The high Soviet casualty rate was largely a result of Stalin's hurry to reach Berlin.
Once again it was interferance from Stalin, the Americans had recently crossed the Rhine and the Soviet leader was concerned that they might capture Berlin before him. To speed up his campaign, he split the command of the Berlin operation between Marshall Zukhov in the centre and Marshall Konev in the south. Stalin thus effectively triggered a race between his two most senior commanders, as both of them were eager to be credited with the conquest of the German capital.
But Stalin may have been onto something.
Stalin was desperate to get his hands on the German nuclear research centre, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the southwest of Berlin - before the Americans got there. The Soviets knew through their spies of the American atomic bomb programme. Stalin's own nuclear programme, Operation Borodino, was lagging behind and Soviet scientists wanted to find out exactly what the Germans had come up with during the war.
As it turned out, the special NKVD troops despatched to secure the German institute discovered three tons of uranium oxide, a material they were short of at the time. 'So the Soviets achieved their objective,' says Antony Beevor, 'the uranium oxide they found in Berlin was enough to kick start Operation Borodino and allow them to start working on their first nuclear weapon.'
The Wikipedo figures are misleading.
They claim in the graph the casualties for the battle of Berlin as........
German casualties. 173,000 dead 134,000 captured or missing
152,000 civilian dead Total over 300,000
Russian 185,000 dead, 275,000 wounded
But the 185,000 Russian dead wern't in the fighting in the city.
As it says in the story following the graph they state the following.......
The Soviets sustained 50,000 dead ''in the city'' and ''135,000'' in Eastern Germany as a whole; the Germans sustained as many as 325,000 killed, wounded or missing, civilians included.
Plus the following.......
A breakdown of soldiers and civilians killed can be made as follows:
the crossing of the Oder river: Soviets: 35,000 (majority near Seelow), Germans: 20,000.
the defence of Berlin: Soviets: 50,000; Germans: 45,000 (25,000 men from the Wehrmacht; 15,000 Volkssturm and 5,000 Hitler Youth) and 45,000 civilians.
the battle around Halbe: Soviets: 30,000; Germans: 60,000 (incl. 25,000 civilians)
other battles in the attack: Soviets: 20,000; Germans: 25,000 and 25,000 civilians
Total killed: Soviets: 135,000; Germans: 125,000 and 95,000 civilians. Germans surrendered 135,000 in Berlin and in the Halbe pocket, many of them were wounded.
You're always going to expect high casualties in capturing a large city like Berlin, as the Germans found out in a much smaller city at Stalingrad.
Although the Paulis and Hoth outnumbered Chuikov by up to 3 to 1 in men and material and had complete control of the air, the Germans took heavy casualties and made slow progress untill they were eventually surounded and aniliated.
It,s unfortunate that 50,000 plus Russians were killed in taking the city, but no matter how it was aproached, it was going to be expensive.