World War II was indubitably the largest and most devastating worldwide conflict known to man. It consumed the lives of 70 to 85 million people. Following World War II, the world made significant steps in human rights via acts such as the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Some of the products of World War II included the development of atomic weaponry, colonial resistance to European colonial powers, and the fear of war with the United Soviet Socialist Republics.
One of the final battles of World War II was the Battle of Berlin, which occurred from April 16, 1945, to May 2, 1945, and was designated by the Soviet Union as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation. The Soviets had already lost millions of lives at the hands of the Third Reich since Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The conquest of Berlin stood as a sizable military and political ambition for the people of the U.S.S.R. to claim revenge against the Third Reich. On April 16, 1945, the Red Army, led by its supreme commander, Georgy Zhukov, assaulted the city from its northern, eastern, and southern flanks, gradually taking parts of the city. The only German defenses available to defend Berlin were a severely supply-depleted force of 45,000 personnel of the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht. The end of the Battle of Berlin entailed the city falling to Soviet occupation and Adolf Hitler committing suicide. The city was partitioned into four separate sectors: the British, French, American, and Soviet military occupation zones.
Now, let us consider a hypothetical situation in which U.S. forces had advanced into Berlin and captured the city. If that were the case, I firmly believe that tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union would have escalated to an even greater extent, as the U.S. would project its power closer to Eastern Europe and the Soviets would be denied their long-standing goal of capturing the capital of the country that ravaged their nation and people.
As the final days of Hitlerite fascism were reaching its end, Germany was confined between approaching Allied armies from both its western and eastern theaters. Predominantly U.S. and British military units traversed through Western Germany, with the U.S. sustaining its ambition of capturing one of Germany’s key industrial regions, the Ruhr, as well as taking the coal-wealthy Saarland and the Rhineland, whereas the Red Army advanced through Poland and the Baltic states. Per History.com, an American victory in capturing the capital of Germany was initially a military objective: “A year before, in early 1944, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, had been all in on the idea of capturing the German capital: ‘Berlin is the main prize,’ he wrote to his British counterpart, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. There is no doubt whatsoever, in my mind, that we should concentrate all our energies and resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin.”
Regarding how the events of the Cold War could have potentially unfolded, had the U.S. attempted to take Berlin, relations between the Western hemisphere and the Soviet Union would have grown more tense. The Soviet Union would not only fear the projection of Western power further into Europe and closer to Soviet territory but would develop an even larger distaste towards the West, as they would have been denied their goal of capturing Adolf Hitler and occupying Berlin for themselves. Moreover, the provisional government of the Federal Republic of Germany would have been relocated to Berlin instead of Bonn, meaning the Berlin Wall likely would never have existed, and the Soviet Union would have attempted to disseminate Marxist propaganda to other countries to implement a fortification against NATO. Lastly, if America had captured Berlin, Allied military forces would have been deployed along eastern Europe, so the Soviet Union would have expanded its military buildup to a larger degree, extending the chance of all-out war.
However, despite America’s initial ambition of seeking to take Berlin, the U.S. saw reaching Berlin as unnecessary as the Soviets were commanding a massive force intending to take the capital. According to Mark Grimley in his History.net article “What if Eisenhower had driven on to Berlin” the U.S. would have not only sustained more casualties but would potentially lose its hold in already occupied parts of Germany. “Taking Berlin might cost up to 100,000 casualties, notes Gen. Omar Bradley: ‘a pretty stiff price to pay for a prestige objective, especially when we’ll have to fall back and let the other fellow take over.’” If the U.S. had attempted to advance into Berlin, which was quite the distance from the maximum size of Germany that the Western Allies occupied, resistance in southern Germany would have escalated, harming the objective of the German surrender to the Allies. Therefore, by allowing the Soviet Union to advance into Berlin, the U.S. could strengthen its hold in Western Germany and prevent resistance to Allied occupation.
Consequently, if the U.S. had attempted to reach Berlin, the Cold War would have become an even more fearful and hostile situation between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and its allies. Allied presence in an American-occupied Berlin would allow for the spread of Western power to Eastern Europe, where the Soviets had established their satellite states. The Soviet Union would have more actively tried to pressure other countries to turn toward communist ideologies and would have continued to expend more resources into its military budget to strengthen its armed forces. While British Prime Minister Winston Churchill trusted Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not, for he viewed Stalin as an unpredictable individual. Therefore, if the U.S. did take Berlin, both the West and the Soviet Union would continue to prepare for the worst during the Cold War.
