As the largest engagement of the Second World War to take place on German soil, the Battle of Berlin would prove to be the desperate last stand of Hitler's regime; the bloody coda to a war long lost & ultimately the coup de grâce to National Socialism... Seventeen days in the spring of 1945 that would define Europe for decades to come: setting the stage for Cold War confrontation between East and West, and ensuring that Berlin and Germany remain divided for another 45 years.
The encirclement of Berlin by the forces of Stalin’s Red Army, on April 25th 1945, was not the first time that war arrived to the streets of the Nazi capital. Nor could it be said that the opening volleys of Soviet artillery hitting the city on April 20th were the start of Berlin’s physical ruin.
The Battle of Berlin, in many ways, began much earlier.
Capable of inflicting a measure of carnage unprecedented before the early 20th century, the air fleets of the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force had been repeatedly pounding the city since 1940.
Five years before the arrival of Soviet ground forces.
Gradually reducing the blackened heart of the Third Reich to smouldering rubble.
With geography and technology more often than not limiting conflict to the frontiers of any belligerent state – never before in human history had the capital of an enemy power been subjected to so much; and from such a distance.
