Battle of Berlin | Animated History

It is February 1945. Soldiers of the Soviet 8th Guards Army stand in silence as they observe the rays of the morning sun glisten on the icy waters of the Oder River. Among them is the war correspondent Vasily Grossman. Vasily has covered the war since the Battle of Moscow, and like his comrades-in-arms, he has counted every river he has crossed since the advance westward from the Now, after a hellish trek of over three years, he stands at the bank of the final river before Berlin. Caught by the emotion of the moment, he writes, Hi, I'm Griffin Johnson, the Armchair Historian. By early 1945, Hitler's Third Reich was on its last legs. While the Allies prepared to make a dash across the Rhine, in the east, the Red Army was advancing toward the German border at lightning speed. As its armies closed in on Berlin, its men vowed to take revenge for the death and destruction the Germans had brought upon the motherland. Hitler, however, would not go down without a fight, and forced his defeated people into one more cataclysmic bloodletting that would not end until the Hammer and Sickle finally flew above the Reichstag, and the Fuhrer lay dead in his underground bunker. or you're streaming videos and reaching out to family and friends in your spare time. Either way, visit nordvpn.com slash historyvpn and find out how Nord can help protect you and your online activities using military-grade encryption on up to six devices at once for every major platform, including Linux and even Android TV. Tools like NordVPN help our team and region-locked documentaries by routing connections through 5,600 servers in 59 countries. While features like Nord Threat Protection keep our researchers safe from malware and dodgy websites, in a digital landscape where content is progressively becoming more segregated between regions and continents, NordVPN is the great equalizer, putting everything at your fingertips as it should be. Support our channel and try NordVPN today with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee and get a two-year plan with a huge discount and four months for free by signing up using our link in the description below or visiting nordvpn.com slash historyvpn. 1944 had been nothing short of a disaster for the Germans on the Eastern Front. After the annihilation of Army Group Center, the seemingly unstoppable Red Army had chased the Wehrmacht to the gates of Warsaw. In the south, Romania and Bulgaria had capitulated and changed sides, while Hungary verged on collapse as Soviet armies laid siege to Budapest. Unwilling to admit defeat, Hitler now made the momentous decision to deploy his final armored reserves to relieve the city's defenders and secure Hungary's oil fields. This, as it turned out, was exactly what the Soviet High Command, better known as the Stavka, had hoped for. By increasing pressure on the Hungarian front, Stalin and his advisors aimed to lure the Führer into moving his vital armored reserves away from Poland. While three Soviet fronts, totaling some 2.5 million men, would make a dash across the Vistula River, around Warsaw, and drive straight toward Berlin. To mentally prepare their men for the coming struggle, political commissars handed out instructions that echoed the overwhelming sentiment felt among the embittered Soviet soldiers. The soldier's rage in battle must be terrible. He does not merely seek to fight. He must also be the embodiment of the court of his people's justice. Fueled by a desire for revenge, Stalin's armies began breaking out of their bridgeheads on January 12th. Within days, the outgunned defenders were forced into a frenzied retreat. On the 15th, General Heinz Guderian pleaded with Hitler to send every available unit east. The Führer, in turn, made great promises in the form of two SS Panzer Corps, recently withdrawn from the Ardennes. However, rather than arriving to salvage the situation in Poland, they were thrown into yet another one of Hitler's armored pipe dreams in Hungary. Lacking sufficient mobile reserves, the bulk of the ill-fated German defenders were encircled and As the catastrophe unfolded, the Berlin Radio broadcasted apocalyptic news bulletins which compared the advancing Red Army to the Mongol Hordes, the Huns, and the Tartars, who were out to bring total destruction and the end of civilization. Driven by fear, a growing mass of German refugees began a long, deadly march across the icy roads leading westward in hopes of eluding the jaws of Soviet vengeance. The dreaded Red Horde, however, was moving at lightning speed, and by the end of January, its armies had advanced some 500 kilometers or nearly 311 miles to the banks of the Oder River, just 60 kilometers or 37 miles from Berlin. However, the rapid advance had stretched the Red Army's logistics to their limit, and heavy resistance in East Prussia had left Marshal Georgi Zhukov's flank dangerously exposed to counter-attack from German troops massing in Pomerania. As a result, the Stavka decided to halt the final assault on Berlin until the flanks were secured. By mid-April, the Red Army had reached the Oder-Neisse river line on a front that stretched from Stetten in the north to the Czech border in the south. The eyes of the world were now converging on Berlin, as Stalin's armies prepared for their final act of vengeance that would eradicate Nazi Germany once and for all. Although the Allies had promised to leave Berlin to the Red Army, the ever-paranoid Stalin still urged haste in the capture of the city. The final plan called for a three-pronged attack on the Berlin Axis to encircle and capture the city within 12 to 15 days, then move on to meet the Allies at the Elbe River. Zhukov's first Belorussian front would be at the center of the thrust, while Marshal Ivan Konev's first Ukrainian front to the south was set to attack across the Neisse river in the direction of Potsdam and Dresden. Finally, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky's second Belorussian front would tie down German forces to the north in the Stetten-Schwez sector to prevent them from reinforcing Berlin. Having become accustomed to fighting on wide open terrain, few in the Red Army had much experience in large-scale urban street fighting. It was up to General Vasily Chuikov's 8th Guards Army, veterans of the Battle of Stalingrad, to distribute pamphlets on urban warfare, while special combined arms task forces were formed. Red Army engineers, on their part, worked day and night to construct hundreds of bridges and thousands of wooden assault boats to cross the Oder and Neisse rivers. To achieve this, Soviet planners had to find a way to move 29 armies over hundreds of kilometers to create shock groups capable of penetrating the German line in areas only 2.5 to 10 kilometers or 1.5 to 6 miles in width. When it was all said and done, the Red Army would advance on Berlin with some 2.5 million men, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 7,500 combat aircraft. Aiming to make the invaders bleed for every inch of German soil, the Wehrmacht constructed a series of well-entrenched defensive lines which barricaded the way into Berlin. Manning these positions were the remains of Army Group Vistula and 4th Panzer Army, as well as the Berlin Garrison. Combined, this force consisted of 750,000 German soldiers, supported by 1,519 tanks and assault guns, 9,303 guns and mortars, and 2,200 aircraft. However, these numbers looked more impressive on paper than they did in reality, as virtually all of its formations were understrength. Although many units were led by battle-hardened veterans of the Eastern Front, their rank and file was often made up of a mix of wounded, unfit, and inexperienced soldiers and even boys from the Hitler Youth. Moreover, some 60,000 of the defenders came from under-trained and barely-armed Volkssturm militia battalions. The infantry would not be able to count much on its armored and air assets either, as the Germans lacked the fuel reserves to keep its otherwise considerable force of fighting vehicles operational for any extended period of time. Morale was also at an all-time low. Most suffered from malnutrition and a lack of hygiene, and save for the most fanatical Nazis, few now believed in the promise of final victory. Even so, every effort was made to convince the men that the much-anticipated Wunderwaffen would still turn the tide of the war, and that peace talks with the Western Allies were soon to bear fruit. But if these motivations were only marginally effective, the widespread fear of Soviet vengeance and barbarism drove even the most cynical to continue fighting. On April 12th, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra gave its last performance. Among the music played was Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Four days later, another type of orchestra began to play, as thousands of Katyusha rocket launchers and field guns of Zhukov's Front opened up on the first German defensive line along the Zelo Heights. Miles away in Berlin's eastern suburbs, houses began to shake as terrified citizens gathered in the street to listen to the start of the coming storm. A stunned Russian engineer described the unfolding spectacle. Along the whole length of the horizon, it was bright as daylight. On the German side, everything was covered with smoke and thick foundations of earth in clumps flying up. There were huge flocks of scared birds flying around in the sky, a constant humming, thunder, explosions. We had to cover our ears to prevent our eardrums breaking. As the sound of artillery gradually faded, hundreds of men began shouting to Berlin as tank engines roared and the lead assault elements began advancing toward the Many of the German defenders, unfortunate enough to have been caught in the preceding onslaught, had disappeared in the blink of an eye, while dazed and panic-stricken survivors rushed back toward the second defensive line. However, the awesome bombardment obscured serious problems in Zhukov's plan. The destruction caused by the shelling had been so great in scope that it had severely worsened the condition of the terrain that his men now had to traverse. The searchlights intended to blind the enemy instead reflected onto the smoke-filled air and obscured the vision of the advancing infantry. In the resulting chaos, units lost contact with each other as Soviet artillery and aircraft began attacking friendly formations. Worse still, German intelligence had had prior knowledge of the coming offensive, which meant that many of the first-line troops had been evacuated to the safety of the rear. What ensued was nothing less than what a member of the Gross Deutschland Guard Regiment described as a slaughterhouse. Countless soldiers were cut down as they struggled to advance across the floodplains and through German minefields. In other sectors too, the attackers were cut down and repulsed as they attempted to cross the Oder. Sensing disaster, an increasingly agitated Zhukov ordered his two tank armies to attack at once. However, most of the infantry's artillery and supply vehicles were still trying to make their way to the front, causing the tank armies to become hopelessly stuck in an endless traffic jam. Even when the lead armor finally approached the heights, they found themselves ambushed by concealed 88 gun emplacements, Tiger I tanks, and infantry armed with deadly Panzerfaust recoilless anti-tank launchers. Unsurprisingly, Zhukov's decimated men had made little progress at the end of the first day, and it would take three more days and countless more dead before his armies finally forced their way through the final defensive line. Naturally, Stalin was infuriated, but he could rest easy in the fact that Konev's front to the south had seen more success. By the end of April the 18th, his tank armies were across the Spree River and were racing toward Berlin. Lacking sufficient reinforcements and ammunition, the surviving defenders in both sectors were forced into a headlong retreat. With the German defensive lines in the south and in the center broken, and with vital troops in the north still tied down in heavy fighting, the road to Berlin lay open. Lacking the supplies to keep on fighting, German morale now visibly began to collapse. Thousands of encircled men surrendered, while masses of stragglers, deserters, and refugees made their way into the doomed city. All the while, an increasingly delusional Hitler continued to demand fanatical resistance until the bitter end. On April 20th, the Fuhrer's birthday was rudely interrupted by Soviet artillery shelling Berlin's northeastern suburbs, as its citizens fled into cellars. Zhukov and Konev's tank armies began a frantic race to the city's outskirts. In the meantime, many senior officials of the Nazi party engaged in a similar type of competition to be the first one to get permission to flee the city. Soldiers on the ground enjoyed no such privileges, and those who tried to run or displayed signs of cowardice were summarily hanged throughout the with messages such as, I was a coward or I was a deserter dangling from their chests. The next morning, Soviet artillery fired a frenzied barrage into Berlin's city center, while the remains of General Helmut Weidling's 56th Panzer Corps of the German 9th Army conducted a desperate withdrawal across Berlin's autobahn ring, while being mercilessly strafed by Soviet aircraft. Other remnants of the German defense attempted in vain to stop Zhukov's armies from pushing into the city from the southwestern and northern flanks. However, its depleted units could only delay the enemy, and Zhukov and Konev's forces both reached the city's outskirts that evening. Believing himself to be the next Frederick the Great, Hitler remained confident that a massive counter-stroke by the newly created Army Detachment Steiner and 9th Army against Zhukov's flanks would trap the invaders in the city in a ploy similar to what had befallen the Germans at Stalingrad two years prior. When it became clear on the following day that Steiner's Army Detachment lacked sufficient strength and ammunition to attack, the Fuhrer finally cracked and openly admitted for the first time that all was hopelessly lost. With the Soviets breaking into the city, General Weidling was appointed commander of the Berlin Defense Area. However, by the time Weidling took command, only about 45,000 Wehrmacht and SS troops, just over 40,000 men of the Volkssturm, and a measly 60 fuel-starved tanks were left standing to defend the city against some 1.5 million Soviet troops. Unsurprisingly, Zhukov's armies had managed to push the defenders out of the eastern and southeastern suburbs by the end of the 23rd, while other fronts tightened their grasp around the city's flanks. With inevitable defeat looming on the horizon, many of the defenders began to lay down their arms. Others, however, continued to resist fanatically. At the Tempelhof Airport, a mixed group of SS-led German defenders, including some 100 Hitler youth, wreaked havoc on the attacking Soviet tanks and infantry, who had to resort to massive aerial and artillery bombardment to finally capture the airport a day later. By that time, the encirclement of Berlin had been completed. However, a manic Hitler promised Weidling that yet another massive counter-offensive by General Wenck's 12th Army in the southwest was sure to come to the rescue of the beleaguered defenders. Wenck, however, had no intention on embarking in a futile suicide mission, and instead moved to relieve encircled German troops further to the east. With no further hope of relief, Weidling urged the Führer to stage a breakout westward to join up with remnants of Army Group Vistula. Hitler, however, rejected the plan and restated his intention to fall at the head of his troops. During the next three days, the Red Army tightened its hold on Berlin as the advancing armies closed in on the inner defensive line, protecting the governmental district. The lack of clear demarcation lines between the fronts, however, led to various formations competing for space and getting hopelessly confused in the ensuing quagmire. After careful deliberation, it was decided that most of Konov's frustrated men were to be redeployed to Czechoslovakia, while Zhukov was to go in for the final kill. By the end of the 29th, the 8th Guards Army had blasted its way through the heavily defended Tiergarten sector, while the 3rd Shock Army had crossed the Spree over the Moltke Bridge just to the north. In front of them lay the ultimate prize, the blackened walls of the Reichstag, the former parliamentary building widely regarded as the symbolic heart of the Third Reich. Capturing it would be nothing less than the culmination of the entire Soviet war effort. The defense of the building and its surroundings was led by a In the morning of the following day, Soviet artillery opened fire as a few hundred assault troops rushed forward. After a heavy firefight, the men reached the main entrance and proceeded to clear the building in brutal close quarters combat. After hours of bitter fighting, the red banner was spotted hanging from the second floor at around 2.30pm, but it wouldn't be until late in the evening before a path to the roof had finally been cleared. Two sergeants identified as Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria managed to reach the top and hoisted the hammer and sickle on top of the Reichstag, marking the symbolic end of Hitler's Third Reich. As this historic moment unfolded, an even more momentous event occurred barely a kilometer away. With Soviet troops converging on his bunker complex, the embittered Fuhrer knew that he had reached the end of the line. The German people had failed him and his vision of a thousand-year Reich. After giving Weidling the go-ahead to attempt a belated breakout, the Fuhrer said his farewells to his remaining staff, poisoned his dog Blondie, and retired to his study room to commit suicide together with his newly wedded bride Eva Braun. But Hitler's death did not put an immediate end to the fighting. The new chancellor, Josef Goebbels, rejected Stalin's demand for an unconditional surrender of the garrison, prompting the Red Army to blast the remaining German positions until the defense was reduced to little more than a few isolated pockets. With Goebbels' subsequent suicide being announced that night, the door to peace in Berlin could finally be opened. At 6am on May 2nd, General Weidling officially ordered his remaining men to lay down their arms. When the guns finally fell silent in the afternoon, an eerie silence descended on the city of which Troikoff would later write, the flame of world war was quenched ere whence it arose. Although fighting in Europe would continue until Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8th, the war had come to a climax at the Battle of Berlin. The capture of Germany's capital had cost the Red Army an estimated 78,000 men killed in action, and over 274,000 wounded. In return, the Germans had lost some 90,000 to 100,000 men killed in action, as well as at least another 200,000 wounded. During their advance into Germany, the vengeful Red Army had left a trail of pillage and destruction in its wake. An estimated 95,000 to 130,000 women in Berlin alone are said to have been sexually assaulted, of which 10,000 would later commit suicide. Still, many Germans were relieved that the conflict was finally over, and that a semblance of normal human life was slowly returning under shared allied Soviet occupation. However, the alliance between the two victors would prove short-lived, and the start of the Cold War would usher a new type of crisis in the city which had suffered so much during the Second World War.