The operation started with an assault on the Seelow Heights by 1BF and by Marshal Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front (1UF) to the south.
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Marshal Georgy Zhukov concentrated 1BF, which had been deployed along the Oder river from Frankfurt in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the Seelow Heights.
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The 1st Belorussian Front opened its attack on the German Ninth Army from the Magnuszew and Puławy bridgeheads at 08:30 on 14 January, again commencing with a heavy bombardment.
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31 January: 1BF reaches the river Oder to the North of Küstrin and establishes a bridgehead on the western side less than 60 km from Berlin.
During what became known as the Battle of Studzianki, the Soviet 8th Army, aided by elements of the Polish 1st Armoured Brigadeof the 1st Belorussian Front, defeated an armoured counter-attack carried out by three German divisions, including the infamous Fallschirm-Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring.
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General Georgy Zhukov concentrated his 1st Belorussian Front (1BF) which had been deployed along the Oder river from Frankfurt in the south to the Baltic, into an area in front of the Seelow Heights.
Heinrici ordered the III Corps, reduced to three battalions and a few tanks, to scrape together whatever forces it could find to set up a screening line along the Finow Canal to protect the southern flank of the Third Panzer Army from an attack by the Soviet Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, which had broken through the Seelow Heights' defences and was encircling Berlin.
The 1st Belorussian Front, to Konev's north, opened its attack on the German 9th Army from the Magnuszew and Puławy bridgeheads at 08:30, again commencing with a heavy bombardment.
By 2 August, the 1st Belorussian Front’s left wing armies seized bridgeheads over the Vistula at Magnuszew (Chuikov's 47th Army) and Puławy (Lieutenant General V. la. Kolpakchi's 69th Army).