As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
World War II is one of the most interesting strategic examples of the use of civilian centers as military bastions. For all of the focus upon Stalingrad and Leningrad, there was a reality which the communist Soviets never became educated to, as Adolf Hitler in his genius set up Citadel Cities which the Allies never did conquer.
That is the fact in this, that Adolf Hitler denied ports and tied up allied resources in containing cities as bastions of the Reich, while the Allied armies advanced on Germany.
This denial was played out to the end, in one of thee most horrific sieges in world history in the firepower which was unleashed on the city of Berlin. This examination is the death of a city and why Berlin Germany did not give up nor was she completely made into rubble, due to German planning in laying out this wonderful city.
Berlin to be understood is area of numerous lakes and rivers. It is a literal garden. In it's modern development, it produced two major housing developments in apartments for workers, which were all brick, and became an impenetrable shield to fire. If the were destroyed by air bombing or artillery, their deep cellars immediately became bunkers.
The modern city is a perfect military castle, when made of non combustible materials and the asset of sewer systems and subways. Wide boulevards, lakes, streams, parks all produce fire walls, and resistance lines to any siege army, and Berlin was the perfect citadel. It was a park created for the German worker and German aristocrat in modern comfort, and in this hygienic living space for over 4 million Germans, there appeared the perfect defensive zone for two German divisions to hold out against two Soviet armies.
The order of battle for Berlin was the General Zhukov's front led by the 8th Guards Army of Stalingrad led by General Chuikov on the east. On the south, General Konev attacked Berlin. The Soviet armies discovered that Zhukov's armoured columns in crossing the Oder were met by Panzer's in mass and the Soviets who had sworn to fight without retreat, discovered that dying for the war being over was not something they relished.
On the crossing of the Oder River on April 16th, Konev in the south made headway, while Zhukov had to personally appear and threaten his armour to attack or he would remove the commanders.
With that the Russian advance continued
During the week which followed in massive bombardments of the civilian centers and the German divisions protecting the cities, it is an amusing reality that General Robert Ritter von Greim and test pilot Hanna Reitsch actually flew into Berlin to meet Adolf Hitler and landed on the East West Axis, and took off again unharmed.
Greim would be appointed to replace Herman Goering as head of the Luftwaffe.
On April 21st, Zhukov's tanks entered the northern suburbs of Berlin, with heavy fighting.By April 26th, the Soviets had 464,000 troops, 12,700 guns, 21,000 rocket launchers and 1500 tanks, ringing Berlin.
Tens of thousands of civilians entered the two flak towers in Berlin for safety, as others hid in cellars and the sewer system. Smoke rose of Berlin to 1000 feet in the battle for the city.
Germany had become a cordon of 3 miles by 10 miles where the defenders stood against the Soviet hordes. There would soon come a time when Zhukov would order his artillery 'wheel to wheel" in so many cannons were assembled they were lined up that close to unleash their salvos.
The Germans never stopped fighting of all of this. It would become a battle of the Reich's Chancellery, the Reichstag and the Ministry of the Interior, of as the Russians defined it, Himmler's House.
In the propaganda it is recorded that Adolf Hitler died with his wife Eva on April 30th, 1945 AD in the year of our Lord. In this Joseph Goebbels attempted to entreat with the Soviets for a ceasefire and sent for a Colonel to make contact, and the next day sent General Krebs, who entreated for a ceasefire in a 4 way conversation in Krebs spoke to Chuikov, who spoke to Zhukov who spoke to Stalin.
The Germans being civilized were naive in requesting a ceasefire for peace talks. Stalin soon bored with the conversation and demanded complete capitulation, and went to bed.
Chuikov then astoundingly stated that the German government could announce Hitler was dead, that Himmler was a traitor for attempting to make peace with the west, and that it could treat with the 3 allied governments, (excluding the French), and with that Chuikov ordered his lines to rain artillery on the Germans as there would not be any more talks.
In the morning LVI Panzer Corp requested as ceasefire. General Weidling soon surrendered to the Soviets and ordered the German Wehrmacht to cease fire.
The Wehrmacht had been fighting to the last in order to keep a corridor open in the west so that civilians and then military units could cross over to American and British forces. At 3 PM, Soviet guns ceased to fire.
In the death of Berlin, 125,000 Berliners had perished. Numbers by suicide as they knew the rape and torture which awaited the Soviet occupation which had advanced with their lines in horrendous war crimes. Stalin in order to inflict the most terror and motivation in his sledge hammer military created by the United States, had deliberately included Soviet prisoners of war, egged them to a frenzy with propaganda, and unleashed them to rape, mutilate and mass murder the civilian populations.
For the Russians, Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovks's armies had suffered 304,887 killed, wounded and missing. 10 percent of their manpower had been obliterated. It was the greatest loss of life in a Soviet siege and a horrendous military failure, as the Germans had inflicted far more casualties than they had inflicted upon them.
Berlin was not alone, as Breslau refused to surrender until May 6th, costing the Russian 60,000 dead.
This is what the death of a city is like. The reality is that all through the war the British had attempted to kill Berlin, but Berlin remained active in building roads, commerce and rail lines running.
For all the treachery and mass murder of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the one genius they did have politically was to not expose themselves to the slaughter of the Saxons by their own Anglo Saxons who in Germanic reality would have risen up and overthrown these two despots, for murdering a city is not an easy thing, when she was Berlin.
Nuff Said
agtG
