Battle of Berlin

Brutal Brawl for Berlin

By Michael E. Haskew

By the end of March 1945, the Western Allied armies were across the Rhine, the last major geographical barrier to an all-out final assault against the Third Reich. Read more

Battle of Berlin

Hitler’s Waffen-SS and the Last Battle in Berlin

By Christopher Miskimon

In the predawn hours of April 24, 1945, SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg received orders from Army Group Vistula defending Berlin to immediately lead the remnants of the 57th Battalion of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne from its staging area at the SS training camp at Neustrelitz to the German capital. Read more

Battle of Berlin

Battle of Berlin Prelude: Küstrin, and Death on the Oder

By Pat McTaggart

 “We felt that we were already dead men,” wrote former Captain Albrecht Wüstenhagen in a May 1988 letter to the author of his time in the fortress garrison of Küstrin. Read more

Battle of Berlin

The T-34 Tank: The Story of Soviet Russia’s Rugged Armored Vehicle

By Phil Zimmer

December 1941 was a dark month and the end of a dark year for the Soviets as the Germans pressed ever onward toward Moscow, the lair where Joseph Stalin and his minions plotted what to do next against the Nazi juggernaut that had, in a few short months, rolled over everything before them. Read more

Battle of Berlin

The Trampled Swastika

By Eric Niderost

On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Reich Chancellor and Führer of Germany, emerged from his underground bunker in the center of Berlin. Read more

Battle of Berlin

Storming the Reichstag in Russia’s ‘Military Disneyland’

By Nicholas Varangis

Explosions send fire through the air, aircraft drone overhead, tanks rumble across the cratered ground, and machine guns chatter in murderous conversation on a chaotic battlefield. Read more

Battle of Berlin

Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army

By Martin K.A. Morgan

The vast Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park commemorates 5,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in battle in the city in April and May 1945. Read more

Battle of Berlin

A Masterful German Defense at the Battle of Seelow Heights

By William E. Welsh

The officers huddled in a candlelit cellar in an abandoned farmhouse midway between the Oder River and Berlin. Read more

Battle of Berlin

Battle of Berlin: Why it Became the Death Knell for Hitler’s Third Reich

By David H. Lippman

The Battle of Berlin began with what a German colonel called “a dull, continuous roar of thunder from the east.” Read more

Battle of Berlin

‘Raising a flag over the Reichstag’ Photographer Yevgeni Khaldei

By Michael E. Haskew

The image of Red Army soldiers hoisting their hammer and sickle emblazoned banner atop the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament, is a classic photo of World War II, an image that told the world Nazi Germany was at last finished. Read more

Battle of Berlin

Himmler’s Recruits

By John Osborn, Jr.

In August 1942, with Operation Barbarossa at its height, the invader in coal shuttle helmet and field gray uniform crawled on his elbows through brush up the hillock, pistol in his right hand. Read more