Battle of Halbe - Aftermath

Aftermath

The casualties on both sides were very high. There are about 15,000 Germans buried in the cemetery at Halbe, making it the largest war cemetery in Germany from World War II. A major part of the buried, about 10,000, are unidentified soldiers killed during the first half of 1945. According to Beevor some 30,000 German troops were killed in the battle. The Red army claimed to have killed 60,000 German soldiers and taken 120,000 as prisoners, a figure that is considered to be a gross exaggeration. About 20,000 soldiers of the Red Army died trying to stop the breakout; most are buried at a cemetery next to the Baruth–Zossen road (Bundesstraße 96). These are the known dead, but the remains of more who died in the battle are found every year so the total of those who died will never be known. Nobody knows how many civilians died, but it could have been as high as 10,000.

The most astonishing part of the story is not the numbers who died or were forced to surrender but the 25,000 soldiers and several thousand civilians who succeeded in getting through three lines of Soviet troops. — Antony Beevor