As the United States was tightening the noose around Japan in 1945, so the Red Army, battling increasingly fanatical resistance, around the same time moved inexorably closer to the German capital. Truman reluctantly gave the green light for the Russians to take Berlin, partly out of consideration for their outsize burden in casualties from the war, and partly because loss estimates for the Battle of Berlin projected gruesomely high numbers. So gathered on the eastern outskirts of the city the 1st Belorussian Front, under Marshal Zhukov, and the 1st Ukraine Front under Marshal Konev.

On this day, April 16, in 1945 the Red Army launched its final assault on Berlin. Two million men in total departed that day, well equipped with 6,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 6,000 aircraft and almost 16,000 artillery pieces. Waiting for them was a network of fortifications defended by close to a million German defenders, many of them volkssturm militia: civilians pressed into service with little practical military training.

Like the American marines in Iwo Jima, a famous picture of Russian soldiers raising the Soviet hammer and sickle over the Berlin capital building was actually a recreation. The building was completely cleared secured before a journalist was allowed in the next day, to snap the iconic image that would be used in Soviet propaganda for decades to come.