The siege of Küstrin, 1945: gateway to Berlin

The acclaimed WWII historian and author of Race to the Reichstag vividly chronicles the preliminary battle that opened the Red Army's path to Berlin. In January of 1945, the arrival of Soviet troops at the garrison town of Küstrin came as a tremendous shock to the German High Command. The Soviets were now only fifty miles from Berlin itself. Before they could advance on the capital, the Red Army needed the vital road and rail bridges passing through Küstrin. A combination of flooding and strategic blunders resulted in a sixty-day siege by two Soviet armies which totally destroyed the town. The delay in the Soviet advance gave the Germans time to consolidate the defenses shielding Berlin. Despite Hitler's orders to fight to the last bullet, the Küstrin garrison commander and a thousand defenders managed a dramatic break-out to the German lines. The protracted siege had an appalling human cost, with thousands of lives lost on both sides and many more wounded. With painstaking research and eyewitness testimony, Tony Le Tissier bring the story of the siege to life.