With 300,000 casualties, if you look at it individually, it's a huge number, but don't forget that if you put that number on the Soviet battlefield of the Soviet-German War, it's not much.
If we do not say anything else, the two decisive battles that took place on Soviet soil, one in which the Soviet Union suffered one million casualties, and the other in which the Defense of Stalingrad resulted in two million casualties in the Soviet Union.
In this horizontal comparison, you will know that the Battle of Berlin was a not small but not small battle for the war between the Soviet Union and Germany.
After all, the fighting time is not very long, a Battle of Berlin is resolved in less than a month, and the defense of Stalingrad is fought for more than seven months as soon as it starts.
The cruelty of this is incomparable, but it is undeniable that the two sides of the Battle of Berlin fought fiercely.
Especially in the capitol offensive and defensive battle, the two sides fight to the end, with knives fighting each other, you can imagine in a conference hall, dozens of people bullets with knives, with teeth, there are fists to beat each other scene, such a battle will even happen in the stairwell, so that in the process of the two sides fighting, a piece fell from the stairs.
Even the case of bombarding a person with an iron fist at close range has happened.
Why is that?
We can't help but look back at what happened at that time, and I will answer the question of the subject by the way.
First, let's look at the Soviet preparations before the offensive.
Why? The Americans were shrewd, and before the war began, the casualties of the attack on Berlin would be very large for them, and it would not be cost-effective to fight such a battle.
After all, the American people could not afford to suffer too many casualties in one battle, because the casualties of the Americans in the entire European battlefield were only a little more than half and eighty thousand, and the Battle of Berlin calculated that the Americans needed to bear 300,000 casualties, which was more than half of the casualties on the entire European battlefield.
If the Americans had fought like this, his current administration would be in trouble, so he took the British and the French into the mountains to look for something for the Germans to make a comeback, but of course nothing was found.
So the picks for attacking Berlin belonged to the Soviets.
Then it is different for the Soviets to leave this matter, who needs a satisfactory end in the Soviet-German war.
After all, the Soviet Union has lost too much in this war, and the culprit is the Germans who started the war, so in the end the Germans must be trampled to death, and the perpetrators must be the Soviets.
And the significance of the capture of Berlin is very significant, which will be the greatest honor in the history of World War II.
Of course, when attacking Berlin, the Soviet Union still had to be fully prepared, after all, he did not fight the city war twice, so there must be sufficient combat troops, a full of 2.5 million troops.
Of course, in the face of so many troops, the variety of materials needed is an astronomical number.
It is said that there are one million tons of various ammunition and oil on the Berlin front. All the Soviet supply bases were piled high with all kinds of supplies.
So that on the first day of the war, the Soviet Union fired more than 1.23 million rounds of shells at the German positions, and if you can't feel anything about this number, let's switch to two other numbers, and you will be shocked and drop your jaw.
If all these shells were loaded on the skins of the train, he would fill them with two thousand four hundred and fifty train skins, and if they were sold as scrap, they would weigh ninety-eight thousand tons.
This is only a day's volume, and to exaggerate, the German position is estimated to be covered with Soviet-made steel.
Therefore, modern warfare, that is, eating materials and not spitting out bones, how much money to spend on it, is not enough to fill this bottomless pit.
Then in the face of these shells, you can still hear the gunshots in the German positions for a short time before the start of the war, and when the battle starts, these sounds are masked by soviet artillery.
After listening to this, it is estimated that the friends will feel very bullish, but they can't help but have a question in their hearts: "Then why did the Soviet Union suffer 300,000 casualties and sacrifice nearly 80,000 people?" ”
Soviet artillery is powerful, but Germany he is not mud kneading, is it? After all, the initiators of World War II, at the beginning of the Soviet Union to fight back and forth again, the bottom of the pressure box, scratching and scraping still have.
This adds that Berlin's position in Germany is not low at all, the political center, the military center, the biggest fascist leader Hitler is still here?
So next, let's see what the Germans are prepared for?
At that time, the German army laid out three lines of defense between Berlin and the Oder River, and the lines of defense and defense were covered with mines, what barbed wire, dragon's tooth defensive fences, and could be fully clothed.
There were more than 1,500 tanks, about 10,000 artillery pieces, and more than 2,000 aircraft.
This caused the Soviets to lose more than 100,000 people in the battle on the outskirts of Berlin.
Usually the most brutal of street battles, in the city of Berlin, Germans set up barricades on all avenues to prevent tank obstacles.
If you are at that point in time, look around, as long as it is a house you can see, all the windows have become shooting holes, but also reinforced shooting holes, and the houses are fortresses.
Of course, this was not enough, and the Germans also divided the entire Berlin city into eight garrisons and a central special garrison.
And the urban defense line also has three lines, the Soviets want to come in, the same need to break through one by one.
Of course, in order to prevent the Soviet army from entering the various defense zones from the subway, the Germans filled the subway with water.
In order to overcome these, the Soviets used the B4 howitzer, which had a caliber of 203 mm and eleven tons of a gun mount.
Just one shot of this howitzer can penetrate four meters of reinforced concrete.
So this cannon is called Stalin's hammer.
The Soviets used this gun to shoot flat at targets of two hundred to three hundred meters.
That's a cross, let's move on to the preparation of the Germans.
In order to increase the firepower, the Germans put the tanks under repair, as long as the gun was still usable, all of them were piled up at the intersection, and they were used as sniper guns.
In the end Hitler also mobilized half a million troops, and because of the shortage of soldiers, Hitler included the students of the Army University and all military schools, which was not enough, he also included the air defense and the naval corps in this general battle.
But this was clearly not enough, after all, the Soviet Union had prepared two and a half million troops for this battle.
So we saw that the German army also armed ordinary citizens, not only the old men and women went to the battlefield, but even the children did not let go.
Take a simple example and you'll see.
This incident is recorded in a book called "Hitler Youth Combat Unit, 1944-1945", a thirteen-year-old boy named Foster, who destroyed two tanks during the battle, and this thirteen-year-old boy did not receive praise from the company commander, but received a criticism, the company commander criticized him for being too reckless.
But do you know how this teenager answered?
"Oh no! The bullet won't hit me at all! ”
It sounds naïve, but there is more than one thirteen-year-old teenager who holds this idea.
A soldier of the SS 33rd Division recorded this passage.
At the end of the fight, hundreds of children came to their reinforcement, and the soldier saw in the eyes of these children a desire to kill.
The soldier lectured the children, drawing their attention to the experienced Soviets, as well as warnings of all kinds.
But the warnings were like the wind in their ears, and when they blew, they rushed up with rifles and bazookas.
There are many such things.
The Soviets themselves had a record, and everyone in Trikov knew it, and his Eighth Guards Regiment was attacked by about four hundred children when it broke into the Tiergarten district.
This unit was the one that had fought in the defense of Stalingrad, and there were veterans, and according to the recollections of the veterans of the vanguard units that had been attacked, this children's unit, which did not look like a single one over fifteen years old, rushed up with an iron fist.
What if this veteran in a hurry calls on the radio?
The order came down, did not fire, and disarmed first, but warned that these children would not care at all, and rockets would still be fired into the Soviet ranks.
So the big guys can guess what the ending is?
In fact, in this war, the Germans gathered all the men who could carry guns, and even the girls took up arms.
So from the description of these things, you know that Berlin is a place where there are battles everywhere, that is, there must be fierce battles, after all, this is the last attempt of the German army's dying struggle, and the ability to return to the light is still there.
The first reason Berlin is not easy to play
The People's Stormtroopers, which had been formed temporarily by the citizens, consisted of two hundred battalions, and they were trained in street fighting, and of course their weapons were nothing more than an iron fist.
Then under the attack of various artillery and anti-tank weapons, the Soviets, if nothing else, were killed by more than a thousand tanks in this kind of street battle, and you must know that the Soviet tanks were killed on the battlefield of the entire Battle of Berlin, and more than two thousand and one hundred, close to half of the number.
So from this comparison of numbers, you know that the street battles in Berlin are not easy to fight at all.
And the beast was so trapped that he could not hand over the defense line of the city of Berlin to the children and the People's Stormtroopers, the most effective SS troops, all over the defensive zone.
After all, there were as many as 420,000 SS troops entering the Battle of Berlin.
The SS guys are stubborn, and often it's these people who fight to the death. If nothing else, even if the Soviets encountered a unit that was not an SS, but there were SS in this unit to supervise the battle, it was a difficult bone to gnaw.
These guys were so fanatical that when Berlin was taken down and the news of Hitler's suicide came out, there were more than 60,000 SS soldiers who followed Hitler's suicide.
Even after receiving the news, there were still more than 70,000 SS soldiers who gritted their teeth and had to carry them to the end.
The most typical example is the Offensive and Defensive War of the Capitol.
There were actually more than two thousand people here, but these guys were all SS, and nearly five hundred were foreign, and they were deadly.
You don't know that when two Red Army soldiers planted the red flag above the Reichstag, the Reichstag at their feet fought fiercely for days and nights.
Eventually the German defenders were compressed into a basement and planned to resist to the end.
Finally, The commander of the berlin defenses, Admiral Weidling, surrendered, and the Red Army completely occupied the Reichstag, and the gang surrendered, and there were still three hundred people who could shoot, of course, five hundred wounded.
This war of attack and defense of the Capitol has only come to an end.
That is to say, if the Soviet Red Army confronts these outlaws, casualties will inevitably go up.
Another reason is Hitler
Hitler had no intention of fleeing berlin as soon as the war began, and according to the German propaganda minister Goebbels: "Together we will meet the final victory or destruction!" ”
This was tantamount to setting the tone, so in history, when the Soviets began to cross the river and the main Party and government organs in Germany began to withdraw, Hitler stayed.
When he stayed, the morale of the German army would definitely last for a while, and it would even be more desperate to fight with the Red Army.
The addition of the teenagers mentioned above to the offensive forces is a good example.
On the thirtieth of April, Hitler ordered the Youth Army to attack in the bunker, and it was time, the Battle of Berlin was almost over, and the discerning people could see that there was little point in fighting.
But it was this order that still caused more than two thousand children to rush into the battlefield , the Olympic Stadium.
According to Helmut. Artena's description:
More and more youth groups are coming, and many people are expecting their companions to be injured, because then they can pick up the weapons of these wounded companions.
But these people are not much trained, and when they take up weapons and shoot, they are hit by recoil.
A few hours later, more than two thousand Germans were lying on the ground, including adults, of course.
On April 30, Hitler committed suicide at midnight.
This group of children only accepted the surrender, so after accepting the surrender, do you know what happened?
Many surrendered children gathered in front of the cooking carts to ask the Soviets for bread, and if these children swore that they would no longer be enemies of the Red Army, they would get a piece of bread and would be sent home, of course, unwillingly.
So Hitler's presence also exacerbated the brutality of the battle. When the news of Hitler's death spread, the fierce fighting throughout Berlin eased.
But even so, it was not until the afternoon of May 2, 1945, that the Germans stopped resisting and accepted surrender.
In this war, then, the casualties of the Red Army were not three hundred thousand, but three hundred and fifty thousand, and if proportionally, one in eight soldiers participated in the battle came down.
In this battle, the Germans also paid a price of 420,000 casualties.