1945 CROSSING THE LINE
Lugging whatever they can in suitcases or boxes, desperate Germans clamber over the bent, crumpling skeleton of a railway bridge spanning the River Elbe. The city of Tangermünde, 60 miles west of Berlin, escaped severe damage until the final weeks of World War II, when US troops approached and the retreating German forces blasted the bridge to slow them down. Thousands of people made the crossing so that they could surrender to the Americans, rather than the Soviet Red Army advancing from the east.