The Battle Of Berlin: April 21st 1945 – Red Army Troops Reach Berlin

At 9:30am on April 21st 1945, Adolf Hitler was awakened in the damp concrete Führerbunker by news that Soviet artillery was now pounding Berlin’s central Mitte district.

The Nazi leader immediately ordered the air force to silence the guns. A task the now crippled Luftwaffe was far from capable of performing.

Instead the bombardment would only worsen. With the nearby Hotel Adlon – once the city’s grandest establishment – turned into a military hospital to accommodate the mounting casualties in the area.

An observation post at the Berlin Zoo was however able to pinpoint the volleys as originating from the suburb of Marzahn – no further than 8 miles away from Hitler’s chancellery.

Over the next eleven days, Soviet artillery would unleash hell on the Nazi capital. For a city more than accustomed to the routine – and devastating – air attacks carried out by Anglo-American forces – the introduction of desultory Red Army barrages would bring with it a new and more sinister measure of torment – as more than 1.8 million shells rained down on the city. Almost exceeding, in less than two weeks, the total tonnage of explosives dropped by the British and Americans over the past five years.

Unlike aerial bombing, Soviet artillery would arrive without warning – indiscriminately hitting Alexanderplatz and the Tiergarten throughout the day.

The same morning, senior Nazi party officials would swarm the army headquarters for the Defence of Berlin – located on Hohenzollerndamm – to be granted passes entitling them to leave the beleaguered city. This exodus of armchair warriors – dubbed the ‘Flight of the Golden Pheasants’ by locals – would see the army issue 2,000 exceptions to the citywide policy that all capable of fighting against the Bolshevik enemy should stand their ground. “The rats are leaving the sinking ship,” a colonel on the Chief of Staff would retort. The very same party men who had rallied against the army for cowardice when it suffered losses at the front were now leaving the Nazi capital at the height of its hour of need.