BattleTurning point
· Day 1395 of 1418
Forward to Berlin!
The Seelow Heights
- Soviet soldiers took part
- ≈ 2.5 million
- Soviet soldiers took part
- searchlights blinded the defenders
- 140
- searchlights blinded the defenders
Before dawn on 16 April 1945 the Berlin operation began. 140 powerful searchlights shone straight into the defenders’ eyes. The fighting on the Seelow Heights was very hard, but within days the troops broke into Berlin’s suburbs.
About two and a half million Soviet soldiers took part, with thousands of tanks and aircraft. The enemy had turned the Seelow Heights, steep hills above the Oder valley, into its strongest line of defence.
Berlin was defended by soldiers and, in the last days, by old men and teenagers the Nazis had thrown into battle. On 25 April the ring around the city closed.
See it on the map