From March 1945 onwards, as the Red Army approached mainland eastern Germany and targeted the Nazi capital berlin, the Wehrmacht and its Waffen-SS still numbered 7 million. However, in the Battle of Berlin, in the face of the fierce attack of 2.5 million soviet fronts, the German army could only gather less than 1 million people to fight, and finally Berlin fell "Reich destroyed" Hitler committed suicide, so where did the German army "go"?
Still
Obviously, military enthusiasts misunderstand the composition structure of the army in wartime, in general, the so-called number of troops refers to the total number of all military personnel of a country, but a considerable part of them cannot carry guns to the battlefield, such as late stages, organs, ground service, academies and so on. Therefore, the army should be divided into two categories: "combat troops" and "non-combat troops", and the so-called 7 million people still in the German army are actually limited in number.
According to data from Zhukov's memoirs, by the end of 1944 Nazi Germany had an army of more than 9.4 million men, of which only about 5.4 million were combat troops. That is to say, hitler's 4 million men were "waste" in military uniforms, who played little role on the battlefield and had little to lose in the war. The same was true of the Soviets, who actually had only 6.7 million combat troops out of more than 10 million troops.
Therefore, it is necessary to look at the problem from a professional military point of view, rather than simply counting heads, non-combat troops are only the support of the combat effectiveness of the field army, but their own combat effectiveness in the battle of the large corps is almost negligible. For example, the "skeleton units" of the SS guarding the concentration camps, you see they mistreat and kill prisoners of war, Jews when they are cowhide, American soldiers come when they either flee or surrender, there is almost no decent resistance, they are not very loyal and fanatical? It was useless, the security forces were in front of the regular field army, and the firing was only crushed.
In the continuous advance of the Soviet Red Army in early 1945, through the Polish Campaign and the East Pomerania campaign, a large number of German front-line troops were crushed, of which "Army Group Center" was equivalent to total annihilation. By the time the Battle of Berlin began, the "total head" of German uniforms had dropped to more than 7 million, 4 million could not go to the battlefield, the German field troops were actually only 3 million people, and there was a serious lack of experienced grass-roots officers and veterans.
The Battle of Berlin was not a simple urban street battle, whether Berlin could be defended mainly depended on how long the outer defense line lasted, and hitler mobilized 1 million people to defend Berlin among the 3 million remnants of the army, which was already a very large proportion. A simple calculation shows that the Soviet army has nearly 7 million field troops, except for the 2.5 million people of the three fronts used in the direction of Berlin, what is the other 4.5 million people?
Of course, it was to annihilate the remnants of the German field forces in other areas, such as Courland, such as the Czech Republic, such as Hungary, etc., do not forget that there are still millions of American and British Allies on the Western Front who are advancing into Germany, and Hitler is close to "opening the Western Front infinitely". In addition, the German army in northern Italy also had Kesselring's "Army Group G" and the Norwegian Army Group in northern Europe, which also accounted for hundreds of thousands of troops.
According to Zhukov's judgment, Hitler had assembled a total of 1.2 million troops around Berlin (1 million on the perimeter defense line and 200,000 city garrisons), which the author felt was inflated, and the Soviets exaggerated the difficulty of their attack. The reality is that even the outer cities can have a total of 1 million people, and in the vast battlefields of Europe, Hitler can concentrate one-third of the field troops to defend Berlin, and he has done his best!
The Germans concentrated 10,400 guns, 1,500 tanks, and 3,300 aircraft in the direction of Berlin, which were already most of Hitler's family. The SS 6th Panzer Army in Hungary was only 40 tanks left to be beaten later, and the center of gravity of the German military was clear at a glance. In the battles of the Vistula and Oder rivers on the east side of Berlin, the Soviets crushed the strength of 60 german divisions, and the so-called "Vistula Army Group", which had been commander-in-chief by Himmler, basically ceased to exist, and the door to Berlin was wide opened.
Thus by the time the battle began in the city, the German army in the entire Berlin area was only about 400,000 people, and it was divided into two isolated groups: the "Berlin Cluster" and the "Frankfurt-Guben Cluster", Hitler's general trend was gone, and the fall of Berlin was only a matter of time.
In particular, not all of the 300,000 Soviet troops lost in the Battle of Berlin lay on the streets of Berlin, because the Germans had only more than 200,000 men left in the city, and included many SS and "People's Stormtroopers", and if the Soviet army had to sacrifice 300,000 to eliminate these people, it would be too watery. In fact, these 300,000 people were the losses of the entire Battle of Berlin, most of which were sacrificed on the battlefields of the Vistula and Oder rivers.