Bundestag (Berlin U-Bahn)

Berlin's Federal Ribbon (German: Band des Bundes) is an architectural ensemble that runs across the government district north of the Reichstag building across the Spreebogen on the edge of the Spreebogenpark. The concept was designed by the architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank.

The Volkshalle ("People's Hall"), also called Große Halle ("Great Hall") or Ruhmeshalle ("Hall of Glory"), was a proposal for a monumental, domed building to be built in a reconstituted Berlin (renamed as Germania) in Nazi Germany. The project was conceived by Adolf Hitler and designed by his architect Albert Speer. No part of the building was ever constructed. The word Volk had a particular resonance in Nazi thinking. The term völkisch movement, which can be translated to English as "the people's movement" or "the folkish movement", derives from Volk but also implies a particularly racial undertone. Before the First World War, völkisch thought had developed an attitude to the arts as the German Volk; that is, from an organically linked Aryan or Nordic community (Volksgemeinschaft), racially unpolluted and with its roots in the German soil of the Heimat (homeland).

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.

The Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag is a memorial in Berlin, Germany. The memorial is located in front of the Reichstag building and commemorates the 96 members of the parliament who died unnaturally between 1933 and 1945 (1948). The idea of creating the monument started in the 1980s, and the memorial was erected in September 1992. It was designed by Dieter Appelt, Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Justus Müller, and Christian Zwirner. The memorial is made of 96 cast iron plates, with the names, birth and death dates and places engraved on the edges. It has been designed so that it can be extended if new names are discovered in the future.

Spreebogenpark is a park in Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany.

The Kroll Opera House (German: Krolloper, Kroll-Oper) in Berlin, Germany, was in the Tiergarten district on the western edge of the Königsplatz square (today Platz der Republik), facing the Reichstag building. It was built in 1844 as an entertainment venue for the restaurant owner Joseph Kroll, and redeveloped as an opera house in 1851. It also served as the assembly hall of the Reichstag from 1933 to 1942. Severely damaged by the bombing of Berlin in World War II and the Battle of Berlin, it was demolished in 1951.

The Crown Prince Bridge (German: Kronprinzenbrücke) is a road bridge over the River Spree in the city of Berlin. It links the Berlin quarters of Mitte and Tiergarten with the parliamentary quarter within the borough of Bezirk Mitte. The structure carries Konrad-Adenauer-Straße – the continuation of Reinhardtstraße – which has two vehicle lanes as well as cycleways and footpaths on both carriageways. Immediately on the western end of the bridge is the children's nursery of the German Bundestag and the Spreebogenpark.

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; however, Hitler attributed the fire to Communist agitators. He 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. Some historians believe, based on archive evidence, that the arson had been planned and ordered by the Nazis as a false flag operation; indeed, the Gleiwitz incident in 1939 that granted Hitler emergency powers and paved the way for World War II proves that such a tactic was not out of the question for the Nazis. The building remained in its damaged state until it was partially repaired from 1961 to 1964 and completely restored from 1995 to 1999. 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.