The Battle of Berlin, 1945
The Red Army’s final offensive in Europe — from the Oder and Seelow Heights to the encirclement, street fighting and fall of the Nazi capital.
Before dawn on 16 April 1945, the Red Army opened its final offensive against Berlin. The 1st Belorussian Front attacked from the Küstrin bridgehead across the Seelow Heights; the 1st Ukrainian Front drove north from the Neisse, while the 2nd Belorussian Front advanced farther north. The Soviet command had assembled roughly 2.5 million troops, more than 6,000 tanks and assault guns and about 7,500 aircraft for the wider operation — overwhelming force directed at the last defended centre of the Third Reich.
The breakthrough cost four days of hard fighting. Soviet armies encircled Berlin on 25 April, then forced their way through barricades, rubble and Panzerfaust ambushes toward the government district. T-34-85s carried the mass of the advance; IS-2s and ISU-152s fired directly into fortified buildings, while the VVS contested the sky above the city. Berlin surrendered on 2 May 1945. The machines gathered here belong specifically to that campaign — not to the wider collapse of Germany in the west.
