Bombing of Berlin in World War II in the context of "RAF Bomber Command"

The Stammheim Missal is an illuminated manuscript Roman Missal made between 1160 and 1170. It is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, having been acquired from the private collection of the barons of Fürstenberg, who sold it to raise funds to repair Schloss Körtlinghausen. A Carolingian ivory diptych had been used for its binding, but was removed in 1904 and was in the State Museums of Berlin until 1945, when it disappeared during the bombing of Berlin in World War II.

It was produced by the priest Henricus of Middel for Hildesheim Abbey, and was later held at Stammheim Castle. It was made in the same era as the Ratmann Sacramentary. It is richly decorated with full-page miniatures, including one showing Bernward of Hildesheim (died 1022, subject of a local cult from 1150 and formally canonised in 1192).

52°31′07″N 13°22′14″E / 52.51861°N 13.37056°E / 52.51861; 13.37056

The Kroll Opera House (German: Krolloper, Kroll-Oper) in Berlin, Germany, was in the Tiergarten district on the western edge of the Königsplatz square (today Platz der Republik), facing the Reichstag building. It was built in 1844 as an entertainment venue for the restaurant owner Joseph Kroll, and redeveloped as an opera house in 1851. It also served as the assembly hall of the Reichstag from 1933 to 1942. Severely damaged by the bombing of Berlin in World War II and the Battle of Berlin, it was demolished in 1951.

The Berlin Palace (German: Berliner Schloss), formerly known as the Royal Palace (German: Königliches Schloss), is a large building adjacent to Berlin Cathedral and the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin. It was the main residence of the Electors of Brandenburg, Kings of Prussia and German Emperors from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture. The royal palace became one of Berlin’s largest buildings and shaped the cityscape with its 60-meter-high (200 ft) dome erected in 1845.

Used for various government functions after the abolition of the Hohenzollern monarchy in the 1918 revolution, the palace was damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, and was razed to the ground by the East German authorities in 1950. In the 1970s, the East German authorities erected a modernist parliamentary and cultural center on the site, known as the Palace of the Republic. After German reunification in 1990, and years of debate, particularly regarding the fraught historical legacy of both buildings, the Palace of the Republic was itself demolished in 2009.

In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy or hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while engaging an enemy, long range ranging errors or inaccuracy. Accidental fire not intended to attack enemy or hostile targets, and deliberate firing on one's own troops for disciplinary reasons is not called friendly fire, and neither is unintentional harm to civilian or neutral targets, which is sometimes referred to as collateral damage. Training accidents and bloodless incidents also do not qualify as friendly fire in terms of casualty reporting.

Use of the term friendly in a military context for allied personnel started during the First World War, often when shells fell short of the targeted enemy. The term friendly fire was originally adopted by the United States military; S.L.A. Marshall used the term in Men Against Fire in 1947. Many North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) militaries refer to these incidents as blue on blue, which derives from military exercises where NATO forces were identified by blue pennants and units representing Warsaw Pact forces by red pennants. In classical forms of warfare where hand-to-hand combat dominated, death from a "friendly" was rare, but in industrialized warfare, deaths from friendly fire are more common.

The Palace of the Republic (German: Palast der Republik, pronounced [paˈlast deːɐ ʁepuˈbliːk]) was a building in Berlin that hosted the Volkskammer, the parliament of East Germany, from 1976 to 1990.

Also known as the "People's Palace", it was located across the Unter den Linden from Museum Island in the Mitte area of East Berlin, on the site of the former Berlin Palace, which had been heavily damaged by Allied air raids and demolished in the 1950s. It was located between the Lustgarten and Schlossplatz, near the West Berlin border. The palace was completed in 1976 to house the Volkskammer, also serving various cultural purposes including two large auditoria, art galleries, a theatre, a cinema, 13 restaurants, five beer halls, a bowling alley, billiards rooms, a rooftop ice skating rink, a private gym with spa, a casino, a medical station, a post office, a police station with an underground cellblock, a fire station, an indoor basketball court, an indoor swimming pool, private barbershops and salons, public and private restrooms and a discothèque. In the early 1980s, one of the restaurants was replaced by a video game arcade for children of Volkskammer members and staff. The palace also had its own subway station, secure underground parking garage reserved for Central Committee members and a helipad reserved for Politburo members.