Near the town of Toragau, on the Elbe river today stand a small plaque reading “[H]ere the forces of the first Ukrainian Front linked with American forces”. For the Allies, it was the culmination of joint efforts that began with the Normandy landings in 1944, opening a second front against Hitler. With the Americans and British driving from the West, and the Soviet army from the East, their meeting represented a complete encirclement of Germany, another nail in the coffin of the Third Reich.

On this day, April 25, in 1945, forward elements of the First Ukrainian Front, the same one that would lead the drive on Berlin weeks later, met up with an American patrol led by Lt. Albert Kotzebue, who was on reconnaissance at a nearby village.

Kotzebue was decided to take the initiative and advance further than he was ordered, to link up with the main Soviet force. Flying the British Union Jack that they liberated from a group of released British POWs, Kotzebue jumped on a boat across the river. The historic encounter, commemorated in the plaque at Torgau came from a meeting right in the middle of the Elbe, as Kotzebue and a Soviet soldier embraced, under the twisted wreckage of a former bridge over the river.