No-one will ever know who the man who fell at the Seelow Heights outside of Berlin was. Denied an honourable burial as five million men of the Red Army marched on the Nazi capital in 1945, he was disinterred last month to be plundered of his papers and army insignia.

He fell victim the first time to a Soviet shell blast; the second to vultures who are at work plundering the graves of fallen warriors like him for money.

Thousands of German and Russian corpses recovered from the battlefields around Berlin have been stripped of medals, papers, rank badges, ID discs and other items to feed a worldwide multi-million pound military souvenir industry....

Nazi-era insignia and papers are much sought after. Medals, particularly Iron Crosses, are torn off to fetch up to £500 a time....