This is how Berlin was abandoned after the surrender of the Nazis: a ghost town plagued by destruction, desolation and misery

This Saturday marks the 76th anniversary of one of the pivotal moments of WWII.

Publication date: May 8, 2021 at 12:00 p.m.

The ruins of the German capital, seen from the air. (Photo: courtesy Rare Historical Photos)

In 1940, at the start of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler envisioned the idea of ​​building a lavish metropolis, with gigantic buildings and large militarized spaces to make it a sort of universal capital. The name he chose for this city was Germany. On May 8, 1945, when the Nazi dictator was already dead, this fanciful and senseless illusion was already a myth. Berlin came into being with the last echoes of bombing and gunfire from an unprecedented warlike conflict. His almost sepulchral image which the Allies recorded in photographs and videos was the frame in which the Germans They signed the surrender, which marks 76 years this Saturday.

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During the last months of the conflict, the Germans saw their army scattered around the world and decimated. The intervention of the United States, on the one hand, was essential; the approach of this zone of millions of soldiers of the Soviet army, on the other hand, it was crucial. The Nazis were cornered.

When the “red” forces manage to advance towards the capital, the end of the Battle of Berlin is imminent. The famous image in which a soldier raises a flag of the USSR on the roof of the Reichstag building is the symbol of the debacle of Hitler’s supporters.

According to what the site of National Geographic, Germany has surrendered twice. The first was on May 7. Alfred Jodl, head of the Wehrmacht’s operations command, signed an act of unconditional military surrender and ceasefire in the French city of Reims. “All forces under German command will cease active operations at 11:01 p.m. Central European Time, May 8, 1945″, Noted the text.

When the Soviet leader Joseph stalin he found out, flew into a rage. He wanted to be the one to bring the Germans to their knees. For this reason, among other objections, he insisted that the surrender take place on German soil. Thus, he forced Berlin to be the city in which the first German military commander in operation at that time, Marshal Wilhelm keitel, sign the new document.

Arrived in Karlshorst, a suburb of Berlin. For more details on the text and particular discussions, the date the second surrender was signed It was May 9th. This is why most countries in Europe remember the Victory Day 8 and the current Russia it is still commemorated on the 9th, a day later.

While in the top military leadership, they decided what to do with Germany’s future, in the country’s central city everything was a shell: debris piled up in corners, while hundreds of people took refuge as best they could empty buildings without roof.

An aerial tour of the first Allies to arrive in the German capital recorded, with a camera, hellish destruction which caused the bombings and massive explosions that took place. The devastation was total.

The ruins of Berlin contrasted sharply with human misery. A historical investigation of the newspaper ABC from Spain said that if the bodies of those killed by the fighting lay in the street as well as the rubble, there were over 50,000 lost babies, many of them, orphans.

According to the site Rare historical photos, which covers universal history in photographs, there is an estimate of the deaths that occurred due to the bombing of the city: between 20 and 50 thousand.

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The capital was literally a ghost place. According to the official website of the city of Berlin, 600 thousand apartments were destroyed and only 2.8 million of the original 4.3 million population lived there at that time: almost half had deserted.

As soon as the documents were signed, the Cold War began to cement another next step. The city was divided into four sectors and jointly administered by the powers which occupied it: United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. This separation was the seed of what would become the Berlin Wall in the future. But this is another story.