Who won the Battle of Berlin?
The Soviet Red Army won. Its offensive opened on the Oder and the Neisse on 16 April 1945, encircled Berlin by 25 April and ended on 2 May, when the garrison commander, General Helmuth Weidling, surrendered the city. Adolf Hitler had killed himself in his bunker on 30 April, and within a week Germany surrendered unconditionally.1
By the spring of 1945 the Third Reich had been pushed back to its own capital. The Soviet offensive that opened on 16 April ended two weeks later with the red flag over the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler dead in his bunker and the city in ruins. It was one of the last battles of the war in Europe.2
A battle of the Eastern Front of World War II · Related: the Seelow Heights, Halbe, Stalingrad
Background: the road to Berlin
After the Soviet winter offensive the Red Army stood at the end of January 1945 on the Oder and the Neisse, less than 80 kilometers from Berlin, and through February and March it fought for bridgeheads on the west bank. The capture of the German capital was the declared aim of the Soviet leadership under Joseph Stalin.3
The plan gave the main role to Marshal Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, attacking straight for the city out of the bridgehead at Küstrin. Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front was to cross the Neisse to the south, and Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front was to strike across the lower Oder in the north.4 › Georgy Zhukov
The plan also set two marshals against each other. Britannica describes Zhukov and Konev racing for the glory of taking Berlin and willing to accept enormous casualties to win it, and Ziemke, the US Army's official historian of the Eastern Front, shows that the plan left Konev free to swing his tank armies north toward the city if the main thrust stalled.5
Armies and commanders
The figures depend on the source and on what they count. For the whole offensive Ziemke, LeMO and dzieje.pl give about 2.5 million Soviet soldiers with over 6,000 tanks and 7,500 aircraft. Britannica counts more than 1.5 million soldiers outside Berlin, with some 6,500 tanks and 8,500 aircraft.6
Against them LeMO puts about a million German soldiers on the Oder front, with barely 800 tanks; dzieje.pl gives about 760,000 men, 1,500 tanks and 2,200 aircraft. Both describe a force made up of the remnants of Wehrmacht armies, Waffen SS units and untrained Volkssturm militia, and both describe it as crippled by shortages of fuel and ammunition.7
The city itself had far fewer defenders. LeMO counts just under 100,000 men, a little over 40,000 of them Volkssturm; dzieje.pl gives over 80,000, nearly half of them poorly trained and poorly armed Volkssturm units. Britannica describes stragglers and the remnants of shattered formations, supported by ill-equipped militia and Hitler Youth units. Their commander from late April was General Helmuth Weidling.8
Polish troops fought on the Soviet side. The 1st Polish Army advanced as part of Zhukov's front, and its 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division, with Polish artillery and sappers, took part in the storming of the city, fighting toward the Tiergarten.9
The battle in phases
16 to 20 April, the breakthrough. The offensive opened before dawn on 16 April with a massive bombardment along the Oder and the Neisse. Zhukov's front ran into the Seelow Heights, where the German line held for three days. It broke on 19 April in Ziemke's account and on 20 April according to dzieje.pl and the Seelow memorial. The memorial counts over 35,000 Soviet and 12,000 German dead on the Heights; dzieje.pl puts Soviet losses there at almost 40,000 killed and wounded. To the south Konev's front forced the Neisse, broke through Army Group Center, took Cottbus and turned north toward Berlin.10 › Battle of the Seelow Heights, 1945
20 to 25 April, the ring closes. LeMO has the first Soviet assault troops entering Berlin's north-eastern outskirts on 20 April, Hitler's birthday; dzieje.pl has the 1st Belorussian Front reaching the outskirts on 22 April. Britannica dates the battle for the city itself from 20 April. Hitler chose to stay in his bunker under the Reich Chancellery rather than leave the capital, while Hermann Göring and other leaders of the regime left the city in the days that followed. On 25 April the encirclement was complete, and on the same day American and Soviet troops met on the Elbe at Torgau.11
26 to 29 April, the street fighting. The Soviet armies then fought their way in district by district. Tanks sent into the streets without enough infantry became prey for Germans armed with the Panzerfaust, and Soviet artillery pounded the city. About two million civilians were still in Berlin, worn down by daily air raids and shelling, and they sheltered in cellars and bunkers. SS squads shot soldiers and civilians suspected of weakening resistance.12
Hitler gave orders to armies that could no longer save him. The last relief attempt, by General Walther Wenck's 12th Army from the south-west, came to a halt near Potsdam on 29 April.13 › Battle of Halbe, 1945
Wenck had been meant to reach the city, but the 9th Army that had held the Oder line never got there. Cut off south-east of Berlin in the forests around Halbe, General Theodor Busse's army, with soldiers, refugees and civilians, broke out westward toward Wenck instead.14
Turning point: the Reichstag
The symbolic target was the Reichstag. It had not been used as a parliament since 1933 and had no military value, but for the Soviets it stood for the Third Reich. Britannica argues that Stalin's fixation on it cost many Soviet lives.15
Hitler killed himself in his bunker on 30 April, a few hundred meters from the fighting. That evening, by the accounts of LeMO and dzieje.pl, Soviet soldiers raised the red flag over the Reichstag. The historian Laurenz Demps, writing for the Bundestag, says the building was not fully taken until 2 May.16
For the Soviets the Reichstag, a ruin of no military value, stood for the whole Third Reich.
Weidling surrendered the city on 2 May. Britannica notes that Hitler's death gave him the chance to do it.17
Aftermath
Six days later, on the night of 8 to 9 May, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the unconditional surrender of all German armed forces at the Soviet headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst, and the war in Europe was over.18
How many died in the Battle of Berlin?
Estimates differ widely. About 80,000 Soviet soldiers were killed, by the counts of the Memorial Museums portal and visitBerlin, and Britannica and dzieje.pl put all Soviet casualties at 350,000 to more than 361,000. German military dead are estimated at up to 92,000 or about 100,000, and tens of thousands of Berlin civilians also died.19
The cost was immense, and the estimates differ widely. Britannica gives some 350,000 Red Army casualties, at least 450,000 German military casualties and about 300,000 civilians killed or wounded. Dzieje.pl counts over 361,000 Soviet and Polish soldiers killed or wounded, about 100,000 German soldiers killed and about 125,000 civilians killed in the assault. The Memorial Museums portal gives about 80,000 Soviet dead, up to 92,000 German soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians.20
The victors' arrival brought its own terror. Soviet soldiers raped women on a vast scale. Estimates collected by the Bundestag research service and cited by historians put the number of women raped in Berlin alone at around 100,000.21
Why was the Battle of Berlin important?
It ended the war in Europe. The fall of Berlin brought down the Third Reich: Hitler killed himself in his bunker on 30 April, the city's garrison surrendered on 2 May, and on the night of 8 to 9 May Germany signed its unconditional surrender in Berlin-Karlshorst. The red flag over the Reichstag became the Soviet symbol of victory.22
The best-known image of the battle is the TASS photographer Yevgeny Khaldei's photograph of a Soviet soldier raising the red flag over the Reichstag. It was staged on 2 May, days after the building's capture. Smoke was added to the background, and a watch was removed from a soldier's wrist so that it would not suggest looting. Khaldei had taken his cue from Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the flag raised on Iwo Jima, and for Russians the Reichstag image became just as powerful a symbol of victory.23
In the days after the fighting Soviet soldiers covered the walls of the Reichstag with their names and messages. Part of the graffiti was rediscovered when the building was rebuilt for the Bundestag in the 1990s, and it can still be seen today.24
For Poland the battle has its own place in memory. On 2 May 1945 soldiers of the Kościuszko Division hung a white and red flag on the Victory Column in the Tiergarten.25
Visiting today
The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park was built between 1946 and 1949 for the roughly 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the battle, and about 7,000 of them are buried there. It was designed by a team led by the architect Yakov Belopolsky and the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich. Visitors pass a statue of the grieving Motherland on the way to its centerpiece, a bronze Soviet soldier holding a child and standing on a smashed swastika, and wreaths are still laid there every year. It was dedicated on 8 May 1949 according to visitBerlin, and on 9 May according to the Memorial Museums portal. A second Soviet memorial stands in the Tiergarten.26
The building in Karlshorst where the surrender was signed is now the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst. Its permanent exhibition tells the story of Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II from both sides.27 › The Greatest Battles of the Eastern Front
