The Battle of Berlin
April 19 - May 2 1945
“To Berlin!”
The 16 day Battle of Berlin marked the final major struggle of the Second World War in Europe. By April, Nazi Germany was in a deadly vice. From the West, the Allied forces of Britain, the United States, Canada and others had crossed the Rhine and were speeding into Germany. In the East, the Red Army had advanced across Poland and now stood poised on the Oder River - only 50 miles from Berlin.
All told, 2.3 million Soviet troops were amassed for the final assault. The Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, ordered an aggressive and speedy attack. He wanted the Reichstag in the center of Berlin captured by May 1st - International Workers’ Day. More importantly, however, he wanted Berlin captured before the Western Allies arrived. Although united against Germany, tensions were beginning to show in the Soviet-Western alliance.
On April 16th, Operation Berlin was launched. After extremely heavy fighting on the Seelow Heights, Soviet forces arrived on the outskirts of Berlin on April 20th - Hitler’s 56th birthday. It would not be a happy one for the Führer, or the Berliners that remained.
Götterdämmerung
For his birthday, the Red Army gifted Hitler the first of a series of artillery, rocket and air attacks. They would continue practically uninterrupted for 12 days, a period Berliners would christen ‘the Götterdämmerung’, the German translation of Ragnarok - the end of the world.
By the war’s end, Allied aerial bombing and Soviet artillery would reduce one third of Berlin to rubble, including 80 percent of the city’s center. The Soviet army dropped almost as much explosives in these 12 days, than the Allied air-forces had since 1939.
The last days of the battle descended into desperate, often disorganized attempts by troops of the German armed forces to stem the Red Army’s advance. Against the roughly 900,000 Soviets now in the city, the Germans could only muster 80,000 defenders, half of which were Volkssturm - under-equipped old men and young boys. On April 27th, the city was surrounded. Escape seemed impossible.
Downfall
By late April, Hitler spiraled into irritability and despair. Despite his orders to never surrender Berlin, he had privately admitted defeat. However, he took no responsibility himself. The defeat, he claimed, was fault of the German people and military. He would leave them to suffer their punishment.
Instead, on April 30th, he retired to his drawing room in the Führerbunker and shot himself. His body was then hastily burnt in a shell hole, lest it be captured by the Soviets now only hundreds of yards away. His loyal propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels would share his fate the next day.
From April 29th, vicious fighting was taking place around the Reichstag - the symbolic heart of Berlin. By May 1st, the Hammer and Sickle banner was flying from its rooftop. The next day, Berlin would finally surrender.
In only 16 days of fighting, 80,000 Soviet troops and around 100,000 German troops, as well as 22,000 civilians had been killed. Those who survived now faced the uncertainty of occupation.
Division
Red Army occupation brought relief from artillery, but also a new kind of violence - especially towards the women of Berlin. Sexual assault, looting and arson became common. To the perpetrators, they were simply repaying the Germans for crimes committed in their own countries.
On May 8th, the war in Europe came to an end. Stalin stuck to agreements to divide Germany and Berlin into four zones of occupation: Soviet, British, American and French.
Standards of living, freedoms and rebuilding greatly differed in each of these sectors. Families and neighbors - once part of the same community - now lived in different political and social worlds.
As tensions developed between the victors, Berlin would once again become a central battleground of a new kind of struggle. One in which East and West sought political dominance under the threat of global nuclear annihilation.
The ‘Raising a Flag over the Reichstag’ image comes from the websites (mil.ru, минобороны.рф) of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and is copyrighted. This image is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence for free use.