23.4. 1945 Liberation of Brno began

A large part of Brno celebrated its liberation just three days after the Red Army arrived in the city. It happened on April 23, 1945, when Marshal Malinovsky himself gave the order for the final attack from Major General Afonin's observation post on the hill above Křepice.

The liberation of South Moravia and Brno and the subsequent connection with the troops attacking Ostrava and the Moravian Gatewas the aim of one of the two largest military operations on our territory. The Brno part of it began on 5 April 1945 with fierce fighting to establish a bridgehead on the Morava River and advance northwards. 250,000 Soviet and 70,000 Romanian soldiers faced each other as part of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. The Germans had at their disposal 250 thousand soldiers from Army Group Süd - the 8th Army and a division of the 6th Army.

This was the so-called Bratislava-Brno operation. During its second stage, heavy fighting took place in the area of Lanžhot, Pasohlávky, Ořechov and Křepice. "The advance was complicated and even stopped by the swollen Morava and Dyje rivers and a fiercely defending enemy. The Germans were deliberately releasing water from the Vranov Dam. They also took advantage of the defensive lines that forty thousand of our citizens had to build," Milan and Roman Plch describe the events of that time in their book The Secret Places of Nazism.

The Red Army arrived in Brno on 23. On April 23, when Marshal Malinovsky himself gave the order for the final attack from Major General Afonin's observation post on the hill above Křepice, and just three days later, a large part of Brno celebrated its liberation. "Malinovsky then subsequently led the fighting in the Far East. The villages to the north and northeast of the city remained in the power of the German army until May 5, 1945.

During the Bratislava-Brno operation, Malinovsky, as commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, entered Moravia only once. It was on April 23, 1945, when he personally participated in the launch of the decisive strike on Brno.

The balance of war damage in Brno during World War II is quite accurate. "Every second house in the city was hit, and 1,278 houses were completely demolished. The greatest and irreplaceable loss of human life, however, was the loss of life. One and a half thousand people died in the attacks," summarises the Internet Encyclopaedia of the History of the City of Brno.

The event of the liberation is still commemorated by the torso of a monument on the Čertoraj hill near the village of Křepice in the Břeclav region. It has not been completed to this day, although it was started in the 1980s. In the long term, it is being considered for completion with the idea of building a small museum and a lookout tower on the hill.

Sources.