The Daily Express rejoices to announce the report of Adolf Hitler's death...

No inch of space wasted upon his career as evil of his deeds is all too well-known

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NO ONE knew how or when the Third Reich would collapse. British parliamentarian Harold Nicolson summed up the confusion in his diary on March 15, 1945: "The Nazis may retire to their Bavarian Alpine Redoubt to stage a Götterdammerung and prolong their own invincible legend. Others do not share this idea and believe there will be a series of large-scale capitulations. All of which boils down to the fact that the war may last till Christmas 1945, or it may end by June. Nobody can tell."

Efforts to finally rid the world of Nazi Germany began with two great Allied river crossings in March and April 1945, both heralded by unprecedented thunders of cannon-fire. In the east, the Soviets had advanced to the River Oder, 40 miles from Berlin and paused to reorganise, reinforce and reequip. Then, on April 16, led by Marshals Zhukov, Rokossovsky and Konev, two million men with 6,000 tanks and supported by 40,000 artillery guns, parked one every yard, leapt across the water and attacked the German capital. The assault would carry them to the very steps of Hitler's Berlin bunker.

In the west, three million Canadians, Britons, Americans and Frenchmen launched an equally ambitious series of attacks along a 300-mile stretch of the fast-flowing River Rhine, Germany's western barrier since Roman times.

At Kleve, Rees and Wesel near the GermanDutch border, Field Marshal Montgomery led the main push by Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander. His assaults thereafter triggered a southwards ripple of American and French units also crossing under fire along as far upriver as Strasbourg.

For Montgomery, his riverine operation overnight on March 23-24, codenamed Operation Plunder, was the culmination of every doctrine and piece of machinery his soldiers had developed since winning at El Alamein, 28 months earlier.