Patsdamer Platz

I arrive in Berlin for my week end of truth.  The maraton Sunday morning.  I stay at the Marriot in Patsdamer Platz which has changed magically even during the short time I have known her.  Patsdamer totally laid to waste during World War II and then desolate during the Cold War when The Wall bisected its former location.  Today it has become yet another Midtown Manhattan (indeed, my hotels restaurant called "Midtown") with steel and glass skyscrapers everywhere including PwC and Deutsche Bank.  I know this makes Germany proud but Is there no imagination left?  I could be in Shanghai. Or London.

During the WW and as with most of Berlin, almost all of the buildings around Potsdamer Platz turned to rubble by air raids and heavy artillery. The three most destructive raids (out of nearly 400) that the city suffered, occurred on 23 November 1943, and 3 February and 26 February 1945. Things were not helped by the very close proximity of Hitler's Reich Chancellery, just one block away in Voßstraße, and many other Nazi buildings nearby so Potsdamer Platz was a major bull's eye.

Once the bombing and shelling stopped, the ground invasion began as Soviet forces stormed the centre of Berlin street by street, building by building, aiming for the Reich Chancellery and other key symbols of the Nazi government. The city was divided into sectors by the occupying Allies at the end of the war, Potsdamer found itself on the boundary between the American, British and Soviet sectors.  Then came the Cold War and the Berlin Wall in 1961.

I thank my lucky stars not to have been born during that horrible time when Europe stuck the knife into its heart.