7 ms·

Berlin 1945 and Today

168 points by guruz 11y ago

kiiski 11y ago
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.
- galago 11y ago
  The second to the last with A. Hitler/woman eating ice cream was probably my favorite of all of these.
- kiiski 11y ago
  The photos, btw, are from the Finnish Defence Forces photo archive which is available at http://sa-kuva.fi http://sa-kuva.fi It's not exactly a masterwork of UI design, but for those who like ww2 photos it might be interesting.
paddyzab 11y ago
Would like to see Warsaw, or Stalingrad in similar manner.
- zpetrov 11y ago
  Stalingrad 1942 vs 2013: http://fpvestnik.ru/foto/stalingrad-194243-volgograd-2013/ http://fpvestnik.ru/foto/stalingrad-194243-volgograd-2013/
- c_lebesgue 11y ago
  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
- jwr 11y ago
  Take a look at the second picture on this page: http://culture.pl/pl/artykul/co-pamieta-warszawa http://culture.pl/pl/artykul/co-pamieta-warszawa This is the ghetto area. And these are before/after photos, all taken in the center of Warsaw: http://wczorajidzis.blogspot.com/2010/06/3-w-1-1945-1971-2010.html http://wczorajidzis.blogspot.com/2010/06/3-w-1-1945-1971-201... I've always been hoping that we can learn from past mistakes, but recent inaction of western europe towards Putin's war with Ukraine has me deeply worried.
kstenerud 11y ago
It's a cool idea, but the site doesn't work properly with Chrome :/
- aurora72 11y ago
  Perfectly works with FF35 on WinXP
- EugeneOZ 11y ago
  Works fine in Chrome 43.0.2357.45 OS X.
zdw 11y ago
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.
- matt4077 11y ago
  It's mostly underground now.
- TillE 11y ago
  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.
- maljx 11y ago
  The streetcar lines were removed in the west, but all of East-Berlin (about 1/4th of the city) still has them. Related: https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience/photos/a.456449604376056.98921.367116489976035/582205285133820 https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience/photos/a.456449...
dominotw 11y ago
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
c_lebesgue 11y ago
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.
- LukaszB 11y ago
  http://www.warsawrising.eu/ http://www.warsawrising.eu/
  - tormeh 11y ago
    That website is simply extraordinary.
  - sogen 11y ago
    Wow, there goes morning productivity. Awesome site.
  - _lce0 11y ago
    although nowadays the city seems to be populated, it has some scars of that time. street view has good coverage in the area https://goo.gl/maps/eDl59 https://goo.gl/maps/eDl59
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Similarly, Nuremberg was something like 95% destroyed. It's strange to see it. The vast majority of the city looks obviously new, and it's all a very similar architectural style. The bricks are a little too clean, a little too straight, on these buildings designed to look 300-500 years old, that are only 30 to 60 years old--at the most!
konz 11y ago
The fact that the perspective is slightly off bugs me more than it probably should.
AaronMT 11y ago
Devastating. See also Damascus a few years ago and present day.
grimmdude 11y ago
Bah wow, what's up with the picture on the women's gym at Auguststraße (Mitte)
- caludio 11y ago
  There is a women-only gym there. And they probably put pics of women on the walls to make it clear to men. Awful.
- izacus 11y ago
  Uh, what's wrong with it (besides some minor vandalism by someone who thought putting stickers on nipples was funny)?
  - tormeh 11y ago
    The facade is kinda bland and ugly. The stickers is the best part of the wall.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
superfx 11y ago
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.
- wahsd 11y ago
  I don't know what you mean by a typical American city. There is nothing remotely distinguishing enoughly similar to an American city in those pictures of boring and bland versions of the already insignificant Bauhaus architectural style.
- amyjess 11y ago
  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.
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
I would find more interesting 1989 vs Today along and near the Berlin wall.
- caludio 11y ago
  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...
- chrtze 11y ago
  There is a similar project on this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/06/the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-stunning-before-and-after-pictures-on-the-25th-anniversary/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/06...
wahsd 11y ago
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.
- iak8god 11y ago
  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.
javert 11y ago
Reichstag looked much better without the handicapped ramp. Couldn't they put it somewhere that wouldn't ruin the aesthetic of the building?
dewey 11y ago
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.
mxfh 11y ago
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
olivermarks 11y ago
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...

168 points by guruz 11y ago

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.

galago 11y ago
The second to the last with A. Hitler/woman eating ice cream was probably my favorite of all of these.
kiiski 11y ago
The photos, btw, are from the Finnish Defence Forces photo archive which is available at http://sa-kuva.fi http://sa-kuva.fi It's not exactly a masterwork of UI design, but for those who like ww2 photos it might be interesting.

paddyzab 11y ago

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

zpetrov 11y ago
Stalingrad 1942 vs 2013: http://fpvestnik.ru/foto/stalingrad-194243-volgograd-2013/ http://fpvestnik.ru/foto/stalingrad-194243-volgograd-2013/
c_lebesgue 11y ago
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
jwr 11y ago
Take a look at the second picture on this page: http://culture.pl/pl/artykul/co-pamieta-warszawa http://culture.pl/pl/artykul/co-pamieta-warszawa This is the ghetto area. And these are before/after photos, all taken in the center of Warsaw: http://wczorajidzis.blogspot.com/2010/06/3-w-1-1945-1971-2010.html http://wczorajidzis.blogspot.com/2010/06/3-w-1-1945-1971-201... I've always been hoping that we can learn from past mistakes, but recent inaction of western europe towards Putin's war with Ukraine has me deeply worried.

kstenerud 11y ago

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

aurora72 11y ago
Perfectly works with FF35 on WinXP
EugeneOZ 11y ago
Works fine in Chrome 43.0.2357.45 OS X.

zdw 11y ago

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.

matt4077 11y ago
It's mostly underground now.
TillE 11y ago
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.
maljx 11y ago
The streetcar lines were removed in the west, but all of East-Berlin (about 1/4th of the city) still has them. Related: https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience/photos/a.456449604376056.98921.367116489976035/582205285133820 https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience/photos/a.456449...

dominotw 11y ago

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

c_lebesgue 11y ago

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.

LukaszB 11y ago
http://www.warsawrising.eu/ http://www.warsawrising.eu/
- tormeh 11y ago
  That website is simply extraordinary.
- sogen 11y ago
  Wow, there goes morning productivity. Awesome site.
- _lce0 11y ago
  although nowadays the city seems to be populated, it has some scars of that time. street view has good coverage in the area https://goo.gl/maps/eDl59 https://goo.gl/maps/eDl59
moron4hire 11y ago
Similarly, Nuremberg was something like 95% destroyed. It's strange to see it. The vast majority of the city looks obviously new, and it's all a very similar architectural style. The bricks are a little too clean, a little too straight, on these buildings designed to look 300-500 years old, that are only 30 to 60 years old--at the most!

konz 11y ago

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

AaronMT 11y ago

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

grimmdude 11y ago

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

caludio 11y ago
There is a women-only gym there. And they probably put pics of women on the walls to make it clear to men. Awful.
izacus 11y ago
Uh, what's wrong with it (besides some minor vandalism by someone who thought putting stickers on nipples was funny)?
- tormeh 11y ago
  The facade is kinda bland and ugly. The stickers is the best part of the wall.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

superfx 11y ago

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.

wahsd 11y ago
I don't know what you mean by a typical American city. There is nothing remotely distinguishing enoughly similar to an American city in those pictures of boring and bland versions of the already insignificant Bauhaus architectural style.
amyjess 11y ago
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.

a8da6b0c91d 11y ago

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

caludio 11y ago
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...
chrtze 11y ago
There is a similar project on this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/06/the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-stunning-before-and-after-pictures-on-the-25th-anniversary/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/06...

wahsd 11y ago

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.

iak8god 11y ago
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.

javert 11y ago

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

dewey 11y ago

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.

mxfh 11y ago

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

olivermarks 11y ago

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...