Seelow Heights

The Seelow Heights, a ridge some 48 metres high overlooking the Oder about 90 kilometres east of Berlin, were where the battle was largely decided before the Red Army reached the city (introduction). Rather than hold the open plain, Gotthard Heinrici of Army Group Vistula chose to fortify the heights, held by Theodor Busse's 9th Army. Three lines of trenches — the Hauptkampflinie, the Hardenberg-Stellung and the Wotan-Stellung — ran for 16–24 kilometres, with bunkers and anti-tank ditches.

16 April

The offensive of Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front opened in the dark on 16 April with a barrage of some 9,000 guns firing 500,000 shells in 30 minutes. Heinrici had expected it and pulled most of his men back to the second line before it began. Searchlights meant to light the way for the infantry instead silhouetted them as they crossed the swampy floodplain. Zhukov had promised Stalin the heights within the day; by evening his troops had reached only the first line, with heavy losses, and his decision to send in the tank armies after midday jammed the roads from the bridgeheads. Shortly before midnight Soviet tanks took the first three houses in the town of Seelow.

17–19 April

On 17 April the attackers struggled through minefields and across the flooded plain to the far more heavily manned Hardenberg line. Vasily Chuikov's 8th Guards Army reached the heights by noon, and by nightfall the 5th Shock Army and the 2nd Guards Tank Army had broken through the second line. The account dates the taking of the heights to around 7pm that day (18 April); the page for 19 April speaks of them being overrun on the 18th.

Beyond the heights lay the Wotan line west of Müncheberg. On 18 April Soviet columns jammed on the forest roads and lost heavy armour to German anti-tank squads. The last line broke on 19 April, and a substantial part of the 9th Army was encircled before it could fall back on Berlin. By the account's figures, the 1st Belorussian Front lost nearly three times as many men as the defenders. From there the way to Berlin lay through open country.