MIlitary
Abandoned or forgotten sites and buildings in Berlin or around it that were associated with military use. There were lots of them.
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Abandoned or forgotten sites and buildings in Berlin or around it that were associated with military use. There were lots of them.
Wünsdorf was the Soviet military forces' HQ in Germany, Little Moscow, the Forbidden City. The Nazis used it before that for their underground army HQ.
Vogelsang still clings to its nuclear secrets. One sneaky deployment of bad weapons was so damned secret it was even kept from the Soviet soldiers involved.
West Berlin's lifeline during the Soviet Blockade, Tempelhof Airport has since become the city’s biggest park. Berliners will fight to keep it that way.
Germany's Luftwaffe used Flugplatz Schönwalde for the war. The Soviets took over afterward and left their traces after abandoning the airfield in 1992.
The abandoned NSA Field Station from the frontline of the Cold War, used to spy on Soviet-controlled East Germany on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
Flugplatz Brand was strategically important for the Soviet Air Force. Thankfully its battalions of flying fighters remained on ice for the duration of the Cold War.
East Germany checked out right before the Stasi could check in. Their hotel was never completed. Now it's just a great hulking ruin between the trees.
Jüterbog and its military camps played host to soldiers’ charades, men playing with guns, for around 130 years before the last ones left in 1994.
Flugplatz Oranienburg served in the summer of 1944 as a test center for the legendary Horten Ho IX, the world’s first “stealth” bomber.
The Stasi spy station Quelle 1 in Rhinow tapped fiber cable going from West Berlin 250km across the DDR to enemy state West Germany. Sneaky.
One of the world’s first motor airfields when it opened in 1909. People used to flock to Flugplatz Johannisthal to see marvelous metal machines with wings actually fly.
Lager Koralle was the forest bunker that controlled Germany’s feared U-boat fleet during World War II, central command for its marauding submarines.
Krampnitz, former military training school for Nazis, then Russians, where Inglourious Basterds was filmed, now abandoned and awaiting exploration.
Brash airplanes used to roar in and out of Fliegerstation Berlin-Friedrichsfelde's Flugzeughallen in days after the land had been used for testing airships.
It was a "small sensation" to find 80 meters of the original Berlin Wall among a bunch of secretive trees that imagined they could keep it hidden forever.
Years after he first visited, Lenin’s Soviet comrades brought him back to Germany for what they thought was a long haul. He still lingers in Fürstenberg.
The Olympic Games used to be the toast of the world. Berlin’s Olympics in 1936 were the most captivating games of all, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Lurking in the shadows of the forest, Heilstätte Grabowsee creaks and groans through the gloom, sighing with echoes of the past as it sinks into decay.
Flugplatz Rangsdorf was the airfield from which Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg flew off with a bomb for Hitler as part of the unsuccessful July 20 plot.
Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital saw better days, days when it used to care. Don’t bother expecting treatment now unless you need a roof falling on your head.
The Soviet military had its administration HQ in Karlshorst, near where Generelfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel signed the unconditional surrender of German troops.
The British built "Fighting City" so their soldiers could learn the subtle art of urban combat. It wasn’t abandoned for long before the police took over.
Horrific experiments on concentration camp prisoners were carried out at Heilstätten Hohenlychen, formerly a complex of sanatoriums, then military hospital.
Sperenberg was considered the ideal site for Berlin's long overdue shiny new airport until the powers-that-be opted to build it beside Schönefeld instead.
Before the Soviets took over, Bernau's Panzer Kaserne was dedicated to the Nazis’ Heeresbekleidungsamt, which made or repaired Wehrmacht soldiers' uniforms.
Bernau’s Heeresbekleidungsamt or “Army Clothing Agency” was where the Nazis had uniforms made for the war effort. No running around in rags for these guys.
Hitler and Honecker were among Beelitz-Heilstätten's famous patients. The former TB sanatorium became the largest Soviet military hospital outside the USSR.
In the DDR's final days, Volkspolizei and Stasi officers arrested protestors and brought them to this police barracks in Blankenburg to brutally beat them.
Lew McDaniel of West Virginia worked as a linguist at Teufelsberg, Field Station Berlin, from 1968-71. He tells Abandoned Berlin of life at the spy station.