Battle of Berlin (1 Viewer)

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On 9 April, after a long resistance Königsberg in East Prussia finally fell to the Red Army. Three Fronts converged on Berlin, from north, east and south.
The three Soviet Fronts had altogether 20 Armies, 2.5 million men (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army), 6,250 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,255 truck-mounted Katyusha rocket launchers, and 95,383 motor vehicles.
Marshal Georgy Zhukov concentrated his 1st Belorussian Front into an area in front of the Seelow Heights. Marshal Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front moved into the positions being vacated by the 1st Belorussian Front north of the Seelow Heights. Marshal Konev shifted the main weight of the 1st Ukrainian Front to the Neisse River.

The final chapter in the destruction of Hitler's Third Reich began on April 16, 1945. The Battle of the Seelow Heights, fought over four days from 16 April until 19 April, was one of the last pitched battles of World War II, given that it required a commitment of almost one million Red Army troops and more than 20,000 tanks and artillery pieces were in action to break through the "Gates to Berlin" which was defended by about 100,000 German soldiers and 1,200 tanks and guns.


Dawn on 16 April 1945, on the Reitwein Spur. The whole 1st Belorussian Front was about to launch the last offensive of the European war against the Seelow Heights. Zhukov himself had come up to General Chuikov's command post, overlooking the misty Oder valley. In the darkness below them, there was the rattling of pots as men in the trenches were woken and given hot soup. The generals could smell the soup and hear the insect-buzz of field-telephones as each unit contacted its forward positions and artillery observers. A young woman named Margo served the commanders coffee. They climbed up to the camouflaged observation point at three minutes to five. At five o'clock, nine thousand guns and rocket-batteries opened fire.

 

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Battle of Berlin part 2

Half an hour later, Zhukov switched on 143 searchlights to blind the German defenders, and ordered the attack to begin.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 3

During 19 April, the fourth day, the 1st Belorussian Front broke through the final line of the Seelow Heights and nothing but broken German formations lay between them and Berlin.

" I started in Moscow, and we freed Poland - then we went to Berlin. Berlin is surrounded by a canal, 10 meters wide and 3 meters deep and filled with water. I'm standing by this canal, I was already a captain, and a lieutenant says, "Comrade Captain, Zhukov is approaching." I said, "Stop frightening me," and I see he's already near me. I said, "Comrade Marshal, I'm from such-and-such tank battalion. We're awaiting crossing." He said, "Why are you waiting for the crossing? There's a village. Leave a mechanic behind, and you go with the others and take apart the roofs and ceilings and floors and that will be your crossing."
We went and took them apart and put them together and suddenly, from somewhere, about 20 construction regiments arrived. Zhukov had called for them. And they built it, they covered the canal. And we rushed toward Berlin on tanks."

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 4

"Our battalion crossed, and behind us Katukov's tank army crossed. I don't know who else was behind us. I just know that Katukov was next to us, and they passed behind us and also began to take Berlin."

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 5

"We were always shooting. The tanks were moving and always shooting. There were even women in the tanks. They were tractor drivers from collective farms. There were two girls in our unit; they were driving tanks into battle. Driving a tank is like driving a tractor; the levers are almost the same."

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 6

Berlin was almost completely destroyed. I saw destroyed buildings. I counted 24 Katyushas. The tanks were standing there, and the Katyushas were in front. Can you imagine how, from these Katyushas, they fired rounds on Berlin? It is frightening. All of Berlin was covered in black smoke after they fired. Katyushas are the most frightening explosions. Au-au-au-au, they fire

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 7

The forces available to Weidling for the city's defence included several severely depleted Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, in all about 45,000 men.[3] These divisions were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm.[3] Many of the 40,000 elderly men of the Volkssturm had been in the army as young men and some were veterans of World War I

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 8

Civilian and military casualties in Berlin were appalling. Regardless of this, Adolf Hitler clung to his belief that the German Army would defeat Zhukov’s eight armies in Berlin. Aides watched as he spoke about grandiose German armoured formations that would defeat Zhukov in Berlin. In reality, the Red Army was up against exhausted troops effectively at the end of their fighting ability, Hitler Youth troops armed with the anti-tank weapon, the Panzerfaust, and the male elderly who had been forced into a civilian’s militia which was expected to make a last stand.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 9

"It was a terrifying sight as they sat high upon their tanks with their rifles cocked, aiming at houses as they passed. The screaming, gun-wielding women were the worst. Half of the troops had only rags and tatters around their feet while others wore SS boots that had been looted from a conquered SS barrack in Lichterfelde. Several fleeing people had told us earlier that they kept watching different boots pass by their cellar windows"

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 10

"The Soviets battled the German soldiers and drafted civilians street by street until we could hear explosions and rifle fire right in our immediate vicinity. As the noise got closer, we could even hear the horrible guttural screaming of the Soviet soldiers which sounded to us like enraged animals. Shots shattered our windows and shells exploded in our garden, and suddenly the Soviets were on our street. Shaken by the battle around us and numb with fear, we watched from behind the small cellar windows facing the street as the tanks and an endless convoy of troops rolled by...

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 11

On 20 April, Hitler's birthday, Soviet artillery of 1st Belorussian Front began to shell the centre of Berlin and did not stop until the city surrendered (the weight of ordnance delivered by Soviet artillery during the battle was greater than the tonnage dropped by the Western Allied bombers on the city).

On the walls of the houses we saw Goebbels' appeals, hurriedly scrawled in white paint: 'Every German will defend his capital. We shall stop the Red hordes at the walls of our Berlin.' Just try and stop them!
Steel pillboxes, barricades, mines, traps, suicide squads with grenades clutched in their hands—all are swept aside before the tidal wave.
Drizzling rain began to fall. Near Bisdorf I saw batteries preparing to open fire.
'What are the targets?' I asked the battery commander.
Centre of Berlin, Spree bridges, and the northern and Stettin railway stations,' he answered.
Then came the tremendous words of command: 'Open fire at the capital of Fascist Germany.'
I noted the time. It was exactly 8:30 a.m. on 22 April. Ninety-six shells fell in the centre of Berlin in the course of a few minutes.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 12

The assault on the Reichstag, the home of the German parliament in Berlin, was planned for dawn on April 30, 1945. Soviet commanders were desperate to capture it in time for the May Day parade in Moscow. The Reichstag, remained the chosen symbol for victory over the "Fascist Beast,"

During the night, confirmation had been received from Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, head of the German Armed Forces High Command, that no relief could be expected. And that morning, following the intense artillery bombardment of the government quarter, the commander of the defenses around the Reichstag and Chancellery, SS Brig. Gen. Wilhelm Mohnke, said that they had two days or less. The commandant of the city, Lt. Gen. Helmuth Weidling, who had arrived in the latter part of the morning, estimated that resistance would collapse that night due to lack of ammunition. He again asked for permission to break out of Berlin.

On the 30th April, Unterscharführer Georg Diers and his crew of tank 314, were ordered to take up a defensive position at the Reichstag buildings. This was one of only two remaining King Tigers belonging to Heavy SS Tank Battalion 503 in Berlin. By that evening they had knocked out about 30 T34's, and the following day led a successful counterattack against the Kroll Opera House directly opposite the Reichstag. Their efforts though, merely postponed the inevitable and by the end of the day the order was given to abandon the position and prepare to break out of Berlin.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 13

A war correspondent, summoned to 'the headquarters of the 150th Rifle Division just a few hours before the assault on the Reichstag, was told to hand over his pistol. He did so, horrified that he was being sent home for some misdemeanor. But the captain who had taken it from him put his mind at rest when he came back into the room with a fresh weapon. "The order has come through," he said, "that everyone going to the Reichstag must be armed with a submachine gun."

Amid sporadic fire, the journalist was taken on a zigzag route to the Ministry of the Interior. Fighting still continued on the upper floors, as the explosions of grenades and the rattle of submachine guns made clear. In the basement, however, battalion cooks, with almost as much noise, were preparing breakfast for the assault groups. On the first floor, Captain Neustroev, a battalion commander about to lead the assault on the Reichstag, was trying to orient himself. He kept glancing down at his map and then up at the gray building ahead. His regimental commander, impatient at the delay, appeared.
Once breakfast was dished up, the journalist wrote, "Everyone started checking their weapons and spare magazines." Then at 6, the first company charged out. They had "hardly gone fifty meters when the hurricane of fire from the enemy made them lie down." Two rather reduced battalions made a dash forward soon afterward, but many were killed.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 14

Heavy fire was also coming from the Kroll Opera House on the west side of the Konigsplatz, as well as from the Reichstag itself.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 15

With the assault force trapped in the crossfire, another division was rapidly deployed to deal with the Kroll Opera House, but first it had to clear the buildings behind, on the embankment. More self-propelled guns and tanks were also brought over the Moltke Bridge during the course of the morning to support the infantry on the Konigsplatz. The smoke and dust from the bombardment was so thick that the soldiers could not see the sky.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 16

Some ninety guns, including 152mm and 203mm howitzers, as well as Katyusha rocket launchers, fired continuously at the Reichstag. It says much for the solidity of its construction fifty years before, during the Second Reich, that it withstood such a pounding.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 17

Another prominent building heavily bombarded that morning was Hermann Goring's Air Ministry on the Wilhelmstrasse, its Ferro-concrete construction also resisted well. Because of its solidity and proximity to the Reich Chancellery, it had become an assembly point for uniformed Nazi Party members pretending that they were part of the great battle. The mixture of uniforms was striking. Along with Luftwaffe and Waffen SS, there was an elderly Volkssturm officer in his Wilhelmine uniform from World War I, who appeared "to have escaped from a waxworks museum," according to the journalist.
On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself in the mouth while simultaneously biting into a cyanide capsule

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 18

Because of German entrenchments and support from 88 mm guns two kilometres away on the Berlin Zoo flak tower it was not until that evening that the Soviets were able to enter the Reichstag. The riflemen, finding that the windows and doors had been blocked or bricked up, needed the heavy guns to blast a way in for them. They eventually forced their way through to the main hall, only to find the German defenders firing down at them with Panzerfausts or throwing grenades from the stone
One of the attackers, Senior Lieutenant Belyaev, vividly remembered the splattering of blood on the huge stone columns.

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 19

The casualties were terrible, but the Red Army soldiers, using the usual combination of grenades and submachine guns, began to fight their way up the broad staircases, firing from behind balustrades. Part of the German garrison-a mixture of sailors, SS, Hitler Youth-withdrew into the basement. The rest conducted a fighting retreat upward and back along the corridors. Fires, ignited by Panzerfausts and hand grenades, started in many rooms, and soon the great halls began to fill with smoke

 

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Re: Battle of Berlin part 20

Officers awaited word of negotiations, but the suddenly renewed storm of fire in the middle of the morning spoke for itself. General Krebs had failed to achieve a cease-fire. The Soviet commanders had insisted on unconditional surrender, and Goebbels had refused. The massed artillery and Katyusha launchers of the Third Shock Army, the Eighth Guards Army, and the Fifth Shock Army blasted away again at semi-ruined buildings.
At the Reichstag, the fighting inside was still savage, which made rather a mockery of raising the red banner of victory before midnight on May Day. One Soviet soldier who tried to throw back a German grenade misjudged his aim. It bounced off the door lintel and exploded at his feet, blowing them off. Soldiers on both sides fought on, exhausted and thirsty, their throats and noses raw from dust and smoke. It made one Soviet officer keep thinking of the Reichstag fire in 1933, which Hitler had used to crush the German Communist Party