Berlin and Munich trip advice

They won't need a car to get around Munich or to/from Dachau. Public transportation is good, so stay near the historic center. If they're doing a day trip outside Munich, just rent a car for the day. Parking in Munich is a PITA and can be expensive.

They don't need a car if for any of it. You can get to Dachau easily by train as well as traveling from Berlin to Munich.

In Berlin, I'd take a 4 hour Discover Berlin walk soon after arriving. You will be shown around Berlin, hear stories about the city and see the "must sees". I can recommend Original Berlin Walks but there are others.

Apply to go up to the Dome of the Reichstag if possible. Free and great views of the city.

The single best thing you can do is start with the Rick Steves Germany guidebook . Since tastes and interests vary from person to person , and there is a great deal to see in each city , it is best for you to get some basic focus and then return here for specifics . I' m headed back to both cities for return trips this September , myself . PS get the kindle edition , and you can start immediately

In Berlin, for WWII historians, I recommend the Chancellery, Flak Tower III, and the remains of the wall/ Checkpoint Charlie.

In Munich, the Deutsches Museum is probably the best, but there's also the Bavarian Military Museum a short train ride away in Ingolstadt.

Although I love Berlin and Munich.... They could also break their travel day from Berlin to Munich by stopping in Nuremberg for the night. It is only about an hour to go on to Munich the next day. Because it will be a Sunday they could take the U-Bahn to the Nuremberg Trial Courtroom and see the Museum above it. It is only open on weekends since the courtroom is still used as a courtroom.

https://museums.nuernberg.de/nuremberg-municipal-museums/

https://museums.nuernberg.de/memorium-nuremberg-trials/

And Nazi Party Rally Grounds and Documentation center.
https://museums.nuernberg.de/documentation-center/

The Documentation Center in Nuremberg is not a WWII Museum - it is an analysis about how the Nazi Party took over and ran Germany.

NickB stole my thunder. I agree with him 100 percent. While I'm generally not a fan of one-night stays, I think this one makes a lot of sense for your guys, given their interests and time frame. As NickB notes, Sunday is also a great day for a stop in Nuremberg, because Courtroom 600 in the Palace of Justice will be open for visitors to see it. I would suggest leaving Berlin early on Sunday so they can spend most the day in Nurembrerg. After visiting the Nazi sites in Nuremberg, wander around the old town in the evening and try the Nuremberg sausage (Nürnberger Rostbratwurst).

Is Mitte a good neighborhood for first time Berlin visitors?

I almost feel like being located near good transportation is more important than location. It's nice to be near a U or S stop. Mitte is fine, but there are other options. Here's a recent thread on Berlin neighborhoods: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany/which-neighborhood-to-stay-in-berlin

Use the search bar at the top of this page to search "Where to stay in Berlin" for many more threads on this topic.

In Munich, should they stay IN the city? or outside?

I am of the opinion that staying IN almost any city is usually best. This includes Munich.

I would rather spend more days in Berlin than in Munich. Tons more to see there and it is just a more interesting city. Would definitely recommend the Insider tours. Have found them to be really good.
Other sites to see might be the Olympic Stadium, Track 17, Wannsee Villa, Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, or perhaps a day trip to Potsdam.
Have you considered making a side trip to Sachsenhausen? My personal recommendation would be to go there rather than Dachau, simply because the exhibits are better done and I found them more meaningful. Most of the buildings are intact. Russia used this as a prison for many years after the war, so the preservation is extensive.

I would rather spend more days in Berlin than in Munich.

Agree to Ms. Jo

Is Mitte a good neighborhood for first time Berlin visitors?

Mitte is a district with 400,000 residents and appr. 40 sqkm area, not a neighborhood but it contains a lot of neighborhoods, two and some othes I described in this thread. You need to be more precisely on area you look for.

One update to my entry in this thread: bus line 200 will change route from Aug 4 on, so better prefer bus 100.

What "musts" can they cover in three full days in Berlin, without
overdoing it?

"must" depends on your priorities. Only to see the basics of Berlin you can easily spend 3-4 days without any deep dive. One list of top 10 sights you can find here.

WWII is a typical surfacial tourist headline for three very different main topics (Nazi terror, Holocaust, the real war). Also here the question what do you mean precisely? With each of the topics you can quickly fill 2-4 days. Based on what you seem to know I would start with a visit in German Historic Museum to get some basics and an understanding why this could happen (start with epoch 1871 or minimum 1918). VisitBerlin provides a list of Third Reich Memorials.

If you want to do something different and very local visit a week(ly) market on Saturday morning.

Make yourself famliar with Berlin public transport.

Yeah, I guess Ms Jo and MarkK raise a good point. I would rather spend more time in Berlin than Munich, too. In fact, my personal score card since my first trip to Germany in 2016 shows 33 nights spent in Berlin and 3 in Munich. I have two more stops in Berlin this fall; I don't have any plans to hit Munich again.

A few questions to guide further advice...

Is the mindset for this trip still rapid-fire WWII (like the previously proposed London-Normandy-Berlin itinerary) or is the mindset more a relaxed pace while hitting some WWII/Third Reich sites? Are there things other than Dachau they want to see around Munich? For example, are they looking to add a little Bavarian Alps to the trip?

@dave this is much more relaxed. My husband wants to see the Bavarian alps, visit a market, pubs etc. I think it’s far more realistic than the previous proposed itinerary

Julie... Thanks for your response! That is very helpful information to know. I think Steven's advice is great; get the RS Germany book and let husband/son start looking at what the two cities have to offer.

I would recommend some form of walking tour on the first full day in Berlin -- a general Berlin tour will cover many WWII and Cold War sites in the center of the city. Insider Tour gets much love on this website for excellent, economical tours. I personally am a fan of private tours, if there is room for that in your budget. In Berlin, I recommend Robert Sommer (no idea what his schedule would be like this close to the trip). He was the 15-year-old son of a fairly high-ranking DDR (East Germany) bureaucrat when the Berlin Wall opened/fell. I have done 3 tours with him and enjoyed all of them. He gives great insight into the sites and history of Berlin (with a bit of a DDR, non-victor's-history point of view [which I love]) and freely shared his experience of DDR life and the fall of the wall with me and a friend. If you husband/son were to end up doing a tour with Robert, I suspect intellectual curiosity about the DDR will get him to open up much more than an "I bet it sucked to live in the DDR" point of view.

For other "must sees" in Berlin, I think this thread is great and reinforces what Steven said: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany/what-not-to-miss-in-berlin

I will scrap my recommendation on Nuremberg given the new info and recommend going on to Munich. My opinion, though, is that I would depart for Munich one day later, giving Berlin 4 full days.

With the resulting three days in Munich, I would suggest a Third Reich walking tour (+ other interesting activities) for one day, Dachau (especially if no concentration camp in Berlin) + other interesting activities for a second day, and a day trip into the Bavarian Alps for a third day. I personally would pick a place I could visit by train for the Alps day trip as traffic in/around Munich is miserable, but renting a car for a day to go somewhere is also a choice. Dachau is easily reached by public transportation, so no car necessary. Even with a day trip, I would still recommend staying in the city center.

One totally off-topic recommendation... If your husband and son are looking for a WWII activity closer to home, I would recommend the World War II Weekend put on by the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum at Reading, Pennsylvania the first weekend of every June. Lots of old aircraft, encampments, re-enactors, WWII artillery, motor vehicles, etc. There are air shows every afternoon. There is a French village. There is home front and USO entertainment. A handful of WWII vets speak in a speaker's tent... catch them soon... because they'll soon be gone!

https://www.maam.org/maamwwii.html

I did not know about the the White Rose resistance group until we were in Munich when we learned about the group, and the participation of siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl, from a local. We did not have time to tour the museum, so I can't give a first-hand recommendation, but it is free and near the English Garden, so it might be worth checking out.

https://www.weisse-rose-stiftung.de/white-rose-memorial-exhibition/

If it should come to a choice between spending more days in one over another, then it's Berlin where absolutely more time should be set aside for.

"...primarily interested in WW2 history." In Berlin if you're willing to track the sites, there is plenty to keep them busy, or better that they prioritize which sites to track down.

I suggest choosing from the following: the Invalidenfriedhof (Cemetery, 2. the British RAF cemetery on Heerstrasse, 3. The Resistance Museum on Stauffenberg Strasse, which is housed in the complex that HQ for the Replacement Army (Ersatzarmee). Prior to WW2 the street was called the Bendlersrasse. The wreathes indicate the memorial site where Stauffenberg and his 3 colleagues were shot on the night of 20 July after it had become apparent that Hitler was still alive.

Go the Seelow, take the regional to Frankfur an der Oder, then the S-Bahn to Seelow, where the battle of Berlin begain, the biggest ever on German soil. The battlefield memorial site and museum are there along the German and Soviet cemeteries and numerous examples of WW2 Soviet tanks, and other ordinance.

Take the S-3 (Ekner) to Berlin-Karlshorst to see the building in which the Germans signed the surrender to the Soviets one day it was don in Reims. It was the 4th and last surrender they signed in 1945. That building was a Wehrmacht building usable in 1945 and houses now the German-Russian Museum, ie the Nazi-Soviet War, told from the Russian perspective.

Getting to the Museum is ca 30 mins walk from the station, "Karlshorst." A bus does this route and stops almost in front of this museum. The suroundiing premises have more WW2 Soviet tanks on display.

If hubby and son want to see WW1 sights in Berlin, that can be done too, just a matter of priorities and depth of serious interests, as long as doing the Bavarian Alps trip do not cut into his time, ie, which is more important, going to the Bavarian Alps or tracking down the war sites...all a matter of priorities