The capital of Germany, Berlin had a powerful political appeal as a target and objective in the final phases of the war in Europe. While it was certainly a major Germany city, it was in many ways throughout the war no longer the functioning capital, since Adolf Hitler spent most of his time at Berchtesgaden and at various field headquarters. The Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not consider Berlin a key military objective and made the decision to allow the city to fall to the Soviet Red Army while the forces of the western Allies turned south into Bavaria. (Eisenhower's decision was also motivated by his understanding of the diplomatic situation; at the Yalta Conference, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had promised Joseph Stalin that, all other things being equal, Berlin would be a Red Army objective.) Yet it is undeniably true that Berlin was a moral and symbolic prize of enormous importance, both to the Nazi regime and the victorious Allies. It is also true that Hitler had returned to Berlin from his western front headquarters on January 15, 1945, only to find himself held hostage by relentless bombing raids, which drove him into his massively fortified bunker beneath the Reich chancellery building. Thus, an advance on Berlin was an advance directly against Adolf Hitler.

The First Belorussian Front ("front" was the Soviet equivalent of an Allied "army group"), under Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and the First Ukrainian Front, under Marshal Ivan Konev, advanced on the Oder River, about 35 miles east of Berlin early in February 1945. Zhukov reached Kustrin, on the Oder, first, and he favored an immediate advance against Berlin. Stalin ordered a delay, however, preferring to attack with overwhelming numbers. This was a mistake, because at the time, the forces defending this approach to Berlin were badly depleted, nothing more than the remnants of the Third Panzer Army and the Ninth Army now cobbled together in Army Group Vistula.

The delay, however, was hardly fatal to the Soviet offensive since Germany could no longer muster a sufficient force to exploit it. Moreover, Konev began an advance across the Oder to the Neisse River, targeting the Fourth Panzer Army positions there and creating a new threat to Berlin, this one from the south. That the German situation was indeed hopeless did not, however, deter Hitler from ordering that Berlin would be defended "to the last man and the last shot." He deployed troops, including at this point overaged men and underaged boys, in four concentric rings around the city. The first was about 20 miles from central Berlin; the second some 10 miles from the center; the third positioned along the S-Bahn, the city's suburban rail system; and the fourth, called the Z-ring (Z for Zitadelle, Citadel), within the center of the city itself, surrounding the government buildings and the Fuherbunker beneath the chancellery.

What finally moved Stalin to order the Zhukov-Konev advance renewed was not the German situation, but the speed with which the Americans and British were advancing from the west. On March 31, Stalin informed Zhukov that he would have the honor of taking Berlin, and he accordingly ordered him to regroup and immediately resume his advance. His advance would be in concert with Konev, who would protect and support Zhukov's left flank as well as advance against Dresden. A third Red Army group, the Second Belorussian Front, under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, was sent to the lower Oder River, where it would support Zhukov's right flank. Taken together, these three army groups mustered 2.5 million men, 6,250 tanks and other armored vehicles, and 7,500 aircraft, most of them attack planes well suited for close air support. . .

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