THE BATTLE FOR BERLIN April 1945

The battle of Berlin was actually fought outside of Berlin and the
battle in the streets of Berlin which took place from around April
24th was for the Russians a gigantic mopping-up operation. However it
was an operation which was to cost them dearly.

The Red Army had overwhelming superiority inboth men and machinery when
it faced the Germans across the Oder and the Neisse at the end of
January. It could deploy 40,000 artillery pieces,6000 tanks and
7,500 aircraft. In response, the Wehrmacht could muster 10,000 guns,
1,500 tanks and 3,000 aircraft.

On April 16 1945, the Red Army attacked across the Oder and the Neisse
rivers .This was the inevitable blow to fell Nazi Germany once and for all.
Berlin would be taken and the Russians would meet the Western allies on
the Elbe.The Germans under General Heinrici fought a masterful defence
outside of Berlin on the Seelow Heights and succeded in checking
the Russians. However, the Russian commander Zhukov had almost
unlimited amounts of tanks and men and eventually the German positions
were smashed and the defenders fell back on the city. The German 9th
and 12th armies containing the troops that could have made a succesful
defence of Berlin a possibility, fought the Russians outside the city.

The defence of Berlin was left to approximately 90,000 troops and a 
very mixed bag they were. Many were Hitler Youth or Voksturm (Home
Guard uits) composed of teenagers or the old and unfit. Mixed in with
these were a small hard corps of Wehrmacht troops and sections from
fanatical SS units from the four corners of Europe. French,British and
Scandinavian SS men prepared for a final Gotterdamerung in Berlin.

By 25 April,Berlin was completely encircled.By 26 April, the nine armies
all part of a million-strong Red Army Force now in the heart of
Germany, had redeployed and reorganised so a concerted assault began.
This was to be simply a relentless inward drive by each of the armies
involved.

In the Berlin suburbs, the defenders were thin on the ground,and pockets
of resistance could be annihilated by artillery or bypassed until their
supples run out.In places however defence was fanatical.In the centre of
the city, resistance stiffened as German-trained troops became thicker
on the ground. The fighting was sharp and vicious.Early Red Army attempts
to penetrate into the city in armoured columns had been abandoned as 
vehicles had been knocked out by German weilding the panzerfaust bazooka
weapon.By the time the city centre came under attack, mixed infantry combat
teams had the task of clearing the area street by street and block by
block.

The Red army used artillery and katyushi rocket batteries at close
range to level city blocks which showed signs of resistance.In the centre
of the city, beneath the Reichstag, Hitler and his entourage, directed
the dying gasps of the Third Reich.On April 30th, the Fuhrer committed
suicide, just as Red Army units stormed the Reichstag. The building
was fiercely defended and was only finally cleared after the surrender
of the city.Other resitance centres were the giant flak towers in the
Berlin Zoo gardens and in the Humboldtshain Park.At the same time, quite
a large body of troops tried to escape West from the suburbs but most
were killed or captured.

Back in the city a handful of snipers were ruthlessly dealt with by
the Soviets and on the 2nd May, the Battle of berlin was over.