The Battle Of Berlin: May 1st 1945 – The Storming Of The Zitadelle

At around 3:30am on May 1st 1945, German General Hans Krebs met with Vasily Chuikov, head of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, to attempt to negotiate a ceasefire. Krebs also gave Chuikov news of a certain event that had transpired some 12 hours earlier in the Führerbunker – contained in a document signed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann.

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was dead.

Feigning prior knowledge, Chuikov replied that the Red Army was already aware, before relaying this news to Georgy Zhukov, who contacted Joseph Stalin. The Soviet leader immediately refused the German attempt to arrange a ceasefire – demanding nothing short of unconditional surrender.

Stalin would then return to bed and insist on not being disturbed, in order to rest to be prepared for the May Day celebrations in Moscow. The Generalissimo would watch the parade on Red Square, the capital’s garrison filing past, the Soviet leaders gathered at Lenin’s Mausoleum. To celebrate the day that Stalin hoped would coincide with the Soviet victory in Berlin, NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria had even lifted the curfew in the capital – especially for the celebrations.

One day before the capitulation of the city of Berlin, fighting continued. But in a strange atmosphere of celebration and exhaustion – as intoxicated Red Army soldiers slumped over against crippled buildings, passed out on pavements and intermingled with the corpses of their fallen comrades. The dust of ruined buildings blowing through the streets, leaving the few remaining defenders – now numbered in the thousands – red eyed from the harsh air and smashed by the waves of defeat.

Regular Red Army units carried out coordinated assaults on entrenched defenders but the rigidity of the formations parading in the Russian capital – to celebrate May Day for the first time in four years of the Great Patriotic War – would have little in common with their comrades still slugging it out in Berlin.