It was only after his dismal battlefield performance led to his swift dismissal and demotion in 1941 that the situation began to improve. Sheer numbers of men and machines were the decisive factor. Soviet tank crews parade in Moscow after the victory. His near-total ignorance of weapons technology and his tendency to condemn military innovations as вЂbourgeois sabotageвЂ™ contributed to Soviet humiliation in the Winter War against Finland and the catastrophic defeats during Barbarossa in 1941/1942. The Red ArmyвЂ™s ambitious modernisation programme of the 1930s had been crippled by StalinвЂ™s purges, which had led to the rise of incompetent, but politically вЂsafeвЂ™ senior officers such as Marshal Grigory Kulik, who was appointed Head of the Main Artillery Directorate, with responsibility for weapons-systems research and development in 1937. The Luftwaffe, which had always been primarily a tactical air force, was also re-equipping with some of the worldвЂ™s most-advanced aircraft, but was just as badly crippled by the fuel crisis caused by Allied bombing of synthetic fuel plants and the Soviet conquest of the Romanian oilfields. The thinly armoured light and medium Panzers of 1939 had evolved into a vast range of powerfully armed AFVs, whose potential could never be fully exploited due to ever-worsening fuel shortages. In 1939, the German infantry went to war with beautifully made, expensively produced machine-guns and bolt-action rifles, supported by a small range of anti-tank weapons, infantry guns, and mortars.Д«y 1945, it fought with increasing numbers of assault rifles, Panzerschrecks and Panzer-fausts, and was field-testing shoulder-fired AA rockets. вЂQuantity has a quality all its ownвЂ™ Josef StalinД«y 1945, both German and Soviet forces had been transformed under the pressures of total war. In his second, he describes the battle itself, both on the Seelow Heights and in the streets of city, drawing out the key features of this apocalyptic last stand of the Third Reich. In his first article, he details the massive imbalance in force, but lays stress on notable German advantages in equipment, experience, and tactics. In our special this time, David Porter analyses this extraordinary battle. It arose from the dictatorвЂ™s absolute power and his equally absolute refusal to contemplate negotiation and surrender. The Battle of Berlin was an act of military madness by a deranged regime. Instead, Hitler dragged the whole of Germany into the abyss of his own defeat. But the process of Gleichschaltung вЂ“ вЂstreamliningвЂ™ or вЂcoordinationвЂ™ вЂ“ since 1933 had created a Nazi-dominated state backed by a ferocious police terror that had effectively disempowered those traditional elites. In 1918, their forebears had negotiated an armistice and accepted a victorвЂ™s peace, in order to save Germany both from invasion, conquest, and possible dismemberment, and to prevent socialist revolution. The traditional German elites вЂ“ political, corporate, and military вЂ“ knew the war was lost long before the end. The Resistance was a major factor in the military equation, pinning down German troops and undermining the Third ReichвЂ™s mobilisation of resources.

What weakened the Nazis further was their bestial behaviour in the countries they occupied. The number of German divisions deployed in North Africa and then Italy pales in comparison with the number on the Eastern Front in 1943.

Certainly, the US commitment was relatively modest until the campaign in north-west Europe during the last year of the war. It seems likely that the Soviet Union could eventually have defeated Nazi Germany on its own.

It has since become one of the most recognisable images of the taking of Berlin. A propaganda image depicting Soviet soldiers raising the Red Flag on the Reichstag. The reason was simple enough: the overwhelming industrial superiority of the Allied alliance that had been conjured into being by HitlerвЂ™s aggression. It was 1945, and the Germans had lost the war by the winter of 1942/1943 вЂ“ if not already by the winter of 1941/1942.Д¬ertainly, once HitlerвЂ™s summer/autumn offensive of 1942 had been defeated at Stalingrad, the history of the Second World War in Europe, on all fronts, was essentially one of dogged defence, step-by-step retreat, and slow contraction of the Nazi empire. The Battle of Berlin has few historic parallels.

German tank buster plane