Battle of Berlin: European Waffen-SS Troops Fought To the Bitter End

Inside the Führerbunker, May 1945

Outside the bunker at Friedrichstraße, May 1945

A fallen volunteer of SS-Regiment Danmark, late April/early May 1945

The last stand in the streets of the German capital Berlin was made in the face of insurmountable odds against which any sort of victory was utterly impossible. The volunteers of the European Waffen-SS knew this would be their last battle. They were not ardent committed National Socialists, but rather vehemently anti-Bolshevists enlisted in the hope of eradicating the threat that Communist Russia posed to Western and Eastern Europe. The bonds shared by its soldiers as the result of having fought side-by-side for years held many of them together. A few Waffen-SS foreign volunteers did manage to escape Berlin, but the reprieve they attained was often temporary. Credit: WHN. Top image: mold covered SS officers cap on floor inside Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's command bunker where he and Eva Braun allegedly committed suicide. The photo was taken two weeks after Hitler's death by William Vandivert, the first Western photojournalist to photograph the Berlin ruins and the Führerbunker located near the Reich Chancellery. He used candles to illuminate the dark rooms in the bunker, searching for clues about Hitler's last moments. It was evident that the Russians who first had entered the bunker had looted it thoroughly. LIFE photo archive. Fair use. Middle image: German POWs stumble through Friedrichstraße in the heart of Berlin to an uncertain destiny - passing by the Swedes destroyed SPW half-track n°339 - many would not live to see Europe again. According to Rüdiger Overmans of the German Office of Military History 35.8 % who entered Soviet captivity died. Several hundred thousand of these POWs had been transferred by the U.S. to the Soviets which used them, alongside Soviet captured POWs and German civilians, as forced laborers. The last major repatriation of German POW survivors of the forced labor camps occurred in 1956. The photo was taken by Soviet propaganda photographer Mark Redkin in early May 1945. Redkin worked for Soviet newspaper Krasnaia Zvezda. Bottom image: a Soviet Red Army soldier having his photograph taken next to a fallen Berlin defender in the heart of the bombed-out city. The photo was taken in the corner of Chausseestraße and Oranienburger Straße late April/early May 1945. The dead is wearing a field tunic of an SS-Hauptsturmführer with an unreadable Waffen-SS cuff title on the lower left sleeve. The Danish national arm shield below the SS arm eagle indicates that he was a Waffen-SS volunteer serving with SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 24 Danmark of the multinational Nordland Division. For some reason this SS officer had been armed with a Fallschirmjägergewehr 42, the paratrooper automatic rifle FG-42, and used a paratrooper helmet. Pinned to his uniform is also the Iron Cross First Class. The fallen has never been positively identified. Bottom photos by Russian State Military History Archive (RGVIA). PD.