With the unconditional surrender in the great hall of the museum, a former officers' mess of the Wehrmacht Pioneer School, the Second World War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. From 1945 to 1949, the building served as the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. In 1967, the Soviet surrender museum was opened here. After the agreements on the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union decided in 1990 to jointly build a museum on this site to commemorate the German Reich's war of extermination against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945. It was opened in 1995.

Since 2013, the permanent exhibition has documented the war from the perspective of the German and Soviet actors. The territories occupied by the Wehrmacht were not only the territory where the murder of European Jews began.German warfare and occupation rule also included other crimes such as the mass deaths of Soviet prisoners of war or the planned starvation of millions of civilians. The exhibition also deals with the consequences of the Second World War that reach into the present.

The museum also organizes special exhibitions, discussions, film series, scientific conferences and the annual May 8 events.