After being transferred from the Field of Mars in Leningrad (currently Saint Petersburg) to Moscow on May 8, 1967, the Eternal Flame in the Alexander Garden near the Kremlin Wall has become a symbol of the memory of over 25 million Soviet soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War.
The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) was a crucial part of World War II (1939-1945). It began on June 22, 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Germany signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender in a suburb of Berlin in the late evening of May 8, 1945 (already May 9 according to Moscow time).