In April 1944, the Soviet Red Army finally launched an offensive against Berlin, the capital of Germany. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

At this time, the Soviet army had already occupied a large area of Germany, Dresden and Leipzig south of Berlin, Rostock and Novobrandenburg north of Berlin, and the Posen area east of Berlin had been occupied by the Soviet Red Army, leaving the Nazi German army stationed in Berlin in a state of semi-encirclement.

The Soviet army involved in the Battle of Berlin consisted of three fronts, namely the 1st Belorussian Front, the 2nd Belorussian Front, and the 1st Ukrainian Front, commanded by Rokossovsky, Zhukov, and Konev respectively, with a total strength of 2.5 million troops, more than 7,000 tanks and 8,000 aircraft.

When Berlin was under siege, Hitler did not accept the advice of his advisers to leave Berlin, and he resolutely remained in Berlin, vowing to live and die with it.

In order to hold Berlin, Hitler mobilized the manpower and material resources of the whole city of Berlin at all costs, conscripted a large number of barely trained civilians into the army, and reluctantly integrated an army group of nearly 1.2 million people.

Although the combat effectiveness of these civilians was not reliable, this army group was Hitler's only hope in the Battle of Berlin.

This army group consisted of three army groups and a reserve army group of nearly 400,000 men, namely the 2nd National Army of the Wehrmacht, the 8th Escort Army of the Wehrmacht, the 1st Elite Army of the Imperial Guard, and the 16th National Army (Reserve Army) of the Wehrmacht.

However, due to the fact that the Mauser factory that produced guns had been occupied by the Soviet army, the supply of guns was very limited, and Nazi Germany did not have many guns in its hands, even if all the stocks of the First World War era were taken out, it was not enough to arm the Berlin Guard of 1.2 million people in a short period of time.

In order to hold back the Soviet Red Army from the east, the Nazi German army mobilized engineers and local residents to strengthen the fortifications of the Hille Heights, using the power of German artillery to build the Hille Heights into a powerful artillery fortress.

The strategic value of the Schilä Oberland is extremely important, as it is located 17 km west of the Oder River and 90 km east of Berlin, overlooking the highway that crosses the Oder River and guards the main access road from the Oder to Berlin.

This high ground is the last line of defense from the east into the city of Berlin, and after the line of defense is already the suburbs outside the city. Some Germans even regarded the Hilley Heights as the key to the survival of the Third Reich, and transferred the remaining elite SS 7th Panzer Army and two National Infantry Divisions to the Hilley Heights defensive line.

In addition to reinforcing the fortifications on the Hillae Heights, the German engineers flooded the reservoirs in the upper reaches of the river, turning the Oder River, which had already flooded with autumn snowmelt, into a moat swamp, and built three lines of defense behind the Oder River all the way to the outskirts of Berlin. These zones consisted of anti-tank trenches, anti-tank batteries, and a large number of trench pillboxes.

However, it was not enough to establish a defensive line in the east of Berlin, because the Soviets did not attack Berlin from the east, but from the east, south and north.

Therefore, in addition to guarding against the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front from the east, the Germans also had to confront the 1st Ukrainian Front from the north from Leipzig-Dresden and the 2nd Belorussian Front from Rostock to the south to attack Berlin.

In this way, the German army needs to establish corresponding defensive lines from the east, south, and north, but the German army has limited resources, and their time is also limited, and the length of the front line in the north and south directions is more than 100 kilometers, and it is almost impossible to use limited resources in a short period of time to block and seal this 100 kilometers.

Despite this, the temporary defensive line built by the German army still caused a lot of trouble for the Soviet army, and the Nazi SS and the German Wehrmacht, which faced the threat of national annihilation, were extremely high-willed and brave. In the face of the inferiority of weapons and equipment, they did not flinch and "defended" the last land with their own blood.

This was the second time in the history of Germany/Prussia that it was threatened with annihilation, as two centuries earlier (1760) the Russian army had also invaded the city of Berlin and captured the Prussian capital with Austrian troops. But in 1762, Empress Elizabeth I of Russia died and was succeeded by a German who did not speak Russian, Peter III.

Peter III was a native German, he barely spoke Russian, he was deeply influenced by German culture since he was a child, when Prussia was about to perish, and Prussian King Frederick II was about to commit suicide, Peter III actually announced an alliance between Russia and Prussia, and in turn ordered General Chernyshev, who captured Berlin years ago, to lead 20,000 Russian troops to aid Prussia.

As a result, Prussia, with the help of Russia, was given a respite and defeated Austria at the Battle of Freiburg, not only retaining its territory, but also winning the war. This sudden change was later called "the miracle of the Brandenburg royal family".

When the Soviet Red Army arrived in Berlin, Hitler also hoped that there would be unexpected events to help Germany, as he had done two centuries earlier, such as the split between the Allied forces in the East and the West, and the accession of neutral powers. But his fantasies were too unrealistic to take place before the fall of Nazi Germany.

On April 20, 1944, while the Ukrainian Third Front of the Soviet Red Army captured Kassel, Göttingen, Braunschweig, Wolfsburg and other cities, the First Ukrainian Front and the Second Belorussian Front also met in Magdeburg, 130 kilometers west of Berlin, to complete the siege of Berlin and besiege Hitler's 1.2 million troops in the Berlin area.

The 1st and 2nd Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts continued to shrink the encirclement, taking advantage of air superiority and armor superiority to win field battles on the outskirts, and on April 25, they stormed the periphery of the city of Berlin, and the Soviets and Germans began to engage in fierce street battles in the city of Berlin.

From the moment the Soviet troops surrounded Berlin, the countdown to the demise of Nazi Germany had begun, and all the Red Army generals knew that they would win the final victory. For them, time is not a problem, the problem is casualties, and in order to minimize casualties, they did not rush to attack, but patiently carried out operational deployment, sweeping block by block.

At the same time, the Ukrainian Second Front and the Ukrainian Fourth Front were also advancing non-stop towards the Ruhr industrial area and the areas around Bremen and Hamburg, striving to seize all the industrial cities in western Germany before the Anglo-American coalition forces.

By this time, Nazi Germany had been divided into two parts, one controlling the western states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-West**, Schleswig-Holstein, Jutland in Denmark, and parts of the Netherlands and Belgium, and the German army in this area was temporarily under the command and control of Field Marshal Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor.

The other was under Hitler's direct control, but it was actually three-quarters of the Berlin city and was shrinking by the hour.

When Berlin fell and Hitler was captured/committed suicide, Karl Dönitz would become the leader of the Nazis, leading the remaining German soldiers into battle with the Allies.