Reichstag

The Reichstag was the Red Army's final objective in Berlin, and for most of the battle two Soviet fronts raced for it. Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front, which had travelled nearly three times as far as Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, was threatening to reach it first by 22 April, and Zhukov's armies spent the following days denying him the route. Stalin settled the question on 28 April: Konev's troops were turned west towards Savignyplatz, and the building was left to Zhukov and the 3rd Shock Army.

The approaches

The only crossing of the Spree to the building was the Moltke Bridge, barricaded at both ends, mined for demolition and strewn with wire. Beyond it lay the Diplomatic Quarter and the Ministry of the Interior, then trenches, gun emplacements and minefields. The Reichstag's windows had been bricked up but for small gunports, artillery and mortar teams stood in the Tiergarten, and a large water obstacle across the Königsplatz, the square in front of the building, shaped the line any attack could take. The remaining armour of SS Nordland, including eight Tiger II tanks, had been ordered into the Tiergarten on 26 April for the final fight.

The 79th Rifle Corps tried to rush the bridge just after midnight on 29 April and was stopped by machine guns and mortars already ranged on it. That morning the 150th Rifle Division fought its way across and spent the rest of the day taking the Ministry of the Interior, the "Himmler House".

The assault, 30 April

On 30 April the 171st Rifle Division followed the Spree east to attack from the north, the 150th went straight across the Königsplatz, and the 207th secured the right flank towards the Brandenburg Gate. Assaults at 4:30am, 11:30am and 1pm were beaten back with heavy losses before tanks and self-propelled guns were brought up to support the infantry. Zhukov's Operation Order No. 6 then reported the building captured and the Soviet flag hoisted at 14.25 hours. The report was false: the war correspondents it sent to the Reichstag found the infantry only halfway across the square.

The Red Banner

Reports of when the Soviet flag first flew on the building vary. The day-by-day account follows those that place it at around 10:50pm on 30 April, when Sergeants Yegorov and Kantaria, the banner party carrying Red Banner No. 5, fought their way to the rear of the building, climbed to the roof and wedged the flag into a statue on its corner. The defenders soon removed it, and the fighting went on.

The fall

By the late afternoon of 1 May the Soviet troops had beaten off the counterattacks and were trying to force the surrender of the men in the cellar, and Polish infantry had helped restart a halted tank attack on the building. The Germans who were left pulled out that evening and tried to break out to the north. The building was not completely cleared until around 4am on 2 May, after several attempts at negotiation. Later Soviet stories of thousands of defenders holding out into the late afternoon were, like the storming of the Reich Chancellery, most likely made for propaganda after the war.

Yevgeny Khaldei's photograph of the Soviet flag raised over the Reichstag, the best-known picture of the building in those days, is dated 2 May 1945. Less than a mile from the Reichstag, one of the three mass graves of Red Army soldiers in Berlin became a Soviet war memorial after the war (28 April).