APRIL 25 1945 was a day that changed the course of history whilst at the same time narrowly averting a Capitalist coup that would have delivered world domination to Wall Street banking cartels and Washington DC.

Unique archival photographs of Soviet commanders during a meeting with the Allies are published today on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense in the section ‘Meeting on the Elbe: Unknown Pages’, the press service of the military department.

The historic meeting of the Soviet and American armies during the Great Patriotic War took place on April 25, 1945, near the German city of Torgau on the Elbe River. Then the units and divisions of the 69th Infantry Division of the 1st American Army and the 58th Rifle Division, part of the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, commanded by Marshal Ivan Konev, met. 

‘A selection of photographs from the family archives of the Soviet commanders Konev, Zhadov, Baklanov, Rodimtsev identify rituals at the headquarters of the Allied armies, about friendly meetings and mutual celebrations held in April and May 1945 in the German cities of Torgau and Wiesbaden, where the headquarters of the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front and the American 12th Army Group.

The section captures the moment of delivery to Marshal Konev of a return gift from the American General Bradley, the Willys military Jeep. Of the 654,000 Jeeps made, most were given to the Red Army. Prior to this, Konev gave his colleague a war horse.

Details of the first meetings with the American allies are presented in a published excerpt from the conversation between Konev and writer Konstantin Simonov, who also participated in the famous meeting on the Elbe.

As the chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) Vladimir Medinsky noted, the meeting on the Elbe became the highest point of relations between the allies during the war.

‘But right after the end of the war, already during the Potsdam Conference in July and August 1945, the outlines of the future confrontation between the USSR and the Western allies were being prepared,’ he added.

According to Medinsky, the situation was aggravated by American and British preparations for the atomic bombing of Soviet cities. Furthermore, there was the development, on the personal order of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to prepare the operation ‘The Unthinkable’. This was a plan for a land war in Europe against the Soviet Union.

By August 1945, the Capitalist Wall Street had provided the Soviet Union with the military and economic means (Lend Lease) to wage war on National Socialist Germany from the East. The Soviets and Red Army had thus helped Wall Street by removing Germany as a trade rival. The USSR had by August 1945 served Wall Street and Washington’s purpose.

By August 1945, emerging from the ruins of World War II as a potential trade rival, there was now a compelling urge to prevent the Soviet Union from replacing the Reich as a trade rival to Capitalist interests. Winston Churchill led the campaign to do to Russia’s major city what the U.S. had already done to Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Churchill’s ‘Unthinkable’ due to war weariness was postponed.

You can see more pictures with their descriptions on the Russian-language page of the website of the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense.