In April 1945, after five years of bitter fighting, the Red Army finally invaded the German capital of Berlin, where, like any previous siege battle, they were greeted by tenacious street battles of German soldiers.
After another 12 days of street fighting, the Soviets finally saw the dawn of the end of the war, at which time the German casualties were countless like the end of the crossbow. So the Soviets decided to attack the Reichstag, which had more than 1,000 SS troops and was the last force in the German army.
But what they did not expect was that these 1,000 SS and 500 foreign soldiers actually exploded in the last battle, so that the Soviet Red Army, which was 10 times larger than them, was repeatedly repulsed, and even after the suicide of Nazi leader Hitler, the German soldiers did not have the idea of stopping.
So, what is the significance of the Empire State Building worth their stay? Why were the Germans able to hold out for 4 days without support?
Empire State Building: The beginning of Nazi regime
Originally built in 1884 during the reign of Wilhelm II of Germany, the Reichstag building is a dome-like building located in the heart of the German capital Berlin.
In 1933, under Goering's planning, the Reichstag arson case was successfully carried out, hitler poured dirty water on the German Communist Party, and quickly took control of the German executive, which was also the starting point for Hitler and the Nazi Party to usurp the highest power in Germany.
The Reichstag arson burned the roof of the Reichstag building, and until the end of World War II, Hitler did not repair it, and the German parliament never voted on it, but used it as a propaganda tool for public opinion.
In April 1945, the Soviet army successfully invaded Berlin, and after several days of fierce fighting, the Berlin garrison was annihilated by 15,000 people, and the civilian casualties were heavy.
General Weidling, commander of the Berlin city defenses, asked Hitler to retreat, and the answer was that if Berlin could not be defended, it would be annihilated wherever it went. According to the laws of nature, if the Nazi Germans could not defeat the Soviets, they should perish.
A few days later, General Weidling, seeing that his ammunition was running out, again appealed to Hitler to surrender to the Soviet Union, to which Hitler replied that it was the duty of every soldier to die for the Nazis.
Second, the last resistance
On 28 April, as the Soviets pressed the front closer to the Reichstag, fighters brought in large-caliber artillery and launched the first round of bombardments against the Reichstag for 20 minutes.
The main force guarding the Reichstag building at that time was the German Waffen-SS, which was directly under Hitler's jurisdiction, an armed gendarmerie unit that participated in almost all of the Nazi invasion campaigns, and who were notorious for their main executioners in the Nazi regime's massacre of Jews.
In addition, there were other defeated soldiers, Hitler's own guards, the Berlin police, the Berlin garrison, and even the new soldiers who had just graduated from the German military academy.
Theoretically, this is a ragtag bunch of people with no supplies and no reinforcements, and it seems that they can be easily broken.
The Germans converted the Empire State Building into a fortress with fire and observation points on the upper level, obstacles on the lower level, and military bunkers in the basement for use as combat hospitals.
Because the Reichstag was a very important political symbolism for the Nazis, the Soviets wanted to preserve him intact and completely capture the symbol of Berlin, so they did not use a large amount of explosives to blow it up directly, but chose a small-scale combat attack.
Third, the tragic final battle
Elite assault units of the 150th and 171st Divisions stormed the Capitol area, and the Soviet fighters were told they would go down in history once they succeeded in reaching the top.
However, when the Soviets charged directly at the Parliament Building, they encountered stubborn resistance. Using the Reichstag and nearby tall buildings, Nazi soldiers built a three-dimensional fire network that covered all the intersections leading to the Reichstag, causing great trouble for the Soviet offensive.
The Nazi German fire was still fierce, from the MG34, MG42 machine guns to the 75 mm anti-tank guns, there were German fire points everywhere, leaving the attacking fire to die in large areas.
The Soviets were not prepared to fight a war of attrition with them here, they transported soviet 152 mm, 203 mm howitzers into the city of Berlin, directly began fire coverage against the Reichstag, the small-caliber guns of the Nazi German army were difficult to resist the Soviet large-caliber artillery fire, either directly destroyed, or dudded, in the afternoon of the same day, there was a gap in the fire network, and the Soviet army took advantage of the situation to invade the neighborhood near the Reichstag.
However, after shrinking the defensive line, the German firepower was stronger, the Soviet army was difficult to go further, in the face of the German army's trapped beast, the Soviet army once again increased its firepower, the light artillery used 89 guns, but also called tanks and large-scale killing rockets.
So many long guns and short cannons bombarded the small target of the Reichstag, and the square became a sea of fire, and the artillery fire almost flooded the entire sky, the gunfire was deafening, and the disparity in firepower finally suppressed the German firepower network
But a more difficult phase of attack began, with the Soviets and Germans engaged in fierce fighting inside the Reichstag, where every room, every door, and every window became the point of fire of the engagement. The German SS was holding the STG44 assault rifle, which used a short 7.52 caliber bullet, light and portable, and powerful firepower.
In this kind of close-range combat, the standard rifle was often not opened, and coupled with the heavy ambush originally laid by the German army in the defense conference, the Soviet soldiers were once repulsed.
In the middle of the battle, there was also a oolong, and General Shatnov of the 150th Division was eager to win, and when he saw that his subordinates had successfully attacked the building, he sent a report to the Soviet Central Command
The report claims that the 150th Division of the Soviet Red Army has now fully occupied the Nazi Reichstag building at 2:25 p.m. and raised the red flag. Marshal Zhukov, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army, received the news and sent it to major newspapers around the world.
Excited Soviet war correspondents rushed into Berlin, but just as they were about to record the last scene, they saw the scene of the battle in the Reichstag, which made Marshal Zhukov immediately issue a stern warning to Shatanov.
In order not to be court-martialed, Admiral Shatanov had to increase his personnel input and fire support, and he ordered the soldiers of the assault battalion to plant the red flag on the top of the Reichstag at all costs.
But this was not easy to say, the Soviet fighters were not familiar with the structure within the Reichstag, and the Nazi soldiers used the terrain to cut them into small detachments and then use their relative superiority to eat them piece by piece.
After nightfall, Admiral Shatanov again poured two battalions of troops into the Reichstag. Tank cover was also brought in to transport light howitzers into the interior of the building. Finally, fire suppression was also achieved inside the Capitol. But the Nazis did not give up, and they engaged in close hand-to-hand combat with the Soviets with bayonets, daggers and even butts, and launched suicide attacks with grenades, with heavy casualties on both sides. In a parliamentary hall, there were even dozens of soldiers twisting into a close fight.
According to the recollections of Soviet veterans who fought in the war at the time, the scene in the Empire State Building that day was almost barbaric, exactly like "a group of crazy people fighting another group of crazy people".
After more than five hours of bloodshed and repeated bombardments by heavy weapons, the Soviets barely removed the fire points outside the Capitol.
At 10:50 p.m. on April 30, the Soviets finally opened the passage and climbed to the top of the Reichstag. Sergeant Egorov and Corporal Cantaliya rushed forward and planted the Soviet red flag, a symbol of victory.
But the battle is still not over. The remnants of the Nazi German army retreated into underground bunkers and continued to attack the Soviets.
On the same day, in the basement of the German presidential palace, the Soviet army found two charred corpses, one from a shooting at the temple and the other from poisoning, which, according to physical characteristics, was the corpse of Hitler and his new wife, Eva.
Later, according to Hitler's description of captain of the Guard, Hitler died by suicide, and in order to prevent the body from being insulted after death, he ordered his cronies Baumann and Goebbels to carry out the task of burning the body after death.
The Soviets immediately raised the news to the remnants of the German army in the Reichstag through various channels, and at 6 a.m. on May 2, The commander of the Berlin City Defense, General Weidling, applied to the Soviet army to surrender, and on the afternoon of the same day, the remaining remnants surrendered to the Soviet Union.
Fourth, the end of the European battlefield of World War II
In this battle, the Nazi German army, with more than 1,000 SS and other miscellaneous troops, fought against four Soviet assault battalions for four days without any support, and suffered casualties several times their own size, which showed the Nazi struggle.
The Battle of the Reichstag was recognized as the last battle of the Nazi regime and symbolized the end of the Nazi regime. 12 years ago, Hitler began Nazi rule through the arson of the Reichstag, and 12 years later, the defense of the Reichstag brought to an end the fall of the Third Reich.
After the Battle of Berlin, the Nazi Germans were like dogs that lost their families and failed to launch a large-scale counterattack. In the early hours of 7 May, at the request of the Allies, the Germans held a surrender ceremony at the command headquarters of General Lance Essenhower, and the Nazi representative, General Gustav, signed the surrender to the Allies.
Representatives of the Soviet Union, Britain and France respectively attended the ceremony. The United States was preparing for the final offensive of the Pacific War, so it did not participate. The five-year-long Battlefield of World War II in Europe is finally over.
Text/Dream
Reference: I Burned Hitler's Body, Goebbels