A strange ribbon bar, a captain and a village

[TabsTabs1964]

After the war.

After the capitulation, German refugees and people who had lost their homes in the bombing and battle of Berlin found temporary accommodation in the village...






Let's think that from Spandau, the westernmost suburb of Berlin, to the Olympic village is only about 18 kilometers. So it was a destination you could walk to in one day.


Image of a transit camp for East German refugees in Charlottenburg... The large halls of the Hindenburghaus, packed with Berlin refugees, must have had a similar appearance.

[TabsTabs1964]

Less than ten years after the opening of the Olympic Village, new users came to the site: the Soviet Army....




The new owners and their souvenirs

In the weeks following the conquest of Berlin in 1945, more than two million Red Army soldiers had to be quartered in the forests and countryside surrounding the city.



The entire Brandenburg region remained in the Soviet occupation zone.

The Russian occupier also used it as a place to live, but only in 1947 did they officially take over. The last refugees left the village in 1949, after which Russian officers and their families came to live there.

[TabsTabs1964]

During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact expected NATO's main attack on Berlin to come from the west and the Olympic Village was in the center of the main defense strip, so the area was of great strategic importance.

So in the period of Soviet occupation, no less than one Motor Rifle Division occupied the facilities and their living quarters. In the 1950s, the base had around 5,000 soldiers.


Propaganda posters displaying the friendship of the German people with the Soviet occupation army...

In the summer of 1953, local units received marching orders because they were deployed to suppress the June 17 uprising in East Berlin.





One of these units was the one stationed in the former Olympic village.

[Rakkasan187]

Wonderful thread Santi,

Brings back memories of my time in Berlin with the US forces. Went numerous times to the Olympic stadium which was in the British Sector at the time.

Smitty

[TabsTabs1964]

Interestingly, from the 1950s until 1992 sports continued to be played at the facilities, as the Soviet Army Sports Club Elstal or Sowjetische Armeesportklub Elstal (SASK) trained here. The former Olympic Village became the new home of the Soviet Army Sports Club.


Gruppe der Sowjetischen Streitkräfte in Deutschland - Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG)


A shield of the Armeesportklub (CKA) Elstal in the entrance gate in the Speisehaus der Nationen


Emblem of FC CSKA Moscow in 70s

The SASK football department was made up almost exclusively of CSKA Moscow players who were in military service based here was well known in the GDR.

The best Soviet athletes who did their military service in the GDR came here. The football department played friendly matches against BFC Dynamo, Union Berlin and 1.FC Magdeburg and the club even loaned its players to German clubs from time to time.

The Olympic Village has always hosted important sports competitions organized by the Soviet armed forces, attended by athletes from all over the GDR.

[TabsTabs1964]

The Hindenburg House would serve as an officers' dining room and (once again) for the most important cultural events.







121 of the 141 former athletes' houses were demolished in the seventies and eighties. Instead came the well-known German Democratic Republic Plattenbau: ugly flats. Nowadays, only the hull is left of these flats.





Todat the most visible evidence of Soviet use of the area is these large prefabricated buildings that were built here and complemented the historic buildings.

A number of them will be demolished. The Russians also built a number of new buildings, such as a cafe. This is some years ago now also demolished.

[TabsTabs1964]

The long years of the Cold War passed little by little...


1970s Soldiers sightseeing


1980s The Soviet War Memorial Parade Tiergarten, Berlin


1981 Life goes on in the nearby Spandau prison. Brigadier General John E. Rogers and Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Dorofeev.


1980s Discipline and military reviews are maintained


1989 Parade for the 40th anniversary of the creation of the GDR... it will be the last

[TabsTabs1964]

Until, shortly before the total collapse of the Soviet regime, the communist regime of the GDR collapsed and somewhat by surprise, in November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall occurred....





After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a lot changed in Germany. Soldiers with nothing to do, uncertain about their future, and with vodka within reach, sometimes want to demolish something out of frustration.





Eventually the Russians left the complex in 1991/1992.

[TabsTabs1964]

On August 31, 1994, the Westgruppe der russischen Streitkräfte (Western Group of the Russian Armed Forces) said goodbye to Berlin. Three years earlier the USSR had dissolved and the post-Soviet space was beginning to slowly sink into a decade of chaos and violence.







With the lowering of the Kremlin's red flag, the night of December 26, 1991, the international order that emerged from the ashes of the Second World War symbolically ended....



The Red Army, which had entered Berlin victoriously in April 1945 to put an end to Hitler's regime, discreetly left the German capital 49 years later....

[TabsTabs1964]

In 1993 the area was granted a protected monument status. But under which municipality the Olympic village and area of the military training grounds at Döberitz actually fell remained a dispute for a long time. Finally, it was decided in 1996 that it belonged to the municipality of Elstal.