КАТУКОВ ОТКРЫТО ОБВИНИЛ ЖУКОВА ПОСЛЕ ВОЙНЫ — ЧТО ПРОИЗОШЛО У ЗЕЕЛОВСКИХ ВЫСОТ.САМЫЙ СПОРНЫЙ БОЙ

April 1945. Berlin is eighty kilometers away. Katukov's First Guards Tank Army stands at the Oder. According to the Stavka plan, the tank armies were supposed to bypass the Seelow Heights from the north—reach the rear of the German Ninth Army, cutting off its escape routes. Zhukov changed the plan, placing the tanks behind Chuikov's infantry. First, the infantry takes the heights—then the tanks launch a clear breakthrough to Berlin. Katukov understood what this meant. The Seelow Heights are thirty to forty meters above the Oder Valley. The German artillery on the reverse slopes is invisible. Three-line trenches. Pillboxes. Minefields. General Busse had months to prepare and knew he was facing a frontal assault. On April 16th, at three in the morning, one hundred and forty-three searchlights lit up and forty thousand guns fired. A million shells—on empty trenches. Busse withdrew his troops to the reverse slopes well in advance. By the evening of the first day, less than half of the planned advance had been made. Zhukov threw Katukov's tanks into the unfinished breakthrough. Two days of heavy fighting. Then Katukov found a weak spot north of the heights. A breakthrough. A turn to the south. A defense system designed to last for weeks collapsed in a day and a half. Two hundred thousand German soldiers in the Halbe pocket. Berlin fell on May 2. Katukov later wrote asking whether the same problem could have been solved by other methods, without wearing down fairly large tank forces in ineffective battles. Zhukov wrote that he had made no serious mistakes. Two marshals. One Berlin. Different answers to the same question. #katukov #seelowheights #berlin #berlinoperation #greatpatrioticwar #1945 #zhukov #tanks #historyofwar #sovietarmy #militaryhistory #victory #germany #firstguard #marshal