Moment in time: Winston Churchill tours Berlin – July 16, 1945
When Winston Churchill arrived in Berlin in the summer of 1945, most of the agenda was reserved for important geopolitical business: a summit of victorious powers in nearby Potsdam. Before the summit began, however, Churchill spent a day touring the nerve centre of the enemy that Britain and its allies had so recently vanquished. The weather was hot and the city “nothing but a chaos of ruins,” Churchill later wrote. He visited the Chancellery, the seat of Nazi power, climbing over rubble and around shattered chandeliers. He was shown the site of Hitler’s bunker. Earlier, when he had arrived at the Chancellery, a considerable crowd of Berliners – haggard-looking and dressed in threadbare clothes – were milling out front. Upon seeing him, they began to cheer, leaving Churchill “much moved,” he wrote. “My hate had died with their surrender.” –
Churchill was one of the greatest statesmen ever. Always proud to have lived in the same moments in time.
God Bless and keep reading.
