In Europe

the women of Berlin were indefatigable.
    Out on the street the diarist saw the last German soldiers retreating from the front aboard a truck, tired and silent. This was what remained of the Nazi myth. She wrote: ‘I notice again and again these days that my feeling, the feeling of all the women towards the men, is changing. They make us feel sad, they're so pitiful and powerless. The weaker sex.’
    On Friday, 27 April, hiding beside the window at 5 a.m., she sees the first Russian soldiers enter her street; two men with broad backs, wearing leather coats. A piece of heavy artillery was being pulled around the corner. A few hours later the street was full of cars, carts and carefree soldiers, a field kitchen was set up, there was even a cow walking around. That afternoon the first Russian broke into the house, that evening she was raped for the first time, on the steps, while the neighbours held the cellar door shut. More soldiers followed: ‘My heart pounds like crazy. I whisper, I beg: “Only one, please, please, only one. You, if need be. But throw the others out.”’
    That Friday evening the first Americans reached Berlin: two journalists, Andrew Tully of the
Boston Traveler
and Virginia Irwin of the
St Louis Dispatch
, with their driver, Sergeant John Wilson. On Wednesday, 25 April, while the American-Russian feast of fraternisation at Torgau was still in full swing, the two had decided on a half-drunken whim to drive their jeep straight on to the capital. Amid all the confusion, they actually succeeded. They had taken an American flag with them from Torgau, talked their way past all the roadblocks, drove blindly down roads lined with corpses and wrecked vehicles, and finally arrived at the Berlin headquarters of Major Nikolai Kovaleski. In all innocence, Kovaleski arranged a festive banquet to welcome the three Americans – an act of hospitality for which he would later pay dearly, for Stalin was not at all fond of such ‘conspiracies’.
    Virginia Irwin saw Berlin as a ‘maelstrom of destruction’. The Soviet artillery was pounding the city's heart without interruption. The journalists received a guided tour from a Russian soldier, ‘a wild boy with a big fur cap’ who jumped onto the hood of their jeep and pointed the way with an enormous rifle. ‘The earth shakes. The air reeks of gunpowder and corpses. All of Berlin is in chaos. The fierce Russian infantry is pushing on towards the centre. Runaway horses which have escaped the supply wagons are roaming the streets. There are dead Germans everywhere.’ After a while the soldier jumped down off the jeep, shook hands with them and joined a group of infantrymen on their way into the burning, shuddering centre of the city.
    The next morning, Saturday, 28 April, it was party time again. The Soviet officers, war medals clinking on their chests, waltzed with Virginia Irwin and the female soldiers to the strains of ‘Kannst Du Mir Gut Sein’ and ‘Love and Kisses’. Meanwhile orderlies ran in and out, asked for instructions, and went back to the fighting in the streets. Nightmarish things were taking place outside: the SS had flooded U-Bahn stations with hospital trains in them and entered houses flying the white flag of surrender near Kurfürstendamm, shooting everyone in them. There was a bloody massacre on the Charlottenbrücke, where a panicked crowd of civilians and soldiers was trying to make its final escape amid the incoming Soviet shells. An anonymous German soldier wrote in his diary: ‘Through the holes in the street you can see the U-Bahn tunnels. It looks as though the dead are piled on top of each other down there.’
    On the night of 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun. A macabre party was held in the
Führerbunker
, while Hitler dictated his political last will and testament to Fräulein Junge in one of the antechambers.
    Outside, the Battle of Berlin was raging. Upstairs, in the cellars of the
Reichskanselerei
, an orgy was in full swing. Junge, who had gone up to get some food, saw ‘bodies in lustful embrace’ everywhere, even in a dentist's chair. During those final hours, her primary task was to care for Goebbels’ children. At around 3 p.m. on Monday, 30 April, she was making bread and jam for them. ‘The children were cheerful, they felt completely safe with eleven metres of concrete above their heads, they were counting the explosions,’ she said much later. ‘Suddenly we hear a loud bang. ‘A direct hit!’ little