Blog 4:
The German-Russian museum
On may 2nd, 1945, the German army fighting to defend berlin officially surrendered to the Russian army. General Wielding was forced to agree to an unconditional surrender by Soviet General Chiukov. While many see this as the end if the war this surrender only ended the battle of Berlin. The rest of the nazi forces in southern Germany had yet to surrender.
So on may 8th, 1945 representatives of the German army, air force, and navy met with General Zhukov in Karlhorst Courthouse to sign the official document that ended the war entirely.
From 1945-49, Zhukov used it as an administrative office, after that it was turned into a museum with the original layout of the room and documents still preserved as it was on may 8th.
The museum is very pro-Russian. To this day it is half controlled by Russia, and it gets to decide was is held in the museum. The name of it is very telling of the German-Russian relationship after the war. Until 1994 it was named the Surrender Museum, or Capitulation Museum depending on translation.
Once you step inside the museum repeats that it’s heavily favorable to the soviet side. It sights uncountable amounts of atrocities the nazis committed while sweeping through the Eastern European countryside. Murders, rapes, mass killings, and personal story audio tapes are shown describing the horrors of the nazi regime. This museum is accurate in accounting for these crimes. The endless stream of horrific stories is both moving and informative to the tragedy Russia faced in WWII. The museum, however, lacks to mention the equivalently horrible treatment the Russian soldiers dealt to the civilians of east Prussia and east Germany, displaying the pro-Russian bias of it.
All and all it was an informative and interesting museum, but in being partly owned by Russian authorities, it is heavily biased to ignore the realities of actions of the soviet troops