to be a club, with a kitschy decorated room, and another gym area, with another interesting sport-themed mural. Some of the less explicitly Soviet murals may date to the years immediately after WWII, when Forst Zinna was a training academy for future key-figures of the ‘political life’ (?) of the GDR.

Another interesting building can be found to the northern end of this sector of the base. Some decorative details look more modern than the age of the base. It looks like there was a kind of glass-covered patio, or a large greenhouse.

A highlight of the northern part of this sector is the large theater building. Unfortunately, the roof of the theater room has recently collapsed completely, destroying everything below it. Yet the foyer was spared, with one of the most famous Soviet murals in the GDR. Considering the style, it must date from a relatively recent Soviet age, even though the military gear in the portrait is not really recent.

Still in place is the coat hangers area, with some inscription in Russian on the wall nearby. The building – well, what remains of it – is likely from pre-WWII times.

To the northwestern end of the barracks sector, cross the main former access road to the base, you can find traces of Soviet monuments, with stylized troopers, a huge concrete Red Banner flag and information signs, everything in a rather bad shape, and attacked by the wild vegetation.

Nearby you can find an administration building, nice in style, but again in a very bad shape, and with a partly-collapsed roof. Yet this building hosts something of great interest for pickier explorers and Cold War historians. A couple of rooms likely hosted a logistic or travel service, and here you can find at least three well-preserved maps of the USSR!

The first is a smaller-scale topographic map, and is the worst conserved. The corresponding office was really shabby, with the lowest quality furniture. What appears interesting here is a set of electric power metering rigs or switches, with hand-written labeling in German – maybe from the years of Wehrmacht tenancy?

The second map is a very big political map of the USSR, with all the Soviet Socialist Republics. You may spend an hour looking at all the particulars! The map is from 1971. You can find places like Voroshilovgrad, Leningrad, Chernobyl, Riga, Poliarnyi, Semipalatinsk, Gorkij, Leninakan, all within the boundaries of the Soviet Union – names strongly bound to real world or fiction plots from the Cold War! Some of these locations have even changed their names!

The third map is an even more unique portrait of the railway lines of the USSR, presented in great detail – the map, from 1981, occupies an entire wall. Here you can also find interesting names and places, like Tashkent, Gori – Stalin’s birthplace in Georgia, see this chapter – or Borjomi, where one of the most famous water springs of the Czarist Empire is still active, producing mineral water you can find everywhere in the former USSR still today.

To end with this part, between the administration building and the theater, you can find a really mysterious underground bunker-like structure. This faces to the ground in an area fenced with barbed wire and protected by a firing turret with loopholes. Maybe a deposit for rifles or smaller weapons?

Northern Area – Warehouses and Technical Buildings

This area was likely devoted to the storage of heavy vehicles – trucks, tanks, movable cannons, who knows? As you can see from Google pictures on the web, until at least 2009 there used to be many garage buildings here. As said, this is the area most hit by demolition works, and what you find today is a large flat area, with some buildings surviving close to the perimeter, marked by the original concrete outer wall of the base.

Luckily for explorers, a few surviving buildings make for interesting sights. An item you can easily spot is a tall brick chimney. At the base of this you can find a – likely – power station for the base. The burners are gone, but you can see extensive piping, and boilers for hot water.

The piping from the boilers – made in the GDR in 1973 – are labeled in Russian, and there are also several posters and signs in Cyrillic. Not far from the main rooms, there is a small booth for a technician constantly supervising the plant.

Close by the power station building, large service buildings are shrouded in the wild vegetation. One of them was completely dedicated to bathrooms. The most visible remains are the changing rooms, with some hangers with small mirrors still in place, and the showers, still partly intact!

North of these buildings, you meet a long concrete pool with slides for vehicles at the two far ends. It used to carry out some industrial function – amphibious vehicle testing?

Other surviving buildings in this area include a very tall one, possibly a maintenance hangar, as well as some of the – originally many – garages.

Close by the inner fence dividing this sector from the barracks part of the base, you can find a smaller garage with some books scattered around. There is also a fire emergency station with writings in Russian.

Northeastern Area – Sporting Facilities and Mystery U-Shaped Building

In this area, technically not separated from the southwestern one with the barracks, you can find some non-residential buildings of great interest.

Possibly the construction with the largest area in the whole base, a big U-shaped building with what appear to be large workshops or garages can be found close to the northeastern corner of the base, just inside the perimeter concrete wall.

Inside the halls of this building, you can find many interesting Soviet remains – posts, writings, murals,… The function of these many rooms has really to be guessed. Some feature doors so small that entering with a vehicle would be impossible. Others still preserve the smell of Diesel oil.

An unexpected surprise in this mystery building is a kind of commemoration-information area. The geometry of the rooms is very strange, with a small unlighted corridor leading you in. An incredible Soviet mural with hammer and sickle can be found in this corridor.

In the two adjoining rooms you can find traces of many interesting panels, arranged in a kind of ‘Soviet temple’ architecture. There are photographs of soldiers during training activities, aircraft, tanks, portraits of some high-ranking staff, and much more.

There are also artistically valuable Soviet-themed comics characters! Some big photographs portray the base of Forst Zinna in the days of operation. Unfortunately, big parts of the pics are missing, but you can recognize the typical German architecture of the buildings. The appearance of the base used to be different, without all the trees you find today!

The next room was possibly centered on the explanation of some Soviet industrial activity. The room is dominated by a scaled model of the USSR, with some locations – including Chernobyl nuclear power-plant, find it between Kiev and Minsk! – pinpointed on the map.

The walls of the quarters where these strange rooms can be found are covered in old newspapers. There are also historical pictures of the Soviet monument in Khatyn and other locations in Belarus (see here).

Close by the U-shaped building, moving north you can find a strange storage, with cases for – apparently – rifles.

To the northern end, there is an open-air swimming pool. It lies at the center of a sporting area, close to the outer concrete wall of the base. The pool makes for very good photo opportunities. It is hard to tell whether this was built for the Wehrmacht or later for the Soviets. It is large, and two springboards are more or less still in place.

The service building nearby appears to date from old times. Yet the pool was much used by the Soviets, as shown by the number of panels written in Russian, including regulations, one with a ‘START’ sign, another to show the temperature of water!

There are also typically Soviet decorations, like an Olympics symbol made of metal gearwheels.

Close to the pool, you can find a ghost football field. You can see a goal and a referee ladder, both imprisoned by the newly grown trees!

Next to the football field, the wall of the base is decorated with some nice sport-themed Soviet murals.

Leaving the base behind when walking further northeast, you come across former trenches, and a dump of light material, including many Soviet boots, gas masks, spades, bottles, and so on. They are likely what remains of flattened buildings in this area.

Soviet Monument

Back to the perimeter road where the main gate to the base is, to the opposite side of the main access road you can find an interesting monumental ensemble hidden in the trees. This was probably composed of a small square, today barely recognizable due to the overgrown vegetation, bordered to the far end by a set of concrete slabs adorned with typical soviet themes and by a tall concrete spine.

The latter part is still there, almost untouched. The spine used to be colored, as testified by the scant remnants of red paint over the surface. Also a painted emblem can be found to the back of the cube suspended halfway along the spine.

The slabs feature a head of Lenin, seen from the side, together with the ship Aurora. Others feature a dam, the monument to the Russian motherland in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), and the monument to the soviet cosmonauts in Moscow, among other items.

Getting there & Moving around

Reaching the premises of Forst Zinna is not difficult. The site is five minutes northeast of Jüterbog, about 1 hour driving south of Berlin, and is recognized by normal GPS navs. Jüterbog has also a railway station, so you may come by train+MTB.

The official status of the site is uncertain. There are a few prohibition signs ahead of the official gate, but much less than in other similar locations in Germany, and some of the buildings are reportedly listed, albeit not really looked after. The real threat for a visit is in the condition of the base. Most buildings are in a really bad shape, and entering is at your own risk. As said, some of the most visited parts have finally collapsed – luckily, nobody was in at the wrong time, but be sure you know what you are doing and take all precautions.

Forst Zinna is rather popular among German explorers, plus the area is a natural preserve now, so you will likely meet somebody during the exploration of the site, especially during the week-end. If you go on working days instead, you are likely to be alone all of the time, which may add to the atmosphere.

The size of the base is very large. These photographs were taken over three visits, for a total of about 10 hours, and at least on third of the buildings have been totally overlooked or not explored thoroughly.

War Museums in Moscow

People visiting Moscow from abroad usually spend much of the time in the Kremlin and the nearby districts, where they can find many cultural attractions, as well as fashion stores, great hotels and restaurants. Among the features of Russia’s capital city less known to the average tourist are the many monuments and museums dedicated to war history, which in some cases host extremely interesting exhibitions and artifacts from various ages, which would tell the visitor as much as the most prominent attractions in town.

Three I could visit in person are cited in this post, all of them easily reachable with the usual metro rail in a few minutes from the downtown.

The following photographs were taken during a visit to Moscow in September 2015.

Central Museum of the Armed Forces

This is a purely Soviet installation Cold War buffs will definitely like very much… Despite the old-fashioned website – which after all contributes to the picture of a Soviet-state-owned company… – the building was built following WWII, better known in Russia as the Great Patriotic war of  1941-1945. On the outside, besides the entrance there are a missile and a tank. Once inside you immediately find yourself in a large two-levels hall, dominated by a sculpture of Lenin and a huge mosaic wall, plus paintings of battles and other war-themed scenes all around.

From soon after your arrival, you get to grips with the only real ‘problem’ of this installation, where – just like many others touristic sights in Russia – everything – including the escape plan in the event of fire… – is written in Russian only. So, from the viewpoint of history, you’d better go prepared if you want to get the most from this exhibition, for you won’t find any understandable written information, unless obviously you understand some Russian.

There are several halls in the museum, related to historical moments from WWI up to the present day. A first notable room presents a lively reconstruction of a WWI trench fight, with lights and sounds.

The path through the museum follows the course of history, including the revolution, which put an end to WWI for Russia. Then follows WWII. I have to say I never found a collection of Nazi artifacts so rich as the one preserved here in any other place I visited. Literally hundreds of items, from propaganda posters to flags and banners, weapons, medals, papers,… Also present in due quantity are flags and banners of the Soviet Union, as well as Soviet uniforms, weapons and medals from the age of WWII.

Probably the most notable items from the time are the red banner raised on the Reichstag in Berlin – the corresponding b/w photograph is today one of the symbols of the end of WWII – and an original metal eagle with a swastika, probably taken from the Reichstag or the Reichkanzlei. The flag and the eagle are put together in a kind of monumental installation in a large central hall, celebrating the victory of the Soviet Union in the Patriotic War.

An old coat and a hat belonging to Stalin are also part of the exhibition.

Moving on to the Cold War period, a first focus is on the early history of the Soviet atomic program, leading to the detonation of the first nuclear asset in 1949, and to the testing by the Soviets of the largest thermonuclear device ever. Many models and some documentation are available – I could not understand the details, in that occasion I really regretted having no knowledge of Russian! The development of strategic missiles is covered next, including the much connected race to space.

The highlight of this part of the exhibition – at least for western visitors – may be the wreck of Francis Gary Powers’ aircraft, downed in 1959 by a SAM, basically a Soviet invention, during an illegal flight over the territory of the USSR ordered by the CIA. A large part of the fuselage and of the wings can be seen, with technical labels in English. Also part of the ejectable seat and other parts of this Lockheed U-2 are packed together somewhat inelegantly. Some original papers and maps the pilot had with him at the time of the accident are exhibited, together with many photographs. Extremely interesting.

Approaching the last stage of the Soviet Union, scale models, mockups and parts of larger nuclear missiles are presented. Also the war in Afghanistan is mentioned and the more contemporary war actions in Chechnya and other theaters following the collapse of the USSR are outlined and artifacts and photographs showcased. A window from the relic of the ill-fated Kursk submarine remembers this more recent tragedy – together with a monument on the outside to the right of the entrance.

Finally, the backyard is full of interesting items like missiles, gantries, heavy vehicles, tanks and so on. Unfortunately, it started raining heavily at the time of my visit, so photographs were not possible.

All in all, I would say one of the best museums in Europe on the topic of 20th century war history, and probably the best on Russian/Soviet operations in the 20th century. The presentation may be perceived as antiquated for todays standards, nonetheless this may be appreciated by people who are not totally new to this piece of history and who are more interested in seeing valuable and unusual ‘hardware’. I would recommend at least a full hour for the interested visitor, extendable to 1.5 hours rather easily including a detailed visit to the outside exhibition.

Getting there and moving around

The museum is not far north from downtown Moscow, less than .2 miles from Dostoyevskaya metro stop (line 10). The building can be approached walking along ul. Sovetskoy Armii, on the side of the park. The neighborhood is decent and safe, I had no bad feelings visiting alone.

Museum of the Great Patriotic War

Moscow is scattered with monuments remembering the Soviet effort and the victorious outcome of WWII, but the focal point of the celebration is the park at Poklonnaya Hill with the museum of the Great Patriotic War. The park is an extensive area, built around a perspective leading to the top of the hill, where the museum can be found (website here). This is hosted in the curved building behind the very tall spine which can be seen from the distance.

Approaching from the east, from the famous Kutuzovski Prospekt where many important political players of the USSR used to live, including Brezhnev, it is possible to spot first a huge arch, just in the middle of the road, and departing from it the perspective leading to the hill, just to the left of the Prospekt. To the left of the hill as well as beyond the spine there is a park with several smaller installations remembering war actions involving the USSR and more recently Russia, and following WWII. It is also possible to find there an exhibition with cannons, armored vehicles and other warcrafts.

The museum, accessible from the front of the circular building, is intended basically to celebrate the heroism of the Red Army in the war against Germany. It acts as a place of remembrance for the many who never came back, and during my visit there I coincidentally could assist to a ceremony with high ranking military staff celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.

Inside the most notable items are huge and very vivid dioramas – I must say, very well made, especially for the age – reconstructing some scenes from some especially dramatic battles of the war against Nazi Germany.

In the crypt it is possible to find the very interesting ‘Hall of sorrow’, a more modern monument to the fallen soldiers, with many crystal drops hanging from the ceiling, representing the tears of Mother Russia. These should be really many, with a proportion to the number of soldiers actually lost in the conflict.

The exhibition of artifacts includes a selection of items from various moments and fronts of the war. I could not tour this part freely because of the above mentioned ceremony, but what I could see was interesting. Unfortunately, I could not see the Hall of fame.

Above all, the plan of the whole installation and the Soviet style adopted, not so bombastic in this case, are extremely interesting. Touring the museum may take less than 45 minutes. If you are interested in moving in the park, you may need more. Distances here follow monumental proportions, so monuments are not really close to each other as they might seem on a map.

Getting there and moving around

The area can be reached easily from Park Pobedy metro stop on line 3. The perspective leading to the museum starting from the arch (and from the metro station) is about .6 miles long.

Museum-Panorama ‘The battle of Borodino’

You can find this museum very close to the Museum of the Great Patriotic War described above. The theme of the exhibition is here the battle of Borodino during the war against Napoleon and the French Army.

Borodino is located about 80 miles west of Moscow. There the advancing French Army faced the full power of the Russian Army. Napoleon himself was present and led war operations, while Kutuzov and Bagration, the top-ranking generals of the Tsar, were among the strategists on the Russian side. The battle was a prototypical battle of the time, with wild fire from cannons, infantry and cavalry, all in the arena. It turned out very cruel, taking a huge death toll on both parts. As a matter of fact, the Russian Army, which had constantly retreated avoiding the contact with the French until that great battle, continued back towards Moscow, which was finally abandoned and set on fire as Napoleon’s Army was reaching it. On one side, the Russians failed to stop the French at Borodino, on the other they set for the French a deadly trap – the French did not quit chasing the Russians until the winter of 1812 finally struck when they were infinitely far from home with no active supply lines, nor food nor resupply storages at hand. The season killed basically 9 out of 10 on the French side, triggering the end of Napoleon’s dreams of power.

The museum was recently refurbished in a modern key, with a detailed description of some moments of the battle on wide screens and interactive panels – again, unfortunately all in Russian. Uniforms, weapons and artifacts add to the visit, but the highlight here is the beautiful panorama painting. This is similar to the cyclorama in Gettysburg, PA, and it is a more than 300 ft long circular painting vividly depicting some important moments in the battle of Borodino. As you can learn from the website, the painting was made in 1912 (before the Soviets) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the battle. The building was renovated in 1962.

The visit may not take much, especially if you are not interested in the war against Napoleon, but I would suggest going there even only for the uniqueness of the installation as well as  for its artistic significance. In any case, the visit may not take more than 45 minutes, especially if you don’t understand Russian.

Right behind the museum it is possible to see the wooden hut where Kutuzov and his staff discussed and decided for the destruction of Moscow in order to jeopardize the plans of the French to find a shelter there for the approaching winter season.

Getting there and moving around

The museum can be reached easily from Park Pobedy metro stop on line 3, like the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. From the metro stop you can walk west on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, and you will soon find the museum on the left (northern) side of the road, about .2 miles from the station.

Surrender Sites of Nazi Germany – Reims & Berlin-Karlshorst

Differently from what one is usually taught in schools, World War II in Europe did not stop in one moment with the death by suicide of the Führer, on April 30th, 1945.

As soon as the advancing Western Allies established strongpoints within the original borders of Germany – as these had been before the war – in 1945 the chain of command in Germany began to vacillate. Rumors about contacts between top-ranking Nazi officials and the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) have lived to this day, and they are reasonable even though not well documented – as a matter of fact, Hitler dismissed both Göring and Himmler just before his death, on account of unauthorized contacts with ‘the enemy’, promoting Admiral Dönitz to the rank of president of Germany.

The understandable confusion of those days at the ‘top of the pyramid’ is reflected by the local autonomous surrender of substantial parts of the German armed forces around Europe, against the will of the Führer, and even before his death. Literally millions of soldiers were disarmed on both fronts in April 1945, and the process culminated in the surrender of all German forces in Italy on April 29th, the day before Hitler’s death.

The new German president Dönitz acted with the same authority of the Führer in the last stormy days of the collapsing Nazi rule, early May 1945. Under Dönitz’s mandate, between the 1st and 7th of May 1945 some separate surrenders took place, including all German forces in Austria, North-West Germany, Holland, Denmark, Berlin – who surrendered to the Soviets -, Mecklenburg and Pommern north of Berlin, and Bavaria. The German navy ceased war operations on May 5th, by direct order of admiral Dönitz.

All this preceded the ‘official’, authorized, unconditional surrender which was signed on behalf of acting president Dönitz separately by General Jödl in the headquarters of the Expeditionary Force in Reims in the early hours of May 7th, and by Feldmarschall Keitel in Berlin-Karlshorst on May 8th, in presence of General Zhukov of the Red Army. The capitulation called for quitting all military operations at 23:01 CET, May 8th. Both of the signers were arrested soon after, as were Dönitz, Göring and other top German players of the war in Europe.

Today, the two locations where the unconditional surrender(s) were signed are open for visitors. The following photographs were taken during visits in 2015 and 2016.

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Reims – Musée de la Reddition

The headquarters of the SHAEF where the ‘instrument of surrender’ was signed on the western front occupied the building of a high school.

Today, the building has returned to its original function, but a small part of it with the original room and table have been preserved inside of a museum on-site. The walls of the room are covered with original maps from the time, resembling how it looked like in 1945.

Other rooms are packed with showcases, where you can see many items, including an official copy of the document signed by Jödl, authenticated by Dönitz, uniforms, original flags and other memorabilia.

The museum is rather small, and can be toured in about 30 minutes at most. This excludes the video presentation, which I had not the chance to watch.

Getting there and moving around

The historical place is located to the north of the city center in Reims, very close to the railway station. The exact address is 12 Rue du Président Franklin Roosevelt, 51100 Reims. There is chance of public parking nearby. If you parked somewhere else for visiting historical Reims, I suggest not moving your car, as the museum can be easily reached with a short 5 minutes walk from Porte de Mars, right on the northern edge of the center. Website here.

Berlin-Karlshorst – Deutsch-Russisches Museum

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Soon after the end of the war and the division of Berlin, with the district of Berlin-Karlshorst falling under Soviet rule, the Soviets converted the building where the capitulation was signed for hosting their headquarters. After the birth of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) at the end of the Forties, the place was turned into a museum.

Besides the very room where the document was signed, you can find some dioramas dating back to the first years of the museum, as well as a specifically designed foyer and a stained glass window portraying the statue of the Soviet Soldier in Treptower Park – dating from the same late Stalin’s era.

More recently, the museum has been refurbished and enlarged with very interesting and well prepared exhibits, including many memorabilia items, findings and relics not only from the events of May 1945, but more in general from WWII and the less known eastern front.

Compared to the museum in Reims, this is much broader and richer, going well beyond the preservation of the room and the evocation of the last stage of the war.

Getting there and moving around

The museum is in a nice residential area in southern Berlin. This is not a touristic area, so you’d better go there only if you are interested in this specific museum, cause there is not much else to see. Yet if you are interested in WWII and especially to the eastern front, I would say this absolutely a must – all in all, there is not so much information in the touristic areas of Berlin about WWII, so this might fill the gap.

Anyway, the exact location is Zwieseler Strasse 4. This can be reached with bus 296 from the S-3 station Karlshorst or from U5 stop Tierpark. Alternatively, from S-3 Karlshorst it is a walk of about ten minutes. Finally, if you are going by car – the most convenient way – there is a parking right in front of the building. Website here.