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This was not “approved,” but was more of an unspoken concession. The Soviets wanted Berlin more and were prepared to do almost anything to gain it as a trophy.The Soviet army reached the Oder River on January 31, 1945, only 33 miles from Berlin. They were some three hundred miles ahead of their supply bases east of Warsaw, however, and had to stop there.The Western Allies, at the time, were cleaning up, after the Battle of the Bulge, in the forests of the Ardennes on the western borders of Germany. They were three hundred fifty miles from Berlin and still west of the Rhine. While Stalin kept insisting that the fall of Berlin was of no consequence, no one really believed him. Certainly, in the Soviet army, every soldier wanted the war and the killing to end and wanted his army to take the capital of the hated Third Reich. Soldiers were recorded as saying that if the English or Americans got close to it, they would have to send them a few artillery concentrations.Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet commander, began to organize a massive assault to take Berlin and end the war. He allocated ten weeks to rebuild the devastated road and rail networks in Eastern Germany and western Poland. A million and a half men and mountains of supplies would be accumulated. He scheduled his offensive to begin April 18th.Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in western Europe, had been carefully piling up supplies, munitions, and engineering materials all winter, even while the fighting raged in the Ardennes. As he saw it, his part of the campaign that would end the war in Europe was to destroy the German armies west of the Rhine, get across before the Germans could organize a new line of defense along the river, then meet the oncoming Soviets somewhere in Germany.Bill Simpson (US 9th Army), Walther Wenck (German 12th Army ) Georgy Zhukov (1st Belorussian Front) and Dwight Eisenhower (SHAEF)What Eisenhower needed from the Soviets in January of 1945 was a liaison program. He had given up on learning specifically what plans the Soviets were going to follow. They were nearly as secretive about them with their allies as they were with their enemies. He did need procedures to follow, recognition signals, an exchange of radio frequencies and local codes, boundaries for artillery barrages and air strikes.The Soviet command did not provide these for another two months.While Eisenhower attempted to work with the Soviets diplomatically, the Canadians, British, Poles, French, and Americans took on the task of destroying the five German armies dug in along Germany’s western frontier. This took place between February 22 and March 23, the offensives opening in echelon sequence from north to south. The 21st Army Group, invading from the Netherlands, struck the Rhine first north of the Ruhr industrial area and began preparing for a formal amphibious crossing. The American 1st Army, south of the Ruhr, reached the river and captured a bridge at Remagen on March 7. It secured and then slowly enlarged its bridgehead there against fierce but under-powered German resistance over the next three weeks. Farther south, the American 3rd and 7th Armies crushed the German forces in front of the Middle Rhine. George Patton, determined not to be held up by the river, had amphibious equipment kept forward and crossed the Rhine on March 22nd. On March 23rd Montgomery’s 21st Army Group executed their planned crossing in fine style.It began to look to everyone involved that the German army was not going to be able to organize a new defensive line on the Rhine. They had not been able to pull enough troops back across the river and had not organized enough new formations to cover the front in any strength. Eisenhower ordered his armies to keep moving.Given that Eisenhower still had no formal liaison procedure in place to deal with the Soviets, he chose to deploy his armies to cover as much ground as possible and avoid the main Soviet thrust to Berlin. Orders to that effect went out on March 28.The Canadian and British armies on the lower Rhine were directed northeast, towards Hamburg and Lubeck, to cut off Denmark from Northern Germany and the Soviets from Denmark. The American 1st and 3rd armies turned northeast to and then east towards Saxony and the Czech border. The American 7th Army and the French 1st Army were ordered to drive across southern Germany towards Munich and Vienna.The American 9th Army, under General Bill Simpson, had been assigned to General Montgomery for the last two months to strength his army group. Montgomery wanted to use it for a drive on Berlin, which he intended to capture with the British 2nd Army. Eisenhower, after making his dispositions for the final drive across Germany, informed Montgomery the 9th Army would move directly east to cut off the German forces re-arming in the Ruhr. It would then revert to American control and hold a line covering the gap between the British 2nd Army and the American 1st Army.Five days later, on April 1st, the 9th and 1st American armies met at Lipstadt, east of the Ruhr. They soon realized that they had a quarter million Germans trapped in the pocket that just formed. This included almost all the organized German troops that were supposed to hold the Americans and British in Western Germany while the German line in the East held off the Soviets.The initial lunge of the 9th Army (light blue) led by the 2nd and 5th Armored divisions (under the XIII and XIX Corps), after being ordered to break out of the Wesel Bridgehead (yellow) over the Rhine on March 28th, meeting the US 1st Army (violet) at Lipstadt.The Americans were still three hundred miles from Berlin on March 28th. However, with only scratch German forces in front of them after closing off the Ruhr Pocket on April 1st, the completely mechanized 9th Army advanced rapidly across the North German Plain.Note the 9th Army’s advance in blue, with the British army moving towards Hamburg and the American 1st Army bypassing the Ruhr to the south, then moving directly towards Saxony.The XIII and XIX Corps re-organized and attacked eastward again on April 5th. They overran scattered German units in open country and shot their way into towns behind air strikes and artillery barrages. The only major river in front of them was the Elbe, one hundred and fifty miles away. They reached it in six days. The 2nd Armored Division, after advancing 150 miles in four days, found itself on April 11th in Magdeburg, on the Elbe River and only fifty miles from Potsdam in the Berlin suburbs.When the 2nd Armored Division reached the Elbe, the only resistance it met was local militia and security units. These were strong enough to keep the Americans off the bridges until they could be demolished. One American commander determined that, as of April 12th, there were no organized German units on the autobahn between his combat command and Potsdam. He estimated he could reach Berlin in eight hours.While the Americans were reaching the Elbe, General Walther Wenck organized the German 12th Army around a half-dozen scratch units put together from training schools. This was the only force assigned to cover Berlin from the west. They amounted to a few under-strength battalions, which was only enough for some sharp counterattacks against American attempts at amphibious crossings of the river.On April 15th, Eisenhower gave the order to halt on the Elbe. Even at that late date, Berlin was held only by Volksturm and a few security units. Most of the organized German units in the region were on the Oder River, facing the Soviets. The Führerbunker lay twenty miles farther into the built-up zone from Potsdam, while the military headquarters for the entire German army lay thirty miles to the southeast of Potsdam, at Zossen.The speed of 9th Army’s advance shocked both the Germans and the Soviets. Eisenhower, however, could not justify the move. The Americans would get tangled up in bloody urban fighting, the Soviets would be infuriated, accuse the Americans of treachery, and might even open fire on the Americans to claim Berlin as their prize. In any event, 9th Army was already far into territory that would be part of the Soviet occupation zone after the German surrender.On April 15th, Eisenhower ordered 9th Army to stand down and wait along the Elbe River. Stalin wanted Berlin and he would get it.What might have happened in if the 9th Army had pressed on is open to dispute, but there weren’t enough bullets left west of Berlin to kill a hundred thousand Americans. Nor were there any armored reserves or mobile units to mount a major counterattack. Most Germans, even among the generals in the army, were hoping the Americans would get to the city first. They didn’t want to surrender to the Russians. Even among those who wanted to fight, American armor in Berlin would shatter the German chain of command and what was left of its supply network. And how were they going to convince men to keep fighting the Russian juggernaut when the capital was being taken behind them and they were defending for no purpose other than to give themselves a chance to flee to American lines?Zhukov’s offensive began two days early, on April 16th. It was brutal and bloody on an appalling scale. 80,000 Russians died taking Berlin and twice as many Germans died defending it. Stalin wanted Berlin and he got it, but at a terrible human cost.

The Soviets got to Berlin first because they wanted it more and were prepared to do almost anything to gain it as a trophy.The Soviet army reached the Oder River on January 31, 1945, only 33 miles from Berlin. They were some three hundred miles ahead of their supply bases east of Warsaw, however, and had to stop there.The Western Allies, at the time, were cleaning up, after the Battle of the Bulge, in the forests of the Ardennes on the western borders of Germany. They were three hundred fifty miles from Berlin and still west of the Rhine. While Stalin kept insisting that the fall of Berlin was of no consequence, no one really believed him. Certainly, in the Soviet army, every soldier wanted the war and the killing to end and wanted his army to take the capital of the hated Third Reich. Soldiers were recorded as saying that if the English or Americans got close to it, they would have to send them a few artillery concentrations.Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet commander, began to organize a massive assault to take Berlin and end the war. He allocated ten weeks to rebuild the devastated road and rail networks in Eastern Germany and western Poland. A million and a half men and mountains of supplies would be accumulated. He scheduled his offensive to begin April 18th.Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in western Europe, had been carefully piling up supplies, munitions, and engineering materials all winter, even while the fighting raged in the Ardennes. As he saw it, his part of the campaign that would end the war in Europe was to destroy the German armies west of the Rhine, get across before the Germans could organize a new line of defense along the river, then meet the oncoming Soviets somewhere in Germany.Bill Simpson (US 9th Army), Walther Wenck (German 12th Army ) Georgy Zhukov (1st Belorussian Front) and Dwight Eisenhower (SHAEF)What Eisenhower needed from the Soviets in January of 1945 was a liaison program. He had given up on learning specifically what plans the Soviets were going to follow. They were nearly as secretive about them with their allies as they were with their enemies. He did need procedures to follow, recognition signals, an exchange of radio frequencies and local codes, boundaries for artillery barrages and air strikes.The Soviet command did not provide these for another two months.While Eisenhower attempted to work with the Soviets diplomatically, the Canadians, British, Poles, French, and Americans took on the task of destroying the five German armies dug in along Germany’s western frontier. This took place between February 22 and March 23, the offensives opening in echelon sequence from north to south. The 21st Army Group, invading from the Netherlands, struck the Rhine first north of the Ruhr industrial area and began preparing for a formal amphibious crossing. The American 1st Army, south of the Ruhr, reached the river and captured a bridge at Remagen on March 7. It secured and then slowly enlarged its bridgehead there against fierce but under-powered German resistance over the next three weeks. Farther south, the American 3rd and 7th Armies crushed the German forces in front of the Middle Rhine. George Patton, determined not to be held up by the river, had amphibious equipment kept forward and crossed the Rhine on March 22nd. On March 23rd Montgomery’s 21st Army Group executed their planned crossing in fine style.It began to look to everyone involved that the German army was not going to be able to organize a new defensive line on the Rhine. They had not been able to pull enough troops back across the river and had not organized enough new formations to cover the front in any strength. Eisenhower ordered his armies to keep moving.Given that Eisenhower still had no formal liaison procedure in place to deal with the Soviets, he chose to deploy his armies to cover as much ground as possible and avoid the main Soviet thrust to Berlin. Orders to that effect went out on March 28.The Canadian and British armies on the lower Rhine were directed northeast, towards Hamburg and Lubeck, to cut off Denmark from Northern Germany and the Soviets from Denmark. The American 1st and 3rd armies turned northeast to and then east towards Saxony and the Czech border. The American 7th Army and the French 1st Army were ordered to drive across southern Germany towards Munich and Vienna.The American 9th Army, under General Bill Simpson, had been assigned to General Montgomery for the last two months to strength his army group. Montgomery wanted to use it for a drive on Berlin, which he intended to capture with the British 2nd Army. Eisenhower, after making his dispositions for the final drive across Germany, informed Montgomery the 9th Army would move directly east to cut off the German forces re-arming in the Ruhr. It would then revert to American control and hold a line covering the gap between the British 2nd Army and the American 1st Army.Five days later, on April 1st, the 9th and 1st American armies met at Lipstadt, east of the Ruhr. They soon realized that they had a quarter million Germans trapped in the pocket that just formed. This included almost all the organized German troops that were supposed to hold the Americans and British in Western Germany while the German line in the East held off the Soviets.The initial lunge of the 9th Army (light blue) led by the 2nd and 5th Armored divisions (under the XIII and XIX Corps), after being ordered to break out of the Wesel Bridgehead (yellow) over the Rhine on March 28th, meeting the US 1st Army (violet) at Lipstadt.The Americans were still three hundred miles from Berlin on March 28th. However, with only scratch German forces in front of them after closing off the Ruhr Pocket on April 1st, the completely mechanized 9th Army advanced rapidly across the North German Plain.Note the 9th Army’s advance in blue, with the British army moving towards Hamburg and the American 1st Army bypassing the Ruhr to the south, then moving directly towards Saxony.The XIII and XIX Corps of 9th Army re-organized and attacked eastward again on April 5th. They overran scattered German units in open country and shot their way into towns behind air strikes and artillery barrages. The only major river in front of them was the Elbe, one hundred and fifty miles away. They reached it in six days. The 2nd Armored Division, after advancing 150 miles in four days, found itself on April 11th in Magdeburg, on the Elbe River and only fifty miles from Potsdam in the Berlin suburbs.When the 2nd Armored Division reached the Elbe, the only resistance it met was local militia and security units. These were strong enough to keep the Americans off the bridges until they could be demolished. One American commander determined that, as of April 12th, there were no organized German units on the autobahn between his combat command and Potsdam. He estimated he could reach Berlin in eight hours.While the Americans were reaching the Elbe, General Walther Wenck organized the German 12th Army around a half-dozen scratch units put together from training schools. This was the only force assigned to cover Berlin from the west. They amounted to a few under-strength battalions, which was only enough for some sharp counterattacks against American attempts at amphibious crossings of the river.On April 15th, Eisenhower gave the order to halt on the Elbe. Even at that late date, Berlin was held only by Volksturm and a few security units. Most of the organized German units in the region were on the Oder River, facing the Soviets. The Führerbunker lay twenty miles farther into the built-up zone from Potsdam, while the military headquarters for the entire German army lay thirty miles to the southeast of Potsdam, at Zossen.The speed of 9th Army’s advance shocked both the Germans and the Soviets. Eisenhower, however, could not justify further advance. The Americans would get tangled up in bloody urban fighting, the Soviets would be infuriated, accuse the Americans of treachery, and might even open fire on the Americans to claim Berlin as their prize. In any event, 9th Army was already far into territory that would be part of the Soviet occupation zone after the German surrender.On April 15th, Eisenhower ordered 9th Army to stand down and wait along the Elbe River. Stalin wanted Berlin and he would get it.What might have happened in if the 9th Army had pressed on is open to dispute, but there weren’t enough bullets left west of Berlin to kill a hundred thousand Americans. Nor were there any armored reserves or mobile units to mount a major counterattack. Most Germans, even among the generals in the army, were hoping the Americans would get to the city first. They didn’t want to surrender to the Russians. Even among those who wanted to fight, American armor in Berlin would shatter the German chain of command and what was left of its supply network. And how was that chain of command going to convince men to keep fighting the Russian juggernaut while the capital was being overrun behind them and they were defending for no other purpose than to give someone else a chance to flee to American lines only a few kilometers to the west?Zhukov’s offensive began two days early, on April 16th. It was brutal and bloody on an appalling scale. 80,000 Russians died taking Berlin and twice as many Germans died defending it. Stalin wanted Berlin and he got it, but at a terrible human cost.

This was not so much an agreement as an unspoken concession.The Soviet army reached the Oder River on January 31, 1945, only 33 miles from Berlin. They were some three hundred miles ahead of their supply bases east of Warsaw, however, and had to stop there.The Western Allies, at the time, were cleaning up, after the Battle of the Bulge, in the forests of the Ardennes on the western borders of Germany. They were three hundred fifty miles from Berlin and still west of the Rhine. While Stalin kept insisting that the fall of Berlin was of no consequence, no one really believed him. Certainly, in the Soviet army, every soldier that wanted the war to end and the killing to end wanted his army to take the capital of the hated Third Reich. Soldiers were recorded as saying that if the English or Americans got close to it, they would have to send them a few artillery concentrations.Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet commander, began to organize a massive assault to take Berlin and end the war. He allocated ten weeks to rebuild the devastated road and rail networks in Eastern Germany and western Poland. A million and a half men and mountains of supplies would be accumulated. He scheduled his offensive to begin April 18th.Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in western Europe, had been carefully piling up supplies, munitions, and engineering materials all winter, even while the fighting raged in the Ardennes. As he saw it, his part of the campaign that would end the war in Europe was to destroy the German armies west of the Rhine, get across before the Germans could organize a new line of defense along the river, then meet the oncoming Soviets somewhere in Germany.Bill Simpson (US 9th Army), Walther Wenck (German 12th Army ) Georgy Zhukov (1st Belorussian Front) and Dwight Eisenhower (SHAEF)What Eisenhower needed from the Soviets in January of 1945 was a liaison program. He had given up on learning specifically what plans the Soviets were going to follow. They were nearly as secretive about them with their allies as they were with their enemies. He did need procedures to follow, recognition signals, an exchange of radio frequencies and local codes, boundaries for artillery barrages and air strikes.The Soviet command did not provide these for another two months.While Eisenhower attempted to work with the Soviets diplomatically, the Canadians, British, Poles, French, and Americans took on the task of destroying the five armies dug in along Germany’s western frontier. This took place between February 22 and March 23, the main drives opening in sequence from north to south. The 21st Army Group, invading from the Netherlands, struck the Rhine first north of the Ruhr industrial area and began preparing for a formal amphibious crossing. The American 1st Army, south of the Ruhr, reached the river and captured a bridge at Remagen on March 7. It secured and then slowly enlarged its bridgehead there against fierce but under-powered German resistance over the next three weeks. Farther south, the American 3rd and 7th Armies crushed the German forces in front of the Middle Rhine. George Patton, determined not to be held up by the river, had amphibious equipment kept forward and crossed the Rhine on March 22nd. On March 23rd Montgomery’s 21st Army Group executed their planned crossing in fine style.It began to look to everyone involved that the German army was not going to be able to organize a new defensive line on the Rhine. They had not been able to pull enough troops back across the river and had not organized enough new formations to cover the front in any strength. Eisenhower ordered all of his armies to keep moving.Given that Eisenhower still had no formal liaison procedure in place to deal with the Soviets, he chose to deploy his armies to cover as much ground as possible and avoid the main Soviet thrust to Berlin. His orders went out on March 28.The Canadian and British armies on the lower Rhine were directed northeast, towards Hamburg and Lubeck, to cut off Denmark from Northern Germany and the Soviets from Denmark. The American 1st and 3rd armies were to head directly east towards Saxony and the Czech border. The American 7th Army and the French 1st Army were ordered to drive across southern Germany towards Munich and Vienna.The American 9th Army, under General Bill Simpson, had been assigned to General Montgomery for the last two months to strength his army group. Montgomery wanted to use it for a drive on Berlin, which he intended to capture with the British 2nd Army. Eisenhower, after making his dispositions for the final drive across Germany, informed Montgomery the 9th Army would move directly east to cut off the German forces re-arming in the Ruhr. It would then revert to American control and hold a line covering the gap between the British 2nd Army and the American 1st Army.Five days later, on April 1st, the 9th and 1st American armies met at Lipstadt, east of the Ruhr. They soon realized that they had a quarter million Germans trapped in the pocket that just formed. This included almost all the organized German troops that were supposed to hold the Americans and British in Western Germany while the German line in the East held off the Soviets.The Americans were still three hundred miles from Berlin on March 28th. However, with only scratch German forces in front of them after closing off the Ruhr Pocket, the completely mechanized 9th Army advanced rapidly across the North German Plain. The 2nd Armored Division, after advancing 150 miles in four days, found itself on April 13th in Magdeburg, on the Elbe River and only fifty miles from Potsdam in the Berlin suburbs.Note the 9th Army’s advance in blue, below.The speed of 9th Army’s advance shocked both the Germans and the Soviets. One American regimental commander estimated he could be in Berlin in eight hours. The Germans hadn’t yet brought any fresh units in line to stop him. Eisenhower, however, could not justify the move. The Americans would get tangled up in bloody urban fighting, the Soviets would be infuriated, accuse the Americans of treachery, and might even open fire on the Americans to claim Berlin as their prize. In any event, 9th Army was already far into territory that would be part of the Soviet occupation zone after the German surrender.On April 15th, Eisenhower ordered 9th Army to stand down and wait along the Elbe River. Stalin wanted Berlin and he would get it.Zhukov’s offensive began two days early, on April 16th. It was brutal and bloody on an appalling scale. 80,000 Russians died taking Berlin and twice as many Germans died defending it.Addendum: How the Americans Got Within Reach of BerlinThe map below shows the initial lunge of the 9th Army (light blue) led by the 2nd and 5th Armored divisions (under the XIII and XIX Corps), after being ordered to break out of the Wesel Bridgehead (yellow) over the Rhine on March 28th.In three days they advanced fifty miles and made contact with the US 1st Army (in violet) at Lipstadt, creating the Ruhr pocket. While other American divisions took up the task of reducing the pocket, The XIII and XIX Corps re-organized and attacked eastward again on April 5th. They overran scattered German units in open country and shot their way into towns behind air strikes and artillery barrages. The only major river in front of them was the Elbe, one hundred and fifty miles away. They reached it in six days.When the American 2nd Armored Division reached the Elbe on April 11, the only resistance it met was local militia and security units. These were strong enough to keep the Americans off the bridges until they could be demolished. One American commander determined that, as of April 12th, there were no organized German units on the autobahn between his combat command and Potsdam, in the Berlin suburbs. He thought he could make it there in eight hours.Over the next three days, General Walther Wenck organized the German 12th Army around a half-dozen scratch units put together from training schools. This was the only force assigned to cover Berlin from the west. They amounted to a few under-strength battalions, which was only enough for some sharp counterattacks against American attempts at amphibious crossings of the Elbe.On April 15th, Eisenhower gave the order to halt on the Elbe. Even at that late date, Berlin was held only by Volksturm and a few security units. Most of the organized German units in the region were on the Oder River, facing the Soviets. The Führerbunker lay twenty miles farther into the built-up zone from Potsdam, while the military headquarters for the entire German army lay thirty miles to the southeast of Potsdam, at Zossen.What might have happened in if the 9th Army had pressed on is open to dispute, but there weren’t enough bullets left west of Berlin to kill a hundred thousand Americans. Nor were there any armored reserves or mobile units to mount a major counterattack. Most Germans, even among the generals in the army, were hoping the Americans would get to the city first. They didn’t want to surrender to the Russians. Even among those who wanted to fight, American armor in Berlin would shatter the German chain of command and what was left of its supply network. And how were they going to convince men to keep fighting the Russian juggernaut when the capital was being taken behind them and they were defending for no purpose other than to give themselves a chance to flee to American lines?