Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
unbuilt victory memorials, subsisting on salads, herbal tisanes and regular injections
of dubious substances by one Dr Morell. To hapless generals and faithful acolytes, he
ranted about traitors and the unworthiness of the German
Volk
, and after learning that
General Steiner's army had failed to stop Zhukov's advance declared that the war was
lost and that he would stay in the bunker to the end.
The final days
By April 25, Berlin was completely
encircled by Soviet troops
, which met up with
US forces advancing from the west. Over the next two days, the suburbs of Dahlem,
Spandau, Neukölln and Gatow fell to the Russians, and the city's telephone system
failed. On April 27, the hird Panzer Army was completely smashed; survivors fled
west, leaving Berlin's northern flank virtually undefended. he obvious hopelessness of
the situation didn't sway the top Nazis' fanatical
refusal to surrender
. As the Red Army
closed in, Goebbels called hysterically for “rücksichtslose Bekämpfung” - fight without
quarter - and SS execution squads worked around the clock, killing soldiers,
Volkssturm guards or Hitler Youth who tried to stop fighting.
In the city the horrors mounted. he
civilian population
lived underground in
cellars and air-raid shelters, scavenging for food wherever and whenever there was a
momentary lull in the fighting. Engineers blasted canal locks, flooding the U-Bahn
to prevent the Russians from advancing along it and drowning scores of sheltering
civilians in the process. On April 27, the Ninth Army was destroyed attempting to
break out of the Russian encirclement to the south, and unoccupied Berlin had been
reduced to a strip 15km long from east to west, and 5km wide from north to south,
constantly under bombardment. Next the Russians captured the Tiergarten, reducing
the
last pocket of resistance
to the
Regierungsviertel
, where fighting focused on the
Reichstag and Hitler's Chancellery, and on Potsdamer Platz, only a few hundred metres
from the
Führerbunker
, by now under constant shellfire.
Hitler still hoped one of his phantom armies would relieve Berlin, but on April 28 his
optimism evaporated when he heard that Himmler had been suing for unconditional
surrender with the western Allies. In the early hours of the following day, he married
Eva Braun, held a small champagne reception, and dictated his will. As the day wore
on, savage fighting continued around the Nazi-held enclave. At a final conference the
commandant of Berlin, General Weidling, announced that the Russians were in the
nearby
Adlon Hotel
, and that there was no hope of relief.
A breakout attempt was proposed, but Hitler declared that he was staying put. On
the afternoon of April 30, after testing the cyanide on his pet German shepherd dog,
Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide
: he with a revolver, she by poison. he bodies
were taken to the Chancellery courtyard and doused with two hundred litres of petrol;
Hitler's followers gave the Nazi salute as the corpses burned to ashes. Meanwhile, Soviet
troops battled for the Reichstag, and at 11pm two Russian sergeants raised the red flag
on its rooftop.
After Hitler's death, chief of staff Krebs was sent out to parley with the Russians.
After hasty consultation with Stalin, General Chuikov replied that only unconditional
surrender was acceptable. When Krebs returned to the bunker, Goebbels rejected this
and ordered the fighting to continue. hat night he and his wife killed themselves,
having first poisoned their six children. Almost all the rest of the eight hundred or so
1943-45
1945
Over ninety percent of Berlin is destroyed in
air raids.
The Allies take Berlin, and divide it into Russian,
American, French and British zones.
