On the way to Berlin we watched the movie “Bridge of Spies” (recent Tom Hanks movie).  It is a true story about an insurance attorney played by Tom Hanks that was thrust into the center of the cold war when the CIA sent him to negotiate the release of captured U2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who had “strayed” into Soviet air space and been shot down.  He ejected from the plane and was captured and imprisoned.  After some high drama and James Bond style intrigue, a swap for a Soviet spy was eventually negotiated.  This was to take place on the bridge between east and west Berlin.  This is the bridge.

Looks like any bridge but what a cool history it has.

Lunch was at another Biergarden on the Wannsee Lake

No I did NOT eat that!

Next stop was one of places that I have been excitedly anticipating. The location of the Wannsee Conference. The meeting of the darkest figures of the Nazi elite that were to decide the fate of the European Jews. The Nazis called the Jews their “misfortune”. They had made it impossible for Germany’s Jews to remain in their homeland so there were few left there but there were 11 million more to get rid of in Europe. The Final Solution.  Juden Frei.

This is the majestic mansion where they met.

The meeting lasted only 90 minutes. It was a directive from Hitler so there was nothing discuss. A handout was given to each attendee.  It defined how a Jew was to be determined, what to do about mixed marriages, Jews that looked German and other ridiculous issues.  Quotas for extermination were set though euphemisms were used to describe the actions.  11 million was the goal.  They accomplished 6 million.

If you watch the movie “The Conspiracy” it portrays this meeting quite well.

Himmler’s second in command, Reinhard Heydrich was the ultimate bad ass Nazi.  He conducted the meeting that Adolf Eichmann had so efficiently planned.  Heydrich was one of the most evil Nazis and wildly anti-semitic.  He was nickanmed the Butcher of Prague.  5 months after this meeting he was riding through Prauge in his big Mercedes convertible and was wounded by two Czech agents who had been trained  by the RAF Special Forces and dropped in by parachute to do the hit.  He died a few days later of infection.  As retribution the two surrounding villages had all their women and children sent to concentration camps and all the men over age 16 shot.  The villages were then burned.

This meeting might never have been known about because the attendees were sworn to secrecy and all documents were to be studied then destroyed.  As luck would have it, one of them kept the document and it was discovered in 1947 among files that had been seized from the German Foreign office.  Eichmann, the great organizer, later corroborated the details of the meeting when he was captured in Argentina in the early 1960’s by the precision Israeli Moussad forces.  He was smuggled out of Argentina by them to Israel where he was tried for war crimes and hanged.  He never expressed one moment of remorse for the millions of killings he help plan.

Next stop was the 1936 Olympic stadium.  This is where Hitler refused to watch our Jesse Owens at the awards ceremony because he was enraged that a black man beat his perfect blond men to the gold.

Our Belin hotel is beautiful and just across the street from the former Wehrmacht (German Army) headquarters. It has a special story all its own.