Soviet War Memorial

It was the spring of 1945, and the war that had ravaged Europe for six years was drawing to a close. Hitler's military machine, which had for a time looked unstoppable as it rolled across the continent, was making its last stand in a Berlin practically beseiged by Stalin's army. In a little under two months, from April to May that year, 20,000 of the Red Army's soldiers died in the German capital. They are remembered in the form of a colossal monument in Treptower Park, built directly after the war in a style and on a scale that embodies Soviet pomp. It is a meeting point for former Soviet veterans of the battle for Berlin, and a place of contemplation and peace.