[17] The German tactics used for urban warfare in Berlin were dictated by three considerations: the experience that they had gained during five years of war, the physical characteristics of the city, and the methods used by the Soviets.

Most of the central districts of Berlin consist of city blocks with straight wide roads and contain several waterways, parks and large railway marshalling yards.

Most of those, thanks to housing regulations and few elevators, were five stories high and built around a courtyard that could be reached from the street through a corridor large enough to accommodate a horse and cart or a small delivery truck.

They moved through the apartments and cellars, blasting holes through the walls of adjacent buildings (making effective use of abandoned German Panzerfausts), while others fought across the rooftops and through the attics.

At dawn on 24 April the LVI Panzer Corps still under Weidling's direct command, counterattacked but were severely mauled by the 5th Shock Army, which was able to continue its advance around mid-day.

[24] While the fighting raged in the south-east of the city, between 320 and 330 French volunteers commanded by SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg and organised as Sturmbataillon (assault battalion) "Charlemagne" were attached to XI SS Panzergrenadier Division Nordland.

They moved from the SS training ground near Neustrelitz to the centre of Berlin through the western suburbs, which apart from unmanned barricades across the Havel and Spree were devoid of fortifications or defenders.

This division, down to its last dozen tanks and thirty armoured personnel carriers (APC)s, had been promised replacements for battle losses but only stragglers and Volkssturm were available to fill the ranks.

The Nordlands' remaining armour, eight Tiger tanks and several assault guns, were ordered to take up positions in the Tiergarten, because although these two divisions of Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps could slow the Soviet advance, they could not stop it.

[29] SS-Oberscharführer Schmidt recalled, "I was assigned as platoon leader of a 'dwindled company' which included a squad of Hungarian volunteers, Volkssturm men, Hitlerjugend, as well as members of the Heer [army]... Daily, the Russians advanced closer to the government quarter, which we were to defend.

It became more and more difficult to hold the line 'under all circumstances'..."[30] Hitler summoned Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim from Munich to Berlin to take over command of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) from Hermann Göring.

[34] On the following day, 27 April, 2,000 German women were rounded up and ordered to help clear Tempelhof Airport of debris so that the Red Army Air Force could start to use it.

As Chuikov did not inform Rybalko, commander of the 3rd Guards Tank Army, that the 8th was doing this, the troops ordered to carry out this manoeuvre suffered disproportionate casualties from friendly fire.

In the south-east, Berzarin's 5th Shock Army had bypassed the Friedrichshain flak tower and was now between Frankfurter Allee and the south bank of the Spree, where its IX Corps was fighting.

Perkohorovich's 47th Army was now approaching Spandau, and was also heavily involved in a battle to capture Gatow airfield, which was defended by Volkssturm and Luftwaffe cadets using the feared 88 mm anti-aircraft guns in their anti-tank role.

Colonel-General Vasily Kuznetsov's 3rd Shock Army had bypassed the Humboldthain flak tower (leaving it to follow-up forces), and had reached the north of the Tiergarten and Prenzlauerberg.

[40] In the evening of 28 April, the BBC broadcast a Reuters news report about Heinrich Himmler's attempted negotiations with the western Allies through Count Folke Bernadotte in Luebeck.

The 3rd Shock Army were in sight of the Victory Column in the Tiergarten and during the afternoon advanced towards the Moltke Bridge over the Spree, just north of the Ministry of the Interior and a mere 600 m (660 yd) from the Reichstag.

He called Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the Chief of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, "high command of the armed forces"), in Fürstenberg.

After very heavy fighting, the formation managed to capture the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, but a Waffen SS counter-attack forced the regiments of the division to withdraw from the structure.

By now the Spree had been bridged and the Soviets were able to bring up tanks and artillery to support fresh assaults by the infantry, some of which were tasked with out-flanking the Opera House and attacking it from the north-west.

Throughout the rest of the day, as ninety artillery pieces, some as large as the 203 mm howitzer, as well as Katyusha rocket launchers, bombarded the Reichstag and its defensive trenches.

Starting from 16:00 on 30 April, the 1st Battalion of the Polish 1st Regiment (assigned to the region of 35th Mechanized Brigade) begun an assault on a barricade on Pestalozzistrasse, a major obstacle which made previous tank attacks in that direction suicidal.

At 18:00 hours, while Weidling and his staff finalized their breakout plans in the Bendlerblock, three regiments of the Soviet 150th Rifle Division, under cover of a heavy artillery barrage and closely supported by tanks, assaulted the Reichstag.

The German garrison, of about 1,000 defenders (a mixture of sailors, SS and Hitler Youth) fired down on the Soviets from above, turning the main hall into a medieval style killing field.

[79] Close combat raged throughout the night and the coming day of 1 May, until the evening when some German troops pulled out of the building and crossed the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn Station, where they moved into the ruins hours before the main breakout across the Spree.

At about 20:00, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, left the bunker and close to the entrance bit on a cyanide ampoule, and either shot themselves at the same time or were given a coup de grâce immediately afterwards by the SS guard detailed to dispose of their bodies.

Major Anna Nikulina, a political officer with Lieutenant-General I. P. Rossly's 9th Rifle Corps of the 5th Shock Army carried and unfurled the red flag on the roof.

Beevor claims that the official Soviet description is an exaggeration, as most of the German combat troops had left in the breakouts the night before, and resistance must have been far less than that inside the Reichstag.

[100] At 01:00 hours, the Soviets picked up radio message from the German LVI Corps requesting a cease-fire and stating that emissaries would come under a white flag to Potsdamer bridge.