Elbe Day

• 1. Introduction

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  Elbe Day, the 25th of April 1945, began with a small boat crossing a river in Germany. First Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue paddled across the Elbe near Strehla with just three men from an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon. On the far bank, they encountered a Soviet horse rider from a Guards rifle regiment. Two armies, advancing from opposite ends of a continent, had finally touched.

  At that moment, the war in Europe was not yet over. But Germany had been cut in two. The east belonged to the Soviets. The west belonged to the Americans. What happened next, and what it has come to mean across the decades since, is a story of soldiers, symbols, and a phrase that still surfaces whenever two nations try to remember what they once shared.

• 2. The Encounter at Strehla and Torgau

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  At 11:30 in the morning on April 25, Kotzebue's small group made the first confirmed contact between American and Soviet forces. The Soviet rider they met belonged to forward elements of a regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Gordeyev of the First Ukrainian Front.

  Later the same day, a second meeting took place on the destroyed bridge at Torgau. Second Lieutenant William Robertson, accompanied by Frank Huff, James McDonnell, and Paul Staub, encountered a Soviet patrol led by Lieutenant Alexander Silvashko. Torgau's bridge had been wrecked, but it became the setting for an image that would outlast the war itself.

  On April 26, the commanders of the two divisions met formally at Torgau, southwest of Berlin. Emil F. Reinhardt, commanding the 69th Infantry Division of the First Army, sat down with Vladimir Rusakov, commanding the 58th Guards Rifle Division of the 5th Guards Army. From that meeting came the plan for a staged, photographable handshake. On April 27, Robertson and Silvashko shook hands on that same broken bridge in front of cameras. Among those caught in the iconic photographs were Soviet Lieutenant Charles Thau and U.S. Army Technician Fifth Grade Bernard Kirschenbaum, reaching toward each other across the gap.

  That same evening, the Soviet, American, British, and French governments released simultaneous statements from London, Moscow, and Washington, declaring their shared determination to finish off the Third Reich.

• 3. The Spirit of the Elbe

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  Front-line soldiers on both sides, according to contemporary accounts, broke into spontaneous celebrations. They traded insignia and personal items. A widespread feeling moved through the ranks that the war in Europe was nearly done.

  This brief period of warmth acquired its own name: the Spirit of the Elbe. The phrase captured something specific. It described the capacity of individuals from two deeply different political systems to recognize a shared goal, in this case the defeat of Nazi Germany, and to act on it together. The handshake on a destroyed bridge was not just a military event; it became a reference point for what had briefly seemed possible between the two powers.

  In contrast to the geopolitical Cold War that began almost immediately afterward, the Spirit of the Elbe served as a standing rebuke to the argument that the two systems could never cooperate. The encounter near Torgau offered evidence that cooperation had, at least once, been concretely realized.

• 4. Cold War Memory and Commemoration

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  During the Cold War, the memory of Elbe Day did not disappear. It was kept alive partly because it was useful. In 1961, the popular Russian song "Do the Russians Want War?" summoned the image of American and Soviet soldiers embracing at the Elbe. The song used the memory as an argument against conflict, not a celebration of victory.

  The Soviet film studio Mosfilm had already committed the meeting to cinema in 1949, with the black-and-white film Encounter at the Elbe. Monuments at Torgau, Lorenzkirch, and Bad Liebenwerda mark the first contact sites. A plaque at Arlington National Cemetery in the United States commemorates the Spirit of the Elbe. In 1988, a stone near Torgau was fitted with a plaque titled Der Geist der Elbe, the German phrase for the same idea.

  In 1995, the Russian Federation issued a three-ruble coin for the 50th anniversary of the event. By 2010, the 65th anniversary, annual Elbe Day events in Torgau were drawing tourists to the city each year on the weekend closest to April 25. That year also brought a first: the presidents of the United States and Russia issued a joint statement on April 25 to mark the occasion together.

• 5. Joseph Polowsky and One Soldier's Lifelong Mission

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  Joseph Polowsky was among the American soldiers who met Soviet troops on Elbe Day, and the experience changed the course of his life. He devoted much of the rest of his years to opposing war and to keeping the memory of April 25 alive in public consciousness.

  Every year he commemorated Elbe Day in his hometown of Chicago. He petitioned the United Nations to designate April 25 a World Day of Peace. The petition was unsuccessful. Still, Polowsky continued. The fact that he failed to move institutions did not stop him from returning, year after year, to the same act of remembrance.

  When Polowsky died, his remains were buried not in the United States but in Torgau, the German city where the famous photographs had been taken. American singer-songwriter Fred Small later memorialized both the man and the day in his song "At The Elbe," carrying the story into folk music.