Germany reinforces its security against the pro-Russian marches for the Day of the Capitulation of the Third Reich
The German authorities have reinforced security measures in the face of the more than 50 calls announced between Sunday and next Monday, the anniversary of the Capitulation of the Third Reich, including some organized by pro-Russian and far-right groups. Only in Berlin are concentrations expected both at the monument to the Soviet army in the Tiergarten, in the vicinity of the emblematic Brandenburg Gate, and in Treptow Park, where thousands of people usually gather that day to pay tribute to the 80,000 fallen Soviet soldiers in the battle of Berlin.
The Berlin police have prohibited the display of Russian or even Ukrainian flags in some 15 hotspots in the capital, to avoid provocations. This has led to a protest by the Ukrainian ambassador, Andrij Melnik, who has described it as a “slap” to his country.
The police deployment, with some 6,000 agents in the German capital alone, will begin on Sunday, when the 77th anniversary of the signing of the Capitulation of Nazi Germany is commemorated in Germany. That night Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz will address a televised message to his compatriots, aware that this year the commemoration will have a “very particular” character, according to sources from the Berlin Government yesterday.
The so-called Red Army was the first to enter Berlin. Both Russia and Ukraine were “victims of Nazi Germany’s aggression” in World War II, a government source recalled yesterday, later referring to the war now launched from Moscow on Ukraine.
For Monday, a special device has been prepared before the call for a march from the two T.34 tanks, integrated into the Tiergarten monument to the imposing 30-meter-high statue of a Soviet soldier crushing a cross with his sword swastika, in Treptow.
For Germany, the date of May 8 is the date of the defeat of the Nazi regime, responsible for an annihilating war and a massive extermination plan that began with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, in 1933. The Capitulation was signed the night of May 8-9, a few days after the suicide in their bunker of Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, on April 30; over the smoldering Reichstag hung the flag from it a Soviet soldier on May 2. The date still has a complex meaning for many Germans. It took decades for Germany to qualify that day as a “liberation”. Entire cities had been flattened by Allied bombing; According to current estimates, some 900,000 women were victims of mass rape, especially in the part of the country that came under Soviet control. (Eph)