2 de maio de 1945: a queda da Berlim nazista

HISTORY · GERMANY

2 May 1945: The Fall of Nazi Berlin

André Marinho
1 May 2025

Eighty years ago, Soviet troops defeated the Nazis in the battle for the German capital. Episodes of violence and the rape of civilians marked the final victory that opened the way to the end of the Second World War in Europe.

In a famous photograph amplified by Russian propaganda, a soldier waves a flag from the top of the Reichstag on 2 May 1945, the day Berlin capitulated. Photo: Yevgeny Khaldei/TASS/dpa/picture alliance.

Amid the rubble of the war-ravaged metropolis, Berliners could tell where the sound of heavy artillery was coming from in the early morning of 2 May 1945, exactly 80 years ago.

There was no official confirmation, but an informal network of reports and rumors indicated that the German capital had been encircled by the Red Army. “No one knew exactly what the situation was, but most Berliners believed the city’s days were numbered,” journalist Cornelius Ryan writes in his book The Last Battle (1966).

That morning, the flag of the Soviet Union flying high over the Reichstag — the seat of the German parliament — put an end to any remaining doubts about what was happening. It marked the end of the Battle of Berlin, a key episode in the chronology of the final phase of the Second World War in Europe.

The war in Germany would continue for another week, but the surrender of the capital signaled the definitive collapse of German defensive lines. For Soviet troops, who had suffered the greatest losses of any country in the war, it was a triumphant achievement.

The Nazi regime was already in its death throes amid the ruins of the Third Reich, decapitated after Hitler responded to signs of imminent defeat by shooting himself on 30 April. His successor as chancellor, Joseph Goebbels, also killed himself the following day.

With no clear leader left, the decision to end the fighting in the area was taken by Berlin’s defense commander, General Helmuth Weidling. The order was broadcast over several loudspeakers: “Every hour of fighting increases the immense suffering of Berlin’s population and of our wounded (...) I order the immediate cessation of hostilities.”

The destruction of the German parliament building in 1945 illustrates the scale of Berlin’s devastation at the end of the war. Photo: Usis-Dite/Leemage/picture alliance.

A Shrunken City

The city had become a wasteland. Its population had reached 4.3 million at the end of the 1930s, but according to historical records it had fallen to 2.8 million by 1945. More than 600,000 homes had been destroyed after years of Allied air raids.

Those who remained faced shortages of food, medicine and basic necessities, as well as frequent interruptions to water and electricity supplies. Secret BBC radio broadcasts reported on the advance of troops on the Western Front, as military historian Antony Beevor recounts in his book Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (2002).

The British knew few details about the Russian advance. “Their report on the liberation of the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp north of Berlin gave an indication of the Red Army’s progress and its intention to encircle the city,” the historian notes in his book.

Cornered from both sides, Germany entered April 1945 with little hope of any significant reversal in the military campaign. A phrase attributed to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop gives an idea of the situation: “Germany has lost the war, but it still has the power to decide to whom it has lost it.”

Led by the Americans, the Western Allies reached the Elbe River, about 100 kilometers from central Berlin, from where they had planned to advance on the Reich capital.

After the death of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April and amid uncertainty over supplies, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force Dwight D. Eisenhower changed his decision: plans to enter Berlin were canceled.

The retreat opened a rift at the top of the Western alliance. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill argued that Allied forces should “shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible,” anticipating the geopolitical dynamics that would emerge during the Cold War.

Churchill (left) believed that the Allies should enter Berlin as a message to Stalin (right). Photo: U.I.G./Bildagentur-online/picture alliance.

The Soviet Race for Berlin

Eisenhower’s decision effectively opened the way for the Russian advance on the nerve center of Nazi Germany. The Soviets were in fact completing a kind of counteroffensive after their victory in the bloody Battle of Stalingrad had ended the German advance into Russia in 1943, explains historian Vítor Soares, host of the podcast História em Meia Hora. “It was this counteroffensive that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany,” he says.

In the final weeks of April 1945, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin assigned the mission of invading Berlin to Marshals Ivan Konev, commander of the First Ukrainian Front, and Georgy Zhukov, commander of the First Belorussian Front. The arrangement triggered a genuine race between them for the prestige of being the first to enter the German capital.

On Stalin’s orders, the Battle of Berlin officially began on 16 April. On Hitler’s last birthday, 20 April, Soviet troops began a prolonged and intense bombardment of the metropolis. It proved enough to break through all the Nazi defensive lines. Operation Clausewitz, devised by the Germans to hold back the Allies, failed.

Soviet troops advanced from every direction “like a swarm,” Cornelius Ryan writes in The Last Battle. By the end of April, districts fell under Soviet control like dominoes. Members of the Hitler Youth and the Volkssturm tried to resist, but they no longer had clear leadership. Many simply threw down their weapons and fled.

Repeated Rapes

During the final days and hours of the battle, an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty spread through Berlin among the Germans who remained in the city. Red Army soldiers committed repeated rapes of German women, acts widely described in contemporary accounts and modern historiography.

Ukrainian soldier Vladimir Gelfand wrote about some of them in his wartime diaries. In an entry dated 25 April, at the height of the fighting, the officer described meeting a group of women while riding his bicycle through Berlin.

The women told him about episodes of sexual violence that horrified the young soldier. “They raped my daughter in front of me,” one distraught mother said. “They can still come and rape my daughter again,” reads the diary passage discovered and made public by Gelfand’s family after his death.

Cases of sexual violence by Red Army soldiers and officers had already been known for some time and had also been reported in other countries, such as Poland. But as the troops approached Berlin, their behavior took on a more vengeful character.

“Nuns, girls, old women, pregnant women and mothers who had just given birth — all were raped without pity,” Beevor writes in Berlin: The Downfall 1945.

In the 1950s, a book entitled A Woman in Berlin, published anonymously by a German woman, caused a stir in Germany. It described the daily rapes suffered by a Berlin journalist during the fall of the city in 1945. In the book, the author recounts her decision to enter into a sexual relationship with a high-ranking Soviet officer in order to avoid random violence — in her words, to “find a single wolf so as to keep away the pack” and try to survive. The author’s identity, journalist Marta Hillers, was revealed only in the 2000s, after her death.

The mass rapes took place in parallel with the advance of Soviet troops toward the center of the capital. By the time Hitler killed himself at the end of April, bloody fighting was already raging within the city.

Years of bombing destroyed Berlin. Photo: akg-images/picture alliance.

Intense shelling trapped people in overcrowded shelters and indiscriminately killed many of those who risked going outside. The wounded could barely reach aid stations. Even the zoo did not escape: of the 4,000 animals that had lived there, only 91 survived. At the same time, units made up of fanatical Nazis continued to hunt down and execute Germans who tried to desert or hide while the battle was already effectively lost.

At the beginning of May, the fragile pockets of defense collapsed. For the remaining Nazis, the only option was to accept the terms of surrender. “The Battle of Berlin was officially over. People who went out that day onto the Platz der Republik saw the red flag flying over the Reichstag,” Cornelius Ryan writes.

There is no consensus on the number of casualties, but according to the most common estimates more than 150,000 people died during those final days of fighting for the German capital, Ryan states.

A Divided City

Almost three months earlier, the Yalta Conference had already decided that Germany and Berlin would be divided into four occupation zones shared among the Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. Less than two decades later a wall was erected that divided the city in two and became the principal physical symbol of the Cold War until it fell in 1989.

Nevertheless, the fact that the Soviet Union was the first to raise its flag in the center of Nazism played a fundamental role in shaping national identity, historian Vítor Soares explains. “The Soviets were very proud that they had invaded the country and brought Nazism to an end,” he says.

Soviet memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park. The sculpture depicts a fighter standing over a shattered swastika. Photo: picture-alliance/Bildagentur-online/Schoening.

After the end of the Second World War, three large Soviet memorials were built in Berlin to honor the USSR’s victory in the city and commemorate the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the battle: one near the Reichstag in Tiergarten, another in Schönholzer Heide, and the largest in Treptower Park.

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