When the Allies announced, at the end of the World War II Casablanca Conference in January 1943, that they would seek the unconditional surrender of all the Axis Powers, it ensured that Nazi Germany would fight to the bitter end. Hitler’s response was ‘If we cannot conquer we shall drag half the world into destruction with us’ and he declared ‘Totaler Krieg’ - Total War. The prize awaiting an Allied victory was the German capital, Berlin. By early 1945, following the failure of Operation Market Garden and Hitler’s last gamble in the West, the attack through the Ardennes, only the Soviet forces were in a realistic position to secure this prize. On 1st February Hitler declared Berlin a ‘Fortress City’. By then the Soviet forces had gained bridgeheads over the River Oder and Berlin lay only 50 miles beyond.

This Berlin tour focuses on the final months of the Second World War in Europe and the struggle to capture the capital of ‘The Thousand Year Reich’. We shall visit the Seelow Heights where fierce fighting took place in April 1945 as Marshal Zhukov’s 1st Byelorussian Front began the break-in battle. Then we follow the Soviet route into the heart of Berlin. Other key battle sites within Berlin, including the fight for the Reichstag, will be explored.

This WW2 tour accompanied by Colonel Peter Knox also considers some of the darker sides of National Socialism. We shall visit the Wansee Conference Centre where the ‘Die Endlösung’, the implementation of a ‘final solution to the Jewish question’, was discussed in February 1942, and then the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.

Visiting Berlin would not be complete without seeing the historic royal city of Potsdam, including Schloss Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference took place between 17 July and 2 August 1945, and the CWGC cemetery where many RAF bomber crews lie buried. At Potsdam, Germany was divided into four military occupation zones. But already the tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union were apparent, and the seeds of the Cold War were sown.

ITINERARY
Day 1. (Wednesday): Fly London to Berlin. Orientation tour
en-route to our centrally located Berlin hotel. Dinner and overnight.
Day 2: Today we head east out of Berlin to the Polish border to study the Battle of the Seelow Heights, the Nazi’s last desperate attempt to stop the Soviet Army on the River Oder. We visit the Soviet Army museum dedicated to the Seelow Heights battle. On our return to Berlin we visit the Soviet war memorial in Treptow Park and go to Karlshorst where the unconditional surrender document was signed during the night of 8/9 May 1945. Dinner in our hotel.
Day 3: Battle for Berlin. Today we visit many of the sites associated with the final days of the battle for Berlin city centre, the Reichstag, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Brandenburg Gate and Tiergarten Red Army memorial. Own dinner arrangements in the evening.
Day 4: This morning we visit the remains of the Humboldthain Flak Tower then drive to Orianienburg to visit Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This is one of the best preserved Holocaust camps and you will learn of its use from pre-war times to its liberation and subsequent use by the Communists after the war. Dinner in our hotel.
Day 5: We visit Potsdam and, on leaving the city, the 1936 Olympic Stadium and the CWGC cemetery, where so many of the RAF Bomber Command aircrew who perished during the air battle for Berlin are buried. Then on to Wansee Conference Centre and the Glienicke Bridge on the former border between East and West Berlin, the scene of the famous spy exchanges at the height of the Cold War. After lunch in Potsdam we visit Schloss Cecilienhof where we see the location of the famous Potsdam Conference where Churchill, Attlee, Truman and Stalin met in July and August 1945. Dinner in our hotel.
Day 6: Morning at leisure in Berlin. Afternoon departure for the airport for our return flight to London.