Rejoining the Elbe and heading for Torgau, where Allies armies met towards the end of the Second World War, US from the West and Soviet Union from the east.
#cycletour #history #cyclinghistory #elberadweg #worldwar2 #ww2 #cycletouring #torgau #1945
Day five. Uh, just had a night in Collet’s Castle. Managed to escape. I didn’t need to use the bed sheets. They just let me out. Um, so I’m heading up back towards the Alba River now. [Music] So, I was just cycling along and I noticed this at the side of the road. It’s a war memorial for the village, this little village that I’m in. Uh, the First World War, obviously. So you can see it’s got a soldier kneeling down there and you’ve got the style helm on top sitting on a pile of oak cleaves. Uh they sort of represent sort of bravery in the German army. Just things that you little things that you come across at the side of the road when you’re on your bike makes it much better than traveling by car. I’m here at a little town called Straa on the banks of the Alba. And here quite a significant event occurred during the Second World War. You can see behind me here, there’s a a bronze mural. So on the 25th of April, an advanced reconnaissance party of five American jeeps arrived at the river and just on the other side was the Red Army. So they crossed and they met. So some people might be saying, well, the Red Army and the United States Army met in Togard, not in Stella. But actual fact this happened just before just across here where there’s the ferry today there was a pontoon bridge built by the Germans and that was to allow German soldiers and German civilians to flee from the advancing Red Army because they didn’t want to get caught by them. On the 22nd of April the Germans blew the bridge uh but in the process they killed hundreds of people and injured hundreds more. because it was a spontaneous meeting um and because there were lots of dead Germans lying around it was deemed not very good for propaganda purposes. So a later stage meeting was held up the river at Togar and that’s when the press photographers were there and that’s really the photographs and the sort of how it was being written into history but it was actually here in Stella where the first meeting took place. This is the ring of friendship that was donated by the Americans to symbolize uh the connection of the Russian American armies. [Music] Cobbles. Cobbles. Cobbles. More bloody cobbles. Here I’m at Togar and this is the linkup memorial that commemorates the meeting of the US first army and the Soviet first Ukrainian front in April 1945. We know the meeting was further south at Australa although I think the tour guard have gone to tarn a bit more on the memorial. This was created by the Soviet Union uh in 1945. At the top you can see there’s lots of rifles stacked up and then there’s some Soviet and US flags. Just across the street from the linkup memorial is this one here. This was done in 1975 and under in other words under the DDR and it commemorates the liberation by the Soviet Union. And interestingly, nowhere on this memorial does it mention the Western Allies as if the whole defeat of fascism and Nazism was solely due to the Soviet Union. [Music]