Berlin 1945: The Final Battle of Europe

The strategic situation confronting Nazi Germany by early 1945 had deteriorated beyond any possibility of recovery, with Soviet forces advancing rapidly across Eastern Europe while American and British armies pressed forward from the west after their successful crossing of the Rhine River. Adolf Hitler's decision to make Berlin the site of a final stand reflected both his delusional belief that the German people could still achieve victory through fanatical resistance and his psychological inability to accept the reality of total defeat that had become inevitable to virtually all rational observers.

The Soviet military machine that approached Berlin in the spring of 1945 represented the culmination of years of bitter fighting and massive industrial mobilization that had transformed the Red Army from the disorganized force that had nearly collapsed in 1941 into the most powerful land army in the world. Under the leadership of Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev, Soviet forces had accumulated overwhelming superiority in tanks, artillery, and aircraft that would enable them to crush German resistance through sheer weight of numbers and firepower, while their battle-hardened troops possessed the experience and motivation needed for the brutal urban warfare that awaited in Berlin's streets.