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Battle of Berlin [Mission]

Map: Berlin - 4/29/1945

After the Vistula-Oder Offensive in January and February 1945, the Red Army paused its advance 60 km (37 mi) east of Berlin. On March 9, the German government launched Operation Clausewitz, a plan to defend Berlin. On March 20, the Wehrmacht began the first phase of defense preparations outside Berlin under the command of General Gotthard Heinrich, the new commander of Army Group Vistula.

The Soviets resumed the offensive on April 16; two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while another Soviet front annihilated German troops stationed north of Berlin. Before launching the general attack on Berlin, the Soviets had successively occupied Seelow Heights and Halbe, and completed the encirclement of the city of Berlin. On April 20, 1945, on the 56th birthday of German Führer Adolf Hitler, the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov began to bombard the center of Berlin, while the 1st Ukrainian Front under Marshal Ivan Konev broke through the defenses of Army Group Center and advanced to the southern suburbs of Berlin. On April 23, General Helmut Weidling took over the defense of Berlin. The defenders in Berlin were mainly composed of several incomplete and poorly organized Wehrmacht and Waffen SS units, supplemented by poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members. The Soviet army gradually captured the entire city in the following week.

On April 30, Hitler committed suicide, and several of his confidants and senior generals who were by his side also committed suicide one after another shortly afterwards. The Berlin defenders surrendered on May 2, but fighting continued in the northwest, west and southwest of the city. Before the war in Europe ended on May 8,[Note 7] some German units continued to break out westwards in order to surrender to the Western Allies and avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army.[15]