The notes of the camp doctor revealed that in the 8-year-old history of Bhanvald, 32,75 prisoners had died, not counting those who had been executed.

The next day, US correspondent Edward Ar Muro would report on the radio.

As I walked along the prisoner’s blocks, the men who were too weak to stand began to applaud.

It sounded as if it were babies trying to clap their hands.

That’s how weak they were.

I can’t find words to describe what I saw.

There are many fatalities in a war, but these men in the camp were living dead.

In contrast, the Germans were wellfed and well-dressed.

US Army commander George S.

Patton ordered 1,000 citizens of Vimar to visit Bhanvald camp.

On the 10 km long walk up to the eters bag, many of them seemed unaware of what lay in store for them.

The guided tour across the camp had been meticulously organized by the Americans.

First, the citizens of VHimar were presented with evidence of the barbarity.

shrunken heads and tattooed pieces of skin.

Skillfully prepared souvenirs from an SS production plant.

Then they were taken to the crerematorium where the corpses have been piled up.

A prisoner described the people’s reactions in a letter to his sister.

What they saw were just humble remains of the reality we had experienced.

But it was enough for some people to faint.

“We didn’t know,” they cried out desperately.

“All of a sudden, and after years of regarding and treating us as criminals, they were faced with the certainty of an indelible guilt.

” In a written report, US General Eric F.

Wood questioned the educational effects of this action.

After the inspection, many citizens had the impedance to claim that they had never heard of this camp, although it was in their direct vicinity.

50,000 German soldiers were herded together in the Misenheim prisoner of war camp near Andak.

Thousands more were brought in every day as entire Vermach units laid down their arms and were transported to the meadows on the banks of the Rine.

Cameraman Owens was there and filmed Hitler’s boy soldiers.

At the beginning of April, the Furer had had the 1928 to 29 age group drafted.

Many 16-year-old boys lost their lives for the collapsing Third Reich.

The unusually hot spring sun and insufficient water supplies took their toll on the prisoners.

On the previous day, the Allied expedition forces had issued a preliminary assessment of the situation.

From all viewpoints, it’s only a matter of time before organized resistance in Nazi Germany will break down completely.

Nothing is now able to rectify the errors made by Hitler and his officials any longer in trying to prolong the war or to turn the situation in their favor.

The abilities of the enemy are indeed zero.

Many of the prisoners of war were taken to Namur in Belgium in freight wagons.

They were the fortunate ones.

In the months to follow, thousands of German soldiers would die on the Ryan Meadows due to supply [Music] problems.

The American troops had reached Leipy where they encountered a remarkable willingness to surrender from the population.

Members of the local resistance have been distributing leaflets for days with mottos such as end the senseless war of the Nazis and start waving the white flags.

The people were told to comply absolutely with the instructions of the occupying authorities.

Nevertheless, there were fanatics here too.

A 16-year-old boy from the Hitler youth managed to knock out a Sherman tank with a bazooka.

Its crew died and the boy was killed by the next [Music] tank.

Soldiers of the US 69th Infantry Division combed through the railway station in Leipzig on that 19th of April.

The German forces defending it had surrendered on the previous evening.

Yet there could still be individual fighters hiding in one of the largest railway stations in Europe.

Army cameraman Smith captured these scenes.

[Music] Fighting was still going on in parts of the city.

After the German military governor, Colonel Fonert, was forced to abandon the railway station and the town hall to the Americans, he barricaded himself with 300 followers in the Battle of the Nation’s monument on the outskirts of the city.

Liberated French prisoners of war were cheering when Major General Fronzigazar was taken prisoner by the Americans.

He had been removed from his post as the military governor of Leipzig just a few days before his arrest due to his hesitant attitude.

The occupation troops appealed to the population over a PA system to remain calm.

By 2:00 in the morning, the entire city would be in the hands of the Americans.

In Leipig’s town hall, the US soldiers made a gruesome discovery.

The city’s mayor, Fryberg, had committed suicide together with his wife and daughter.

His deputy, the city treasurer, Dr.

Lisso, had followed his fate.

And also, the head of the local NSDAP, Albert Vidote, had put an end to his life on the Furer’s 56th birthday.

Yet this discovery was insignificant compared with the frightful scenes the US soldiers faced in the Leipix suburb of Techla.

The rubble of a shack in the forced labor camp was smoldering.

Horribly mutilated corpses lay everywhere.

Evidently the German security guards had driven over 300 prisoners into the shack, poured petrol over it, and then set it a light before they ran off.

Those who managed to escape the flames were killed by the bullets of the retreating guards.

[Music] The US Army cameraman captured every detail.

These images would be used as evidence later in trials against the German war criminals.

On the same day, tanks of the US 7th Army reached the center of Nuremberg.

Hitler personally had ordered that the city of the Nazi party rallies be defended to the last man standing.

Local Gowiter Carl Holtz was a fanatical follower of the Furer and was determined to fulfill his wish.

So the defense commissioner of Nuremberg personally led raiding patrols against the American [Music] tanks.

The US troops advanced cautiously as small German units kept engaging them in skirmishes.

Goltz was later found dead in a cellar.

[Music] Nuremberg’s historic old town was a heap of ruins.

90% of all buildings have been destroyed.

It’s unclear how many German soldiers lost their lives for their furer on the day of his birthday.

The Americans also suffered losses.

[Music] [Music] On the previous evening, propaganda minister Ysef Gerbles had held his last radio address in Berlin.

The hour has come when we must prove ourselves.

Of course, I will stay in Berlin with my assistants.

My wife and children are here and will stay here, too.

Our fight will be the signal for the most purposeful fight of the entire nation.

The burning town of Kaioshim east of Shibishal was captured by the Americans for the second time on the 21st of April.

10 days prior to that, the 13th SS Corps had succeeded in retaking it.

The few hundred remaining inhabitants didn’t seem too impressed by the return of the German forces.

A local teacher wrote in her diary, “None of the people standing on the side of the road are happy about our compatriots or about the fact that we’re German again.

They’re thinking they’ll trigger off Allied air raids again, and I wish it was over.

” Fascinated, the US Army cameraman filmed this scene with the 82-year-old Katherine Marie Copenhofer wandering alone among the ruins of [Music] Kaisim.

According to the plan of US Army Commander George S.

Patton, the final act was to begin in the Swayabian town of Dillingan on that day.

The crossing of the seventh army over the Danube.

The US 12th armored division encountered resistance.

The German commander-in-chief West Field Marshal Albert Kessler was determined to halt the enemy’s advance here.

He informed General Ritteron EP who was willing to capitulate that he Kessler had the better overview and that he also had orders to obey.

3 days later, however, the Danu would no longer present an obstacle to the [Music] Americans.

Adolf Hitler had a nervous breakdown in the bunker under the Rice Chancellory in Berlin on that 22nd of April.

The Furer told his shocked generals that the war was lost and that he would commit suicide.

From that moment on, coherent conduct of the war by the Vermat no longer [Music] existed.

The bridge over the Danube fell into the hands of the Allies intact.

The GIS removed several 500lb bombs which would have destroyed the bridge had they been detonated.

The Americans established the bridge head on the other side.

In Kitsingan near Vertzborg, SS man Richard Yaik was led to his execution at dawn.

The town had been in American hands for 2 weeks now.

Yarotsik had tried to get to a bridge over the mine in civilian clothes with the intention of blowing it up.

He was sumearily caught marshaled as a spy and put before a firing [Music] squad.

A military doctor confirmed his death.

In Grimmer, east of Leipzig, Army cameraman Hutton filmed soldiers and civilians crossing the small Moulder River on that 23rd of April.

The no man’s land between the Ela and Moulder rivers was crowded with former slave laborers liberated allied PS and citizens who had fled from besieged towns.

Many Vermax soldiers had obviously run away to avoid the approaching Soviets.

They thought it better to be taken prisoner by the Americans.

Among these were also soldiers from General Vassov’s Ksac army.

They had gone to war on the side of Hitler and were now dreading Stalin’s revenge.

[Music] The Red Army had reached the Ela River, barely 40 km away.

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] downstream in the town of Dunenburg in Lower Saxony, soldiers of the US Fifth Armor Division discovered some mysterious production sheds in a remote forest.

[Music] A special model of the V1 missile had been built here.

In actual fact, Hitler’s miracle weapon was unmanned and had been primarily used against cities in the south of England since the summer of 1944.

The technicians here had obviously been converting them to be used for kamicazi attacks by fearless pilots.

They would steer the otherwise rather inaccurate V1s into undamaged bridges or advancing enemy units.

The curious GIS inspected the peculiar structure which was never used for its intended purpose.

[Music] [Music] US Major General Emile F.

Reinhardt crossed the Ela in a Russian rowboat to take part in an historic event.

A meeting of the American and the Soviet armed forces was staged near Togal as a symbol of the victory against Nazi Germany.

Soviet cameramen were also present in order to film Reinhardt’s meeting with Major General Vladimir Russov.

However, American reporters have been faster.

On the previous day, a small American reconnaissance patrol had run into Red Army soldiers.

The encounter was captured on film.

US President Harry Truman, who had taken over office from Franklin D.

Roosevelt after the latter’s death on the 12th of April would solemnly declare on the following day, “The meeting of our forces in the heart of Germany is of great significance for the entire world.

The last desperate hopes of Hitler and his gangster administration have now been obliterated.

” Also, in that speech, Truman expressed a wish that seemed unrealistic even at the time it was voiced.

Secondly, the alliance of our armed forces is a signal to us and the entire world that the cooperation between our nations for the course of peace and freedom is an effective cooperation which can withstand the gravest difficulties of the most enormous campaign in military history and end in success.

4 days before Hitler committed suicide and 12 days before the unconditional capitulation of Nazi Germany, the post-war era had begun on the stage of world politics.

[Music]

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