During WWII the Soviet Union suffered the largest losses of all nations involved, with more than twenty-five million of its people killed.
During the battle of Berlin alone, which was fought between April 16 and May 2, 1945, 22,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives.
To honor these soldiers and to celebrate the Red Army's victory over Germany the Soviet military ordered the construction of several memorials.
The largest of these was built between 1946 and 1949 in Treptower Park, in southeast Berlin, where more than 7,000 Red Army soldiers were buried.