Battle of the Seelow Heights, 1945: the last gate to Berlin

The memorial at Seelow calls it the largest battle fought on German soil in the Second World War. It was also one of the costliest for the Red Army in the last weeks of the war: a frontal assault against a prepared ridge, launched while the Soviets raced the Americans for Berlin.²

The race for Berlin

By the end of January 1945 the Red Army stood on the Oder and the Neisse, from Stettin to Görlitz, less than 80 kilometers from Berlin. In February and March the Soviets brought up about 2.5 million men, over 6,000 tanks and 7,500 aircraft for the final offensive. The memorial portal describes Soviet and American forces as competing for the capital; once the fortress of Küstrin had fallen and the bridgeheads on the Oder were secure at the end of March, the Red Army seemed to have the advantage.³

The plan gave the main role to Marshal Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, attacking from the Küstrin bridgehead straight toward Berlin along Reichsstraße 1. Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front was to cross the Neisse to the south, and Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front to cover the north.⁴ › Georgy Zhukov

A ridge above the marsh

The greatest natural obstacle on Zhukov's road was the Seelow Heights, a ridge along the western edge of the Oderbruch, the flat, marshy valley of the Oder, about 70 kilometers east of Berlin. There the German 9th Army, put together from whatever units could be found, built its defensive line under General Gotthard Heinrici. The waterlogged ground below ruled out fast armored thrusts, and minefields and machine-gun nests covered the slopes. The memorial portal puts the attackers at about 900,000 men and the defenders at 200,000.⁵

Searchlights in the night

The assault, joined by the 1st Polish Army, began in the early hours of 16 April with one of the heaviest artillery bombardments of the war. Zhukov then switched on anti-aircraft searchlights, 120 by the memorial's count, meant to blind the Germans as the infantry went forward. Instead the beams reflected off the smoke and dust and lit up the attackers, who suffered heavy losses.⁶

When the infantry stalled, Zhukov threw his tank armies into the battle early. In the narrow lanes and wet ground below the ridge they collided with the infantry and added to the chaos. Instead of a quick breakthrough, the attack ground against the heights for days.⁷

Four days

According to dzieje.pl, the German defenders held Zhukov's front for three days, and the Red Army lost almost 40,000 killed and wounded and 900 tanks on the Seelow Heights, more tanks than Heinrici's whole army group had on that sector. Only on 20 April did the 1st Belorussian Front break through; on 22 April it reached the outskirts of Berlin. Meanwhile Konev's armies had crossed the Neisse, broken through to the south and turned toward the capital, and on 25 April the ring around Berlin was closed.⁸ › Battle of Halbe, 1945

The memorial gives over 35,000 Soviet and 12,000 German dead between 16 and 20 April, and over 100,000 soldiers killed in the fighting for the Oder bridgeheads and the heights together. Hundreds of civilians died in the area after the war from hunger, disease and unexploded shells.⁹

Memory

A few days after Berlin fell, Zhukov commissioned the sculptor Lev Kerbel to raise monuments along the Red Army's road; at Seelow a bronze soldier stands over the graves of 200 Soviet dead. In 1972 the East German state opened a Memorial to the Liberation of the Seelow Heights, which told the battle from the Soviet side only. After reunification the exhibition was rebuilt, and since 1995 it has also told the stories of German and Polish soldiers and of the civilians caught between the armies. Among the tanks and guns on display is one of the searchlights used on the night of 16 April.¹⁰