Dramatic Color Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

in History | November 21st, 2019 14 Comments

From Kro­nos Media comes a pret­ty astound­ing mon­tage of video show­ing Berlin in July 1945 — just two months after the Nazis lost The Bat­tle of Berlin and Hitler com­mit­ted sui­cide, and a month after the allies signed the Dec­la­ra­tion Regard­ing the Defeat of Ger­many and the Assump­tion of Supreme Author­i­ty by Allied Pow­ers. 

The near­ly 75-year-old footage shows a city in sham­bles. You see the wound­ed, and build­ings reduced to piles of rub­ble. The Reich­stag makes an appear­ance, as does the worn-out Bran­den­burg Gate, through which res­i­dents passed from British-con­trolled Berlin to Sovi­et-con­trolled Berlin. And most­ly you see every­day peo­ple try­ing to get on with their lives. Most chill­ing is the final scene, where an aer­i­al shot car­ries you over miles and miles of des­o­la­tion. To see Berlin dur­ing an ear­li­er, cer­tain­ly bet­ter time, vis­it our 2013 post: Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film Between 1900 and 1914.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in May 2015.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

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Comments (14)
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  • Kingsman says:
    November 21, 2019 at 2:23 pm

    There was still a lot of dam­age there in the ear­ly 60’s when I served there.

    Reply
  • George says:
    November 21, 2019 at 3:24 pm

    Very dramatic.but you should post more dra­mat­ic footage of oth­er coun­tries they dam­aged too like London,Poland.Drama does’nt stop with Berlin.Nazis destroyed lots of coun­tries too

    Reply
  • Heidi Recker says:
    November 21, 2019 at 8:09 pm

    They enslaved my then 15 yr old czech dad to dig out for 2 years the still spew­ing gas pipes of the bombed out build­ings over there. The sol­diers also just did­n’t
    tuck those young boys in at night.I’m tak­ing about the NAZIS

    Reply
  • Lev says:
    November 22, 2019 at 6:31 am

    No pity what­so­ev­er at all. It deserves is. I’m hurt by the nowa­days trend of rep­re­sent­ing nazis as heroes and suf­fer­ers.

    Reply
  • Eribert says:
    November 22, 2019 at 7:51 am

    I do have sym­pa­thy not only for Ger­many, but all of Europe. Not all Fas­cists were Ger­man and not all Ger­mans were Fas­cists, yet every­one suf­fered at the Fas­cist’s hands. All coun­tries of Europe had either a Fas­cist Par­ty, even Eng­land, or Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers. The real ene­my was not Ger­many, but ultra-right wing Fas­cism; a mes­sage that seems to have got­ten lost in the last few years.

    Reply
  • TommyT says:
    November 22, 2019 at 8:19 am

    Yes, you can see the fas­cist on our cam­pus­es and in the halls of Con­gress. Try­ing to take away our of free speech and the right to defend our­selves. Like today, the fas­cist of yes­ter­day were embraced by the elite and the intel­li­gentsia. Trump is the Churchill of our time. He has sac­ri­ficed sig­nif­i­cant amounts of mon­ey and has been attacked vicious­ly. You will know them by their fruits.

    Reply
  • City Girl says:
    November 22, 2019 at 9:39 am

    Ger­many got off easy. Con­sid­er­ing the death, destruc­tion, hor­ror and pure evil Ger­many inflict­ed on mil­lions this is triv­ial. Post war, dur­ing the war Ger­many did­n’t suf­fer as much as the coun­tries they warred against and deserved much more destruc­tion and pun­ish­ment.
    Instead they were reward­ed with rebuild­ing as a bul­wark against Com­mu­nist Rus­sia, which what­ev­er their own evil, also suf­fered from the Nazis

    Reply
  • Stuey says:
    November 22, 2019 at 10:13 am

    Got no sym­pa­thy with Ger­many what­so­ev­er. Should have bull­dozed the whole place down.take a trip to one of the many con­cen­tra­tion camps and then see how much sym­pa­thy you have for Ger­many.

    Reply
  • Robert Bennett says:
    November 22, 2019 at 10:53 am

    Well.….the British were the inven­tors of the Con­cen­tra­tion Camp. The evil British empire went back to the cap­tive nations and slaugh­tered and cas­trat­ed as long as pos­si­ble.

    Reply
  • Brian Doherty says:
    November 22, 2019 at 11:05 am

    Antifi­ca the new Amer­i­can Nazi par­ty

    Reply
  • Leonid Ardov says:
    November 22, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    More mil­i­tary age males in civil­ian clothes than I would have expect­ed. Most­ly at the extremes of the age range, but still.

    Reply
  • Tom Hayes says:
    November 23, 2019 at 1:40 am

    Robert Ben­nett… The con­cen­tra­tion camps in South Africa were to con­cen­trate the Boy­er civil­ians in one place.. They weren’t designed as death camps.. That hon­our goes to Ger­many finest… Yes there were deaths in the South African camps but that was main­ly due to mis­man­age­ment and logis­ti­cal prob­lems but there was­n’t a polit­i­cal­ly dri­ven death pro­gramme.. .. Yes we know the British made mis­takes etc but to com­pare poor­ly run hold­ing facil­i­ties to a olit­i­calky sanc­tioned death camp is a bit niaive.

    Reply
  • Michael Grant says:
    November 23, 2019 at 1:55 am

    My dad was in Berlin a cou­ple of weeks after end of Euro­pean war. Have some images but they do not por­tray as vivid­ly as this.

    Reply
  • Toploadednet says:
    November 23, 2019 at 3:48 pm

    Thanks for shar­ing. So infor­ma­tive.

    Reply

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