Friday April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler celebrates his 56e Birthday in the bunker located under the gardens of the Reich Chancellery, where he permanently moved on March 30. Physically, it is a wreck, ravaged by Parkinson’s disease. But his will remains intact. How to interpret that he still plays the war chief by moving divisions that are only battalions? Has he lost contact with reality, or does he play comedy to sculpt his image as a fighter for posterity?
No sensible spirit, in any case, can maintain the slightest doubt about the outcome. The last hopes of containing the enemy coalition disappeared, in the west, on March 22, when the IIIe American army crossed the Rhine; to the east, on March 27, with the last attempted IXe armed to dislodge the red army from its bridgehead on the ODER. While the Western armies spread to the Elbe without organized resistance, the same April 20, the first Soviet tanks are reported in the eastern suburbs of the German capital. For the 389e And last time since 1939, the sirens howl to announce the last bombardment of the Anglo-Saxon quadrimotors.
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