Battle of Berlin
- This article is about the land capture of Berlin in 1945. For the strategic bombing raids on Berlin, see Battle of Berlin (air).
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| The Battle of Berlin
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| Conflict | World War II
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| Date | April 21, 1945 - May 2, 1945
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| Place | Berlin, Germany
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| Result | Soviet victory
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| Combatants
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| Soviet Union
| Germany
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| Commanders
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Georgi Zhukov
| Karl Weidling
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| Strength
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| 2.5 million men, 6,250 armored vehicles, 7,500 aircraft
| 1 million men, 1,500 armored vehicles, 3,300 aircraft
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| Casualties
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| 80,000 killed, 275,000 wounded/MIA, 1,997 armored vehicles, 2,108 artillery pieces, and 917 aircraft
| 150,000 killed, 134,000 POWs
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The Battle of Berlin was the final battle of World War II in the European Theater of World War II. A massive Soviet army attacked Berlin from the East. The battle lasted from late April, 1945 until early May. Before it was over, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered five days after the battle ended.
Background
The Eastern Front had been relatively stable since August 1944 and aftermath of the Operation Bagration. The Germans had lost Budapest and most of Hungary. Romania and Bulgaria were forced to surrender and declare war on Germany. The Polish plain was open to the Soviet Red Army.
The Soviet commanders, after their inaction during the Warsaw Uprising, took Warsaw in January 1945. Over three days, on a broad front incorporating four army Fronts, the Red Army began an offensive across the Oder River and from Warsaw. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving twenty to twenty-five miles a day, taking the Baltic states, Gdansk, East Prussia, Poznan, and drawing up on a line thirty-six miles outside of Berlin.
A counterattack by the newly created Army Group Vistula failed by February 24, and the Russians drove on to Pomerania and cleared the right bank of the Oder River. In the south, three German attempts to relieve the encircled Budapest failed and the city fell on February 13 to the Soviets. Again the Germans counterattacked, Hitler insisting on the impossible task of regaining the Danube River. By March 16 the attack had failed and the Red Army counterattacked the same day. On March 30 they entered Austria and captured Vienna on April 13.
Only a twelfth or less of the fuel needed by the Wehrmacht was available. Fighter and tank production was down, and the quality was much less than in 1944. The war was clearly over, but the Germans would hold out for almost a month. The fighting would be fierce; national pride and the desire to gain time for refugees to get to the West before the Red Army arrived led German units to fight bitterly.
By April 1, 1945, the Soviets were at the gates of Berlin. They built up for two weeks, knowing that Berlin would be heavily contested. The Western Allies planned to drop paratroops to take Berlin, but decided against it. Eisenhower saw no need to suffer casualties taking a city that would be in the Soviet sphere of influence once the war was over. The plan was unrealistic in terms of the number of soldiers and the amount of supplies needed for the operation
Adolf Hitler, who never thought Berliners supported him the way he deserved, decided to remain in the city. Some think he remained to punish the city for lack of support in the early days of Nazism; more likely there was nowhere else to go. The Battle of Berlin would be the deciding conflict between Nazism and Communism.
Berlin
The assault was carried out by three Soviet Fronts, numbering more than 2 million men and included 1st Polish Army (78,556 soldiers). Preparations for the battle took two weeks; following days of bombardment by thousands of guns and rocket launchers.
The main German defenders were the 12th Army, withdrawn from the Western Front by Hitler specifically to defend the city. However teenagers and the elderly were also pressed into the defence of the city.
The offensive began with thousands of artillery and truck-mounted rockets, called 'Stalin Organs' by the Germans, and Katyushas by everyone else opening a huge sustained barrage for days. On April 16, the 1st and 2nd Byelorussian Fronts and the 1st Ukrainian Front, which boxed in Berlin from the north, west, and south, attacked. By April 24 the three army groups had completed the encirclement of the city.
The next day the Soviet 5th Guard Tank Army linked with the US First Army at Torgau, Germany on the Elbe River. On April 20, Hitler ordered the Twelfth Army facing the Americans and the Ninth Army to break into Berlin and relieve the siege. Neither unit was able to get through.
Berlin's fate was sealed, but the resistance continued. Fighting was heavy, with house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. The Soviets sustained 80,000 dead in the city and 305,000 in eastern Germany as a whole; the Germans sustained as many as 325,000, including civilians. In some areas of the city, vengeful Soviet troops gangraped and often killed many German women and children. Red Army officers were outraged by this behaviour.
As the Soviet forces fought their way into the centre of Berlin, Adolf Hitler appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz as the new President of Germany. On April 30th, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun and then committed suicide by taking cyanide and shooting himself. Berlin surrendered to the soviets on May 2. Germany surrendered to the Allies on 7 May 1945.
The Battle of Berlin was over, and with it went the Third Reich. The thousand-year Reich had lasted for twelve years, and 40 million people were dead. The German Surrender was signed on May 7 in Rheims, France. Nevertheless some German troops continued resistance for several more days.
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