The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II. The Soviet offensive central had two objectives. Stalin did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory occupied by them in the post-war Soviet. But the overriding objective was to capture Berlin. Another consideration was that Berlin itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and the German atomic bomb program. On 20 March, General Gotthard Heinrici was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula. He immediately started to lay defensive plans. Heinrici arranged to fortify the Seelow Heights which overlooked the Oder River. German engineers turned the Oder's flood plain, already into a swamp by releasing the water from a reservoir upstream. The engineers built three belts of defensive emplacements reaching back towards the outskirts of Berlin. These lines consisted of anti-tank ditches, anti-tank gun emplacements, and an extensive network of trenches and bunkers. After a long resistance, East Prussia finally fell to the Red Army. This freed up Marshal Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front to move west to the east bank of the Oder river. Marshal Georgy Zhukov concentrated his 1st Belorussian Front, which had been deployed along the Oder river from Frankfurt in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the Seelow Heights. To the south, Marshal Konev shifted the main weight of the 1st Ukrainian Front out of Upper Silesia and northwest to the Neisse River.
In the early hours on 16 April 1945, the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation began with a massive bombardment by thousands of artillery pieces and Katyusha rockets in a barrage which was sustained for as long as two hours on some sectors of the front.] Shortly afterwards and well before dawn, the 1st Belorussian Front attacked across the Oder, and the 1st Ukrainian Front attacked across theNeisse. The 1st Belorussian Front was strengthened because it had the more difficult assignment and was facing the majority of the German forces in prepared defences. The initial attack by the 1st Belorussian Front was a disaster. Heinrici anticipated the move and withdrew his defenders from the first line of trenches just before the Red Army artillery obliterated them. Red Army casualties were very heavy. Frustrated by the slow advance, Zhukov threw in his reserves. On 18 April, both Soviet Fronts made steady progress, but Red Army losses were substantial. By nightfall, the 1st Belorussian Front had reached the third and final German final line of defence. On the fourth day of the battle, 19 April, the 1st Belorussian Front broke through the final line of the Seelow Heights. Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front started his offensive to the north of Berlin. On 20 April, between Stettin and Schwedt, Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front attacked the northern flank of Army Group Vistula, held by the III Panzer Army. By 22 April, the 2nd Belorussian Front had established a bridgehead on the east bank of the Oder over 15 km deep, and was heavily engaged with the III Panzer Army. The attack by the 1st Ukrainian Front was keeping to plan because Army Group Centre was not providing as much opposition as that faced by Zhukov's troops. Konev's successful attacks on Schörner's poor defences to the south of the Seelow Heights positions were unhinging Heinrici's defence.
On 20 April, Soviet artillery of the 1st Belorussian Front began to shell Berlin and did not stop until the city surrendered. While the 1st Belorussian Front advanced towards the east and north-east of the City, the 1st Ukrainian Front had pushed through the last formations of the northern wing of Army Group Centre. To the north the 2nd Belorussian Front attacked the northern flank of Army Group Vistula. The Soviet plan was to encircle Berlin first and then to envelop the IX Army. On 22 April, at his afternoon situation conference, Hitler fell into a tearful rage when he realised that his plans of the day before were not going to be realised. He declared that the war was lost; he blamed the generals and announced that he would stay on in Berlin until the end and then kill himself. The 2nd Belorussian Front had established a bridgehead over 15km deep on the west bank of the Oder, and was heavily engaged with the III Panzer Army. A Soviet tank spearhead was on the Havel river to the east of Berlin, and another had at one point penetrated the inner defensive ring of Berlin. On 23 April, the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front and 1st Ukrainian Front continued to tighten the encirclement, and severed the last link between the German IX Army and the city. Elements of the 1st Ukrainian Front continued to move westward and started to engage the German XII Army moving towards Berlin. By 24 April elements of 1st Belorussian Front and 1st Ukrainian Front had completed the encirclement of the city. 25 April, the Soviet investment of Berlin was consolidated, with leading Soviet units probing and penetrating the S-Bahn defensive ring. By the end of the day there was no prospect that the German defence of the city could do anything but temporarily delay the capture of the city by the Soviets, as the decisive stages of the battle had already been fought and lost by the Germans outside the city.
The forces available to General Weidling for the city's defence included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely depleted German Army and Armed SS divisions. These divisions were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Hitler Youth, and the Volkssturm. On 23 April, Berzarin's 5th Shock Army and Katukov's 1st Guards Tank Army assaulted Berlin from the south east reaching the Berlin S-Bahn ring railway by the evening of 24 April. On 26 April, Chuikov's 8th Guards Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army fought their way through the southern suburbs and attacked Tempelhof Airport, just inside the S-Bahn defensive ring, where they met stiff resistance from the Müncheberg Division. But by 27 April, the two understrength divisions that were defending the south east, now facing five Soviet armies were forced back towards the centre, taking up new defensive positions around Hermannplatz The Soviet advance to the city centre was along these main axes, from the south east, along the Frankfurter Allee from the south along Sonnen Allee ending north of the Belle Alliance Platz, from the south ending near the Potsdamer Platz and from the north ending near the Reichstag. The Reichstag, the Moltke bridge, Alexanderplatz, and the Havel bridges at Spandau saw the heaviest fighting, with house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. The foreign contingents of the SS fought particularly hard, because they were ideologically motivated and they believed that they would not live if captured.
In the early hours of 29 April the Soviet 3rd Shock Army crossed the Moltke bridge and started to fan out into the surrounding streets and buildings. The initial assaults on buildings, including the Ministry of the Interior, were hampered by the lack of supporting artillery. It was not until the damaged bridges were repaired that artillery could be moved up in support. At 04:00 hours, in the Führerbunker, Hitler signed his last will and testament and, shortly afterwards, married Eva Braun. At dawn the Soviets pressed on with their assault in the south east. After very heavy fighting they managed to capture Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, but a Waffen-SS counter-attack forced the Soviets to withdraw from the building. To the south west the 8th Guards Army attacked north across the Landwehr canal into the Tiergarten. By the next day, 30 April, the Soviets had solved their bridging problems and with artillery support at 06:00 they launched an attack on the Reichstag, but because of German entrenchments and support from guns 2 km away on the roof of the Zoo flak tower, in Berlin Zoo, it was not until that evening that the Soviets were able to enter the building. The Reichstag had not been in use since 1933 when it burned and its interior resembled a rubble heap. The German troops inside made excellent use of this and lay heavily entrenched. Fierce room-to-room fighting ensued. At that point there was still a large contingent of German soldiers in the basement who launched counter-attacks against the Red Army. Finally, on 2 May the Red Army controlled the building entirely. The famous photo of the two soldiers planting the flag on the roof of the building is a re-enactment photo taken the day after the building was taken. However, to the Soviets the event as represented by the photo became symbolic of their victory demonstrating that the Battle of Berlin, as well as the Eastern Front hostilities as whole, ended with the total Soviet victory.
During the early hours of 30 April, Hitler and Braun committed suicide and their bodies were cremated not far from the bunker. As the perimeter shrank and the surviving defenders fell back, they became concentrated into a small area in the city centre. By now there were about 10,000 German soldiers in the city centre, which was being assaulted from all sides. The remaining German Tiger tanks of theHermann von Salza battalion took up positions in the east of the Tiergarten to defend the centre against Kuznetsov's 3rd Shock Army and the 8th Guards Army advancing through the south of the Tiergarten. These Soviet forces had effectively cut the Germans in half and made any escape attempt to the west for German troops in the centre much more difficult. On the night of 1–2 May, most of the remnants of the Berlin garrison attempted to break out of the city centre in three different directions. However, only a handful of those who survived the initial breakout made it to the lines of the Western Allies—most were either killed or captured by the Red Army's outer encirclement forces west of the city. Early in the morning of 2 May, the Soviets captured the Reich Chancellery. General Weidling finally surrendered with his staff at 06:00 hours. On May 2 Weidling agreed to order the city's defenders to surrender to the Soviets. The 350-strong garrison of the Zoo flak tower finally left the building. While there was sporadic fighting in a few isolated buildings where some SS troops still refused to surrender, the Soviets reduced such buildings to rubble.