Once the conference was over, Stalin replied to Eisenhower’s message. He told him that his plan ‘completely coincided’ with that of the Red Army and that ‘Berlin has lost its former strategic importance.’ The Soviet Union would deploy only secondary forces against it, while its main effort would be made to the south to join up with American forces, probably in the second half of May. ‘However, this plan may undergo certain alterations, depending on circumstances.’ It was the greatest April Fool in modern history.
At the meeting with Harriman and Clark Kerr, Stalin had appeared ‘much impressed’ by the vast numbers of prisoners the Allies were rounding up in the west. Patton’s Third Army alone had taken 300,000. But such figures of course fed his suspicion that the Germans were surrendering to the British and Americans, while concentrating their forces against the eastern front. Ilya Ehrenburg reflected this in an article in Krasnaya Zvezda. ‘American tankists are enjoying excursions in the picturesque Harz mountains,’ he wrote. The Germans were surrendering ‘with fanatical persistence’. But the phrase which angered Averell Harriman the most was his remark that the Americans were ‘conquering with cameras’, implying that they were just tourists.
Even devoted followers of the Führer found their faith in ‘final victory’ shaken. ‘In the last few days we have been rushed by events,’ an army officer on the staff of an SS corps in the Black Forest wrote in his diary on 2 April. ‘Düsseldorf lost, Cologne lost. The disastrous bridgehead at Remagen… In the south-east the Bolsheviks have reached Wiener Neustadt. Blow upon blow. We are coming to the end. Do our leaders see perhaps a possibility? Does the death of our soldiers, the destruction of our cities and villages make any sense now?’ Yet he still felt that they should fight on until told otherwise.
The war correspondent Godfrey Blunden noted how Germans still made ambushes, killed some Americans and then jumped up with their arms raised shouting ‘Kamerad!’ and expecting to be treated well. He was struck by the contrasts in the advance. ‘We have gone through small towns perfectly preserved from war and a few miles further on entered cities lying in ruins.’ Almost everywhere, they were greeted by pillow slips and sheets hung out of windows as tokens of surrender. The destruction wrought by the combined bomber offensive shook all who observed the reality on the ground. Stephen Spender later wrote of Cologne: ‘One passes through street after street of houses whose windows look hollow and blackened–like the open mouths of a charred corpse.’ In Wuppertal, the tram lines were ‘curled up like celery stalks’. ‘Roads are still thronged with slave workers steadily moving westward,’ Blunden recorded. ‘I saw one today with a tricolore flying from the pack on his back.’ He also saw released slave workers raid a brewery, then dance in the street and smash windows.
It was not long before the full horrors of the Nazi regime became apparent. On 4 April American troops entered Ohrdruf concentration camp, part of Buchenwald, to find apathetic, skeletal figures surrounded by unburied corpses. Eisenhower was so appalled that he ordered soldiers to visit the camp, and brought in war correspondents to witness the sight. Some of the guards had tried to disguise themselves, but when they were pointed out by prisoners Allied troops shot them on the spot. Other guards had already been killed by prisoners, but few had the strength. On 11 April, American soldiers came across the tunnel factory of Mittelbau-Dora. Four days later British troops entered Belsen. The stench and the sights made most of them feel physically sick. Some 30,000 prisoners were in a limbo between life and death, surrounded by more than 10,000 rotting corpses. Belsen’s population had been grotesquely swollen by the survivors of death marches who had been dumped there. More than 9,000 had died in the previous two weeks and 37,000 in the previous six, from starvation and a typhus epidemic. Of those still just alive, another 14,000 died despite all the efforts of the Royal Army Medical Corps. The senior officer present ordered a strong detachment of troops to march into the adjacent town of Bergen, to bring back the whole population at bayonet point. As they were to put to work moving corpses to mass graves, these German civilians all professed shock and protested their ignorance, to the angry disbelief of British officers.
The aimless movement of tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners from one place to another continued with murderous futility. Some 57,000 women and men from Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen were still being herded west. Altogether, between 200,000 and 350,000 prisoners are estimated to have died on the death marches. German civilians showed them little pity. Blunden heard of the Gardelegen massacre, where SS guards handed over several thousand prisoners from Dora-Mittelbau to a mixed group of Luftwaffe personnel, Hitler Jugend and local SA members. They forced the prisoners into a barn and set fire to it, then shot down any who attempted to escape. The speed of the Allied advance in the west prompted groups of SS, often aided by Volkssturm, to carry out many other massacres of prisoners.
Allied forces also had to care for their own prisoners of war, released from camps overrun in their advance. During the month of April a quarter of a million needed to be fed and repatriated. Eisenhower requested RAF and USAAF bombers to be diverted to this task, now that their work of destruction was virtually over.
The biggest relief operation was planned for the starving Netherlands. When Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart threatened to drown large areas, Eisenhower’s SHAEF headquarters announced that he and Generaloberst Blaskowitz, the commander-in-chief in Holland, would be treated as war criminals if that happened. Then, after complicated negotiations through the Dutch resistance, the German authorities agreed not to hinder attempts to drop food supplies in the worst-affected areas, including Rotterdam and The Hague. In Operation Manna, 3,000 sorties by RAF bombers parachuted in more than 6,000 tons. For countless people close to death, it came only just in time.
After the encirclement of Generalfeldmarschall Model’s Army Group B in the Ruhr during the first week of April, divisions from Simpson’s Ninth Army pushed rapidly forward towards the River Elbe. Eisenhower, taken aback by the British reaction over his change of strategy, vacillated over the taking of Berlin. Simpson, in his orders, was told to exploit any opportunity for seizing a bridgehead over the Elbe and to be prepared to continue the advance on Berlin or to the north-east. First Army on his right was heading for Leipzig and Dresden, while Patton’s Third Army was already in the Harz Mountains and heading for Czechoslovakia. In southern Germany, Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch’s Seventh Army and Lattre de Tassigny’s First French Army were advancing through the Black Forest.
On 8 April Eisenhower visited Major General Alexander Bolling, the commander of the 84th Infantry Division, after it had taken the city of Hanover.
‘Alex, where are you going next?’ Eisenhower asked him.
‘General, we’re going to push on ahead. We have a clear go at Berlin and nothing can stop us.’
‘Keep going,’ Eisenhower told him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I wish you all the luck in the world and don’t let anybody stop you.’ Bolling understood this as confirmation that Berlin was their objective.
On 11 April American troops reached Magdeburg along the autobahn from Hanover, and the following day crossed the Elbe south of Dessau. Over the next two days several other bridgeheads were seized across the river. Bolling’s 84th Division repulsed a counter-attack by part of General Walther Wenck’s lightly armed Twelfth Army. He had bridges across the Elbe ready to take the 2nd Armored Division, and during the night of 14 April its vehicles rumbled across ready to advance on Berlin. Both Simpson and Bolling guessed that opposition would be light. They were right. Almost all the SS formations were deployed facing the Red Army, which they knew was about to unleash its own assault on the capital. Most army units were now only too happy to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets arrived.
Eisenhower suddenly had another change of heart. He talked to Bradley, who thought that the capture of Berlin might cost 100,000 casualties, an estimate he later admitted to have been far too high. They both agreed th
at heavy casualties were an unacceptable price to pay for a prestige objective, from which they would have to withdraw anyway when the fighting finished. The European Advisory Commission had already settled the boundary of the Soviet occupation zone along the Elbe, while Berlin itself would be partitioned. Roosevelt had died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 12 April, and perhaps this also had an effect on Eisenhower’s thinking.
Early on 15 April, Simpson was summoned to 12th Army Group headquarters near Wiesbaden. Bradley was waiting for him at the airfield when his aircraft touched down. Without wasting any words, Bradley told him straight off that Ninth Army was to halt on the Elbe. There was to be no advance on Berlin. ‘Where in hell did you get this?’ Simpson asked.
‘From Ike,’ Bradley replied. Simpson, feeling dazed and dejected, returned to his headquarters wondering how he was going to announce this to his officers and men, especially as it came on top of the news of Roosevelt’s death.
Eisenhower had made the correct decision even if for the wrong reason. Stalin would never have allowed the Americans to take Berlin first. As soon as Red Army aviation pilots had spotted their advance, Stalin would almost certainly have ordered Soviet aircraft to attack them. Afterwards, he would probably have claimed that it had been the fault of the Allies for trying to trick him with their assurances of advancing further to the south. Eisenhower wanted to avoid clashes with the Red Army at all costs. And strongly supported by Marshall, he rejected Churchill’s argument that the Americans and British ‘should shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible’. They knew that Churchill wanted to put pressure on Stalin in the hope of obtaining better treatment for Poland, but they both refused to be influenced by what they saw as the post-war politics of Europe.
Goebbels, on hearing of Roosevelt’s death, was overjoyed. He immediately telephoned Hitler, who was sunk in gloom in the Reichschancellery bunker. ‘My Führer, I congratulate you!’ he said. ‘Roosevelt is dead. It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be the turning point for us. This Friday 13 April, it is the turning point!’ Goebbels had been trying to raise Hitler’s spirits a few days before by reading to him from Carlyle’s History of Friedrich II of Prussia, including the passage where Frederick, tempted by suicide at the lowest point of the Seven Years War, suddenly received news of the death of the Tsarina Elizabeth. ‘The Miracle of the House of Brandenburg had come to pass.’ The following night Allied bombers reduced much of Frederick the Great’s Potsdam to rubble.
On 8 April, as their enemies closed in, Hitler and the Nazi leadership had embarked on a frenzy of killing to pre-empt any chance of another stab-in-the-back. Prominent prisoners, especially those from the July plot and others suspected of treason, were murdered. They included Admiral Canaris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the cabinet-maker Georg Elser, who had tried to assassinate Hitler in November 1939. ‘Flying courts martial’ handed out death sentences on deserters and any who retreated without orders. Soldiers were told to shoot any officer of whatever rank who told them to pull back. On 19 March Hitler, who had already made clear to close associates that he intended ‘to take a whole world’ with him, had issued what was known as the ‘Nero Order’ to destroy bridges, factories and utilities. If the German people were incapable of victory, then in his view they did not deserve to survive. Albert Speer, supported by industrialists and some generals, managed to thwart some of this destruction with the argument that it was defeatist to wreck installations that might be recaptured in a counter-attack.
Hitler began to have doubts about the enigmatic Speer and he began to suspect even his most loyal paladin, Heinrich Himmler, who was trying to ‘sell’ Jews to the Allies or use them as bargaining counters. The Nazi Party’s authority had disintegrated as word spread of Gauleiters escaping to safety with their families, having ordered everyone else to fight to the death. The braggarts and bullies were revealed for the cowardly hypocrites they really were. The greeting of ‘Heil Hitler!’ and the Nazi salute were now used only by diehard fanatics, or by others made nervous in their presence. Hardly anybody believed any more in Hitler’s ‘empty phrases and promises’, as an SS Sicherheitsdienst report warned. People were angry that the regime refused to face the reality of defeat and avoid the senseless waste of more lives. Only the most desperate believed Hitler’s fantasy that a falling-out between the Allies would somehow save Germany.
The Nazi empire was now reduced to a ribbon from Norway down to northern Italy. Only isolated pockets remained outside. Guderian’s demands to repatriate forces, particularly the vast garrison in Norway and the remnants of Army Group North trapped on the Courland Peninsula, had all been angrily rejected by Hitler. His defiance of military logic reduced military commanders to despair. Guderian himself had been sacked on 28 March, after a failed attempt to relieve Küstrin. The row in the Führer bunker had shaken all those who witnessed it. ‘Hitler became paler and paler,’ noted the chief of staff’s aide, ‘while Guderian became redder and redder.’
Guderian was replaced by General Hans Krebs, the officer whom Stalin had slapped on the back on the Moscow platform shortly before Operation Barbarossa. Krebs, a short, witty opportunist, had no experience of command, which suited Hitler, since he wanted nothing more than an efficient subordinate to do his bidding. General staff officers at OKH headquarters out at Zossen did not know what to think. They were already suffering from ‘a mixture of nervous energy and trance’, said one of them, because of the sensation of ‘having to do your duty while seeing at the same time that this duty was completely pointless’.
On 9 April in Italy the 15th Army Group, now under General Mark Clark, launched an offensive beyond the Gothic Line north towards the River Po. The US Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army had become even more of an international conglomeration, with the 1st Canadian Division which had taken Rimini in September, the 8th Indian Division, the 2nd New Zealand Division, the 6th South African Armoured Division, II Polish Corps, two Italian formations, a Greek mountain brigade, Brazilian forces and the Jewish Brigade. The US Fifth Army, commanded by Lucien Truscott, finally managed to take Bologna with the help of the Polish Corps, while the Eighth Army took Ferrara and also reached the Po.
Churchill was hoping for a rapid advance. He was concerned that the Soviet–Yugoslav treaty, which was signed two days later, would support Tito’s claims to Trieste and Istria at the head of the Adriatic. Churchill turned down Tito’s requests for more aid. Since the Yugoslavs had entered the Soviet embrace, they could look instead to Moscow for assistance. He also feared that Soviet power in the region might encourage the Italian Communists, whose partisans already represented a powerful force in northern Italy.
On 11 April the Red Army reached the centre of Vienna. Even before the battle for Berlin, a race for position in post-war Europe was on. Churchill urged Eisenhower to allow Patton’s Third Army to push on to Prague, but the supreme commander insisted on consulting with the Stavka. The refusal was immediate and peremptory. Churchill also became concerned about Denmark. Once across the mouth of the Oder near Stettin, Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front could make a dash across Mecklenburg.
On 14 April Hitler issued an Order of the Day to his troops on the Oder and Neisse front. Once again it threatened that anyone who did not fulfil his duty would be ‘treated as a traitor to our people’. Hitler, with rambling references to the defeat of the Turks outside Vienna in 1683, claimed that ‘this time the Bolshevik will experience the ancient fate of Asiatics’. (He failed to mention that the city had in fact been saved by Polish heavy cavalry.) Hitler also seemed to ignore the fact that Vienna had just fallen to the Red Army. Goebbels instead coined the slogan ‘Berlin remains German and Vienna will be German again’. Historical parallels and modern propaganda no longer had any effect on the majority of Germans.
Berliners prepared for the onslaught with foreboding. Women were offered pistol-shooting practice. Members of the Volkssturm, some of whom were wearing French helmets captured in 1940, were put
to work constructing barricades across streets already littered with masonry and broken glass. Trams and railway goods wagons, filled with stone and rubble, were manoeuvred into place, pavements were ripped up, and individual foxholes dug for men and boys armed with Panzerfaust launchers. Housewives laid in what supplies they could, and they boiled water to be kept in preserving jars for drinking when the taps ran dry.
Teenage members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst, a paramilitary labour service, were inducted en masse into the army. Many of them were forced to witness executions: ‘To accustom you to death!’ an officer told them. Mothers and girlfriends came to see them off. These recruits, escorted by NCOs, tried to keep up their spirits with gallows humour as they departed for the Oder front on the S-Bahn local rail network. ‘See you in the mass grave!’ was one farewell.
48
The Berlin Operation
APRIL–MAY 1945
On the night of 14 April, German troops dug in on the Seelow Heights west of the River Oder heard tank engines. Music and sinister Soviet propaganda messages blasted at full volume from loudspeakers failed to camouflage the noise as the 1st Guards Tank Army crossed the river into the bridgehead. This extended across the Oderbruch flood plain below them, where a river mist covered the sodden meadows. Altogether nine armies of Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front were poised to attack between the Hohenzollern Canal in the north and Frankfurt an der Oder in the south.
The Second World War Page 101