Encircling the capital city of Berlin, the region of Brandenburg was fought over fiercely during WWII. The areas of former battlefields are now brimming with historic sites where you can further your knowledge of German history. In the town of

The German Ilse Schier spent her childhood and youth in East Prussia, the easternmost part of the German Reich. Her rural idyllic life there ended abruptly with the outbreak of the Second World War.

The 14-year-old Jew Manfred Steinfeld fled from Nazi Germany to the USA in 1938. Seven years later he returned with the 82nd U.S. Airborne Division as a liberator and participated in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. On 2 May 1945 he witnessed the meeting of U.S. and Soviet forces at the Elbe as well as the liberation of Wöbbelin concentration camp.

Rosie the Riveter is the symbol for all the women that worked in the war industry during the Second World War. As the men went to the front, hundreds of thousands of women took their places in the factories and with their tireless efforts contributed greatly to the Allied victory.

Svetoslao N. Hlopoff arrived in eastern France as a soldier with the U.S. Army in December 1944. After the surrender of Nazi Germany, a roundabout route took him to the Allied Kommandatura in Berlin as a Russian-English interpreter. In this capacity he experienced the beginnings and the collapse of the Four Powers Administration.

After Italy announced its withdrawal from the Second World War in early September 1943, the Wehrmacht deported Italian soldiers to the German Reich. They were deployed as forced labourers in the industry. The Italian military radio operator Ugo Brilli was one of them. He was interned at the forced labour camp in Schöneweide.

Wilhelm Keitel served as chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1945. He loyally supported Hitler’s policies and shared responsibility for the war of annihilation in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. On 8 May 1945 he signed the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces in Berlin. In November 1945 he stood trial in Nuremberg.

On 1 July 1945, Colonel Frank Howley arrived in Berlin with an advanced detachment of the U.S. Army. His mission was to build the American military administration in Berlin.

The Second World War in Europe ended in the spring of 1945 with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. The fate of the German people now lay in the hands of the four victorious powers, the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. Germany and Berlin were placed under a shared four-party administration.

The battle of Berlin was one of the last battles of the Second World War in Europe. The war that had proceeded from Berlin returned to the city. Many soldiers and civilians died in widespread house-to-house fighting.

Germany offers a wealth of culture and history and many opportunities to better comprehend its troubled past during WWII. A must-do while in the country is to visit the memorials built on the sites of former German concentration camps, for

Josef Brettschneider took part in the Battle of Berlin as a young lieutenant. In a hopeless situation, he had to fight with a Volkssturm unit in a city sur-rounded by Soviet troops.