Barracks Rathenower Straße

The former barracks of the Großdeutschland unit were located in the area between Kruppstraße, Rathenower Straße, Seydlitzstraße and Invalidenstraße, where initially a huge barracks complex for three guard regiments of the Prussian Army was erected. After the regiments were dissolved in 1919, some Freikorps units (which suppressed the Spartacist uprising in 1919) and security units were stationed here. In 1922, a Berlin guard commando was established on the premises, which would fulfil protocolary functions in the German capital.

By 1939, the unit was reorganised into the Großdeutschland formation, an elite unit of the Wehrmacht. While most parts of the units saw combat in France and the Soviet Union, its guard battalion remained in Berlin for protocol duties, helping in cleanup works, searching for the victims of air raids and guarding various local forced labour camps. The battalion played a crucial role in the plot of 20 July 1944, when it received orders from the conspirators led by Claus von Stauffenberg to arrest the NSDAP and SS leaders in Berlin. However, after battalion commander Otto Ernst Remer was provided a personal telephone call with Hitler, the guard battalion was immediately used against the conspirators, most of whom were later tortured and executed. By the beginning of the Battle of Berlin, the remainder of the – now guard regiment – Großdeutschland was engaged in fights against the advancing Soviet troops in different parts of the city and then mostly managed to break out of the city. The premises were captured between 29 and 30 April 1945 by the Soviet 207th Rifle Division, which set up its divisional headquarters there.

After the war, the area was demilitarised, and most of the buildings (especially those between Seydlitzstraße and Invalidenstraße) were demolished. Some of the accommodations of the former barracks in the Rathenower Straße still stand to this day and are used as office buildings, while other parts have been replaced by Fritz Schloß Park and modern apartment blocks.