The Gray Despair of Potsdam

The Soviet Detention and Tribunal Site on Lindenstrasse 1945–1952

September 26, 2025 until July 12, 2026

The unconditional surrender of the German Reich on 8 May 1945 marked the end of World War II in Europe. More than 60 million lives had been lost around the globe. The war’s instigator, Germany, was governed and divided into four zones of occupation by the victors—the U.S., the Soviet Union, the U.K. and France. One important objective pursued by these nations was to punish war criminals and cleanse society of Nazi ideology.

Within its occupation zone, the Soviet Union established and consolidated a communist dictatorship. In late July 1945, the Soviet secret service confiscated the prison site on Lindenstrasse for use as a detention prison. By 1952, the secret service had imprisoned more than 2,000 people here under harsh and often violent conditions.

In the courtroom, military tribunals conducted trials that ignored any form of due process yet sentenced people to long prison terms or even death.

In Stalin’s terror system, “Lindenstrasse” served as a regional collection, tribunal, and transit prison in the  Soviet zone and then in the newly created East Germany. This exhibition presents the latest research findings about this secret service site and the people interned there.