In Berlin 1945, there was a sense of impending doom. The optimists were learning English. The pessimists, Russian, as the Allies closed in on all sides.
Meanwhile, Red Army soldiers who had watched their motherland burn at German hands were preparing to enter the layer of the fascist beast and exact their revenge. The result was a human tragedy beyond comprehension. Berlin would be made to look like Stalenrad.
In our previous episode, we covered the end of the Second World War in the West. This time, we'll examine the final battles on the Eastern Front. Why did German soldiers continue to fight until the very end?
How did an intervention from Stalin affect the battle? And what was the battle for Berlin actually like? This is the story of Germany's downfall on the Eastern Front.
As 1945 began, the Soviets had one clear goal. End the war if possible within the next 3 months. Using hard one bridge heads over the Vistula River, they planned to punch through to Berlin with the first Bellarussian and first Ukrainian fronts.
Having built up an overwhelming superiority in manpower and material, the Soviets were certain of victory against an enemy that was on its very last legs. The German army was a shadow of its former self. The remaining German forces were lacking in numbers, experienced officers, equipment, and fuel.
To make up for this, Hitler established the Vulturm in late 1944. Made up of young teenagers, old men, and the wounded from earlier campaigns. This people's militia was more useful as a propaganda tool than as a fighting force.
This Vulderm tunic is typical of the sort of German uniform used in 1945. It's made from rough green gray fabric rather than the finer field gray used earlier in the war. Many vulture were armed with weapons like this panzer.
It was cheap to produce in numbers and could be used with little training by vulner fighters, but with its short range, the German soldier had to creep undercover as close to the tank as possible before firing its armor-piercing bomb. Even with their panzer fouse, officers of the German army saw little use for the vulgm other than as cannon foder. German intelligence detected the Soviets as they built up for their attack, but Germany's leader Adolf Hitler refused to believe the reports.
The German army chief of staff told Hitler that the front was quote a house of cards. but he refused to provide reinforcements by evacuating the Corland pocket and even sent the sixth SS Panzer army to the south for a planned offensive in Hungary. These mistakes would prove costly when the Soviet offensive began.
At 5:00 a. m. on the 12th of January 1945, the first Ukrainian front began the attack.
It was a particularly cold winter, and the local German commanders were expecting the Soviets to wait for the weather to improve. As a result, the mammoth Soviet barrage caught many German soldiers in the forward lines. By noon on the first day, the first Ukrainian front had opened gaps in the German line and unleashed their armor.
The next day, the third Bellarussian front joined the attack, followed by the first and second Bellarussian fronts the day after that. With a numerical superiority of up to 10 to one in the breakthrough sectors, the offensive got off to a flying start. The Soviet Red Army had an embarrassment of riches to call upon.
At the start of 1945, they had 4 million troops on the Eastern Front, in contrast to just under 2 million for the Germans. Soviet troops were equipped with a range of rugged, mass-produced arms and armor. This display in IWM Second World War galleries shows how the Soviets were constantly trying to simplify their designs and increase production.
The PPD40 was first developed during the 1930s. However, it was difficult and expensive to massproduce. So, in 1940 was replaced by the superior and much cheaper PPSH41.
The PPS43 continued the evolution of the PPS submachine guns with full metal components and featuring a folded stock. Both saw use by Soviet allies well after the Second World War. But the Red Army was far more than massed men and arms.
By 1945, they had also perfected their deep battle doctrine to destroy entire armies. These tactics were used to perfection in 1945. By the 17th of January, Warsaw had fallen and both the first Bellarussian and first Ukrainian fronts were clear of the Vistula.
Soviet tanks were now in the German rear, advancing some 25 to 30 m a day, while improved weather allowed Soviet air superiority to be brought to bear against the retreating enemy. The German line was coming apart. Soon, Army Group Center and Army Group A lost contact with each other, forcing Hitler to create a new Army Group Vistula to try and plug the gap.
But it was no use. By the 27th of January, an entire German army group had become trapped in East Prussia. At the same time, a humanitarian catastrophe was growing in Central and Eastern Europe.
German civilians began to flee westwards in their millions, fearing that the horrors inflicted on the Soviet Union by German forces would now be repeated in reverse. They were joined in this by 3/4 of a million concentration camp prisoners who had been forced into so-called death marches towards the heart of the Reich. Walking in sub-zero temperatures, often without food or medicine, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives.
In late January, the tide began to turn. German reinforcements, desperately thrown in from other fronts, began to take their toll on the Soviets. But then a huge blizzard brought deep snow followed by a sudden thaw which turned the ground into a quagmire.
Soon the Soviet advance began to slow. By the 2nd of February the Soviets had covered 500 m and had bridge heads over the Oda River. Berlin seemed to be within reach, but Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin intervened.
Just 40 mi from Berlin, the Soviets called a halt to their attack. This was partly because of stiff German resistance on the Soviet flanks and difficulties in supplying their spearhead units. But there was also a strategic rationale.
As well as being a brutal, ruthless leader, Joseph Stalin was also deeply paranoid. He was convinced that he needed a barrier of Soviet occupied buffer states in Eastern Europe. The big three allied leaders were soon to meet in Yolter to decide the future of Europe.
The attack on Berlin could wait. Instead, the Soviets switched their focus to the flanks. The Germans attempted a counterattack towards the Soviet bridge head at Kustran, but this was beaten off with ease, and by the end of March, Silisia and Pomerania were in Soviet hands.
In an effort to assist the Soviets, the Western Allies intensified their bombing against German cities. Berlin was attacked almost daily, while the city of Drsden, through which German reinforcements were flowing to the east, was leveled over the course of 3 days, killing up to 25,000 people. In March, the Germans began their final large-scale offensive of the war, Operation Spring Awakening.
This was supposed to secure the oil fields in southern Hungary, but despite initial success, the German advance soon came to a halt. The Soviets then counteratt attacked and by midappril they had captured Vienna. In the meantime, the German forces in front of Berlin took the chance to dig in.
Their only objective was to prolong the war. The question of why German soldiers continued to fight until the very end continues to fascinate historians today. There were many different factors.
For Hitler and ideological Nazis, there was no option other than to fight on. they would not be taken prisoner and tried as war criminals. For soldiers on the front line, there were other motivations.
Many felt that Germany had surrendered too early during the First World War and wanted to write that wrong. Others lived in genuine fear of the Soviets. They knew what German soldiers had done during their invasion of the USSR, and they knew how they would be treated when the Soviets reached Germany.
Every day they held out was an extra chance for German civilians to escape to the west. Helmet Ryman, in charge of Berlin's defense, declared every block, house, story, hedge, and shell hole was to be defended to the utmost. But in truth, the city was no Stalingrad.
It could not hold out for long. More effective fortifications were built around the sale heights west of the Odor, the only place where German forces had any hope of stopping the Soviets. But if this line fell, there was virtually nothing between them and Berlin.
By the beginning of April, the Western Allies had crossed the Rine and were rapidly approaching Berlin. This prompted Stalin to accelerate his capture of the city. The main thrust of the Soviet attack would now be split between Yukov's first Bellarussian front and KV's first Ukrainian front, effectively manufacturing a race for Berlin.
They would be joined in the assault by Roasovvski's second Bellarussian front recently transferred after the fall of Kixburg. This brought the total Soviet forces in front of Berlin to a staggering 2. 5 million men, 6,250 tanks and 41,600 artillery pieces, a virtually unstoppable force.
On the 16th of April 1945, the Battle of Berlin began. The initial attack by the first Bellarussian front was a disaster. The Germans withdrew their defenders from the first line of trenches just before the Soviet artillery obliterated them.
While the light from Soviet search lights, which were intended to blind the defenders, made useful silhouettes of the attacking Red Army troops. As the casualties mounted, the strain began to show between the Red Army commanders. Zhukov overruled the commander on the ground and sent in the Red Army tanks before a breakthrough had been achieved.
But the rough, swampy ground churned up by artillery shell holes made the advance even more difficult against the last German heavy tanks. Frustrated by the delays, Stalin taunted Zhukov, promising to give the attack on Berlin to Kv instead. However, Zhukov's men persevered, concentrating their firepower while Kanyev's successful attack further south threatens to unhinge the German defense.
On the fourth day of the battle, the German lines on the Zeilau heights finally broke. The road was now open to Berlin. On the 20th of April, Roasovski joined the attack while Kyv's men had crossed the river spree and were headed for Berlin.
That night, the first Soviet shells began to fall on the city. They would not stop until the battle was over. There was by now a huge gap between Germany's fourth Panzer Army and 9inth Army with the latter on the verge of encirclement.
However, Hitler forbade retreat. Instead, he ordered the fourth Panzer army to attack from the south and newly created army detachment Steiner to attack from the north, believing he could cut off and destroy the Soviet spearheads. This was, of course, a complete fantasy.
The German units were merely shattered remnants devoid of men and fuel. Soon, the 9inth Army would be completely cut off. When his fantastical plans were not achieved, Hitler became apoplelectic with rage and had a complete mental breakdown in the Reich Chancellory bunker.
Though he continued to hatch plans and give orders until the end, deep down Hitler knew that the war was lost. He vowed to stay in Berlin until the end before taking his own life. He soon drafted his last will and testament, a copy of which is held in the Imperial War Museum collection.
From his position in the Reich Chancery bunker, Hitler could hear the Soviet shells falling all around. This bulletridden sculpted eagle, the symbol of the Nazi party, was taken from the ruins of the Reich Chancery building in Berlin. Originally sculpted by Nazi propagandist Kurt Schmid Airman, this was one of the two Nazi eagles featured on the Reich Chancery building designed by Hitler's architect Albert Schmeer.
Hitler remained in the Reich Chancellory building until the 30th of April when he took his own life. The battle for Berlin's suburbs was already well underway before on the 25th of April, the city was encircled by troops from Kv and Zukov's front. They would clear the city together, but Stalin decided that Zhukov would get the honor of capturing the Reichstag.
The race for Berlin had been decided. Meanwhile, outside the city, the battle was still raging. By now, Hitler's orders had fallen by the wayside, and the German army was trying to save its own skin.
Walter Ven's 12th Army tried a lastditch attack to create a corridor for the 9inth Army to escape. They managed to push a wedge into the Soviet line, but the 9inth Army took heavy casualties in the woods around Halba, trying to escape. Only around 30,000 made it back to German lines.
By now, the Soviets had completed their long-awaited linkup with American forces on the Elb, and Rockoski had finally broken through in the north. German forces everywhere were in head-long retreat to the west. The war in Europe was essentially over, but the fight for Berlin wore on.
Though the city was not the fortress that Hitler had hoped for, it was a bombed out metropolis. It would take the Red Army almost a week to capture the last few miles of rubble. The battle for Berlin was characterized by slow house-to-house street fighting.
These were not the open plains of Bellarussia. Numbers and tanks counted for little in the tight streets. The Soviet approach was to bring forward armored artillery and simply demolish any buildings containing German resistance.
This was a living nightmare for the millions of German civilians and refugees trapped in the city. Everyone left was pressed into service, digging trenches. Boys as young as 11 were sent to the front line.
Any civilians caught lingering or deserting were executed on the spot. Even the tunnels of the Esban, the Berlin underground train system, were demolished and flooded to prevent the Soviets from using them. The last four years had been a brutal war of annihilation.
In the German invasion of 1941, towns and cities were burnt to the ground and millions of Soviet civilians and prisoners of war killed. As the Soviet troops captured German territory, they took out their vengeance on German civilians, especially women. Endemic rape and sexual violence followed.
Some Soviet soldiers saw this as an entitlement as victors, others simply as revenge. Allied soldiers of all nationalities committed acts of sexual violence in the final campaign in Germany, but Soviet violence against women was effectively state sanctioned. It was a horrifying coder to the bloodiest conflict the world has ever seen.
By the evening of the 30th of April, a Soviet banner was flying high at top the richag. Still the fighting continued with the Soviets cutting the remaining German defenders into small pockets before eventually on the 2nd of May the city's garrison surrendered. At the same time, Germany's new leader KL Ditz attempted to surrender only to the Western Allies.
However, they refused, demanding an unconditional surrender where they would close their lines to German troops. With no other options, the Germans capitulated first at Rem on the 7th of May and then again in Berlin the following day. And with that, the Second World War in Europe was over.
The four months of fighting in 1945 were some of the bloodiest of the entire conflict. According to field reports, the Soviets lost over 600,000 killed or missing in 1945, including 80,000 in the Battle for Berlin. German casualties in this period are harder to quantify, but historian Rudiger Overmans estimated that 1.
2 million Germans lost their lives in 1945 with around 2/3 of those coming on the Eastern Front. Over a million more went into Soviet captivity, many of whom would never return. Meanwhile, the civilian losses are almost impossible to calculate, but some 125,000 are thought to have died in the Battle of Berlin alone.
On the 8th of May 1945, the city of Berlin lay in ruins. The Germans had gambled on a war of annihilation in the east and they had lost. Now civilians who survived emerged from the ruins.
German prisoners of war huddled under guard and the Soviet victors celebrated with music and vodka. Victory had come as a result of the greatest mass mobilization in the history of the world and the immense sacrifice of the Soviet people, albeit with significant support from the Western Allies. In total, over 25 million Soviet citizens died throughout the war.
Nazism in Eastern Europe was defeated. However, this was soon to be replaced by the repressive brutality of Stalin's Soviet regime. The Great Patriotic War defines Soviet history and former Soviet history to this day.
