From the 20th of April 1945, the Battle of Berlin raged.

That day marking the first arrival of Soviet forces on the edge of the city in the eastern suburbs.

It was ironically also Hitler’s 56th birthday.

10 days later on the 30th of April, Hitler died in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellory Garden.

And 2 days after that, the Germans surrendered Berlin to Stalin’s forces.

The battle generated several iconic images of World War II.

None more so than this image of a Soviet soldier raising the red flag above the Reichtag building where an horrendous battle had occurred over several days before the Red Army gained control of the building from the SS.

The photo is the Eastern Front equivalent of that most famous of flag raising photographs of US Marines at top Mount Surabbachi on Uima in the Pacific.

Another iconic image from the battle of Berlin was this one.

An abandoned Tiger 1 tank 100 meters in front of the battered Brandenborg gate near the Reichag.

The Tiger epitomizing the power of German armaments lies silent and wrecked before one of the greatest monuments to the German military itself.

A wreck.

It summed up the Soviet victory very well.

Propaganda aside, the story of how a Tiger tank ended up here is fascinating and forms part of the story of the final battle for the government quarter of Berlin, the last stand of the thousand-year Reich.

The Battle of Berlin developed as a result of the failure of Germany’s last defensive position east of the city, the Saleo Heights, about 100 km to the east.

The exhausted and often outnumbered German forces fought desperately to hold the heights against a massive Soviet offensive that opened on the 16th of April 1945.

By the 19th, despite inflicting enormous casualties on the Red Army, the Soviets broke through and poured out onto the open ground before Berlin.

What German forces that remain fell back on the city and its three defense rings, the Soviets close behind.

One of those units was an ad hoc formation called the Munchag Panza Division.

It had been formed on the 25th of February 1945 by re-rolling the training and tank demonstration units at the Kumdorf testing grounds.

Initially as a panza abtailong cobbled together from repaired tanks.

Initially it had four Tiger 2s or King Tigers, one Tiger 1 and one Yagtigga.

On the 14th of March, the unit was expanded, absorbing 11 Panza fors, a panther, and some more Tigers.

It fought in the battle of the Zo Heights until pulled out on the 17th of April and withdrawn to Berlin.

Its remaining heavy armor was vital for the prolonged defense of the city center.

By the 24th of April, the Muncherberg was fighting in the northeast sector of the city and in concert with the 11th SS Panza Grenadier Division Nordland launched a counterattack on the 26th of April to drive back Soviet spearheads at Templehof airport and Noon.

10 tanks took part, but the counterattack failed.

Following this, Munchberg fell back to defense sector zed.

Zed standing for Citadela or Citadel.

This was the central government district full of huge ministry buildings and monuments.

Thousands of SS as well as army, navy, and air force troops and vulkerm home guards and Hitler youths fought to hold this area and ultimately to protect Hitler in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellory Garden.

The citadel was a very tough nut to crack.

For as well as the huge buildings like the Reichtag, there were huge flack towers mounting large caliber guns that allowed the Germans to fire on Soviet tanks as they advanced.

Munchag and its remaining handful of functioning heavy tanks was used to bolster the defenses of the tear garden, a large central Berlin park where the Germans had set up an emergency landing strip on Charlotte and Borg shi which incorporated some prefabricated workshops hidden nearby.

The control tower was the repurposed victory column, one of Berlin’s most famous monuments.

I recently climbed the huge number of steps to the top from where Lufafa air traffic controllers in 1945 armed with a radio directed the flights coming and going from this what would be last air base in Berlin.

The height also gives some idea of the views from the top of a flack tower.

And it’s easy to see how the guns of the now demolished zoo flack tower nearby would have dominated the entire area for miles around.

Red army forces fought across the Maltka Bridge over the Spray River to assault first the Ministry of the Interior, which they called Himmler’s house, a massive edifice, and the adjacent diplomatic quarter.

then launched head-on attacks against the Reichtag across Kernik’s plat.

The Reichtag defenses included an artificial water obstacle blocking the square in front created by flooding an incomplete Yuban underground railway tunnel cutting plus anti-tank ditches, infantry trenches, 88 mm flat guns, and then the loophole firing positions in the Reich target itself and on its roof.

Supporting fire also came from the Zoo Flack tower from behind.

A Muncherberg Tiger 1 numbered 323 was positioned beside the Reich tag, covering the top end of the tear garden in front of the Brandenburg gate.

Undoubtedly low on fuel, the tank’s job was to act as a sort of block house, taking on any Soviet tanks that approached the sector.

A second tiger one was probably situated close to the zoo flack tower at the other end of the shellotenborg shall.

One obvious point to make looking at the Soviet photographs is the position of Tiger 323 after the end of the war.

It was probably in a slightly different location to the location it ended up being photographed in.

I would say actually sitting in the road in the Soviet photographs.

The tank’s gun is facing rearwards as if ready for loading aboard a tank transporter or for transport anyway, and the vehicle sits among lynen trees, which would have impeded the traverse of the Tiger’s long gun barrel.

I suspect after the battle ended, Soviet engineers dragged the tank off the road to remove an obstruction to military traffic, hence how it looks in these photographs taken shortly afterwards.

Ganala Mayayor Va Mumat commanding the Munchberg Panza division established his command post in the enormous zoo flack tower.

This armored vehicle, sometimes identified as a stoug three or four assault gun, was actually most likely a Munchberg armored ammunition carrier or Munit 4 based on the Panza 4 tank and could very well have been hauling more ammunition the 2 km to Tiger 323 from stores at the Flack tower when it met its end near the victory column.

Tiger 323 fought until the 1st of May 1945 when it was destroyed by its crew and abandoned probably either due to battle damage or lack of ammunition.

It is recorded that only one of the five crew members survived the battle of Berlin.

The Reich’s target finally fell on the 2nd of May.

Though the Soviets had initially raised their red flag at top the building on the 30th of April, fighting continued inside room to room, floor to floor for several days until on the 2nd of May, the fighting finally ended and a second photograph was taken.

This famous image from the top of another red banner being planted.

Tiger 323 remained in position in the Tar Garden for a while after the German surrender on the 2nd of May, becoming a popular place for Red Army soldiers to have their photograph taken.

Though it is often described as the last Tiger tank to fall in Berlin, that honor actually went to a Tiger 2 turret number 314 of the 503rd SS Heavy Panza Battalion that made an extraordinary last stand outside Potama Railway Station.

I’ve covered this in a separate video link in the end screen.

This beast was credited with knocking out 39 Soviet tanks and assault guns and was ironically itself knocked out when it tried to move and ran over a German mine.

This happened several hours after Tiger 323 had been destroyed at the Brandenborg Gate.

In this photograph of 323, the Soviets have wound the turret back around, and it appears a truck has been driven right up to the Tiger for some reason.

The tank’s bow machine gun has been removed.

Perhaps the Soviets were stripping it of ordinance and other movable items before it was hauled away.

By the time US and British forces arrived in Berlin in July 1945, Tiger 323 was apparently gone.

As I can find no photographs of British and American soldiers clambering onto the tank for photographs, hauled away to a central collecting point, Tiger 323 was eventually stripped and then scrapped by the Soviets.

But if you’re interested today, you can stand at the exact point where Tiger 323 was seen destroyed.

Even the trees are exactly the same.

None of the knocked out German tanks were preserved by the Soviets in museums, but there are some tanks involved in the Battle for Berlin that are preserved very close by to where Tiger 323 was destroyed.

This pair of Soviet T3476s preserved today at the Soviet monument to their war dead in central Berlin located in the tear garden.

Behind the memorial is a cemetery containing about 2 and a half thousand Soviet dead from the battle of Berlin.

Just a small portion of the 80,000 or so who fell trying to take the city.

Check out my video about the construction of this memorial.

link in the end screen.

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