28. Берлин (Berlin)

Destruction and fall of Berlin

This extensively restored working copy belonged to Major General Safaryan, commander of the 89th Armenian Infantry Division, and is part of his estate. The map shows the division’s progress during the Battle of Berlin in April 1945. The division attacks from the north (Wilhelmsruh) and is the second division to penetrate the ‘Reichstag’ (the blue circle near the river Spree) on 30 April via the ‘Invalidenstraße’. The building is taken one room at a time. The basic map was printed in besieged Leningradin 1943. The shaded overprint visualises the situation on 25 March: partially or completely destroyed neighbourhoods and buildings – essentially most of the city – are marked in red. The information used for the map was gathered by spy planes painted in German colours, which enabled them to fly around undetected. The overprint was applied on a printing press housed in special railway carriages just behind the frontlines. All six thousand street and building names were transcribed in Cyrillic. The raising of the Soviet flag three times on the ‘Reichstag’ heralds the total defeat of the Germans.