The Wende Museum

Located in an old armory in Culver City, California, the Wende Museum is one of the world's largest collections of Cold War era items, paraphernalia, artifacts, and archives. 

The museum currently houses around 100,000 items, ranging from consumer products to media (including thousands of documentaries and educational films from the era) to Eastern Bloc surveillance equipment. 

The surveillance equipment pieces are fascinating examples of how Eastern Bloc governments used to spy on both their enemies and their own citizens. The Wende's collection includes archaic listening devices, a camera hidden in a pen, fake passports, crude satellites, and examples of surveillance cameras that were commonly used throughout the Communist Bloc. 

In 2009, the museum installed ten original Berlin Wall segments along Wilshire Blvd to make them more accessible to the public. This is the longest stretch of the original Wall outside Germany. An eleventh segment stands on the museum grounds itself.

Other notable artifacts include sickle-and-hammer tapestries, Eastern Bloc military uniforms, government-sanctioned paintings, and an enormous collection of Lenin busts, including the “Pink Lenin,” meticulously painted pink by a political commentator in the days after the Wall’s collapse.

For years the Wende Museum was located in an inconspicuous business park, but in 2017 the collection moved to the Armory in Culver City. The Armory was built by the National Guard in 1950 in response to the growing threat of war with the Eastern Bloc countries and was decommissioned in 2011. The Wende Museum was awarded a 75-year lease by the city to house its collection.

The museum’s name, “Wende,” is German for “turning point,” referring to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist East Germany.