The last days of the Battle of Berlin and Trump's followers....

[steve2470]

The forces available to Artillery General Helmuth Weidling for the city's defence included several severely depleted Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, in all about 45,000 men. These formations were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm.[c] Many of the 40,000 elderly men of the Volkssturm had been in the army as young men and some were veterans of World War I. Hitler appointed SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke commander of the city's central government district. Mohnke's command post was in bunkers under the Reich Chancellery. The core group of his fighting men were the 800 members of the Leibstandarte (1st SS-Pz.Div. LSSAH) Guard Battalion (assigned to guard the Führer).[13] He had a total of over 2,000 men under his command.[d]

Because of the smoke, dusk came early to the centre of Berlin. At 18:00 hours, while Weidling and his staff finalized their breakout plans in the Bendlerblock, three regiments of the Soviet 150th Rifle Division, under cover of a heavy artillery barrage and closely supported by tanks, assaulted the Reichstag. All the windows were bricked up, but the soldiers managed to force the main doors and entered the main hall. The German garrison, of about 1,000 defenders (a mixture of sailors, SS and Hitler Youth) fired down on the Soviets from above, turning the main hall into a medieval style killing field. Suffering many casualties, the Soviets got beyond the main hall and started to work their way up through the building. The fire and subsequent wartime damage had turned the building's interior into a maze of rubble and debris amongst which the German defenders were strongly dug in.[77] The Soviet infantry were forced to clear them out. Fierce room-to-room fighting ensued.[78] As May Day approached Soviet troops reached the roof, but fighting continued inside. Moscow claimed that they hoisted the Red Flag on the top of the Reichstag at 22:50, however Beevor points out that this may have been an exaggeration as "Soviet propaganda was fixated with the idea of the Reichstag being captured by 1 May".[77] Whatever the truth, the fighting continued as there was still a large contingent of German soldiers down in the basement. The Germans were well stocked with food and ammunition and launched counter-attacks against the Red Army, leading to close fighting in and around the Reichstag.[78] Close combat raged throughout the night and the coming day of 1 May, until the evening when some German troops pulled out of the building and crossed the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn Station, where they moved into the ruins hours before the main breakout across the Spree.[79] About 300 of the last German combatants surrendered.[77] A further 200 defenders were dead and another 500 were already hors de combat, lying wounded in the basement, many before the final assault had started.[77]

On the morning of 2 May, the Soviets stormed the Reich Chancellery. In the official Soviet version, the battle was similar to that of the battle for the Reichstag. There was an assault over Wilhelmplatz and into the building with a howitzer to blast open the front doors and several battles within the building. Major Anna Nikulina, a political officer with Lieutenant-General I. P. Rossly's 9th Rifle Corps of the 5th Shock Army carried and unfurled the red flag on the roof. However, Beevor suggests that the official Soviet description is probably an exaggeration, as most of the German combat troops had left in the breakouts the night before, resistance must have been far less than that inside the Reichstag.[99]

At 01:00 hours, the Soviets picked up radio message from the German LVI Corps requesting a cease-fire and stating that emissaries would come under a white flag to Potsdamer bridge. General Weidling surrendered with his staff at 06:00 hours. He was taken to see Lieutenant-General Chuikov at 8:23 am. Chuikov, who had commanded the successful defence of Stalingrad, asked: "You are the commander of the Berlin garrison?" Weidling replied: "Yes, I am the commander of the LVI Panzer Corps." Chuikov then asked: "Where is Krebs? What did he say?" Weidling replied: "I saw him yesterday in the Reich Chancellery." Weidling then added: "I thought he would commit suicide."[46] In the discussions that followed, Weidling agreed to an unconditional surrender of the city of Berlin. He agreed to order the city's defenders to surrender to the Soviets. Under the direction of Chuikov and Soviet General Vasily Sokolovsky (Chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Front), Weidling put his order to surrender in writing.[46][100]

The 350-strong garrison of the Zoo flak tower finally left the building. There was sporadic fighting in a few isolated buildings where some SS still refused to surrender. The Soviets simply blasted any such building to rubble. Most Germans, soldiers and civilians, were grateful to receive food issued at Red Army soup kitchens. The Soviets went house to house and rounded up anyone in a uniform including firemen and railwaymen, a total of 180,000 and marched them eastwards as prisoners of war.[101]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_in_Berlin

Many of Trump's supporters are like these Nazi troops/forcibly-enlisted old men and young boys and foreign fighters. They fought to the death in 1945 or got captured and later mostly died in Soviet camps.

I have no hope for most of them. It's really sad, for them, and for our country.

[lapfog_1]

1. Road to Berlin

The flames of the Tigers are lighting the road to Berlin
Ah, quickly we move through the ruins that bow to the ground
The old men and children they send out to face us, they can't slow us down
And all that I ever was able to see
The eyes of the city are opening now it's the end of the dream

[steve2470]

2. wow fascinating, never knew about this song!!!!

https://www.elyrics.net/read/a/al-stewart-lyrics/roads-to-moscow-lyrics.html

I wonder what inspired him to write it.

[Mister Ed]

3. Such a beautifully haunting song.

One of my lifetime favorites.

Al Stewart seemed to have a fascination with history, and with the concept of time, that revealed itself in many of his songs.

The lyrics paint pictures much more vivid than any that could accompany a video. Better, I think, for one to just close their eyes and listen...

[rzemanfl]

5. Thank you for posting this haunting song. I learned here within the past few days

you need peanut butter to talk. I hope you have a plentiful supply in the New Year.

[lastlib]

11. LOVE this song!! (along with a few dozen other Al Stewart songs!)

Have seen him perform this one in concert twice. He once said it took him four YEARS to write it, and that he read through nine books about the war on the Eastern front in the process.

A magnificent song!

[malthaussen]

8. According to "Songfacts," Mr Stewart has said it is about...

... Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. It does fit in with his biography, along with that of thousands of others. But Mr Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned for criticizing "the man with the moustache," and not for the crime of being taken prisoner and surviving, so while he may have served as an inspiration, the song's protagonist is more likely Everyman, or possibly Ivan Denisovich.

-- Mal

[malthaussen]

7. Yean, and look what happened to the song's narrator...

... even when you win, you lose.

-- Mal

[The Blue Flower]

4. Somewhere someone's already writing "Springtime for Donald and History"

nt

[malthaussen]

6. Soldat, the memoirs of Siegfried Knappe, give a first-hand view of this...

... he was a General Staff officer in the battle. One of his musings is pretty interesting: after security at the Bunker got used to him (and other people who came and went daily), they allowed him to carry his sidearm even into the presence of the Fuhrer. He could have shot him at any time. Yet he did not. And not because Major Knappe was a fanatical believer.

-- Mal

[steve2470]

9. "If I had shot him it would not have changed anything because the fighting was all but over"

WWII: You went into Hitler’s bunker a number of times during the battle. Initially, the guards took away your pistol, but toward the end they stopped searching you and you were able to take your pistol in. You say in your book that you had the opportunity to shoot Hitler, and while you thought about it you decided not to. Could you elaborate on that?

Knappe: If I had shot him it would not have changed anything because the fighting was all but over.

http://www.historynet.com/interview-with-world-war-ii-german-officer-siegfried-knappe.htm

[steve2470]

10. This quote perfectly summarizes Trump supporters

WWII: What made you think about killing Hitler when the opportunity was presented?

Knappe: Probably his statement to General Weidling when Weidling was asking him for permission to break out and for him to go with us. General Weidling told me that Hitler had said that he did not want to die in the street like a ‘Landstreicher.’ Landstreicher does not have an exact translation into English, that is why my book uses the word ‘dog,’ but a Landstreicher is someone like a hobo or panhandler. Both of us had seen hundreds of German soldiers die in the streets during the war, and now Hitler was saying that he did not want to die like they died. My brother died from his wounds that he received in Russia. So, both of us were very upset by Hitler’s use of this word. It was just such an unbelievable comment, especially to make that type of comment to a soldier. It wasn’t until this time that I finally began to realize what sort of man we had been fighting for.

WWII: So, it was that one statement?

Knappe: Yes. I just had this impulse to shoot him. I wasn’t worried about being executed afterwards, for I thought that I was a dead man anyway. We had recaptured some places from the Russians during the war and whenever we did, we almost always found that the German officers had been executed. So, I thought that the Russians would execute me after I was captured. Unconsciously, I realized that I couldn’t afford to make Hitler into a martyr. This would have created another Dolchstosslegende or’stabbed-in-the-back legend.’ [Joseph] Goebbels [Hitler’s propaganda chief] would have made the most out of it. I’m sure that he probably would have said that if the Fuhrer had not been killed by a general staff officer he would have found some way to save the German people.

http://www.historynet.com/interview-with-world-war-ii-german-officer-siegfried-knappe.htm


It took SIX YEARS OF WAR, millions dead, and that ONE personally insulting statement FINALLY woke up this Nazi. This anecdote perfectly summarizes Trump supporters, and probably some of them would STILL support him even if he personally insulted them to their face. Sad sad sad.