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Whitlam's Berlin Tours

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18/09/2026

West Berlin trains once ran straight through East Berlin’s ghost stations 👻

🧱 When the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, parts of today’s U6, U8 and north-south S-Bahn suddenly crossed the border twice on their journeys through the city

🚇 East Berlin closed the stations along these routes, but West Berlin trains were allowed to keep passing through. Passengers simply stared out at dark, deserted platforms as they rolled underneath the East

👮 The stations were heavily guarded to prevent escapes. Border guards watched passing trains from fortified posts on the platforms

🔓 After the Wall fell, the ghost stations were gradually reopened and Berlin’s underground network was stitched back together

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🏛️ I’m Jonny Whitlam, founder of Whitlam’s Berlin Tours. We offer private Berlin history tours with me and a small team of expert guides

🔗 whitlams-berlin-tours.com

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

Kelet-Berlin, Chausseestrasse. U-Bahn megálló a Walter Ulbricht stadionnál. Fortepan 50889.jpg, FOTO:FORTEPAN / Nagy Gyula, CC BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 173-1321 / Helmut J. Wolf / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-85458-0002 / Junge, Peter Heinz / CC-BY-SA
891118k berlin u bahnhof stadtmitte.jpg, Frits Wiarda, CC BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1220-301 / Grimm, Peer / CC-BY-SA 3.0

17/09/2026

12,000 tons of fail - all it did is prove the plans would never work!

15/09/2026

There’s a secret basketball court inside Tempelhof Airport 🏀

🇺🇸 Built by American forces in 1947, inside the monumental airport constructed under the N***s

🏀 US soldiers helped basketball spread through postwar Berlin, teaching young Berliners to play the game

🇩🇪 But basketball grew on both sides of the Wall, from East German star Birgit Menz to Berliners Satou and Nyara Sabally making it all the way to the WNBA

🏆 And now Berlin has just hosted the Women’s Basketball World Cup, with Germany finishing 4th for their best ever result

🏟️ Under Berlin’s Olympic bid, Tempelhof could host 3×3 basketball alongside skateboarding and climbing, using temporary infrastructure beneath that enormous roof while protecting and respecting Berliners’ green space

📍 From American soldiers in 1947 to the world’s biggest basketball stage, all at Tempelhof

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🤝 COLLABORATION
This video was produced in collaboration with @ as part of Berlin’s campaign for the Olympic and Paralympic Games

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

Nyara Sabally & Leonie Fiebich 2024 (cropped).jpg, John Mac, CC BY-SA 2.0
Satou Sabally 2025a (cropped).jpg, John Mac, CC BY-SA 2.0

14/09/2026

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This WWII spy conned the N***s out of a fortune 🕵️‍♂️

🇷🇸 Duško Popov was a Serbian pl***oy recruited by German military intelligence in 1940 who promptly started working for the British

🎰 In neutral Portugal he stayed at luxury hotels, gambled at Casino Estoril and met German handlers while working as a double agent

💷 His most audacious con saw British intelligence pocket German money worth more than £1 million today

🇺🇸 Then the Germans sent him to America with an intelligence questionnaire featuring a suspicious amount of interest in Pearl Harbor

🍸 Back in Estoril, another British intelligence officer may have watched Popov gambling with a small fortune in intelligence money

📚 His name was Ian Fleming

🎲 Twelve years later Fleming published Casino Royale

🤔 Did Popov help inspire James Bond? Maybe!

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🏛️ I’m Jonny Whitlam, founder of Whitlam’s Berlin Tours. We offer private Berlin history tours with me and a small team of expert guides

🔗 whitlams-berlin-tours.com

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-2005-0152 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-2005-0153 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Image Rights (Thérèse Bonney)

Thérèse Bonney, © The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. This work is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license., CC BY 4.0, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

12/09/2026

1920s Berlin once had what was basically a theme park for adults 🤯

🌍 Haus Vaterland let you eat and drink your way around the world without leaving Potsdamer Platz

⛈️ The Rhine restaurant even unleashed a fake thunderstorm every hour because apparently dinner wasn’t exciting enough

💡 More than 4,000 light bulbs helped create elaborate indoor light shows

😬 Then came the N***s, Aryanisation and war

🧱 What survived ended up beside the Berlin Wall before the ruins were finally demolished in the 1970s

👯 Have you heard of this place before?

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🏛️ I’m Jonny Whitlam, founder of Whitlam’s Berlin Tours. We offer private Berlin history tours with me and a small team of expert guides

🔗 whitlams-berlin-tours.com

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

Berlin Potsdamer Platz - Haus Vaterland (49609053797).jpg, Sludge G, CC BY-SA 2.0
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Freiburg W 134 Nr. 033167b / Fotograf: W***y Pragher, CC BY 4.0
IV 85735 V.png, N.N., CC BY-SA 4.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13681 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Freiburg W 134 Nr. 001504, CC BY 4.0
SM 2018-00408.jpg, N.N., CC BY-SA 4.0
Sludge G, CC BY-SA 2.0
Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-08538,_Fritz_Lang_bei_Dreharbeiten.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Octave.H, CC BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1988-035-14 / Hoffmann, Herbert / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R67508 / Bittner / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Staatsarchiv Freiburg W 134 Nr. 078734b / Fotograf: W***y Pragher, CC BY 4.0
David Wintzer, CC BY-SA 4.0
W***y Pragher, CC BY 3.0
Edward Valachovic https://www.flickr.com/people/fauxaddress/, CC BY-SA 2.0
File:Vaterland1976.jpg, Hubert Gottschling, CC BY-SA 4.0

06/09/2026

One of the most powerful men in N**i Germany is buried in Berlin with no name on his grave ⚫

⚰️ Reinhard Heydrich was one of the principal architects of the Holocaust and was given an enormous state funeral in 1942

🪦 After the fall of N**i Germany, his grave marker disappeared but his body remained

⛏️ Then in 2019, someone dug open the unmarked grave during the night

📍 Today, the Invalidenfriedhof is one of Berlin’s most historically fascinating cemeteries - I’ll bring you more stories from here soon

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🏛️ I’m Jonny Whitlam, founder of Whitlam’s Berlin Tours. We offer private Berlin history tours with me and a small team of expert guides

🔗 whitlams-berlin-tours.com

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

NTB / Riksarkivet, CC BY-SA 4.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 121-1344 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101III-Alber-040-02 / Alber, Kurt / CC-BY-SA 3.0

04/09/2026

If Berlin gets the Olympics, the modern pentathlon would be held here 🏟️

🏃 The Poststadion was built in the 1920s as a huge new sports complex for ordinary Berliners, hosting everything from football and athletics to swimming and tennis

🥊 Max Schmeling fought here, Germany played Olympic football here in 1936 and Hi**er famously watched them lose 2–0 to Norway

🌿 Almost a century later, the stadium is still in use, but parts of it are badly in need of investment

🛠️ Berlin’s Olympic plan is based overwhelmingly on reusing existing and temporary venues, which could mean restoring places like this rather than building new ones

👀 So could another Olympics actually leave Berlin with a better Poststadion?

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🤝 COLLABORATION
This video was produced in collaboration with .gewinnt as part of Berlin’s campaign for the Olympic and Paralympic Games

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-K0625-0500-013 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00327A / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-00892 / Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-07878 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
File:Paulino Uzkudun.jpg, Indalecio Ojanguren, CC BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-09348 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R82532 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

01/09/2026

Berlin had Tinder before Tinder ❤️‍🔥

🕺 is one of the city’s great surviving dance halls, and it still carries a bit of old Berlin nightlife magic

👯‍♀️ and I went to check it out!

☎️ Their original 1938 table telephones still work, so if someone catches your eye across the room you can literally give them a ring

💌 Back in the day, some Berlin clubs even had pneumatic tubes - Berliners could send love letters and even little gifts across the ballroom. Much more charming than swiping right!

✨ The 1905 Ballhaus Berlin is still very much alive today, with dancing, concerts, cabaret and burlesque keeping the tradition going

🎺 Check out their Monday Swing night for a touch of old world glamour *today*

🍸 Nearly 90 years later, the phones are still ringing, the dance floor is still busy, and this all sounds much more fun than Hinge 👀

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

Pre-war postcard, Ballhaus Resi, Berlin SW29 (50025999521).jpg, Sludge G, CC BY-SA 2.0

31/08/2026

Eva Tetz really did live through almost everything Berlin threw at the 20th century 🎙️

👧 Born just as Hi**er came to power, she was evacuated to Austria during the war and later ended up in Dresden the night before the bombing

🏚️ She returned to Berlin for the final weeks of the war, saw the Red Army arrive and remembered Soviet troops turning parts of her apartment building into stables for their horses

👁️ She later lived in East Germany, was approached by the Stasi and on 9 November 1989 became one of the first people to cross at Bornholmer Straße as the Berlin Wall opened

🎧 Her extraordinary story was recorded by my friend Matti Geyer for his podcast Was für ein Leben – Außergewöhnliche Biografien

🎤 Matti has interviewed everyone from everyday Berliners with unbelievable life stories to Nina Hagen and former West Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen

🔎 Search Was für ein Leben wherever you get your podcasts

29/08/2026

This weird little park next to Berlin Hauptbahnhof used to be one of Berlin’s most notorious prisons 👀

🔒 Zellengefängnis Moabit opened in 1849 and was Germany’s first prison systematically designed around solitary confinement

😶 Prisoners lived, worked and exercised alone, and could even be forced to cover their faces so they couldn’t recognise each other

🏰 The prison was built like a fortress, with five cell blocks radiating out from a central surveillance point

⚔️ Under the N***s, resistance members were imprisoned here, including several people involved in the 20 July 1944 plot to kill Hi**er

💀 In April 1945, with the Red Army already fighting its way into Berlin, the SS took sixteen political prisoners from here and murdered them

🏚️ The prison survived the war, closed in 1955 and was mostly demolished soon afterwards

🌳 Today the park traces the prison that once stood here, with parts of the outer wall still standing and lines marking the former wings and cells

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Image Rights (Wikimedia Commons)

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-025-12 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-109-19A / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R77793 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

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Berlin

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