Battle of Berlin (1 Viewer)

[redhugh]

Re: Battle of Berlin part 21

The firing did not die down until the late afternoon. Germans in the cellars shouted that they wanted to negotiate with a senior officer. The young Captain Neustroev told Lieutenant Berest to pretend to be a colonel. He gave him a sheepskin coat to hide his shoulder boards and sent him forth to negotiate. Shortly afterward, Germans began to appear from the basement, dirty and unshaven in their ragged uniforms, with their eyes flickering nervously around and "smiling like obedient dogs." Some three hundred enemy soldiers and officers laid down their weapons. Nearly two hundred had been killed. In the improvised dressing station in the basement lay another five hundred, although many of them had been wounded earlier. The battle for the Reichstag was over.

 

[redhugh]

Re: Battle of Berlin part 22 The end

On the afternoon of the 1st May Goebbels (who was against surrender) and his family killed themselves. Goebbels's suicide removed the last impediment preventing Weidling's being able to accept the terms of unconditional surrender of his garrison, but he chose to delay the surrender until the next morning to give some time until dark for the planned breakout.

On 2 May, Berlin surrendered.General Wilding, the commander of the German troops in Berlin, finally surrendered the entire city to the Soviet army. There was no radio or newspaper, so vans with loudspeakers drove through the streets ordering us to cease all resistance. Suddenly, the shooting and bombing stopped and the unreal silence meant that one ordeal was over for us and another was about to begin. Our nightmare had become a reality. The entire three hundred square miles of what was left of Berlin were now completely under control of the Red Army. The last days of savage house to house fighting and street battles had been a human slaughter, with no prisoners being taken on either side. These final days were hell. Our last remaining and exhausted troops, primarily children and old men, stumbled into imprisonment. We were a city in ruins; almost no house remained intact."

However, fighting continued to the north-west, west and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May (9 May in the USSR) as German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets.

 

[Wraith]

RH,

Nice work! Had me as a captive audience reading through the narrative and the shots work brilliantly.

Cheers
Simon

 

[PolarBear]

Redhugh

This is an outstanding presentation in both story and pictures. It ranks up there with one of my favorite WWII films Downfall.

Thanks for producing this great diodrama

Randy

 

[Col. Hesler]

Wow, very nice, its like a movie. Great Job.

 

[lancer]

Brilliant. Left me wanting more. -- lancer

 

[Leadmen]

Nice work on the photos and narrative. I enjoyed your pictures of the Russian and German battle at this stage of the war. Leadmen

 

[nmrocks]

RH,
Thanks for the great present for the new Year!!! Great work!
Ray

 

[UKReb]

RH

Par Excellence!

Reb

 

[The Lt.]

Another fine story teller proving photos has joined the ranks very nicely done RH........The Lt.

 

[GICOP]

Excellent.

Cheers

Martyn

 

[debrito]

Voila the perfect Berlin 1945 supporter....

Thanks Red for this incredible description of the battler of Berlin you have a nice collection..

Cheers

 

[redhugh]

thanks for all the compliments , I really enjoyed putting it together, the Fall of Berlin was a great K&C range..the figures were very dramatic in their sculpting..Would really like to see some more russian figures, even russian winter figures and do a stalingrad diorama but not counting on that anytime soon

 

[nasirkasmani]

RH, the commentary was gripping and thoroughly enjoyable.

let this be the first of many to come.

sincerely.

 

[redhugh]

Chapter 2 Aftermath of the Battle of Berlin part 1

Over 46 million Europeans have died as a result of the war. Worldwide, over 60 million have died.
Close to 60% of the European war dead are from the Soviet Union. Of the more than 26 million Soviets killed, nearly 18 million are civilians. About nine million servicemen and women from the Red Army have died. One of Stalin's two sons, Yakov, is among the dead.

 

[redhugh]

Re: Chapter 2 Aftermath of the Battle of Berlin part 2

"We want to see the residents of Berlin. Where are they? Who's been hanging out the white flags?
Women are standing in the basement opening of a large building. Elderly Germans, they look fearfully at us.
"What are you doing here?"
"We're breathing," they answer. "We're breathing air."
There are two Berlins. And we saw this with our own eyes. One is shown on the map; that's this one, the one in which we are now fighting, smashed by American bombs and Russian shells. The other is underground, cavelike Berlin, the one in which the inhabitants of the city have lived for many months, protecting themselves from bombardment. And we visited this Berlin, too.

Basements. Bunkers. Dungeons. Caves. Dark. Damp. Stuffy. Crowded. People like sardines in a can--they sit, hunched over, legs pulled in, leaning on stools, their shoulders pressing against one another. Elderly men and women burghers, young women, children, suckling infants, and ancient grandmothers who, despite it all, still want to live.
"Hitler gave us all this," said restaurant-keeper Willie Westfal, smiling. "He promised us the whole world, and gave us this cave."
The resident of Berlin spent the long hours of the frequent bombardments in these dungeons. Gradually, pillows, mattresses, children's' beds, primus stoves, frying pans and pots migrated here from the upper floors. Feather beds were replaced with narrow plank beds, parquet floors with gray cement, chandeliers with oil lamps. Thus was formed the cave life of the Berlin German.
Several months ago, the Tommys bombed the water-pumping and power supply station in this neighborhood. Light disappeared; there was no gas, no water, no heating.
We are not cruel people, but we must admit that we looked upon the cave life without pity or sympathy. We remember Leningrad under blockade, and Stalingrad.

 

[redhugh]

Re: Chapter 2 Aftermath of the Battle of Berlin part 3

It was they--not us--who wanted war. And they got it. Now they are beginning to understand what war really is. War has come onto their land. War has made havoc of their lives and their apartments, which had been made comfortable by their fathers and grandfathers, by generations of grabbers and money-grubbers. This cult of the double-size bed, cheap pictures in cherry frames, tapestries, chandeliers. This cult of the kitchen, where "salt", "pepper", and "coffee" are carefully written on white porcelain containers. These suburban dachas with concrete paths, with apple trees in blossom, with baths in the garden, with birds and bunnies.

Having robbed all of Europe, they lived well. They were satisfied while the war was enriching them. They lived in the intoxicating fumes and drug stupor of victories. They called themselves a nation of soldiers. Each apartment has an honored spot where you will see two large photographs. In one of them is the head of the family with his future wife in a wedding gown; in the other, the head of the family is in a soldier's uniform--the Kaiser's, the Reich's, or an S.S. uniform. Photos of parades, inspections, and training exercises are hung in gilded frames. The head of the family is necessarily present in all of them.
They lighted the fires of war. Now, war is burning them--their land, their cities, their dachas and apartments. They have hung out diapers, white sheets, and napkins: We surrender!
The ordinary Berliner--philistine, shopkeeper, worker--really doesn't want the war any more. The war is lost, Hitler's army is crushed, the Russians are in Berlin.

 

[redhugh]

Re: Chapter 2 Aftermath of the Battle of Berlin part 4

" When the first Soviet military commandants appeared in the conquered regions of Berlin, and the first bright-green declarations of the commandant appeared on the walls and were distributed as leaflets, all of underground Berlin crawled out onto the streets; great crowds of Germans thronged around the declarations. They were shoving one another. They read them and reread them. They told their neighbors about them, discussed them, and again they read:

In connection with the lying assertions of Hitler's propaganda claiming that the Red Army has the extermination of the entire German people as its goal, we clarify: the Red Army has not given itself the task of the destruction or enslavement of the German people. We do not have--and could not have--such idiotic goals...."
They read this with satisfaction.
"We order the population to support the established authority and to unquestioningly obey all instructions from the authorities."
These orders and leaflets had a great calming effect. Order has been established. Now the Germans gather all day long in the commandant's office. They come here for information; they ask what's permitted and what's forbidden. Can they lock their doors? Move from the basements to the upper floors? Engage in buying and selling? They show the commandant various forms, passports, and documents.
Doctors come from the hospital. Stores and bakeries are opening."


It is the Russian Army that has done the main work of ripping the guts out of the German Army ... In the air and on the ocean and the seas we can maintain ourselves, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being except after several more years that would have been able to maul and break the German Army and subject it to such terrible slaughter and manhandling as has fallen upon the Germans but the Russian Soviet Armies.
Winston Churchill
From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent [of Europe]. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe.... [A]ll these famous cities and populations lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere. Churchill

 

[PolarBear]

Two thumbs up, 5 stars and an Oscar nomination!

 

[The Lt.]

Once again redhugh another excellent group of photos and story line.....The Lt.