Berlin still bears scars 80 years after pivotal battle that sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany

BERLIN (AP) — Central Berlin was in ruins after the Red Army completed the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in an intense fight for the capital in May 1945.

After decades of division and its revival as the capital of a reunited, democratic Germany, the city is now transformed, blending painstakingly restored buildings with modern architecture. But the scars of the past remain visible in many places: facades riddled with holes from bullets and shrapnel, or gaps in rows of houses sometimes plugged by new buildings.

An Associated Press story from May 9, 1945, painted a stark picture. It read: “This town is a city of the dead. As a metropolis it has simply ceased to exist. Every house within miles of the center seems to have had its own bomb.”

Berlin, the epicenter of Adolf Hitler's power, was the ultimate prize as the Allies closed in from east and west on the disintegrating German defenses in the final stage of World War II.

“We all had a little case next to the bed, even the children," recalled Eva-Maria Kolb, now 89, of the constant aerial bombing in the last six months of the war. “When there was an air raid warning you had to pull something on quickly and then go down to the basement.”

The final Battle of Berlin in late April and early May 1945 reduced much of what was left of the city to rubble. The Soviet military attacked from several directions with an enormous concentration of troops, who faced a struggle to cross rivers and canals and an intensifying street fight as they moved deeper and deeper into the city.

On April 25, Berlin was encircled. Hitler killed himself in his bunker on April 30; and on May 2, the commander of German military forces in Berlin, Gen. Helmuth Weidling, capitulated to Soviet forces.

“Berlin was a heap of rubble — because of these last 10 days, almost everything in the center was ruined,” said Jörg Morré, the director of the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, located in the building where Germany's final surrender was signed.

But “the infrastructure could be repaired relatively quickly — the sewerage system wasn't so badly damaged. They managed to get the water supply and pipes going again. A lot of old Berliners are still familiar with hand pumps ... electricity came, so that the trams starting running again, and the commuter trains.”

Kolb said: “It was, of course, a great relief in ‘45 that the war was over and Hitler was no longer alive ... everyone who wasn't a Nazi was very, very grateful that the war was over.”

She recalled that parts of the city were rubble, but she went to a school in the Tempelhof district, south of the center, “that was only half-ruined. It no longer had a roof and the second or third floor was missing — but we had lessons. Only when it rained were lessons canceled.”

‘This marked the end’

Post-war Berlin was divided into sectors controlled by the wartime allies. That hardened into a Cold War division that saw two separate German states founded in 1949 and ultimately led to the building in 1961 of the Berlin Wall, which fell 28 years later as communist rule collapsed in East Germany.

Germany was reunited in 1990 and the national government moved to Berlin in 1999. Parliament now meets in the restored Reichstag, where the raising of the Soviet Union's red flag in 1945 was emblematic of the victory over Nazi Germany. Graffiti left by Soviet troops at the Reichstag has been preserved at several places in the building.

The military surrender of Berlin on May 2, 1945, wasn't quite the end of the war. Hitler's successor, Grand Adm. Karl Dönitz, tried to fight on but was quickly forced to negotiate Germany's surrender.

Germany's unconditional capitulation was signed at Allied headquarters in Reims, France, on May 7 and came into effect the following day.

But the Soviet Union had only a liaison officer at the ceremony and fighting against the Red Army continued in the east, so a second ceremony was agreed at Soviet headquarters in Berlin on May 8, Morré said. As a result, the West and Russia mark the end of the war in Europe on May 8 and May 9, respectively.

“In this room, World War II ended in Europe,” he said, in the preserved hall where the capitulation was signed in Berlin. “This marked the end.”

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Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.