Fall of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin (16 April – 2 May 1945) was the final major offensive on the European Eastern Front. Marshal Zhukov's First Belorussian Front and Konev's First Ukrainian Front assaulted the city with 2.5 million men and 6,250 tanks against 750,000 German defenders, many of them Volkssturm conscripts and SS units fighting fanatically in the ruins. Hitler remained in his Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, issuing orders to divisions that no longer existed. On 30 April, with Soviet troops less than a kilometre away, he married Eva Braun and then killed himself. On 2 May Berlin's commander, General Weidling, surrendered unconditionally. The visual symbol of the battle — a Soviet soldier raising the red flag over the Reichstag, photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei — became one of the most iconic images of the twentieth century. The human cost of the Battle of Berlin alone was approximately 80,000 Soviet soldiers killed and 125,000 German soldiers killed, with hundreds of thousands of Berlin civilians dead from bombing, fighting, and the mass rapes carried out by Soviet soldiers.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Military
