BATTLE OF BERLIN  | The Battle of Berlin was one of the final battles of the European Theatre of World War II. A massive Soviet army attacked Berlin from the east. The battle lasted from late April 1945 until early May. Before it was over, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered five days after the battle ended. It was a scary site seeing soldiers sitting on the tanks with their guns pointing at the houses as they passed by them. The screaming, gun-wielding women were the worst. Half of the troops had only rags around their feet and others wore SS boots. People would watch different boots pass by their cellar windows. Facing reality was ten times worse than just hearing about it. Throughout the night, people huddled together in fear, not knowing what would happen the next morning. People would sneak upstairs to see if their houses were still in good shape and peek out the door and hear and see women screaming loudly. The troops would pound on the doors of the people to try to break in. Then the Soviets had broken into banks and taken money coming out laughing and happy. |
Stalin unleashed the brutal power of 20 armies, 6,300 tanks and 8,500 aircraft with the plan of crushing German resistance and capturing Berlin. By April 24 the Soviet army surrounded the city slowly tightening its hold on the Nazi defenders that were left. Fighting street-to-street and house-to-house, Russian troops blasted towards Hitler's chancellery in the center of the city.
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