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In a rare moment of calm, two German pilots converse under the nose of a Messerschmitt Me Bf 110 heavy fighter, in expectancy of
being alerted for an incursion against the Soviet columns that now press on the very German boundaries.
An American patrol fights within the ruins of a house on the Rhine riverbank, in March 1945.
The last call-up of Hitler were boys of fifteen - or even less - years who, wearing uniforms too large for their size, would be
sent to their death to prolonge the agony of the "Reich of the Thousand Years".
American troops are fighting on the industrial areas of the Rhine, while smoke generators conceal their movements to the German
observers settled on the other side of the river.
Among the photographs destined to immortalize the great victory of the Soviet Union in Berlin this is certainly the most famous
one. The red flag of Communism waves upon the ruins of the Reichstag and a new era, not very bright either, begins for the
countries of East Europe.
A prisoner, who survived until the arrival of his liberators, looks amazed at the calcined remainings of bones extracted from a
crematorium.
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The anti-tank fortifications of the Siegfried Line were a fragile obstacle for the advance of the Allied armies. This defensive
line had not been designed for a static defense but for one based in maneuvers, in which fixed positions would support the mobile
forces on a rather temporal defense. The Siegfried Line differed from the Maginot Line in that protection was entrusted to
dispersion and camouflage rather than to armor, barriers and concentration.
A patrol of the Allied vanguard moves ahead within the ruins of a German village to evict the enemy snipers.
All of the dreams of victory have vanished. Within the destroyed buildings only one man, already delusional, still believes on the
"Reich of the Thousand Years".
Of the once powerful Wehrmacht only prison camps will remain.
This is what remains of the large lounge of the Chancellery of the Reich that housed the work cabinet of Hitler. To the effect of
bombs was added that of souvenir hunters.
Loading of death in the Buchenwald concentration camp. American soldiers and some countrymen look amazed the corpses that the
fleeing SS did not have time to incinerate in their crematorium of industrial scale.
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