Backtrack 2: In which the adventurers picnic in the halls of former power

Beginning of Chapter 4 in Inglorious.

(EDIT 7/28 - Today we passed all the documents to a German guy from the state archives of Berlin. He said the archives are generally interested in all things GDR, and that it's especially rare to find documents like these that the Soviets left behind. I think we all feel very good about this.)

Today Juliya's cousin translated the Soviet documents (how cool does that sound?) that we found at Kaserne Krampnitz this past Friday. (I mentioned these in an ecstatic blog post on the day that we found them.) We haven't been able to find much on the history of Kaserne ("barracks") Krampnitz, but the gist is that the Nazis moved their driving and riding school to the site from Hanover in 1937, the Soviets took over the complex a single day after the Germans abandoned it at the end of the war, and then they abandoned it themselves in 1992. Since then it hasn't been touched, except to make these movies called Enemy at the Gates and Inglourious Basterds. Maybe you've heard of them?

So, the barracks. The first building we hit was the officers' kasino above, with all the very nicely cleaned and finished rooms that Tarantino and his crew must have used. Although this site was  used for its fair share of WWII movies, the Soviets left their marks all over it--or, more aptly, obliterated any and all traces of the Nazis. We ran across a few fireplaces with eagle-shaped holes carved out of the walls above them. And, when we ventured into a four-story barracks building after the officers' kasino, we spotted similar signs of de-Nazi-fication on the front of the building--empty circles, carved-out eagle and swastika shapes. Of course, they also left plenty of Communist symbols and slogans. In one attic Juliya translated the phrase "The most beautiful clothing is the strength of muscle and the resilience of skin" plastered above news clippings of Soviet body builders! Sweet.

The Soviets weren't so thorough with all of their de-Nazi-fication of the complex, though. In the third building we found the infamous ceiling mosaic of an eagle surrounded by swastikas. There's some debate as to whether or not it's the real thing. Some say there's no way the Soviets would have left it intact and that was put up for Enemy at the Gates, but from recent viewing of said fantastic 2 hours of Jude Law's face I can tell you that I, at least, didn't spot any eagle mosaics in the film. Others say the Soviets painted over it with red paint and that the paint has since chipped off. From what we saw, we're on the "it's the real thing" side. (In other news, it was around noon when we got to the eagle room ,and Elizabeth and I were getting kinda hungry, so we camped out on a carpet there and picnicked on our delicious sandwiches from Le Crobag. Talk about irony. Maybe we're turning into hipsters.)

But the finds didn't stop there. We found a handful of rooms with maps plastering the wall--in RUSSIAN! Maps of Europe, maps of Asia. The world according to the Soviets. I bet they sat around in those rooms plotting about how they were about to totally take it over. Sweet. Photo ops abound.

Clever, right?

We kept finding stairs and going up them until we got to the top floor, which seemed to be lots of offices. This is where we found "the documents" that Juliya and her cousin translated today. No juicy history-altering revelations, or dramatic "Hey, so I'm in Berlin, and you gotta hear about what just happened..." letters from 1989--instead, just stories about regular people doing regular things, which was almost better. Many of them were evaluation-like documents describing soldiers as honest, shy, handsome, hardworking, physically fit, reserved, disciplined, respectful, moral, putting others before himself. One detailed what kinds of books one soldier liked to read. In one of the little autobiographies a soldier stated that he "understands governments and political parties, the right way." One of the information cards detailed a soldier with a spotless service record for years who was suddenly caught drinking on the job five consecutive times as his service came to an end. Another soldier, a solid tank engineer, was reprimanded once for dressing poorly and another time for shirking work as a dishwasher. A big stack of papers outlined what food, equipment, and clothing each soldier was rationed, and how much each item cost in German marks. Lots of little stories. I liked them.