1945

The Battle of Berlin, known as the 'Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation' by the Soviet Union, was one of the last major offensives in Europe of World War 2.

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Germany had invaded Russia in June 1941 and by October had reached Moscow. In December Stalin's Soviet Red Army counter-attacked and slowly drove the German Army back. By November 1942, Stalingrad was relieved and a year later Kiev in the Ukraine was recaptured. In January 1945, Warsaw in Poland was under control and by February  the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 37 miles east of Berlin.

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When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts (army groups) attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.

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On the 23rd April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The forces available to General Weidling for the city's defence included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely depleted German Army and Waffen-SS divisions. These were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm Militia. Many of the 40,000 elderly men of the Volkssturm had been in the army as young men and some were veterans of World War I. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army gradually took the entire city.

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Battle for the Reichstag

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In the early hours of the 29th April the Soviet 3rd Shock Army crossed the Moltke bridge and started to fan out into the surrounding streets and buildings. At 06:00 the next day they launched an attack on the Reichstag, but because of German entrenchments and support from 12.8 cm guns just over a mile away on the roof of the Zoo flak tower, close by Berlin Zoo, it was not until that evening that the Soviets were able to enter the building.

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The same day Hitler committed suicide (with several of his officials also committing suicide shortly afterwards).

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The Reichstag had not been in use since it had burned in February 1933 and its interior resembled a rubble heap more than a government building. The German troops inside made excellent use of this and were heavily entrenched. Fierce room-to-room fighting ensued. At that point there was still a large contingent of German soldiers in the basement who launched counter-attacks.

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On 2 May 1945 the Red Army controlled the building entirely. The famous photo of the two soldiers planting the flag on the roof of the building is a

re-enactment photo taken the day after the building was taken. To the Soviets the event as represented by the photo became symbolic of their victory demonstrating that the Battle of Berlin, as well as the Eastern Front hostilities as a whole, ended with the total Soviet victory.

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As the 756th Regiment's commander Zinchenko had stated in his order to Battalion Commander Neustroev....

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"... the Supreme High Command ... and the entire

Soviet People order you to erect the victory banner

on the roof above Berlin"

 

The 350-strong garrison of the Zoo flak tower left the building. There was sporadic fighting in a few isolated buildings where some SS troops still refused to surrender, but the Soviets reduced such buildings to rubble.

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The city's garrison surrendered on May 2nd but fighting continued to the north-west, west, and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on the 8th May as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets.

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The city's food supplies had been largely destroyed on Hitler's orders. 128 of the 226 bridges had been blown up and 87 pumps rendered inoperative.

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 "A quarter of the subway stations were under water, flooded on Hitler's orders. Thousands and thousands who had sought shelter in them had drowned when the SS had carried out the blowing up of the protective devices on the Landwehr Canal."

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Workers had sabotaged and prevented the blowing up of the Klingenberg power station, the Johannisthal waterworks, and other pumping stations, railroad facilities, and bridges prepared with dynamite by the SS in the last days of the war.

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On the night of the 2nd and 3rd of May, General von Manteuffel, commander of the III Panzer Army along with General von Tippelskirch, commander of the XXI Army, surrendered to the US Army. On the morning of the 7th May, the perimeter of the XII Army's bridgehead began to collapse. Wenck crossed the Elbe under small arms fire that afternoon and surrendered to the American Ninth Army. Von Saucken's II Army, that had been fighting north-east of Berlin, surrendered to the Soviets on the 9th May.

 

Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration 111-SC-205228 • Believed to be in the Public Domain