Patrols from the US First Army and the Soviet Red Army met on a shattered bridge over the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany, on April 25, 1945. The meeting, later staged for photographs of soldiers shaking hands and embracing, symbolized the collapse of Nazi Germany, now cut in half by advancing Allied and Soviet forces closing in from east and west.
American Lieutenant William Robertson and Soviet Lieutenant Alexander Silvashko led the patrols that first spotted each other across the ruined Elbe, a moment so significant that both armies staged a more polished reenactment the next day for cameras, complete with flags and formal handshakes. The image of American and Soviet soldiers embracing became one of the war's most enduring photographs.
The link-up meant Nazi Germany had been sliced into a northern and southern remnant, with Berlin, where Adolf Hitler would take his own life within days, isolated and surrounded. Wehrmacht units were now trapped between two of the most powerful militaries in human history, with nowhere left to retreat.
The goodwill of the Elbe meeting proved short-lived. Within months, the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union began fraying, and the same soldiers who had toasted each other with vodka and cigarettes on the riverbank would soon find themselves on opposite sides of a Cold War that divided Germany, and the world, for the next 45 years.
Key people: William Robertson, Alexander Silvashko