About WW2

WW2 Allies - USSR

On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded Russia, thereby beginning Operation Barbarossa. Soon following, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Finland declared war. The Soviet Union suffered grievous casualties in the Second World War, which they called the Great Patriotic War.

Overview

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 established a non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol describing how Poland and the Baltic countries would be divided between them. In the Invasion of Poland of 1939 the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland, and in June 1940 the Soviet Union also occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The Red Army had little time to correct its numerous deficiencies before Nazi Germany and other Axis countries allied with it swept across the newly-relocated Soviet border on June 22, 1941, in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets' poor performance in the Winter War against Finland encouraged Hitler to ignore the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and take the Red Army by surprise. During the initial stages of the war, Soviet forces were often ordered to stand their ground despite limited defensive capabilities, resulting in numerous encirclements and correspondingly high numbers of casualties.

The United States program of lend lease was extended to the Soviet Union in September 1941, supplying planes, tanks, trucks and other war materials. Eventually the Soviets managed to slow the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg, halting the Nazi offensive in December 1941 outside the gates of Moscow, in part because mobilized troops with winterized clothing from Siberia were transferred from there after Stalin realized that Japan was not going to attack the USSR (Japan had just attacked Pearl Harbor). The Red Army launched a powerful winter counteroffensive which pushed the Germans back from the outskirts of Moscow. At the start of 1942, the weakened Axis armies abandoned their march on Moscow and advanced south towards the Caucasus and Volga river. This offensive, in turn, ran out of steam in autumn 1942, allowing the Soviet forces to stage a devastating counteroffensive on the overextended enemy. The Red Army encircled and destroyed significant German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad, which ended in February 1943 and reversed the tide of the war in Europe.

In the summer of 1943, following the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army seized the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. All Soviet territory was liberated from Axis occupation by 1944. After having driven the Axis armies out of Eastern Europe, in May 1945 the Red Army launched its assault on Berlin, which effectively ended World War II in Europe. Much of Eastern Europe and even parts of the USSR were devastated by Red Army troops as a result of an aggressive policy of "scorched earth". Once Germany had surrendered, the Red Army joined the war against Japan, and in summer 1945 carried out an offensive against Japanese forces stationed in northern Manchuria. The Red Army emerged from the war as the most powerful land army in history with five million soldiers, and more tanks and artillery than all other countries combined. Its name was changed to the Soviet Army.

The defeat of the Wehrmacht had come, however, at the cost of seven million soldiers and perhaps twenty-seven million civilians dead, by far the highest losses of any country during the war. This is believed to be the highest human death toll from any military conflict.

Operation Barbarossa

German planning for Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union, began in September 1940. Hitler made his objective clear: despite the German-Soviet pact of 1939, he wanted the utter destruction of the Soviet Union. In retrospect, Barbarossa has to be considered fatally flawed, but based on information available to the German planners in the fall of 1940, after the sequential fall of every country Germany had targeted, they had every reason to expect that Barbarossa would be another Blitzkrieg success.

Planning Operation Barbarossa

The success of Blitzkrieg in Western Europe gave rise to immense optimism in German military and political circles. Hitler looked eastward and assumed that Stalin's Soviet Union would fall as easily as his western conquests. In addition, the Soviet Red Army had been stalemated by the relatively small Finnish Army in 1939, so could be expected to fall rapidly to the three million man assault force of Barbarossa. The unprepared Soviets were further weakened by Stalin's brutal purges of Russian officers and by the ineptitude of those remaining.

On 6 September 1940, Colonel-General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the Army, directed the preparation of plans which were ready by late November, including war games indicating the limits of the forces and logistics needed to support such a massive operation. In early December, Halder discussed the plan with Hitler, who refused to decide whether the basic objective should be Moscow or Leningrad and the Ukraine. This lack of strategic direction haunted the operation, but Halder and OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres, the Army High Command) were confident that Russia could be defeated.

Barbarossa was planned as a ten-week campaign that would start on 15 May 1941, allowing for many months of favorable weather. But events elsewhere delayed implementation of the plan: the Afrika Korps was dispatched to North Africa (February 1941) and German troops were required in Greece and Crete to assist the weak Italians.

Early Phase of Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was finally launched on 22 June 1941, with three Army Groups (North, Center, South) consisting of nineteen panzer divisions, 114 infantry divisions, fifteen motorized divisions, plus Finnish, Rumanian and Hungarian units, a force of more than 3 million soldiers, 3500 tanks, 7200 artillery pieces, 2000 planes and three-quarters of a million horses. The initial results of the largest attack in history went according to plan; the Blitzkrieg tactics of 1939 and 1940 once again succeeded. The panzer columns plunged deeply into the Soviet interior as the Red Army fell back despite desperate efforts to stem the advance. The Soviets reeled, near collapse, seemingly as helpless against the German Blitzkrieg as Belgium or France the year before.

The three German axes of attack operated in tandem. The northern axis drove toward Leningrad. In the center the objective was Moscow. The southern axis moved toward the Ukraine, and from there the Crimean peninsula and the Caucasus region. The Germans destroyed one Russian unit after another and impounded large numbers of prisoners. However, the OKH had badly miscalculated the Soviet strength. Overcoming the Red Army's tremendous losses, the Russians were able to mobilize ever more troops and throw them into the battles, actually increasing in strength as the summer of 1941 progressed. In the region around Smolensk, Soviet counterattacks and tenacious defense delayed the German Center Army Group offensive and forced the redeployment of significant forces from the other axes of advance.

The Russians also perfected the art of removing industrial equipment -- even whole factories -- ahead of the German advance, to be installed safely to the east where production of war material for the Red Army grew rapidly while leaving nothing for the Germans to appropriate.

The front defending Moscow was pierced by mid-August 1941, and the German armored columns were poised to begin the drive toward the Soviet capital. But Halder and OKH realized that the three pronged attack (Leningrad, Moscow, Ukraine) against the unexpectedly large Soviet opposing force was spreading the German front far too thin. The basic question that had been raised the previous winter now had to be decided: was Barbarossa's prime objective Moscow or the Ukraine? Halder and the commanders in Army Group Center argued for an immediate thrust to Moscow, taking advantage of gains, momentum and weather favoring the Germans at that moment. But Hitler chose a maneuver that would drive south to the Ukraine and envelop some 500,000 Russian troops in the Kiev pocket and Odessa. At the same time, the drive north would capture Leningrad, followed with a complicated operation from all sides to outflank and then capture Moscow.

The German Drive Stalls Before Moscow

The Ukraine operation, which did capture large concentrations of troops and materiel, was declared a great victory, but a greater strategic error had been made. The way to Moscow had been open in August, but the German armies would now have to contend with reinforced Soviet defenses. The German forces were split with insufficient striking power directed toward Moscow. Even worse, the delay meant the Russian winter was much closer. The time lost in the Ukraine could not be regained.

The attack toward Moscow resumed by Army Group Center at the end of September 1941 (Operation Typhoon). Initial progress was excellent, renewing German hopes that Moscow could be taken before the onset of winter. But the German advance ground to a halt as autumn rains turned the unpaved roads into quagmires, stopping all movement. The Russian's "scorched earth" policy denied local replenishment and irregulars (partisans) attacked all along the supply lines from the west, creating shortages of fuel and ammunition. As the weather grew colder, the Germans found themselves deep inside the Soviet Union with dwindling supplies and with uniforms and equipment intended for mild weather.

In early November, over the objections of field commanders, Hitler ordered a final drive on Moscow to begin at once, a 'final effort of willpower' to crush the defenders of Moscow. On 15 November 1941 a new offensive was launched, attempting to swing around Moscow to the north and seal the rail supply lines from the east. Heavy winter weather began on 19 November slowing the advance, nonetheless the Red Army was again driven back. By 2 December forward German units were in the suburbs of Moscow and German panzers came to within 18 miles (30 km) of the city. But winter deepened with temperatures dropping well below zero (F). The mechanized Wehrmacht found its engines would not start, wheels would not turn, artillery would not fire. Supplies could not reach the German troops and they began to eat their dead, frozen horses. An epidemic of frostbite and exposure deaths struck the ill-clad Germans while the Russians, accustomed to such weather and prepared, were scarcely affected.

The Soviets mounted a heroic defense of Moscow assisted by civilians building fortifications and barricades, while Army reserves were brought in from the east. The discouraged Wehrmacht discontinued their attacks and planned to remain in position until better weather returned. The Reds denied them that chance with a 6 December counterattack, as Marshal Georgi Zhukov hurled his forces at the frozen Germans, opening gaps in their lines, pushing them back as much as 175 miles (280 km) west by the end of December, eliminating the immediate threat to Moscow. By 31 January 1942, the Wehrmacht had suffered more than 900 thousand casualties out of the 3 million soldiers in action.

Fighting in the Soviet Union would continue for years, but Operation Barbarossa was over, a colossal failure. The limits of Blitzkrieg had been revealed and the Wehrmacht's invincibility was discredited. The attack by Japan at Pearl Harbor on 7 December brought the U.S. into the war and the long, slow defeat of the Axis had begun.

The Battle of Stalingrad

During the Battle of Stalingrad, 19 August 1942 to 2 February 1943, the Germans and Russians lost over 1 million men fighting over the rubble of the already destroyed city. The city was known as Tsaritsyn until it was renamed Stalingrad in 1925. In 1951, it took on its present-day name of Volgograd.

Events Leading to the Battle of Stalingrad

The German Operation Barbarossa failed to take Moscow and ground to a halt as the terrible Russian winter took hold in December 1941. A massive counteroffensive began on 6 December, as Marshal Georgi Zhukov hurled his forces at the frozen Germans, opening gaps in their lines, pushing them back as much as 175 miles (280 km) west by the end of December, eliminating the immediate threat to Moscow. The Russian counteroffensive continued into the spring of 1942, ending the German drive with a stalemate.

Early in 1942, the Wehrmacht was still holding a huge territory inside the Soviet Union. In May, the Germans resumed their attack and captured Sevastopol after an eight month siege. In June 1942, under Operation Blau, German forces roared eastward across southern Russia to the banks of the Volga River at Stalingrad and toward the oil-rich Caucasus region. Once again, in the summer of 1942, Blitzkrieg enjoyed initial success and on 27 July Rostov was captured. The force was then split: one branch went against Sevastopol on the Black Sea, capturing the port on 10 September 1942. The second branch moved toward Stalingrad, an important industrial center on the Volga River.

The Attack on Stalingrad

Stalingrad was attacked by the German Sixth Army, the same Army that swept across Belgium and Holland in 1940, 330,000 seasoned soldiers commanded by Gen. Friedrich Paulus. The struggle began on 22 August 1942 with a tremendous bombardment that leveled most of the city on the first day. With the city in ruins, German troops launched a tank and infantry assault that destroyed everything left standing.

As in Leningrad and elsewhere, the Russians did not surrender. A block by block orgy of hand to hand combat ensued, one of the first urban combat scenarios in modern warfare. German tanks were almost useless because the rubble made streets impassible. Bayonets and knives were employed as much as bullets. A far cry from Blitzkrieg, German forces would crawl forward a few yards in hours of combat, only to be pushed back in the next hours. Thousands died daily in the slaughter, dead who were never counted. The once-proud Wehrmacht was ground down by the relentless, guerilla-style attacks and suicidal defensive tactics of the Russians.

The German commanders begged Hitler for permission to withdraw and regroup. Hitler refused, shouting, "I am not leaving the Volga!" On 19 November 1942, the Russians under Zhukov launched twin counterattacks from the north and northeast, in a few days closing a ring the Sixth Army, trapping the Germans just as winter descended with full force. All supply lines were cut and Wehrmacht attempts to relieve the city failed. Hitler made insane announcements from afar, declaring Stalingrad a "Fortress City". Hermann Goering claimed that the Luftwaffe would supply 750 tons of airlifted supplies each day, but few supply planes could deliver. The Russians tightened the noose day by day inflicting tremendous losses on the trapped Germans. German troops were reduced to eating horses and stray animals while defending themselves with little ammunition. Finally General Paulus, defying Hitler, surrendered the remnants of his spent force, a mere 12,000 survivors, on 31 January 1943.

Evaluation of the Battle of Stalingrad

Stalingrad was the most devestating defeat of the German Army in World War II, the end of any pretention of potential success on the Eastern Front. Major operational and strategic changes followed as the Soviets gained the time to mobilize and the Germans lost one of their most effective combat units. The destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad meant German strategy in the east had to be completely revised. Hitler raged at his General Staff and forced changes that estranged him from the military leadership.

After Stalingrad in early 1943, the general direction of the war on the Eastern Front turned decisively in favor of the Red Army. The change became irreversible after the Battle of Kursk, the following July.

Leningrad

St. Petersburg, on the eastern shore of the Baltic, one of the largest and most important cities of Europe, became Leningrad in 1924 to honor Nikolai Lenin, leader of the Communist revolution that created the Soviet Union. Leningrad, along with Stalingrad, were the cities that Hitler most needed to conquer in order to realize his dream of the destruction of the Soviet regime. When Germany crossed the Russian border with Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, Army Group North (one of three prongs of attack) had Leningrad as its target, reaching the city by the end of August. Helped by the Finns, who moved on Leningrad from the north and west, the Germans nearly encircled the city during the next two months.

The Siege of Leningrad

Despite all efforts by the Wehrmacht, Leningrad did not fall. Instead a siege began that lasted 900 days, from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944, an attempt by the Nazis to starve the city's 3 million people to death. The only lifeline the Russians could hold was a water route across Lake Ladoga (the "Road of Life") -- the Germans held the highways, rail lines, and other water access.

Although the Luftwaffe and artillery pounded the city, the Russians held off the Germans with a ferocious defense, involving the entire population in either actual fighting or work supporting the effort. In January-February 1942, over 200,000 people died in Leningrad of cold, starvation or shellfire. Thousands of corpses littered the streets until spring. Despite this, the defense held and war production continued in the city's factories.

During the winter months, Lake Ladoga was frozen and truck convoys crossed the ice to deliver supplies and carry out refugees. In the summer, ferries served the same function. People carried on life as best they could -- factories, schools, and other functions continued even though the people were starving and under frequent attack. With incredible courage, the Russians carried on and did not surrender.

End of the Siege of Leningrad

The Germans built strong defensive positions around the city, able to withstand powerful attempts by the Soviets to lift the siege. But on 18 January 1943, as a result of Operation Spark, the Red Army took the German fortifications south of Lake Ladoga, opening a corridor to Leningrad, partially lifting the siege. A year later, on 27 January 1944, Soviet forces broke through the German lines and recaptured the region, ending the siege and pushing Army Group North back to the Narva River-Lake Peipus line. During the summer of 1944, the Finns were pushed back to the pre-war border.

At least 650,000 people, and perhaps as many as 1.2 million, died in Leningrad during the siege from starvation, exposure, disease or enemy action.

Battle of Kursk

The German push into Russia had been stopped at the gates of Moscow in the winter of 1941-42 and again at Stalingrad on the Volga a year later. In February 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended with over 300,000 German soldiers dead or captured. Soviet forces moved on Kharkov but a German counterattack stopped that Winter Offensive.

To bolster morale in Germany and hold his allies in line, Hitler needed a clear cut victory in Russia. To erase the pain of Stalingrad, Hitler decided to order a massive force to regain the initiative against the Red Army.

Hitler and his generals looked for a place where a decisive victory could be purchased relatively cheaply. They chose to cut off a 90 mile bulge in the Eastern Front between the cities of Orel and Kharkov that included the small city of Kursk at its pivot, using a gigantic pincer movement. Hitler's key military leaders wanted to stage this offensive (Operation Citadel) in May 1943, but bickering and interference by Hitler delayed it until early July.

Months of preparation under the eyes of the Soviet army eliminated any surprise when Operation Citadel launched on 5 July. The Germans failed in their objective to pinch off the Kursk salient and suffered irreplacable losses of men and materiel in the process. Now that both German and Soviet records are available, it is clear that the German plan was based on faulty assumptions. After two years of fighting inside Soviet territory, the Germans assumed that a well-prepared offensive would be able to penetrate the Soviet defense and that superior German tactics, staff work, and weaponry would compensate for greater Soviet numbers. Furthermore, they thought that adverse weather would hamper any Soviet offensive, and that if such an offensive occurred, the mobile German counterattack could halt it.

The Germans were badly mistaken. The Soviet army of mid-1943 had evolved far from the Soviet army of 1941. They had learned from their mistakes, more than the Germans had learned about the Reds. The Kursk salient contained Soviet forces that were hardened and ready, strong and complete units that would be difficult to encircle and erase even under the best of circumstances. For the German army of 1943, Operation Citadel was far too ambitious to succeed.

The Soviet's plan was much more realistic and actionable. They anticipated the German lines of attack and prepared the battlefield with dense mine fields, trenches, and camouflaged gun positions. An enormous reserve force was assembled with plans to absorb the German attack and exhaust them, then counterattack with overwhelming force when the Germans were weakened and without reserves.

The Battle at Kursk Unfolds

The Germans massed tanks, guns and tens of thousands of troops on the front. From the north, the Wehrmacht's Ninth Army was poised to move from the south of Orel toward Olkhovatka. In the south, the Fourth Panzer Army would move from east of a line joining Kharkov and Belgorod toward Prokhorovka. At dawn on 5 July German guns opened up a huge bombardment, and masses of German tanks moved into the battle supported by Stuka fighters overhead. Soviet artillery, T-34 tanks and Katyusha rockets answered. German Tigers did well, but the lighter Mark IV and Panthers were decimated. Guns tanks and infantry fought for more than a week in vicious battles of total war.

More than 2.2 million men were engaged on both sides, along with 5,000 airplanes and 6,000 armored vehicles. Soviet minefields channeled German tanks into prepared fields of artillery fire. Panzers would make progress in one area but be immediately challanged and attacked by Soviet planes or by infantry with explosives. The Soviet defenses held.

Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, 12 July 1943

The greatest tank battle of World War II, unsurpassed until Operation Desert Storm in February 1992, was fought at Prokhorovka during the Battle of Kursk. Approximately 6,000 to 6,500 AFV's were involved, with about one-quarter to one-half actually engaged at any one time (compared to 10,000 AFV's in the Kuwait-Iraq area in 1992.) The Russians are credited with more than half the total, perhaps 2,700 German and 3,500 Russian vehicles.

Elements of the 4th Panzer Army, on the southern battlefield, made their final attack in the direction of Prokhorovka but the Soviet forces stopped them short of their objective. Soviet counteroffensives threatened to annihilate the Germans in both the north and south sectors. After the day's action on 12 July, Hitler ordered an end to the German offensive.

Aftermath of the Battle of Kursk

The Germans suffered tremendous losses at Kursk, their last offensive operation in Soviet territory, including about 30,000 dead and 60,000 wounded. After the German failure, the Russians launched their own Summer Offensive to take the Belgorod-Kharkov area and cross the Dnieper to cut off the German withdrawal, an extensive and decisive campaign along the Orel-Kursk-Belgorod line which extended directly south of Moscow. After fierce battles, the Germans had to abandon Kharkov because of their heavy losses and Russian advances elsewhere on the front.

The Soviet offensive that began after Kursk continued westward until the fall of Berlin in 1945.

Battle of Berlin

By early April 1945, Allied forces in the west had crossed the Rhine into Germany and were advancing rapidly. The U.S. First and Ninth armies executed a double envelopment on 1 April 1945 in the northern Ruhr, trapping 325,000 German soldiers. The U.S. Third Army drove southeastward into Bavaria, Czechoslovakia and Austria alongside the Seventh Army. After a hard fight at Heilbronn, Seventh Army took Nurnberg after a three-day battle ending on 20 April. The French swept through the Black Forest to take Stuttgart on 22 April. The war in the west was nearly over.

Red Army Assault from the East

U.S. and Soviet troops connected on 25 April at Torgau on the Elbe River about 60 miles southwest of Berlin. Munich fell on 30 April. Organized resistance by German forces in the west was near an end as many Germans rushed to surrender to the Americans, the English, and their Allies, expecting humane treatment. In the east it was very different.

On 6 February 1945, the Soviet Army stood on the Oder river, about 60 miles east of Berlin, the line reached after their massive attack from the Vistula River in Poland, starting 12 January. Marshall Zhukov was preparing a final drive on Berlin and its expected collapse would end the war. The Allies had just concluded agreements at the Yalta Conference that gave Stalin control over the countries east of Germany and split control of Germany with the other Allies. Stalin called Zhukov that day and ordered him not to drive on Berlin, but to first deal with the remaining German forces in the east.

Stalin's orders for the redirection temporarily saved Berlin but ultimately resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more Red Army soldiers. The Soviets descended on the areas of eastern Germany with a viciousness born of a desire for vengeance for what the Germans had done inside Soviet territory during Operation Barbarossa. Rape, destruction and death were inflicted on Germans in unimaginable numbers, especially in East Prussia. The result was a flood of refugees who added to the defenses of Berlin and created a mindset among the defenders that surrender was impossible since death was preferable to the Soviet treatment of conquered Germans.

By early April, Soviet forces had overrun and had their vengeance on Pomerania, West and East Prussia, and were driving through the Balkans, nearing Vienna. Now came the final assault, across the Oder toward Berlin.

Assault on Berlin

Stalin wanted desperately to get to Berlin ahead of the western Allies, but he didn't have to hurry. Eisenhower's forces were still 300 miles west of Berlin when the Red Army reached the Oder. Eisenhower had decided that Berlin was too far away and had little value in ending the war, so American armies were ordered to stop at the Elbe River, not ordered toward Berlin. But by April it was time for the Red Army to go ahead and finish the job. Stalin created a competition between his two field commanders, Marshall Georgi K. Zhukov in the center and Marshall Ivan Konev in the south to capture Berlin and to establish the line of contact between the Soviet and Allied armies as far west as possible.

On 15 April 1945, preceded by an artillery barrage of one million shells, Zukhov's troops advanced across the Oder River. The found that the Germans, alerted by intelligence, had retreated to strongly prepared positions on the Seelow Heights further west. In three days of powerful attacks by human waves and tanks, with losses of perhaps 30,000 Soviet soldiers, Zukhov broke through the German lines and moved west to surround Berlin.

German units retreated to Berlin or headed west to surrender to the Americans, ignoring fantasy orders coming from Hitler's bunker. But by 24 April the IX German Army was caught in a pocket in the Spree Forest near the town of Halbe, between Zukhov and Marshall Konev's army coming from the south. Bitter and confused fighting in the dense forest continued through the end of April. Some Germans managed to slip through the Soviet lines to Berlin while an estimated 30,000 were killed in the fighting. Total military and civilian losses were at least 50,000 dead in the area.

Fighting in Berlin

The first Soviets reached the Berlin suburbs on 21 April and during the last week of April both Zuhkov and Konev had forces inside Berlin itself, the vanguard of millions of Soviet troops pouring in, by now largely unopposed. Soviet T-34 tanks roamed the rubble filled streets and troops assaulted pockets of resistance. Fighting raged block by block, building by building. Artillery continued to rain down on any strong point and tanks or antiaircraft guns were used to take out snipers. Allied bombers from the west continued to pound what was left of the city. The 90,000 German defenders, old men of the Volksturm or Hitler Youth, the shoddy remnants of the once-invincible Wehrmacht, waged a desperate defense from the rubble, from the interior of destroyed buildings, from subway tunnels, and from anywhere they could, reminiscent of Stalingrad when the Russians were defending.

The Battle of Berlin ended 2 May 1945 when General Helmuth Weidling surrendered the city to Soviet troops. By the time it was over, barely a building was left standing, none undamaged, in the once beautiful and celebrated city of Berlin. The battle cost the Soviets over 300,000 casualties with 70,000 dead, many of them due to the hasty, careless tactics of the Soviet generals now in a rush to claim Berlin. German military losses are estimated at 150,000 to 175,000 with an additional 150,000 civilians dead. Close to a half million German soldiers became prisoneres with 100,000 German POWs marched to prison camps in the Soviet Union, most never heard from again.

The End of Nazi Germany

On 29 April, as fighting raged around the Reichstag, Chancellery and along nearby streets, Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun were married. The next day, 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, propaganda minister Joseph Göbbels, his wife and five children committed suicide in Hitler's Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Hitler took poison, then shot himself. The bodies were burned to avoid public humiliation, but were recovered by the Soviets and kept for decades inside Russia.

Martin Bormann, Hitler's right hand man and the highest ranking Nazi unaccounted for, probably died in the streets of Berlin trying to break through the Soviet lines after Hitler's suicide. A few dozen top Nazis, including Reichsmarschall and Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Göring, were apprehended and put on trial for war crimes.

Italy officially surrendered on 2 May. On 4 May Salzburg fell, Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden was captured, and American forces coming from Austria and Italy's Po Valley met in the Brenner Pass. Also on 4 May, German Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz surrendered all forces in the north, including Denmark and the Netherlands.

On 7 May, German military leaders surrendered unconditionally to a representative of General Eisenhower at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) at Reims in northeastern France. A document of surrender was signed. A day later, at 0001 on 9 May, German officials in Berlin signed a similar document, explicitly surrendering to Soviet forces in the presence of Marshall Zhukov, winner of the Soviet competition for Berlin. 8 May 1945 became VE Day (Victory in Europe), a day of celebration for the victorious Allies in the U.S. and Europe. SHAEF had concluded its mission and was officially inactivated 14 July 1945.