[hankbrown]

I'm seeing Wagner's Walküre at the Washington Opera in the evening. Hope it doesn't turn out to be das Ende.

Or Gotterdammerung.

[aristeides]

A paragraph from Anthony Beevor's recent book on the fall of Berlin:

Berlin itself was already in ruins from Allied bombing. Now Soviet artillery shells began to fall in the streets. The people faced these events with stoicism. When a shell decimated a line of women queuing for food, their ranks closed to fill the gap. The Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance on 12 April. After the finale - Wagner's Götterdämmerung - departing members of the audience were offered cyanide capsules from baskets held by uniformed Hitler Youth.