From your Digest
In addition to many other fine answers, here are some recently discovered photos from Berlin in April and May 1945. These were taken by military reporter Valériy Famínskiy and survived the Soviet era in his private archive.
Below, wounded Red Army soldiers who participated in the Battle of the Seelow Heights head back for getting medical care.
Below, a Red Army medevac unit uses dog carriages for transporting heavily wounded to hospital:
A wounded soldier is being put on a horse-drawn carriage in Berlin. The two medevac personnel on the carriage are still wearing padded winter jackets. The pilótki (“pilot hats”) on the heads of three of the men, had been adopted by the Red Army only few years prior, which is why two of them are still wearing it the “dufus way”. After the war, the only correct way was to pinch it at the top, like the soldier at the forefront did. (Look how I was wearing it in the army.)
Below, a red Army unit gets a new battle assignment from a wounded captain. Several men in the right part of the group wear the tanker’s overalls. The trucks look like captured German-produced Ford G917Ts. The jeep to the left is an American lend-lease Willys MB.
Two soldiers use the calm in the fighting to clean their PPSh-41 submachine guns. A large part of our fighting troops in the last months of the war were not supplied with helmets—hence all the soldiers in these Berlin photos with bandaged heads. In an urban fight, the troops were constantly pummelled by speeding cement and stone fragments hitting them from all directions.
Two Soviet officers requisitioning a Berlin apartment for their unit. On the walls, a portrait of our old war hero Mikhail Kutuzov, revered for driving the French out of Russia in 1812, with the man’s quotes.
Below, two Soviet tank crew men are taking a rest in front of an abandoned Königstiger.
Below, a makeshift hospital in one of the captured buildings in Berlin.
Below, a group of soldiers and medical troops take an occasion for a group photo. See how the young people pinched the top of their hats. Meanwhile, the old-timers don’t catch the drift and wear it the “dufus way”. The soldier to the right posing with a machine gun is one of about 200,000 underage boys conscripted in 1944–45 when the USSR started running out of conscription-age men.
Below, my colleagues in propaganda make a staged scene for the photo reporter about public announcements from the new Soviet authorities to the locals in Berlin. The major to the left is reading up a text in German, but his mike doesn’t seem to be connected to the bullhorn we see on the top of the Studebaker in the back. The two women in the pictures are most likely Germans who try to find a job with the new occupation authorities.
Below, a Soviet military officer plays a piano. The pieces of furniture around him are probably rescued from a house on fire. It’s not unthinkable that parts of what we see will be taken by the men in the photo to the USSR as war reparations.
Below, an attempt to squeeze what looks like a 2-door Opel Kadett inside a Red Army Lisunov Li-2 plane (license-built DC-3) to be taken home by some Soviet general in war reparations. UPD: Charles Fletcher points out the astrodome as a proof this is a lend-leased Douglas C-47 Skytrain.
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