No.261194[Reply]
On 20 April 1945, Adolf Hitler’s 56th birthday dawned under the thunder of Soviet artillery. At dawn, the 79th Rifle Corps of Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front unleashed the first shells on Berlin’s city centre—an unrelenting barrage that would continue without pause until the capital’s fall.
Simultaneously, Marshal Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front seized the strategic initiative from the south. His armies smashed through the depleted defenses of Army Group Centre north of Jüterbog and raced across the open Brandenburg countryside toward Berlin’s southern suburbs—a thrust that would soon encircle the German 9th Army and set the stage for the bloody battle at Halbe.
To the north, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front struck between Stettin and Schwedt, pounding the flanks of Army Group Vistula and tightening the noose around the doomed capital from all sides.
Meanwhile, far to the east on the Samland (Sambia) peninsula, the East Prussian Strategic Offensive pressed on. By 20 April, Soviet forces had intensified their assault on German fortifications along the Tenkitten defensive line, driving relentlessly toward the vital evacuation port of Pillau as part of the broader Samland offensive.
In a single, coordinated crescendo of firepower and maneuver, the Red Army’s converging fronts on 20 April 1945 stripped the Third Reich of its last defenses—an ominous prelude to the fall of Berlin and the end of Nazi Germany.
No.264210
Upp
