The article was published on May 7, 1945
Berlin, a key city in the bombastic Nazi structure, was the masterpiece of all the mindless, suicidal last posts the Germans erected in blood and fire along the road back to it.
The fourth city in the world, in its hour of death, was a monstrous example of almost complete destruction. Once upon a time, wide highways have become just lanes in a jungle of huge ruins. Even the alleys heaved and shook from underground explosions. The Germans, leaving the streets, transferred their final struggle to the subway, and the Russians blew them up and burned them out. The Germans buried themselves in the sewers to get out behind the attackers, and the Russian sappers were systematically engaged in the dirty business of cleaning up large sections. Avalanches of stones fell into the streets and blocked them.
The Spree River and canals near the university and the Kaiser's palaces, along the banks of which Berliners once walked, now carry a leisurely line of corpses. The towers of fire throw out clouds of smoke and dust that hang over the dying city. Here and there Berliners took risks, rushing from their basements to bomb craters filled with disgusting water. Berlin's water supply system collapsed; the thirst was worse than stray bullets.
Red Dream
Towards evening, large Russian searchlights focused their beams down from the battle-broken streets to the wide Alexander Platz, where Soviet shells fired at the headquarters of the Gestapo and hundreds of fanatics. Other beams of light pierced the last small fortress of scorched chestnuts, which was a cool, crisp Tiergarten.
This was Berlin, which every krasno-armeyets (Red Army soldier) dreamed of entering in triumph. But in their wildest dreams, no one could have imagined these vignettes engraved by a madman. After the Red Storm had passed and the German shells had left the distance, the waiters from Birshtube stood in the ruins with foam mugs, smiling cautiously, inviting the Russians passing by to try beer, as if to say: "Look, it's not poisoned."
Where the burning breath of battle had not yet touched them, lush apple trees blossomed along the side streets. Unless the hulls had cut the trunks of the century-old lindens, they had soft, green leaves on them, and they glided down and stuck like brightly colored postcards on the hot gray armor of Russian tanks. In the gardens, multicolored tulips swayed from gunshots, and the lilac smelled faintly through the acrid smoke.
But a hot, sour smell rose from the underground sinkholes - the smell of sweaty men, from damp hiding places, scorched by flamethrowers. Boys in gray-green and forged boots emerged from the stench of the subway. These were some of the last Hitler Youth. Some of them were drunk, and some were staggering with fatigue, some were crying, and some were hiccupping. Another square about a mile from Wilhelmstrasse was captured, and another red banner flapped over the landscape with dead bodies and abandoned swastika armbands.
Tanks and cannons came to this bridgehead, and then to others, and, finally, to everything in the ruins of Unter den Linden. Katyusha rockets screeched over the Brandenburg Gate. Then, against the background of the flames, the Red Banner of Victory soared over the burnt-out Reichstag building. But even after the 10-day battle was won, the Germans died hard.
Red monument
But Berlin was a masterpiece in a different way - the finishing wide brushstroke was applied to the canvas by Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov who came from Moscow in 41 months of battles. In the ashes and ashes of death, Berlin stood as a monument to the great suffering and monumental firmness of the Red Army, and the imperturbable Marshal Zhukov was the main instrument of this army's victory. Rising from the darkest days before Moscow, rising from the bloody pit of Stalingrad and the snow, dirt and dust of Ukraine and Poland, he now stood before Berlin as one of the truly great commanders of World War II.
To a greater extent than any other person, except for his boss, Joseph Stalin, on strong shoulders and strong legs, Deputy Commander-in-Chief Zhukov bore the responsibility for the life and death of the Soviet state. Not a single Allied commander deployed or led a large number of troops and weapons, for an attack on Berlin from the north and central part of Germany, he had 4,000,000 people. No Allied commander has strategized on such a grandiose geographic scale; none matched his complex tactics and massive attacks.
Zhukov seemed to have been marked for more in history. Politically loyal to Stalin and a confidant of the Communist Party, he could now be a tool for the delicate tasks of running a defeated Germany and destroying the Japanese army.
