On April 16, in 1945, the Soviets began their final assault on the Nazi capital city of Berlin.

 On April 16, in 1945, the Soviets began their final assault on the Nazi capital city of Berlin. 

The sheer size of this force is staggering. They deployed over 2 million soldiers and 6,000 tanks for the operation. 

And in typical Stalinist style, the Soviet dictator engineered a competition between his two leading generals, Ivan Konev and Georgy Zhukov.

 Whoever reached Berlin first would get the glory.The Third Reich’s days were numbered.

By early April 1945, the walls were closing in on Adolf Hitler. British and American forces were across the Rhine River and streaming through central Germany.

 Allied aircraft was roaming at will over German cities and turning them into rubble. Worst of all, the Soviets were on their way to the capital, leaving death and destruction in their wake. 

But Hitler was prepared to let the German people drown in a sea of pain before he would ever surrender.

Stalin seems to have acted out of fear that the British and Americans might make it to the capital before they did. 

But in reality, there was little chance of that happening. Allied general Dwight Eisenhower didn’t see much point in pushing hard and losing American lives in return for territory that in large part would be handed over to Soviet occupation anyway.

 Much to the consternation of the British, Eisenhower made it clear that it was his job to win the war, not to worry about postwar European politics. 

He was content to let his soldiers halt on the Elbe River, which eventually formed much of the border between East and West Germany during the Cold War. 

To Stalin, though, it was important to put his troops on the ground in as much of Germany as possible.

 Stalin knew that agreements were paper thin, but soldiers holding a particular territory were rock solid.

To get to Berlin, the Soviet soldiers needed to cross the Oder River, which required attacking through swamps in the Oder flood plain. They then had to storm the Seelow Heights, a plateau that loomed over the Oder.

 It was a tough assignment but achievable if one was willing to spend the lives to do it. Stalin absolutely was.

The Soviet approach at this stage of the war was to blow a hole in enemy lines with infantry and artillery, and then send tanks deep into enemy rear areas. 

But on the Oder, the terrain gave them no choice but to commit their tanks early. The Red Army’s death toll was massive.

 But after a couple of days, they made it through and headed to Berlin. The Soviets reached the city’s outskirts on April 21.

Reality finally seemed to set in for Hitler on the next day - April 22. He broke down at a staff briefing when he heard that units weren’t following his orders.

 At this point, the German leader was essentially giving imaginary orders to imaginary troops.

 Everyone - including Hitler - now knew the jig was up. But he refused to try to escape. He made it clear that he intended to die in Berlin, along with his regime.

The day after Hitler’s breakdown, the Soviets closed a ring around Berlin.

 Hitler was trapped inside. On April 25, the advancing Soviets and Americans met at Torgau, cutting Nazi Germany in half. 

Now, the rats began to desert Hitler’s sinking ship. Especially Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and Hitler’s designated successor.

Himmler had a failed career as a chicken farmer and hadn’t enjoyed much success in life before signing on with the Nazis. 

But he joined far-right paramilitaries after WWI and used his role in the SS to claw his way into Hitler’s inner circle. Now, Himmler started to try to cut deals for himself.

 Even though he had been deeply involved in the Holocaust, Himmler now tried to save some Jews in a duplicitous attempt to earn some goodwill.

 He also tried to negotiate a peace deal using neutral Sweden as a go-between. When that news got out, Hitler declared Himmler a traitor and ordered him arrested.

 Himmler went on the run and lasted for two weeks before the British caught him. While preparing for arrest and interrogation, he bit on a cyanide capsule and killed himself.

Hermann Göring had been one of Hitler’s closest associates at the start of the war.

 His failure to bomb Britain into submission, followed by the round-the-clock bombing of German cities, cost him that status. On paper, though, he remained Hitler’s designated successor. 

But when the Soviets cut off Berlin, Göring concluded that Hitler no longer could lead Germany. 

He sent a message asking him for approval to take over. This was a mistake. 

Hitler was furious. He disowned Göring, and turned instead to Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of Germany’s submarine force. 

Dönitz had two virtues: He was a fanatical Nazi and he was one of the few people still around.

Hitler, with the Soviets only blocks away, decided not to risk being taken alive. On April 30, he hastily married his longtime mistress Eva Braun. 

He also got news of the death of Benito Mussolini, who had been captured by Italian partisans, shot, and then hung upside down from a gas station.

 That firmed Hitler’s resolve that he wasn’t going out that way.

 He and Eva both committed suicide after their marriage: She took a cyanide pill and he shot himself. 

Their bodies were doused in gasoline and burned just outside the bunker to hide their identity.

 It didn’t work. The Soviets recovered the bodies and conducted an autopsy to confirm Hitler’s identity to be sure that he was indeed dead.

Lots of German leaders did exactly what Hitler did: 10 to 15 percent of German generals and admirals killed themselves rather than surrender. 

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, tried to negotiate a ceasefire from the Russians.

 But when that failed, he and his wife poisoned their 6 children and then shot themselves. His wife - Magda Goebbels - said that there was no future for her children in a world without Hitler or National Socialism.

After Hitler killed himself, the Soviets captured the Reichstag and planted a flag on top, creating an iconic moment of victory. 

It’s a little unclear exactly when they captured it and who hoisted the flag - and it’s obviously staged and doctored - but it makes for a great photograph nonetheless. The Berlin garrison gave up on May 2.

Still, capturing the seat of the German government didn’t mean the war was over. Nazi Germany still had a government, and the German army was still fighting.

 Admiral Dönitz moved his government north to the German Naval Academy at Flensburg. 

With Hitler dead, Admiral Dönitz felt free to negotiate terms with the Allies, hoping to cut a deal to end the fighting with the British and Americans, but keep up the struggle against the Soviets. 

But the Allies - or at least most of them - were not interested in negotiations. Since the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, the Allied position had been unconditional surrender: Nazi Germany gives up and the Allies decide what happens next. 

No partial surrenders, no making deals to keep Germany or the Nazi party intact, nothing.

Further complications came about thanks to the German’s fear of ending the war in a Soviet prison camp.

 They knew they’d be better off in a British or American camp and wanted to surrender to the Western Allies. 

So on May 6, Dönitz had a German delegation discussing terms of surrender at Eisenhower’s headquarters at Reims in France. But from Eisenhower’s point of view, there were no terms to discuss. 

He played hardball, threatening to close American lines so that Germans couldn’t pass through to end the war on the American side.

 That convinced the German military real quick that it was time to completely give up. 

Early on the morning of May 7, they signed an agreement to surrender unconditionally and end the war late on the night of May 8.

However, this created a new problem. Although Eisenhower always played it straight with the Soviets, kept them informed of what he was doing, and always insisted that any surrender be complete and simultaneous, he assumed some things about what the Soviets would think. 

But from the Soviet point of view, Germany’s surrender should not have been signed in France at an American headquarters. 

Stalin wanted a signing in Berlin with a high-level Soviet delegation present.

 It was the Red Army who had done the bulk of the fighting - and dying - after all. 

The Allies were willing to go along with this, but had to keep things quiet to avoid a public scandal. That didn’t work. 

All it took was one leak. A reporter from the Associated Press released the story on the afternoon of May 7 that the war would be officially over the next day. 

There was mass rejoicing in Western Europe and the United States, even though official confirmation was slow. 

The Soviets kept the news quiet inside their own country, waiting on the ceremony that they wanted.

For the Americans and the British, the surrender was signed on May 7 and took effect on May 8. 

For the Soviets, the surrender was signed on May 8 just outside Berlin with Zhukov present, taking effect May 9. To this day, Victory Day is May 8 in the West and May 9 in Russia.

The Third Reich was finally over.

When the last Anglo-American bomb had been dropped, and the last Russian shell had landed, the shattered German people began emerging from their hiding places to survey the smoking heaps of rubble that had once been Berlin, or Dresden, or Hamburg. 

There must have been a moment, however fleeting, when the grizzly reality of all that had happened fell in upon them and they asked themselves the question: “How had it ever come to this?”

It was a question that must have haunted the ghost-like human shells that suffered the unspeakable agonies of Auschwitz, or Buchenwald, or Treblinka. 

It must have come to them in a million ways during the endless days and nights in boxcars, or barracks, or prison cells, or in the gas chambers themselves, when the world had become one long shrieking nightmare. 

For the Germans, that question was accompanied by an enormous burden of guilt, shame, and horror - by what had been done by Germans, in the name of the German people. For them, there is another legacy. It is a legacy that must be all of ours as well. 

It is a political, but even more, a moral imperative that this must never happen again.

The story of the rise of National Socialism and WWII isn’t purely a unique story about Germany. 

Its lessons and its dangers apply to us all, especially those of us that live in democratic societies. 

Be vigilant about your rights. Care about the fundamental rights and the human dignity of others. 

When the rights of any group - no matter how small - are violated, your liberty and your freedom is put at risk.

Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror and have to ask ourselves the question.

 How did it ever come to this?

 That, more than the details of politics, more than the social developments, and more than the military maneuvers, is the point of studying this terrible war.