Germany 2022

Those sound like good destinations for you.

Be aware that if you fly into Berlin and spend 3 nights there, you'll have only 2 full, non-jetlagged days to explore that huge, sprawling city. It has a lot of historical sights as well as traditional museums, though it's true that a lot of the sights are more Cold War- rather than WWII-related. (I found the Cold War sights fascinating.)

In other words, I think you'll really regret not having considerably more time in Berlin, but you only have so much time (I assume), and I don't know where to tell you to cut days to add them to Berlin.

Many thanks for your constructive feedback - we will add more time to Berlin!

My advice may be "constructive" in the sense that you need to do some fundamental reconstruction.

"I hope to have the freedom to explore without being bound to a strict schedule."

You will be bound to a strict schedule if you follow this plan. There'll be no exploring.

"We can't see everything..."

So why try to include "everything" you found in the Rick Steves (or other) guidebooks?

WW II sites in Berlin AND Nuremberg AND in Munich/Dachau AND in Berchtesgaden... Sure you are interested in WW II but you are letting it dominate your entire trip.

You have so many personal attachments to Germany... so I don't quite understand why you don't spend at least half your time actually exploring the places where your relatives once hung out. Where was your dad stationed? Where were your husband's relatives during WW II? Where were the biking pictures taken? Where does your husband's cousin live? I would try to spend most of my time in these places if I were you.

The biggest mysteries you have to explore are the personal ones - the ones that I assume you will not find in all the "official" museums and all the "official" WW II sites. Won't most of these official things all be "old information" for you anyway, since you have no doubt already learned/studied/ investigated WW II?

We have a keen interest in WWII history...

That being the case, you should check out a site known as third reich ruins. It has many, many photos of places that were taken during or just after WWII. For comparison it then has photos of the same places taken more recently.

I haven’t been to Neuschwanstein, but it is widely reported here to be missable and maybe under construction?. Having said that, I consider Munich to be overrated and in your itinerary, a huge consumer of travel time.

I hope you are planning more than the 9 days you mention.

Train travel is easy and inexpensive with proper planning. When you select the dates, you can get maximum savings by purchasing tickets 6 months prior for long distance trains. There are a wide variety of day tickets that make for good savings for local travel.

By staying in apartments and smaller inns, you can travel fairly inexpensively. Adjusted for inflation, my wife and I are able to travel as cheaply as when “Europe on $10 a Day” was published. We average about 150 Euro per day, total, everything included ( except airfare )

I would plan one more day for Berlin, e. g. half day memorial and ex concentration camp Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg and after that I recommend either Topography of Terror or the German Resistance Memorial Center.

Do not miss to visit German Historic Museum for the epoche of your interest.

Try to also arrange for a tour of the Reichstag. The modern portions of the interior have been melded with the bullet holes from the Soviet Army as well as graffiti posted by the soldiers once the capital was taken. Since your trip isn't until 2022 you have plenty of time to look into how to arrange for the tour. Other forum posts gave me great instructions on how that can be done. In fact, this forum was a wonderful resource for planning our trip last summer.

Another site you could consider is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It suffered a great deal of damage in the war and, rather than rebuild it, it was left in it's ruinous state. The Altes Museum on Museum Island also sports bullet holes in it's columned portico - nice spot to take a picture too.

A previous post mentioned going to the German History Museum as does Rick Steve's in his Berlin guide. The museum provided my wife and I with a great historical basis for our trip. No matter how much I thought I knew about German History I only knew the American version of it. The German viewpoint is very direct and no nonsense and much of what I learned stayed with us during our week in Berlin (I recommend staying as long as you can by the way). Stop in their cafe too. They serve a nice sausage platter and a wonderful plum cake.

Berlin is a great city with many different neighborhoods. So much you can do and see and experience. Read as many posts as you can on the forum. We found that the hours we spent learning from the experience of others allowed us to make decisions that really enhanced our trip. Whether it was info on sites to visit, cultural etiquette, using ATMs, riding the ICE trains, lodging or whatever you can't go wrong with the Forum.