The photograph shows the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten, photographed in summer 1955. In the left third of the image, the characteristic triangular stele with the Soviet star mounted atop dominates the composition; in front of it extend symmetrically arranged hedge fields and granite slabs, as well as two stone sarcophagi in the middle ground. Several civilly dressed visitors, including a man with a camera in the foreground, move along the broad pathways of the grounds. The war memorial, erected in 1945 and dedicated to Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin, lay in the British sector of West Berlin and was guarded by Soviet sentries—a daily visible symbol of Soviet presence in the midst of the divided city. As a site of visitation for Allied military personnel and civilians alike, the scene illustrates the peculiar status of Berlin as a focal point of the Cold War, where the four powers encountered one another in the tightest of quarters.