Why U.S. Army Stopped Short of Berlin

The Battle for Berlin in April – May 1945 may not have been the final battle of the World War II in Europe, but it was certainly the concluding one. It was the culmination of the Soviet Union, having wrested the strategic initiative away from the Germans after the Battle of Kursk in July 1943, remorselessly pushing the Germans out of Mother Russia and then westwards out of Eastern Europe. By August 1944 they had reached the outskirts of Warsaw (but failed to lend any assistance to the Polish Home Army as it rose against the Germans) having decimated Army Group Centre in Operation Bagration in July and captured Bucharest on 31 August. The rest of 1944 and early 1945 was spent occupying East Prussia, Courland, Pomerania and the Baltic States. The offensive restarted in January with an advance from the River Vistula to the River Oder that saw the Soviets clearing the remaining German forces from Poland, although Admiral Karl Dönitz masterminded a successful seaborne evacuation of over 2 million civilians and military personnel from the clutches of the Soviets.