Berlin, after it fell to the Russians in 1945: WW2

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


RUSSIAN 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 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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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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Quotes about war....

"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man."
--Napoleon Hill

"We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide."
--Havelock Ellis

'Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."
--Mao Tse-Tung (1893 - 1976)

"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."
--George McGovern

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
--Joseph Stalin

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
--Voltaire, War

In war, truth is the first casualty.
-- Aeschylus

"The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery."
--Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
--Adolf Hitler

"To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization."
--George Orwell

"Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country."
--Bertrand Russell

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.
--Francis Meehan

Snippets From History

German Soldiers in Russia: Part 1

Hubert Menzel was a major in the General Operations Department of the OKH (the Oberkommando des Heers, the German Army headquarters), and for him the idea of invading the Soviet Union in 1941 had the smack of cold, clear logic to it: 'We knew that in two years' time, that is by the end of 1942, beginning of 1943, the English would be ready, the Americans would be ready, the Russians would be ready too, and then we would have to deal with all three of them at the same time.... We had to try to remove the greatest threat from the East.... At the time it seemed possible.'
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Battle for Berlin, 1945

'We started to fire at the masses,' says one former German machine gunner. 'They weren't human beings for us. It was a wall of attacking beasts who were trying to kill us. You yourself were no longer human.'

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Berlin after it fell to the Russians, 1945

"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.'
Read More

========

Dramatic Pictures: Battle For Stalingrad
"...Effective command no longer possible... further defense senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops."
General Paulus' radio message to Hitler on January 24, 1943

"...Capitulation is impossible. The 6th Army will do its historic duty at Stalingrad until the last man, the last bullet..."

Hitler's response to General Friedrich Paulus' request to withdraw from the city

READ MORE>>>

Points To Ponder....

The fall of France was shocking. It reduced France to virtually a non-player in the Second World War. The efforts of Charles de Gualle were more symbolic than material. But the martial instincts of the French must never be doubted. Under Napoleon they were a formidable military power. The French definitely have more iron in their blood then say, the Italians [I do not mean it in a derogatory sense. War never makes sense]

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Bias Of Western Historians

Soviet resistance made possible a successful Allied invasion of France, and ensured the final Allied victory over Germany.

It can hardly be called mere 'resistance'! If it hadn't been for the Russians, Hitler would have made mincemeat of British forces in Africa and landed on British shores in no time. Hitler attacked Russia first because it had more land and resources than Britain. It is as simple as that.

READ MORE>>>>
Eastern Front: Bias Of Western Historians