The Last Stand: The Battle of the Reichstag, Berlin 1945 (WW2 Documentary)

Of them, most were willing to sell their lives dearly, but that was not true for all the German defenders in the surrounding area. The young recruit Gunter Debski, who had been assigned to a penal battalion after having attempted to desert a hearing weeks earlier, found himself next to the Reichstag on April 30. Gunter Debski: “We received the order to defend the southern side of the Reichstag; The Russians were not to take it. There was an SS unit inside the Reichstag and we were to be on the south side. Then the commanding officer told us: "I have received the order to send a negotiating group to the Russians at the other end of the Reichstag." Oh my god, I really thought he was an idiot.

He told me to take off my shirt, tie it to a broomstick and go to Podgorsky. To Debski's good luck, the officer was mortally wounded moments later, so Debski, along with Podgorsky, deemed the order, which would likely have resulted in their deaths, invalid and retreated out of sight. Let's return to the Soviet perspective. Now they were faced with the prospect of crossing these 280 meters of practically open terrain. Today, it's a leisurely five-minute walk, but in

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, at least for a time, it was the most contested stretch of terrain in Europe. At 4:30 on the morning of April 30, the Soviets made their first move to reach the water obstacle.

Aided by the smoke and brick dust of the bombardment, they advanced, but to no avail. The German return fire was simply too strong. At 11:30, the Soviets made a second attempt, but it was also repulsed, in part by sustained fire from the zoo's Flak Tower. Three hours later a third assault was launched, and this time they managed to reach the water obstacle, having taken out several key positions and probably the 88 defending the Reichstag front. Halfway there, half is missing. By then, the Soviets had managed to gather large concentrations of field artillery, and firing from outside Lehrter Station, an area today known as Washingtonplatz, they began hitting the Reichstag building almost at point-blank range, in an attempt to slow the fire.

German response. Seeing the sign on the wall, and growing increasingly desperate, the commanding officer of the Reichstag defense, Gerhard Babick, put out a call for armored support and, perhaps surprisingly, received it. Several Stug IIIs and a huge King Tiger from the SS Nordland division arrived at this corner on the south side of the Reichstag, where Debski had been shortly before. Inside the King Tiger was Commander Georg Diers. In his memories he remembered the scene. “The Reichstag building was already severely bombed and the plenary hall burned down. At the front of the building we looked towards the Kroll Opera building and saw a large number of T 34s sitting on our right, about thirty of them, with their cannons pointed at the Reichstag building, at us.

After a detailed briefing to the crew, we dared to turn the corner and opened fire on this large number; successfully." But a tiger king could never make a

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ing difference. More and more Soviet armor was crossing the Moltke Bridge and the newly captured Kronprinzbrucke to the northeast. With the northern flank of the Königsplatz in Soviet hands, the attackers were ready to strike. a final advance towards the Reichstag. It was no secret that Stalin took a personal interest in the fighting at that time. In fact, he had made it very clear that he wanted the Reichstag to be captured and the Soviet hammer and sickle to fly over the building before the.

May 1, International Labor Day, an important date in the Soviet calendar. This meant that several "banner parties" with the express purpose of reaching the roof of the Reichstag would now enter the fray. transmitted to Moscow and to Stalin's own desk an erroneous report that a red banner had been seen in the Reichstag at 2:30 in the afternoon of the 30th. When the error was realized, the responsible commanders, probably and probably with Reasonably fearing the consequences of their mistake becoming known, they began making concerted efforts to make it a reality, including attempting to place a banner on the roof of an airplane.

It failed, so, with increasing urgency, an all-out attack was launched. There has long been debate about where exactly the Reichstag was first entered. Some sources give a ground floor window on the north side closest to the river, others indicate an area on the south façade, but most likely they were men of the 756th Rifle Regiment around 6 p.m. April 30 through the main entrance on the ground floor. Sergeant Ilya Syanov, awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union as one of the first to enter the building, had this to say about the moment: At first we came to a long hallway.

It turned out that the entire huge building was in motion. Somewhere there was a sound of footsteps, somewhere people were shouting in German. It was not possible to immediately take stock of the situation. One thing was clear: there were many Germans in the building and we would have to fight. What Syanov didn't have, but we do, is a detailed map showing how complex the layout of the Reichstag was. A maze of rooms large and small, stretching both above and below ground, was a nightmarish prospect for both attacker and defender, and a prolonged and brutal struggle for control of the building began.

With long hallways, wide staircases, hundreds of individual rooms, and the building on fire in multiple places, the fighting descended into room-to-room and hand-to-hand

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s for hours on end. In the end, the Soviets managed to breach the German defenses by taking control of the ground floor, forcing some surviving Germans to the upper floors and others to the multi-story basement. This caused the artillery to intervene again, with the Soviets bombarding the upper floor and the few remaining German guns aimed at the ground floor. The fight continued throughout the afternoon of the 30th and well into the night. Again, the records are unclear, but it is likely that the first Soviet banner to fly from the Reichstag, at some point during that night, was actually placed here, above the main entrance, tied with belts.

Despite the hammer and sickle, the fighting was far from over and the

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pockets of staunch German resistance in the Reichstag would fight until May 2 before finally, out of ammunition and completely surrounded, they were forced to surrender. In total, the fighting inside the Reichstag would last more than 30 hours. As the last shots were fired in the Reichstag, all of Berlin's defenders emerged from cellars and buildings into a shattered, dust-filled city and surrendered to the waiting victors. Let's head to the roof of the Reichstag to explore one last iconic photograph. Of course, it's this one, taken by Russian photographer Yvgeny Khaldei;

It is perhaps the best-known photograph of the entire Second World War. This image, despite its fame, is, of course, staged, and although it shows a Red Flag flying over the ruins of Berlin, it was taken, probably on May 2, some time after the first banners were flown in building. As a curiosity, it was also later edited to eliminate one of the two watches worn by the protagonist of this photograph, a small but important detail that alludes to the looting and much darker episodes that would take place in the city in the days to come: a story perhaps for another day.

For both sides, the cost of the fight for Berlin had been incredibly high. Figures vary, but in total it is believed that between 80,000 and 100,000 Soviet and 100,000 German soldiers fell in the fighting, along with perhaps up to 20,000 civilians. In the following days the first scenes of the fighting and destruction that had occurred would be shown to the world. The Reichstag, still the center of attention, became a mecca for Soviet soldiers in Berlin, many of whom marked their visit by writing in chalk and carving their names on the walls of the building. He was still present when the first Western journalists arrived in the city to document the fighting that finally ended Nazi Germany.

Of course, Berlin's story does not end there. Within a few months it would be the center of attention again, this time in the formative months of the Cold War, and would remain so for the next five decades. Today Berlin as a city has changed a lot and the signs that the war went like this in

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are few and far between. But, if you look beneath the surface of modern buildings and skyscrapers, you can still find small symbols, such as the

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-damaged griffin that once adorned the Moltke Bridge, the last remnants of Soviet graffiti on the roof of the Reichstag, and by Of course, the memorials to the thousands of people who fell here in the final days of World War II in Europe.

This brings us to the end of this video, we hope you found it interesting. If you want to know more about Berlin, be sure to check out the excellent 16 Days in Berlin series from our friends at RealTime History, which offers an in-depth look at the entire fight for the city. If you would like to support our work to continue sharing stories like this with as wide an audience as possible, please consider joining our ever-growing Patreon community. We greatly appreciate your support. That's all this time, thanks again and see you soon.