Battle of Berlin

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:31 pm

Ian

You may enjoy Max Hasting's "Armageddon" which includes some good stuff on the battle of Berlin and the fall of Germany.

cheers
Reb

ian_granger · Post by **ian_granger** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:47 pm

hello Reb,

Thanks for your info, I'll try to search it at online store.

I must admit very hard to find information and pics about battle of berlin than battle of stalingrad or others.

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 7:09 pm

See the books forum here - there is a recent "Berlin" book but my mind has blanked on me - the author also did a "stalingrad." His Berlin wasn't bad and quite detailed. Sadly - his name has slipped through my memory buffer!

Hasting's ruled for me though - he has a way of catching the "feel" of the times which helps me see it.

cheers
Reb

Doktor Krollspell · Post by **Doktor Krollspell** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:38 pm

That would be Anthony Beevor, Gentlemen! I can also recommend Wilhelm Tieke's "Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe - Der Kampf um Berlin 1945" (2nd ed. 1992).

Regards,

Krollspell

Annelie · Post by **Annelie** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:01 pm

I should like to add

Berlin 1945
Die Zeit vom 16. April bis 2. Mai

This book is first hand accounts of those fighting in Berlin.

in memoriam Helmuth Weidling.

von_noobie · Post by **von_noobie** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:53 pm

Antony beevor, good writer, just finished his stalingrad book and am know onto berlin, the fall of 1945.

ian_granger · Post by **ian_granger** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:57 pm

Annelie wrote:I should like to add

Berlin 1945
Die Zeit vom 16. April bis 2. Mai

This book is first hand accounts of those fighting in Berlin.

in memoriam Helmuth Weidling.

hello annelie,

is this book on german language or english language ??

Annelie · Post by **Annelie** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:23 pm

ian_granger wrote

is this book on german language or english language ??

The book is only in German.

von_noobie · Post by **von_noobie** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 11:19 pm

actually it is in both, i should know as i have one in English

2nd SS Panzer Das Reich · Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:21 pm

sid guttridge wrote:There is no doubt that the Russians were prepared on several occasions to make much greater sacrifices than the Germans were ever prepared to.

Probably true. However if you think will power is all it takes than the Japanese have the better of everyone

Helmut Von Moltke · Post by **Helmut Von Moltke** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:00 am

sid guttridge wrote:Hi Kitsune,

I agree. One does tend to hear a lot about German fanaticism at the end of the war, but what one actually finds is that, behind the stolid professional shield of the remains of the German Army, it was more like Nazi fanaticism that Germans should fight to their doom, and widespread German popular determination not to do so.

For example, Nazi Gauleiters organised the Volksturm and advocated that it should fight to the last. However, not only was the Volksturm a negligible military factor, but almost none of the 40+ gauleiters found death in battle themselves.

We hear talk of the conscription of 16 year-old German Youths, but the number actually reported dead by the army was probably lower than the number reported killed by Allied air raids.

And what happened to the Wehrwolf organisation and the supposed National Redoubt in the Alps?

In the Saarland (in which 90% of the electorate had voted for reincorporation into Hitler's Reich in 1934) the civilian population tried to stop the military fighting for their villages and towns for fear that they would be destroyed. Hitler ordered them evacuated en masse. Albert Speer was trying to prevent Hitler's scorched earth orders being put into effect, and even Hausser was colaborating with him by the end.

In the West, which embraced some two-thirds of the country, German resistance effectively collapsed during April 1945. Only in the east was there serious determination to near the end, but even then the likes of Berlin did not reproduce the earlier resistance of Budapest, Konigsberg or Breslau.

You are right, the Wehrmacht was gutted. That is why the Soviet assault on Berlin was so successful so quickly, with the result that Berlin never became a long epic of popular resistance and endurance. It was a brief and overwhelming onslaught against a comparitively small number of fanatical defenders and a large, numbed, impotent and largely non-participatory civilian population.

It might be romantic to some if the final battle for Berlin had been a military epic that befitted the climax of a massive global struggle, but the fact is that it wasn't. Neither the Wehrmacht nor the German people were up to it.

The people who claimed to be most keen on fighting to the last, the senior Nazis, generally ran away, hid, committed suicide or surrendered tamely. The end of the Third Reich was a shoddy betrayal.

Cheers,

Sid.

hi Sid, you say that Berlin was no military epic battle, not heroic as Wehrmacht was gutted, etc? But what about the Foreigners of the Nordland Division who fought to death in Reichstag? The French Charlemagne men? Well, there was some minor fanaticsm and willingness to fight to then end in Berlin, but minor, as you on a thread before said that Foreigner volunteers in Berlin weren't that important to the battle, could not change it's outcome, etc. And there probably was no lack of bravery among the Hitleryouth or Volksturm holding the city too, you claim Berlin never reached the length of resistance of Konigsberg, Breslau, etc. That is because those fortresses weren't facing 1 million red army soldiers. Well, just my 2 cents.

helmut

von_noobie · Post by **von_noobie** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:41 pm

no they werent facing 1 million red army troops, but Berlin wasnt facing that many either, it was facing 2.5 million red army troops with 6750 tans and self propelled guns and 40,000 + artillary peices.

Helmut Von Moltke · Post by **Helmut Von Moltke** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:20 pm

von_noobie wrote:no they werent facing 1 million red army troops, but Berlin wasnt facing that many either, it was facing 2.5 million red army troops with 6750 tans and self propelled guns and 40,000 + artillary peices.

indeed there is a diffrence there, thanks for the numbers.

cheers

helmut

von_noobie · Post by **von_noobie** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:42 pm

No problem.

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:53 am

Hi HvM,

Not only didn't the likes of Konigsberg or Breslau face several million Soviet troops, but they weren't endowed with the numbers of defenders that Berlin was.

The battle for Berlin, the capital of the Thousand Year Reich, was over in a fortnight. The fighting in its streets lasted little over a week. If one is looking for epic defences, Berlin does not rate particularly highly because the Wehrmacht was too gutted by then to match its own earlier performances or those of the Red Army on a number of occasions.

Cheers,

Sid.