War Zone Zoo: The Berlin Zoo and World War 2 by Prenger Kevin

Author:Prenger, Kevin [Prenger, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

13

Zero hour

While soldiers were still sacrificing their lives in Berlin for their fatherland, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in the afternoon of April 30, 1945, along with Eva Braun whom he had married shortly before. Two days later, the Wehrmacht garrison capitulated in the German capital, followed by the signing of Germany’s unconditional surrender by Generaloberst Alfred Jodl on May 7 in Reims and by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel in Berlin on May 8. The Second World War in Europe had come to an end. In Germany, Stunde Null (Zero hour) began, the period of transition to a new era in which the country in literal as well as in figurative sense had to be rebuilt from the ground up. In Berlin, damage was huge; entire blocks of buildings had been destroyed, streets were covered in debris and supply of electricity, water and food almost non-existent. The once impressive 19th century Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche on the edge of the zoo with its central tower missing looked like a half burned candle. Only two out of the four side towers were still standing while its walls looked like Swiss cheese as a result of the many hits by bullets and grenades.

Just like in its surroundings, destruction in the zoo was massive. Anything still intact after the bombings had as yet been destroyed by hits of mortars and grenades of the Red Army. “The zoo had been transformed into a rough battlefield, full of bomb craters like a lunar landscape,” Dr. Katharina Heinroth declared, “saturated with trenches; pavements and flowerbeds scored and flattened by the heavy tanks, all houses shot to pieces or burnt, not a single roof was to be found; many buildings had turned into huge piles of debris, wreckage of vehicles and tanks scattered everywhere, trees had fallen like match sticks, bars had been torn down or cut, branches shot off and between them the corpses of humans and animals. The perimeter wall, many miles in length had been destroyed in many places, just like water mains, power lines and the sewage system.” [11] On the premises, the remains of 82 people were counted and those of many more animals. Injured horses were stumbling among the piles of wreckage and the dead bodies of other animals. To the employees, it was heartrending to see what had been achieved with love and dedication over a century, being utterly destroyed in hardly 2 years. They felt deep sorrow for the victims among the animals.

Russian author and war correspondent Konstantin Simonov reported about a gruesome discovery in the monkey house after hostilities had ended. Accompanied by a keeper he entered the brick building and the first thing he saw on the floor in front of the cages were the bodies of three SS men who had been killed. “Obviously they had fled here and were probably killed by a single burst of fire from the door.” In the cage were two dead apes: “an enormous gorilla and a very large chimpanzee. Two dark puddles of blood had formed beneath them.

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