As the Soviet armies advanced into East Prussia in January 1945, the Germans removed the remains of Hindenburg and his wife and blew up the entrance tower and the one containing the burial chamber. Further demolition took place when, by a final stroke of historical irony, the mausoleum's materials were used in the construction of the Stalinesque Palace of Culture and the headquarters of the Communist Party in Warsaw.

On the far side of the mound, we discovered one half-buried brick arch. Apart from that were only shattered fragments in a carpet of grass and wild flowers.

The obliterated extermination camp at Treblinka, the crazily wrecked bunkers near Ketrzyn and the pathetic remnants of a great mausoleum: we had been travelling through the wreckage of German military might.