A City Of Doom: Berlin May 1945 In Pictures

Berlin. May 1945. A city doomed. Paying for the madness of Germany's leaders. If there ever was hell on earth it was Berlin in May 1945.....

How the mighty fell. A forlorn Brandenburg Gate stands witness to how low the German people had fallen. Soviet soldiers walk around a destroyed German Panther tank in the foreground.

Old women and children suffered for no fault of theirs. Here helpless German women in a suburb of Berlin are fleeing from he east and trying to cross the River Elbe to the relative safety of American occupied Germany. The Red Army soldiers were raping women from 8 to 80 years old. Even the poor girl in the image must have been raped. What justice? Is man really civilised? One wonders at times like these.

A devastated Berlin in May 1945. It had  been half blown to bits by British and American bombers even before the Russians entered. The Red Army came and completed the job.

The most humiliated of Germans. Surrendered German soldiers being sent to camps by the Russians. These once proud men of the Wehrmacht not only faced defeat  but also the additional ignominy of seeing German women raped by Russians in front of them.

German women on a Berlin street in end of May 1945. By then the mass rape was beginning to abate somewhat.

Apocalypse now. A city totally destroyed . It is a wonder how so many of its inhabitants managed to survive the savage fighting.

To survive is to be practical. Berlin women thought it best to socialise with the                                                                          enemy. Here German women chat with Red Army soldiers.

What happened to Hitler's "Survival of the fittest?". This old gentleman must have seen a lot of things he wished he had not. 

The man of the moment. Marshal Zhukov emerges  from the ruins of the Reichstag.

A blinded Russian soldier walks with the support of his comrade. He could well be Germany.

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