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| © Berliner Zeitung |
German“An exciting day: peace rumors; Himmler’s proposal, etc.” Klaus Mann is with the American army in Rome when he hears of Himmler’s offer to surrender to the Western powers. Hitler receives the news in the Führerbunker via Radio Stockholm. He rages and has the SS liaison officer Otto Hermann Fegelein shot; Himmler himself is no longer in Berlin. The Red Army now stands in the north immediately beside the government district. Two divisions begin the assault on the Moltke Bridge in the afternoon; by midnight the first soldiers reach the southern bank.
Bersarin issues his “Order No. 1,” regulating life in the occupied city: “Within 72 hours, all members of the German Wehrmacht, the SS and the SA who remain in the city of Berlin must likewise report for registration.” Officer Wladimir Gelfand writes in his diary: “The streets of Berlin are noisy and lively. The Germans are all wearing white armbands. They are not afraid of us and walk about the streets wherever they can.”
Brigitte Mira takes refuge with the nuns at St. Gertrauden Hospital. Its chronicle says that, “on the whole, the Russian soldiers behaved decently toward the sisters.” Hugo B. from Kreuzberg witnesses his neighbor being shot by Russian soldiers after he defended his daughter. “We in particular, who never believed Nazi propaganda, are now very disappointed by the Russians’ conduct.”
Tomorrow historian Gerd Herzog writes: the final issue of the Panzerbär appears.