April 16, 1945. The Red Army begins its Berlin offensive. The generals are willing to incur heavy losses. On the Western Front, the first concentration camps have been liberated by British and US forces. They discovered emaciated prisoners and mounds of corpses. Hundreds of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers surrender. Churchill doesn’t want to leave Berlin to Stalin, but Eisenhower has other concerns. He is afraid of German units forming a national redoubt in the Alps. Hitler finally realizes that the war is a lost cause. Only Goebbels and his family remain in the Führer’s bunker. Hitler and his wife Eva Braun commit suicide on April 30. Nor do the Goebbels family survive the downfall. It is left to administrators under Grand Admiral Doenitz to declare unconditional surrender. On May 8, the Second World War comes to an end in Europe.
