The bombing finally stopped, the sirens sounded the all-clear and a few people began to venture slowly out into the wasteland from basements where they hid to save themselves. Unknown thousands lay buried beneath the mountains of rubble that were once the elegant buildings of Berlin. After hours filled with the terrifying roar of aeroplanes and exploding bombs, a strange, haunting silence embraced this city that was once the pride of the Third Reich.
Once small cities like Dresden had been razed to the ground by endless waves of bombers, it was the turn of mighty Berlin to meet its nemesis and face apocalypse. Unable to prevent the bombing of their cities due to insufficient warplanes, fuel and other resources, the German High Command, in an attempt to boost morale, let it be known that the Allies who bombed them were doing them a great service by destroying their old buildings which were constructed through the architecture of a discredited liberal era, for now they had the opportunity to rebuild them in the new, heroic style befitting the Third Reich. Himmler, delivering such a lecture to senior officers who listened with incredulity, piled delusion upon delusion as the Allied pincer movement encircled and began their strangulation of Germany's capital city.
From this city, Hitler's orders emanated and brought destruction to the world as he pursued his dream of relentless expansion and domination of those he considered lesser peoples. He considered this policy to be a divine right in view of Germany's perceived Aryan superiority and managed to convince his people of it.
Strategic errors made in faraway theatres of war, in North Africa, Southern Europe and the vast expanses of Russia came to haunt the Nazi leadership as their essential area of operations had been squeezed by superior forces and planning into the few square miles that was the city of Berlin. Russian soldiers approaching the city from the east were bent on revenge, their souls burning to avenge the tens of millions of their countrymen who died by the bullet and starvation because of Hitler's invasion of the holy Russian soil. The soldiers were given freedom by their officers to do as they pleased, to take back their honour and pride and punish the impudence of the Germans who considered them less than human and invaded their country in order to turn them into slaves.
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