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Western Allies take Berlin???

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Steve Moss (U14938325) on Friday, 22nd July 2011

  in a couple of books i have read recently (I think Taming the Tigers, and i also seem to recall a mention in Barborossa), there is mention that British and American forces on crossing The Elbe reckon they could have been on the outskirts of Berlin failry sharpish, but never attempted it?
  
  Firstly, how likley would this have been? and secondly apart from royally upsetting Stalin, would it have made any differnce post war, if some american / britsh forces had managed to reach Berlin first?

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 22nd July 2011

  Steve
  
  I am not sure that the Western troops racing across Germany in the Spring of 1945 were in any position to take Berlin.. Really since the break out from the Normandy beaches they had not really been confronted with such a "fortress"
  
  And after British bombing had turned so much of the city to rubble, the people were most unlikely to welcome the Westerners with open arms- even as an alternative to the hated Russians..
  
  Others will know the detailed plans made at talks like Potsdam and Yalta for the actual conduct of the war better than me, but I understand that there was a clear understanding of East and West meeting in the middle..
  
  And the Soviet advance was perhaps held up by various factors including the Soviet pause that allowed the Germans to destroy the Warsaw uprising before the Soviets then launched their own attack..
  
  Moreover struggles like those for Leningrad and Stalingrad had set the pattern for a very different kind of warfare than was more normal in the West, more desperate, hand to hand and street to street.
  
  More recent wars, like some elements of the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, suggest that the kind of warfare and militarism that helped to make "The West" such a dominant force in the world may have been based upon a different concept of warfare than has been present in "older" regions. I would be interested to know whether there have ever been other equivalents of the Geneva Convention.. Certainly T.E. Lawrence was aware of being a lone Englishman in battles that were fought according to much older Arabian ideas of battle as -in that old Anglo-Saxon phrase- a "place of slaughter".
  
  The use of the A bomb to end the war in the Pacific , and the British milltary withdrawals a few years later from Palestine and India, indicate that there was a general feeling that the British had "done their bit"..
  
  And it is difficult to resist the suspicion that an element of revenge had crept into the conduct of the war.. Allowing the Soviet forces to wreak revenge on Berlin- including the massive tithe of rape which has been revealed more recently since the fall of Communism- was not a totally unwelcome choice.. And whether or not the Red Army actually wanted to die in such numbers in taking Berlin was irrelevant. It was what Stalin wanted. "There's but to do and die".
  
  Cass

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  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 22nd July 2011

  Firstly, how likley would this have been? and secondly apart from royally upsetting Stalin, would it have made any differnce post war, if some american / britsh forces had managed to reach Berlin first?Β  The taking of well fortified city of Berlin cost about 100 thousand Red Army troops in just a few days of operation. I don't think the Allies would be willing to stomach this kind of carnage, completely unnecessary at that. Those who dug in the city could not be resupplied and could have been besieged to submission, with far less casualties, including civilian casualties. And, whoever took the city did not matter with respect to its status. The status (occupation zones, etc, etc) had been agreed to at Potsdam already.

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  Posted by vesturiiis (U13688567) on Saturday, 23rd July 2011

  It does seem strange that the Allies had to take Berlin head on, I wonder if other plans of action were considered. Of course Hitler and buddies would not negotiate but they could only play cards down in the bunker for so long.
  
  Was there a hidden prize within Berlin which Stalin sought and found before the West made their appearance?

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 23rd July 2011

  vesturiiis
  
  From memory the prize was winning the competition that Stalin set before his two top Generals. Unless I am confusing with another city Stalin encouraged rivalry between them and set them the task of attacking Berlin from two different diffections.. As has been said Berlin was in the zone that the USSR was due to invade- though the post-war occupation was to be shared- including a negotiated piece for the French- purely really as a sop to battered French pride.
  
  The huge losses that the USSR was prepared to accept on the Eastern Front may perhaps owe something to the habit in the last two major European wars for the defeated country to pay reparations, meeting the costs of the war incurred by the victors.. Russia had made peace before Germany was defeated in 1918 and "missed out" then.. And after 1945 the Western Allies "moved the goalposts" and quickly decided that Germany needed to receive aid not pay reparations.
  
  
  The USSR had to content itself with goods in kind from its occupied territory. Just proved that you can not do business with Capitalists.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 24th July 2011

  From memory the prize was winning the competition that Stalin set before his two top Generals.Β 
  
  The scene is usually described as follows: Stalin had received the message from Eisenhower, in which the latter announced that he had no intention of moving his forces towards Berlin. Being Stalin, he did not believe it. He invited Zhukov and Koniev to headquarters, and in their presence drew a line on the map to divide their areas of advance. That line stopped just short of Berlin, offering both of them the possibility of capturing the city.
  
  Reportedly the "race" ended only 300 meters from Hitler's bunker, where Zhukov encountered Koniev's men, who had been fighting their way into Berlin, and personally sent them away. It had been costly: Zhukov was not a man who valued the lives of his soldiers very highly, and his brutal attempt to force the way to Berlin from his existing bridgeheads over the Oder, had resulted in enormous casualties.
  

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  Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Sunday, 24th July 2011

  I wonder what the effect of reaching Berlin first, then having to withdraw to the agreed line would have been on (particularly) congress and parliament - or on the Allied civil populations?

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• Message 8

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Monday, 25th July 2011

  At the end of WWI, some generals chose to remain on the offensive to the very last minute. Pershing managed to lose thousands of men between the signing of the armistice and the final ceasefire: Apparently this utterly pointless slaughter did not diminish his heroic reputation in the eye of the American public, though many of his officers thought differently.
  
  And 1945 was not 1918. A costly battle in the ruins of Berlin -- maybe the remaining field troops no longer wanted to fight, but the fanatics who defended the Reichstag to the last were a different story -- followed by a withdrawal, would not have impressed the public.
  
  

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