The prisoners kept their eyes down, not daring to look at their guards or the ring of

a maceated civilian to an emerge from the ruins in such astonishing numbers.

All around, odd shots broke the silence of the former battlefield.

Those in bunkers sounded muffled.

Nobody knew whether each report signified the end of a soldier found hiding, of one who

had offered resistance in some way, or of a severely wounded soldier receiving the coup d'agrasse.

These defeated remnants of the Six Army without weapons or helmets, wearing woolen caps

pulled down or even just rags wrapped around their heads against the hard frost, shivering

in their inadequate great coats, fastened with signal cables as a belt, were herded into

long columns of march.

A group of survivors from the 297th Infantry Division was confronted by a Russian officer

who pointed at the ruins around and yelled at them, that's how Berlin is going to look.

80 years ago.

That was what was going on.

That was what was going on, the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the surrender, the capture,

the capitulation of Six Army, the German Six Army, the first major, no equivocation defeat

of German forces in the Second World War, you know, Battle of Britain, whatever.

Battle of Britain, Alamein, etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

But certainly on the Eastern Front, a proper major puncture.

You can be pushed back to another river, that's one thing.

You can be completely destroyed and surrounded and entirely destroyed and completely hoodwinked.

...