<p>The German new year gift was the final coordinated offensive by the Luftwaffe, the one big blow that General Galland and other Luftwaffe commanders had discussed for so long. They assembled a task force of 700 to 800 fighter-bombers and sent them on a two-hour strike against Allied airfields. Designated Operation Bodenplatte (Baseplate) it was planned as a damaging assault against tactical air strength. It backfired, and gave the Luftwaffe one of its worst days. Sources vary on the extent of German losses, but any losses were punishing at that time. Pilots could not be spared, and the 36 US fighters that were destroyed out of the total Allied loss of about 150 were not worth the cost to the dying Luftwaffe.
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<p>The Combined Chiefs conferred at Malta on 30 January, and decided to give the Russians a hand by sending heavy bombers against targets selected by the Kremlin. Fine, said the Russians, hit the transport centers in eastern Germany: Berlin, Chemnitz, Cottbus, Dresden and Leipzig among others.
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<p>One of those raids took the Eighth to Berlin in a massive 3 February strike. About 1,000 B-17s hit the capital, and another 400 B-24s pounded Magdeburg. Skies over Berlin were clear; the bomb drops were accurate and devastating in the government-building area. About 25,000 civilians died. On the night of 13 February, the RAF slammed Dresden, with 772 heavies dropping their huge loads on that city. Next day, 311 B-17s of the Eighth hit Dresden with a second blow. About 35,000 died there; for propaganda reasons that figure was inflated greatly by the Germans and later used as fact by some historians and writers.
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<p>There was little left to do for the strategic force and for tactical air as Germany crumbled in those last months. General Spaatz sent an 11 April message to Eaker and Doolittle which began: "The advances of our ground forces have brought to a close the strategic air war... "
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<p>The last raid against a strategic target was flown by the Eighth, as they had flown the first. On 25 April, they hit the Skoda armament works in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. Then the Eighth turned to supply drops, evacuating prisoners of war, and taking 30,000 sightseers—the hard-working ground crews of the heavy bomber squadrons—over the lunar landscape that German cities had become.
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<p>The Allied armies joined at the Elbe; Russians, French, British and Americans shared confiscated wine in a few moments of mutual respect and delight that the war was, for them, over. They had survived, the single most important fact of their lives.
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<p>Germany was dead. The Third Reich expired in a Gotterdammerung of its own choice and its own devising. Its residual government surrendered on 7 May 1945.
