Tracing NS History of Tempelhof Airport

Tempelhof Airport is one of the most important surviving buildings of National Socialist Germany. Its monumental architecture was intended to give unquestionable form to the »Third Reich’s« claim to power and eternity. But the airport was only completed after the Second World War – by the American occupation forces. In the following decades, Tempelhof Airport became »Berlin’s gateway to the world«, first during the Airlift, later as a transport link for West Berlin. This guided tour illuminates the older, partly overlapping layers of its history: its planned function as an instrument of rule with regard to the National Socialist »Volksgemeinschaft«, its military role in the German air war, armament production using forced labourers, and Tempelhof’s significance as a central site of »early terror« during the National Socialist conquest of power.