At the Berliner Sportpalast in the German capital, Adolf Hitler announced during a rally that the Germans had captured 2,500,000 Soviet prisoners of war, destroyed or captured 22,000 guns, destroyed or captured 18,000 tanks, destroyed 14,500 aircraft, and since 1939 had expanded Germany by an area four times as large as Britain. He stressed that the Soviet Union had been broken and would never rise again
