The battle of Berlin was truly a battle on an unprecedented scale. The Soviets massed 1,600,000 troops for 'Operation Berlin', and Marshal Zhukov in the centre had half of them, but his initial attack floundered, lasting four days instead of one, and was so costly that he had to revise his plans for taking of the city, and to revise them yet again when Stalin allowed his rival, Marshal Koniev, to intervene