7. A broken German anti-aircraft gun on a Berlin street.
8. Soviet tank T-34-85 in a pine forest south of Berlin.
9. Soldiers and T-34-85 tanks of the 12th Guards Tank Corps of the 2nd Guards Tank Army in Berlin.
10. Burnt German cars on the streets of Berlin.
11. A dead German soldier and a T-34-85 tank of the 55th Guards Tank Brigade on a Berlin street.
12. Soviet signal sergeant at the radio during the fighting in Berlin.
13. Residents of Berlin, fleeing street fighting, go to areas liberated by Soviet troops.
14. A battery of 152-mm howitzers ML-20 of the 1st Belorussian Front in position on the approaches to Berlin.
15. A Soviet soldier runs near a burning house during a battle in Berlin.
16. Soviet soldiers in the trenches on the outskirts of Berlin.
17. Soviet soldiers on horse-drawn carts pass near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
18. View of the Reichstag after the end of hostilities.
19. White flags on Berlin houses after the surrender.
20. Soviet soldiers listen to an accordion player while sitting on the frame of a 122-mm M-30 howitzer on a Berlin street.
21. The crew of the Soviet 37-mm automatic anti-aircraft gun model 1939 (61-K) is monitoring the air situation in Berlin.
22. Destroyed German cars near a building in Berlin.
23. A photograph of Soviet officers next to the bodies of the dead company commander and Volkssturm soldier.
24. The bodies of the dead company commander and Volkssturm soldier.
25. Soviet soldiers are walking along one of the streets of Berlin.
26. Battery of Soviet 152-mm howitzer guns ML-20 near Berlin. 1st Belorussian Front.
27. Soviet tank T-34-85, accompanied by infantry, moves along a street on the outskirts of Berlin.
28. Soviet artillerymen fire on the street on the outskirts of Berlin.
29. A Soviet tank gunner looks out of the hatch of his tank during the Battle of Berlin.
30. Soviet self-propelled guns SU-76M on one of the streets of Berlin.
31. The facade of the Berlin Hotel Adlon after the battle.
32. The body of a killed German soldier next to a Horch 108 car on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.
33. Soldiers and commanders of the 7th Guards Tank Corps near the T-34-85 tank with its crew in Berlin.
34. Sergeant Trifonov’s 76-mm gun crew at lunch on the outskirts of Berlin.
35. Soldiers and T-34-85 tanks of the 12th Guards Tank Corps of the 2nd Guards Tank Army in Berlin.
36. Soviet soldiers run across the street during the battle in Berlin.
37. Tank T-34-85 on a square in Berlin.
39. Soviet artillerymen prepare a BM-13 Katyusha rocket launcher for a salvo in Berlin.
40. Soviet 203-mm howitzer B-4 fires in Berlin at night.
41. A group of German prisoners escorted by Soviet soldiers on the streets of Berlin.
42. Crew of the Soviet 45-mm anti-tank gun 53-K model 1937 in a battle on the streets of Berlin near the T-34-85 tank.
43. The Soviet assault group with a banner is moving towards the Reichstag.
44. Soviet artillerymen write on shells “To Hitler”, “To Berlin”, “Across the Reichstag” (1).
45. T-34-85 tanks of the 7th Guards Tank Corps in the suburbs of Berlin. In the foreground, the skeleton of a destroyed German car is burning.
46. A salvo of BM-13 (Katyusha) rocket launchers in Berlin.
47. Guards rocket mortar BM-31-12 in Berlin.This is a modification of the famous Katyusha rocket launcher (by analogy it was called “Andryusha”).
48. A damaged Sd.Kfz.250 armored personnel carrier from the 11th SS Division “Nordland” on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.
49. Commander of the 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Division, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, Guard Colonel Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin at the airfield.
50. Killed German soldiers and a BM-31-12 rocket launcher (a modification of the Katyusha, nicknamed “Andryusha”) on a Berlin street.
51. Soviet 152-mm howitzer-gun ML-20 on the street of Berlin.
52. Soviet tank T-34-85 from the 7th Guards Tank Corps and captured militiamen from the Volkssturm on the streets of Berlin.
53. Soviet tank T-34-85 from the 7th Guards Tank Corps and captured Volkssturm militia on the streets of Berlin.
54. Soviet traffic policewoman against the backdrop of a burning building on a Berlin street.
55. Soviet tanks T-34-76 after the battle on the streets of Berlin.
56. Heavy tank IS-2 near the walls of the destroyed Reichstag.
57. Formation of military personnel of the Soviet 88th separate heavy tank regiment in Berlin's Humboldt-Hain Park at the beginning of May 1945. The formation is carried out by the regiment's political officer, Major L.A. Glushkov and deputy regiment commander F.M. Hot.
58. A column of Soviet IS-2 heavy tanks on the streets of Berlin.
59. A battery of Soviet 122-mm howitzers M-30 on the streets of Berlin.
60. The crew is preparing a BM-31-12 rocket artillery mount (a modification of the Katyusha with M-31 shells, nicknamed “Andryusha”) on a Berlin street.
61. A column of Soviet IS-2 heavy tanks on the streets of Berlin. In the background of the photo you can see ZiS-5 trucks from the logistics support.
62. Column of a unit of Soviet IS-2 heavy tanks on the streets of Berlin.
63. A battery of Soviet 122-mm howitzers, model 1938 (M-30), fires at Berlin.
64. Soviet tank IS-2 on a destroyed street in Berlin. Elements of camouflage are visible on the car.
65. French prisoners of war shake hands with their liberators - Soviet soldiers. Author's title: “Berlin. French prisoners of war released from Nazi camps."
66. Tankers of the 44th Guards Tank Brigade of the 11th Guards Tank Corps of the 1st Guards Tank Army on vacation near the T-34-85 in Berlin.
67. Soviet artillerymen write on shells “To Hitler”, “To Berlin”, “Across the Reichstag” (2).
68. Loading wounded Soviet soldiers onto a ZIS-5v military truck for evacuation.
69. Soviet self-propelled guns SU-76M with tail numbers “27” and “30” in Berlin in the Karlshorst area.
70. Soviet orderlies transfer a wounded soldier from a stretcher to a cart.
71. View of the Brandenburg Gate in captured Berlin. May 1945.
72. Soviet tank T-34-85, shot down on the streets of Berlin.
73. Soviet soldiers in battle on Moltke Strasse (now Rothko Street) in Berlin.
74. Soviet soldiers resting on an IS-2 tank. The author's title of the photo is “Tankers on vacation.”
75. Soviet soldiers in Berlin at the end of the fighting. In the foreground and behind, behind the car, are ZiS-3 guns of the 1943 model.
76. Participants of the “last Berlin conscription” at a collection point for prisoners of war in Berlin.
77. German soldiers in Berlin surrender to Soviet troops.
78. View of the Reichstag after the battles. German 8.8 cm FlaK 18 anti-aircraft guns are visible. To the right lies the body of a dead German soldier. The author's title of the photo is “Final”.
79. Berlin women cleaning the street. The beginning of May 1945, even before the signing of the Act of Surrender of Germany.
80. Soviet soldiers in position in a street battle in Berlin. A street barricade built by the Germans is used as cover.
81. German prisoners of war on the streets of Berlin.
82. Soviet 122-mm howitzer M-30 horse-drawn in the center of Berlin. On the shield of the gun there is an inscription: “We will avenge the atrocities.” In the background is the Berlin Cathedral.
83. Soviet machine gunner at a firing position in a Berlin tram car.
84. Soviet machine gunners in a street battle in Berlin, taking a position behind the fallen tower clock.
85. A Soviet soldier walks past the murdered SS Hauptsturmführer in Berlin at the intersection of Chaussestrasse and Oranienburgerstrasse.
86. Burning building in Berlin.
87. A Volkssturm militiaman killed on one of the streets of Berlin.
88. Soviet self-propelled gun ISU-122 in the suburbs of Berlin. Behind the self-propelled guns there is an inscription on the wall: “Berlin will remain German!” (Berlin bleibt deutsch!).
89. A column of Soviet self-propelled guns ISU-122 on one of the streets of Berlin.
90. Former Estonian tanks of English construction Mk.V in Berlin's Lustgarten park. The building of the Old Museum (Altes Museum) can be seen in the background. These tanks, rearmed with Maxim machine guns, took part in the defense of Tallinn in 1941, were captured by the Germans and transported to Berlin for an exhibition of trophies. In April 1945, they allegedly took part in the defense of Berlin.
91. Shot from a Soviet 152-mm howitzer ML-20 in Berlin. On the right you can see the track of the IS-2 tank.
92. Soviet soldier with a Faustpatron.
93. A Soviet officer checks the documents of German soldiers who surrendered. Berlin, April-May 1945
94. The crew of the Soviet 100-mm BS-3 cannon fires at the enemy in Berlin.
95. Infantrymen from the 3rd Guards Tank Army attack the enemy in Berlin with the support of a ZiS-3 cannon.
96. Soviet soldiers hoist the banner over the Reichstag on May 2, 1945. This is one of the banners installed on the Reistag in addition to the official hoisting of the banner by Egorov and Kantaria.
97. Soviet Il-2 attack aircraft from the 4th Air Army (Colonel General of Aviation K.A. Vershinin) in the sky over Berlin.
98. Soviet soldier Ivan Kichigin at the grave of a friend in Berlin. Ivan Aleksandrovich Kichigin at the grave of his friend Grigory Afanasyevich Kozlov in Berlin in early May 1945. Signature on the back of the photo: “Sasha! This is the grave of Kozlov Gregory.” There were such graves all over Berlin - friends buried their comrades near the place of their death. About six months later, reburial from such graves to memorial cemeteries in Treptower Park and Tiergarten began. The first memorial in Berlin, inaugurated in November 1945, was the burial of 2,500 Soviet soldiers in the Tiergarten park. At its opening, the allied forces of the anti-Hitler coalition held a solemn parade in front of the memorial monument.
100. A Soviet soldier pulls a German soldier out of a hatch. Berlin.
101. Soviet soldiers run to a new position in battle in Berlin. The figure of a murdered German sergeant from the RAD (Reichs Arbeit Dienst, pre-conscription labor service) in the foreground.
102. Units of the Soviet heavy self-propelled artillery regiment at the crossing of the Spree River. On the right is the self-propelled gun ISU-152.
103. Crews of Soviet 76.2 mm ZIS-3 divisional guns on one of the streets of Berlin.
104. A battery of Soviet 122-mm howitzers model 1938 (M-30) fires at Berlin.
105. A column of Soviet IS-2 heavy tanks on one of the streets of Berlin.
106. Captured German soldier at the Reichstag. A famous photograph, often published in books and on posters in the USSR under the title "Ende" (German: "The End").
107. Soviet tanks and other equipment near the bridge over the Spree River in the Reichstag area. On this bridge, Soviet troops, under fire from the defending Germans, marched to storm the Reichstag. The photo shows IS-2 and T-34-85 tanks, ISU-152 self-propelled guns, and guns.
108. Column of Soviet IS-2 tanks on the Berlin highway.
109. Dead German woman in an armored personnel carrier. Berlin, 1945.
110. A T-34 tank from the 3rd Guards Tank Army stands in front of a paper and stationery store on Berlin Street. Vladimir Dmitrievich Serdyukov (born in 1920) sits at the driver’s hatch.
Six decades ago, one of the largest battles in world history ended, not just a clash between two military forces, but the last battle against Nazism, which for many years brought death and destruction to the peoples of Europe.
Direction of the main attack
The war was ending. Everyone understood this, both the Wehrmacht generals and their opponents. Only one person, Adolf Hitler, despite everything, continued to hope for the strength of the German spirit, for a “miracle weapon,” and most importantly for a split between his enemies. The reasons for this were, despite the agreements reached in Yalta, England and the United States did not particularly want to cede Berlin to Soviet troops. Their armies advanced almost unhindered. In April 1945, they broke through into the center of Germany, depriving the Wehrmacht of its “forge” in the Ruhr Basin and gaining the opportunity to rush to Berlin. At the same time, Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front and Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front froze in front of the powerful German defense line on the Oder. Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front finished off the remnants of enemy troops in Pomerania, and the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts advanced towards Vienna.
On April 1, Stalin convened a meeting of the State Defense Committee in the Kremlin. The audience was asked one question: “Who will take Berlin, us or the Anglo-Americans?” “Berlin will be taken by the Soviet Army,” Konev was the first to respond. He, Zhukov’s constant rival, was also not taken by surprise by the Supreme Commander’s question; he showed the members of the State Defense Committee a huge model of Berlin, where the targets of future attacks were precisely indicated. The Reichstag, the Imperial Chancellery, the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were all powerful centers of defense with a network of bomb shelters and secret passages. The capital of the Third Reich was surrounded by three lines of fortifications. The first took place 10 km from the city, the second on its outskirts, the third in the center. Berlin was defended by selected units of the Wehrmacht and SS troops, to whose assistance the last reserves were urgently mobilized: 15-year-old members of the Hitler Youth, women and old men from the Volkssturm (people's militia). Around Berlin in the Vistula and Center army groups there were up to 1 million people, 10.4 thousand guns and mortars, 1.5 thousand tanks.
For the first time since the beginning of the war, the superiority of Soviet troops in manpower and equipment was not just significant, but overwhelming. 2.5 million soldiers and officers, 41.6 thousand guns, more than 6.3 thousand tanks, 7.5 thousand aircraft were supposed to attack Berlin. The main role in the offensive plan approved by Stalin was assigned to the 1st Belorussian Front. From the Küstrinsky bridgehead, Zhukov was supposed to storm the defense line head-on on the Seelow Heights, which towered above the Oder, closing the road to Berlin. Konev’s front had to cross the Neisse and strike the capital of the Reich with the forces of the tank armies of Rybalko and Lelyushenko. It was planned that in the west it would reach the Elbe and, together with Rokossovsky’s front, would join the Anglo-American forces. The Allies were informed of the Soviet plans and agreed to halt their armies on the Elbe. The Yalta agreements had to be implemented, and this also made it possible to avoid unnecessary losses.
The offensive was scheduled for April 16. To make it unexpected for the enemy, Zhukov ordered an attack early in the morning, in the dark, blinding the Germans with the light of powerful searchlights. At five in the morning, three red rockets gave the signal to attack, and a second later thousands of guns and Katyushas opened hurricane fire of such force that an eight-kilometer space was plowed up overnight. “Hitler’s troops were literally drowned in a continuous sea of fire and metal,” Zhukov wrote in his memoirs. Alas, the day before, a captured Soviet soldier revealed to the Germans the date of the future offensive, and they managed to withdraw their troops to the Seelow Heights. From there, targeted shooting began at Soviet tanks, which, wave after wave, made a breakthrough and died in a completely shot through field. While the enemy's attention was focused on them, the soldiers of Chuikov's 8th Guards Army managed to move forward and occupy lines near the outskirts of the village of Zelov. By evening it became clear: the planned pace of the offensive was being disrupted.
At the same time, Hitler addressed the Germans with an appeal, promising them: “Berlin will remain in German hands,” and the Russian offensive “will drown in blood.” But few people believed in this anymore. People listened with fear to the sounds of cannon fire, which were added to the already familiar bomb explosions. The remaining residents numbered at least 2.5 million and were forbidden to leave the city. The Fuhrer, losing his sense of reality, decided: if the Third Reich perishes, all Germans must share its fate. Goebbels' propaganda frightened the people of Berlin with the atrocities of the "Bolshevik hordes", convincing them to fight to the end. A Berlin defense headquarters was created, which ordered the population to prepare for fierce battles on the streets, in houses and underground communications. Each house was planned to be turned into a fortress, for which all remaining residents were forced to dig trenches and equip firing positions.
At the end of the day on April 16, Zhukov received a call from the Supreme Commander. He dryly reported that Konev overcame Neisse “happened without any difficulties.” Two tank armies broke through the front at Cottbus and rushed forward, continuing the offensive even at night. Zhukov had to promise that during April 17 he would take the ill-fated heights. In the morning, General Katukov's 1st Tank Army moved forward again. And again the “thirty-four”, which passed from Kursk to Berlin, burned out like candles from the fire of “Faust cartridges”. By evening, Zhukov's units had advanced only a couple of kilometers. Meanwhile, Konev reported to Stalin about new successes, announcing his readiness to take part in the storming of Berlin. Silence on the phone and the dull voice of the Supreme: “I agree. Turn your tank armies towards Berlin." On the morning of April 18, the armies of Rybalko and Lelyushenko rushed north to Teltow and Potsdam. Zhukov, whose pride suffered severely, threw his units into a last desperate attack. In the morning, the 9th German Army, which received the main blow, could not stand it and began to roll back to the west. The Germans still tried to launch a counterattack, but the next day they retreated along the entire front. From that moment on, nothing could delay the denouement.
Friedrich Hitzer, German writer, translator:
My answer regarding the assault on Berlin is purely personal, not a military strategist. In 1945 I was 10 years old, and, being a child of the war, I remember how it ended, how the defeated people felt. Both my father and my closest relative took part in this war. The latter was a German officer. Returning from captivity in 1948, he decisively told me that if this happened again, he would go to war again. And on January 9, 1945, on my birthday, I received a letter from the front from my father, who also wrote with determination that we needed to “fight, fight and fight the terrible enemy in the east, otherwise we will be taken to Siberia.” Having read these lines as a child, I was proud of the courage of my father, the “liberator from the Bolshevik yoke.” But very little time passed, and my uncle, that same German officer, told me many times: “We were deceived. Make sure this doesn’t happen to you again.” The soldiers realized that this was not the same war. Of course, not all of us were “deceived.” One of my father’s best friends warned him back in the 30s: Hitler is terrible. You know, any political ideology of the superiority of some over others, absorbed by society, is akin to drugs
The significance of the assault, and the finale of the war in general, became clear to me later. The assault on Berlin was necessary; it saved me from the fate of being a conquering German. If Hitler had won, I would probably have become a very unhappy person. His goal of world domination is alien and incomprehensible to me. As an action, the capture of Berlin was terrible for the Germans. But in reality it was happiness. After the war, I worked on a military commission dealing with issues of German prisoners of war, and I was once again convinced of this.
I recently met with Daniil Granin, and we talked for a long time about what kind of people they were who surrounded Leningrad
And then, during the war, I was afraid, yes, I hated the Americans and the British, who almost bombed my hometown of Ulm to the ground. This feeling of hatred and fear lived in me until I visited America.
I remember well how, evacuated from the city, we lived in a small German village on the banks of the Danube, which was the “American zone”. Our girls and women then inked themselves with pencils so as not to be raped. Every war is a terrible tragedy, and this war was especially terrible: today they talk about 30 million Soviet and 6 million German victims, as well as millions of dead people of other nations.
Last birthday
On April 19, another participant appeared in the race for Berlin. Rokossovsky reported to Stalin that the 2nd Belorussian Front was ready to storm the city from the north. On the morning of this day, the 65th Army of General Batov crossed the wide channel of the Western Oder and moved towards Prenzlau, cutting into pieces the German Army Group Vistula. At this time, Konev’s tanks moved north easily, as if in a parade, meeting almost no resistance and leaving the main forces far behind. The Marshal consciously took risks, rushing to approach Berlin before Zhukov. But the troops of the 1st Belorussian were already approaching the city. His formidable commander issued an order: “No later than 4 o’clock in the morning on April 21, break into the suburbs of Berlin at any cost and immediately convey a message about this for Stalin and the press.”
On April 20, Hitler celebrated his last birthday. Selected guests gathered in a bunker 15 meters into the ground under the imperial chancellery: Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann, the top of the army and, of course, Eva Braun, who was listed as the Fuhrer’s “secretary”. His comrades suggested that their leader leave doomed Berlin and move to the Alps, where a secret refuge had already been prepared. Hitler refused: “I am destined to conquer or perish with the Reich.” However, he agreed to withdraw the command of the troops from the capital, dividing it into two parts. The north found itself under the control of Grand Admiral Dönitz, to whom Himmler and his staff went to help. The south of Germany had to be defended by Goering. At the same time, a plan arose to defeat the Soviet offensive by the armies of Steiner from the north and Wenck from the west. However, this plan was doomed from the very beginning. Both Wenck's 12th Army and the remnants of SS General Steiner's units were exhausted in battle and incapable of active action. Army Group Center, on which hopes were also pinned, fought heavy battles in the Czech Republic. Zhukov prepared a “gift” for the German leader in the evening, his army approached the city border of Berlin. The first shells from long-range guns hit the city center. The next morning, General Kuznetsov's 3rd Army entered Berlin from the northeast, and Berzarin's 5th Army from the north. Katukov and Chuikov attacked from the east. The streets of the dull Berlin suburbs were blocked by barricades, and “Faustniks” fired at the attackers from the gateways and windows of houses.
Zhukov ordered not to waste time suppressing individual firing points and to hurry forward. Meanwhile, Rybalko’s tanks approached the headquarters of the German command in Zossen. Most of the officers fled to Potsdam, and the chief of staff, General Krebs, went to Berlin, where on April 22 at 15.00 Hitler held his last military meeting. Only then did they decide to tell the Fuhrer that no one could save the besieged capital. The reaction was violent: the leader burst into threats against the “traitors,” then collapsed on a chair and groaned: “It’s all over, the war is lost...”
And yet the Nazi leadership was not going to give up. It was decided to completely stop resistance to the Anglo-American troops and throw all forces against the Russians. All military personnel capable of holding weapons were to be sent to Berlin. The Fuhrer still pinned his hopes on Wenck's 12th Army, which was supposed to link up with Busse's 9th Army. To coordinate their actions, the command led by Keitel and Jodl was withdrawn from Berlin to the town of Kramnitz. In the capital, besides Hitler himself, the only leaders of the Reich left were General Krebs, Bormann and Goebbels, who was appointed head of defense.
Nikolai Sergeevich Leonov, Lieutenant General of the Foreign Intelligence Service:
The Berlin operation is the penultimate operation of the Second World War. It was carried out by forces of three fronts from April 16 to April 30, 1945, with the raising of the flag over the Reichstag and the end of resistance on the evening of May 2. Pros and cons of this operation. Plus the operation was completed quite quickly. After all, the attempt to take Berlin was actively promoted by the leaders of the allied armies. This is reliably known from Churchill’s letters.
Disadvantages: Almost everyone who participated recalls that there were too many sacrifices and, perhaps, without objective necessity. The first reproaches to Zhukov were made at the shortest distance from Berlin. His attempt to enter with a frontal attack from the east is regarded by many participants in the war as a mistaken decision. It was necessary to encircle Berlin from the north and south and force the enemy to capitulate. But the marshal went straight. Regarding the artillery operation on April 16, the following can be said: Zhukov brought the idea of using searchlights from Khalkhin Gol. It was there that the Japanese launched a similar attack. Zhukov repeated the same technique: but many military strategists claim that the searchlights had no effect. The result of their use was a mess of fire and dust. This frontal attack was unsuccessful and poorly thought out: when our soldiers walked through the trenches, there were few German corpses in them. So the advancing units wasted more than 1,000 wagons of ammunition. Stalin deliberately arranged competition between the marshals. After all, Berlin was finally surrounded on April 25th. It would be possible not to resort to such sacrifices.
City on fire
On April 22, 1945, Zhukov appeared in Berlin. His armies of five infantry and four tanks destroyed the capital of Germany using all types of weapons. Meanwhile, Rybalko’s tanks approached the city limits, occupying a bridgehead in the Teltow area. Zhukov gave his vanguard, the armies of Chuikov and Katukov, the order to cross the Spree and be in Tempelhof and Marienfeld, the central regions of the city, no later than the 24th. For street fighting, assault detachments were hastily formed from fighters from different units. In the north, the 47th Army of General Perkhorovich crossed the Havel River along a bridge that had accidentally survived and headed west, preparing to connect there with Konev’s units and close the encirclement. Having occupied the northern districts of the city, Zhukov finally excluded Rokossovsky from among the participants in the operation. From this moment until the end of the war, the 2nd Belorussian Front was engaged in the defeat of the Germans in the north, drawing over a significant part of the Berlin group.
The glory of the winner of Berlin has passed by Rokossovsky, and it has passed by Konev as well. Stalin's directive, received on the morning of April 23, ordered the troops of the 1st Ukrainian to stop at Anhalter station literally a hundred meters from the Reichstag. The Supreme Commander entrusted Zhukov with occupying the center of the enemy capital, noting his invaluable contribution to the victory. But we still had to get to Anhalter. Rybalko with his tanks froze on the bank of the deep Teltow Canal. Only with the approach of artillery, which suppressed the German firing points, were the vehicles able to cross the water barrier. On April 24, Chuikov’s scouts made their way west through the Schönefeld airfield and met Rybalko’s tankers there. This meeting split the German forces in half; about 200 thousand soldiers were surrounded in a wooded area southeast of Berlin. Until May 1, this group tried to break through to the west, but was cut into pieces and almost completely destroyed.
And Zhukov’s strike forces continued to rush towards the city center. Many fighters and commanders had no experience of fighting in a big city, which led to huge losses. The tanks moved in columns, and as soon as the front one was knocked out, the entire column became easy prey for the German Faustians. We had to resort to merciless but effective combat tactics: first, the artillery fired hurricane fire at the target of the future offensive, then volleys of Katyusha rockets drove everyone alive into shelters. After this, tanks moved forward, destroying barricades and destroying houses from which shots were fired. Only then did the infantry get involved. During the battle, almost two million gun shots and 36 thousand tons of deadly metal fell on the city. Fortress guns were delivered from Pomerania by rail, firing shells weighing half a ton into the center of Berlin.
But even this firepower could not always cope with the thick walls of buildings built back in the 18th century. Chuikov recalled: “Our guns sometimes fired up to a thousand shots at one square, at a group of houses, even at a small garden.” It is clear that no one thought about the civilian population, trembling with fear in bomb shelters and flimsy basements. However, the main blame for his suffering lay not with the Soviet troops, but with Hitler and his entourage, who, with the help of propaganda and violence, did not allow residents to leave the city, which had turned into a sea of fire. After the victory, it was estimated that 20% of the houses in Berlin were completely destroyed, and another 30% partially. On April 22, the city telegraph office closed for the first time in history, receiving the last message from the Japanese allies “we wish you good luck.” Water and gas were cut off, transport stopped running, and food distribution stopped. Starving Berliners, not paying attention to the continuous shelling, robbed freight trains and shops. They were more afraid not of Russian shells, but of SS patrols, which grabbed men and hung them from trees as deserters.
The police and Nazi officials began to flee. Many tried to get to the west to surrender to the Anglo-Americans. But the Soviet units were already there. On April 25 at 13.30 they reached the Elbe and met with tank crews of the 1st American Army near the town of Torgau.
On this day, Hitler entrusted the defense of Berlin to tank general Weidling. Under his command there were 60 thousand soldiers who were opposed by 464 thousand Soviet troops. The armies of Zhukov and Konev met not only in the east, but also in the west of Berlin, in the Ketzin area, and now they were separated from the city center by only 78 kilometers. On April 26, the Germans made a last-ditch attempt to stop the attackers. Fulfilling the Fuhrer's order, Wenck's 12th Army, which consisted of up to 200 thousand people, struck from the west at Konev's 3rd and 28th armies. The fighting, unprecedentedly fierce even for this brutal battle, continued for two days, and by the evening of the 27th, Wenck had to retreat to his previous positions.
The day before, Chuikov’s soldiers occupied the airfields of Gatow and Tempelhof, carrying out Stalin’s order to prevent Hitler from leaving Berlin at any cost. The Supreme Commander was not going to let the one who treacherously deceived him in 1941 escape or surrender to the Allies. Corresponding orders were also given to other Nazi leaders. There was another category of Germans who were intensively searched for, nuclear research specialists. Stalin knew about the Americans’ work on the atomic bomb and was going to create “his own” as quickly as possible. It was already necessary to think about the world after the war, where the Soviet Union had to take a worthy place, paid for in blood.
Meanwhile, Berlin continued to suffocate in the smoke of fires. Volkssturmov soldier Edmund Heckscher recalled: “There were so many fires that night turned into day. You could read a newspaper, but newspapers were no longer published in Berlin.” The roar of guns, shooting, explosions of bombs and shells did not stop for a minute. Clouds of smoke and brick dust blanketed the city center, where, deep under the ruins of the Imperial Chancellery, Hitler again and again tormented his subordinates with the question: “Where is Wenck?”
On April 27, three-quarters of Berlin was in Soviet hands. In the evening, Chuikov’s strike forces reached the Landwehr Canal, one and a half kilometers from the Reichstag. However, their path was blocked by selected SS units, who fought with special fanaticism. Bogdanov's 2nd Tank Army was stuck in the Tiergarten area, whose parks were dotted with German trenches. Every step here was taken with difficulty and a lot of blood. Chances again appeared for Rybalko’s tankers, who on that day made an unprecedented rush from the west to the center of Berlin through Wilmersdorf.
By nightfall, a strip 23 kilometers wide and up to 16 kilometers long remained in the hands of the Germans. The first batches of prisoners, still small, moved to the rear, emerging with their hands raised from the basements and entrances of houses. Many were deaf from the incessant roar, others, gone crazy, laughed wildly. The civilian population continued to hide, fearing the revenge of the victors. The Avengers, of course, could not help but exist after what the Nazis did on Soviet soil. But there were also those who, risking their lives, pulled German elderly people and children out of the fire, who shared their soldiers’ rations with them. The feat of Sergeant Nikolai Masalov, who saved a three-year-old German girl from a destroyed house on the Landwehr Canal, went down in history. It is he who is depicted by the famous statue in Treptower Park in memory of Soviet soldiers who preserved humanity in the fire of the most terrible of wars.
Even before the end of the fighting, the Soviet command took measures to restore normal life in the city. On April 28, General Berzarin, appointed commandant of Berlin, issued an order to dissolve the National Socialist Party and all its organizations and transfer all power to the military commandant's office. In areas cleared of the enemy, soldiers were already beginning to put out fires, clear buildings, and bury numerous corpses. However, it was possible to establish a normal life only with the assistance of the local population. Therefore, on April 20, the Headquarters demanded that the commanders of the troops change their attitude towards German prisoners and civilians. The directive put forward a simple rationale for such a step: “A more humane attitude towards the Germans will reduce their stubbornness in defense.”
Former foreman of the 2nd article, member of the international PEN Club (International Organization of Writers), Germanist writer, translator Evgenia Katseva:
The greatest of our holidays is approaching, and the cats are scratching at my soul. Recently (in February) of this year I was at a conference in Berlin, seemingly dedicated to this great, I think, not only for our people, date, and I became convinced that many had forgotten who started the war and who won it. No, this stable phrase “win the war” is completely inappropriate: you can win and lose in a game; in a war, you either win or lose. For many Germans, the war is only the horrors of those few weeks when it went on on their territory, as if our soldiers came there of their own free will, and did not fight their way to the west for 4 long years across their native scorched and trampled land. This means that Konstantin Simonov was not so right when he believed that there is no such thing as someone else’s grief. It happens, it happens. And if we forgot who put an end to one of the most terrible wars, who defeated German fascism, how can we remember who took the capital of the German Reich, Berlin. Our Soviet Army, our Soviet soldiers and officers took it. Whole, completely, fighting for every district, block, house, from the windows and doors of which shots rang out until the last moment.
It was only later, a whole bloody week after the capture of Berlin, on May 2, that our allies appeared, and the main trophy, as a symbol of the joint Victory, was divided into four parts. Into four sectors: Soviet, American, English, French. With four military commandant's offices. Four or four, even more or less equal, but in general Berlin was divided into two completely different parts. For the three sectors quite soon united, and the fourth eastern and, as usual, the poorest sector turned out to be isolated. It remained so, although it later acquired the status of the capital of the GDR. In return, the Americans “generously” gave us back Thuringia, which they had occupied. The region is good, but for a long time the disappointed residents harbored a grudge for some reason not against the renegade Americans, but against us, the new occupiers. This is such an aberration
As for the looting, our soldiers did not come there on their own. And now, 60 years later, all sorts of myths are being spread, growing to ancient proportions
Reich convulsions
The fascist empire was disintegrating before our eyes. On April 28, Italian partisans caught dictator Mussolini trying to escape and shot him. The next day, General von Wietinghof signed the act of surrender of the Germans in Italy. Hitler learned of the execution of the Duce simultaneously with other bad news: his closest associates Himmler and Goering began separate negotiations with the Western allies, bargaining for their lives. The Fuhrer was beside himself with rage: he demanded that the traitors be immediately arrested and executed, but this was no longer in his power. They managed to get even on Himmler’s deputy, General Fegelein, who fled from the bunker; a detachment of SS men grabbed him and shot him. The general was not saved even by the fact that he was the husband of Eva Braun’s sister. On the evening of the same day, Commandant Weidling reported that there was only enough ammunition left in the city for two days, and there was no fuel at all.
General Chuikov received from Zhukov the task of connecting from the east with the forces advancing from the west, through the Tiergarten. The Potsdamer Bridge, leading to the Anhalter train station and Wilhelmstrasse, became an obstacle to the soldiers. The sappers managed to save him from the explosion, but the tanks that entered the bridge were hit by well-aimed shots from Faust cartridges. Then the tank crews tied sandbags around one of the tanks, doused it with diesel fuel and sent it forward. The first shots caused the fuel to burst into flames, but the tank continued to move forward. A few minutes of enemy confusion were enough for the rest to follow the first tank. By the evening of the 28th, Chuikov approached Tiergarten from the southeast, while Rybalko's tanks were entering the area from the south. In the north of Tiergarten, Perepelkin's 3rd Army liberated the Moabit prison, from where 7 thousand prisoners were released.
The city center has turned into a real hell. The heat made it impossible to breathe, the stones of buildings were cracking, and water was boiling in ponds and canals. There was no front line; there was a desperate battle for every street, every house. In dark rooms and on staircases the electricity in Berlin had long gone out and hand-to-hand fighting broke out. Early in the morning of April 29, soldiers of General Perevertkin’s 79th Rifle Corps approached the huge building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, “Himmler’s House.” Having shot the barricades at the entrance with cannons, they managed to break into the building and capture it, which made it possible to get close to the Reichstag.
Meanwhile, nearby, in his bunker, Hitler was dictating his political will. He expelled the "traitors" Goering and Himmler from the Nazi Party and accused the entire German army of failing to maintain "commitment to duty until death." Power over Germany was transferred to “President” Dönitz and “Chancellor” Goebbels, and command of the army to Field Marshal Scherner. Towards evening, the official Wagner, brought by the SS men from the city, performed the civil wedding ceremony of the Fuhrer and Eva Braun. The witnesses were Goebbels and Bormann, who stayed for breakfast. During the meal, Hitler was depressed, muttering something about the death of Germany and the triumph of the “Jewish Bolsheviks.” During breakfast, he gave two secretaries ampoules of poison and ordered them to poison his beloved shepherd Blondie. Behind the walls of his office, the wedding quickly turned into a drinking party. One of the few sober employees remained Hitler’s personal pilot Hans Bauer, who offered to take his boss to any part of the world. The Fuhrer once again refused.
On the evening of April 29, General Weidling reported the situation to Hitler for the last time. The old warrior was frank. Tomorrow the Russians will be at the entrance to the office. Ammunition is running out, there is nowhere to wait for reinforcements. Wenck's army was thrown back to the Elbe, and nothing is known about most other units. We need to capitulate. This opinion was confirmed by SS Colonel Mohnke, who had previously fanatically carried out all the Fuhrer’s orders. Hitler prohibited surrender, but allowed soldiers in “small groups” to leave the encirclement and make their way to the west.
Meanwhile, Soviet troops occupied one building after another in the city center. The commanders had difficulty finding their bearings on the maps; there was no indication of the pile of stones and twisted metal that had previously been called Berlin. After taking the “Himmler House” and the town hall, the attackers had two main targets: the Imperial Chancellery and the Reichstag. If the first was the real center of power, then the second was its symbol, the tallest building of the German capital, where the Victory Banner was to be hoisted. The banner was already ready; it was handed over to one of the best units of the 3rd Army, the battalion of Captain Neustroev. On the morning of April 30, the units approached the Reichstag. As for the office, they decided to break through to it through the zoo in Tiergarten. In the devastated park, soldiers rescued several animals, including a mountain goat, which had the German Iron Cross hung around its neck for its bravery. Only in the evening the center of defense, a seven-story reinforced concrete bunker, was taken.
Near the zoo, Soviet assault troops came under attack from the SS from the torn up metro tunnels. Chasing them, the fighters penetrated underground and discovered passages leading towards the office. A plan arose right away to “finish off the fascist beast in its lair.” The scouts went deeper into the tunnels, but after a couple of hours water rushed towards them. According to one version, upon learning that the Russians were approaching the office, Hitler ordered to open the floodgates and let the Spree water flow into the metro, where, in addition to Soviet soldiers, there were tens of thousands of wounded, women and children. Berliners who survived the war recalled that they heard an order to urgently leave the metro, but due to the resulting crush, few were able to get out. Another version refutes the existence of the order: water could have broken into the subway due to continuous bombing that destroyed the walls of the tunnels.
If the Fuhrer ordered the drowning of his fellow citizens, this was the last of his criminal orders. On the afternoon of April 30, he was informed that the Russians were on Potsdamerplatz, a block from the bunker. Soon after this, Hitler and Eva Braun said goodbye to their comrades and retired to their room. At 15.30 a shot was heard from there, after which Goebbels, Bormann and several other people entered the room. The Fuhrer, pistol in hand, lay on the sofa with his face covered in blood. Eva Braun did not disfigure herself, she took poison. Their corpses were taken into the garden, where they were placed in a shell crater, doused with gasoline and set on fire. The funeral ceremony did not last long; Soviet artillery opened fire, and the Nazis hid in a bunker. Later, the burnt bodies of Hitler and his girlfriend were discovered and transported to Moscow. For some reason, Stalin did not show the world evidence of the death of his worst enemy, which gave rise to many versions of his salvation. Only in 1991, Hitler's skull and his ceremonial uniform were discovered in the archive and demonstrated to everyone who wanted to see these dark evidence of the past.
Zhukov Yuri Nikolaevich, historian, writer:
The winners are not judged. That's all. In 1944, it turned out to be quite possible to withdraw Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria from the war without serious fighting, primarily through the efforts of diplomacy. An even more favorable situation for us arose on April 25, 1945. On that day, troops of the USSR and the USA met on the Elbe, near the city of Torgau, and the complete encirclement of Berlin was completed. From that moment on, the fate of Nazi Germany was sealed. Victory became inevitable. Only one thing remained unclear: exactly when the complete and unconditional surrender of the moribund Wehrmacht would follow. Zhukov, having removed Rokossovsky, took upon himself the leadership of the assault on Berlin. I could just squeeze the blockade ring every hour.
Force Hitler and his henchmen to commit suicide not on April 30, but a few days later. But Zhukov acted differently. Over the course of a week, he mercilessly sacrificed thousands of soldiers' lives. He forced units of the 1st Belorussian Front to fight bloody battles for every quarter of the German capital. For every street, every house. Achieved the surrender of the Berlin garrison on May 2. But if this surrender had followed not on May 2, but, say, on the 6th or 7th, tens of thousands of our soldiers could have been saved. Well, Zhukov would have gained the glory of a winner anyway.
Molchanov Ivan Gavrilovich, participant in the assault on Berlin, veteran of the 8th Guards Army of the 1st Belorussian Front:
After the battles at Stalingrad, our army under the command of General Chuikov passed through all of Ukraine, the south of Belarus, and then through Poland it reached Berlin, on the outskirts of which, as is known, the very difficult Kyustrin operation took place. I, a scout in an artillery unit, was 18 years old at the time. I still remember how the earth trembled and a barrage of shells plowed it up and down. How, after a powerful artillery barrage on the Zelovsky Heights, the infantry went into battle. The soldiers who drove the Germans from the first line of defense later said that after being blinded by the searchlights that were used in this operation, the Germans fled clutching their heads. Many years later, during a meeting in Berlin, German veterans of this operation told me that they then thought that the Russians had used a new secret weapon.
After the Seelow Heights we moved directly to the German capital. Because of the flood, the roads were so muddy that both equipment and people had difficulty moving. It was impossible to dig trenches: water came out as deep as a spade bayonet. We reached the ring road by the twentieth of April and soon found ourselves on the outskirts of Berlin, where incessant battles for the city began. The SS men had nothing to lose: they strengthened residential buildings, metro stations, and various institutions thoroughly and in advance. When we entered the city, we were horrified: its center was completely bombed by Anglo-American aircraft, and the streets were so littered that equipment could barely move along them. We moved with a city map and found the streets and neighborhoods marked on it with difficulty. On the same map, in addition to fire targets, museums, book depositories, and medical institutions were indicated, at which it was prohibited to shoot.
In the battles for the center, our tank units also suffered losses: they became easy prey for the German patrons. And then the command applied a new tactic: first, artillery and flamethrowers destroyed enemy firing points, and after that, tanks cleared the way for the infantry. At this point, only one gun remained in our unit. But we continued to act. When approaching the Brandenburg Gate and the Anhalt station, we received the order “not to shoot”; the accuracy of the battle here turned out to be such that our shells could hit our own. By the end of the operation, the remnants of the German army were cut into four parts, which began to be squeezed with rings.
The shooting ended on May 2nd. And suddenly there was such silence that it was impossible to believe. Residents of the city began to come out of their shelters, they looked at us from under their brows. And here, in establishing contacts with them, their children helped. The ubiquitous guys, for 1012 years, came to us, we treated them to cookies, bread, sugar, and when we opened the kitchen, we began to feed them cabbage soup and porridge. It was a strange sight: somewhere firefights were resuming, volleys of gunfire were heard, and there was a line for porridge outside our kitchen
And soon a squadron of our horsemen appeared on the streets of the city. They were so clean and festive that we decided: “Probably, somewhere near Berlin they were specially changed and prepared.” This impression, as well as the arrival of G.K. to the destroyed Reichstag. He drove up to Zhukov in an unbuttoned overcoat, smiling, etched into my memory forever. There were, of course, other memorable moments. In the battles for the city, our battery had to be redeployed to another firing point. And then we came under German artillery attack. Two of my comrades jumped into a hole torn apart by a shell. And I, not knowing why, lay down under the truck, where after a few seconds I realized that the car above me was full of shells. When the shelling ended, I got out from under the truck and saw that my comrades had been killed. Well, it turns out that I was born for the second time that day
last fight
The assault on the Reichstag was led by the 79th Rifle Corps of General Perevertkin, reinforced by shock groups of other units. The first onslaught on the morning of the 30th was repulsed in a huge building, with up to one and a half thousand SS men dug in. At 18.00 a new assault followed. For five hours, the fighters moved forward and upward, meter by meter, to the roof decorated with giant bronze horses. Sergeants Yegorov and Kantaria were entrusted with hoisting the flag and decided that Stalin would be pleased to have his fellow countryman participate in this symbolic act. Only at 22.50 two sergeants reached the roof and, risking their lives, inserted the flagpole into the shell hole right next to the horse's hooves. This was immediately reported to front headquarters, and Zhukov called the Supreme Commander in Moscow.
A little later, another news came, Hitler’s heirs decided to negotiate. This was reported by General Krebs, who appeared at Chuikov’s headquarters at 3.50 am on May 1. He began by saying: “Today is the First of May, a great holiday for both our nations.” To which Chuikov replied without unnecessary diplomacy: “Today is our holiday. It’s hard to say how things are going for you.” Krebs spoke about Hitler's suicide and the desire of his successor Goebbels to conclude a truce. A number of historians believe that these negotiations were supposed to prolong time in anticipation of a separate agreement between the “government” of Dönitz and the Western powers. But they did not achieve their goal. Chuikov immediately reported to Zhukov, who called Moscow, waking Stalin on the eve of the May Day parade. The reaction to Hitler’s death was predictable: “I’ve done it, you scoundrel!” It's a shame we didn't take him alive." The answer to the proposal for a truce was: only complete surrender. This was conveyed to Krebs, who objected: “Then you will have to destroy all the Germans.” The response silence was more eloquent than words.
At 10.30 Krebs left headquarters, having had time to drink cognac with Chuikov and exchange memories; both commanded units at Stalingrad. Having received the final “no” from the Soviet side, the German general returned to his troops. In pursuit of him, Zhukov sent an ultimatum: if Goebbels and Bormann’s consent to unconditional surrender is not given by 10 o’clock, Soviet troops will strike such a blow that “there will be nothing left in Berlin but ruins.” The Reich leadership did not give an answer, and at 10.40 the Soviet artillery opened hurricane fire on the center of the capital.
The shooting did not stop all day; Soviet units suppressed pockets of German resistance, which weakened a little, but was still fierce. Tens of thousands of soldiers and Volkssturm troops were still fighting in different parts of the huge city. Others, throwing down their weapons and tearing off their insignia, tried to escape to the west. Among the latter was Martin Bormann. Having learned of Chuikov’s refusal to negotiate, he and a group of SS men fled from the office through an underground tunnel leading to the Friedrichstrasse metro station. There he got out into the street and tried to hide from the fire behind a German tank, but it was hit. The leader of the Hitler Youth, Axman, who happened to be there and shamefully abandoned his young charges, later stated that he saw the dead body of “Nazi No. 2” under the railway bridge.
At 18.30, soldiers of the 5th Army of General Berzarin stormed the last stronghold of Nazism, the Imperial Chancellery. Before this, they managed to storm the post office, several ministries and a heavily fortified Gestapo building. Two hours later, when the first groups of attackers had already approached the building, Goebbels and his wife Magda followed their idol by taking poison. Before this, they asked the doctor to administer a lethal injection to their six children; they were told that they would give an injection that would never make them sick. The children were left in the room, and the corpses of Goebbels and his wife were taken out into the garden and burned. Soon everyone who remained below, about 600 adjutants and SS men, rushed out: the bunker began to burn. Somewhere in its depths only General Krebs, who fired a bullet in the forehead, remained. Another Nazi commander, General Weidling, took responsibility and radioed Chuikov agreeing to unconditional surrender. At one o'clock in the morning on May 2, German officers with white flags appeared on the Potsdam Bridge. Their request was reported to Zhukov, who gave his consent. At 6.00 Weidling signed the order to surrender addressed to all German troops, and he himself set an example to his subordinates. After this, the shooting in the city began to subside. From the basements of the Reichstag, from under the ruins of houses and shelters, the Germans came out, silently putting their weapons on the ground and forming columns. They were observed by the writer Vasily Grossman, who accompanied the Soviet commandant Berzarin. Among the prisoners, he saw old men, boys and women who did not want to part with their husbands. The day was cold, and a light rain fell on the smoldering ruins. Hundreds of corpses lay on the streets, crushed by tanks. There were also flags with swastikas and party cards, Hitler’s supporters were in a hurry to get rid of the evidence. In Tiergarten, Grossman saw a German soldier and a nurse sitting on a bench, hugging each other and not paying any attention to what was happening around them.
In the afternoon, Soviet tanks began driving through the streets, broadcasting the order of surrender through loudspeakers. At about 15.00 the fighting finally stopped, and only in the western regions did explosions roar and pursue the SS men who were trying to escape. An unusual, tense silence hung over Berlin. And then it was torn apart by a new barrage of shots. Soviet soldiers crowded on the steps of the Reichstag, on the ruins of the Imperial Chancellery and fired again and again, this time into the air. Strangers threw themselves into each other's arms and danced right on the pavement. They couldn't believe that the war was over. Many of them had new wars, hard work, difficult problems ahead, but they had already accomplished the most important thing in their lives.
In the last battle of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army crushed 95 enemy divisions. Up to 150 thousand German soldiers and officers died, 300 thousand were captured. The victory came at a heavy price; during the two weeks of the offensive, three Soviet fronts lost from 100 thousand to 200 thousand people killed. The senseless resistance claimed the lives of approximately 150 thousand Berlin civilians, and a significant part of the city was destroyed.
Chronicle of the operation
April 16, 5.00.
Troops of the 1st Belorussian Front (Zhukov), after powerful artillery bombardment, begin an offensive on the Seelow Heights near the Oder.
April 16, 8.00.
Units of the 1st Ukrainian Front (Konev) cross the Neisse River and move west.
April 18, morning.
The tank armies of Rybalko and Lelyushenko turn north, towards Berlin.
April 18, evening.
The German defense on the Seelow Heights was broken through. Zhukov's units begin to advance towards Berlin.
April 19, morning.
Troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front (Rokossovsky) cross the Oder, cutting apart the German defenses north of Berlin.
April 20, evening.
Zhukov's armies are approaching Berlin from the west and northwest.
April 21, day.
Rybalko's tanks occupy the German military headquarters in Zossen, south of Berlin.
April 22, morning.
Rybalko's army occupies the southern outskirts of Berlin, and Perkhorovich's army occupies the northern areas of the city.
April 24, day.
Meeting of the advancing troops of Zhukov and Konev in the south of Berlin. The Frankfurt-Gubensky group of Germans is surrounded by Soviet units, and its destruction has begun.
April 25, 13.30.
Konev's units reached the Elbe near the city of Torgau and met there with the 1st American Army.
April 26, morning.
Wenck's German army launches a counterattack on the advancing Soviet units.
April 27, evening.
After stubborn fighting, Wenck's army was driven back.
April 28.
Soviet units surround the city center.
April 29, day.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs building and the town hall were stormed.
April 30, day.
The Tiergarten area with its zoo is busy.
April 30, 15.30.
Hitler committed suicide in a bunker under the Imperial Chancellery.
April 30, 22.50.
The assault on the Reichstag, which had lasted since the morning, was completed.
May 1, 3.50.
The beginning of unsuccessful negotiations between the German General Krebs and the Soviet command.
May 1, 10.40.
After the failure of negotiations, Soviet troops begin storming the buildings of the ministries and the imperial chancellery.
May 1, 22.00.
The Imperial Chancellery is stormed.
May 2, 6.00.
General Weidling gives the order to surrender.
May 2, 15.00.
The fighting in the city finally stopped.
Berlin was taken surprisingly quickly. The assault on Berlin itself lasted from April 25 to May 2. The Berlin offensive operation began on April 16. By comparison, Budapest defended from December 25, 1944 to February 13, 1945. The besieged city of Breslau (now Wroclaw) capitulated after Berlin without being taken by assault, having been under siege since mid-February. The Germans were never able to take besieged Leningrad. Fierce battles in Stalingrad went down in history. Why did Berlin fall so quickly?
According to German data, the city was defended in the final phase by 44 thousand people, of whom 22,000 died. Military historians involved in the reconstruction of the storming of Berlin agreed on a figure of 60 thousand soldiers and officers and 50-60 tanks. The Soviet army directly involved 464,000 people and 1,500 tanks and self-propelled guns in the assault on Berlin.
It fell to the city's firefighters and police to defend Berlin, but the Volkssturmists - poorly trained and poorly armed old men and minor members of the Hitler Youth (Nazi "Komsomol") - prevailed. There were about 15 thousand career soldiers in Berlin, including about four thousand SS men. Even in April 1945, Hitler had a very large army, but there were not even hundreds of thousands of soldiers for the capital. How did it happen that 250 thousand professional experienced soldiers waited until the end of the war in Courland (Latvia) and were not transferred across the Baltic Sea to Germany? Why did 350 thousand soldiers surrender in Norway, from where it was even easier to get to Germany? A million soldiers surrendered in Italy on April 29. Army Group Center, located in the Czech Republic, numbered 1 million 200 thousand people. And Berlin, declared a fortress (Festung Berlin) in February 1945, did not have a sufficient garrison or any serious fortification preparations for defense. And thank God.
Hitler's death led to the rapid surrender of the German army. While he was alive, German troops surrendered in entire formations in extreme cases, when all possibilities of resistance had been exhausted. Here you can remember Stalingrad or Tunisia. Hitler was going to fight to the last of his soldiers. Strange as it may sound today, but back on April 21, he believed that he had every opportunity to push the Red Army back from Berlin. Although at that time the German defense line on the Oder had already been broken through and it became clear from the advance of Soviet troops that for a few more days Berlin would be surrounded by a blockade. American troops reached the Elbe (at the Yalta summit, the Elbe was designated as the dividing line between American and Soviet troops) and were waiting for the Soviet army.
At one time, Hitler demonstrated outstanding abilities in the struggle for power. Having a very low starting position, he managed to outplay, or even simply fool, many professional politicians and gain complete control over a large European country. Hitler's power in Germany was much greater than that of the Kaiser. And if during the First World War the military actually deprived the Kaiser of power, then during the Second World War Hitler increased his power over Germany. How can one not imagine oneself as a genius, a favorite of Providence? And Hitler believed in his own genius.
A typical episode is cited in his memoirs (“Hitler. The Last Ten Days.”) by Captain Gerhard Boldt, assistant chief of the General Staff of Guderian and then Krebs: “Gehlen (chief of the military intelligence and analytical department) again presented absolutely reliable information, prepared by specialists of the highest level, regarding the plans of the Soviet command and the places of concentration of Russian strike units. Having listened, Hitler, in great irritation and in a tone that did not allow objections, declared: “I categorically reject these worthless proposals. Only a true genius is able to predict the enemy's intentions and draw the necessary conclusions. And no genius will pay attention to various little things."
Hitler, rejecting all the proposals and requests of the General Staff for the evacuation of two armies from Courland, justified his refusal with the “brilliant” insight that if this supposedly happened, then Sweden, which was just waiting for this, would immediately declare war on Germany. All the arguments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in favor of Sweden’s strict adherence to neutrality were not taken into account by the “brilliant” strategist.
The Courland Pocket formed on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
Hitler didn't trust his generals. And this mistrust intensified after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. A sharp deterioration in health after concussion and many minor wounds also affected the quality of decisions made. All this led to such stupid decisions as the appointment of Reichsführer SS Himmler on January 24, 1945 as commander of the Vistula Army Group (equivalent to our concept - front commander), and the Minister of Information and Propaganda Goebbels as Reich Defense Commissioner and, concurrently, Berlin Defense Commissioner . Both tried very hard and did everything in their power to successfully complete the assignments they received.
Our commissars, to tell the truth, were no better. The famous Mehlis, sent by Stalin in 1942 to the Crimea to look after the “stupid” generals, made so much trouble. that no Goebbels could compete with him. Thanks to Mehlis, who constantly interfered in military affairs, the Red Army, having a great advantage in numbers and equipment, suffered a crushing defeat. The Red Army lost 170,000 people in prisoners alone and tens of thousands killed. The Germans lost 3,400 people, of which about 600 were killed.
But let's return to the storming of Berlin. The troops of the First Belorussian Front were facing the decisive offensive at a distance of 60 km from Berlin. The direct path to the capital of the Reich was covered by the 9th German Army. After breaking through the defense line to Berlin, the 56th Panzer Corps under the command of Lieutenant General Helmut Weidling retreated from the Seelow Heights. On April 16, on the eve of the Berlin operation, the corps numbered 50,000 people along with the rear. After bloody battles, the corps retreated to the capital, greatly weakened. By the beginning of the fighting in Berlin itself, the corps included the following forces:
1. 18th Panzer Division - 4000 people.
2. 9th Airborne Division - 4000 people (500 paratroopers entered Berlin and here the division was replenished with Volkssturmists to 4000).
3. 20th Panzer Division - about 1000 people. Of these, 800 were Volkssturmists.
4th SS Panzer Division "Nordland" - 3500 - 4000 people. National composition of the division: Danes, Norwegians, Swedes and Germans.
In total, the corps that retreated to Berlin consisted of 13,000 - 15,000 soldiers.
After the surrender of Berlin, General Weidling gave the following testimony during interrogation: “Already on April 24, I was convinced that defending Berlin was impossible and from a military point of view pointless, since for this the German command did not have sufficient forces, moreover, at the disposal of the German command by April 24 in Berlin there was not a single regular formation, with the exception of the Grossdeutschland security regiment and the SS brigade guarding the Imperial Chancellery.All defense was entrusted to Volkssturm units, police, fire brigade personnel, personnel of various rear units and services.
The commandant of Berlin, Helmut Weidling, died in Vladimir prison on November 17, 1955 (64 years old).
Before Weidling, the defense of Berlin was led by Lieutenant General Helmut Reimann, who manned the people's militia (Volkssturm). A total of 92 Volkssturm battalions (about 60,000 people) were formed. For his army, Reiman received 42,095 rifles, 773 machine guns, 1,953 light machine guns, 263 heavy machine guns and a certain number of mortars and field guns.
Volkssturm is a people's militia in which males from 16 to 60 years old were conscripted.
By the time the militia was formed, the German armed forces were experiencing an acute shortage of weapons, including small arms. The Volkssturm battalions were armed mainly with captured weapons produced in France, Holland, Belgium, England, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Norway. In total, there were 15 types of rifles and 10 types of light machine guns. Each Volkssturmist had an average of 5 rifle cartridges. But there were quite a lot of Faust cartridges, although they could not compensate for the shortage of other weapons.
The Volkssturm were divided into two categories: those who had at least some weapons - Volkssturm 1 (there were about 20,000 of them), and Volkssturm 2 - who had no weapons at all (40,000). The people's militia battalions were formed not according to the military system, but according to party districts. Party leaders who were untrained in military affairs were usually appointed as commanders. These battalions did not have headquarters; moreover, they did not have field kitchens and were not paid. The Volkssturmists were fed by the local population, usually their own families. And when they fought far from their homes, they ate whatever God provided, or even went hungry. The Volkssturm also did not have its own transport or communications. Among other things, these battalions were subordinate to the party leadership, and not to the military command, and were placed at the disposal of the city commandant only after receiving a conditional signal, which meant that the assault on the city had begun.
This is also a Volkssturm. Dictators need their subjects only as cannon fodder.
The fortifications of Berlin erected under the leadership of Goebbels were, according to General M. Pemzel, simply ridiculous. General Serov's report to Stalin also gives an extremely low assessment of the Berlin fortifications. Soviet experts stated that there were no serious fortifications within a radius of 10-15 km around Berlin.
On April 18, by order of Goebbels, Reimann, then still the commandant of Berlin, was forced to transfer 30 Volkssturm battalions and an air defense unit with their excellent guns from the city to the second line of defense. As of April 19, 24 thousand militia remained in the city. The departed battalions never returned to Berlin. Also in the city there were units made up of military personnel of the rear services, firefighters, police officers, and members of the Hitler Youth. Among the young Volkssturmists was 15-year-old Adolf Martin Bormann, the son of Hitler’s deputy in the party. He survived and became a Catholic priest after the war.
The last replenishment that arrived in Berlin by land (April 24) were about 300 French from the remnants of the SS volunteer division Charlemagne. The division suffered heavy losses in the fighting in Pomerania. Of the 7,500 people, 1,100 remained alive. These 300 French SS men provided invaluable assistance to Hitler. They knocked out 92 Soviet tanks out of 108 destroyed in the defense zone of the Nordlung division. On May 2, 30 French survivors were captured at Potsdam Station. Oddly enough, two thirds of the SS men who fought fiercely against the Soviet army in Berlin were foreigners: Norwegians, Danes, Swedes and French.
An armored personnel carrier of a company commander of Swedish volunteers. To the right of the vehicle lies the driver: Unterscharführer Ragnar Johansson.
The last meager reinforcement for the defenders of Berlin arrived on the night of April 26. A battalion of naval school cadets from Rostock was transported by transport aircraft. Some sources (even Wikipedia) report. that it was a parachute landing. But these comrades probably only saw parachutist jumps on TV, otherwise they would not have written that young people who were trained for service on submarines mastered parachuting so skillfully and were able to perform a technically difficult jump in the dark from a low altitude. And even in the city, which in itself is difficult even during the day and in peacetime.
Not only Hitler and Goebbels, but also German generals helped us take Berlin. The commander of the Vistula Army Group, which covered Berlin from the east, Colonel General Heinrici, was one of those German generals who believed that the war was lost and must be ended urgently, to prevent the complete destruction of the country and the destruction of the people. He was extremely sensitive to Hitler’s intentions to fight to the last German. Heinrici, a talented military leader, was considered very suspicious from the Nazi point of view: he was married to a half-Jewish woman, was a zealous Christian, went to church and did not want to join the NSDAP, and refused to burn Smolensk during the retreat. Heinrici, after breaking through the defense line on the Oder, withdrew his troops in such a way that they did not reach Berlin. On April 22, the 56th Tank Corps received an order from the headquarters of the 9th Army, part of the Vistula Group, to withdraw south of Berlin to link up with the main units of the army. The generals, playing giveaway, hoped that the Red Army would reach the Reich Chancellery somewhere by April 22. Weidling received an order from Hitler to lead the corps to defend the city, but he did not obey the order immediately, but only after the Fuhrer duplicated it. Hitler even ordered Weidling to be shot on April 23 for insubordination, but he managed to justify himself. True, the general gained little from this. Weidling died in Vladimir prison after spending 10 years there.
Heinrici continued to withdraw his troops located north of Berlin to the west for surrender to Anglo-American troops. At the same time, he tried to deceive Keitel and Jodl, who remained loyal to Hitler until the very end. Heinrici did everything possible not to comply with the demands of the command and Hitler personally to organize a counterattack by the Steiner group from the north to unblock Berlin. When Keitel was finally convinced of Heinrici's intentions, he removed him from his post and offered to shoot himself as an honest officer. However, Heinrici surrendered command. went to a small town and later surrendered to British troops.
Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici. Died in December 1971 (84 years old).
On April 22, SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner received Hitler's order to strike from the north and unblock Berlin. Steiner attempted to carry out the order, but failed. Realizing that further attempts would doom his hastily formed group to death, Steiner voluntarily began the withdrawal of units subordinate to him to the West. He also did not obey the orders of Field Marshal Keitel, Chief of the General Staff of General Krebs, to again send his troops towards Berlin. On April 27, 1945, Hitler removed him from command of the group for disobedience, but Steiner again disobeyed and continued to withdraw. According to Heinz Hoehne, author of The Black Order of the SS, Himmler was critical of Steiner, calling him "the most disobedient of my generals." Obergruppenführer G. Berger, close to Himmler, asserted: “Obergruppenführer Steiner cannot be educated. He does whatever he wants and doesn’t tolerate any objections.”
SS Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner. Died in May 1966 (69 years old).
Great assistance was provided to the Soviet army and the Minister of Armaments Speer, who did so much to ensure that until the beginning of 1945, arms production in Germany steadily increased. Speer, after the winter offensive of the Soviet army, compiled a report for Hitler, which began with the words “the war is lost.” Speer was categorically against the “scorched earth” tactics in Germany, believing that the surviving Germans would have to live somehow. Speer prevented the explosion of most of the bridges in Berlin, which could have led to delays in the offensive and large losses for the Red Army. Of the 248 bridges in Berlin, only 120 were blown up.
The central defense sector of Berlin, the "Citadel", was defended by a group under the command of Brigadeführer W. Mohnke.
Brigadeführer W. Mohnke, released from Soviet captivity in October 1955, died in 2001.
On the night of April 21, 1945, Adolf Hitler appointed him commander of the “Kampfgruppe Mohnke,” which was entrusted with the defense of the Reich Chancellery and the Fuhrer’s bunker. In total, the group included 9 battalions with a total strength of about 2,100 people. After Hitler's suicide, on May 1, Mohnke led a group that broke out of the bunker and unsuccessfully tried to escape from Berlin to the north. He was captured.
The inhabitants of Hitler's bunker tried to escape from Berlin in three groups. In one of the groups were Bormann, Axmann, the leader of the Hitler Youth and Hitler's personal physician Ludwig Stumpfegger. They, along with other inhabitants of the bunker, tried to make their way through the battle-torn center of Berlin, but soon Stumpfegger and Bormann separated from the group. Finally, exhausted and demoralized, they committed suicide at Lehrter station. On December 7-8, 1972, two skeletons were found while laying an underground mail cable. After careful examination by forensic scientists, dentists and anthropologists, the skeletons were recognized as belonging to Stumpfegger and Bormann. Shards of glass ampoules containing potassium cyanide were found between the teeth of the skeletons.
Knowing the weakness of Berlin's defenses, the Soviet command planned to capture the German capital on Lenin's birthday, April 21. On this day, the “Victory Banner” should have been flying over Berlin. Why did the Red Army, which has a colossal advantage in men and equipment, have to take Berlin with such heavy losses, the highest average daily losses in the entire war? Military historians are still looking for the answer to this day.
I shared with you the information that I “dug up” and systematized. At the same time, he is not at all impoverished and is ready to share further, at least twice a week. If you find errors or inaccuracies in the article, please let us know. My e-mail address: [email protected]. I will be very grateful.
The Berlin operation was not the most difficult for the Soviet troops. In 1945, when everyone, even the most inexperienced fighters, understood that there was very little left until the end of the war, when almost the entire native land was cleared of the enemy, and Soviet troops, surpassing the enemy in both the quantity and quality of weapons, stood on the outskirts to Hitler's lair, it seems, it was still easier to fight than a year later, when we had to surrender city after city, region after region, to the enemy. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the operation, developed by the best Soviet commanders, would end in success: neither in Moscow, nor even in Berlin, which continued to agonize, from where the Fuhrer continued to send directives to army headquarters and call the piece of Central Europe torn apart by bombing and flooded with refugees “ empire."
War and politics
But despite all the obviousness of the outcome of the Berlin operation, on the eve of the upcoming battles, military aspects gave way to political ones. The closer the end of the war was, the more attention the Allied powers paid to the issue of post-war reconstruction of the world. The impending collapse of the Third Reich posed a lot of questions for the USSR, the USA and Great Britain (at that time France had already joined them), which, even if they were discussed at the Yalta Conference, still gave rise to wariness and even distrust towards each other. The command of the Soviet troops had to build their plans in accordance not with the convenience of the current military positions, but with the need to give more weight to Moscow's arguments during its future negotiations with its allies. That is why, at the last stage of the Great Patriotic War, political considerations sometimes so decisively interfered with the operational plans of Soviet military leaders.
For this reason alone, despite the victorious mood of the soldiers and officers of the Red Army, the Berlin operation cannot be called an easy walk. The high stakes of this battle made it one of the most stubborn and bloody on the Eastern Front. The Nazis defended their last line and had nothing to lose. Moreover, the Germans were not simply led by blind fanaticism. In addition to the actual defense of the Reich capital, they had another important goal - to hold back the advance of Soviet troops for as long as possible, so that most of German territory would come under Allied control. And the defenders of Berlin themselves were more attracted by the prospect of ending up in the hands of the Anglo-Americans than of falling into Russian captivity. Such views were universally instilled by Hitler’s propaganda, although it represented the British and Yankees as arrogant hillbillies, but did not attribute to them the satanic bloodthirstiness that, according to Dr. Goebbels, they were distinguished by “ Bolshevik Slavic-Tatar hordes«.
On the approaches to the lair
By mid-April, the Nazi army, despite the beating that had been given to it on all European fronts for two years, continued to remain in a very combat-ready state. The strength of the Wehrmacht was estimated at 223 divisions and brigades, the majority of which, including the most combat-ready, operated on the Soviet-German front. A series of defeats and heavy losses undermined the morale of the German troops at the front and the population in the rear, but it was not completely broken.
In the Berlin direction, the fascist German command concentrated a large group of army groups "Vistula" and "Center" (in total about 1 million people, 10,400 guns and mortars, 1,530 tanks and assault guns, over 3,300 aircraft). A deeply layered defense was created on the western banks of the Oder and Neisse rivers, which included the Oder-Neisse line, which consisted of three stripes 20-40 kilometers deep, and the Berlin defensive area. The total number of the Berlin garrison exceeded 200 thousand people. For the convenience of troop control, the city was divided into 9 sectors. The central sector, which covered the main state and administrative institutions, including the Reichstag and the Imperial Chancellery, was most carefully prepared. All defensive positions were connected to each other by communication passages. The metro was widely used for covert maneuver by forces and means.
For the offensive in the Berlin direction, the Soviet command concentrated 19 combined arms (including 2 Polish), 4 tank and 4 air armies (2.5 million people, 41,600 guns and mortars, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled artillery units, 7,500 aircraft). The plan of the operation was to deliver several powerful blows on a wide front, dismember the enemy’s Berlin group, encircle and destroy it piece by piece. The main role in the capture of Berlin was given to the armies of Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, commander of the 1st Belorussian Front. At the same time, the Headquarters directives did not provide for the organization of operational-tactical cooperation with the 1st Ukrainian (commander Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev) and 2nd Belorussian Fronts (commander Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky). When breaking through the Oder-Neissen line, the 1st Belorussian Front was supposed to deliver the main blow from a small bridgehead, attack with an open right flank, and attack the enemy’s deeply echeloned defenses head-on.
They tried to implement this plan back in February, but then the offensive did not work out - the Soviet command underestimated the enemy. In bloody battles, both sides suffered heavy losses, but the Germans still managed to stop the advance of Soviet troops by transferring additional units to this section of the front.
Having relied on a lightning strike right in the heart of Hitler's Reich in order to get ahead of the allies and single-handedly put an end to Nazi Germany, Moscow, as always in such cases, pushed into the background the question of the cost of victory. If it were possible to squeeze the German troops concentrated around Berlin into a “cauldron”, dismember them into parts and destroy them individually, without rushing to storm the well-fortified Seelow Heights, which covered the capital of the Reich from the east, then the Soviet army would have avoided those losses. which she carried, striving at all costs to enter the city by the shortest route.
But it was here that operational expediency was forced to give way to political considerations. Despite the few days allotted to the Red Army to capture Berlin, the Allied troops, moving at an accelerated march, could well have gotten there earlier - on the Western Front by that time the Germans had practically stopped resisting, surrendering entire corps and divisions. But, apparently, the blow inflicted in January by German tanks in the Ardennes had such an effect on the Allies that even in the absence of resistance they observed the greatest caution in Germany. But the pace of advance for the Soviet army during the Berlin operation was determined as follows: for combined arms armies - 8-14 kilometers, for tank armies - 30-37 kilometers per day.
To Berlin!
On April 16, at 3 o'clock local time, aviation and artillery preparation began in the sector of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian fronts. After its completion, 143 searchlights were turned on, and the infantry, supported by tanks, attacked the enemy. Without encountering strong resistance, she advanced 1.5-2 kilometers. However, the closer our troops came, the stronger the enemy’s resistance grew.
In order to strengthen the onslaught, Zhukov brought tank armies into the battle in the afternoon. Their vanguards completed the breakthrough of the first line of defense. However, approaching the Seelow Heights, the infantry and tanks encountered unsuppressed enemy defenses. During the first day of the offensive, the front troops advanced only 3-8 kilometers and were unable to break through the defenses on the Seelow Heights. The premature introduction of tank formations created chaos in the operational formation of combined arms armies, caused a disruption in their rear communications, and confusion in command and control of troops.
Only towards the end of April 17 did the front troops overcome the second line of defense. Two days later the Oder line of German defense was finally broken through. As a result of a four-day fierce struggle, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front advanced to a depth of 34 kilometers.
The troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, in turn, advanced 1-1.5 kilometers by the end of the first day of the offensive. The Germans began to retreat across the Spree River, and Marshal Konev on April 17 ordered troops “on the shoulders of the enemy” to cross the river in order to “open a non-stop route to Berlin.” Taking into account the hitch of Marshal Zhukov’s armies and the success of the 1st Ukrainian Front, the Supreme High Command Headquarters decided to encircle the city with the forces of three fronts, which was not initially included in the operation plan.
Despite the unrelenting resistance of the enemy, the troops of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts resolutely “bit into” its defenses and, bypassing fortified settlements, approached Berlin. By the end of April 21, the tank armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front reached the outer defensive line of the German capital. On the same day, part of the forces of the 1st Belorussian Front bypassed Berlin and continued their accelerated advance towards the Elbe, where a meeting with the Allied troops was expected.
It was on the eve of the decisive assault on Berlin that a not entirely justified competition developed between Marshals Zhukov and Konev for the right to be the first to report on the breakthrough of the troops of their front to the capital of the Third Reich. In fact, the front command demanded that the troops move forward, regardless of any losses in manpower and equipment.
On April 22, the last operational meeting of the German High Command, at which Hitler was present, took place in the Imperial Chancellery. It was decided to withdraw Walter Wenck's 12th Army from its positions on the Elbe and send it east to meet the troops of the 9th Army, which was striking at Soviet troops, from the area southeast of Berlin. In an effort to delay the advance of the 1st Ukrainian Front, the German command launched a counterattack from the Görlitz area to the rear of the strike group of Soviet troops. By April 23, German troops had penetrated 20 kilometers into their location. However, by the end of the next day, the enemy's advance was stopped.
On April 24, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front linked up southeast of Berlin with the armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front. The encirclement to the west of the city has closed. At the same time, in the Torgau region, Soviet troops met with the Americans. Thus, the Berlin enemy group was divided into two isolated groups: Berlin and Frankfurt-Guben
Flag over the Reichstag
It took the Red Army five days to eliminate the then-strong Frankfurt-Guben group of Germans from the Red Army - from April 26 to May 2. The enemy fought with the desperation of a cornered beast, before which the hope of salvation suddenly loomed, since, if they had united with Wenck’s army, the Germans would have had a corridor to escape to the West, straight into captivity by the Americans. After stubborn fighting on the night of April 29, the Nazis managed to break through the encirclement of Soviet troops at the junction of two fronts. As a result, they formed a corridor up to two kilometers wide, through which they began to retreat west to Luckenwalde. But by the end of the day the enemy was stopped, and his troops were cut up, surrounded and destroyed by May 1. Only a few broke through to the West.
The assault on the German capital itself also began on April 26. The Soviet armies launched attacks in converging directions towards the city center. The fighting went on day and night. They were carried out on the ground, in underground communications and in the air. The next day, the enemy in Potsdam was destroyed, and in Berlin he was compressed into a strip up to 2-3 kilometers wide, stretching from east to west for another 16 kilometers.
The intensity of the fighting in Berlin increased as Soviet troops advanced towards the city center, towards the Reichstag and government buildings. The armies that stormed Berlin had predetermined offensive lines; units and subunits attacked specific objects - areas, streets, buildings and structures. The battles were fought, as a rule, by assault groups and detachments made up of units of all branches of the military; Tanks, direct fire guns, flamethrowers and even captured Faust cartridges were used.
It is difficult to talk about the intensity of the fighting in Berlin, even after reading the memories of the participants in those events. There was an assault on the real lair - the city from where fascism spread like a plague throughout Europe, where the craziest Nazi ideas were born and where every house was an enemy fortress. The whole city was full of defensive structures - the Reich Chancellery and the Reichstag were especially fortified, as already mentioned. A strong fortified area was created in Tiergaten Park. The Nazis made extensive use of tanks and heavy artillery, turning their capital into a pile of ruins without mercy. All measures were taken to contain the advance of the Soviet troops - the metro was flooded, houses were blown up to block the streets, and most importantly, until the very last moment people were driven to slaughter so that they would hold the line. In essence, it was a mass suicide - the behavior of the defenders of Berlin can probably be compared to the Japanese “kamikazes”. The same lack of alternative - only death in the name of the Fuhrer, who himself was already on the brink of the grave.
By the end of April 28, the encircled Berlin group was cut into three parts. The next day in the evening, the commander of the city's defense, General Weidling, presented Hitler with a plan for a breakthrough to the west, and Hitler approved it. The breakthrough was scheduled for April 30. One can only envy the optimism of this man, although perhaps the whole point is that in the last days of his life, seeing how the monstrous empire he built was crumbling to dust under the blows of Soviet troops, the Fuhrer practically lost the ability to think soberly.
On April 29, fighting began for the Reichstag, which was defended by about a thousand people. It is difficult to understand what these people were fighting for, but each floor of the building had to be taken with a fight. After a series of attacks, units of the 171st and 150th Infantry Divisions burst into the building. On April 30, at 14:25, sergeants Mikhail Egorov and Meliton Kantaria hoisted the Victory Banner over the Reichstag. The capture of the Reichstag had enormous political and moral significance. The courage, dedication and heroism of Soviet soldiers were actively promoted among the troops, the names of the heroes of those battles were heard in Sovinformburo reports throughout the country. And the very sight of the main building of Nazism, decorated with inscriptions of Soviet soldiers who carried all their hatred of the enemy and rejoicing at the victory from the banks of the Volga and Dnieper, told everyone - the Third Reich was crushed.
On May 1, at 3:50 a.m., the chief of the general staff of the Wehrmacht ground forces, Infantry General Krebs, was delivered to the command post of the 8th Guards Army, commanded by the hero of Stalingrad, General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov. He stated that he was authorized to negotiate a truce and reported on Hitler's suicide. Zhukov’s deputy went to Chuikov for negotiations with Krebs with Stalin’s order not to conduct any negotiations with anyone other than unconditional surrender. Zhukov himself set an ultimatum: if consent to unconditional surrender is not given by 10 o’clock, Soviet troops will strike such a blow that “there will be nothing left in Berlin but ruins.” The leadership of the dying Reich was slow to respond. Therefore, at 10:40 a.m., Soviet troops opened heavy fire on the remnants of the defense in the center of Berlin. By 18:00 it became known that the enemy had rejected the demand for unconditional surrender. After this, the final assault began on the central part of the city, where the Imperial Chancellery was located.
The battle for this object continued throughout the night from May 1 to 2. The Germans made desperate attempts to push back the Soviet soldiers, but all their counterattacks were thwarted. By morning, all the premises were cleared of the enemy: Goebbels’s corpse was discovered near the entrance to the chancellery bunker, and in one of the rooms the bodies of his wife and six children were discovered. According to eyewitnesses, several corpses of Hitler's doubles were also found in the building, but the remains of the Fuhrer themselves were discovered later.
On the night of May 2 at 1:50 a.m., the radio station of the Berlin Defense Headquarters broadcast in German and Russian: “ We are sending our envoys to the Bismarck Strasse bridge. We stop hostilities". On May 2, Deputy Minister of Propaganda Dr. Fritsche turned to the Soviet command with a request for permission to speak on the radio with an appeal to the German troops of the Berlin garrison to end all resistance. By 15:00 on May 2, the remnants of the Berlin garrison with a total of more than 134 thousand people surrendered.
The price of victory
After the fall of Berlin, active hostilities were conducted essentially only in Czechoslovakia. On the territory of Germany itself, only individual units tried not even to hold off the Soviet troops, but to break through to the west in order to surrender to the allies. Despite the fact that Admiral Karl Doenitz, appointed Reich Chancellor by Hitler, continued to issue orders calling on German soldiers not to lay down their arms, surrenders became widespread.
Goebbels's propaganda machine worked brilliantly: the image of a bloodthirsty savage feeding on the meat of German babies was permanently entrenched in the minds of the subjects of the Third Reich. Of course, it is impossible to completely deny the facts of murder of civilians, rape of German women and robbery of the population by Soviet troops. And the Allies often behaved on German territory far from like liberators. However, in a war as in a war, especially since the Soviet troops, unlike the Americans and the British, almost until the very end of the war had to overcome fierce resistance at every step. Moreover, not only military personnel were involved in this resistance, but also civilians, hastily armed and stuffed with Hitler’s ideology. Elderly veterans of the First World War and 14-year-old boys armed with fauspatrons joined the ranks of the defenders of Berlin.
These Germans could be understood and humanly pitied - in front of them stood Soviet soldiers, who, thanks to Goebbels' tales, had turned into a horde of cannibals, and behind them were military courts, which, until the very last hours of the war, continued to impose death sentences for desertion. Moreover, in his hatred of everything Soviet, Hitler ordered to turn the whole of Germany into a cemetery. On his orders, the retreating troops everywhere used scorched earth tactics, leaving destruction, hunger and death in their wake.
The fact that the Nazi resistance during the Berlin operation was desperate in the full sense of the word is also evidenced by the fact that the losses of Soviet troops in it amounted to 361,367 people killed and wounded (irretrievable losses - 81 thousand). And the average daily losses (15,712 people) were even higher than during the Battle of Stalingrad or Kursk. However, the desire of the Soviet Headquarters, primarily Marshal Zhukov, to take Berlin at any cost as soon as possible also played a role here.
The enemy also knew about the heavy losses of the Soviet troops trying to push through the defenses on the approaches to Berlin. The hitch in the attack on the Seelow Heights caused great joy at the German command headquarters. Hitler exclaimed with enthusiasm: “ We repulsed this blow. At Berlin, the Russians will suffer the bloodiest defeat that can ever happen!". The Fuhrer, as usual, turned out to be a bad seer, but it cannot be denied that Berlin was taken at a truly high price, even if we take into account the rapid pace of advance of the Soviet troops and the strength of the enemy opposing them - after all, in just 16 days the Red Army defeated about a hundred enemy divisions that did not surrender, but tried desperately to resist.
But this price was paid for the capture of the main stronghold of Nazism, and therefore for victory in the Great Patriotic War. On May 9 at 0:43 Moscow time, Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel, as well as representatives of the German Navy, who had the appropriate authority from Doenitz, signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany. A brilliantly executed operation, coupled with the courage of Soviet soldiers and officers who fought to end the four-year nightmare of war, led to a logical result: Victory.
I. S. Konev
Storm of Berlin- the final part of the Berlin offensive operation of 1945, during which the Red Army captured the capital of Nazi Germany and victoriously ended the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War in Europe. The operation lasted from April 25 to May 2.
Storm of Berlin
The “Zoobunker” - a huge reinforced concrete fortress with anti-aircraft batteries on the towers and extensive underground shelter - also served as the largest bomb shelter in the city.
Early in the morning of May 2, the Berlin metro was flooded - a group of sappers from the SS Nordland division blew up a tunnel passing under the Landwehr Canal in the Trebbiner Strasse area. The explosion led to the destruction of the tunnel and filling it with water along a 25-km section. Water rushed into the tunnels, where a large number of civilians and wounded were taking refuge. The number of victims is still unknown.
Information about the number of victims... varies - from fifty to fifteen thousand people... The data that about a hundred people died under water seems more reliable. Of course, there were many thousands of people in the tunnels, including the wounded, children, women and old people, but the water did not spread through the underground communications too quickly. Moreover, it spread underground in various directions. Of course, the picture of advancing water caused genuine horror in people. And some of the wounded, as well as drunken soldiers, as well as civilians, became its inevitable victims. But talking about thousands of deaths would be a gross exaggeration. In most places the water barely reached a depth of one and a half meters, and the inhabitants of the tunnels had enough time to evacuate themselves and save the numerous wounded who were in the “hospital cars” near the Stadtmitte station. It is likely that many of the dead, whose bodies were subsequently brought to the surface, actually died not from water, but from wounds and illnesses even before the destruction of the tunnel.
At one o'clock in the morning on May 2, the radio stations of the 1st Belorussian Front received a message in Russian: “We ask you to cease fire. We are sending envoys to the Potsdam Bridge.” A German officer who arrived at the appointed place, on behalf of the commander of the defense of Berlin, General Weidling, announced the readiness of the Berlin garrison to stop resistance. At 6 a.m. on May 2, Artillery General Weidling, accompanied by three German generals, crossed the front line and surrendered. An hour later, while at the headquarters of the 8th Guards Army, he wrote a surrender order, which was duplicated and, with the help of loudspeaker installations and radio, delivered to enemy units defending in the center of Berlin. As this order was communicated to the defenders, resistance in the city ceased. By the end of the day, the troops of the 8th Guards Army cleared the central part of the city from the enemy. Individual units that did not want to surrender tried to break through to the west, but were destroyed or scattered.
On May 2 at 10 o'clock in the morning everything suddenly became quiet, the fire stopped. And everyone realized that something had happened. We saw white sheets that had been “thrown away” in the Reichstag, the Chancellery building and the Royal Opera House and cellars that had not yet been taken. Entire columns fell from there. A column passed ahead of us, where there were generals, colonels, then soldiers behind them. We walked for probably three hours.
Alexander Bessarab, participant in the Battle of Berlin and the capture of the Reichstag
Results of the operation
Soviet troops defeated the Berlin group of enemy troops and stormed the capital of Germany, Berlin. Developing a further offensive, they reached the Elbe River, where they linked up with American and British troops. With the fall of Berlin and the loss of vital areas, Germany lost the opportunity for organized resistance and soon capitulated. With the completion of the Berlin operation, favorable conditions were created for encircling and destroying the last large enemy groups on the territory of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The losses of the German armed forces in killed and wounded are unknown. Of the approximately 2 million Berliners, about 125 thousand died. The city was heavily destroyed by bombing even before the arrival of Soviet troops. The bombing continued during the battles near Berlin - the last American bombing on April 20 (Adolph Hitler's birthday) led to food problems. The destruction intensified as a result of Soviet artillery attacks.
Indeed, it is unthinkable that such a huge fortified city could be taken so quickly. We know of no other such examples in the history of World War II.
Alexander Orlov, Doctor of Historical Sciences.
Two Guards IS-2 heavy tank brigades and at least nine Guards heavy self-propelled artillery self-propelled artillery regiments took part in the battles in Berlin, including:
- 1st Belorussian Front
- 7th Guards Ttbr - 69th Army
- 11th Guards ttbr - front-line subordination
- 334 Guards tsap - 47th Army
- 351 Guards tsap - 3rd shock army, front-line subordination
- 396 Guards tsap - 5th shock army
- 394 Guards tsap - 8th Guards Army
- 362, 399 guards tsap - 1st Guards Tank Army
- 347 Guards tsap - 2nd Guards Tank Army
- 1st Ukrainian Front
- 383, 384 guards tsap - 3rd Guards Tank Army
Situation of the civilian population
Fear and despair
A significant part of Berlin, even before the assault, was destroyed as a result of Anglo-American air raids, from which the population hid in basements and bomb shelters. There were not enough bomb shelters and therefore they were constantly overcrowded. In Berlin by that time, in addition to the three million local population (consisting mainly of women, old people and children), there were up to three hundred thousand foreign workers, including “ostarbeiters”, most of whom were forcibly taken to Germany. Entry into bomb shelters and basements was prohibited for them.
Although the war had long been lost for Germany, Hitler ordered resistance to the last. Thousands of teenagers and old men were conscripted into the Volkssturm. From the beginning of March, by order of Reichskommissar Goebbels, responsible for the defense of Berlin, tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women, were sent to dig anti-tank ditches around the German capital.
Civilians who violated government orders even in the last days of the war faced execution.
There is no exact information about the number of civilian casualties. Different sources indicate different numbers of people who died directly during the Battle of Berlin. Even decades after the war, previously unknown mass graves are found during construction work.
Violence against civilians
In Western sources, especially recently, a significant number of materials have appeared concerning mass violence by Soviet troops against the civilian population of Berlin and Germany in general - a topic that was practically not raised for many decades after the end of the war.
There are two opposing approaches to this extremely painful problem. On the one hand, there are artistic and documentary works by two English-speaking researchers - “The Last Battle” by Cornelius Ryan and “The Fall of Berlin. 1945" by Anthony Beevor, which are more or less a reconstruction of the events of half a century ago based on the testimony of participants in the events (overwhelmingly representatives of the German side) and memoirs of Soviet commanders. The claims made by Ryan and Beevor are regularly reproduced by the Western press, which presents them as scientifically proven truth.
On the other hand, there are the opinions of Russian representatives (officials and historians), who acknowledge numerous facts of violence, but question the validity of statements about its extreme mass character, as well as the possibility, after so many years, of verifying the shocking digital data provided in the West . Russian authors also draw attention to the fact that such publications, which focus on hyper-emotional descriptions of scenes of violence that were allegedly committed by Soviet troops on German territory, follow the standards of Goebbels propaganda of the beginning of 1945 and are aimed at belittling the role of the Red Army as the liberator of Eastern and Central Europe from fascism and denigrate the image of the Soviet soldier. In addition, the materials distributed in the West provide virtually no information about the measures taken by the Soviet command to combat violence and looting - crimes against civilians, which, as has been repeatedly pointed out, not only lead to tougher resistance of the defending enemy, but also undermine the combat effectiveness and discipline of the advancing army.