11 of the Top World War II History Sites in Europe

Known as Oświęcim in Polish, the little town of Auschwitz is home to one of the best-known of the Nazi German concentration camps to visit in Europe: the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. More than a million people died here (the vast majority of them Jewish) and the fragmentary remains have a somber energy that’s deeply moving.

Most travelers visit on day trips from Krakow, half-day trips, or historical tours, and pay to join organized tours led by museum educators. Entry to the site is free—however, there is a limited amount of unguided visits available if you book in advance. Ultimately, we strongly recommend you book a guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau from nearby Krakow to fully grasp the site’s vital significance.

Related: Know Before You Go: Visiting Auschwitz

Anne Frank, the ordinary yet exceptional Jewish girl whose moving diary miraculously survived the war, is many people’s first encounter with the Holocaust. Unsurprisingly, it requires a bit of advance planning to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam—the annex where her family and their neighbors lived is small, and lines for admission to the museum complex regularly stretch around the block.

Even if you’re too late to book ahead of time, you can still discover her world on a walking tour of Anne Frank’s Amsterdam, or on one of the many Amsterdam historical walking tours of the city. Additionally, the National Holocaust Museum or the Jewish Museum (Joods Museum) in the Jewish Cultural Quarter provide wonderful glimpses into life in Amsterdam during WWII.

Krakow is your base for not one but two of the most moving Holocaust remembrance sites in Europe. Along with Auschwitz stands Oskar Schindler's Factory (Fabryka Schindlera), where German businessman Oskar Schindler saved the lives of around 1,100 Jewish people by having them work in his factories—a story retold in Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award–winning movie Schindler’s List.

A mix of recreated artifacts and multimedia installations make this a powerful and moving place to visit, particularly when paired with sites including Kazimierz (Krakow Jewish Quarter), the Eagle Pharmacy (Apteka pod Orlem), and the Gestapo headquarters on Pomorska Street.

June 6, 1944 is a date that lives forever in history, as it's when Allied forces swarmed back into France and brought WWII to its final stages. Out of five landing beaches (the others were Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword), Omaha was the most fiercely defended and suffered most casualties, so many Normandy D-Day beaches tours focus on Omaha Beach above all.

Whether you brave the lengthy day trip from Paris or base yourself in Bayeux, other D-Day sights in the area include the American cemetery, the Canadian cemetery, Pointe du Hoc, Sainte-Mère-Église, Arromanches-les-Bains, and Longues-sur-Mer, as well as the Arromanches 360 cinema installation.

A little village near Limoges in south-central France, Oradour-sur-Glane lives on in infamy as the place where Nazi SS men took brutal vengeance on an innocent town on June 10, 1944. (Soon after the Normandy landings, and two years to the day after massacring the inhabitants of Lidice, a small town in the Czech Republic.)

In retribution for attacks by the French Resistance, the soldiers tried to kill every man, woman, and child in the village—just 10 managed to escape the hail of bombs, fire, machine guns, and grenades, to ensure the story lived on. Today, the French village’s ruins are preserved as a memorial.

If you drive east for around three hours from Gdansk in northern Poland, you’ll arrive at the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze or Wilczy Szaniec). This complex of structures (now in ruins) was the site of Hitler’s field headquarters for a chunk of WWII, and it’s where the assassination plot of July 20, 1944 failed after an unsuspecting officer moved a briefcase that should have blown up Hitler.

Today, parts of some buildings have been restored into recreations of their original purpose, giving it an eerie atmosphere. Some tours visit from Gdansk, others from Warsaw, which is about a 4-hour drive away.

Created in 2005, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial) is the most moving of Berlin's WWII history landmarks, comprised of a forest of 2,711 concrete steles among which to wander.

While most of the city’s WWII sites were razed to the ground, you can still visit Führerbunker (the spot where Adolf Hitler’s bunker once lay), tour the remains of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and pay tribute to other murdered groups at the Monument to Homosexuals Persecuted Under National Socialist Regime and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism.

Insider tip: If you want an excuse to explore more of Germany’s WWII history, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site is only 30 minutes outside of Munich and offers another harrowing-yet-humbling look into that chapter of world history.

As the Warsaw Uprising Museum in Poland so dramatically retells, Nazi forces entirely destroyed Warsaw Old Town (Stare Miasto) after a heroic uprising by resistance fighters in 1944. But after a painstaking reconstruction of the area with as much attention to original Gothic architecture detail as possible, it’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, acting as a symbol of a rebuilt nation.

It’s important not to forget or overlook the struggles of the city’s Jewish population, though. Here, tours of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto and the POLIN Jewish history museum help preserve their story for future generations.

In early summer 1940, after a catastrophically fast Nazi advance through Europe, Great Britain and France stood on the verge of defeat at the hands of the German army. But the leaders of the Allied forces arranged Operation Dynamo, a rescue mission they hoped would bring home 20,000–30,000 troops from the French port city of Dunkirk.

In fact, they ended up saving nearly 340,000 British and French soldiers by sea, an incredible feat immortalized in Walter Lord’s novel The Miracle of Dunkirk and Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award–winning movie Dunkirk. Today, you can tour the memorials and key locations in both France and Belgium, including Dunkirk itself, Calais, Bruges, Ypres, and Arras.

While it’s important not to buy into British self-mythologizing about WWII (the Soviet Union lost around 24 million dead, orders of magnitude more than either the British or the Americans), the Churchill War Rooms in London remains one of the most popular WWII sites in Europe. And, given that it offers the rare chance to explore the rooms where leaders made decisions and staff lived and worked under bombardment, that’s no surprise.

Pair that trip with excursions to other WWII places of interest such as Bletchley Park, where you can learn about British codebreakers including Alan Turing; HMS Belfast, a museum ship which served in WWII; or the Imperial War Museum for a fascinating look at different eras of wars around the world.

For most of the first half of 1944, Allied and German forces battled for control of Italy’s Monte Cassino, a mountain that guarded the road to Rome. Atop the hill was an abbey, founded by St. Benedict in AD 529, which the Allies bombed to rubble in an attempt to drive out the Germans.

Today, Montecassino Abbey (Abbazia di Montecassino) stands rebuilt and proud again, but guided battlefield tours still cover key sites of the struggle, as well as taking you to pay your respects at memorials and cemeteries. Enjoy the sprawling views of the countryside, but don’t miss exploring the many artifacts, manuscripts, and other historical details located inside.