I recommend this You Tube video without qualification or reservation. A BBC production, the famed historian Antony Beevor touring the last [?] major battlefield of the Second World War in the European theater.
"The Fall of Berlin in 1945"
"A powerful and evocative film documenting the battle for Berlin in 1945. With some excellent original footage and testimonies, this film will be very useful for students of the period."
* The Soviet attack on those German units protecting the Oder river line preceded by a bombardment of one million artillery rounds. All those munitions as fired NOT hardly any doing any damage, German troops forewarned and displacing to the rear the day before the attack.
* Soviet infantry on the advance finding the Oder river line terrain in front of them so chewed up by the massive artillery bombardment that movement even on foot difficult at best!!
* German women in captured Berlin [and for the rest of Soviet occupied Germany too] subjected to mass rape by Red Army soldiers. More particular, Soviet women employed as forced labor of the German also raped in prodigious numbers. THIS PHENOMENON WAS AND ONCE AGAIN IS A SOVIET/RUSSIAN STATE SECRET OF THE HIGHEST CLASSIFICATION!
Stalin having a keen, yea almost overwhelming interest in the capture of Berlin. Soviet occupation of the city along with the allied zones of occupation agreed upon at Yalta, Stalin honoring the agreement. Efforts to capture Berlin carried out more or less by three Soviet Fronts [a front a collection of armies] and done so in a frenzied manner, totally heedless of losses. [German resistance it should be noted also frenzied and seemingly no heed give to losses.]
THERE BEING A VALID AND OVERRIDING REASON FOR THIS OBSESSION OF STALIN BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO VIEW THE VIDEO TO KNOW THE FULL AND COMPLETE ANSWER.
coolbert.