There has never been a book like this! This is the most fundamental, informative and detailed study of the combat path of the 1st Guards Tank Army, based on archival documents (not only Soviet, but also German military archives), memoirs of tank crews and a seven-volume handwritten history of this legendary formation, created by its veterans immediately after Victory, “hot on the heels” of tank battles. The book is illustrated with original maps and diagrams from the war and exclusive photographs published for the first time. Of particular interest is the statistical analysis of the losses of our armored vehicles in comparison with the German ones. “The hatches were opened in Berlin” was the title of the Soviet book about the 1st GTA. This legendary formation was the elite of the armored forces. This famous army fought from the Arc of Fire to the Reichstag. It was its tankers who took the main blow of the SS divisions “Adolf Hitler”, “Reich” and “Totenkopf” in the Battle of Kursk. It was they who in the spring of 1944 cut through Army Group South, cutting off the escape route for its main forces. They broke the back of the Wehrmacht in the Vistula-Oder operation, stormed the Seelow Heights and took Berlin. “These hero tank crews accomplished the truly impossible, often inaccessible to human understanding. These are people in armor who went into battle, destroyed the enemy and died themselves, burned his tanks and burned themselves in their tanks, liberated their own and other people’s lands from the enemy and ultimately won, showing unprecedented perseverance and dedication...”