Unter den Linden is the central Berlin boulevard that frames the last phase of Adrián Gallardo’s wartime story. In the final days of the Battle of Berlin, its damaged palaces become barracks for a dwindling force, and the avenue’s approach toward the Brandenburg Gate brings the Soviet advance directly into view.

Setting and Military Role

A palace on Unter den Linden, among the buildings that had best withstood Russian bombing, housed the troop for a week. The soldiers’ first task was to clear rubble from its floors so that they could occupy the rooms. The walls were so badly damaged that setting anything against them sent dust and pebbles cascading down; the building offered shelter only in the most precarious sense, and another air raid could turn it into a tomb.

The officers dismissed the prospect of a further aerial attack. Soviet infantry was advancing so rapidly, and outnumbered the defenders so heavily, that a ground assault seemed imminent and an air attack appeared unnecessary. That calculation failed: on 10 April 1945, more than 1,200 Soviet aircraft struck the Reich’s last stronghold in a massive bombardment whose effects were visible even in a city that already seemed destroyed to its foundations.

Retreat and Desertion

The boulevard also marks the collapse of the force gathered around Gallardo. Of the fifty men Kleiber had recruited to take to Klooga, only five made it as far as Berlin. During the retreat, the prospect of reaching railway stations drew soldiers away from their duties: some stole civilian clothes, hid them under their uniforms or in their packs, and escaped through towns, sometimes bribing guards with the clothes they had taken. Captured deserters were shot, but many more managed to board trains or trucks. German civilians, already expecting surrender, were increasingly unwilling to report them.

Fritz Weber, the only German among the Klooga soldiers who reached the end, was from Potsdam and had married a Berliner. He had grown withdrawn during the advance, but news that the group would be assigned to reserve troops in Berlin’s central district revived his spirits. Once the column entered the city, he waited for the lieutenant to leave for instructions, quietly shook hands with his companions, and slipped away to go home. He warned them that Estonia would not be forgiven. None followed him; when the lieutenant returned, he did not notice Weber’s absence.

The Boulevard and the Final Stand

At the end of the fighting, Unter den Linden gives the Soviet advance a clear, almost measured approach. On 2 May, a lone Soviet tank—the first the two occupants had seen—moved slowly along the boulevard toward the Brandenburg Gate. From their position at a corner of Wilhelmstrasse, both could watch it without difficulty. One of them spoke Spanish, welcomed its arrival, and told the other to prepare. Adrián Gallardo prepared himself.

The contrast between the boulevard’s monumental route and the isolated defenders compresses the scale of the battle into a single sight: a tank advancing toward the Gate, watched by two men from a street corner. The avenue is not merely a backdrop to Berlin’s fall. It is the ground on which the remaining military position narrows to a final, exposed encounter with the approaching Soviet force.