Report. Elbe Stop Line and Berlin, 5th Armored Division MII Team 440-G. 7 May 1945

Washington, D.C.: National Archives, 1945. - 8 pgs. From a copy now in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio University, this is an official report by two officers of the U.S. 5th Armored Division who were ordered to make contact with the opposite Russian forces at the Elbe in 1945. After completion of their mission they, with their Chinese-American driver, made a sidetrack to Berlin and appear to have been the first U.S. combat troops to enter the erstwhile capital of the Third Reich. This report contains their observations of the defeated German military, the battlefields, and the Soviet troops (32nd Cossack Cavalry Division). This copy was obtained by the author Cornelius Ryan and is now in the collection of Ohio University with much other research material he gathered. A very interesting piece of first-hand history.