Potsdamer brücke, Berlin. 'Zentrale' building being demolished. Circa 1942.

Many thanks to my friend in Berlin who did a lot of work on this one. It was labelled and so the location was easy to identify. I assumed it was a post-war photo of bomb-damaged ruins being cleared, but several details didn't add up when we compared it with pre and post-war photographs of the same location (see below). By the end of the war this building had been obliterated, but here it was still intact. The old 19th century railings of the Potsdamer bridge are clearly visible, but this bridge was destroyed in 1945. No, this isn't a photo of bomb damaged buildings at all, this is a planned demolition that took place to create a new heroic avenue, part of the unrealised grand plan, the 'Welthauptstadt Germania', of Hitler's architect, Albert Speer.













It looks like this now. There's a big underground art gallery next to it....