00:00The silence that precedes the fall of an empire is never absolute.
00:04It throbs, vibrates, announces the catastrophe before the first shot is fired.
00:11At the end of 1942, when the German 6th Army, with nearly 300,000 men, was surrounded at Stalingrad,
00:20Something broke irreversibly at the heart of the Third Reich.
00:25It wasn't just a military defeat. It was the moment when war ceased to be a promise of glory.
00:32and it became an omen of annihilation.
00:36From that point on, everything that would follow would be a direct consequence of that siege.
00:41And Berlin, still far from the front lines, began to feel the chill of the approaching sentence.
00:48In the German capital, the population lived intoxicated by easy victories.
00:52anesthetized by grandiose speeches and the artificial certainty of invincibility.
00:59To admit that the Wehrmacht's greatest force was doomed seemed like unthinkable delusion.
01:05Nevertheless, the rumors crossed the walls of official buildings and reached the streets.
01:11Joseph Goebbels, the architect of propaganda, went on the radio to quell the panic.
01:16There were no promises of joy or comfort.
01:19The announcement of an austere Christmas, without festivities, was presented as an ideological virtue.
01:25as proof of moral strength.
01:27But in practice, it sounded like a veiled warning that something was deeply wrong.
01:34Two years later, at Christmas 1944, there was no room left for disguises.
01:40Berlin was an exhausted city, entire buildings reduced to rubble, streets covered in dust.
01:47And rubble, faces marked by hunger and constant vigilance.
01:52The jokes that once circulated in a lighthearted tone have turned into dark humor.
01:57It was said that the ideal gift was a coffin.
02:00On the still-standing walls, desperate messages sought out missing relatives.
02:05writings about cracked concrete.
02:08Just above, official posters warned that looters would be killed.
02:13Daily life had been replaced by a routine of survival.
02:17Allied bombing raids dictated the rhythm of existence.
02:21Berliners spent more time in stuffy basements than in their own beds.
02:25The air-raid shelters, illuminated by bluish lamps, reeked of sweat, fear, and resignation.
02:32People huddled together, dressed in whatever warmest clothes they had.
02:36holding small cardboard bags filled with makeshift food.
02:39When the power went out, the luminous paint on the ceiling guided footsteps in the darkness.
02:46The city had about 3 million inhabitants, but the shelters were insufficient.
02:50Popular cynicism has renamed the official acronym for air raid shelter into something far more cruel.
02:58Learn Russian quickly.
03:00The fanaticism had evaporated.
03:03Hitler's name was hardly ever mentioned anymore.
03:06The greeting in the streets has become a single word laden with meaning.
03:10Survive.
03:12The fear came from the east.
03:14Goebbels' propaganda incessantly repeated accounts of atrocities committed by the Red Army.
03:20in places like Nemersdorf.
03:23Stories of rape and murder fueled a collective panic.
03:27The Soviet arrival seemed inevitable.
03:31Nevertheless, in December 1944, the Ardennes offensive brought a brief glimmer of hope.
03:40Many believed again in the Führer, in miraculous weapons, in an improbable turnaround.
03:45It was a fatal mistake.
03:46The high command knew that attacking in the west would decisively weaken the eastern front.
03:52But Hitler was obsessed.
03:55He rejected any possibility of diplomacy with Moscow and ignored clear warnings about the
04:01concentration of Soviet forces.
04:04The storm in the east was dismissed as an illusion.
04:07In January 1945, the illusion shattered.
04:10A massive attack erupted in East Prussia.
04:14Soviet soldiers were instructed to view that territory as the lair of
04:19fascist beast.
04:21German resistance was intense, but insufficient against the overwhelming numerical superiority.
04:27The advance was swift, brutal, and relentless.
04:30Local authorities collapsed.
04:33Conflicting orders.
04:34Poorly coordinated evacuations.
04:35Trains full of refugees mistakenly sent to areas already occupied.
04:40As the tanks approached, many leaders simply fled.
04:45The civilian population was left to its own devices.
04:49Thousands tried to escape on foot, braving deep snow and lethal temperatures.
04:54Frozen bodies lay by the roadside, captured on camera but lacking the necessary features.
04:59any consolation.
05:00In villages, the NKVD found the corpses of executed civilians, silent marks of
05:06Death marches halted.
05:09Women with stars sewn onto their clothes lay in the snow.
05:13The violence of the Red Army spread in an almost uncontrollable way.
05:18For many soldiers, the Germans were not people, but living symbols of everything that
05:24It had been destroyed in the Soviet Union.
05:26Revenge has become a collective impulse.
05:30As they advanced, the Soviet soldiers entered German houses and stopped, stunned.
05:37They found order, comfort, and material wealth.
05:41The contrast with the burned villages to the east generated envy.
05:45And envy quickly turned into hatred.
05:50What could not be taken was broken or burned.
05:53In just a few weeks, millions of people abandoned their homes.
05:58It wasn't just a population displacement.
06:01It was a desperate escape.
06:02An entire region, deeply connected to German history, began to be erased.
06:07At the end of January, Berlin descended into absolute chaos.
06:12Refugees arrived at the stations telling terrifying stories.
06:15Underground radio operators tuned into foreign stations in search of real news, despite the risk of death.
06:24Some still believed that only members of the SS would be punished.
06:29It was a fragile hope.
06:30The city tried to maintain an appearance of order, but inside it was becoming a breeding ground for internal collapse.
06:37Goebbels forbade leaving without authorization.
06:39And Himmler intensified public executions.
06:43The victory slogan sounded empty.
06:45Hitler, increasingly isolated, showed clear signs of physical and mental decline.
06:52Meanwhile, the Soviet fronts were advancing at an alarming rate.
06:56Cities were falling one after another.
06:59The Oder River was reached.
07:01Berlin was within artillery range.
07:03On April 20, 1945, Hitler's birthday, Soviet guns began the final bombardment.
07:12There was no celebration.
07:14Only destruction.
07:16The choice of date was symbolic.
07:18A clear message.
07:19The end had come.
07:22A few days later, Soviet newspapers announced that their soldiers were already marching through the streets of the enemy capital.
07:29For civilians, ideology meant nothing.
07:32The priority was survival.
07:35Giant shelters have become overcrowded refuges.
07:40The air was unbreathable.
07:42Hygiene has collapsed.
07:44There was a water shortage.
07:45Women risked their lives under mortar fire to fetch water.
07:49Those who returned alive were seen as heroines.
07:53At the same time, German soldiers were abandoning their uniforms, deserting, and going into hiding.
07:59The morale of the Wehrmacht was destroyed.
08:01Social collapse has reached unimaginable levels.
08:05With the entry of the Red Army, military victory quickly gave way to another form of horror.
08:12Discipline dissolved under the influence of alcohol and impunity.
08:16Looting, summary executions, and sexual violence have become commonplace.
08:20Women of all ages were attacked.
08:23It didn't matter if you were ideological, old, or in a certain condition.
08:27Surrender did not guarantee protection.
08:29In many cases, white flags were met with bursts of machine-gun fire.
08:33There were exceptions, isolated acts of humanity, but they were rare given the scale of the barbarity.
08:38The occupation transformed the lives of Berlin women into a parallel war.
08:43Fear began to dictate every move.
08:45Many developed survival strategies.
08:48Disguises, hiding places, negotiations, protection groups.
08:53Some sought out high-ranking officers as a way to reduce risks.
08:58Others disappeared into basements for days.
09:00Rape has become a constant threat.
09:03A shadow that hung over every street, every doorway, every staircase.
09:07The numbers are difficult to establish.
09:10But estimates point to hundreds of thousands of victims in the Soviet-occupied zone alone.
09:17Many were attacked repeatedly.
09:19Some died as a direct result of the violence.
09:23Others carried physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.
09:28Hospitals have improvised wards to deal with forced pregnancies and venereal diseases.
09:32The bureaucracy of trauma required detailed reports.
09:36Turning pain into letterhead.
09:39Mass abortions were authorized as a cold response to an unprecedented human catastrophe.
09:45The inevitable question echoed.
09:47Why such brutality?
09:50The answer was not a single cause.
09:53but in an explosive combination of factors.
09:56Years of extermination war in the east,
09:59concentration camps liberated,
10:01mass graves,
10:03Entire families wiped out.
10:05Soviet propaganda fueled hatred.
10:07transforming revenge into duty.
10:09When the Red Army crossed the German border and found a relatively intact country,
10:15The contrast was interpreted as an affront.
10:19Military discipline was lost in the rapid advance, and alcohol removed the last moral restraints.
10:26Violence has become the new normal.
10:28With the official end of the war,
10:31Moscow realized that the chaos threatened the stability of the occupation.
10:35Punishments began to be applied.
10:37Rapists were either executed or sent to the Gulag.
10:41Soldiers were confined to barracks.
10:43Contact with civilians was restricted.
10:45Discipline gradually returned.
10:48But it was too late to undo what had already happened.
10:51The scars remained.
10:54Thus ended the Third Reich.
10:56Not with a final act of grandeur,
10:58But with ruins, silence, and a legacy of suffering that has spanned generations.
11:03Berlin in 1945 was a portrait of war in its rawest form.
11:08A series of decisions, omissions, and accumulated hatred that exploded upon defenseless civilians.
11:16There were no moral winners in that scenario.
11:19Just survivors trying to rebuild something from scratch.
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