Letter from Pyotr Ilyich Stoyanov to his wife Anastasia Sergeyevna Stoyanova (USEAAR, #30)

This post is part of an after-action report of Unconditional Surrender! (Salvatore Vasta, GMT Games) and therefore entirely fictitious.

Berlin, June 22, 1943

Beloved Nastya!
You will have noticed from the top of this page – I am truly sending this letter from Berlin!

Fighting in the city has ceased two days ago. It’s been fierce – the Germans have been throwing their last reserves to their troops in Berlin, and we’ve lost many good men to tanks, snipers, and anti-tank weapons. Sometimes, they have given these weapons to mere boys, no older than twelve or fourteen! The fascists are truly animals.
I have only gotten some bruises when a wall next to me was hit by a shell. Nothing that would not heal soon. Not everybody has been so lucky: Yegor Vladimirovich has lost his leg, and Vanya Aleksandrovich has gone missing. The street where he was last seen has been reduced to heaps of rubble, so we fear he was buried somewhere under there. It has been a savage week.

Soviet soldier raises a flag over the Reichstag building in Berlin. CC-BY 4.0, copyright holder: Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

Thus I am writing to you from the capital of Germany. Or should I say, the former center of fascism? Our officers have been very careful over the last days to distinguish between the fascists who have plunged us into war and the German working class who have merely been misled or cajoled. Just yesterday, we have hung a large placard from a building that reads a quote by Generalissimo Stalin: „The Hitlers come and go, but the German people will remain.“
Speaking of which: Not sure if Hitler has gone. One hears a lot of rumors. Some say he has fled to Switzerland, others maintain he is still with the retreating German army to the west of us. Ivan Pavlovich theorizes that he might have put on the uniform of a common German soldier, hiding in plain sight among our prisoners-of-war. Anyway, all I can attest is that I haven’t seen him.
With Berlin ours, the war cannot last longer than a few more days or weeks. I will be home with you soon!
Love,
Pyotr

You can see the current state of affairs in the game in the Twitter thread:

June 1943: Germany is down to 12 national will now (every destroyed field army will lower it by one, every lost home city by two). When do you think they will unconditionally surrender?

— Clio's Board Games (@cliosboardgames) July 11, 2020