Berlin Streets After World War II. July 1945

This video shows footage from the capital of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II. As is well known, Germany under Adolf Hitler’s rule, with the world war that began in 1939, quickly brought under its control many European countries Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, France, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Norway, Finland, and we could say nearly the entire European continent—and in 1941 set its sights on Soviet Russia.

With the famous Operation Barbarossa against Russia (June 22, 1941),
3,600 tanks and 4 million soldiers. The largest force massed in history—were amassed at the gates of the Soviet Union. Although the operation went well at first, Russian resistance proved effective; while the Germans carried out the most extensive military operation history had ever seen on the Eastern Front, on the other side, in the west, they found themselves clashing with the British and, later, with the United States, which entered the war and, through the industrial leap it made in those years, had become a massive military power.

However, the Germans got bogged down at Stalingrad as if stuck in a swamp, and could not push beyond it. In the southeast, they were also never able to gain control of the Baku-Caspian oil region, which German generals considered important enough to change the course of the war. For a war of such massive scale, oil was critical. German resources were rapidly running out, while the Russian war machine kept churning out weapons and sending them to the front.

From the Battle of Kursk in 1943 onward, Russian resistance turned into a counteroffensive, and the Germans began to retreat. With the Normandy landings in June 1944, the Americans landed on the French coast, and, advancing step by step. The Americans from the west, the Russians from the east—they pushed the Germans back all the way to the final collapse and the fall of Berlin in 1945.

The Ruined and Exhausted Streets of Berlin

In the video, we see the streets of Berlin a few months after the end of the war. Filmed at a quality that’s remarkable for the technology of the time. Quite sharp, with sound, and in color—the footage shows that almost nothing remains of the Nazi Empire’s grand Reich; the massive buildings and roads, these avenues that once hosted magnificent, powerful parades and celebrations, have now become nothing but a heap of rubble.

Something else that catches our attention is the Russian-language traffic signs on the roads, portraits of Stalin, flags with the hammer and sickle. We see victorious Russian soldiers walking among German civilians who are trying to carry a few pieces of belongings from their destroyed homes on makeshift wooden carts, and the pitiful state of historic buildings that represented centuries of accumulated art and craftsmanship.

A strange silence hangs over the city. It seems almost impossible to guess what state of mind the German people must have been in when faced with such a scene. And yet, among the ruins, we see German women working tirelessly, with buckets and shovels in hand, determined and hopeful to rebuild their shattered, exhausted country. Their morale seems surprisingly intact. We see mostly women, because nearly all of Germany’s men capable of bearing arms had lost their lives in this war.

How they turned such a devastated, exhausted country into one of the world’s leading industrial and technological powers is a true success story. Perhaps the greatest lesson the Germans took from this war was understanding just how wrong it was to hand their country over to the rule of one deranged man, and just how dangerous a form of government fascism truly is.

It’s clear that humanity must learn from the past so that such painful days are never repeated.

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