Berlin is dotted with
memorials and reminders
of its troubled
20th-century history.
For a man with such
megalomaniac ambitions,
it's striking
how little survives
of the world Hitler created.
The former headquarters of
the Nazi air force,
or Luftwaffe,
now houses the German
Finance Ministry.
It's the only major
Hitler-era building
that somehow survived
the war's bombs.
Notice how
the Fascist architecture
is monumental,
making the average person
feel small and powerless.
Just down the street,
an exhibition called
The Topography of Terror
 is built upon
the bombed-out remains
of the notorious SS
and Gestapo buildings.
This spot, once the most feared
address in Berlin,
documents the methods
and evils of the Nazi regime.
Nearby is a site
with nothing to see:
a parking lot, vacant,
yet thought-provoking.
It's the site of Hitler's
vast underground bunker.
In early 1945,
as Allied armies
advanced on Berlin
and Nazi Germany lay in ruins,
Hitler and his inner circle
retreated here.
It was right here,
deep in his underground bunker,
that Hitler committed suicide
April 30, 1945.
A week later,
the war in Europe was over.
In their attempt to exterminate
the Jewish race,
the Nazis killed
six million Jews.
Berlin's Holocaust memorial
is a touching
and evocative field of
gravestone-like pillars.
Called the "Memorial to
the Murdered Jews of Europe,"
it was the first formal
German government-sponsored
Holocaust memorial.
When Germany called this
a memorial to the murdered Jews,
it was a big step.
They admitted to a crime.
They did it.
The design of this memorial
has no explicit meaning.
It's hoped that each visitor
will find their own.
There's no central
gathering point.
It's for individuals,
like death.
Once you enter the memorial,
people seem to appear
and then disappear.
Is it a labyrinth?
A symbolic cemetery?
Intentionally disorienting?
It's entirely up to you
to derive the meaning
while pondering
this horrible chapter
in human history.
A couple blocks away is
another poignant memorial.
Marking the Tombs
of the Unknown Soldier
and the Unknown
Concentration Camp Victim,
it's dedicated to all victims
of war and tyranny.
The statue of a pietà,
Mother with her Dead Son,
is by Käthe Kollwitz,
a Berlin artist
who lived through
both World Wars.
