The day the Red Flag flies atop the Reichstag

On this day, April 30, 1945 soldiers of the Red Army climbed the Reichstag and raised the Soviet flag atop the building.

From that famous day, February 2, 1943, the day the German Army had surrendered at Stalingrad, the Red Army marched relentlessly towards Berlin.

They met up with the US Army at Torgau, an agreement was made that it would be the Soviet Army that would would take Berlin.

The German invasion of Russia and the Soviet counter-offensive resulted in over 23 million Soviet military and civilian deaths. Berlin was theirs by right of suffering and not just conquest.

On the day the Soviet flag flew in Berlin, some short distance away, Hitler with his wife Eva Braun took their lives by suicide.

The following day Josef Goebbels with his wife took their lives before Magda killed all their six children. She could not imagine life under any system other than National Socialism.

Goebbels was born near Düsseldorf, educated at a Gymnasium and sat his Abitur in 1917.

He was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honour to speak at the awards ceremony.

His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest, and Goebbels seriously considered it.

Goebbels studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg and Munich. He was financially supported by a scholarship he was awarded by the Albertus Magnus Society. That's a Dominican link between Hitler's propaganda minister and the Dominican Order.