Almost 75 years have passed since thousands of artillery rounds rained down on the western bank of the Oder River shattering the pre-dawn silence on April 16, 1945, the date the Soviet Red Army commenced its Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation. In the decades following that momentous day, many historical accounts have been published on what would more commonly come to be known as the Battle of Berlin. Cornelius Ryan, John Erickson and Antony Beevor are among the authors whose books are considered the standards on the subject. This work complements those efforts by offering an entirely new and unique perspective on the battle that would result in German leader Adolf Hitler's death and the near total destruction of Berlin - Nazi Germany's Reichshauptstadt. For the very first time, the Battle of Berlin unfolds via the individual combat exploits of the Soviet military personnel who fought in it. Drawing upon primary source material in the archival holdings of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the battle is chronicled employing the descriptive narratives recorded in the original award recommendations of those Red Army personnel who were bestowed the title Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU) for their heroism during the fighting to capture the city. As the former Soviet Union's highest decoration for combat valor, the HSU is broadly analogous to the American Medal of Honor, the British Victoria Cross and wartime Germany's Knights Cross. For Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the city of Berlin was the "beast's lair" - логово зверя (logovo zverya) in the Russian language. No symbol within that lair held more significance for him than the German Reichstag building. While some may argue that Berlin's Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) or Hitler's Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery) would have been more appropriate symbols, Stalin was fixated on the Reichstag alone. Although largely abandoned after it burned in 1933, the Reichstag's capture was nonetheless of immense symbolic meaning for him. In Stalin's mind, only when a red Soviet banner was unfurled and rippled in the wind over the Reichstag, would victory in the beast's lair and Germany's total defeat be secured. These are the stories of the Red Army soldiers whose valor in the Battle of Berlin made Stalin's order a reality.