Der Krieg ist vorbei...

Devastated street in the center of Berlin, July 1945

Yes, in 1945, seventy-five years ago, the Germans could finally say, "Der Krieg ist vorbei...", the war is over.

The Chant's Polish correspondent Paweł reminded me the other day that 75 years ago this month, Berlin fell to the advancing Soviet armies. Well, not all of the troops involved in capturing Berlin were Soviets. In the advance, which ended the war in the East, two Polish armies were involved, the First Polish Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Stanislav Poplavsky, was involved directly in the Battle of Berlin. This army was attached to the 1st Belorussian Front under Marshal Georgy Zhukov. The Second Polish Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Karol Świerczewski, fought south of Berlin, advancing towards Dresden. The Second was attached to the 1st Ukrainian Front under Marshal Ivan Konev. The map below shows these two armies in relation to the Soviet armies involved.

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The Polish First Army on their way to Berlin, 1945.
That would be the fellows on the left with tanks.
The folks on the right, with horse, wagon, and bicycles, are defeated Germans.

I'm sure all of you have seen this picture of Soviet troops raising the red flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin -

But until Paweł mentioned it the other day, I had never seen this picture -

That's a Polish soldier atop the Siegessäule (Victory Column) in Berlin. Here's what the Siegessäule looked in 1900 (when it was near the Reichstag) and now (the Nazis moved it in 1939 and also made it taller).

In 1900.

Today
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While the Reichstag was badly damaged during the war (it started the war damaged, see Reichstag Fire for more details on that), the Siegessäule suffered only minor damage. I didn't know about the Poles' being there for the kill in 1945 until Paweł brought it up. The things I learn from you readers...

My Dad entered the United States Army in November of 1945, at the age of seventeen. He had wanted to sign up on his 17th birthday, one year to the day after the Normandy invasion. He was the youngest of three brothers. No doubt with two boys already serving overseas (my Uncle Louis was in the Pacific with the USAAF, my Uncle Charlie was an infantryman in the ETO, Seventh Army) I'm sure my grandparents were reluctant to let their youngest sign up with fighting still raging in the Pacific. So he had to wait.

He was indeed sent overseas, to Berlin, where he spent most of his three years in the Army. Dad had a lot of pictures of Berlin right after the war, all of them looked like that opening photo, the city was a vast ruin. It was also a graveyard. The Soviets and Poles had suffered over 360,000 casualties in the fight for the city, German losses are estimated to have been over 800,000. No one really knows how many casualties the Germans took, they weren't keeping very good records at that point. Inside the Berlin Defense Area near the center of the city, it was estimated that the Germans suffered roughly 44,000 dead - not killed, wounded, or missing - dead. Of those, half were civilians caught up in the fighting.

Oddly enough, in my seven plus years living in Germany, I never went to Berlin. I wanted to get my parents to come to Germany for a visit, but Mom dislikes flying. A lot. If they'd come over I have no doubt we would have taken Dad to see what had become of his old stomping grounds. No doubt Mom would have been eyeing each likely Frau and wondering if Dad knew her. Seems Dad had sown a lot of wild oats in that town. Heck, he was, after all, only a teenager when he was there! Perhaps that's why they didn't come to visit?

The war had been raging in the East since the 1st of September, 1939. But the front had been a long ways from Berlin when the Germans had gone into Russia at the beginning of the summer of 1941. Now it was getting closer by the day. Horror stories from refugees from East Prussia were making the rounds. The German soldiery had behaved very badly in Russia. Burning and pillaging, executing civilians and captured soldiers as well. Now it was payback time.

Stalin wanted to push the Red Army as far west as possible, even though the Allies had agreed that the Western Allies would halt at the Elbe River, Stalin didn't trust them to do so. (If you're an untrustworthy bastard, you tend not to trust others.) On Hitler's birthday, Soviet artillery began to shell the city. They wouldn't quit until the Germans did. I can't imagine Berlin being a very nice place to be in the spring of 1945.

I recall a line from Band of Brothers where Captain Nixon commented to Captain Winters during Operation Market-Garden that he thought the German Army had been reduced to nothing but old men and boys. This was after a very bitter fight in the Netherlands where the enemy was anything but old men and boys. This was before the Ardennes Offensive in December of 1944 where the Germans basically threw away their last reserves.

By spring the German military was made up of a lot of old men and young boys. Though they still fought hard!

16-year-old Willi Hübner is awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class¹ for his actions in the defense of Lauban.
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A member of the Volkssturm², armed with a Panzerschreck³, outside Berlin, April 1945.
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Most regular German divisions had been reduced to small battle groups consisting of maybe 500 to a thousand men with a few vehicles. Gasoline was in short supply, so what few vehicles (including tanks) which the Germans had, weren't going to travel very far. Not that they had that far to go!

Front lines 1 May (pink = Allied occupied territory; red = area of fighting; white = still under Nazi control)

Seventy-five years ago, May 1945, saw the end of the Nazi Third Reich, after over five years of fighting and millions of deaths. The repercussions of that war can still be felt today. Millions died, the war nearly destroyed the Jewish people. Poland shifted further west geographically (Russians don't like giving back territory), Germany was much reduced, and millions lost their homes forever. We lived with nearly fifty years of the Cold War. The threat of mutually assured destruction is something many of us grew up with.

Millions in Eastern Europe lost their freedom to the scourge of Communism, trading one dictator (Hitler) for another (Stalin and his successors).

Are things unsettled, some might say bad, these days? Sorry, not even close to what things were like in Europe on this date seventy-five years ago.

Not even close.

Battle of Berlin Photos:

• Monovisons, Historic photos of The Battle of Berlin Link
• English Russia, The Battle of Berlin In Pictures Link
• The Battle of Berlin Link
• The Battle in Berlin Link (No, that's not a typo.)

¹ The official criteria for the award was a single act of bravery in the face of the enemy, or actions that were clearly above and beyond the call of duty. (Source)
² Volksturm, People's Militia. It was set up, not by the traditional German Army, but by the Nazi Party on the orders of Adolf Hitler on October 18, 1944. It conscripted males between the ages of 16 to 60 years who were not already serving in some military unit as part of a German Home Guard. (Source)
³ Officially known as the 88mm Raketenpanzerbuechse 54. This 88 mm rocket-propelled, hollow-charge, anti-tank grenade, which was fired from a tube, became operational with German Army and SS field units in August 1944. Nicknamed the Panzerschreck (Tank Terror), this weapon's development had been heavily influenced by American bazookas of 2.4 inch caliber captured in North Africa in spring 1943. (Source)