Battle for Berlin (documentary)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Battle for Berlin |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1973 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Franz Baake , Jost von Morr |
| production | Bengt von zur Mühlen |
| music | Wolfgang de Gelmini |
| cut | Evelyn Mundin |
The Battle of Berlin is a documentary film from 1973 that documents the Battle of Berlin and the time immediately thereafter.
content
The film begins with the air raid on Berlin on December 31, 1944, a medium-strength attack. Adolf Hitler claimed over the radio that the National Socialist state would rebuild the cities in a few years. Afterwards, pictures of the destroyed Berlin are shown and the everyday life of the war in Berlin is described in order to go into detail on the advance of the Allies on Berlin.
The failed Ardennes offensive delayed the western advance by about a month, which was possibly a decisive factor for Berlin's later fate. In mid-January, the Soviet troops broke through the weakened eastern front and by the beginning of February had a bridgehead on the Oder near Küstrin , sixty kilometers from Berlin. The Soviet troops first dig in on the Oder. In mid-March, Hitler visits the Eastern Front for the last time, after which he stayed in his Berlin bunker until the end . The Americans and British have been invading Germany since the end of March. In addition to Berlin, the western troops' destinations were Hamburg, Saxony and southern Germany. On April 12th, US troops crossed the Elbe south of Dessau and formed a bridgehead near Barby ( Saxony-Anhalt ). An advance plan for the 9th US Army on Berlin, which had already been worked out , was not implemented afterwards, as General Eisenhower considered Berlin to be unimportant and he feared too great losses in a battle for the German capital. Instead, the US troops waited for the Soviet troops to arrive. Nevertheless, Berlin remained an air raid target for American and British bombers. From January 1 to April 20, in 110 days, there were 123 air raids on Berlin. In the past few weeks, the people of Berlin sought shelter in the bunkers for days and nights. Numerous Berlin apartments as well as churches and hospitals were destroyed. 50,000 Berliners fell victim to the air war. At that time there were also Jews in hiding and politically persecuted people living in Berlin who were afraid of their discovery and murder. On April 18, thirty political prisoners were executed in Plötzensee.
On the Oder, the Soviet army completed the last deployment for the battle for Berlin. The last briefing before the attack over the Oder took place on April 15. The deployment orders for the coming night were then issued. The balance of power between the Soviet and German units was ten to one. On the German side, only 250,000 people were available to defend Berlin. The last generation of Wehrmacht recruits had previously been drafted early. The so-called Volkssturm was set up and armed with bazookas . The first Belarusian army group under Marshal Zhukov and the first Ukrainian army group Marshal Konev began the advance on Berlin. Five days after the start of the attack, on April 21st, Schukov's and Konev's army groups were in the Berlin suburbs of Bernau , Werneuchen , Strausberg , Buckow (in Märkische Schweiz ), Müncheberg and Erkner . Meanwhile, the Clausewitz case was issued in Berlin . Berlin became a front city. The defense plan for Berlin provided for an outer restricted zone, which at the said time had long been overrun to a large extent. An outer defensive zone that encompassed the actual urban area, the borders of which were waterways, roads and railroad embankments. The government district, in the center of the city, was called the citadel , although the character of a fortress was completely absent.
One day after Hitler's birthday , on April 20th, the immediate attack on the city, in which 2.5 million people lived. Not even 100,000 men, of whom only about half were regular soldiers, were supposed to defend the said urban area against 1.5 million Red Army soldiers . Large parts of Berlin were already occupied on April 25th, namely Tegel , Reinickendorf , Wittenau , Weißensee , Hohenschönhausen , the area north and east of the Schlesisches Bahnhof , Treptow , Adlershof , Rudow , Mariendorf , Britz , Lankwitz , Lichterfelde and Zehlendorf . Shortly afterwards , the ring around the city near Ketzin , northwest of Potsdam , was closed by the Soviet units. Berlin was surrounded. The Reichsführer SS and chief of the German police , Heinrich Himmler , who urged the German women at this time to hit stubborn cowards to the front with the rag, managed to escape from the front city of Berlin. On April 27, Spandau , Blankenfelde , Siemensstadt , the Görlitz train station , Neukölln , Tempelhof with the Berlin-Tempelhof airport , the Botanical Garden , Dahlem were occupied. On April 28th the occupation of the west and north of Charlottenburg followed up to Bismarckstrasse , the western part of Moabit , the eastern part of Schöneberg , Friedenau and Grunewald . The tidying up begins in the occupied streets. Soviet soldiers distribute food. At the same time, there are some rape by Soviet soldiers . On April 29, the Moabit train station , the Anhalter Bahnhof , the Hohenzollerndamm S-Bahn station and the Halensee S-Bahn station were taken by Soviet soldiers. There was obviously also heavy fighting in Wilmersdorf . The advance of the Soviet troops slowed, the soldiers did not want to be shot so shortly before the end of the war. This was followed by urban warfare in the city center . On April 30, the day Hitler committed suicide, entire parts of Wilmersdorf , the Westkreuz S-Bahn station and two hundred blocks in the center were occupied. At the same time the Reichstag was captured. The winners later re- enact the storming of the Reichstag for the film cameras ; the real storming at night was not filmed. On May 1, the Soviet soldiers celebrated the May Day , which is why they fought only "incidentally". A daily order from Stalin was read to the Soviet soldiers, who soon after began to celebrate and dance in the streets. On the same day General Krebs negotiated unsuccessfully on behalf of Joseph Goebbels regarding a ceasefire. Goebbels and Krebs finally committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery bunker. But after that the shooting continued. On the night of May 2, the combat commandant of Berlin, General Helmut Weidling , capitulated . The main actors are dead or have fled. But Himmler also died soon after his escape. When the British tracked him down in northern Germany, he took his own life with poison. German units in the east of the country were still trying to retreat across the Elbe into the areas controlled by the Western Allies, which is why the Soviet army had to fight until the Wehrmacht surrendered unconditionally . The unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht took place on May 8th in Reims , which ended the war in Europe. On May 9, at the request of the Soviet side, the surrender of the Wehrmacht was repeated in Berlin-Karlshorst .
For two months the Soviets were the sole masters of Berlin. Slowly something like that began again in everyday life in Berlin . Berlin rubble women began to clear away the rubble, because most of the men were not back yet. On May 14th the first subway ran again. On May 16, a tram ran again for the first time. A stream of well over a million refugees from the east sets in, because Berlin was on the traffic route westwards. These refugees were not allowed to stay, they did get something to eat in Berlin, but then had to move on within twenty-four hours. Soon afterwards Berlin was placed under a four-power administration. The Western powers, US soldiers, British and French soldiers entered Berlin. Sixty percent of the area of Berlin, with almost two thirds of the population, was occupied by the Western powers. The Potsdam Conference began in July . On September 7th, a joint parade of the four allies took place on the occasion of the victory over Japan in Berlin. The Soviet Memorial in Berlin's Tiergarten was inaugurated on November 11th . Tensions between the Western powers and the Soviet Union increased steadily after 1945. Shortly before Christmas 1945, the Americans had considered evacuating the entire population of their Berlin sector to West Germany, as the situation in Berlin seemed hopeless to them. The plan was dropped, the Western Allies remained, contrary to what the Soviet Union had hoped, present in Berlin.
background
Material was obtained from numerous US, British and German archives for the production of the Chronos Media documentary . Irmgard von zur Mühlen and Hans J. Reichhardt assisted in the production . The 1973 film with the English distribution title "Battle of Berlin" was nominated for the Best Documentary Film at the 1974 Academy Awards , but did not win. It was later released on VHS and DVD .
Web links
- Battle of Berlin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ In some cases, the FSK assessment of "zero" years is shown on websites. In the context of VHS and DVD publication, however, the plausible FSK marking of twelve years can be found on corresponding sales platforms. (See, for example, Moviepilot. Battle of Berlin , accessed on: December 25, 2018).
- ↑ Shortly before, in 1969, the five-part film Liberation , which was made as a co-production between the Soviet Union , the GDR , Poland and Italy , had already been released. This film is not to be confused with the fourth part of this Soviet film epic about the Second World War, with the title “Battle for Berlin”. See Die Zeit : cenotaph made of celluloid , from: February 23, 1973; accessed on: December 25, 2018.
- ↑ Moviepilot. Battle of Berlin , accessed on: December 25, 2018.