The Battle for Berlin in World War Two

Page 7 of 8

• 1. Germany 1945
• 2. Beevor's research
• 3. Stalin and his allies
• 4. Battle of Halbe
• 5. Russians in Berlin
• 6. Fall of the capital
• 7. Nuclear legacy
• 8. Find out more
• Print entire article

Nuclear legacy

The document shows that Stalin was desperate to get his hands on the German nuclear research centre, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the southwest of Berlin - before the Americans got there. The Soviets knew through their spies of the American atomic bomb programme. Stalin's own nuclear programme, Operation Borodino, was lagging behind and Soviet scientists wanted to find out exactly what the Germans had come up with during the war.

As it turned out, the special NKVD troops despatched to secure the German institute discovered three tons of uranium oxide, a material they were short of at the time. 'So the Soviets achieved their objective,' says Beevor, 'the uranium oxide they found in Berlin was enough to kick start Operation Borodino and allow them to start working on their first nuclear weapon.'

'The country lay in ruins and the population was close to starvation.'

After the battle, more than a hundred thousand German prisoners of war were marched to labour camps in the Soviet Union. Only now did the totality of their defeat sink in on the German people. The country lay in ruins and the population was close to starvation. In addition, confirmation of the Nazis' mass extermination of the European Jews meant that Germany faced a complete moral catastrophe.

The battle for Berlin had brought to an end the bloodiest conflict in European history. 'There's no family in the Soviet Union, Poland or Germany where they didn't lose at least one close relative,' said Beevor in our final interview. 'In Britain, the suffering was real, but it simply cannot be compared to the scale of suffering in Central Europe.'

NextPrevious