Berlin - After the Red Army completed the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, central Berlin fell into ruins.
After decades of split and revival, the city has now changed as the capital of Democratic Germany, the city has been transformed, blending the arduous blend of restoration of buildings with modern architecture. However, the scars of the past are still evident in many places: the exterior walls are filled with holes of bullets and shrapnel, or gaps in a row of houses that are sometimes inserted by new buildings.
(The Associated Press story on May 9, 1945 paints a stark picture. It reads: "This town is a city of the dead. As a metropolis, it simply does not exist. Every house within a few miles of the center seems to have its own bomb."
Berlin was the center of Adolf Hitler's strength and was the ultimate prize as the Allies were closed from the East and West in the final stages of World War II due to the collapsed German defense.
"We were all at the bedside, and even the kids had a little case," recalled Eva-Maria Kolb, 89, during the last six months of the war. "When there was an air strike warning, you had to pull something quickly and go down the basement."
(The last battles in Berlin in late April 1945 and early May 1945 reduced most of the remaining ruins of the city. Soviet troops attacked huge forces in multiple directions, facing a struggle to cross rivers and canals, and as they penetrated deeper into the city, they increasingly crossed rivers and canals.
On April 25, Berlin was surrounded. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30. On May 2, General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the German army in Berlin, entrusted to Soviet troops.
"Berlin is a pile of rubble - due to the past 10 days, almost everything in the center has been destroyed," said Jörg Morré, director of the Berlin-Culfest Museum, the building in Germany's final surrender.
But: "Infrastructure can be repaired relatively quickly - the sewer system is not that badly damaged. They managed to get the water supply and pipes running again. Many old Berliners are still familiar with manual pumps...the power started so that the tram started again, commuter trains and commuter trains."
"The war is over, of course it is a relief for 45 years, and Hitler is no longer alive... Everyone who is not the Nazis is very, very grateful for the war ending."
She recalls that some parts of the city were rubble, but she went to a school in the Tempelhof district south of the center, "It was just half the plastic. It no longer had roofs, the second or third floor was missing - but we went to the lesson. It was cancelled only when it rained."
After the war, Berlin was divided into departments controlled by wartime allies. This turned a Cold War department into a Cold War division that saw two independent German countries formed in 1949 and eventually led to the 1961 Berlin Wall building, which fell 28 years later as Communist rule collapsed in East Germany.
Germany was reunited in 1990, and the National Government moved to Berlin in 1999. The Congress is now in the restored Capitol meeting, and in 1945, the Soviet Union's red flag was raised in the Soviet Union, symbolizing the victory over Nazi Germany. The graffiti left by the Soviet Union in the Capitol was preserved in several places in the building.
(On May 2, 1945, the military surrender in Berlin was not the end of the war. Hitler's successor, Karl Dönitz, tried to continue the battle, but was soon forced to negotiate the surrender of Germany.
On May 7, Germany's unconditional surrender was signed at the Allied Headquarters in Rems, France, and effective the next day.
Morey said that the Soviet Union had only one liaison officer at the ceremony, fighting the Red Army, so the second ceremony was reached at the Soviet headquarters in Berlin on May 8. As a result, the West and Russia marked the end of the European war on May 8 and May 9, respectively.
"In this room, World War II ended in Europe," he said. "It marks the end."
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Geir Moulson of Berlin contributed to the report.