PICTURES FROM HISTORY: Rare Images Of War, History , WW2, Nazi Germany: Berlin Destroyed: When The War Ended In 1945

Berlin has always been a proud city. Prouder still was it under the rule of Nazis. But it saw a destruction that still shakes us up when we see the images of a broken Berlin in April 1945.

It was not only the German women who were raped. Berlin too was raped.

One of the last images of Hitler. On April 20, 1945.

The Brandenburg Gate and view of the Soviet Berlin

Schöneberg

Palace Kaiser

The anti-aircraft complex in the Tiergarten district

A broken Reichstag

Soviet soldiers wrote all over the walls of the Reichstag

View of the Reichstag from the edge of the Tiergarten. A road leads to the Brandenburg Gate

Dilapidated Reichschancellery the Wilhelmstrasse. Behind it in the garden was the entrance to Hitler's bunker (Fuehrerbunker)

In Reichschancellery

The ruined garden behind the Reich Chancellery

Goebbels' room in the Fuehrer's bunker

Americans in the garden of Reich Chancellery. In this trench Kempka burned the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun

The main building of the Gestapo at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse

Ministry of Propaganda in the Wilhelmstrasse - Goebbels' office

The ruins of the American Embassy

State Opera on Unter den Linden

The ruins of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Remains of a German Panther

Obervalshtrasse -this place saw a lot of last desperate fighting

Germans stumble back into Berlin

The German people wait for a bus

Brandenburg Gate witnessed the destruction of German manhood

At the Brandenburg Gate. American soldier women smartly salute their Russian counterpart.

Head of the Soviet occupation zone of Berlin, Major-General Nikolai Barinov communicates through an interpreter with the U.S. General Omar Bradley.

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

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.'
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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