Could that be because the Americans and the British already crossed the Elbe and already took a number of major cities designated within Soviet occupation zone in Czechoslovakia and Germany? Those places were not evacuated until mid summer of 45, well after the first problems between Anglo-American troops and Soviet troops started.ChrisDR68 wrote:If that's true then why did Stalin honour the agreement to divide Berlin up after the war?AJFFM wrote:Berlin wasn't a symbolic city, it was strategically located near the Oder which would be the natural boundary between unified Germany (which was obviously going to be under American influence) and Soviet controlled Poland. All signs before the deal (which offered Berlin to the Soviets by the Americans just to rile the Brits with no reciprocal guaranteed about Central and Eastern Europe) showed that Stalin was not interested in honouring any deal with the Americans and with hindsight the Americans realised their mistake as early as June 45.
And the Americas lost 10s of thousand of GIs in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia only to hand these territories to the Soviets, French and British so this argument is null.
No especially if you compare the phenomenal advance of the Anglo-American troops between the 1st of April and the end of the war with the of the Soviet troops. Magdeburg fell on April 11th, 5 days before the Soviet offensive started and it was a mere 100 km away from Berlin. The 2 million German troops between the Rhine and the Elbe gave little resistance compared with the resistance they gave in France, they and their commanders knew the war was over and except fanatical elements surrendered en masse.ChrisDR68 wrote: Your last point about Austria and Czechoslovakia isn't convincing either. Capturing Berlin would have been on a whole different scale of casualties compared to liberating these two countries. Austria also stayed in the western sphere of influence so it could be argued the American losses here were acceptable in terms of grand strategy.
And the west got to keep Austria because the cold war settlements which set up the iron curtain to avoid another destructive war this time with nukes being with only one side. Plus the Americans were already in Austria by the time the war ended so dislodging them would basically mean war.
Yes, after the war already finished and most German troops surrendered to the Soviets or fought out to surrender to the Americans who already occupied a large chunk of Southern Czechoslovakia including Plzen (Pilsen).ChrisDR68 wrote: Going by memory the Soviets captured most of Czechoslovakia themselves and in fact this was where the last remaining large scale organised German military resistance was located.
In any case back to the original topic at hand. The Germans clearly wanted to surrender to the western allies (as the aforementioned Prague offensive show since Schorner decided to fight instead of surrendering to the red Army), their best chance after Kursk was to simply delay the Red army advance until the western allies land after which the hand over Germany with the least resistance as possible to the western allies.
I think if the Germans pursued this strategy the political pressure not to give Berlin or Central Europe to the USSR would have been to much to weather.