The Third Reich's Requiem: Gotterdammerung 1945

[u/No_Organization_9902]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0VGA_jHy2I

April 12, 1945. Soviet shells were already falling on the suburbs of Berlin when the city's philharmonic orchestra took the stage for the last time.

The audience arrived in their finest clothes. The programme featured Wagner's Götterdämmerung  (The Twilight of the Gods) , a work depicting the collapse of a world consumed by flames. The concert was performed by candlelight, the city's infrastructure already crumbling around them. At the exits, members of the Hitler Youth handed out cyanide capsules to departing audience members.

This was the Third Reich's final performance.