April 1945. Berlin is a city of cellars. Two and a half million Soviet soldiers under Zhukov and Konev close on it, and their guns shake plaster onto the people under the stairs. In a bunker under the Chancellery, a regime that promised a thousand years is counting days.
Why then
The eastern war has come home, the way the invasion of 1941 promised it never would. The Allies have already agreed their zones of occupation. Hitler will not give up the city, and the last defenders are boys and old men.
What they wanted
Stalin wants Berlin as trophy, buffer and proof before the Americans can reach it, and sets Zhukov and Konev racing each other for it. The last German units fight on out of fear or faith.
What changed
Hitler shoots himself on 30 April; the city surrenders on 2 May, and the war in Europe ends on 8 May. Germany is divided into four zones, and within four years into two states. Hiroshima is still three months and an ocean away.
Still argued
How much of the horror of those weeks, including the mass rape of German women that Soviet histories left out, was revenge, policy, or the chaos of a falling city? Historians still argue the mix.