For nearly half a century the 'Forbidden City', 25 miles from Berlin, was the heart of Soviet rule in East Germany as Communism and capitalism collided during the Cold War.

Given the nickname because East Germans were not permitted to enter, it also became known as Little Moscow and trains would go back and forth to the Russian capital each day.

At its height the base in Wünsdorf was home to around 75,000 Soviet men, women and children, and was the biggest military camp outside the USSR.

But now a statue of Lenin is a solitary figure after it was abandoned in September 1994, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. New images from inside the base give an eerie view of the past. The clock in the heart of the forest city for years remained stuck at 11.16am, the moment the Russians pulled out.

Before it became home to tens of thousands of Red Army troops, it had been a base dating back to the 1800s, and it was home to Hitler's armed forces, the Wehrmacht, before the SS fled at the end of the Second World War.