World War II

In 1935, Adolf Hitler gave the go-ahead for the construction of a megalomaniac holiday colony in Prora on the German island of Rügen.

In 1936, just before the Second World War broke out, Germany organized the Summer Olympics in Berlin.

Wissant, a seaside resort between the rocky capes of Cap Gris-Nez and Cap Blanc-Nez, has been inundated with tourists since the late nineteenth century. The dunes teem with holiday homes and villas in Art Deco style, such as Villa Le Typhonium. However, during the Second World War, sun worshippers were not welcome at the beach of Wissant.

In Karlshorst, deep in the east of Berlin, the signing of the capitulation by Germany meant the end of the Second World War.

In 1937, architect Albert Speer unveiled his plans for converting Berlin into Welthauptstadt Germania. In his imagination, the new Berlin was teeming with ostentatious monuments that kept pace with the megalomania of the Third Reich.

In the summer of 1945, only a few months after the Third Reich was removed from power, the Soviet government erected the Panzerdenkmal (German for 'Tank memorial') near the AVUS highway.

The residents of the German village of Wünsdorf saw many neighbors coming and going during the Second World War when the army quickly built bunkers to hide the German Army High Command.

From 1928 until the end of World War II, the German army, hidden deep in a remote corner of the country, tested aircraft, water, and amphibious vehicles.