Original subtitles

BERLIN

This is a historical chronicle of the last, decisive battle with Nazi Germany,

the capture of Berlin, and the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces.

Written and directed by Y.Raizman, Director of Photography

Text by N.Shpikovsky, Edited by E.Svilova, I.Setkina, T.Likhacheva

Production manager: I.Khmelnitsky. Deputy production managers: A.Kuznetsov, M.Bessmertny, N.Melnikov.

Production of documentary material from the 1st Belarussian Front: E.Volk and A.Usoltsev, text editor V.Popov

Cameramen: A.Alexeyev, E.Alexeyev, I.Arons, N.Vikhirev, K.Vents, G.Giber, G.Golubov, A.Levitan, B.Dementyev,

L.Dultsev, G.Yepifanov, D.Ibragimov, R.Karmen, I.Komarov, N.Kiselev,

F.Leontovich, V.Lezerson, E.Mukhin, L.Mazrukho, M.Poselsky, S.Semyonov,

V.Solovyov, A.Sofyin, G.Senotov, V.Simkhovich, B.Sokolov, V.Tomberg, V.Frolenko, M.Shneiderov

With additional support from the camera crew of the 1st Ukrainian Front.

Cameramen: G.Alexandrov, M.Aravov, A.Bogorov, K.Brovin, N.Bykov, P.Gorbenko, G.Ostrovsky, A.Pogorely, S.Sheinin

Head of the camera crew: L.Saakov, M.Oshurkov

Production assistants: Z.Tulubyeva, M.Pankina, N.Solovyova

Narrated by A.Khmara. Designed by I.Nizhnik. Sound-track - A.Roitman. Sound engineers: V.Kotov, E.Kashkevich, I.Nikitin

The film was produced with help from the headquarters and political department of the 1st Belarussian Front. Chief consultant: Major-General S.Platonov

Sequences from German newsreels were used in the film.

Produced by the Central Order of the Red Banner Studio of Documentary Films in 1945

Berlin. May, Nineteen forty-five. Hitler's Reichskanzelei has already been taken.

Hitler's personal office.

Here the Nazi military brass cultivated their criminal plans to force people into slavery.

Now these plans are known to the whole world.

First it is necessary to conquer Western Europe.

"Unless we rule Europe we are nothing. Europe is Germany".- Hitler.

Then a Blitzkrieg campaign in Russia.

"If we want to create a great German Empire ... we must decimate the Slav peoples."- Hitler.

Then via the Middle East carry out a strike against Britain...

...India

...and Canada.

"Britain should be hit where it is the weakest - in India and Canada."- Hitler.

Then across the Mediterranean into Africa.

"Africa must be a German dominion."- Hitler.

From there into the Western Hemisphere.

"Germany would become great and rich by capturing Mexican mines. Why should we not embark on this enterprise?"- Hitler

And finally move on to the United States.

"To defeat the Anglo-Saxons and in the future to include the United States of America into the German World Empire."- Hitler

These were not just dreams.

They landed troops in northern Norway.

Having captured Europe, the Nazi armed forces invaded Africa and were approaching Alexandria.

Their submarines were sinking vessels off the American coast.

In those days Hitler thought he was the conqueror of the world and was even ready to share his glory with his Italian ally Mussolini.

Drunken with easy victories, Hitler became brave enough to march his troops to the Soviet Union.

It seemed to many then that there was no force on earth which could stop the advance of his armies.

However, Stalingrad brought them to a standstill.

The Red Army stopped this giant war machine of Hitler's murderers and rapists.

The Red Army's victory and great fame was born out of the smoke of Stalingrad's embers.

It was from here that the march to Berlin began.

The Red Army drove them away from the Volga.

It pursued them across the Don.

Thousands of guns and tanks were left on the battlefields.

Across the Desna. As they left, they burned our villages, blew up our factories, and destroyed our roads.

The Red Army drove them across the Dnieper.

Tens of thousands of Nazi killers and rapists remained on the fields of Ukraine.

They were drowned in the Bug, encircled and destroyed.

They crossed the Dvina.

They were pushed back beyond the Niemen.

Behind lay the liberated Soviet land. But the people of Europe were still awaiting liberation.

The Vistula. The enemy were smashed and defeated decisively.

The Red Army approached the final strip of water blocking their path to Berlin.

The Red Army approached the river Oder.

Here is the Oder.

Four years of war are behind them. Four years of hard fighting and great victories.

The Red Army has come here experienced in battle, hardened,

strong and more than ever before ready to deal the final crushing blow.

The Germans called the Oder their river of destiny.

Now the destiny of that river is in the hands of Russian soldiers.

Few days remain before the beginning of the operation.

The last trains are arriving.

Hundreds of trainloads of supplies were hidden in the woods.

Thousands of tons of fuel were stored away in underground reservoirs.

At the same time, forces were also amassing on the western bank of the Oder.

Here, on a small patch of land captured from the enemy, they had to concentrate all their equipment for a blow of such tremendous force.

It was from this bridgehead that an attack on Berlin would be launched.

Before the offensive, a military council met, attended by the commanders of the 1st Belarussian Front.

Generals who fought in the great campaigns of the patriotic war came together.

They battled at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Orel, and fought for Gomel, Bobruisk, and Vitebsk.

They liberated Poland, and its cities of Lublin, Warsaw and Poznan, and brought their troops to the Oder.

Today their task was to capture the capital of Nazi Germany and to hoist a banner of victory over the Reichstag.

The plan of the operation is as follows:

The troops of the 1st Belarussian Front will deal the main strike, then they are to move on to Berlin and surround it.

The troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front will march forward to link up with the Allies and at the same time support the operation from the south.

The troops of the 2nd Belarussian Front will cross the Oder and support the advance from the north.

The army commanders are holding rehearsals for taking Berlin on a relief map.

Everyone - from general to warrior - prepared for the historic task.

Everything is ready for the decisive offensive.

The bridgehead is quiet.

At the appointed hour on the night of April 1 6, punctually at four a.m., twenty-two thousand guns opened fire on enemy positions.

It was an artillery barrage of unprecedented scale and scope.

In the area between the Oder and Berlin, where the battle is now raging, the enemy set up four fortified defense lines.

Each of them was designed to resist for a long time.

By withdrawing their troops from the Western Front and moving them over to the east,

the Germans concentrated a half-a-million strong army there.

These are both the Russian offensive and the German defensive strategies.

Today these plans clashed with each other on the battlefield.

All of the threads for controlling the battles lead here to Marshal Zhukov's surveillance point.

Supporting the advancing Soviet troops, our assault planes pounded the enemy's strongholds and his reserves

along all the roads leading to Berlin.

The chances of victory became obvious as new regiments enter the battleground.

The 1st Ukrainian Front simultaneously began their advance.

Marshal Konev sent his troops into the offensive.

The unexpectedness of the first strike and its powerful strength set the end of the operation.

The Seelow Heights were passed very quickly,

a dense network of canals and lakes were overcome,

and strongpoints and centers of resistance were swept away.

Forcibly pushing the enemy back to the walls of its doomed capital,

the Soviet troops reached Berlin on April twenty-first.

Here is Berlin.

This was not the first time that Russian troops stood outside the walls of this city.

In 1760, Berlin surrendered without resistance to the troops of General Chernyshov.

It was under these colours that Russian troops entered Berlin.

We uphold these colours.

These bugles were the first to herald a bloodless victory at Berlin.

We uphold these bugles.

This was the treaty of the surrender signed by the Germans in 1760.

We uphold this treaty.

Today, Russian cannons are again at Berlin's walls...

...and the Russian soldier is again fighting for freedom and happiness for the people.

The suburbs immediately became the scene of fierce fighting.

Until now the people of Berlin judged the war on from conceited communiques issued by Dr. Goebbels.

Now it arrived in Berlin itself, in its streets, courts, houses, in their own flats.

Fear drove people into the cellars, while hunger drove them back into the streets.

Instead of the promised affluence and prosperity, Hitler brought the Germans fear and hunger.

Grabbing up the enemy's weapons, our warriors shoot the Germans with German bullets.

Battles are happening in hundreds of streets and crossroads

and sometimes people do not know what is going on around the corner.

But the front squeezes in, moving forward like one whole machine, encircling Berlin.

Ahead there are more and more new streets, more and more new blocks,

but each soldier knows that somewhere out there, in the middle of this huge stone city

there will be an end to this all: the end to Nazism,

to the war, to its four years of existence.

Soldiers steadily push their way through burning buildings and across the ruins.

Their relentless progress seems to defy any force.

Many Germans see this and surrender.

On April twenty-fifth Berlin was encircled.

The 1st Belarussian Front linking up with the armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front to close the ring about Berlin.

By that time the situation was as follows:

Kuznetsov's army was covering the city center from the north.

Berzarin's army was fighting its way downtown from the east,

but there the enemy's resistance was particularly tenacious.

Chuikov's army was battling its way towards Tempelhof.

From the south and south-west, more units commanded by Marshal Konev continued to arrive in their numbers.

It is here on these streets that the overall plan of command is broken up into hundreds of smaller tasks:

heavy fire, break down the door, take over.

The Soviet command ordered the Germans to dismantle the street barricades and obstacles...

...to pave the way for our tanks moving towards the center of the capital.

Yet not so long ago the Germans threw flowers under the tracks of their tanks leaving for the east.

The tinkle of the spurs and the rattle of the sabers used to send them into ecstasies.

Admiration for the military has been inculcated in the Germans for centuries.

Look into those eyes!

Look at that crowd, at those hands which are numbly stretching out with cries of "Heil Hitler!"

Today their hands reach for bread and the Red Army gives them this bread.

This Soviet girl soldier has her own bill to present to the Nazis.

But the Red Army does not take vengeance on civilians and does not kill women and children.

It feeds them.

They make no resistance, they surrender.

They were lucky: they had time to surrender.

But there is not, and cannot be, any mercy for those continuing to resist and preparing a stab in the back for our troops.

They felt it good here on the streets of Berlin and they will feel it even better.

Berlin's central airfield Tempelhof.

German aircraft were still burning and an artillery barrage was still going...

...on when Soviet flyers landed on the airfield.

He is Major Kurt Brest, the airfield commandant taken prisoner.

The major recalls other and more joyful days.

Goering used to hold parades and award his aces here.

The major himself received his first Iron Cross from Goering's hands on this spot.

Now he has other and more melancholy memories.

Benito Mussolini himself was once brought here.

He had just been freed from captivity,

and Hitler was there to meet his hapless friend.

The major's memories are sad.

Tempelhof airfield is far behind.

Our artillery is now pounding towards the center of Berlin.

The excitement of the competition drives the soldiers forward.

Even at night fighting does not lose its intensity.

Berlin is burning.

But its residents have long got used to the acrid smoke of the fires.

Here Hitler set fire to the Reichstag.

It started a conflagration that enveloped the whole world.

Here, in bonfires, the Nazis burned the great works of the human genius.

Here, Nazi storm troopers held their torch-lit marches, recreating medieval times.

Here, education was given to the future butchers of Majdanek, Oswiecim and Treblinka.

Here was the point of departure to the rest Europe, for the arsonists of our peaceful towns and villages.

The flames of war ignited here, in Berlin, have now come home to roost. Back to Berlin.

It is at the city center that our men are now fighting.

Such scenes could also be observed in the center of Berlin, although, in the interests of Berliners themselves,

the Soviet command introduced strict penalties for appropriating abandoned property.

The eighth day is drawing to a close.

Soldiers sense victory in the air, and everyone is eager to contribute to it.

Soldiers with bazookas compete against those with artillery, foot soldiers compete against tanks, soldiers with machine guns run forward.

It grieves one to lose one's comrades-in-arms during these last hours when victory is so near.

Chuikov's Guards units have broken through to the city center from the south-east,

while Kuznetsov's army is advancing on the Reichstag from the north.

It has already taken the Moabit prison.

Berzarin's army is fighting in the east.

The noose around the city center is tightening.

It is closer and closer to Reichstag.

The Reichstag is over there, behind that cathedral.

The pitch of fighting reaches its climax.

But even in these minutes of reckless and ruthless fighting the Russian soldier's heart

is open to pity and commiseration.

What has this woman got from Hitler's criminal plans for world supremacy?

There is occasional action near the Reichstag.

The Reichstag is close at hand and so is the Brandenburg Gate.

Here it is, the Brandenburg Gate,

the venue of past triumphs of the Fredericks and the Wilhelms, the Prussian kings and the German emperors.

Only recently was counterfeit Nazi glory proclaimed to the world from here.

Now it is all over - the Reichstag is just two hundred meters away.

All now share one thought and one desire - to hoist a banner of victory over the Reichstag.

To hoist a banner of victory over the Reichstag.

To hoist a banner of victory over the Reichstag.

A banner of victory is hoisted over the Reichstag!

The second of May, nineteen forty-five.

The date which will for ever go down in history.

Berlin capitulated.

The Germans laid down their arms and surrendered to the Red Army.

Inglorious was the end of their last battle.

They had declared that the Russians would never see Berlin,

but within ten days' had given up their capital.

Ten days.

A pitiful stretch if one recalls the heroic defense of Leningrad, Sevastopol, and Stalingrad.

On that day, one hundred and thirty thousand officers and men surrendered themselves in Berlin.

Some inscriptions still assert: "Capitulate? Never!"

It is no accident that these windows display white flags of surrender.

Many of them vowed allegiance to Hitler in their day.

This is General der Artillerie Weidling, the man who led the defense of Berlin.

On May the second he signed an order of surrender and allowed himself and his staff to be taken prisoner.

This was not the kind of meeting they dreamed of.

At an interrogation General der Artillerie Weidling told representatives of the Soviet command...

...that he had had an audience with Hitler on the twenty-ninth of April,

and that Hitler had insisted on prolonged resistance.

Hitler had hoped that the German 9th army operating south-east of Berlin

and the army fighting against the Allies south-west of Berlin,

supported by a tank regiment, could encircle and defeat the Soviet troops.

"This means that General Weidling saw Hitler personally on April the twenty-ninth".

"Well, ask him how Hitler looked and what was his condition."

"Please do."

"Before that day I had last seen the Fuehrer a year ago.

I was shocked when I saw him again. He was a wreck.

He sat in his chair totally crushed.

His hands were limp over the map like this. He spoke in quiet and barely audible tones, haltingly.

He was a broken man."

On the same day, the dead body of Goebbels was found and identified.

Goebbels is silent.

His ministry of propaganda is destroyed.

Also silent is his radio station from which he has so long been poisoning the world with his preachings of violence and hatred of mankind.

On this day Berlin was visited by Marshal Zhukov of the Soviet Union,

his Berlin Commandant, Lt. General Berzarin,

a member of the military advisory board, Lt. General Telegin, and Lt. General Bokov

for the purpose of evaluating the areas of the recent battles.

Memorial to Wilhelm I.

Headquarters.

It was here that for many decades the plans of many wars were drawn,

it was here where the warmongers created their criminal Hitler thoughts of thievery.

The Reich Chancellery.

Victory Column.

Lt. General Bogdanov's tank soldiers found these awards.

The German military brass twice attempted world supremacy and twice was beaten -

under the sign of the Prussian eagle and under the Nazi swastika banners.

On the streets of Berlin, the victors are meeting the liberated French, Belgians, Americans, Poles, Norwegians, and the British.

The Guards meet the decorated Hero of the Battle of Stalingrad, Chuikov, on a street.

It is a good meeting.

Head Marshal of Aviation Novikov and Lt. General Rudenko came to Berlin.

Officers and men are posing for a snapshot outside the Reichstag.

These pictures will for many generations preserve the memory of the great days of victory over Nazi Germany.

The inscription reads: "Berlin remains German".

Yes, it remains German.

But this episode will never be erased from history the memory of these inscriptions

left by Russian fighting men on the citadel of German imperialism.

The Battle of Berlin had a decisive influence on the course of the hostilities in Europe.

The German war machine broke down and proved incapable of offering further resistance.

Germany capitulated.

On the eighth of May, a delegation of the supreme command of the Allied expeditionary force arrived at Tempelhof airfield.

That day was set for Germany to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender.

Lt. General Vasilyev greets the new arrivals.

Sir Arthur Tedder, Air Chief Marshal, is the head of the delegation.

General Spaatz is the commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Force.

General of the Army Sokolovsky welcomes the guests.

Representatives of Hitler's command have been brought to Berlin to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender.

General Fieldmarshal Keitel.

Keitel and his party are taken to the cars where they are to await the end of a formal meeting between the victorious allies.

Keitel reads the terms of surrender over and over again.

Once more Keitel is driven through Berlin.

But this is not the same Berlin nor the same Keitel.

Representatives from the Allied Forces came to look at the streets of Berlin...

...where their pilots did a pretty good job of things.

The suburb of Karlshorst.

This modest-looking building will be a historic site from this day on.

It is here that the treaty of unconditional surrender will be signed.

Representatives of the Allied command going in to be received by Marshal Zhukov.

Keitel and his party are accommodated in a separate house.

They will wait there until summoned.

At the appointed hour, representatives of the Soviet and Allied commands enter the hall.

The signing ceremony will be held in the presence of numerous representatives of the front command and Allied guests.

Marshal Zhukov announces the arrival in Berlin of representatives of Hitler's command.

The Marshal suggests that the German delegation be summoned to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender.

Even at this crucial moment they remain supercilious and arrogant in a typically Prussian manner.

Asked by Marshal Zhukov if the representatives of the German command know the terms of surrender,

Keitel confirms that they know them.

Marshal Zhukov suggests that the representatives of the German command approach the allied command table

and there sign the treaty of unconditional surrender.

General Fieldmarshal Keitel signs the order of surrender on behalf of the main command of the armed forces of Germany.

Hitler and Goebbels claimed that the year nineteen eighteen would never be repeated,

and indeed it was not.

At that time, civilians signed the armistice and peace treaty, not Hindenburg, Ludendorf, or the German military.

This time, three German commanders acknowledged their total defeat in the capital of Germany, Berlin.

Admiral Friedenburg signs the treaty.

Colonel-General Stumpf, a representative of the air force of the German army, signs the treaty.

The signatures of the representatives of the victor nations seal the capitulation.

The first signature is by a representative of the Soviet command.

The Red Army had the hardest time of all in this war.

It lived up to the challenge and heroically persevered to the end.

The exploits of our comrades-in-arms - British and American soldiers - will also have a place of honor in the chronicle of this war.

The treaty is signed!

The German representatives may leave the hall.

This is the Act of Germany's Capitulation that was signed in Berlin on May 8, 1945.

Berlin.

It costs mankind, including the German nation, immeasurable tears and bloodshed.

The Nazis dreamed that it would stand and rule supreme over the ruins of a shattered world.

Now Berlin lies in ruins, destroyed and quiet.

This is Berlin today...

...and this is Moscow today!

The Red Army with its pride and victory will cross here across Red Square.

Soviet people, be jubilant! You have conquer the Victory!

You have accomplished what no one else in the world could.

Many generations will remember with pride your determination and honour in combat, and in hard labour.

Today we go forward calmly and sure in our future.

Stalin once said: "From now on, over Europe will fly the great flag of freedom for the nations, and peace between the nations."

The end