Much of their rations and transport were American Lend-Lease. Soviet troops were often lean and hungry, expected to live off the land. While ammunition was plentiful, food, spare parts, and even uniforms were in short supply. They did not rely on numbers alone to win battles.īut the Soviets had weaknesses. The Soviets understood the importance of surprise, maneuver, and commitment of reserves. Artillery was still Russia’s “God of War.” Infantry and tanks cooperated with skill, resolution, and aggressiveness. The Soviet Army was by 1945 a well-oiled war machine, lavishly equipped with powerful T-34 and JS tanks, superior to most of their German counterparts and fairly easy for the mechanically challenged Soviet tank crews to operate and maintain. To achieve this victory, Stalin was massing 2.5 million men, 41,600 guns, 6,250 tanks, and 7,500 aircraft. “So that’s the sort of men you are,” responded Stalin, who promptly gave them their orders-Zhukov would drive on Berlin from the center and north, while Koniev hit Berlin from the south, enveloping the immense German capital in a gigantic pincer movement.
“We will, and before the Allies,” answered Koniev. Zhukov, commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, and Marshal Ivan Koniev, head of the 1st Ukrainian Front, who faced Berlin, in a Moscow conference on April 1. “Who will take Berlin? Us or the Allies?” Stalin asked his two top commanders, Marshal Georgi K. Not only did his prestige demand it, so did vengeance for the bloody trail of atrocities and destruction sown by the Germans all the way to Moscow and Stalingrad.
To Russia’s tyrannical and paranoid ruler, Josef Stalin, nothing mattered more than beating the British and American forces to Berlin. The last and most consequential battle of World War II in Europe was starting-the battle for Berlin.Īfter a breather to finish off the “Oder balcony” in East Prussia and to bring up supplies, the Soviet Army was finally ready to attack Berlin and end the war. The rumbling was the sound of 8,983 Soviet artillery pieces, up to 270 guns every kilometer, hurling a stockpile of seven million shells (1.2 million on the first day alone) at the German defenses on the Oder-Neisse River line. On ration queues, women and girls listened “in dread to the distant sounds of the front,” and asked each other if the Americans would get to Berlin ahead of the Soviets. Berlin civilians heard the rumbling, saw the shaking buildings, and knew the hour had come. The Battle of Berlin began with what a German colonel called “a dull, continuous roar of thunder from the east.” The Soviet bombardment was so immense in Berlin’s eastern suburbs, houses shook, pictures fell from walls, and telephones rang.