Video: 'The World At War 1973(World War II Documentary)Episode 21-Nemesis:Germany(February-May 1945)' (Apr. 21, 1945, at 28:15)
(Saturday, April 21, 1945; during the Battle of Berlin on the Eastern Front during World War II) — Soviet tanks thundered into the northeastern suburbs of Berlin today, breaching the Nazi capital’s final outer defenses in a meticulously planned offensive aimed at delivering the death blow to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
In the early hours, troops of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front advanced into the outer ring of Berlin’s suburbs, reaching districts such as Weissensee and Hohenschönhausen.
The Red Army’s breakthrough was marked by a rousing order of the day from Soviet High Command: “Our soldiers have broken into Berlin.” The words reverberated not just across the Soviet Union, but around the world.
Far from a reckless charge, the Red Army’s operation unfolded according to a precise battle plan. Using scale models of Berlin’s streets and buildings, Soviet commanders had rehearsed their tactics in advance. Behind the apparent chaos of street-by-street combat lay a well-orchestrated strategy to encircle the city and drive straight toward its symbolic and strategic center.
Some of these soldiers had crossed the vast breadth of Russia, through cities and villages burned, looted, and destroyed by retreating German forces. Now, they stood at the gates of Berlin, determined to avenge the suffering of their homeland.
Inside Berlin, fear gripped a weary population. With nowhere to run, civilians huddled in basement shelters as Soviet shells rained down. Even children had not been evacuated. Entire families lived underground, listening to the relentless pounding above, unsure of what to expect from the approaching Red Army.
“I went into the cellars,” reported one eyewitness, “and remember most of all the repetition of this phrase: ‘When will this nightmare end?’”
Hitler remains in his heavily fortified Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, according to Allied intelligence, while Nazi leaders issue desperate orders to exhausted troops and untrained Volkssturm units, many of them teenagers and old men.
As Soviet artillery pounded central Berlin, lighting up the skyline, and Red Army infantry tightened the noose block by block, one thing grew unmistakably clear: the end of the war in Europe is fast approaching.
