On the night of 1 May the Victory Flag flew over the dome of the defeated Reichstag
By Anatoly Dokuchaev
In the annals of the Great Patriotic War 2 May 1945 is no less a symbolic date than Victory Day. On this day Berlin was taken. As they said at the time: «the lair of the Fascist beast.»
In the spring of 1945 the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, the USA, the UK and France fought on the territory of Nazi Germany. The Red Army was sixty kilometres away from Berlin, and the advanced units of the Anglo-American troops reached the Elbe 100–120 kilometres away from the German capital. The main forces of the German Fascist troops were still concentrated against the Red Army.
The last frontier
The German Fascist command drew up the maximum possible forces and resources near Berlin. Troops were being redeployed from the interior of Germany, from the Western Front, and police and security units and subunits were being concentrated.
By 16 April there were 214 divisions on the Soviet-German front, of which thirty-four were armoured and fifteen motorised, as well as fourteen brigades. Against the Anglo-American forces the German command held only sixty divisions, of which five were tank divisions, which had only about 200 tanks. The Berlin line was defended by the 3rd Tank Army and the 9th Army of Army Group Vistula, the 4th Tank Army and the 17th Army of Army Group Centre. In total, forty-eight infantry, nine motorised, six tank divisions and many other units and formations were involved. The total number of troops reached 1 million. In addition, there were eight divisions in the reserve of the general headquarters of the ground forces. In Berlin about 200 Volkssturm battalions were formed, and the total number of the garrison exceeded 200,000.
The order issued by the German leadership on 9 March demanded: «Defend the capital to the last man and to the last bullet… The enemy must not be given a moment’s peace: he must be weakened and robbed of vitality in a dense network of footholds and centres of resistance. Every lost house or every lost foothold must be retaken immediately by a counterattack… Berlin can decide the outcome of the war.»
The Soviet Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, assessing the difficulties of the final operation, believed that only a decisive blow and the defeat of the enemy in a short time could lead to a quick victory. The General Headquarters’ plan was to use powerful blows from the three fronts’ troops to break through the enemy’s defences along the Oder and Neisse Rivers, and then, developing an offensive inlands, surround his forces, break them apart and, destroying each one individually, capture Berlin. After this the troops were supposed to reach the Elbe, where they would join the Anglo-American troops.
In preparing for the assault on Berlin, the Soviet Headquarters of the Supreme High Command took into account that the leaders of the UK and the USA also sought to capture Berlin and send their troops there, forestalling the Red Army.
The troops of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian (the commanders: Marshals of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov and K.K. Rokossovsky) and 1st Ukrainian (the commander: Marshal of the Soviet Union I.S. Konev) fronts, part of the forces of the Baltic Fleet (the commander: Admiral V.F. Tributs), 18th Air Army of Long–Range Aviation (the commander: Chief Marshal of Aviation A.V. Golovanov), three corps of the country’s Air Defence Forces and the Dnieper Military Flotilla (the commander: Rear Admiral V.V. Grigoriev). The group of Soviet troops consisted of twenty combined armies, including the 1st and 2nd armies of the Polish Armed Forces, four tank and four air armies, ten separate tank and mechanised and four cavalry corps. They consisted of 2.5 million people, about 42,000 guns and mortars, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 7,500 combat aircraft. This ensured a 2.5–fold superiority over the enemy in troops, fourfold in artillery, 4.1–fold in tanks and self-propelled guns, and 2.3-fold in combat aircraft. In the directions of the main attacks of the fronts this superiority was even more significant.
The Soviet soldiers came to Berlin with valuable combat experience and the ability to crush the enemy according to all the rules of military science. The commanders of the fronts, armies, and formations led the troops skilfully and knew them well. Many military leaders with their armies had gone from Stalingrad, Leningrad and Kursk to the Oder and the Neisse. Soldiers, sergeants, officers and generals were driven by a great patriotic upsurge. Who among the soldiers and officers, even in the most difficult battles near Moscow and Stalingrad, did not dream of reaching Berlin where the most monstrous war in the history of mankind had begun?
On the “Motherland” signal
The troops of the 1st Belorussian Front were met by fierce enemy resistance. At 1.50 p.m. on 20 April the long-range artillery of the 79th Rifle Corps, commanded by Major General S.N. Perevertkin, and of the 3rd Shock Army under the command of Colonel General V.I. Kuznetsov, opened fire on Berlin. It marked the beginning of the assault on the German capital. On 21 April units of the 3rd Shock Army, the 2nd Guards Tank Army and the 47th Army broke through to the outskirts of Berlin and engaged in battle in the city. Towards the end of the same day the 8th Guards Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army penetrated into the city defensive perimeter in the Petershagen and Erkner areas. And on 24 April they met with the 3rd Guards Tank Army and the 28th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front southeast of Berlin in the Bonsdorf area and This completed the encirclement of the enemy’s Frankfurt-Guben group, and Berlin was encircled.
The Nazi command sought to unblock the troops encircled in Berlin. Hitler’s last hope to save Berlin was General W. Wenck’s 12th Army, which was fighting against Anglo-American troops. Wenck was ordered to deploy the troops eastwards, link up with General T. Busse’s 9th Army, part of the forces of the 4th Tank Army, and unblock Berlin’s encirclement. However, under heavy blows from the Soviet troops the German armies could not accomplish this task. The liquidation of the Berlin group right in the city was carried out from 26 April till 2 May by breaking up the defences and destroying the enemy in parts.
The Battle of Berlin was extremely fierce. Hitler kept demanding that the German capital be defended to the last man. And the deeper the Soviet troops penetrated into the city, the more fiercely the enemy resisted. The basis of the combat formations of the rifle and tank units during the fighting in the city were assault detachments and groups, which included rifle, engineering, artillery and tank subunits.
As a rule, the basis of the assault detachment was a rifle battalion, attached by a tank company, 1–2 platoons of 76 mm guns, a battery of 120 mm mortars, 1–2 large-calibre guns (up to 203 mm inclusively) or self-propelled guns, up to a sapper company, and a flamethrower platoon. It was divided into several assault groups, a flamethrower group and a reserve. The assault group was a rifle company or platoon, usually attached by 2–3 tanks or self-propelled guns, 2 anti-tank guns, two divisional artillery guns (76 mm and 122 mm), up to a platoon of sappers, a squad of flamethrowers, and chemists (to set up a smoke screen). The assault group was divided into the capture and firing subgroups.
On 29 April units of the 79th Rifle Corps started storming the Reichstag, a massive building of the lower house of the German parliament in the north-eastern part of Berlin’s central Tiergarten Park. The Germans had regarded it as the Third Reich’s symbol and turned it into a powerful resistance hub. The approaches to it were blocked by deep ditches, various kinds of engineering defensive structures and numerous firing points. The defenders of the Reichstag (about 1000 in all) were armed with a large number of machine guns, panzerfausts and artillery pieces. In addition, there were large Wehrmacht forces near the Reichstag.
On 30 April the enemy defences were divided into four isolated parts. Communication between them was only through underground utilities. To prevent Soviet troops from using the underground railway Hitler reportedly ordered the floodgates on the Spree to be opened, though he must have known that the section of the underground between Leipziger Strasse and Unter den Linden, where thousands of Berliners were hiding in the stations, would be flooded.
But for the Soviet troops the Reichstag building was very symbolic too. On 6 November 1944 in a report at a solemn meeting in Moscow dedicated to the 27th anniversary of the October Revolution the Supreme Commander J.V. Stalin set the task of hoisting the Flag of Victory over Berlin. His call was widely used in the media. However, it was unclear what the Victory Flag should be like, or where exactly it ought to be hoisted.
On the eve of the Battle of Berlin at a meeting of the heads of the political departments of the armies of the 1st Belorussian Front near the town of Landsberg the question was raised: which object in Berlin should be considered the main one? A member of the Military Council of the front, Lieutenant General K.F. Telegin, specifically asked Moscow for an explanation as to where to hoist the Victory Flag. The answer came: over the Reichstag. The decision was made by Stalin himself.
The Flag of Victory
By the evening of 30 April units of the 150th and 171st Rifle Divisions (commanded by Major General V.M. Shatilov and Colonel A.I. Negoda), as a result of repeated attacks, had overcome stubborn resistance and broken into the Reichstag building. The 756th (the commander: Colonel Z.N. Zinchenko), 674th (the commander: Lieutenant Colonel A.D. Plekhodanov) and 380th (the commander: Major V.D. Shatalin) Rifle Regiments participated directly in the storming of the Reichstag. They were supported by the 23rd Tank Brigade (the commander: Colonel S.V. Kuznetsov). On the night of 1 May a fierce fighting broke out inside the Reichstag. Battles were fought for each floor, and hand-to-hand fights ensued on the stairs and in the corridors. The storming fighters cleared the building of Fascists metre by metre, room after room. As they did it, the Soviet soldiers hoisted Red Flags in various places.
During the storming of the Reichstag soldiers and officers of the Rifle Battalions under the command of Captains S.A. Neustroev, V.I. Davydov and Senior Lieutenant K.Ya. Samsonov, the Tank Battalions by Major I.L. Yartsev and Captain S.V. Krasovsky, and a separate group under the command of M.M. Bondar, Captain V.N. Makov and Lieutenant R. Koshkarbaev, especially distinguished themselves. On the night of 1 May the Victory Flag flew over the dome of the defeated Reichstag.
In the past two or three decades, historians have been arguing fruitlessly over the priority of hoisting the Victory Flag over the Reichstag building in Berlin. But there has never been a secret here if you follow the path of the big truth, which has absorbed all the details of the very important historical fact. On 2 May the Red Flag No. 5 of the Military Council of the 3rd Shock Army, hoisted by Sergeant M.A. Yegorov and Junior Sergeant M.V. Kantaria, scouts of the 756th Infantry Regiment of the 150th Idritsa Infantry Division of the Order of Kutuzov, 2nd degree, on the night of 1 May was moved to the dome of the Reichstag. It became a symbol of the Victory of the Soviet Army over the Nazi Army. Incidentally, it was the fourth flag installed on the roof of the building. The first three flags had been destroyed by the night-time long-range German shelling of the Reichstag roof.
The fighting for the Reichstag continued till 1 May, with separate groups of Fascists holing up in basements and continuing to resist till the morning of 2 May. In the battles for the Reichstag the enemy lost over 2,000 soldiers and officers, and over 2,600 were captured. The storming of the Reichstag was the final chord of the Battle of Berlin. Most of Hitler’s leaders, including Göring, Himmler, Keitel and Jodl, had fled Berlin in advance. Fearing punishment for his crimes, Hitler committed suicide on 30 April, and Goebbels did the same on 1 May. When Zhukov informed J.V. Stalin about Hitler’s suicide and the new German Government’s proposal to conclude an armistice, he replied: «You’ve had it, bastard. Pity we didn’t take him alive.»
On 2 May the mass surrender of the Nazi troops of the Berlin garrison began. Fighting against the separate groups trying to break through to the west ended on 5 May. From 3 to 8 May the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front went out to the Elbe, finishing off separate enemy groups. The 1st Ukrainian Front set to complete the liberation of Czechoslovakia. The 2nd Belorussian Front, pursuing the remnants of the enemy’s defeated 3rd Tank Army, reached the Baltic Sea and the Elbe line on 3-4 May, where it established contact with the British 2nd Army.
The resistance of the German Fascist troops was finally broken. On 8 May representatives of the German High Command signed the Act of Surrender of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany in Karlshorst. During the Battle of Berlin, the Soviet Army defeated seventy infantry twenty-three tank and motorised divisions, destroyed most of the Wehrmacht’s aviation, captured about 480,000 people, captured up to 11,000 guns and mortars, over 1,500 tanks and assault guns, 4,500 aircraft and other equipment. The Battle of Berlin cost a lot to the Soviet Army as well: the irretrievable losses amounted to 78,291 people, and sanitary losses – 274,184.
After the Victory Day Parade, which took place on 24 June 1945 on Red Square in Moscow, on 7 September of the same year the Allied Victory Day Parade was held at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
