"Chairman, the Soviet Union wishes to begin negotiations on May 2nd regarding the division of occupation zones." Foreign Minister Li Shiguang relayed the latest critical task from his department.

Li Runshi signaled his agreement. Ending the war was his most fervent expectation at this stage. Even if it meant moving the struggle against the USSR into a different arena, the Chinese leadership was united in its desire to conclude the hostilities.

"Minister Li, are you certain you won't reconsider?" Li Runshi asked.

Li Shiguang shook his head. "I am prepared to retire. I’ve served for a long time, and I believe it is time for me to move on."

Li Runshi had hoped Li Shiguang would stay. Since 1928, his position as Foreign Minister had been virtually a constant. For seventeen years, he had been the face of Chinese diplomacy. Within the He Rui government, he held the record for the longest tenure in a single post. On the global stage, he was the most senior elder of the diplomatic community.

"What do you intend to do after you leave, Minister?" Li Runshi probed indirectly.

"I plan to teach," Li Shiguang answered decisively. "The political science department at Tianjin University has already extended an invitation. I’ll be colleagues with Principal Zhao once again."

Seeing his determination, Li Runshi said no more on the matter. He merely added, "When you see Principal Zhao, please tell him not to be consumed by grief. Tell him to take care of his health."

Li Shiguang nodded. Zhao Tianlin had been the first figure in He Rui’s Northeast Government to wield genuine academic influence, and one of the few core members who was older than He Rui. Born in 1886, he was only four years the Chairman’s senior, making him fifty-nine this year.

Following He Rui’s death, Zhao had suffered a profound shock and fallen seriously ill. He was currently in convalescence. Seeing the victory as a settled fact, the older comrades seemed to be fading away. Li Shiguang was filled with emotion. Since he was also leaving the government, he felt no need for decorum and sighed, "Chairman Li, lately I’ve been thinking of the term 'Destiny.' Though I do not believe in fate, there are some things I simply cannot let go of."

Though Li Runshi felt the weight of his companion’s mood, he answered firmly: "There is no destiny. The Chairman’s death was largely an accident. It was only because of his profound sense of responsibility and his grounded style that he made such thorough preparations beforehand."

Thinking of this made Li Runshi’s own heart ache. He spoke of something he had never shared before: "The Chairman once spoke with me about what work he might do after the victory. He said then that he might go to work at the United Nations. He wanted to give the UN a greater function in opposing aggression and stopping war. The Chairman never saw today’s victory as his endpoint; so long as he was capable of the work, he intended to continue."

The revelation lifted Li Shiguang’s spirits slightly. Yet the fact that He Rui would never see the day of true victory with his own eyes remained difficult to accept.

Seeing him still despondent, Li Runshi advised, "The war will not end quietly. This is a struggle over the future standards of justice for the world. The Red Army is facing the true reactionaries. One might even say these reactionaries are genuine, fanatical warriors with their own beliefs.

"I’ve said it before: when the direction is wrong, the more knowledge one has, the more reactionary they become. In this final phase of the war, this truth will manifest with a fierce clarity. Minister Li, you should observe the attitudes of other nations toward this."

Li Shiguang didn't quite grasp the implication and asked directly, "What value is there in observing the death-struggle of the losers?"

Li Runshi understood the reaction. He himself had struggled to understand He Rui’s pre-death assessment of the war's possible final battle. It wasn't that the ideas were far-fetched, but that He Rui was capable of viewing the situation through the eyes of the Nazis themselves.

"For the German people, the Nazi government was the party that rescued them from despair," Li explained. "Compared to the previous era of poverty, hunger, and hopelessness, their standard of living improved. The shortages of food and daily goods only emerged in the last three months. Since 1937, their life hasn't been bad—better, certainly, than under the Weimar Republic.

"The German people did not firmly oppose colonialism, which proves they were not advanced. They chose racism, which shows they lagged behind the times and failed to struggle against the barbaric elements of their own culture. Their error lay in supporting a party that used war to solve domestic problems. Their crime lay in participating in racial slaughter.

"However, from their own perspective, Nazism was their national movement. The personal corruption within that movement did not change the fact that Nazism, as a German movement, was working with all its might for the benefit of the German people.

"Thus, the performance of the die-hard Nazis in these final battles can, in a sense, be described as tragically heroic. Fighting for the interests of one's own people against perceived external oppression—that is a sentiment that easily finds resonance."

Li Shiguang pondered this for a long time before answering. "Chairman, I have decided to leave the Foreign Ministry, and I will not change my mind. But Chairman He made it clear before he launched this war of liberation: its true meaning is to build a new world. In that future world, no people will be trapped in a life of extreme, societal despair. Without such despair, extremist ideologies may still exist, but they will not trigger extremist social movements. I believe in your capability, Chairman Li, and in our comrades in the Center. I do not believe such extremist thoughts will find resonance with the youth of the future."

Li Runshi could only nod. Li Shiguang’s understanding was sound, yet his impending departure left Li feeling a sense of loss.

After leaving the President’s office, Li Shiguang gave no further thought to the battle for Berlin. He felt only a deep melancholy. Leaving a post one has held for decades is always a mournful affair. Furthermore, he was not a man prone to desertion.

He had served the nation for over twenty years, partly out of a genuine desire to see China escape its fate of being bullied, and partly out of a willingness to serve the He Rui government. Now that He Rui was gone, China had achieved goals far beyond even his most optimistic dreams, becoming the leader of the world. In an era where countless individuals sought to work for the Chinese government, his departure was not a retreat at the height of his career, but simply because he could no longer find a reason to stay.

Particularly as he felt the hidden undercurrents of struggle within the Party and the nation, he had no desire to be involved. Recalling his years in the government—that sense of moving forward together, where even comrades who disliked one another could cooperate with sincerity, often discovering that their rivals were also working with a deep desire to improve themselves and push China forward—it all moved him profoundly.

Amidst his melancholy, Li Shiguang found himself caught in an irresistible fantasy. *If He Rui hadn't died, would the upcoming internal reorganization be more moderate?*

Though he sincerely hoped the struggle would not be so fierce, he had followed He Rui too long and was too well-versed in historical materialism to believe otherwise. He knew it was impossible.

One's position determines one's perspective. The foundation of their unity had been the ever-growing benefits brought by China's victory. Under He Rui's systems and policies, those benefits had been distributed fairly to all Chinese people. The more abundant the social resources, the less intense the internal contradictions.

But everyone's position was different; some were even in direct opposition. Once the external contradiction, previously prioritized, vanished, the internal contradictions—hitherto treated as secondary—would inevitably rise to the fore.

Li Shiguang could see no "gentle" way to resolve these conflicts. If one existed, it would have required He Rui to utilize his unparalleled post-war prestige to force the opposing factions to yield.

But he didn't believe that thought was correct. In thousands of years of Chinese history, there had never been such a case. He Rui himself was not a man for the trick of "releasing military power over a cup of wine."

That tactic involved granting feudal privileges to the elite. He Rui would never allow feudal privilege to take root in New China. He would have faced the contradictions head-on, without a shred of compromise on principle.

With a sigh, Li Shiguang even forgot his conversation with Li Runshi.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, the final steadfast supporters of the Nazi cause were, just as He Rui and Li Runshi had predicted, fulfilling their oaths with desperate courage. They were fighting for Nazism until their final breath.

Since the battle for Berlin began on April 22, 1945, the Wehrmacht had fought a bloodbath with the singular goal of inflicting maximum casualties on the Red Army.

Previously, recruiting suicide squads had been no easy task. No one wants to die. But now, after months of carnage, many Nazi soldiers actually craved death; it was the most direct means of escape from their despair.

Dying was easy enough now; a "suicide squad" was truly a journey from which there was no return. The "Panzerfaust 3" anti-tank weapon, developed using imported American technology, granted its operator few chances to fire.

The original German Panzerfaust was a single-shot disposable weapon. But after the Americans imported the design, they had developed their own version. During their war with China, the US had studied captured Chinese RPG-7s and developed new technologies.

As the US effectively exited the war, these technologies had been funneled back to Germany by American experts supporting the Reich. The German rocket launcher had been upgraded to the Panzerfaust 2, and then, during the siege, to the Panzerfaust 3.

Recently, there had emerged "miracle" operators of the Panzerfaust 3 who had fired ten times and destroyed five Soviet tanks while remaining unscathed. The result was a literal ring of metal—a circle of Soviet tank wrecks—surrounding the city of Berlin. These carcasses became new fortifications, granting the German suicide teams even more protection.

By April 26th, the Soviets began using infantry to lead the assaults, while utilizing heavy vehicles to tow away the scrap. The combat instantly became even more bloody.

The German hit teams found that they could now easily achieve a one-for-one exchange. With proper preparation, ten-to-one was possible. Seeing their deaths as a final act with such a ratio, the Nazi soldiers—already driven to madness by the war—became even more frenzied.

The Red Army, fighting deep within the city, found every door and every hiding spot a lethal threat. They had expected a broken enemy; instead, they found an opponent that had moved beyond brutality into total insanity.

By April 27th, although the Soviets had secured the outskirts and were constantly compressing the perimeter, their losses had exhausted their second wave of units. They were forced to rotate them out and commit their third wave. A significant portion of this third wave consisted of penal battalions.

In the Red Army, the members of the penal battalions were a desperate lot. They knew their only hope of washing away their perceived sins was an honorable death in battle. Faced with the SS units that had once been their greatest headache, the penal troops felt a surge of excitement.

Killing the Nazis who had frustrated even the "pure" Red Army units gave the penal soldiers a sense of value and meaning. When the two forces clashed again, the brutality reached unprecedented heights.

The SS sent out "human bombs"; the Red Army countered with its own. Both sides carried "Glory Bombs"—suicide grenades—and never hesitated to pull the pin and lunge at the enemy once they were cornered.

In just two days, casualties on both sides reached historic levels. Stalin had ordered that Berlin be taken by May Day. It was now April 29th; less than thirty-six hours remained.

Berlin was a hellscape. the smoke in the air never cleared; under the dim skies, the sounds of gunfire and the screams of men were constant. The Red Army pressed on with grim determination. In the non-stop slaughter, the soldiers had grown numb. they no longer fought with their minds, but with pure instinct.

Across from them, the German remnants felt the same. They knew victory was impossible and death was certain. Yet something kept them in the fight. Only in the heat of combat could they temporarily quiet the agony that threatened to consume them.

But the Germans were being ground down, and the Soviet offensive was relentless. The Wehrmacht finally lost the capacity to hold a city-wide line and retreated into the final stage: defending the core Nazi government buildings.

These reinforced concrete structures were incredibly stout, with vast basements for stockpiling weapons, ammo, food, and serving as infirmaries and morgues.

The fighting around these buildings was even more savage. After paying a massive price to break the perimeter and enter, the Soviets often had to launch a dozen charges just to open a single corridor.

Nevertheless, seasoned by years of various bitter campaigns, the Red Army pressed on, taking the buildings one by one. Ultimately, only the defense centered on the Reichstag remained. By this time, only twelve hours remained before the May Day deadline. The Red Army launched its final assault on the building.

From 1894 to 1933, the Reichstag had been the seat of the Imperial and Weimar parliaments, the heart of German political power. To the Soviets, it was the ultimate symbol of the Nazi regime. To the Nazis themselves, however, it represented the democracy they loathed; it had been left in ruins since the fire of 1933. Consequently, they had felt no hesitation in modifying it, transforming the magnificent structure into a fortress of unparalleled strength.

The bloodletting around the Reichstag reached a point where, in the final moments, die-hard Nazis and Soviet soldiers cast aside their weapons and fought with their bare fists.

Guns and bayonets were no longer enough to satisfy nerves that felt as if they were on fire. Only by beating an enemy to death with their hands could these final combatants find any mental release.

As the clock neared 11:40 PM on April 30th, the small hatch of the bunker not far from the Reichstag was opened. Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, stepped out, followed by the entire Goebbels family.

Hitler gazed into the distance, obscured by the haze of war. He spoke to Goebbels: "Thank you for staying with me until the end."

Goebbels’ gaunt face showed no hesitation. He gave a sharp Nazi salute and shouted, "Führer, it is my honor."

Hitler nodded, embraced his wife, and pressed the button on the detonator in his hand.

A moment later, the ground beneath the Reichstag heaved. The massive structure twisted, shattered, and then dissolved into a cloud of debris that was hurled into the sky.

Germany’s second nuclear weapon had been hidden in the deepest cellar of the building. Hitler had detonated it.

Despite the fog of war, countless people who had not yet slept saw a sun rise in the midnight sky. Thousands of soldiers who had managed to drift into a dreamless sleep in their uniforms also saw, in their final, searing dreams, their grandmothers reaching out a gentle hand to them against the backdrop of that brilliant sun.