Battle for Berlin - The American Heritage Museum (2024)

Battle for Berlin

IS-2 Iosef Stalin – RUS | TANK

SU-100 – RUS | TANK DESTROYER

Messerschmitt ME-109G-10 – GER | AIRCRAFT – FIGHTER

The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was one of the last major offensives of the European theater of World War II. On April 16^th, 1945 massive Soviet forces attacked from the north, east and south. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army gradually took the entire city. The forces available for the city’s defense included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely depleted German Army and Waffen-SS divisions. These divisions were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Hitler Youth, WWI veterans and women’s auxiliary units. Knowing his inevitable fate, Hitler committed suicide on April 30^th in an underground Berlin bunker. The city’s garrison surrendered on May 2nd, but fighting continued to the north-west, west, and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe with the German formal surrender to the Western Allies on May 8th and to the Soviet Union, in a separate ceremony, on May 9th.