With full-time guides and historians to add depth and context to every stop and special guests with firsthand recollections of the war years, travelers will have access to a uniquely immersive historical view of Germany and Poland as they travel in comfort to some of Europe’s most extraordinary sites.
“During this tour, our guests will have the opportunity to truly delve into the beautiful capital city of Germany, seeing the major highlights of Berlin, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall and the Allied Museum,” said Jeremy Collins, the Museum’s director of conference & travel program development. “Following Berlin, the tour will move to Dresden, which was once one of the most important centers of modern art and dance in Germany. After Dresden, we’ll take guests to explore the unheralded beauty of Poland, from the Old Town in Warsaw to historic Kraków, the only large Polish city to escape the destruction of World War II.”
The tour will then head thirty miles west of Kraków to the Polish town of Oswiecim, whose German name, Auschwitz, has become synonymous with horror and genocide. In 1940, the German occupiers took over this former army barracks and populated it with Polish political prisoners. As the war years went on, the Nazis expanded and refined the camp, imprisoning Jews from all over Europe here before sending them on to their deaths at nearby Birkenau.
“This tour offers an amazing insight into World War II from the perspective of central Europe; here we experience the drama of Hitler’s rise to power in places like the Olympic Stadium and Wannsee in the city of Berlin, and begin to understand the madness that gripped Germany in the 1930s,” said Richie. “Then, in a journey that takes us from Dresden to Auschwitz to Warsaw, we see the devastating legacy of the Holocaust, the bombing raids, and the last battles. It is a highly moving, personal journey into one of the most important fronts of the entire war.”
The cost for “The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Germany” is $6,495 per person double occupancy and $8,490 per person single occupancy. The price includes a full-time logistical tour manager, luxury 5-star and deluxe 4-star hotel accommodations, and meals designed as social gatherings with WWII veterans and eyewitnesses throughout the program. Exclusions include airfare, incidentals and alcoholic beverages. For more information and registration, visit http://www.ww2museumtours.org/germany-poland/.
Decorated historian Dr. Alexandra Richie will lead this tour of the area she has researched and written so much about. Her most recent work, “Warsaw 1944,” became the #1 best-selling book in Poland and won the Newsweek Teresa Torańska Prize for Best Nonfiction 2014, while first book, “Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin,” was named one of the ten top books of the year by Publisher's Weekly. She lives in Warsaw with her husband and their two daughters. She divides her time between the UK, Canada, and Poland, where she is Visiting Professor of History at the Collegium Civitas, an English-speaking University in Warsaw.
The National WWII Museum tells the story of the American experience in the war that changed the world—why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today. Dedicated in 2000 as The National D-Day Museum and now designated by Congress as America's National WWII Museum, it celebrates the American Spirit, teamwork, optimism, courage, and sacrifice of the men and women who served on the battlefront and the Home Front. For more information, call 877-813-3329 or 504-528-1944 or visit nationalww2museum.org. Follow us on Twitter at WWIImuseum or on Facebook.