Did Zhukov manage to blind the enemy at the Seelow Heights?

In the film “The Battle of Berlin” from the epic “Liberation” there is a memorable episode with searchlights. I was always interested in the question: what did that story really look like? On the eve of Victory Day, we will try to reconstruct the details of a very extraordinary event during the final stage of the war.

The idea was doubtful, but Zhukov believed in success

As we remember, the commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Georgy Zhukov, in order to stun and demoralize the enemy, suggested that his colleagues launch an offensive (or rather, an assault) at night, before dawn, using anti-aircraft searchlights. The front then passed through the Seelow Heights. In the movies, military leaders rightly object to Zhukov, saying that searchlights would be an excellent target for the enemy. And bright light will not only not add effectiveness to our actions, but will do harm by promoting self-detection of troops.



To which the cunning marshal, as an exculpatory argument at the training ground, suddenly blinds them at point-blank range. Of course, anyone can be blinded at close range by spotlights with beams of powerful light radiation that almost knock them off their feet. But at a kilometer distance, as it turned out, this is impossible for several reasons.

In preparation for the “searchlight attack”, special exercises were carried out with a satisfactory assessment, although in combat conditions everything turned out differently. But the searchlight company nevertheless simultaneously coped with other functions assigned to it in the Berlin operation...

What happened in the movies was different from what happened in life

An expert in the field of military history, Viktor Tolstykh from St. Petersburg, conducted a study on this matter, the abstracts of which we will use. It turned out that Zhukov did not actually propose his idea to anyone. He implemented it without any consultation, giving appropriate orders and instructions to his subordinates, which, in general, is normal for the style of a front commander.

From Seelow to Berlin there are a little more than 50 km of continuous defensive structures. By 16.04.1945/140/200, about 3 lighting installations were dispersed along the line of combat contact in the farms of four armies and placed in predetermined positions at a distance of up to XNUMX m between them. At XNUMX a.m. local time, the troops were waiting for commands to unexpectedly and simultaneously turn on the searchlights at the moment the infantry deployed into battle formation. And at the beginning of the fourth, a large-scale, comprehensive assault began.

The commander of the 8th Guards Army, Colonel General Vasily Chuikov, did not approve of the mentioned adventurous venture. And his fears came true. According to the commander, the glow from the artillery barrage turned out to be so bright that the officers at the command post were disoriented and did not even notice the light of the illuminated searchlights. Chuikov and Zhukov asked why they were still not working. And they were amazed when they were told: the spotlights were shining! But after the glow weakened and flared up, something happened that for some reason no one took into account. The powerful light stream hit, as if against a solid obstacle, a curtain of dust and fumes that had formed over the fascist positions. The horizon was not visible, and the picture on the battlefield was mostly hidden from the eyes of the commanders.

We wanted the best ...

And this is what one of the April official front-line reports of the 5th Shock Army under the command of Colonel General Nikolai Berzarin says. The spotlights turned on on time, but in some cases they turned out to be useless. Causes:

– adverse atmospheric phenomena in the form of haze;

– the enemy frontline was plunged into a continuous light-proof dusty and smoke cloud;

– out of 26 installations, 12 did not work. Five were damaged by small fire in the first minutes of operation, one initially turned out to be unusable, the rest could not be launched due to insufficient training of personnel by officers of the searchlight unit. Therefore, instead of stable illumination and blinding, scattered weak strips of light were observed, barely reaching the enemy’s front line. Thus, the depth of the enemy's defense remained unknown;

- searchlight crews were assigned to the rifle corps, and control was entrusted to the chief of artillery, which introduced disorganization. The deputy chief of staff of the air defense corps was responsible for their placement and management. It consisted of exchanging information by telephone with the leadership of anti-aircraft searchlight platoons and reporting on readiness. The headquarters did not provide for the order of actions of the units taking into account the changing operational situation, and withdrew from the direct management of their combat work.

...But your efforts were not in vain?

To complete the picture, we will add here information from the report of the 69th Army under the command of Colonel General Vladimir Kolpakchi. A total of 37 floodlight installations were deployed there. The illuminated area along the breakthrough front reached 5 km. The distance from enemy fortifications corresponded to 300-800 m. The illumination lasted 65 minutes and contributed to the capture of the first three lines of trenches. In some places of the German defense, the discovery of embrasures of fortified strongholds and bunkers ensured the accuracy of hitting them with direct fire.

So, what function did the spotlights perform more or less successfully? Their light did not so much make it difficult for the enemy to see (although it did make it partly difficult, but not as expected), but rather illuminated, albeit fragmentarily, the area with the Nazi positions for the attacking Red Army soldiers. And importantly, the dense illumination spoiled the German Infrarot-Scheinwerfer night vision systems, which detected the target at a distance of up to one kilometer and represented a significant factor in the defense of the Seelow Heights.

On April 22, the order for the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00595/op, concerning the improvement of the organization of the capture of the German capital, in order to activate the assault groups, prescribed the use of searchlights at night for illumination. This time Zhukov did not mention any blinding of the enemy.


After the war, different opinions were expressed regarding that memorable “searchlight attack” undertaken on the night of April 16, 1945. Thus, the commander of the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Shock Army, Lieutenant General Semyon Perevertkin, believed that it was useful, if only because this night spectacle really had an overwhelming effect on the psyche of the Nazis. The prisoners later admitted that we thought that the Russians had used some hitherto unknown weapon. However, there were still few positive reviews from the generals of Victory.