
Berlin 1945 and Today - guruz
http://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/berlin-1945-2015/
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c_lebesgue
Warsaw was devastated after the WWII. It is estimated that about 85% of the
buildings were destroyed, and only about one thousand people lived in the
ruins, compared to more than one million before the war. The communist
government that was installed by the Soviet Union after the war initially
decided to build _a new capital city_ , because it was calculated that it
would be cheaper to build a new one than reconstruct the old one. Later,
people started to move back, and Warsaw was reconstructed instead.

There is a short movie based on a Russian airplane photo footage taken in
1945, the City of Ruins:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ)

The general feeling is also quite well represented in "The Pianist (2002)",
which I highly recommend.

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LukaszB
[http://www.warsawrising.eu/](http://www.warsawrising.eu/)

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tormeh
That website is simply extraordinary.

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dewey
I just discovered this video, showing Berlin in 1945, a few days ago:
[https://vimeo.com/126267047](https://vimeo.com/126267047) \- it's high
quality and in color. Very impressive if you are only used to the black and
white shots of that time.

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dominotw
Saw this on reddit yesterday,Berlin footage in 1945
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5i9k7s9X_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5i9k7s9X_A)

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superfx
It's a little sad seeing how most of the old ornate buildings have been
replaced with much more generic looking buildings. That's one thing that
struck me about Berlin--it looks a lot more like a "typical" American city
than a "typical" European city.

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amyjess
This criticism has been around even before WW2. Berlin was called "the Chicago
of Europe" even back then; the "old ornate buildings" you mention were nothing
compared to other European cities.

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kiiski
Helsinki times did a similiar thing some time ago:
[http://files.snstatic.fi/hs/2013/7/sakuvat/](http://files.snstatic.fi/hs/2013/7/sakuvat/)

Not that much destruction though.

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galago
The second to the last with A. Hitler/woman eating ice cream was probably my
favorite of all of these.

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zdw
Interesting how much public transit (in the form of streetcars and rails in
the road) can be seen in the older photos, which is almost gone from the newer
ones.

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TillE
Yeah, the tram lines were mostly torn out of West Berlin in the 1950s to make
more space for cars. They're still all over the east, and there's been some
very recent construction including a tram line that goes to the main railway
station.

You've still got pretty good buses in those areas, though. Our main public
transit problem lately is construction and/or strikes that shut down large
parts of the S-Bahn.

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paddyzab
Would like to see Warsaw, or Stalingrad in similar manner.

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c_lebesgue
There is a movie about post-war Warsaw [1], based on Russian airplane photo
shoots. The part of the city that looks almost perfectly flat is the former
Jewish ghetto. Nowadays, this area has a completely different arrangement of
streets, because in 1945 you could not tell very well a street from a
building, so it was re-engineered.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ)

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mxfh
Google Earth (Desktop app) has some historical aerial imagery for Berlin, a
lot of other German Cities/Warsaw/Gdansk/ from '44,'45,'53

For more coverage look for gray spots in this overview map
[http://imgur.com/bfvJpR3](http://imgur.com/bfvJpR3)

Helps a lot to get an idea of the extent of destruction.

Warsaw has coverage for 1935 and 1945.

For Berlin it's helpful to also go to the 1953 imagery to see which structures
where demolished.

[http://www.google.com/earth/explore/showcase/historical.html](http://www.google.com/earth/explore/showcase/historical.html)

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konz
The fact that the perspective is slightly off bugs me more than it probably
should.

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wahsd
It's such a sad shame that Germany has wiped any and all architectural detail
or character from their buildings. It's really kind of sad looking at those
boring, boorish buildings.

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iak8god
I'm sure if they'd known this was going to personally disappoint you, the
broke and broken people of occupied postwar Germany would have put a little
more thought into aesthetics.

Snark aside: have a look at Dresden, which was completely destroyed in the war
and is still being reconstructed with beautiful results.

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AaronMT
Devastating. See also Damascus a few years ago and present day.

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olivermarks
Around 70 million people died in WWII, around 3% of the world population at
that time. I find that absolutely horrifying, along with the terror inflicted
on civilians on both sides. It's easy to forget just how destructive humans
were less than 100 years ago...

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kstenerud
It's a cool idea, but the site doesn't work properly with Chrome :/

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aurora72
Perfectly works with FF35 on WinXP

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grimmdude
Bah wow, what's up with the picture on the women's gym at Auguststraße (Mitte)

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izacus
Uh, what's wrong with it (besides some minor vandalism by someone who thought
putting stickers on nipples was funny)?

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tormeh
The facade is kinda bland and ugly. The stickers is the best part of the wall.

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a8da6b0c91d
I would find more interesting 1989 vs Today along and near the Berlin wall.

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caludio
There are so many things to say about this context, but maybe the most
interesting story is the one of Potsdamer Platz. How it was before, how it was
during the wall, how it was (horribly and wrongly) rebuilt...

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javert
Reichstag looked much better without the handicapped ramp. Couldn't they put
it somewhere that wouldn't ruin the aesthetic of the building?

