The "Fall X" - The Conquest of West-Berlin

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The capture of W-berlin was an explicit Eastgerman task, and the film gave me the impression that it was that exclusively: WP troops beyind the NVA were not intended,. nor wehre hey prepared for that and trained for that. The GDr was the player planning for it. The Russians/the WP in a whole, did not, not in this detailk, sand I assume their plannign was mostly for air support, and leaving the rest to the Eastgermans (whom they maybe did not trust to use them in the fronline assaults at fulda and northern Germany - after all, they were Germans). The GDR even continued to plan for attacking W-Berin after relations between NATO and the USSR were thawing up and Moscow did not want to push such aggressive polans and polkciesd anymore - the GDR nevertheless did not obey according demands from Russia. So, W-Berlin was an NVA task, not so much a WP or Russia-task (ignoring air support and artillery). and the NVA was better trained and motivated in general, and NVA forces for the attack on berlin were specialsijg for that task. when the Soviet high Command estimated that WP troops would need 24 hours to capture the city and break resistence, then one could and should assume that the better quality troops of the NVA specialising for that task for around 20 years probably would have needed less time for the same task. That'S why i still think after that film that estimating that the Allied would have held the city for half a day, not longer, still is reasonable a statement. Holding out up to several days, with undisputed air superiority and artillery superiority and numerical superiority on the ground in the range of 2:1 to 3:1, all in favour of the enemy and with disrupted supply lines and critical losses in installations and personnel alrerady in the first two hours? that is very optimistic an assessement, I think. even more so when considering how highly vulnerable and open the Allied installations and community buildings were.

From what I know, the Soviet 6th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, independently attached to the 20th Guards Army, was both stationed in East Berlin and supposed to participate in the offensive. If this is so, there must have at least been some Soviet involvement in the planning and execution. Besides this unit, most of the forces involved would indeed have been East German.

Perhaps East German forces were specially trained for the attack on Berlin, but, since NATO had dedicated garrison brigades for West Berlin, I'd assume that they would have specially trained to defend it as well.

I agree that the Berlin garrison could not reasonably expect to hold for several days, but anywhere from a day to a day and a half would be certainly possible; it takes a lot of time to wipe out well trained troops dug into an urban environment, even with a very large superiority in equipment and troops.

Also, as I said, when they ran the exercises that much of the information about this offensive is based on, they took the first day to cut off the garrison units and the second to eliminate them, suggesting that the planning for the operation itself anticipated such a condition.