YALTA

Moscow, Soviet Union • January 12, 1945 On New Year’s Day 1945 Germans of every stripe faced the stark reality of impending defeat. That reality mate­ri­alized in the cacophony of the opening salvos of the Soviet Union’s offen­sive on Ger­many’s east­ern frontier, the Vistula-Oder operation, that began on this date in 1945. The strongest Soviet…