PICTURES FROM HISTORY: Rare Images Of War, History , WW2, Nazi Germany: 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.

Sexual exploitation German women Red Army soldiers 1945

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.

Russians Move To Berlin: Feb-April 1945

Berlin in 1945: First hand account

Battle For Berlin. 1945. Some Gripping Images

1945. People of Berlin suffer.WW2: After Germany lost the war

A Broken Berlin: After Germany Lost The War

Rape Of German Women: After The War

Brandenburg Gate: 1945

Apocalypse: Battle Of Berlin

The Grim Battle For Berlin

When Berlin fell in 1945

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