p After the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes was neutralised, US and British troops resumed their eastward advance in February 1945. By the middle of March they 222 crossed the frontier into Germany and reached the Rhine, capturing two bridgeheads near Remagen and Oppenheim.

p The Allies were poised for a large-scale offensive with 80 divisions, including 23 tank and 5 paratroop, while the Germans had 60 divisions on the Western Front, numerically equivalent to a mere 26.  [222•1 

p The offensive began on March 23. After breaching the front near Remagen, the American ist Army lunged east, then veered north, and on April i made contact with the gth Army, which had performed a similar manoeuvre, near the city of Lippstadt. As a result, nazi Army Group “B” was trapped in the Ruhr and cut in two in the subsequent fighting, with the surviving 325,000 men surrendering.  [222•2 

p In the meantime, the main American and British forces moved east. On April 11, forward armoured units of the US gth Army force-crossed the Elbe south of Magdeburg, capturing a bridgehead on its right bank. A second bridgehead was developed two days later southeast of Wittenberg, 100 km from Berlin. But holding these bridgeheads proved difficult. German I2th Army counter-attacks compelled the Americans to abandon the bridgehead south of Magdeburg and considerably reduce the one southeast of Wittenberg. Only some 150-200 km lay between the Red Army and the Allies.

p Ever since the autumn of 1944 the Anglo-American command toyed with the idea of capturing Berlin before the Red Army. On September 15, 1944, Eisenhower wrote Fieldmarshal Montgomery: "Clearly, Berlin is the main prize. There is no doubt whatsoever, in my mind, that we should concentrate all our energies and resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin."  [222•3 

p It would appear that after the Crimea Conference, which recognised Berlin as part of the Red Army operational area, US and British plans of capturing the German capital should have been scrapped. Churchill, however, was still in favour of them. He sent urgent messages to President Roosevelt on this score, and telegraphed him on April i: "... From a political standpoint we should march as far east into Germany 223 as possible, and... should Berlin be in our grasp we should certainly take it."  [223•1  On the following day, Churchill sent the same plea to Eisenhower: "...We should shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible."  [223•2  And on April 5 he again appealed to Roosevelt in the same vein.  [223•3 

p Churchill’s proposals were turned down by Eisenhower’s Headquarters. To begin with, it regarded caution as essential in relations with the Soviet Union and its Red Army—a realistic view, indeed, based on a clear-sighted appraisal of the situation. The second reason flowed from the first; the setbacks with the Elbe bridgeheads -showed that the Allied armies were unprepared to storm Berlin, and no time was left for priming. "We would have taken Berlin had we been able to do so,” Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s top adviser, said later. "This would have been a great feather in the army’s cap."  [223•4 

p Eisenhower’s Headquarters worked out an alternate plan — an assault on Dresden. That amounted to a deep Allied penetration into territory which in’ Yalta had been made part of the Soviet zone of occupation. However, when word of Eisenhower’s plan reached the Soviet Government it did not object in the interest of joint action in consummating the defeat of Hitler’s armed forces.

p A new test for the anti-fascist coalition came with President Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945. The new president — the same Harry Truman who on June 24, 1941, discoursed in the US press on the advantages that would accrue from a mutual extermination of Russians and Germans—lost no time in declaring "a strong American attitude towards the Soviet Union".  [223•5 

p Joyous excitement reigned in the underground Imperial Chancellory when word reached it of Roosevelt’s demise. Goebbels congratulated Hitler, who, in turn, let the news be known to the German generals.  [223•6  In his order on April 16, Hitler predicted a radical change in the war.

p But the anti-fascist coalition withstood the test.

p Soviet troops were then completing final preparations for the Berlin Operation, to be carried out by the ist and 2nd Byelorussian and the ist Ukrainian fronts (Marshals G. K. Zhukov, K. K. Rokossovsky and I. S. Konev, respectively), and the Baltic Fleet. The Polish Army, too, was poised for the action. The offensive was to move into gear along a sector of more than 400 km.

p Red Army power was represented in force. The three fronts had 2,500,000 men, with more than 42,000 guns and mortars, more than 6,200 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 8,300 warplanes.  [224•1  Superiority was considerable: 2.5 : i in men, 4 : i in guns, 4.1 : i in tanks and self-propelled artillery, and 2.3 : i in air strength.  [224•2 

p The enemy scraped the bottom of the barrel to build up as powerful a force as he could. Around Berlin he deployed two armies of the Army Group Vistula and two of the Army Group Centre, comprising 85 divisions and several dozen separate regiments and battalions. Besides, Berlin and the towns around it had strong garrisons, reinforced by the Volkssturm. A total of 200 Volkssturm battalions were hastily formed in the capital, the total strength of the garrison exceeding 2oo,ooo.  [224•3  A fortified zone of powerful defence lines ran from the Oder to Berlin, manned well in advance. Fascist propaganda whipped up a fanatical resolve among the men, threatening execution for disobedience and death for surrendering. It issued assurances that the Soviet offensive could be stemmed.

p The ist Byelorussian and ist Ukrainian fronts mounted the offensive early in the morning on April 16. As many as 143 powerful floodlights were switched on in the assault area for the ist Byelorussian Front strike force, sending the infantry and tanks over the top. The attack was irresistible. Two hours later the first line of the enemy defences was breached. Among the many stories of bravery, was one about Lyudmila Kravets medical nurse of a company of the 63rd Guards Infantry Regiment who took her place at the head of the men when the commander had been killed and led them in the successful attack.

p But when the second line of defence on the steep Zeelow Heights, barely negotiable for tanks and infantry, was reached, 225 the advance bogged down. Costly and bitter was the fighting. Not until the morning of April 18 was the line breached at last. The delay could have slowed down the operation, and the Soviet Supreme Command ordered the ist Ukrainian Front, advancing south of Berlin, to turn its tank armies northwest, and the 2nd Byelorussian Front, advancing north of Berlin, to turn its main forces southwest. Thus, at the height of the operation, the frontal offensive of the ist Byelorussian Front was complemented by an enveloping move from north and south by the ist Ukrainian and 2nd Byelorussian fronts, with part of the ist Byelorussian Front also used to invest Berlin from the north.

p The 47th Army and the 3rd and 5th Shock Armies of the ist Byelorussian Front, and the Polish ist Army, which flanked the city from northeast and southwest, were the first to come within firing distance of Berlin. On April 20 they began a methodical bombardment. On the following day, the autobahn ringing Berlin was cut and the fighting carried into the northern and northeastern environs of the city. On April 21 troops of the ist Byelorussian Front approached Berlin from the east while those of the ist Ukrainian Front closed in from the south. Investment of the Frankfurt-Guben enemy group was completed southeast of Berlin on April 24. The Berlin group was enveloped the following day, while initial contact was made with American troops near the town of Riesa and Torgau on the Elbe. A few days later Soviet and British troops met near the towns of Schwerin and Rostock. Germany and her armed forces were thus cut into several isolated segments.

p The Soviet plan of encircling the enemy armies in Berlin was brilliantly carried out. The rapid advance, in complete accord with the Yalta decisions, frustrated the designs of the fascist leadership and those of certain groups in the United States and Britain. The Red Army Berlin operation was not only military, but also political. Among other things, for the fascist chiefs it closed the avenue of escape west from the German capital.

p Fresh Soviet troops were to capture the capital and destroy the German troops refusing to lay down their arms. The powerful enemy force had turned the city into a strongly fortified zone. Top guidance was still in Hitler’s hands, though artillery general Helmuth Weidling was put in command. General Walter Wenck’s iath Army operating 226 against the Americans, was rapidly moved east to face the Soviet troops. The order for its deployment was published in newspapers and transmitted over the radio by Goebbels, who said: "...the German troops on the Elbe have turned their back to the Americans."  [226•1  The battle for Berlin proper lasted seven days, from April 26 to May 2, 1945. Soviet forces encountered numerous difficulties, chiefly because the German capital was, in a way, an aggregate of several fortified zones. Marshal Ivan Konev had this to say of the Berlin defences:

p "The massive stone buildings were adapted to a state of siege. The door and windows of many buildings were walled up and only firing ports were left.

p "A few buildings thus fortified formed a centre of resistance. The flanks were secured by strong barricades up to 4 metres thick, which were simultaneously strong anti-tank obstacles__

p In Berlin, especially in the centre, there were many special reinforced-concrete shelters. The largest of them were surface reinforced-concrete bunkers capable of sheltering garrisons of 300-1,000 soldiers.

p "Some of the bunkers were six-storeyed and up to 36 metres high; their roofs were 1.5-3.5 metres thick and the walls 1-2.5 rnetres thick, which made them practically invulnerable to modern systems of field artillery. On the bunker platforms there were usually several anti-aircraft guns which were simultaneously used against aircraft, tanks and infantry.

p "These bunkers formed part of the defences within the city limits; Berlin had about 400 of them."  [226•2 

p The Battle of Berlin was one more legendary Red Army feat.

p In the meantime, the US and British governments used a variety of channels to negotiate with the nazi chiefs. One of these was the mission entrusted to Folke Bernadotte, a member t>f the Swedish royal family, closely connected with British monopoly tycoons. He visited Eisenhower’s headquarters on November 2, 1944, after which he went to Berlin to meet Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner and other prominent nazis on February 16, 1945. However, he devoted himself mainly to talks with Heinrich Himmler, whom he met on several occasions. Their last conversation took place on April 227 24 in the Swedish Consulate in Luebeck, the premises sparingly lit by two wax candles. Already, the lunatic fascist world lay in darkness.

p Himmler said to Bernadotte: "It is quite possible that Hitler is already dead — And if he isn’t, he is sure to die within the next few days. Berlin is surrounded and its fall is a question of a few days — I recognise that the Reich is vanquished___In the new situation I consider my hands free.

p I am determined to spare as much territory as possible from the Russian invasion. I am prepared to capitulate on the Western Front. The armies of the Western powers will thereby be enabled to advance rapidly as far as possible to the east. In contrast, I have no intention of surrendering on the Eastern Front."  [227•1 

p Hurrying back to Sweden, Bernadotte informed the British and American ministers of Himmler’s proposals through the Swedish Foreign Minister. On April 25, the US leaders, with President Truman at their head, gathered in the War Department to discuss Himmler’s terms and then consulted Churchill by phone. The temptation to strike the deal was great, but the military and international situation ruled out a transaction with the most obnoxious of the nazi chiefs after Hitler. The proposal was rejected and the Soviet Government informed about Bernadotte’s talks. Two days later an account appeared in the British press. Learning of Himmler’s initiative, Hitler ordered him expelled from the nazi party.

p On April 23, Goering, then in South Germany, sent Hitler a radiogram informing him of his intention to place himself at the head of Germany, inasmuch as Hitler’s government in surrounded Berlin was incapable of functioning. Like Himmler, Goering intended to approach Eisenhower and come to terms on terminating hostilities in the West. He ordered General Karl Roller, Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, to draft an appropriate manifesto. Goering said: "The Russians must believe the manifesto when they hear it; they must believe that we intend to continue resisting against West and East, while the British and the Americans must interpret it as a statement of our intention to terminate hostilities in the West and to continue fighting the Soviets. The soldiers must be given to understand that the war is continuing, but that 228 at the same time its end, a favourable one for us, is near."  [228•1 

p Learning of Goering’s intentions, Hitler expelled him from his party and ordered his arrest, as well as that of Koller and others.

p On April 27 the fighting had reached the centre of the German capital. The enemy force was compressed in a narrow strip running 15 km from east to west and 2-5 km from north to south. On the following day, it was cut up into thrte pockets. On Hitler’s orders, the SS flooded the underground Friedrichstrasse station of the city railway where thousands of women, children and wounded German soldiers and officers had sought refuge on April 28.

p Early in the morning of April 30 Soviet troops stormed the Reichstag building. They had to fight for every room, every corridor, every landing and the basement. In the morning of May i the Soviet victory banner was hoisted on the sculpture crowning the fronton, raised there by the scouts M. A. Yegorov and M. V. Kantaria of the 756th Regiment. While bitter fighting still raged for the Reichstag, other troops reached the proximity of the Imperial Chancellory.

p By midday on April 30, Hitler finally understood that there was no salvation, that the hour of retribution had come. After a ceremony in which he wedded Eva Braun, he made her a gift of an ampule of calcium cyanide, then took his own life by shooting himself in the mouth. His entourage carried his corpse into the yard of the Imperial Chancellory under Soviet gunfire, poured gasoline over it and set it alight. "Hitler’s funeral pyre,” said Churchill, "with the din of the Russian guns growing ever louder, made a lurid end to the Third Reich."  [228•2  Goebbels took the life of his children and wife, and committed suicide the following day. Bormann disappeared.

p On May 2 the resistance of the Berlin garrison was finally crushed. Its remnants, comprising 134,000 men and officers,  [228•3  surrendered. All in all, the Soviet troops and Polish units captured 480,000 prisoners in the Berlin Operation.  [228•4 

p The fall of Berlin and the inglorious end of the nazi chiefs was well deserved for crimes committed. It was also a serious warning to all new pretenders to world supremacy. The Red 229 banner over the Reichstag became the symbol of victory over fascism.

Berlin, the heart of German imperialism and the seat of German aggression, lay prostrated. The war in Europe fast neared its end.