'THE WAR IS AT AN END'

• IT'S OVER! • Britain goes wild in the streets

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ON April 30, 1945, holed up in his Berlin bunker as Russian forces closed in on the city, Adolf Hitler - tyrannical Nazi leader of the Third Reich and architect of the cataclysmic war that had ravaged Europe and cost millions of lives - took his own life.

His death brought one of the most brutal regimes in modern history to a sudden conclusion.

His out-of-sight exit marked the endgame of World War Two.

Germany had offered up one last major offensive on the Western Front through the densely-forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.