At the start of April 1945, in the “Fuhrer bunker,” Hitler’s underground bunker system in Berlin, “everyone, with the exception of Adolf Hitler, is terrified” (275). The claustrophobic environment and the certainty that the war is lost, contribute to a sense of fear and hopelessness. Yet life for the average Berliner is worse. Allied air raids are constant, with the Americans bombing Berlin during the day, and the RAF during the night. Already 50,000 Germans have died in these attacks. Further, there is deep anxiety regarding what will happen when the Soviets capture the city: There is widespread fear that the Soviets will rape and murder the city’s inhabitants.

The German campaign on the Eastern Front began in 1941. The Nazi invasion initially met with startling success, as “Operation Barbarossa” annihilated several Soviet armies. However, ferocious Soviet counterattacks combined with the onset of the Russian winter forced the Wehrmacht to stop just short of Moscow. Then in 1942, in a bid to seize the oilfields of the Russian Caucasus, and guarantee Soviet defeat, Hitler laid siege to the city of Stalingrad. After six months of bloody fighting, though, and almost a million casualties on each side, the Soviets succeeded in encircling the German Sixth Army, which surrendered.