50 Fun Facts About Battle of Berlin

What was scratched out of the famous photo of a Soviet flag over Berlin because it hinted at looting?

A second wristwatch on a sergeant's arm was removed with a needle before the picture was published. It was later claimed that the extra one was really a wrist compass.

Soviet artillery began shelling central Berlin on 20 April 1945, a date that marked which occasion for Adolf Hitler?

His 56th birthday drew Hitler above ground for the last time, to pin Iron Crosses on boy soldiers in a ruined garden. The Soviet guns then fired until the city surrendered.

The Soviet flag in the famous 1945 Berlin rooftop photograph was brought by the photographer and sewn from what?

Three tablecloths were stitched together by the photographer's uncle for this very purpose, so the best-known image of the fighting was planned before he even reached the city.

Soviet soldiers raising a red flag in May 1945 were famously photographed on the roof of which Berlin building?

The Reichstag had stood gutted since its 1933 fire, yet the Soviets attached huge symbolic value to capturing the old parliament. The picture restaged a flag raising from two days earlier.

Gold that Heinrich Schliemann dug from which legendary city was handed to the Soviets at a Berlin flak tower in 1945?

Troy's gold, known as Priam's Treasure, vanished to Moscow. Officials there denied knowing its fate for decades, until the Pushkin Museum admitted in 1994 that it held the hoard.

Knautschke, one of the few Berlin Zoo animals to survive the fighting of 1945, was what kind of animal?

A hippo bull, Knautschke was saved from the gunfire in his animal house. A count that May found only 91 of the zoo's 3,715 animals still alive.

Which truck-mounted Soviet rocket launcher, fired in thousands at Berlin, did German troops nickname 'Stalin's Organ'?

Katyusha launchers took their Soviet name from a wartime song about a girl longing for her absent soldier. Germans heard a pipe organ in the howl of the rockets.

Whom did Adolf Hitler marry in a brief civil ceremony in the Führerbunker, less than two days before his death?

Eva Braun had been at his side for years, yet much of the German public learned of her only after both were dead. She was his wife for less than 40 hours.

Which Allied supreme commander chose not to race the Soviets to Berlin, even as Winston Churchill urged him on?

Dwight Eisenhower saw no reason to lose men taking a city that would sit inside the Soviet sphere after the war, so he halted his armies short of it and sent others south.

News of which Allied leader's death on 12 April 1945 briefly raised hopes of rescue inside Adolf Hitler's bunker?

Roosevelt's death convinced some in the bunker that the alliance against Germany would now split apart. It held, and Soviet shells were falling on the city center eight days later.

Which Soviet marshal led the 1st Belorussian Front into Berlin and then accepted Germany's final surrender there?

Georgy Zhukov had already fought at Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. In 1946 Stalin sent the victor to command the Odessa district, a post far from the capital and short of troops.

The Führerbunker, Adolf Hitler's last headquarters, lay about 8.5 meters beneath the garden of which Berlin building?

The Reich Chancellery garden is also where the bodies of Hitler and his new wife were cremated on his instructions. The bunker's emergency exit later lay under a car park.

American and Soviet troops first linked up on 25 April 1945 on which German river, cutting Germany in two?

The Elbe meeting near Torgau came as Soviet armies were closing their ring around the capital. The famous handshake photograph on the wrecked bridge was taken a day later.

Under Adolf Hitler's will, who became Chancellor of Germany on 30 April 1945 and held the post for one day?

Joseph Goebbels carried out a single official act as Chancellor: he sent a general under a white flag to ask the Soviets for a ceasefire. They demanded unconditional surrender instead.

Which admiral, who had led Germany's U-boat arm, was named head of state in Adolf Hitler's last will?

Karl Dönitz ran a short-lived government from Flensburg, a town near the Danish border, until the Allies dissolved his cabinet on 23 May.

Adolf Hitler's March 1945 order to destroy Germany's own infrastructure is nicknamed after which Roman emperor?

Nero, in legend, set Rome ablaze. Hitler's order was meant to leave the Allies only ruins, but armaments minister Albert Speer deliberately failed to carry it out.

Which 2004 German film stars Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler during his final days in besieged Berlin?

Downfall was built from eyewitness accounts and survivors' memoirs. Its scene of Hitler raging at his generals later spread across the internet in countless parody videos.

Which country's Flag Day, 2 May, recalls its soldiers hoisting their flag on Berlin's Victory Column in 1945?

Poland sent its 1st Army into the offensive nearly 80,000 strong, and its infantry was called into the street fighting when Soviet commanders asked for reinforcements on foot.

Two examples of which famous Soviet medium tank flank the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin's Tiergarten?

T-34 tanks guard a monument that ended up in the British sector of the divided city, so Soviet honor guards were sent across from East Berlin to stand watch there.

What was the name of Adolf Hitler's German Shepherd, on which a cyanide capsule was tested in the Führerbunker?

Blondi was a gift from Martin Bormann and slept in Hitler's bed in the bunker. He ordered the test because he doubted the capsules, which had come to him through the SS.

Which Nazi leader, who lacked any real military knowledge, commanded Army Group Vistula east of Berlin until March 1945?

Heinrich Himmler's new army group began without proper maps or a signals unit, its sole link to the outside being his private telephone. A defensive specialist replaced him on 20 March.

Which devices, meant to blind German defenders in April 1945, instead silhouetted the attacking Soviet infantry?

Searchlights, 143 of them, were switched on as the offensive opened, but the early morning mist diffused the beams and outlined the advancing Red Army for German gunners.

The giant bronze Soviet soldier at the war memorial in Berlin's Treptower Park holds a sword and what else?

A German child rests on the soldier's arm, recalling a Soviet sergeant said to have rescued a three-year-old girl under machine-gun fire. The statue stands over a broken swastika.

Soviet commanders pushed to raise their flag over central Berlin in time for which holiday parade in Moscow?

May Day, the workers' holiday on 1 May, set the deadline. Soldiers reached the roof of their target as it approached, while fighting still went on inside the building beneath them.

A large portrait of which Prussian king, one of Adolf Hitler's heroes, hung on a wall in the Führerbunker?

Frederick the Great had been rescued in 1762 when Russia's empress died and her country changed sides, the kind of last-minute reversal the bunker's occupants kept hoping for.

The staged 1945 photo of a Soviet flag over Berlin was inspired by a famous flag raising on which Pacific island?

Iwo Jima's flag raising had been photographed by Joe Rosenthal only weeks earlier. After seeing it, the Soviet photographer had a flag made and carried it to Germany himself.

At which conference, held in the summer after Berlin fell, did the three leading Allies plan the postwar peace?

Potsdam lay in the Soviet occupation zone, and the talks ran from 17 July to 2 August. Britain changed prime ministers midway through, when an election result arrived during the conference.

What was the name of the Nazi militia of males aged 16 to 60 that helped defend Berlin in 1945?

Volkssturm means 'people's storm'. About 40,000 of its elderly members stood in the capital's defense, some of them veterans of the First World War.

Which ridge above the Oder, nicknamed the 'Gates of Berlin', was the last major defensive line before the city?

The Seelow Heights overlooked a floodplain that German engineers turned into a swamp by releasing water from a reservoir. Breaking through took Soviet forces four days.

Which Soviet general, famed for holding Stalingrad with the 62nd Army, took the surrender of Berlin's garrison?

Vasily Chuikov was told of Hitler's death in the early hours of 1 May, when a German general came to him to negotiate. The talks failed because he insisted on unconditional surrender.

Which Berlin airport, later the center of the 1948–49 airlift, did Soviet troops storm in late April 1945?

Tempelhof handled civil flights until 24 April 1945, days before it fell. Soviet soldiers then combed its old and new terminals for treasures and documents, opening every room.

Which Soviet marshal, whose 1st Ukrainian Front hit Berlin from the south, was the first Allied commander into Prague?

Ivan Konev's front was pitted against a rival marshal's armies in a race for the German capital. In 1961 he commanded Soviet forces in East Germany as the Berlin Wall went up.

Which German field marshal, chief of the armed forces high command, signed the final surrender in Berlin on 8 May 1945?

Wilhelm Keitel signed a second surrender because Stalin took the first, signed a day earlier in the west, as an affront and wanted the ceremony repeated in the conquered capital.

Waffen-SS volunteers from which country were among the last defenders of central Berlin in 1945?

France supplied the only reinforcements that actually reached the inner city, a small contingent of SS volunteers from the Charlemagne unit. They were among the last Axis troops to surrender.

Which famous German test pilot flew into besieged Berlin on 26 April 1945, landing beside the Brandenburg Gate?

Hanna Reitsch reached over her passenger, a Luftwaffe general whose foot had just been hit by a bullet, and landed their light Storch plane on an improvised airstrip in the park.

Which single-shot German anti-tank weapon, fired from Berlin's cellar windows, ambushed Soviet tanks in the streets?

Panzerfaust means 'tank fist'. Its tube was thrown away after one shot, and Soviet assault groups used abandoned ones to blast holes through the walls between buildings.

Which fast RAF bomber raided Berlin for 36 nights in a row, ending just before Soviet troops entered the city?

Mosquito bombers flew the last of those raids on the night of 20/21 April 1945. Built mostly of wood, the type was nicknamed the 'Wooden Wonder'.

Besides Adolf Hitler himself, which secret German weapons project did the Soviets hope to seize in Berlin in 1945?

The nuclear program had already slipped away. Unknown to Moscow, most of its uranium and scientists had been evacuated to a small town in southwestern Germany.

Meliton Kantaria, credited with raising the Victory Banner in Berlin, came from which Soviet republic?

Georgia's Kantaria, a countryman of Stalin, was paired in the official story with a Russian sergeant as the two hand-picked flag raisers. Other accounts credit different soldiers with planting the first flag.

Which artificial hill in Berlin, later home to a US Cold War listening station, was built from the city's war rubble?

Teufelsberg, the 'Devil's Hill', buries an unfinished Nazi military college beneath the debris of West Berlin's ruined districts.

Which part of Adolf Hitler's burned remains did Soviet investigators match to his records in May 1945?

His teeth, on part of a jawbone, were identified by staff who had worked for his dentist. They remain the only part of the body known to have been found.

At the June 1945 Moscow Victory Parade, captured German standards were thrown down beside which Red Square landmark?

Lenin's Mausoleum doubled as the reviewing stand, with Stalin watching from the top. One banner tossed down at its foot had belonged to Hitler's personal bodyguard unit.

Which city hosted Germany's first surrender signing on 7 May 1945, a day before the repeat ceremony in Berlin?

Reims housed the Western Allies' headquarters in a red brick schoolhouse, where the document was signed at 02:41 in the morning. The building is now the Surrender Museum.

Which Prussian military theorist's name was the code word that set Berlin's 1945 defense plan in motion?

Carl von Clausewitz lent his name to the order that made the capital a front-line city: military offices evacuated, martial law imposed, and a pledge to fight to the last bullet.

Which German general did Hitler order shot for retreating, then appoint commander of Berlin's defense a day later?

Helmuth Weidling went to the Führerbunker to clear up the misunderstanding and left with a hopeless command. He surrendered the city nine days later and died in Soviet custody in 1955.

Which general, the German army's youngest of his rank, was ordered to turn his 12th Army around and relieve Berlin?

Walther Wenck's attack stalled at a lake near Potsdam, short of the capital. He then led his army, survivors of the Ninth Army and many civilian refugees across to American lines.

Which SS general's failure to launch an ordered attack north of Berlin sent Hitler into a tearful rage on 22 April 1945?

Felix Steiner explained that he did not have the divisions for the pincer attack. Realizing it would never come, Hitler declared the war lost and said he would stay in the city to the end.

At which village southeast of Berlin did the encircled German Ninth Army try to break out through pine forests?

Halbe's cemetery holds nearly 30,000 Germans buried after the breakout. About 25,000 soldiers and several thousand civilians got through, and remains are still found every year.

In which Berlin suburb, later seat of the Soviet military administration, was Germany's final surrender signed in 1945?

Karlshorst's ceremony ran so late on 8 May that it was already 9 May in Moscow, which is why Russia marks Victory Day a day after most of Europe marks VE Day.

Which Wehrmacht defensive expert led Army Group Vistula until dismissed for refusing a last-ditch attack toward Berlin?

Gotthard Heinrici had defied such orders before: in 1943 he refused to burn Smolensk during a retreat and was temporarily dismissed. He survived the war and surrendered to British forces.