To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the World War Two, the Berlin State Library and we have launched a citizen science project in which private documents and photos from the post-war period (1945–1950) are being digitised and made available online.

On 16 May 2025, a collection day was held at the Berlin State Library, during which letters, photos, diaries and other personal documents could be digitised.

Until 30 June 2025 is was possible to upload documents yourself. Now the upload is closed. Over 95 contributions with nearly 2,000 pages were uploaded.

Together with information about the events and people documented in them, they were made publicly available on https://1945.transcribathon.eu/.

The consequences of the Nazi dictatorship and World War II were devastating for the city of Berlin: only 2.6 million people remained in the city, 28 square kilometers of built-up area were completely destroyed, rendering 600,000 homes unusable, along with numerous businesses, hospitals, and infrastructure. Of the approximately 7,000 people who had been persecuted as Jews since 1933 and were in hiding, around 1,700 were liberated in Berlin.

At the end of the war, there were over 370,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners in Berlin. From the end of April to the beginning of July 1945, the Soviet Army was the only occupying power in Berlin. With the Berlin Declaration of June 5, 1945, the Allies assumed supreme authority in Germany and divided the country into four occupation zones. Berlin was also divided into four sectors and administered by a four-power administration, the Allied Command, which held its first meeting on July 11, 1945.

The Berlin sectors were mostly based on district boundaries, but deviated from them in Mitte and Kreuzberg. It was not until the beginning of July 1945 that the first US and British troops arrived in Berlin, followed by the remaining French units in August.

Berlin was thus similar to Vienna in that it was occupied by all four Allied powers.

The project “Memories of the End of the War in Berlin” is a collaboration between the Berlin State Library, Facts & Files Historical Research Institute Berlin, Facts & Files Digital Services GmbH, and Europeana.
It was part of Berlin’s theme week “80 Years Since the End of the War – Liberation of Europe from National Socialism,” a collaboration with Kulturprojekte Berlin, funded by the State of Berlin.