Berlin Sportpalast

In later years, the Sportpalast also hosted non-winter sporting events such as six-day bicycle races and professional boxing matches in which well-known German boxer Max Schmeling fought.

During the tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic in the '20s and early '30s, the Sportpalast was used for the mass meetings of the major German political parties; within its walls, speakers from the Social Democrats, Communists and National Socialists outlined their programs and strategies to capacity crowds.

The Sportpalast was the site of Hitler's Winterhilfe address of September 4, 1940, in which he announced a shift to bombing of British cities rather than only military targets, heralding the beginning of the London Blitz.

In his fanatical appeal to "totaler Krieg" before a select Nazi audience, Goebbels sought to rally the German people to heightened support for the war, which had begun to turn against Germany and was producing ever-growing casualty lists.

Artists such as Bill Haley, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, The Nice, and The Mothers of Invention performed at the Sportpalast during the building's final decades.