The battle in Berlin was an end phase of the Battle of Berlin. While the Battle of Berlin encompassed the attack by three Soviet fronts (army groups) to capture not only Berlin but the territory of Germany east of the River Elbe still under German control, the battle in Berlin details the fighting and German capitulation that took place within the city.
The outcome of the battle to capture the capital of Nazi Germany was decided during the initial phases of the Battle of Berlin that took place outside the city. As the Soviets invested Berlin and the German forces placed to stop them were destroyed or forced back, the city's fate was sealed. Nevertheless, there was heavy fighting within the city as the Red Army fought its way, street by street, into the centre.
On 23 April 1945, the first Soviet ground forces started to penetrate the outer suburbs of Berlin. By 27 April, Berlin was completely cut off from the outside world. The battle in the city continued until 2 May 1945. On that date, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, General Helmuth Weidling, surrendered to Lieutenant-General Vasily Chuikov, commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, a component of Marshal Georgiy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front.
Prelude
Battle of the Oder–Neisse
The sector in which most of the fighting in the overall battle took place was the Seelow Heights, the last major defensive line outside Berlin. The Battle of the Seelow Heights was one of the last pitched battles of World War II. It was fought over four days, from 16 April until 19 April 1945. Close to one million Soviet soldiers and more than 20,000 tanks and artillery pieces were in action to break through the "Gates to Berlin" which was defended by about 100,000 German soldiers and 1,200 tanks and guns.
On 19 April, the fourth day, the 1st Belorussian Front broke through the final line of the Seelow Heights and nothing but broken German formations lay between them and Berlin. Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front, having captured Forst the day before, was fanning out into open country. One powerful thrust was heading north-west towards Berlin while other armies headed west towards a section of the United States Army front line south-west of the city who were on the Elbe.
By the end of 19 April the German eastern front line north of Frankfurt around Seelow and, to the south, around Forst had ceased to exist. These breakthroughs allowed the two Soviet fronts to envelop the German 9th Army in a large pocket east of Frankfurt. Attempts by the 9th Army to break out to the west would result in the Battle of Halbe. The cost to the Soviet forces had been very high between 1 and 19 April, with over 2,807 tanks lost, including at least 727 at the Seelow Heights.
Encirclement of Berlin
On 20 April, Adolf Hitler's birthday, Soviet artillery of the 79th Rifle Corps of the 1st Belorussian Front first shelled Berlin. Thereafter, Soviet artillery continued the bombardment of Berlin and did not stop until the city surrendered; the weight of explosives delivered by their artillery during the battle was greater than the tonnage dropped by the Western Allied bombers on the city. The 1st Belorussian Front advanced towards the east and north-east of the city.
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 Jüterbog, well over halfway to the American front line on the Elbe at Magdeburg. To the north between Stettin and Schwedt, Konstantin Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front attacked the northern flank of General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula, held by Hasso von Manteuffel's 3rd Panzer Army.
By 24 April, elements of the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front had completed the encirclement of the city.
The next day, 25 April, the 2nd Belorussian Front broke through the 3rd Panzer Army's line around the bridgehead south of Stettin and crossed the Rando Swamp. They were now free to move west towards the British 21st Army Group and north towards the Baltic port of Stralsund. The Soviet 58th Guards Rifle Division of Zhadov's 5th Guards Army made contact with the 69th Infantry Division of the First United States Army near Torgau on the Elbe. The Soviet investment of Berlin was consolidated with leading units probing and penetrating the S-Bahn defensive ring. By the end of 25 April, there was no prospect that the German defence of the city could do anything but temporarily delay the capture of the capital by the Soviets as the decisive stages of the battle had already been fought and lost by the Germans fighting outside the city.
Preparation
On 20 April, Hitler ordered and the Wehrmacht initiated Operation Clausewitz, which called for the complete evacuation of all Wehrmacht and SS offices in Berlin; this essentially formalized Berlin's status as a frontline city.
The forces available to Artillery General Helmuth Weidling for the city's defence included several severely depleted Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, in all about 45,000 men. These formations were supplemented by the Berlin Police force, child soldiers in the compulsory Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm militia of males not already in the military. Many of the 40,000 elderly men of the Volkssturm had been in the army as young men and some were veterans of World War I. Hitler appointed SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke commander of the city's central government district. Mohnke's command post was in bunkers under the Reich Chancellery. The core group of his fighting men were the 800 members of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Guard Battalion (assigned to guard the Führer). He had a total of over 2,000 men under his command.
Weidling organised the defences into eight sectors designated 'A' to 'H', each commanded by a colonel or a general, but most had no combat experience. The 20th Infantry Division was to the west of the city; the 9th Parachute Division to the north; Panzer Division Müncheberg (Werner Mummert) to the north-east; the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland (Joachim Ziegler) to the south-east; and to the east of Tempelhof Airport. The reserve, the 18th Panzergrenadier Division, was in Berlin's central district.
Tactics and terrain
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. These were tactical units which were able to apply the tactics of house to house fighting that they had been forced to develop and refine at each Festungsstadt (fortress city) they had encountered since Stalingrad.
The German tactics used for urban warfare in Berlin were dictated by three considerations: the experience that they had gained during five years of war, the physical characteristics of the city, and the methods used by the Soviets. Most of the central districts of Berlin consist of city blocks with straight wide roads and contain several waterways, parks and large railway marshalling yards. It is a predominantly flat area, with some low hills such as Kreuzberg, which is 66 metres (217 ft) above sea level. Much of the housing stock consisted of apartment blocks built in the second half of the 19th century. Most of those, thanks to housing regulations and few elevators, were five stories high and built around a courtyard that could be reached from the street through a corridor large enough to accommodate a horse and cart or a small delivery truck. In many places, these apartment blocks were built around several courtyards, one behind the other, each reached through the outer courtyards by a ground level corridor similar to that between the first courtyard and the road. The larger, more expensive flats faced the street while the smaller, more modest dwellings were grouped around the inner courtyards.
Just as the Soviets had learned a lot about urban warfare, so had the Germans. The Waffen-SS did not use makeshift barricades erected close to street corners, because these could be raked by artillery fire from guns firing over open sights further along the straight streets. Instead, they put snipers and machine guns on the upper floors and roofs because the Soviet tanks could not elevate their guns that high, and simultaneously they put men armed with Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons in cellar windows to ambush tanks as they moved down the streets. These tactics were quickly adopted by the Hitler Youth and the Volkssturm.
Initially Soviet tanks advanced down the middle of the streets, but to counter the German tactics, they altered their own and started to hug the sides of the streets; this allowed for supporting cross-fire from tanks either side of the wider thoroughfares. The Soviets also mounted sub-machine gunners on the tanks who sprayed every doorway and window, but this meant the tank could not traverse its turret quickly. Another solution was to rely on heavy howitzers (152 mm and 203 mm) firing over open sights to blast defended buildings and to use anti-aircraft guns against the German gunners on the higher floors. Soviet combat groups started to move from house to house instead of directly down the streets. They moved through the apartments and cellars, blasting holes through the walls of adjacent buildings (making effective use of abandoned German Panzerfausts), while others fought across the rooftops and through the attics. These enfilading tactics took the Germans lying in ambush for tanks in the flanks. Flamethrowers and grenades proved to be very effective, but as the Berlin civilian population had not been evacuated, these tactics inevitably killed many non-combatants.
Battle
Outer suburbs
With the decisive stages of the battle being fought outside the city, Berlin's fate was sealed, yet the resistance inside continued. On 23 April, Hitler appointed German Artillery General (General der Artillerie) Helmuth Weidling commander of the Berlin Defence Area. Only a day earlier, Hitler had ordered that Weidling be executed by firing squad. This was due to a misunderstanding concerning a retreat order issued by Weidling as commander of the LVI Panzer Corps. On 20 April, Weidling had been appointed commander of the LVI Panzer Corps. Weidling replaced Lieutenant-Colonel (Oberstleutnant) Ernst Kaether as commander of Berlin. Only one day earlier, Kaether had replaced Lieutenant-General (Generalleutnant) Helmuth Reymann, who had held the position for only about a month.
By 23 April, some of Chuikov's rifle units had crossed the Spree and Dahme rivers south of Köpenick and by 24 April were advancing towards Britz and Neukölln. Accompanying them were the leading tanks of Colonel-General Mikhail Katukov's 1st Guards Tank Army. Sometime after midnight, a corps of Colonel-General Nikolai Berzarin's 5th Shock Army crossed the Spree close to Treptow Park. At dawn on 24 April the LVI Panzer Corps still under Weidling's direct command, counterattacked but were severely mauled by the 5th Shock Army, which was able to continue its advance around mid-day. Meanwhile, the first large Soviet probe into the city was put into operation. Katukov's 1st Guards Tank Army attacked across the Teltow Canal. At 06:20 a bombardment by 3,000 guns and heavy mortars began (a staggering 650 pieces of artillery per kilometre of front). At 07:00 hours the first Soviet battalions were across, to be followed by tanks around 12:00, shortly after the first of the pontoon bridges were completed. By the evening Treptow Park was in Soviet hands and they had also reached the S-Bahn.
While the fighting raged in the south-east of the city, between 320 and 330 French volunteers commanded by SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg from SS Division Charlemagne were attached to the Nordland Division. They moved from the SS training ground near Neustrelitz to the centre of Berlin through the western suburbs, which apart from unmanned barricades across the Havel and Spree were devoid of fortifications or defenders. Of all the reinforcements ordered to Berlin that day, only these French volunteers arrived.
On 25 April, Krukenberg was appointed commander of Defence Sector C which included the Nordland Division, whose previous commander, Joachim Ziegler, was relieved of his command the same day. The arrival of the French SS men bolstered the Nordland Division whose Norge and Danmark regiments had been decimated in the fighting. Just midday as Krukenberg reached his command, the last German bridgehead south of the Teltow Canal was being abandoned. During the night Krukenberg informed General Hans Krebs, Chief of the General Staff of Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) that within 24 hours the Nordland would have to fall back to the central sector Z (Z for Zentrum or Mitte).