Berlin Experiences/Articles/Mythbusting Berlin
Mythbusting Berlin.
Fifty of the most repeated stories about Berlin, Prussia, the Third Reich and the Cold War, checked against the record by the historians who lead our private tours.
Did the Nazis invent the bicycle reflector? Did Hitler escape to Argentina? Was the fall of the Berlin Wall an accident? Guests ask questions like these on tour every week, and a tour rarely leaves time to answer them properly. Mythbusting Berlin is where we do.
Each essay takes one story, traces where it came from and weighs it against the documents, trials, ledgers and eyewitnesses. Some myths collapse. Some turn out to be partly true, and the true part is often the more interesting half. Every piece says why the wrong version is the one that spread.
The essays are written for our guests: book any tour and the whole archive opens on your account. Every essay below has a short free introduction, and each one opens to everyone for a week when we feature it on social media.
The archive
Every myth, A to Z.
Are There Any Nazi Statues Left In Berlin?Most visitors assume Berlin was once crowded with statues of Hitler, all toppled after May 1945. The piece starts from a decree issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior in December 1933, asks why Hitler kept his face off banknotes but not stamps, and walks the façades of Charlottenburg, Tempelhof and Siemensstadt to see what Allied Order No. 30 managed to remove.
Could The Western Allies Have Captured Berlin?On 12 April 1945 units of the US Ninth Army reached the Elbe at Magdeburg, fifty miles from Berlin, and there they halted. Could they have pushed on? The piece weighs Churchill's wish to meet the Russians as far east as possible against Eisenhower's shifting plans, the Soviet bridgehead on the Oder, the rumoured Alpine redoubt and the bridge at Remagen.
Did Any Of The Rothschild Dynasty Die In The Holocaust?Nazi propaganda made the Rothschilds the face of ‘Jewish plutocracy’, yet the family's wartime survival has fuelled conspiracy theories of its own. The piece follows Baron Louis, held hostage by the Gestapo in Vienna, the plunder of the French branch's art and vineyards, and a baroness in occupied Paris whose change of seat in the spring of 1944 set off a chain of events.
Did Frederick The Great Introduce The Potato To Germany?Frederick the Great is often credited with bringing the potato to Germany, a country that did not exist until 1871. The piece traces the tuber from Quesada's return from South America in 1565, past Raleigh's botched gift to Elizabeth I and its nickname the ‘Devil's Apple’, to the war-ravaged fields of the Prussia he ruled from 1740 to 1786.
Did Hitler Escape To Argentina In 1945?The story that Hitler slipped out of Berlin to live out his years in Argentina has outlasted almost every other legend of the war. The piece goes back to Hugh Trevor Roper's 1945 investigation, ‘The Last Days of Adolf Hitler’, the SMERSH officers who took over the bunker site, and why Zhukov told the press in June 1945 that Hitler might be in Spain.
Did Hugo Boss Design The Nazi Uniforms?It is repeated at dinner parties and in comment sections: Hugo Boss designed the Nazi uniforms. The piece looks inside the labels, from the SA's surplus ‘Lettow-Shirts’ and the Reichszeugmeisterei that licensed every shade of thread, to Roman Köster's study, commissioned by the company itself, of a Metzingen factory owner who joined the party in 1931.
Did Rudolf Hess Really Commit Suicide?On 17 August 1987 Rudolf Hess, the last prisoner of Spandau, was found dead in the prison garden at 93, an electrical cord around his neck. His family never accepted suicide: he could barely lift his arms, they said, and his farewell note was twenty years old. The piece follows Hess from Landsberg Prison to his 1941 flight to Scotland.
Did The Nazis Develop Nuclear Weapons?Oranienburg, just north of Berlin, is by some measures Germany's most radioactive ground. The piece begins with the Auergesellschaft works, its thorium toothpaste Doramad and the 612 B-17s that flattened it on 15 March 1945, then turns to Hahn and Strassmann's discovery of fission in Dahlem, Heisenberg's Uranprojekt and the question of how close Hitler really came.
Did The Nazis Invent Decaf Coffee?The claim that Hitler's regime gave the world decaffeinated coffee thrives online, and a state obsessed with purity and control of the body seems a plausible culprit. The piece brews the longer story first: Frederick the Great's 400 ‘coffee sniffers’, the chicory and barley of Prussian Muckefuck, and the German chemists who set out to understand the caffeine in the bean.
Did The Nazis Invent The Bicycle Reflector?Anton Loibl, once one of Hitler's drivers, held the patent, and a November 1937 ordinance from Himmler made pedal reflectors compulsory on German bicycles. The piece follows the licence money into the SS research institute Ahnenerbe, which received 77,740 Reichsmarks in the first year, and asks what a rival 1935 patent filed in Dresden means for who invented the thing.
Did The Nazis Run The Largest Counterfeiting Operation In History?On the eve of the Second World War, no one had ever forged the Bank of England's ‘white notes’ on a large scale. The piece sets Nazi ambitions against a long history of currency warfare, from British fakes of American Continentals to Isaac Newton hunting coiners, and follows the plan Arthur Nebe of the Reich Criminal Police put forward in Berlin on 18 September 1939.
Did The Second World War End In Berlin?Guides in Berlin are often asked whether the Second World War ended here, and the answer depends partly on when you think it began. The piece reads the dates carved on the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten, questions the stories told about its two T-34 tanks, and revisits the battle from 20 April to the city's surrender on 2 May 1945.
Did The Spanish Flu Pandemic Help The Nazis Take Power?Around 50 million people died of the 1918 influenza, more than 50,000 of them in Berlin, yet it rarely appears among the causes of Nazism. The piece weighs this ‘forgotten pandemic’ against Versailles and the failings of Weimar, drawing on a 2018 study of the virus's effects on the brain and on Woodrow Wilson's arrival at the Paris peace talks of 1919.
Have Adolf Hitler’s Remains Been DNA Tested?DNA settled the fate of Martin Bormann in 1998 and confirmed Richard III beneath a Leicester car park. So what of Hitler? The piece follows the Soviet SMERSH investigation, the dental drawing made from memory by Käthe Heusermann, the KGB's secret cremation in 1970, and the jawbone and skull fragment held in Moscow and examined in 2003 by forensic scientist Mark Benecke.
How Did The Nazi Concentration Camps Differ From The Soviet GULAG?In 1940, on a bridge at Brest-Litovsk, Stalin handed the German Communist Margarete Buber-Neumann back to the Nazis, and she went from a labour camp in Kazakhstan to Ravensbrück. The piece uses her testimony, alongside Primo Levi, Varlam Shalamov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, to trace how both camp systems grew out of a long history of the prison, beginning with Socrates' cell.
How Long Did It Take To Build The Berlin Wall?Walter Ulbricht told the world that no one intended to build a wall, yet at midnight on 13 August 1961 barriers began going up around the 155 kilometres of West Berlin's edge. When was the Wall actually finished? The piece follows Honecker's ‘Operation Rose’, Conrad Schumann's leap, the bricked-up windows of Bernauer Straße and the later ‘Grenzmauer 75’.
How Many Assassination Attempts On Adolf Hitler Were There?On 8 November 1939 a bomb planted by the carpenter Johann Georg Elser tore through Munich's Bürgerbräukeller, thirteen minutes after Hitler had left. It was neither the first attempt nor the last. The piece counts them, from reported shots in 1921 through Ludwig Assner and the Swiss theology student Maurice Bavaud, and asks why so many came so close.
How Many Jews Died In The Holocaust?How do historians count the dead when a state worked to erase both its crimes and its victims? The piece sets out the method behind the figures: prewar censuses and community records, captured Nazi documents, camp registers, survivor testimony and postwar trials, starting from the 560,000 Jews living in Germany in 1933 and the more than three million in Poland.
How Many People Died Trying To Escape East Germany?The figure usually quoted is around 140, the dead of the Berlin Wall. But the GDR's fortified border ran 1,393 kilometres from the Baltic to Czechoslovakia, and people also died in its forests, rivers and sea. The piece asks what should count as a death at the border, from Peter Fechter's shooting to a heart attack during a Stasi interrogation.
How Old Is Berlin?In 1937 the Nazis gave Berlin a 700th birthday, fixing on 1237 and declaring that the city had never grown out of Wendish fishing villages. The piece looks at why that year was chosen, how the anniversary fed Speer's plans for Germania, and why the rival dates of 1237 and 1244 for Berlin and its sister town Cölln make the question harder than it sounds.
Was Adolf Hitler A Drug Addict?Norman Ohler's 2015 bestseller ‘Blitzed’ made drugs a popular explanation for Hitler's erratic rule, and academic historians pushed back hard. The piece weighs the claim against Ian Kershaw's account of a chaotic regime, the Goldwater Rule on diagnosing from a distance, the methamphetamine Pervitin that was widespread in Nazi Germany, and what those close to Hitler documented in his lifetime.
Was Adolf Hitler A Freemason?The idea that Hitler was a Freemason sits at the centre of the ‘Occult Reich’ legends. The piece traces Berlin's lodges from Frederick the Great's initiation in 1738 and the Lodge of the Three Globes, through General Ludendorff's pairing of ‘Jews and Freemasons’, to what became of the lodges after 1933, including an exhibition Goebbels approved in Berlin in 1937.
Was Adolf Hitler Gay?Rumours about Hitler's sexuality have circulated for nearly a century, fed by the paradox of a regime that persecuted gay men while its street army was led by Ernst Röhm. The piece begins at Bad Wiessee on 30 June 1934 and examines Paragraph 175, Lothar Machtan's ‘The Hidden Hitler’ and the raid on Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research.
Was Adolf Hitler Jewish?From his Nuremberg cell in 1946, Hans Frank claimed that Hitler's grandmother had worked for a Jewish family in Graz named Frankenberger. The piece tests that story against the 1837 baptismal register with its blank space for the father of Alois Schicklgruber, the 1876 alteration that made him Alois Hitler, and the half-nephew said to have threatened blackmail.
Was Currywurst Invented In Berlin?Berlin credits Herta Heuwer, who sold her first ‘Spezial Curry Bratwurst’ from a kiosk on Kantstraße on 4 September 1949. The piece checks her memory of rain that day against the weather reports, hears from the Maximilian sausage makers who supplied her stand, and weighs the rival claim of the novelist Uwe Timm, who recalled eating one in Hamburg in 1947.
Was Fanta Invented By The Nazis?Fanta first appeared in wartime Germany, when a trade embargo cut Coca-Cola GmbH off from its secret syrup. The piece follows Max Keith, chemist Wolfgang Schetelig and a cloudy drink made from apple fibres and whey, to the 1955 Italian relaunch and a 2015 anniversary bottle. How much of the Nazi label actually sticks is a more tangled question than it looks.
Was Frederick The Great Gay?For over two centuries a whispered question has followed Prussia's most celebrated king, who died without an heir. The piece reads the evidence through his brutal father, the Soldier King, the secret flute lessons with Quantz, the failed flight of 1730 with Hans Hermann von Katte, and the retreat at Sanssouci, and weighs how far any document can settle it.
Was Henry Ford A Nazi?Henry Ford put the world on wheels, and his name appears in praise in Mein Kampf. The piece traces how The Dearborn Independent and its ninety-one articles on 'The International Jew' crossed into 1920s Germany, what Baldur von Schirach told the court at Nuremberg, and the medal Ford accepted from Nazi officials on his 75th birthday in 1938.
Was The Colour Blue Invented In Berlin?In 1706 a pigment-maker named Diesbach borrowed contaminated potash from the alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel and woke up to the wrong colour. Before judging Berlin's claim, the piece travels back through Egyptian blue, lapis lazuli worth more than gold, and colonial indigo, to ask what that accident really gave the world and what came long before it.
Was The Döner Kebab Invented In Berlin?More than 17 million Döner are sold in Germany each year, yet nobody agrees on who made the first. The piece tests the rival claims of Kadir Nurman at Zoo Station, Mehmet Aygün of Hasir and Nevzat Salim in Reutlingen, then follows the dish back through Erzurum's Cağ kebabı and an 1855 photograph by James Robertson.
Was The Fall Of The Berlin Wall An Accident?On November 9th 1989, after more than 28 years, the Berlin Wall opened, and how that happened is still argued over. The piece looks behind that night at the 675,000 who fled East Germany in its first three years, a Wall first strung from British barbed wire and washing-line posts, and the economic failures so often left out of the story.
Was The Nazi Party Democratically Elected?Millions of Germans voted for Hitler's party, and that fact is often used to settle the matter. The piece returns to the two republics declared in Berlin in November 1918, the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the Freikorps and a tiny Munich group that became the NSDAP, to ask what the ballot box did and did not deliver.
Were The Allied Bombings Of Germany War Crimes?Berlin was targeted more than 350 times from the air, and Dresden has become a rallying cry for some. The piece sets RAF area bombing beside Wieluń, Warsaw, Coventry and Tokyo, unpicks terms from 'terror bombing' to Thomas Schelling's 'collateral damage', and asks how the law and morality of the time measure what was done.
Were The Nazi Medical Experiments Useful?A claim still circulates that science gained something from the crimes committed in the camps. The piece traces how German medicine, once home to Virchow, Koch and Ehrlich, produced the T4 programme at Tiergartenstrasse 4, then examines Sigmund Rascher's hypothermia and altitude experiments at Dachau and the testimony heard at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial.
What Are The Origins Of The Nazi Salute?In 1892 some 12 million American schoolchildren raised their right arms to the flag. The piece follows the Bellamy Salute from The Youth's Companion to its abolition by Congress in December 1942, and sets it beside Mussolini's saluto romano and its claimed ancient pedigree, to ask where the gesture Hitler's movement adopted really came from.
What Are The Origins Of The Nazi Swastika?The oldest known swastika was carved on a mammoth-tusk bird some 15,000 years ago, and its Sanskrit name means well-being. The piece follows the symbol through Hindu, Buddhist, Navajo and Coptic use, Heinrich Schliemann's 1,800 finds at Troy and Coca-Cola key fobs, to the dentist and goldsmith behind the party flag Hitler claimed as his own.
What Are The Pink Pipes In Berlin?Visitors spot them everywhere: bright pink pipes looping over Berlin's streets and building sites. The piece explains what lies beneath, from a city built on a swamp with groundwater two metres down to the unexploded bombs of 1945, and how the firm Pollems came to choose RAL 3015 after asking a psychologist.
What Do The Colours Of The German Flag Symbolise?Black, red and gold are often said to mean servitude, blood and freedom. The piece traces the colours to the uniforms of the Lützow Free Corps in 1813, through the Wartburg and Hambach festivals and the 1848 revolutions, to Bismarck's rival black-white-red, and asks how much of the popular reading was there from the start.
What Happened To Adolf Hitler’s Alligator?When an 84-year-old alligator called Saturn died at Moscow Zoo in 2020, reports linked him to Hitler. The piece follows Saturn from Mississippi to the Berlin Zoo, through a 1943 British raid on the reptile house and a journey via Leipzig to Moscow, and sets the rumour against the Nazi regime's strange record on animal welfare.
What Happened To The German Royal Family?In 1917, with the war still raging, the Hohenzollerns finished a Tudor-style palace at Cecilienhof. A year later the Kaiser fled into exile. The piece follows the family from Swabian burgraves to kings in Prussia, through a 1926 right of residence and the 1945 Potsdam Conference, and asks where the descendants are today.
What Is The Difference Between Fascism & Nazism?The two words are often used as if they meant the same thing, yet Mussolini and Hitler saw real differences. The piece sets the Doctrine of Fascism and its worship of the State beside Rudolf Hess's claim that National Socialism was 'applied biology', and looks at when race entered Italian Fascism and why.
What Was Checkpoint Charlie?It is one of Berlin's most visited sites, and one of its least understood. The piece traces Checkpoint Charlie back to a quiet promise at Potsdam in 1945 on Allied freedom of movement, explains Alpha, Bravo and the transit route, and returns to October 1961, when an American diplomat's trip to the theatre brought tanks to Friedrichstraße.
What Was Prussia?Prussia no longer exists, and many people struggle to say what it was. The piece follows it from the Teutonic Knights' crusade against the Old Prussians and the 1525 Prussian Homage to the 1701 crowning of a King in Prussia, and asks how a poor, scattered territory came to shape Kant, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Germany itself.
What Was The Berlin Airlift?The Berlin Airlift is usually told as a simple story of Western resolve. The piece goes further back, to Soviet factories crated up and shipped east, uranium mined as 'Peace Ore' in the Erzgebirge, and the Deutsche Mark arriving in boxes marked 'Bird Dog' on June 20th 1948, to ask what the blockade was really about.
What Was The Socialist Kiss?In 1979 Régis Bossu photographed Brezhnev and Honecker in an embrace that became known as 'The Kiss of Death'. The piece traces the fraternal kiss from the Orthodox Easter kiss to Stalin and his pilots and Khrushchev's cosmonauts, and asks what it meant in a state that criminalised homosexuality, and why Mao stepped back from it.
Who Built The Berlin Wall?The question sounds simple but hides several others: who ordered the Wall, who laid it and why. The piece returns to Walter Ulbricht's June 1961 promise that nobody intended to build one, the 1953 uprising, up to 3.5 million people leaving before 1961, and a barrier over 155km long that surrounded West Berlin entirely.
Who Really Raised The Soviet Flag On The Reichstag?Yevgeny Khaldei's photograph of a Red Army soldier on the Reichstag roof became one of the war's defining images. The piece examines how it was taken on May 2nd 1945 and first published on May 13th, its debt to Joe Rosenthal's Iwo Jima picture, and whether the men shown were the first to raise a flag there.
Who Was Really Responsible For The Reichstag Fire?On February 27th 1933 the German parliament burned, and Hitler's regime blamed a Communist uprising. Göring later denied any part in it. The piece rebuilds the night minute by minute, from Karl Buwert's watch at Portal I to the trial of Marinus van der Lubbe, and weighs William Shirer's certainty against what the record can actually support.
Who Were The Last Nazis On Trial?In 1964 a New York Times reporter knocked on a door in Queens and found a former guard from Majdanek. The piece follows Nazi justice from Hitler's lenient 1924 treason trial and the courts of the Third Reich to Nuremberg and today's centenarian defendants, and asks whether justice that arrives this late still counts.
Why Is Berlin The Capital Of Germany?Berlin is not Germany's richest city, its oldest, or in its largest state. The piece revisits the 12-hour Bundestag debate of June 20th 1991, when Willy Brandt mocked Bonn as a 'cocktail party capital' and the vote went 337 to 320, then reaches back to 1871 and the Prussian ambition behind the city's rise.Go deeper