(plane engines blaring)
- [Narrator] Berlin, June 1945.
A city in almost total ruin,
many of its famous streets
and buildings utterly devastated.
A capital city of a country
without its own government,
with barely half of its former population
and millions of cubic meters of rubble.
Today once again the home of
well over three million people
once more fill the buildings old and new.
One of the largest in Europe.
It's hard to believe this
scene was almost empty land
even when cities like Cologne and Trier,
Hausberg, Mainz, were already
long established cities
over 1,000 years old.
And a town called Berlin
didn't exist at all.
Even by the early 13th century
it was still little more
than a village on the river Spree,
but gradually the settlement grew
and prospered to later
become a cathedral town
and a royal residence.
During the 18th century in particular,
under the Prussian kings,
Berlin began to develop
into a major European city.
The splendid broad avenue
of Unter den Linden
had already been created
and along its length
now fine new buildings,
an opera house, a cathedral,
a library, an arsenal,
were erected during the
rein of Frederick the Great.
Even then Berlin was still
of well spaced individual
neighborhoods like Friedrichstadt,
the Nikolaiviertel,
and to the east Charlottenburg,
virtually a town in its own right,
where the Prussian ruler had
commissioned a small country
house for his wife, which was to grow into
the splendid Charlottenburg palace.
Other famous landmarks arose
during the following centuries.
The Victory Column
commemorated the victories
under Chancellor Bismarck leading
to German unification in 1871.
It was linked to the Brandenburg Gate
which was to become the very
symbol of the city of Berlin.
At the end of the 19th century
when the kaiser Wilhelm II
came to the German throne
he had great ambitions
for his capital.
Such plans included the transformation
or creation of avenues to equal
or even surpass those
such as the Champs Élysées
and the boulevards of Paris.
But those plans were to be thwarted by
the outbreak of World War One.
When the war ended the
Treaty of Versailles
was intended to bring
lasting peace to the world.
So, the powers gathered in
Versailles to limit Germany's
future armed forces.
Berlin was no longer to play the part of
a world power capital, but
to concern itself solely
with the internal affairs of the nation
and the city itself governed from
a celebrated 19th century town hall.
But in the following years
there were frequent outbursts
of unrest until the National
Socialist Party came
to power in 1933 and decided
to challenge the prohibitions
of the Versailles treaty,
including Germany's
rights to the Rhineland.
The new government was
determined to restore the role
of Germany as a world military power.
And of Berlin as a world city.
One of Hitler's major
ambitions was the complete
redesign of Berlin to turn
into not only an even greater
capital city for Germany, but
into a leading metropolis,
one of the greatest, if not
the greatest, in the world.
He gave his minister, Albert Speer,
the task of redesigning
Berlin to that end,
even to give it a new name, Germania.
Hub of the new city was
to be the Brandenburg Gate
where a completely new
north-south road was to cross
the existing but enlarged
east-west thoroughfare.
This new road and its
buildings were to be greater,
wider, more monumental than
anything else in the world.
Even as Hitler prepared
for war the Minister Speer
lost no time in getting down to the job.
In fact, the first foundation
stone was scheduled
to be laid the following year,
would need a labor force
of about 180,000 workers
whose first giant task would be
to demolish hundreds of buildings,
indeed complete districts of old Berlin.
And already by 1939
large areas of the city
were being torn down to make way for
the new city of Germania.
The project continued on even
after the outbreak of War
with the invasions of
Poland in September, 1939.
As the first days of
September went by the world,
and indeed the Germans themselves,
were astonished at the
incredibly rapid progress
of their campaign.
A new word was born to
describe it, blitzkrieg.
Within just a few weeks during
September Poland was overrun,
mopping up operations were
carried out by the infantry
in almost leisurely fashion
and the country was finally
occupied by the German forces.
On the very first night of the war,
Britain mounted its
first air raid on Berlin,
but it wasn't bombs that fell,
the ammunition was simply 13
tons of propaganda leaflets.
It was to be almost a further
year before a real bombing
raid was carried out over the
German capital by the RAF.
But even then the raid
was relatively light
and little damage was done to the city.
In fact, the first
months of war had little
or no real effect on the
lives of ordinary Berliners.
- I was nine years old when
World War Two broke out
and I lived in Berlin.
I have to admit that for
me the beginning of the war
in September, 1939, was really
quite a pleasant disruption
of everyday life.
For a start, the schools were closed.
And they put us on
helping with harvest work,
which I enjoyed.
We tried on gas masks and I
seem to remember there were some
more air raids or false alarms.
- [Narrator] After Poland
the war had come almost
to a stand still, until the
start of April, 1940, that is.
(speaking foreign language)
Suddenly the war had come alive again
and the blitzkrieg was to
move into its next phase
against Norway and Denmark.
The lessons that had been
learned in taking Poland
within a month were now
put to the practice again.
In the case of Denmark with
even more devastating effect.
Both Denmark and Norway
were completely unprepared
for this event and the German
army met with practically
no resistance from the people of Denmark.
The troops simply marched in
while the citizens just
stood by and watched.
It was virtually all over in a day or two.
In the case of Norway the
campaign took much longer,
the terrain was more
difficult than in Denmark,
less amenable to the techniques
of blitzkrieg on the ground.
This time the German air
fore had to pay a larger role
in supply and battle operations
that had been necessary up till then.
(bombs exploding)
(upbeat marching music)
By the beginning of May
it was virtually all over
and the country was in full occupation.
Back home in Berlin the
citizens could hardly
believe the unending flow of
good news about the victories
and progress of their army.
But still more was about to come.
The German command now looked further west
and advanced towards the low countries.
Once again the opposing
forces were completely
taken by surprise.
German troops crossed into
Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg,
meeting little or no resistance at first
and the roads to the North Sea
and the Channel coasts were open.
While the troops advanced
practically unopposed,
back in the chancellery in
Berlin even more ambitious
plans were being made for what, to Hitler,
was a greater prize.
A conquest of France and her
rapid removal from the war.
The German tanks and
troops would first have
to overcome the natural
obstacle to the territory
which lay ahead.
The hills and deep valleys
with their countless streams,
the well wooded forests of the Ardennes.
But none of these features
proved to be serious obstacles
to the progress of the Panzer divisions
and the success of blitzkrieg tactics.
(bombs exploding)
Finally the tanks reached the Meuse
and easily crossed from
Belgium into France.
It was at Sedan that the
French had yielded to Germany
70 years before in the
Franco Prussian War.
Now, history was about to repeat itself.
On June 5, the German
troops thrust forward
along a 75 mile front bypassing
the French Maginot Line defense entirely.
The offensive was backed
up by Luftwaffe arrays
on rail tracks and air fields.
Within days the vanguard of
the German army had reached
the coast and occupied Dunkirk
and other crucial Channel ports.
Great quantities of enemy war
materials were left behind.
The panzer columns now turned south for
the greatest prize of all, Paris.
The French had declared Paris an open city
to avoid devastation.
It was only a few days
later on the 15 of June,
that the German troops marched
into the French capital.
With the loss of Paris, the
French government surrendered
and came to the armistices
table at Compiègne
at the same railway carriage
in which they had made
Germany sign surrender terms
after the first World War
22 years before.
(speaking in foreign language)
Their newsreel commentator
described the event
enthusiastically for the people back home.
(speaking foreign language)
- I was born in Schliessen.
My father had a farm there,
but after a few years in
1935 we came to Berlin
where we lived in Dernburgstrasse,
in Charlottenburg close to the Lietzensee.
And there I finished school
and then the war broke out.
The first year or so of the
war was relatively quiet,
one lived almost a normal life.
We all hoped of course that
after the fall of France
the war would soon be over.
- [Narrator] For Berliners
that week the war was
as good as over, the roads
were covered with flowers along
the routes to be taken by Hitler
on his return from France.
The people of Berlin turned out
in the hundreds of thousands
to cheer the leader's triumphal procession
through the streets of the city.
(crowds cheering)
It seemed as though the
whole population of Berlin
was there to watch the
cavalcade make its way
through the capital streets
from the Anhalter Station
to the Wilhelmplatz and
Hitler's new chancellery.
A newsreel commentator
describes the festive
atmosphere of ringing
bells and cheering crowds
celebrating victory in
the nation's capital.
It was a glorious summer day
and a moment in Berlin's
history to be savored.
Things were never again to be so joyful
in the city for many long years ahead.
- The people were very disappointed
and concerned when the war
against Russia started in 1941.
- [Narrator] A strike against
Russia took the German
people by surprise as much as
it did the rest of the world.
True, the campaigns seemed
to have started well,
and prisoners were soon
falling into German hands.
But for many of the German people,
it seemed that this time
Hitler might have gone too far.
And yet the tactics of
blitzkrieg seemed as effective
in the vast distances of
Russia as they had in the west.
The German forces were
very soon deep inside
the Soviet Union and at
the very gates of Moscow.
And well on the way to the
other key Russian cities
from Leningrad to the Ukraine.
It seemed there was just nothing
that could stop the blitzkrieg machine.
Well, there was one thing
and it wasn't an army or a manmade weapon.
The Russian winter.
The advance into Russia was
suddenly frozen in its tracks.
The winter temperatures that
year plunged to even lower
figures than usual.
The fighting continued
with undiminished ferocity,
but the front line hardly moved.
For the first time since the war began,
the German army had been
brought to a standstill.
And in fact were even facing
a severe counter attack.
The nation also was facing
increasing enemy activity
on the home front.
- After the Russian campaign
began life seemed to carry on
still relatively normal in Berlin.
Though there were of course
quite a few air raids.
We used to go from our
flat on the third floor
to the basement shelter
and we were often worried
that our house would be bombed.
- [Narrator] Berlin was starting to become
the more frequent target for the RAF.
After the end of 1941,
the capital suffered fewer
attacks than the more
westerly German cities
because of its greater distance
from the British air fields.
For the RAF it meant a longer journey
and more time in the air
exposed to enemy flak,
but now with the more
effective Lancaster bomber
coming on stream from the production line
in greater numbers, attacks
on Berlin were stepping up.
(bombs exploding)
- The first air raid I remember,
I mean one of the heavier raids,
happened one night in early March, 1942.
(guns firing)
- [Narrator] Berlin and the
route across western Europe
were well defended by the
German anti-aircraft sites.
And an air raid was still a
very dangerous undertaking
for British bombers.
Nevertheless, many bombers did get through
and began to cause a great deal of damage
in the heart of Berlin.
- I can remember one
evening when my mother
and I went to a cinema
in the Kurfürstendamm.
The film was half way through
when somebody shouted,
"There's an air raid warning!
"Please leave the cinema
as soon as possible!"
My mother and I rushed out
and tried to get into
one of the house shelters
in the street, but it was very difficult
because most of the people
who lived in the houses
were in the house shelters
and didn't want to become
overfilled with outsiders.
The bombing had already started
and we were still running about.
Finally we ran to a door and
were determined to get into
the shelter no matter what.
Well, we made it just in
time before the bombardment
really go underway.
(bombs whistling)
This awful attack lasted for about an hour
until the all clear.
And my mother and I came out
again into the Kurfürstendamm
and the street was just a sea of fire.
(fire crackling)
Shops, restaurants, and
houses were all on fire
and we had a great problem to get home.
It was quite a long way
from the Kurfürstendamm
back to our house in the Dernburgstrasse,
especially having to avoid falling masonry
and blazing wreckage.
Of course there were no
buses or trains or taxis,
so we were very worried
about whether our house
had been destroyed or what we
would find when we got there
if we could reach it.
Finally, we arrived
and thank God our house
was still standing.
It wasn't too badly damaged.
You can imagine how relieved we were.
A short while after this attack
and there were many other
attacks following that,
my office decided to
evacuate into the country.
We left at the end of 1943.
- [Narrator] The RAF
carried out more sorties
of concentrated bombing by night than
any other air force during World War two
and the Lancaster was proving to be
its most effective weapon.
From this time the raids on
Berlin were becoming heavier
and more severe with
1,000 bomber raids playing
an increasing role.
(bombs exploding)
each night raid brought its
growing share of ruin in
the morning, especially
in the city center.
Each morning the population
faced the awesome burden
of clearing the streets,
removing the growing piles of rubble,
a task increasingly falling
upon the shoulders of the women
and more elderly men,
but the Berliners set to it
with the women day after day.
At this stage the citizens
were still more or less
able to go about their daily business,
but it was becoming
increasingly difficult.
- In 1944 we came back to Berlin
and continued working in our
office in Bendlerstrasse.
The times were very difficult
and there were many air
raids during this period.
There were hardly any buses
or trams or trains running
and it became extremely difficult
just getting to the office
and back everyday.
The air raids increased very much
and I remember one especially heavy
attack in February, 1945.
We were sitting in my office
and there was suddenly a raid
and we went to a small
street shelter nearby.
The attach was especially
heavy and lasted an hour.
(airplane engines roaring)
(bombs whistling)
- [Narrator] The American
Air Force was now adding
its weight more and more
with daylight raids,
subjecting the city to virtually
round the clock bombing.
- We left the shelter and
it was dark in the city,
even though it was still daytime.
There were fires all over the place.
In the whole area all you
could see was fire and smoke.
- [Narrator] As though
things weren't bad enough
on the home front,
even worse news came flooding
in from the Russian front.
(guns firing)
For months now the
German army had besieged
the key city of Stalingrad
without success.
Now, the Russians began to
fight back, street by street.
Gradually the Germans troops
found themselves encircled
and eventually forced to surrender.
Back in Berlin in the chancellery
the midnight oil was burning.
Hitler was having to
reconsider his Russian campaign
strategy and decided to throw everything
into one last colossal
undertaking, the battle of Kursk.
It proved to be one of
the most ferocious battles
of the war on Europe and ended
in defeat for German arms.
Countless young and abled
bodied men had been lost during
three years of a fruitless
campaign in Russia,
leaving an ever older
and disabled population
behind in the cities.
All males who weren't school children
or elderly citizens were
now conscripted into
the Volkssturm to undergo home front
military style training.
For school children
continuing their education
was a problem.
Going to school was becoming
a matter of when and where.
- Our school times were
constantly interrupted.
And the depended anyway on what time
the previous raid was over.
If it was after one o'clock
I think we didn't have to go
to school next day and of
course we never knew whether
the school building
would still be standing.
- [Narrator] By the spring
of 1945 the Russians reached
Torgau on the banks of the river Elbe
and made contact for the
first time with their western
allies on the other bank.
(cheering)
Berlin was almost completely encircled
and the battle of Berlin
was about to begin.
- In April, 1945 it was clear
to us that the war was lost.
At the end of April the
Russians came to Berlin,
before that we suffered
from heavy artillery.
At that time it was less from bombing,
the damage was mainly from
the Russian Army's artillery.
(guns firing)
- [Narrator] Throughout
February and March the Red Army
had fought its way through
Germany's occupied neighbors,
Austria and Czechoslovakia.
At last, they were positively
on the road to Berlin.
In the early morning of April 16th,
more than 15,000 rocket launchers
and guns opened fire on the
first German defense ring
a few miles outside Berlin.
(artillery firing)
The Russian air force helped
to soften up the resistance.
In just a few days the Russian
tanks had broken through
to the very outskirts of the capital.
Soon the Russian soldiers had reached
and were fighting in the actual
streets of suburban Berlin
for the first time.
Street barricades had
been hastily thrown up
by the city's defenders.
And Berliners still had
enough of their traditional
ironic humor left to make the joke that
the barricades will save Berlin
because when the Russians see
them, they'll die laughing.
(guns firing)
At first, only soldiers
fighting occupied the streets,
but as they moved ahead
they began to encounter
some of the first Berliners
venturing out of doors
looking for shops or places
to supply their everyday needs
and braving the dangers of
gunfire and toppling buildings.
(guns firing)
The defenders spend their
last hopes on an attempt
for relief from west
Berlin which never came.
The battle hardly ever
let up for a moment.
Barrages from street artillery
carried on throughout the day
and into the night.
(guns firing)
As the battle raged nearer
and nearer to the center of Berlin,
the fighting became more at close quarters
and ground was gained
only street by street,
even one side of the street to the other,
then block by block, house
by house, and room by room,
often hand to hand.
Each new advance merely
took them to the next line
of resistance where they
faced snipers with rifles,
machine guns, and even flame throwers.
(guns firing)
As shortage grew, the people formed queues
at every rumor of food or other goods.
All but ignoring the struggles of the city
as it went on around them.
The almost incessant barrages
of artillery heaped up
further great masses of
rubble on top of the ruins
already made by the air
raids of the past few nights.
With the Brandenburg Gate in sight
it was plain that the battle
of Berlin was nearing its end.
(guns firing)
The next objective was the Reichstag.
Already the object of arson in 1933
and never repaired it was
now practically a shell
form the constant bombardment,
but for the Russians it
stood as a symbol of power
that must be taken at all costs.
A handful of Red Army troops stormed
and took the building
on the 30th of April.
Next day, May 1st, in a further
symbolic act for May Day,
they tied the red flag
to the statue of Germania
on the roof of the Reichstag.
(guns firing)
But even after the
capture of the Reichstag
some parts of the city still held out.
- My home district of Charlottenburg
was one of the last parts
of Berlin to be occupied
by the Russians.
We still had German troops
holding out in our area
and because of that we went
on experiencing a good deal
of artillery and machine gun crossfire,
even after it had stopped in
most other parts of the city.
Then, quite suddenly, the
German troops disappeared.
We were just sitting anxiously
in our cellar at home
waiting for whatever would happen to us.
Everywhere was quiet.
A scary silence in the town
and then the Russian
soldiers came to our shelter.
We all heard frightening stories
about the Russian troops,
they took most of the
valuables we had on us,
and disappeared quite quickly.
We were immensely relieved
and grateful that we were still alive.
- [Narrator] A few days
later on the 6th of May,
the war for Germany came to an end.
The city of Berlin lay
spread out in total ruin.
Only 10 years before
the nation's leader had
dreamt of a new Berlin,
the city of Germania.
Incredibly, his planning
officials had actually welcomed
the first real air raid
on the city during 1942
as useful demolition work for
clearing away unwanted areas
to prepare for the new capital.
It was all a dream that never came true.
A dream that turned into a nightmare.
Berlin's larger famous
buildings now stood out
as items of ruin in an
ocean of destruction.
The Gedächtniskirche at the end
of a devastated Kurfürstendamm.
The Brandenburg Gate on the edge of
a now treeless Tiergarten park.
The Reichstag building above
the banks of the Spree.
From the suburb of Spandau in the west,
to the suburb of Lichtenberg in the east,
and Zehlendorf to the south,
to Pankow in the north,
scarcely a building remained intact.
When the opportunity
eventually came to assess
the full extent of the
damage on the ground,
the prospects for the rebuilding
of the city seemed bleak.
Some experts felt that apart
from the few major public
and historic buildings, Berlin
could never be fully rebuilt.
The optimists were the ones
who thought it might be
achievable in 50 or 60 years at least.
- When the war ended,
Berlin seemed to be
destroyed beyond repair.
In certain parts the streets
were just empty of people.
No one lived in them.
First the people didn't
care about the rubble,
it all seemed pointless.
And anyway, there weren't
enough people to do anything.
Those people who did stay in Berlin lived
in basements in the rubble.
- [Narrator] One in three homes
were completely destroyed.
The people with a crumbling room
or an airless damp cellar
were the lucky ones.
And even they faced the
never ending problem
of finding enough food to
stave off their hunger.
Soon after taking over the
city the Russian occupation
authorities had set up
mobile soup kitchens
and street canteens fro
the distribution of food.
And people who were normally peaceful
and respectful citizens
now clamored noisily,
and even fought each other
for a helping of food.
- Life in Berlin was
extremely difficult after
the end of the war.
We had great problems in getting food
and clothing and shelter.
We were provided with a
few official food vouchers,
but otherwise to survive at all one had
to buy various things on the black market.
- [Narrator] The once
beautiful Tiergarten Park
in the heart of the city now
became a favorite black market
rendezvous for Berliners
in search of goods that
no longer appeared in
the few remaining shops.
Day after day in the shadow
of the surrounding buildings,
the people came to buy, sell,
or exchange anything good,
jewelry, watches, cash,
or cigarettes, clothing,
everyday items of food that
had now become luxuries.
It was all quite forbidden,
but nobody cared.
Not even Russian soldiers who
came there to deal as well.
Occasionally an unexpected
consignment of goods
would suddenly arrive at a
local shop or other premises
and the word would spread like wildfire
as people flocked to there
for a piece of material,
an item of clothing, or
a whole bundle of goods.
Because of the damage to
the city water supply,
people often had to queue for water.
Just about the one thing they didn't have
to go without was wood.
Berlin is one of Europe's
greenest capitals,
generously endowed with
parks and woodlands
and surrounded by extensive forests.
And in the summer of 1945
men, women, and children
came in droves to collect kindling
and firewood in bulk
for the coming winter.
Or timber for household
fittings and furniture.
They came and went
constantly with their barrels
and battered old prams,
often in the spirit of healthy day out.
Some in family groups or
housewives with their children
in tow, even elderly citizens
just about able to make it.
Hardly a single member of
the Russian occupation force
had ever set foot
outside of Russia before.
Many of them never even outside
their hometown or village.
Now, here they were in one
of Europe's great capitals
and even the devastated Berlin
was a place for sightseeing.
The Brandenburg Gate, the Victory Column,
Hitler's new chancellery.
Was it really only five years
ago almost to the very same
day that these Russian
officers were striding through
the ruins that the Furor
had stood on the balcony
of the shiny new building to see
and hear the rapturous welcome of the city
after his return from France?
As leader of a new empire
stretching from the Polish-Russian
border to the Channel coast
and tomorrow the world.
The regime that was to
last 1,000 years had failed
to make it much more than a dozen.
After the horrors of
almost three weeks of grim,
uninterrupted street fighting,
the men of the Red Army were allowed a day
or two of relaxation in the city.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union
had sole stewardship of Berlin
until the capital's
future could be decided.
- The next few weeks of
May were very unsure.
We didn't know what
would happen to Berlin,
whether it would become a permanent part
of the Russian occupation.
But after about a month
we learned that the city
was to be divided into four sectors
and the rumor went
around that our district
of Charlottenburg would be
part of the British sector.
We were very thankful
when it proved to be true
and British authorities
arrived with their allies
to make the final
arrangements for the division
on occupation of Berlin.
- [Narrator] At the end of June,
after Russia alone had been running
the city for almost two months,
the British Royal Air Force
Arthur Tedder arrived in Berlin
with his colleagues in the USA
and their staff officers
from the army and navy.
They were greeted at the
airport by senior officers
of the Red Army.
Tedder had been made the
deputy supreme commander
of the Anglo American invasion forces
under General Eisenhower.
He now had the
responsibility of supervising
arrangements for taking over
the western part of Berlin
from the Russians by the occupation forces
of the western allies.
They were driven to the
building where the discussions
were to take place and their
drive through the streets
of the devastated city conveyed some idea
of the magnitude of the
task that lay ahead.
(dramatic music)
It had already been agreed
that the city of Berlin
was now to be divided into
four separate sectors.
Along similar lines to the
division of the Germany
to zones already occupied
by the French, American,
British, and Soviet forces.
As they drove to the meeting place,
watched by groups of curious Berliners,
none of them could be aware how quickly
their wartime alliance would fall apart
in the years to follow
and how tragic the consequences were to be
for hundreds of thousands of
Berlin citizens in the future.
Arrangements at first went
smoothly enough in establishing
the allied command council in Berlin.
Russia was to hold onto
the eastern Berlin sector
and the other powers would
take over west Berlin.
The date was set for the
arrangements to go ahead.
But within three years Russia would leave
the allied command council
and set up a virtually
separate state in east Germany.
And in 1961 the notorious
wall was erected,
dividing Berlin into two separate cities.
Meanwhile, however, on
the 4th of July, 1945,
the American and British troops moved into
their respected sectors.
Ahead of them the occupying
powers faced formidable tasks.
The restoration of public
transport, rail services,
electricity, water, sewage,
and above all the sheer amount of rubble
that filled the city.
75 million cubic feet of
rubble had to be cleared
before any real recovery could take place.
But maybe plain statistics
don't really convey
the sheer scale of it all.
Perhaps you get a better
idea of it when you learn
that there's a hill just outside Berlin
where you can go skiing in winter.
It's called the Teufelsberg,
the Devil's Mountain.
But it's a man-made hill
over three hundred feet high
made up entirely of some of the rubble
left behind in the city.
After the clearance one
can start to think about
the recovery, but recovery
doesn't take place just
with the big projects in the city center.
The repair and provision of
the larger public buildings,
offices, and stores.
Recovery really begins
in the neighborhoods,
with the small jobs that are personal.
The crazy paving
or cobblestone designs
in front of ones house,
bringing back the power to the people.
Getting the local shop back in business.
Keeping the streets clear of litter.
Setting up the water pump
for the neighborhood.
And finally, the day when a
local cinema opens up again.
When the neighborhood
starts functioning once more
the major reconstruction
can properly begin.
One city center building though,
will never be reconstructed.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
Almost entirely destroyed
in the air raids,
the city decided to keep the
remains as a war memorial.
Since German reunification after the war,
reconstruction has taken
on a new lease of life.
The symbol of Berlin today
could fairly be considered
as the building site crane.
Berlin is now prepared to
take the stage once again
as a world city.
Formally, the center
point of a divided city,
the Brandenburg Gate now
unites the west and the east.
The former eastern
sector has itself become
a lively new center
and a street that stood as
a focus of Berlin culture
in the 18th century, Unter den Linden,
continues that tradition into the 21st.
(upbeat music)
A reunited Berlin stands ready
now to welcome the millennium
as a world capital.
