Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Did you know that 9 November is Germany's 'destiny date'? It was the end of the mon-
archy in 1918, the day of the 1923 Hitler putsch in Munich, the Night of Broken Glass in
1938 and the day the Wall fell in 1989.
WWII & the Battle of Berlin
WWII began on 1 September 1939 with the Nazi attack on Poland. Although France and
Britain declared war on Germany two days later, this could not prevent the quick defeat of
Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Other countries, including Denmark and Nor-
way, were also soon brought into the Nazi fold.
In June 1941, Germany broke its nonaggression pact with Stalin by attacking the USSR.
Though successful at first, Operation Barbarossa quickly ran into problems, culminating in
the defeat at Stalingrad (today Volgograd) the following winter, forcing the Germans to re-
treat.
With the Normandy invasion of June 1944, Allied troops arrived in formidable force on
the European mainland, supported by unrelenting air raids on Berlin and most other German
cities. The final Battle of Berlin began in mid-April 1945. More than 1.5 million Soviet sol-
diers barrelled towards the capital from the east, reaching Berlin on 21 April and encircling
it on 25 April. Two days later they were in the city centre, fighting running street battles
with the remaining troops, many of them boys and elderly men. On 30 April the fighting
reached the government quarter where Hitler was ensconced in his bunker behind the chan-
cellery, with his long-time mistress Eva Braun, whom he'd married just a day earlier. Finally
accepting the inevitability of defeat, Hitler shot himself that afternoon; his wife swallowed a
cyanide pill. As their bodies were burned in the chancellery courtyard, Red Army soldiers
raised the Soviet flag above the Reichstag.
One of many fabulous films by Germany's best-known female director, Margarethe von
Trotta, Rosenstrasse(2003) is a moving portrayal of a 1943 protest by a group of non-
Jewish women trying to save their Jewish husbands from deportation.
Defeat & Aftermath
The Battle of Berlin ended on 2 May with the unconditional surrender by Helmuth
Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, to General Vasily Chuikov of the
Soviet army. Peace was signed at the US military headquarters in Reims (France) and at the
Soviet military headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst, now a German-Soviet history museum
