Added: Jul 5, 2008

From: AUFSEHERINNEN

Duration: 8:36

On 16 April 1945, 9,000 Russian guns unleashed a devastating bombardment on German troops operating the outer defenses of Berlin. More than a million Red Army soldiers had assembled to smash their way through to the heart of the city. Time had run out for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. However, the battle-hardened veterans of the Red Army faced an enemy fighting with a ferocity born of desperation. In the streets of the city, their tank formations become easy prey for fanatical tank hunting teams of SS men and boys of the Hitler Youth. Furthermore, at the heart of the defense effort was Hitler himself. The beleaguered Fuhrer doggedly refused to admit defeat, demanding endless suicidal counterattacks.We use aerial reconnaissance photographs taken during the course of the battle. The majority of these aerial images were not view until sixty years after the war. They combined with innovative computer graphics to create three-dimensional models of Hitler's embattled capital city. For the first time, it is possible to follow the dramatic and bloody progress of the savage battle, which ended the war in Europe.Driving the Soviet forces mercilessly forward was Josef Stalin. At the Yalta Conference of February 1945, it decided that Berlin would fall into the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany. However, Stalin refused to trust the Western Allies. With American troops only fifty miles from the city, he pressured his two leading commanders into a race to capture Berlin regardless of casualties.Tragically, thousands of German civilians found themselves trapped in the doomed city. As the battle exploded around them, they faced with a life or death struggle against the dual dangers of maddened Soviet troops and final Nazi execution squads. With archive film, dramatic re-enactments and powerful eye witness testimony from Russian and German veterans, this program tells the incredible story of the bloody battle that brought the World War Two to an end in Europe.

Channel: Film

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Rating: ( ratings)    Views: 570' favoriteCount='1    Comments: 1

dongmk Says:

Sep 19, 2008 - Western often said that If they reached the Berlin before Russia, The German would be surrender without resistance. I do not think so , Any nation has their honor to protect and die for its own country. No matter what country are. It is the critical moment that you who show where r u from.