Allied victory Axis: Germany Hungary[1] Slovakia The Prague offensive (Russian: Пражская стратегическая наступательная операция, romanized: Prazhskaya strategicheskaya nastupatel'naya operatsiya, lit.

On 2 May 1945, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, ordered the German forces to avoid being captured by Russia and facilitate separate negotiation with Western Allies.

[8] From 30 April to 1 May 1945, SS Senior Group Leader (Obergruppenführer) and General of Police Karl Hermann Frank announced over the radio in Prague that he would drown any uprising in a "sea of blood".

On the Allied side, both Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin saw Prague as a particularly important prize, the capture of which could significantly influence the political makeup of postwar Czechoslovakia.

Stalin was determined to have the Soviet Army present in force in western Czechoslovakia when the German troops there finally surrendered.

With Soviet and U.S. forces pressing in from all sides, Army Group Centre's deployment resembled a horseshoe straddling the historical regions of Bohemia and Moravia.

[13] To the northeast of Prague and just north of Dresden and Bautzen, the 4th Panzer Army defended along a front running slightly southeast.

[15] These were organized into three corps and deployed in an arc that began about 40 kilometers SW of Breslau and which led to the southeast in the vicinity of Ostrava.

[4] 4th Ukrainian Front faced the obstacles of Olomouc, a small city, and multiple hill ranges which cut across the projected line of advance.

Unlike 2nd Ukrainian Front, the 4th lacked direct and major road connections from Olomouc to Prague, a factor almost guaranteed to slow its rate of advance.

[4] The bulk of 1st Ukrainian Front's forces were massed north of Dresden for a direct advance on Prague and included the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies.

[20] By agreement with the Soviets, the U.S. forces did not advance in strength eastward of an irregular demarcation line that at points touched Leipzig, Karlovy Vary, and Plzen.

[21] Realizing that the Soviets would attack Army Group Centre following the surrender of Berlin, on 5 May Field Marshal Schörner devised a plan (Blumen-Operation) in which the units of Army Group Centre would attempt a fighting withdrawal to the west where they would be in a position to surrender to U.S. forces versus those of the Soviet Union.

Ending a separate 1st Ukrainian Front operation, 40,000 German troops in Breslau surrendered to the Soviet 6th Army after a two-month-long siege.

Continuing the main attack of the 1st Ukrainian Front, 3rd Guards Army captured Meissen, home of the famous German porcelain.

[32] In western Czechoslovakia, upon receipt of the news of the surrender, U.S. forces ceased offensive operations and assumed a defensive posture.

[31][37] The 1st KONR Division, its relations with the ČNR broken down[37] and realizing no quarter could be expected from Soviet forces, joined the SS and other German troops in a wary alliance of convenience and started moving west.

[38] During the night of 8/9 May, armored units of the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies pushed south some 80 kilometers, entering Prague at daybreak.

[42] In the late hours of the day (after midnight), units from 4th and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts also reached Prague, including the armored brigade of the Czechoslovak Army Corps.

[40] The arrival of the other fronts meant the bulk of Army Group Centre was cut off and forced into a pocket to the east, northeast, and south of Prague.

The bulk of German troops in Army Group Centre were taken prisoner by the Soviets in the two days following the liberation of Prague, while elements of the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts pushed west to the Chemnitz-Karlovy Vary-Plzen demarcation line with U.S.

The left flank of the 2nd Ukrainian Front met with troops of the U.S. Third Army (George Patton) in the regions of České Budějovice and Písek.

These army groups were the last large intact military formations of Germany, and following the offensive, all surviving German soldiers became prisoners of war or fugitives.

The country's prewar borders, however, would not be completely restored as the Soviets engineered the cession of Carpathian Ruthenia to the USSR in July 1945.

[46] Czech soldiers who had fought with the Western Allies found themselves increasingly on the sidelines, and the country itself was forced to become a Soviet satellite state in 1948 by a communist coup.

[47][48] SS-Obergruppenführer und Reichstatthalter Konrad Henlein, the former Czechoslovak politician and the leader of the Nazi Party of Sudeten Germans, died of suicide in American captivity on 10 May.

[29] That the offensive was a military event involving serious combat is made clear by the over 50,000 casualties suffered by the Soviet forces and their allies from 6 to 11 May 1945.

[51][k] The German official history makes note of Stalin's political intentions[51] and his desire to prevent Army Group Centre from surrendering to U.S. forces.

Somewhere between the official German and Soviet views, John Erickson's The Road to Berlin discusses the offensive in some detail while including mention of Stalin's intentions, the Prague uprising, and role of the Russian Liberation Army.

Erickson wrote the work to present a balanced view of Soviet politics and military operations during the war, and so his description of actions by German forces is correspondingly limited.