sourced story
16 April - 2 May 1945Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Hitler drafts his will as 2.5 million Soviet troops close in

On the timeline · around 16 April - 2 May 1945 · Allied VictoryAllied VictoryHitler drafts his will as 2.5 million Soviet troops close in1945

What happened

An overwhelming Soviet force, some 2.5 million troops, 6,250 tanks, and 41,600 artillery pieces, broke through Germany's last defensive line at the Seelow Heights after four days of fighting and closed on Berlin. Hitler, sheltering in a bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, could hear the artillery falling around him; he ordered counterattacks from armies that existed only on paper, then, informed the plans were fantasy, drafted his will. He killed himself on 30 April as Soviet troops fought their way through the city block by block; the garrison surrendered on 2 May. The battle killed roughly 125,000 civilians and 80,000 Soviet soldiers, and the final months of the Eastern Front's collapse saw widespread, often state-tolerated sexual violence by Soviet troops against German women, a grim final chapter to a war both sides had fought as one of annihilation from the start.

Why it matters

Hitler had ordered Berlin defended to the last house, hedge, and shell hole, but the city was never the fortress Stalingrad had been for the Soviets three years earlier; its fall in barely two weeks confirmed that the Wehrmacht, unlike its enemies at Stalingrad, had nothing left to counterattack with.

How we know

Soviet field reports of the Berlin offensive's casualties and timeline, together with German civilian and military accounts of the bunker's final days, corroborate the battle's course from both attacking and defending sides.

Sources

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