This book was written by men and women who as participants in the Battle of Berlin gained a unique and poignant view of the last days and hours of the Second World War. Its authors include the late Marshal Konev, one of the war's outstanding generals, who also contributed the preface, the writer Vsevolod Vishnevsky, who was present at the surrender negotiations, the poet Vassily Subbotin, who took part in the assault on the Reichstag, and the journalist Yelena Rzhevskaya, who as an army interpreter found herself in Hitter's bunker within a few hours of its capture. Many of the documents quoted appear in English for the first time.