From the safety of his bunker in the center of Berlin, Adolf Hitler could not see how the city was being brutally and relentlessly crushed by the Red Army. In streets where the elite formations of the Third Reich had once marched proudly, German troops now fought desperately—and unsuccessfully—to stop the rapid Russian advance.

Josep Gavaldà
23 April 2020 · 17:47
Reading time: 7 minutes
Second World War · Nazism

According to the plans of the Nazi high command, Berlin was supposed to become the grave of the Red Army. It did not. While Hitler hid in his bunker and lost all connection with reality, the Third Reich, proclaimed to last a thousand years, no longer possessed the men or resources needed to resist the collapse closing in around it. The role played by Soviet troops in the defeat of Nazi Germany remains one of the most memorable and tragically heroic moments of the twentieth century for Russia. The Berlin operation lasted a little more than two weeks and unfolded when the German capital had already been reduced to ruins by Allied bombing.

For those who had been at the front—wounded, maimed, and exhausted—the explosions heard on the outskirts of Berlin on 19 April 1945 sounded different. These were not aircraft bombs, to which the population had already become accustomed, but shells from field artillery. That could mean only one thing: the Red Army had reached the approaches to the city and its heavy guns could already strike the capital. Astonished and terrified Berliners asked themselves how events had reached this point.

Despite the overwhelming superiority of the attacking forces and the demoralization of the German defenders, Hitler’s orders were unambiguous: resist to the end. The Führer, sheltering in the bunker together with leading Nazis such as Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, and Joseph Goebbels, refused even to contemplate surrender. In his delusion he was prepared to sacrifice the entire population of Berlin. Surrender or the raising of a white flag was punishable by death. Deserters and those who tried to hide in order to avoid combat were publicly hanged.

Surrendering or raising a white flag was punishable by death; anyone who deserted or hid from battle risked ending up on the gallows.

After Red Army tank divisions crossed the Oder, the Russians offered a short pause. The unexpected respite was not used to organize a thorough defense of the city. Although the defenders clearly lacked forces—only some SS anti-aircraft units and small Volkssturm formations remained—serious fortification work was not undertaken. Refugee trains were even prohibited from stopping in Berlin so as not to undermine civilian morale or trigger a predictable wave of panic.

Only a handful of SS anti-aircraft formations and small Volkssturm militia units were available for the defense of the city.

Aging and increasingly insecure, Hitler continued to impose his will on those around him. He issued ever harsher directives, including so-called destruction measures for the territory of the Reich, better known as the “Nero Decree,” which called for a scorched-earth policy in the face of the advancing enemy.

Immersed in endless discussions, Hitler alternated between bouts of euphoria and violent rages directed at everyone around him, particularly his own generals, whom he accused of incompetence and treason. Since moving into the Reich Chancellery bunker he had lost his sense of time; meetings with his closest aides were often scheduled at bizarre hours. At one such meeting, particularly angered by the failure to take decisive steps to defend Berlin, he dismissed Chief of the General Staff General Heinz Guderian and replaced him with General Hans Krebs.

Disappointed by the lack of adequate defensive preparations, Hitler removed Guderian and appointed Hans Krebs as his successor.

On 20 April 1945, Adolf Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday, American B-17 bombers and British Lancasters “congratulated” him with another heavy attack on central Berlin. Numerous buildings were destroyed, about 2,000 residents were forced to evacuate, and the city again lost its electricity supply.

At a meeting on 22 April, an officer mentioned the supposed successes of the Twelfth Army under General Walther Wenck, then fighting the Americans near Magdeburg. Hitler, who had been trembling and despairing, suddenly brightened. In one of his characteristic swings of mood, he decided that Wenck would turn his army around and come to Berlin’s rescue. While Soviet troops lost men in bitter fighting for the capital, Hitler imagined, a turning point would occur and the course of the war would change.

Wenck could not carry out the plan. His army was exhausted, lacked sufficient resources, and never succeeded in opening a corridor between Berlin and the rest of the Reich. The city was completely encircled. Berlin was dying.

Under General Helmuth Weidling, appointed commander of the city’s defense, desperate attempts were made to create some kind of defensive line. He had only exhausted, demoralized formations at his disposal, including foreign volunteers such as men associated with the Spanish officer Miguel Ezquerra. Along with Volkssturm units, Hitler Youth members, and police, they constructed barricades from tramcars. These looked more like symbols of doom than useful fortifications. Graffiti calling for resistance and victory appeared on walls.

Weidling continued organizing the remnants of the defense while Soviet shells were already falling in the heart of the capital. Volkssturm fighters, Hitler Youth members, and police built ineffective tram barricades beneath slogans promising resistance and eventual victory.

Despite everything, the city continued to fight with the last of its strength and with the determination of people who believed there was no alternative. Yet neither the desperate courage of young National Socialists prepared for suicidal heroism nor the brutality of Werwolf saboteurs could alter the course of events. District after district passed under Soviet control while civilians hid in smoke-filled, fear-filled underground tunnels.

In a desperate effort to halt the advance, a decision was made to blow up dams separating the Landwehr Canal from outer parts of the city so as to obstruct the Red Army. But the outcome had already been decided. Berlin was doomed.

On the afternoon of 30 April 1945, a revolver shot broke the silence of the Führerbunker. After taking cyanide, Adolf Hitler shot himself in his bedroom. His wife Eva Braun, whom he had married the previous day, lay dead beside him on a sofa.

Officers carried both bodies into the garden of the Reich Chancellery, a dangerous task under continuing Soviet artillery fire. The corpses were placed in a shell crater, doused with gasoline, and burned.

As flames consumed Hitler’s remains, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Wilhelm Burgdorf, and Hans Krebs gave a final National Socialist salute from a distance. Thus Adolf Hitler, founder and dictator of the Third Reich, disappeared forever.

Soviet Army soldiers look at a fallen statue of the imperial eagle and swastika after their victory in Berlin.

On 2 May, during the final hours of the Battle of Berlin, many adherents of the Nazi regime, including numerous SS men, chose suicide rather than falling into the hands of the advancing Red Army. Victory was followed by a wave of looting.

Soviet soldiers who had come from the vast spaces of Siberia, the steppes, and the Caucasus mountains suddenly found themselves in an elegant but ruined Berlin, a city unlike anything many of them had ever imagined. They carried away whatever they could: gramophones, jewelry, cigarette lighters, silk underwear, and clothing. Wristwatches became an especially coveted prize and fascinated many soldiers. They were also intrigued by flush toilets, bicycles, and electric light bulbs. Things that could not be taken away were sometimes simply destroyed.

When the looting subsided, another and darker chapter began: mass rape. The subject was scarcely discussed during the Soviet era or the Cold War. Russian media traditionally dismissed such accounts as “Western inventions,” although an important body of evidence comes from the diary of a Soviet officer, Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand, a young Jewish man from central Ukraine. Over time his records, filled with personal experiences, observations, and confessions, became an important testimony to both the heroism and the tragedies that accompanied victory.

The exact number of women raped after the fall of Berlin remains unknown. Some historians have suggested a figure of one hundred thousand. Whatever the exact number, many victims later died by suicide or from the brutality of the assaults they had endured.

The victims were not only young women. Elderly women were assaulted as well; age offered little protection. Soviet soldiers could act with equal brutality toward all. Mothers tried to hide their daughters, while men who dared to intervene—or who simply happened to be nearby—often paid with their lives. Women who resisted risked being shot or struck with a rifle butt.

How many women were raped after Berlin fell is still not known precisely; some historians estimate around 100,000.

On the outskirts of Berlin, beside the River Spree, lies the famous Treptower Park, one of the largest memorial complexes in the former East Berlin. A twelve-meter statue depicts a Soviet soldier holding a sword in one hand and a rescued German girl in the other. His foot crushes a broken swastika, symbolizing the final victory over Nazism.

The memorial was built between 1946 and 1949 in memory of more than seventy thousand Red Army soldiers who died in the battles for Berlin. An inscription on the pedestal reads: “The Soviet people saved European civilization from fascism.”

Yet in present-day Berlin the memorial evokes conflicting feelings for many people. Because of the fear, violence, and suffering that descended on the city in the days after capitulation, some Berliners have bitterly referred to it as the “tomb of the unknown rapist.”

FOR FURTHER READING — More than 20,000 people killed
“The Bombing of Dresden in the Second World War.” Remembered as one of the darkest episodes at the end of the Second World War, the bombing of Dresden—the city known as the “Florence of the Elbe”—was carried out on 13 and 14 February 1945 by Allied British and American aircraft and caused an estimated 20,000 to 45,000 deaths. Several thousand bombers flew over Dresden, destroying to its foundations a city that until then had not been considered especially important strategically. “Read article.”

FOR FURTHER READING — Stolen childhoods
“The Nazi ‘Werewolves.’” With the war lost and the Russians at the gates of Berlin, Hitler played his last card by recruiting children to form part of his special Werwolf units. “Read article.”

FOR FURTHER READING — The Nazi leader’s lover
“Eva Braun, the Woman in Hitler’s Shadow.” The young German woman, fascinated by Adolf Hitler’s image and personality, became his lover and, shortly before the end of the war, his wife. Yet the relationship was far from idyllic. Eva attempted suicide several times, depressed by the Führer’s lack of attention, and finally, after marrying him in the Berlin bunker, died by suicide with him before the Russians arrived. “Read article.”

FOR FURTHER READING — Historian and occultist
“Otto Rahn, the Nazis’ Seeker of the Holy Grail.” One of the figures who has most fascinated students of Catharism because of his obsessive search for the Holy Grail was Otto Rahn. After trying to combine Catharism and Nazism in order to please the leaders of the Third Reich, Rahn was effectively “invited” to take his own life after falling into disgrace. “Read article.”