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“Berlin: A Modern History” by David Clay Large (2001)
Excellent book that covers the Berlin basics (and then some!) in a very readable and exciting way.
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Cabaret (1972)
The Oscar-winning classic musical about 1930s Berlin, when Hitler and anti-Semitism were on the rise, and the only refuge was the cabaret.
>>Get the movie now<<

Wings of Desire (1988)
Set in the former West Berlin, Wim Wenders' romantic fantasy film tells the story of an angel who falls in love with a human. The story concludes in Wenders' 1993 sequel, Faraway, So Close.
>>Watch here<<

“Alone in Berlin” / ”Jeder stirbt für sich allein” by Hans Fallada
(1947)
One of the first anti-Nazi novels to be published by a German after World War II, based on the true story of working-class husband and wife Otto and Elise Hampel who, acting alone, became part of the German Resistance. There’s also a movie based on the book from 2016.
>>Free audiobook<<

Goodbye to Berlin (1939) & The Berlin stories (1939), by Christopher Isherwood
Set in the 1930s, Isherwood describes the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society on the cusp of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power. Berlin is portrayed during this chaotic interwar period as a carnival of debauchery and despair inhabited by desperate people who are unaware of the national catastrophe that awaits them.
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Downfall (2004)
Bruno Ganz delivers a frightening performance as Hitler in this movie about the Führer's final days in his Berlin bunker.
>>Watch on Amazon<<

Hannah Arendt (2012)
This biographical drama examines the life of the German-Jewish philosopher who reported on Adolf Eichmann's 1961 Nazi war crimes trial for the New Yorker.
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Valkyrie (2008)
This historical thriller chronicling the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler includes scenes shot on location in Berlin's Bendlerblock, the nerve center of the failed coup and now a memorial to the resistance effort.
>>Watch on Prime<<

A Life In Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the mising agents of WWII (2005) by Sarah Helm
The real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain's premiere secret agents during World War II, and the fates of the missing female SOE agents.
>>Order here<<

The Third Reich Trilogy (2003) by Richard J Evans
3 narrative history books covering the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail, with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process.
>>The Coming of the Third Reich<<
>>The Third Reich in Power<<
>>The Third Reich at War<<

Hitler (2008) by Ian Kershaw
Classic biographical work that traces the German dictator's origins as a failed artist in Vienna through his dramatic final days in his Berlin bunker.

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 (1955) by Milton Mayer
Book describing the thought process of ordinary citizens during Nazi Germany. August Heckscher, the chief writer of editorials of the New York Herald Tribune, wrote that this book "suggests how easy it is for human beings in any society to fall prey to a dynamic political movement, provided their lives are sufficiently insecure, frustrated or empty."
>>Buy on Amazon<<

Ordinary Men (1992) by Christopher R Browning
Shocking as it is, this book gives evidence to suggest the opposite conclusion: that the sad-sack German draftees who perpetrated much of the Holocaust were not expressing some uniquely Germanic evil, but that they were average men comparable to the run of humanity, twisted by historical forces into inhuman shapes.
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In The Garden of Beasts (2011) by Erik Larson
Book about the extraordinary story of one family witnessing Hitler's rise to absolute power.
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The Counterfeiters (2007).
This Oscar-winning film tells the story of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp inmates forced to run a counterfeiting ring to undermine the British pound
>>Watch here<<

If this is A Woman (2015) by Sarah Helm
Winner of the Longman-History Today Book Prize: A 'profoundly moving chronicle' (Observer) that tells the story of Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp designed specifically for women, using new testimony from survivors.
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In the Country of Numbers, Where the Men Have No Name (2020) by Astrid Ley
More than 6,300 Jewish men were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp after the November pogroms in 1938. The great majority of them were released a few weeks later on the condition that they leave Germany immediately. This book contains nine individual life stories of families who contributed to the exhibition with photos and documents.
>>Buy here<<

Sachsenhausen. The Concentration Camp by The Reich Capital. Formation and Development (2016) by Günter Morsch
This book traces the development of the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp up to the departure of its first commandant in the summer of 1937. It includes not only crucial documents and plans, but also nearly 100 photos of this initial construction phase.
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Sonnenallee (1999)
Comedy movie about a teenager coming of age in 1970s East Berlin. He and his friends daily traverse Sonnenallee, a street bisected by the West Berlin border, an ever-present reminder of a free world just beyond the wall.
>>Get it on DVD<<

The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)
Lightly fictionalized telling of the acts of terrorism committed by radicalized Germans in 1967, which rocked the still-fragile German democracy
>>Watch on Prime<<

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)
In this funny, poignant film, a son struggles to re-create a pre-unification Berlin for his ailing communist mother.
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The Lives of Others (2006)
In this gripping, Oscar-winning drama, a member of East Germany's secret police becomes too close to those whose lives he surveils.
>>Find out more<<

Tunnel 57: A True Escape Story (2013) by Thomas Hensler
This historical comic book is an escape helper's first person account of the construction of a tunnel beneath the divided city of Berlin in 1964.
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The Berlin Wall (2009) by Frederick Taylor
Taylor's exceptional book tells the story of Berlin during the years of the Wall, exploring in fascinating detail why it went up, who tried to cross it, and why it so abruptly came down.
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Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth (2011) by Frederick Kempe
An extraordinary book looking at key events of the twentieth century, with powerful applications to these early years of the twenty-first.
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Deutschland 83
An engrossing TV show with a fun '80s soundtrack that chronicles an intense spy story bringing viewers uncomfortably close to the Iron Curtain.
>>Watch here<<

Stasiland (2004) by Anna Funder
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
Travel through the remains of East Germany with Anna Funder as she meets the people who lived in the GDR before the fall of the wall.
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Berlinkidz Full Graffiti Documentary
>>Watch here on Youtube<<

Berlinkidz Train Stunt
>>Watch here on Youtube<<

1UP video
>>Watch here on Youtube<<

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 (2007) by Christopher Clark
Winner of the Wolfson History Prize and a compelling account of a country that played a pivotal role in Europe's fortunes and fundamentally shaped our world.
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Frederick The Great and the Enigma of Prussia, presented by Christopher Clark
BBC documentary from 2011 available on Youtube
>> Watch now<<

The Pursuit of Glory (2008) by Tim Blanning
The Pursuit of Glory brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in European history - from the battered, introvert continent after the Thirty Years War to the dynamic one that experienced the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon.
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Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (2015) by Robert Beachy
Detailed and extremely well-researched book about how the international gay-rights movement eventually prospered, despite the setbacks it experienced not only in Nazi Germany but also in mid-century America.
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A Woman in Berlin (1954)
Memoir by German journalist Marta Hillers, originally released anonymously in 1954, portraying Berlin in 1945 during the capture and occupation of the city by the Red Army and depicting the widespread rape of civilians by Soviet soldiers, including the rape of the author. It also looks at a woman's pragmatic approach to survival

The Women Who Flew For Hitler (2017) by Clare Mulley
A riveting double biography of Nazi Germany's most highly decorated women test pilots – Hitler's personal Valkyries. Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg.

The Footsteps of Regina Jonas (2014)
Short movie about the world’s first female Rabbi
https://jwa.org/rabbis/regina-jonas-remembered/film

Hoffnung im Herz / Hope in my Heart (2020) by Maria Binder
Short documentary about May Ayim, a Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political activist, and one of the founders of the Black German Movement: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mayayim

The Dead Ladies Show
A Podcast “Celebrating ladies who were in some way fabulous during their lifetimes“: https://deadladiesshow.com/podcast/