Berlin in 1945 was in a bad shape. The incessant bombarding by the approaching Russian army had already reduced it to rubble. Then the street-to-street fighting devastated it even more. The pictures below show the once proud Berlin reduced to rubble.
The women of Berlin suffered most at the hands of the Soviet soldiers. But that is another story.
Dead German women lie on the street
In the Führer bunker, General Krebs and General Burgdorf had sat down side by side at some time in the early hours of that morning, drawn their Luger pistols and blown their brains out. Rochus Misch, probably the last member of the SS Leibstandarte to leave the building, saw them slumped together. After all the brandy they had consumed, they were fortunate not to have botched their suicide most painfully. Captain Schedle, the commander of the Leibstandarte guard in the Reich Chancellery, had also shot himself. Afoot wound had prevented him from getting away with the Bormann party.
Innocent civilians were caught in the cross-fire.
Of the previous night's fugitives from the Führer bunker, only the first group to leave hadstayed together. Led by Brigadeführer Mohnke, it included Hitler's personal pilot, Hans Baur, the chief of his bodyguard, Hans Rattenhuber, the secretaries and Hitler's dietician, Constanze Manzialy. In the early hours of 2 May, they had been forced to hide in a cellar off the Schönhauserallee when the area was swamped with Soviet troops. They remained concealed there until that afternoon, when finally discovered by Soviet troops. Resistance was pointless. The men were arrested immediately, but the women were allowed to go.Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian disguised themselves as men. But the striking Tyrolean Constanze Manzialy became separated from them almost immediately. One account claims that she was seized by a huge Russian infantryman and assaulted by him and his comrades. Nobody knows whether she resorted to the cyanide ampule which Hitler had presented in a brass container to each of his staff as going-away presents. In any case, shewas never seen again. Both Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, despite alarming adventures, managed to reach the other side of the Elbe.
The Mongoloid Soviet soldiers were let loose on the German women
This Russian officer is mighty pleased with himself. He had reason to be.
On 5 May, the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun were finally found after more interrogations. It was a windy day with an overcast sky. A renewed and more thorough search of the Reich Chancellery garden was made. A soldier spotted the corner of a grey blanket in the earth at the bottom of a shell crater. Two charred corpses were exhumed.The bodies of a German shepherd dog and a puppy were found in the same pit. General Vadis was immediately informed.Before dawn the next morning, Captain Deryabin and a driver wrapped the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun in sheets and smuggled them out past Berzarin's cordon. They drove them to the SMERSH base at Buch, on the north-east edge of Berlin. There, in a small brick clinic, Dr Faust, Colonel Kraevsky and other pathologists summoned to examine Goebbels's corpse began work on the most important remnants of the Third Reich.
The last of the bitter fighting on the streets of Berlin
The Russians picked over the city, exploring their new prize. The impotent and ruinous Reichstag building became the symbol of Russian victory. It had ceased to function as a democratic assembly soon after Hitler came to power. Marshal Zhukov added his signature to the other son the stonework of the interior. The journalist Konstantin Simonov wandered around the Tiergarten. He looked in at the Zoo to see the dead and emaciated animals lying beside the bodies of SS men. He went to the huge Anti-Aircraft Tower that had fought to the last. Inside there had been drunken orgies as the last act had been played out. There were the bodies of suicides everywhere. In one cubicle he found a dead SS general,his uniform tunic unbuttoned and a bottle of champagne between his legs. He had committed suicide with his mistress, who lay beside him in a pretty white blouse and skirt. He went on to the Reich Chancellery where agents of Soviet Military Intelligence, or Smersh, had already identified the bodies of Goebbels and his wife and children. Hitler and Eva Braun eluded them for the time being.
After The Reich by Giles Macdonogh
To show who are the new masters
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The women of Berlin suffered most at the hands of the Soviet soldiers. But that is another story.
Dead German women lie on the street
In the Führer bunker, General Krebs and General Burgdorf had sat down side by side at some time in the early hours of that morning, drawn their Luger pistols and blown their brains out. Rochus Misch, probably the last member of the SS Leibstandarte to leave the building, saw them slumped together. After all the brandy they had consumed, they were fortunate not to have botched their suicide most painfully. Captain Schedle, the commander of the Leibstandarte guard in the Reich Chancellery, had also shot himself. Afoot wound had prevented him from getting away with the Bormann party.
Innocent civilians were caught in the cross-fire. Of the previous night's fugitives from the Führer bunker, only the first group to leave hadstayed together. Led by Brigadeführer Mohnke, it included Hitler's personal pilot, Hans Baur, the chief of his bodyguard, Hans Rattenhuber, the secretaries and Hitler's dietician, Constanze Manzialy. In the early hours of 2 May, they had been forced to hide in a cellar off the Schönhauserallee when the area was swamped with Soviet troops. They remained concealed there until that afternoon, when finally discovered by Soviet troops. Resistance was pointless. The men were arrested immediately, but the women were allowed to go.Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian disguised themselves as men. But the striking Tyrolean Constanze Manzialy became separated from them almost immediately. One account claims that she was seized by a huge Russian infantryman and assaulted by him and his comrades. Nobody knows whether she resorted to the cyanide ampule which Hitler had presented in a brass container to each of his staff as going-away presents. In any case, shewas never seen again. Both Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, despite alarming adventures, managed to reach the other side of the Elbe.
The Mongoloid Soviet soldiers were let loose on the German womenRUSSIAN OCCUPATION OF BERLIN (BBC)
The occupying troops celebrated, some indulging in the rape and murder of German citizens. When Stalin was told how some of the Red Army soldiers were treating German refugees, he is reported to say: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have some initiative.'
"Vladlen Anchishkin, a Soviet battery commander on the 1st Ukrainian Front, sums up the horror of the whole event, when he tells how he took personal revenge on German soldiers: 'I can admit it now, I was in such a state, I was in such a frenzy. I said, 'Bring them here for an interrogation' and I had a knife, and I cut him. I cut a lot of them. I thought, 'You wanted to kill me, now it's your turn.'
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...........the Russians took bodily possession of German soil, bit by bit; and bodily they consumed German flesh, night by night.
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This Russian officer is mighty pleased with himself. He had reason to be.On 5 May, the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun were finally found after more interrogations. It was a windy day with an overcast sky. A renewed and more thorough search of the Reich Chancellery garden was made. A soldier spotted the corner of a grey blanket in the earth at the bottom of a shell crater. Two charred corpses were exhumed.The bodies of a German shepherd dog and a puppy were found in the same pit. General Vadis was immediately informed.Before dawn the next morning, Captain Deryabin and a driver wrapped the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun in sheets and smuggled them out past Berzarin's cordon. They drove them to the SMERSH base at Buch, on the north-east edge of Berlin. There, in a small brick clinic, Dr Faust, Colonel Kraevsky and other pathologists summoned to examine Goebbels's corpse began work on the most important remnants of the Third Reich.
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The last of the bitter fighting on the streets of BerlinThe Russians picked over the city, exploring their new prize. The impotent and ruinous Reichstag building became the symbol of Russian victory. It had ceased to function as a democratic assembly soon after Hitler came to power. Marshal Zhukov added his signature to the other son the stonework of the interior. The journalist Konstantin Simonov wandered around the Tiergarten. He looked in at the Zoo to see the dead and emaciated animals lying beside the bodies of SS men. He went to the huge Anti-Aircraft Tower that had fought to the last. Inside there had been drunken orgies as the last act had been played out. There were the bodies of suicides everywhere. In one cubicle he found a dead SS general,his uniform tunic unbuttoned and a bottle of champagne between his legs. He had committed suicide with his mistress, who lay beside him in a pretty white blouse and skirt. He went on to the Reich Chancellery where agents of Soviet Military Intelligence, or Smersh, had already identified the bodies of Goebbels and his wife and children. Hitler and Eva Braun eluded them for the time being.
After The Reich by Giles Macdonogh
To show who are the new masters
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This Russian WW2 documentary was held back from release by Artkino until the studio's similarly-themed The True Glory was distributed in the US. As a result, many of the newsreel clips included herein had already been seen by American audiences. This doesn't dampen their effectiveness, however; the fall of Berlin is depicted in vivid and sometimes harrowing detail, the city's smoldering ruins a mute but eloquent testimony to the utter collapse of the Third Reich. Told from a Soviet point of view, the film glosses over some of the crueler (albeit often justified) excesses of the Russian army, proving anew that history has always been written by the victors. American prints of Fall of Berlin included an English-language narration by William S. Gailmor.
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Berlin in 1945: First hand account: Notes from the diary of Charles Deutmann
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