By 29 April, Army Group Vistula Headquarters staff could no longer contact the IX Army, so there was little in the way of coordination that Heinrici's staff could still to do.
[43] German demolition charges damaged the Moltke bridge but left it still passable to infantry. On 20 April between Stettin and Schwedt, Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front attacked the northern flank of Army Group Vistula, held by the III Panzer Army. Von Greim was ordered to get the Luftwaffe to attack the Soviet forces that had just reached Potsdamerplatz and to make sure that Himmler was punished. [50] During the same period, of all the German forces ordered to reinforce the inner defences of the city by Hitler, only a small contingent of French SS volunteers under the command of SS Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg arrived in Berlin.

It was not until the damaged bridges were repaired that artillery could be moved up in support. [71] By that time, Schörner's offensive, initially successful, had mostly been thwarted, although he did manage to inflict significant casualties on the opposing Polish and Soviet units, slowing down their progress. There are no estimates of wounded. Beevor has suggested that the rivalry went further than just jokes and says that Chuikov deliberately ordered the left flank of the 8th Guards Army (of 1st Belorussian Front) across the front of the 3rd Guards Tank Army (of the 1st Ukrainian Front), blocking its direct path to the Reichstag. [110], The German III Panzer Army and the German XXI Army situated to the north of Berlin retreated westwards under relentless pressure from Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front, and was eventually pushed into a pocket 32 km (20 mi) wide that stretched from the Elbe to the coast. These breakthroughs allowed the two Soviet fronts to envelop the German IX Army in a large pocket east of Frankfurt. He ordered the IX Army to hold Cottbus and set up a front facing west.

[k] Fearing that Hitler was escaping in the plane, troops of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, which was fighting its way through the Tiergarten from the north, tried to shoot down the Arado but the plane took off successfully. [35] On 6 March, Hitler appointed Lieutenant General Helmuth Reymann commander of the Berlin Defence Area, replacing Lieutenant General Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild. Behind the plain on the plateau, the engineers built three belts of defensive emplacements[39] reaching back towards the outskirts of Berlin (the lines nearer to Berlin were called the Wotan position). [26] On 12 April 1945, Hitler, who had earlier decided to remain in the city against the wishes of his advisers, heard the news that the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.

The headquarters of the Dönitz government were located around Flensburg, along with Mürwik, near the Danish border. Drizzling rain began to fall. This was due to a misunderstanding concerning a retreat order issued by Weidling as commander of the LVI Panzer Corps.

Only one day earlier, Kaether had replaced Lieutenant-General (Generalleutnant) Helmuth Reymann, who had held the position for only about a month. This division, down to its last dozen tanks and thirty armoured personnel carriers (APC)s, had been promised replacements for battle losses but only stragglers and Volkssturm were available to fill the ranks.

Stalin did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory occupied by them in the post-war Soviet zone, so he began the offensive on a broad front and moved rapidly to meet the Western Allies as far west as possible.

[50] By the end of the day, the German eastern front line north of Frankfurt around Seelow and to the south around Forst had ceased to exist.

A Soviet tank spearhead was on the Havel River to the east of Berlin, and another had at one point penetrated the inner defensive ring of Berlin. Near Biesdorf I saw batteries preparing to open fire. [118][119] At that point, support from the IX Army could no longer be expected. I noted the time. [82], In the early hours of 29 April the Soviet 3rd Shock Army crossed the Moltke bridge and started to fan out into the surrounding streets and buildings. [66], The capital was now within range of field artillery. The German capital lay now within the jaws of a great pincer. [52], On 20 April 1945, Hitler's 56th birthday, Soviet artillery of the 1st Belorussian Front began shelling Berlin and did not stop until the city surrendered. Chaos ensued among the attackers, and the assault proved abortive. As Chuikov did not inform Rybalko, commander of the 3rd Guards Tank Army, that the 8th was doing this, the troops ordered to carry out this manoeuvre suffered disproportionate casualties from friendly fire. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account.

At that point there was still a large contingent of German soldiers in the basement who launched counter-attacks against the Red Army. One of the other main thrusts was along Wilhelmstrasse on which the Air Ministry, built of reinforced concrete, was pounded by large concentrations of Soviet artillery. A Tiger tank that spearheaded the first attempt to storm the Weidendammer Bridge was destroyed. [74] In accordance with Hitler's last will and testament, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, became the new "Head of Government" and Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler). Chuikov then asked: "Where is Krebs? [68][69], As the perimeter shrank and the surviving defenders fell back on the centre, they became concentrated. [27] This briefly raised false hopes in the Führerbunker that there might yet be a falling out among the Allies and that Berlin would be saved at the last moment, as had happened once before when Berlin was threatened (see the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg).

Wenck crossed the Elbe under small arms fire that afternoon and surrendered to the American Ninth Army. Colossal smoke columns erupt where fire still consume what little remains to be burnt in Berlin. The 1st Ukrainian Front had pushed through the last formations of the northern wing of General Ferdinand Schörner's Army Group Centre and had passed north of Juterbog, well over halfway to the American front line on the river Elbe at Magdeburg. [46] Keitel gave Wenck permission to break off his attempt to relieve Berlin. As well as one of its most symbolic buildings: the Reichstag. General Mohnke and the others who had been in the Führerbunker were interrogated by SMERSH. The Soviet 58th Guards Rifle Division of Zhadov's 5th Guards Army made contact with the US 69th Infantry Division of the First Army near Torgau, Germany, on the Elbe River.

Lt. Gen. Weidling gave them precisely that on May 2.

Meanwhile, Hitler's private secretary (and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery) Martin Bormann wired to the head of the navy Admiral Dönitz: [the] "Reich Chancellery (Reichskanzlei) [is] a heap of rubble. The core group of his fighting men were the 800 members of the Leibstandarte (1st SS-Pz.Div. Still wearing their boots and helmets, and carrying their weapons, the bodies of German soldiers who died in the Battle of the Seelow Heights have finally been unearthed. [32] On the following day, 27 April, 2,000 German women were rounded up and ordered to help clear Tempelhof Airport of debris so that the Red Army Air Force could start to use it. By the evening Treptow Park was in Soviet hands and they had also reached the S-Bahn. [62][63] Originally, one infantry regiment was to support the 1st Mechanised Corps, and two, the 12th Guards Tank Corps; contrary to the original plan, two regiments (1st and 2nd) ended up supporting the 1st Corps, and only one (3rd) the 12th Corps. A frequently quoted number is that 100,000 women in Berlin were raped by soldiers of the Red Army (Helke Sander & Barbara Johr: BeFreier und Befreite, Fischer, Frankfurt 2005).
[14], A Soviet combat group was a mixed arms unit of about eighty men in assault groups of six to eight soldiers, closely supported by field artillery. Germany’s capital, surrounded by the Red Army, looks like a nightmare. At 18:00 hours, while Weidling and his staff finalized their breakout plans in the Bendlerblock, three regiments of the Soviet 150th Rifle Division, under cover of a heavy artillery barrage and closely supported by tanks, assaulted the Reichstag. Three German divisions' attempts to relieve the encircled Hungarian capital city failed, and Budapest fell to the Soviets on 13 February. Still, the street fighting continued. The 3rd Shock Army were in sight of the Victory Column in the Tiergarten and during the afternoon advanced towards the Moltke Bridge over the Spree, just north of the Ministry of the Interior and a mere 600 m (660 yd) from the Reichstag. They were reported to have died a short distance from the bridge, their bodies seen and identified by Arthur Axmann who followed the same route. [37], At dawn on 28 April, the youth divisions Clausewitz, Scharnhorst and Theodor Körner, attacked from the south-west in the direction of Berlin. [124] Soviet estimates based on kill claims placed German losses at 458,080 killed and 479,298 captured,[125][p] but German research puts the number of dead at approximately 92,000 – 100,000. They covered a distance of about 24 km (15 mi), before being halted at the tip of Lake Schwielow south-west of Potsdam and still 32 km (20 mi) from Berlin. [111], The successes of the 1st Ukrainian Front during the first nine days of the battle meant that by 25 April, they were occupying large swathes of the area south and south-west of Berlin. Fourthly, Holste's Corps on the defensive.

Battle of Seelow Heights Zhukov and Konev's forces acted as a pincer movement on Berlin. [140] In Soviet society, Full Cavaliers of the Order of Glory were accorded the same rights and privileges as those accorded to Heroes of the Soviet Union.