Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was the alleged culprit; the Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. The first report of the fire came shortly after 9:00 p.m., when a Berlin fire station received an alarm call. By the time police and firefighters arrived, the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) was engulfed in flames. The police conducted a thorough search inside the building and found Van der Lubbe, who was arrested. After the Fire Decree was issued, the police – now controlled by Hitler's Nazi Party – made mass arrests of communists, including all of the communist Reichstag delegates. This severely crippled communist participation in the 5 March elections. After the 5 March elections, the absence of the communists allowed the Nazi Party to expand their plurality in the Reichstag, greatly assisting the Nazi seizure of total power. On 9 March 1933 the Prussian state police arrested Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev, and Blagoy Popov, who were known Comintern operatives (though the police did not know it then, Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe). Ernst Torgler, head of the Communist Party, had surrendered to police on 28 February. Van der Lubbe and the four communists were the defendants in a trial that started in September 1933. It ended in the acquittal of the four communists and the conviction of Van der Lubbe, who was then executed. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains a topic of debate and research, as while Van der Lubbe was found guilty, it is unclear whether he acted alone. While most historians accept that the Reichstag was set ablaze by Van der Lubbe, some view that the fire was a part of a Nazi plot to take power, a view which historian Richard J. Evans labels a conspiracy theory. In 2008, Germany posthumously pardoned Van der Lubbe under a law introduced in 1998 to lift unjust verdicts dating from the Nazi era.

The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.After the Vistula–Oder Offensive of January–February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km (37 mi) east of Berlin. On 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz. The first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici. When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts (army groups) attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin. On 23 April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganised Army and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army gradually took the entire city. On 30 April, Hitler committed suicide (with several of his officials also dying by suicide shortly afterwards). The city's garrison surrendered on 2 May but fighting continued to the north-west, west, and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May (9 May in the Soviet Union) as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets.

The Bundestag (German pronunciation: [ˈbʊndəstaːk] (listen), "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Grundgesetz, pronounced [ˈɡʁʊntɡəˌzɛt͡s] (listen)) in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany and thus it is the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag. The members of the Bundestag are representatives of the German people as a whole, are not bound by any orders or instructions and are only accountable to their electorate. The minimum legal number of members of the Bundestag (German: Mitglieder des Bundestages) is 598; however, due to the system of overhang and leveling seats the current 20th Bundestag has a total of 736 members, making it the largest Bundestag to date and the largest freely elected national parliamentary chamber in the world.The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 or over. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines first-past-the-post elected seats with a proportional party list to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. An early election is only possible in the cases outlined in Articles 63 and 68 of the Grundgesetz. The Bundestag has several functions. It is the chief legislative body on the federal level. The individual states (Bundesländer) of Germany participate in legislative process through the Bundesrat, a separate assembly. The Bundestag also elects and oversees the chancellor, Germany's head of government, and sets the government budget. Since 1999, it has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin and has its own police force (the Bundestagspolizei). The current president of the Bundestag since 2021 is Bärbel Bas of the SPD. The 20th Bundestag has five vice presidents and is the most visited parliament in the world.

The battle in Berlin was an end phase of the Battle of Berlin. While the Battle of Berlin encompassed the attack by three Soviet Army Groups to capture not only Berlin but the territory of Germany east of the River Elbe still under German control, the battle in Berlin details the fighting and German capitulation that took place within the city. The outcome of the battle to capture the capital of Nazi Germany was decided during the initial phases of the Battle of Berlin that took place outside the city. As the Soviets invested Berlin and the German forces placed to stop them were destroyed or forced back, the city's fate was sealed. Nevertheless, there was heavy fighting within the city as the Red Army fought its way, street by street, into the centre. On 23 April 1945, the first Soviet ground forces started to penetrate the outer suburbs of Berlin. By 27 April, Berlin was completely cut off from the outside world. The battle in the city continued until 2 May 1945. On that date, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, General Helmuth Weidling, surrendered to the commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, Lieutenant-General Vasily Chuikov. Chuikov was a constituent of Marshal Georgiy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front.

The Reichstag dome is a glass dome constructed on top of the rebuilt Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany. It was designed by architect Norman Foster and built by Waagner-Biro to symbolize the reunification of Germany. The distinctive appearance of the dome has made it a prominent landmark in the city.

The Reichstag (German: Reichstag, pronounced [ˈʁaɪ̯çsˌtaːk] (listen); officially: Deutscher Bundestag – Reichstagsgebäude pronounced [ˈʁaɪ̯çstaːksɡəˌbɔʏ̯də] (listen)) (English: Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament. It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (German: Reichstag) of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the Diet until 1933, when it was set on fire. In World War II, during the Battle of Berlin, the building was severely damaged by the Soviet Red Army. After the War, the building fell into disuse; the parliament of the German Democratic Republic (the Volkskammer) met in the Palast der Republik in East Berlin, while the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany (the Bundestag) met in the Bundeshaus in Bonn. The ruined building was made safe against the elements and partially refurbished in the 1960s, but no attempt at full restoration was made until after German reunification on 3 October 1990, when it underwent a reconstruction led by architect Norman Foster. After its completion in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the German parliament: the contemporary Bundestag.

The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism is a memorial in Berlin, Germany. The monument is dedicated to the memory of the 220,000 – 500,000 people murdered in the Porajmos – the Nazi genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples. It was designed by Dani Karavan and was officially opened on 24 October 2012 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the presence of President Joachim Gauck.

The Reichstag Bloodbath (German: Blutbad vor dem Reichstag) occurred on January 13, 1920, in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin during negotiation by the Weimar National Assembly on the Works Councils Act (Betriebsrätegesetz). The number of people killed and injured is controversial, but it is certainly the bloodiest demonstration in German history. The event was a historic event that was overshadowed two months later by the Kapp Putsch but remained in Berlin's labour movement and security forces' collective memory.

Der Rufer (lit. 'The Caller') is a bronze sculpture by Gerhard Marcks. One statue is installed in the Tiergarten in Berlin, Germany. Others are installed in Bremen, Germany, and Perth, Western Australia. The statue is of a barefooted man in a robe, cupping his hands to his mouth as if shouting, and is dedicated to victims and survivors of torture.

Platz der Republik (German: [ˈplats deːɐ̯ ʁepuˈbliːk], Republic Square) is a square in Berlin, Germany. It is located in the Tiergarten (borough Mitte), directly in front (west) of the Reichstag building. The square has an area of about 36,900 square meters and is almost completely covered by grass but is decorated with some hedges and a few trees. Before 1926 and between 1933 and 1948 it was called Königsplatz (German: [ˈkøːnɪçsˌplats], King's Square). The Victory Column stood here before it was moved to its present location in 1939.

Bundestag is a Berlin U-Bahn station located on the line. The name of this station was changed in April 2006 from Reichstag to Bundestag to better reflect the physical location of the station and the function of nearby buildings.

The Soviet War Memorial is one of several war memorials in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, erected by the Soviet Union to commemorate its war dead, particularly the 80,000 soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces who died during the Battle of Berlin in April and May 1945.The memorial is located in the Großer Tiergarten, a large public park to the west of the city centre, on the north side of the east-west Straße des 17. Juni (17 June Street) in the Tiergarten locality.