[1] The memorial is located in the Großer Tiergarten, a large public park to the west of the city centre, on the north side of the east–west Straße des 17.

Early photographs show the memorial standing in a wilderness of ruins, the Tiergarten having been destroyed by incendiary bombs and then stripped of timber for firewood during the last months of the war.

A large inscription in Russian is written underneath the soldier statue, which is translated as "Eternal glory to heroes who fell in battle with the German fascist invaders for the freedom and independence of the Soviet Union".

[4] The German tabloid Bild launched a Bundestag-petition to remove the Soviet tanks from the memorial site as a response to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, calling them a "martial war symbol".

[5] The petition was subsequently denied by the German federal government, which iterated that it would honor the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany requiring it to maintain Soviet war memorials.

[citation needed] The monument and its tanks are a background feature of Rory's jet-lagged run in Tom Hanks' short story "A Junket in the City of Light".