General Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army had increased the bridgehead the day before, with an attack which pushed back the 20th Panzergrenadier Division. Hitler was so angry on hearing the news that he ordered all medals to be stripped from members of the division until they won them back. Chuikov was displeased for a very different reason. He heard that on the night of 15 April Marshal Zhukov would take over his command post on the Reitwein Spur because it had the best view of the Oder flood plain and the Seelow Heights. Relations between the two commanders had deteriorated further since Chuikov’s strong criticisms over the failure to push on immediately to Berlin at the beginning of February.
More than eighty kilometres to the south of Zhukov’s left flank, Marshal Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front lined the Neisse with seven armies. Its political department worked up a powerful message of revenge: ‘There will be no pity. They have sown the wind and now they are reaping the whirlwind.’
News of the change in the party line in Moscow the day before had not reached the front lines. Stalin had finally understood that both the rhetoric and the reality of vengeance were simply intensifying German resistance. This was also why the bulk of the German army was so keen to surrender to the Allied armies in the west. In his view, this greatly increased the risk that the Americans would take Berlin before the Red Army.
On 14 April Georgii Aleksandrov, the head of Soviet propaganda, published an important article in Pravda, which was almost certainly dictated by Stalin himself. This attacked Ilya Ehrenburg’s calls for revenge and his description of Germany as ‘only a colossal gang’. Aleksandrov’s piece, entitled ‘Comrade Ehrenburg Oversimplifies’, said that while some German officers ‘fight for the cannibal regime, others throw bombs at Hitler and his clique [the July plotters], or persuade Germans to put down their weapons [General von Seydlitz and the League of German Officers]. The Gestapo hunt for opponents of the regime, and the appeals to Germans to denounce them proved that not all Germans were the same.’ He also quoted Stalin’s remark: ‘Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the Germans remain.’ Ehrenburg was devastated to find himself being sacrificed in this way, yet most officers and soldiers took little notice of the change in policy. The propaganda image of Germans as ravening beasts had gone too deep.
The Soviet authorities, even within sight of victory, did not trust their own troops. Officers were told to name any of their ‘morally and politically unstable’ men who might desert to warn the enemy of the attack, so that SMERSh could arrest them. And General Serov, the NKVD chief who had supervised the repression of eastern Poland in 1939, became alarmed about the ‘unhealthy moods developed among the officers and soldiers of the 1st Polish Army’. They had become excited about the rapid advance of the British and American armies in the west, having listened illegally to the BBC. They convinced themselves that General Anders’s forces were approaching Berlin. ‘As soon as our troops meet up with Anders’s men,’ an artillery commanding officer was accused of saying by a SMERSh informer, ‘then you can say goodbye to the [Soviet-controlled] provisional government. The London government will take power again and Poland will once more be what it was before 1939. England and America will help Poland get rid of the Russians.’ Serov’s operatives arrested nearly 2,000 men just before the offensive.
German officers were even more concerned about disaffection in their ranks. They were horrified when young soldiers shouted back at Soviet loudspeaker broadcasts that were telling them to give up, to ask whether they would be sent to Siberia if they laid down their arms. Officers in the Fourth Panzer Army facing Konev’s troops on the Neisse confiscated white handkerchiefs to prevent them being used as a sign of surrender. Men caught hiding or attempting to desert were forced out into no-man’s-land and ordered to dig trenches there. Many commanders resorted to desperate lies. They claimed that thousands of tanks were arriving to support them, that new miracle weapons would be used against the enemy, and even that the western Allies were joining them to fight the Bolsheviks. Junior officers were told to have no compunction about shooting any of their men who wavered, and that if all their men ran away, then they had better shoot themselves.
A Luftwaffe Oberleutnant commanding a scratch company of trainee technicians was standing in his trench next to his senior NCO. He shivered. ‘Tell me,’ he said turning to the Kompanietruppführer. ‘Are you also cold?’ ‘We’re not cold, Herr Oberleutnant,’ he replied. ‘We’re afraid.’
On the eve of battle Red Army soldiers shaved and wrote letters. Sappers were already at work in the dark removing mines ahead of their advance. Chuikov had to control his temper when he saw a convoy of staff cars bringing Marshal Zhukov and his entourage, as they approached his command post on the Reitwein Spur with their headlights on.
At 05.00 hours Moscow time on 16 April, which was two hours earlier by Berlin time, Zhukov’s ‘god of war’ opened fire, with 8,983 guns, heavy mortars and Katyusha batteries. It was the most intense barrage of the whole war, with 1,236,000 rounds fired on the first day alone. The intensity was so great that even sixty kilometres away on the eastern side of Berlin walls vibrated. Sensing that the great offensive had begun, housewives emerged from their front doors and began to talk to neighbours in subdued tones, with anxious glances towards the east. Women and girls wondered whether the Americans would reach Berlin first to save them from the Red Army.
Zhukov was pleased with his idea of using 143 searchlights to dazzle the enemy. But both the bombardment and the searchlights proved unhelpful to his men. As the infantry charged forward, shouting ‘Na Berlin!’, the searchlights behind silhouetted them, and the ground ahead was so churned up by craters that their progress was slow. Surprisingly, the artillery had concentrated on the first line of defence, despite the Red Army’s awareness of the German tactic of withdrawing all but a small covering force when a major attack was expected.
Zhukov, who usually reconnoitred the ground carefully before an attack, had failed to do so this time. He had relied instead on air-reconnaissance photographs, but these images did not reveal what a strong defensive feature the Seelow Heights represented. At first, Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army on the left and Colonel General Nikolai Berzarin’s 5th Shock Army on the right advanced quite well. The 1st Guards Tank Army would then pass through them once they had secured the crest. At dawn, Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft streaked in, flying through the fountains of earth thrown up by the shelling, to strafe and bomb German defences and vehicles. Their greatest success was to hit the German Ninth Army’s ammunition depot, which blew up in a massive explosion.
Traumatized German survivors from the front line ran back up the slope of the Seelow Heights, shouting ‘Der Iwan kommt!’ Further back, local farmers and their families also started to flee. ‘Refugees hurry by like creatures of the underworld,’ wrote a young soldier, ‘women, children and old men surprised in their sleep, some only half-dressed. In their faces is despair and deadly fear. Crying children holding their mothers’ hands look out at the world’s destruction with shocked eyes.’
Zhukov in the command post on the Reitwein Spur became increasingly nervous as the morning progressed. Through his powerful binoculars he could see that the advance had slowed, if not halted. Knowing that Stalin would hand the Berlin objective to Konev if he failed to break through, he began cursing and swore at Chuikov, whose troops had still barely reached the edge of the flood plain. Zhukov threatened to strip commanders of their rank and send them to a shtraf company. He then suddenly decided to change his whole plan of attack.
In an attempt to speed up the advance, he would send Colonel General Katukov’s 1st Guards Tank Army in ahead of the infantry. Chuikov was horrified. He could imagine the chaos. At 15.00 hours, Zhukov put through a call to Stalin in Moscow and explained the situation. ‘So, you’ve underestimated the enemy on the Berlin axis,’ the Soviet leader said. ‘And I was thinking that you were already on the approaches to Berlin, yet you’re still on the Seelow Heights. Things have started more successfully for
Konev,’ he added pointedly. Stalin did not comment on Zhukov’s proposed changes to his plan.
The change of plan caused exactly the sort of confusion Chuikov had feared. There were already massive jams, with the 1st Guards Tank Army trapped behind the vehicles of the other two armies, waiting to advance. It became a nightmare for traffic controllers trying to unscramble the mess. And even when the tanks were extricated and began to push forward, they were picked off by 88mm guns sited below Neuhardenberg. In the smoke, they found themselves ambushed by German infantry with Panzerfausts and a platoon of assault guns. Things did not improve when they finally began to climb the Seelow Heights. The mud on the steep slopes, churned by shellfire, often proved too much both for the heavy Stalin tanks and for the T-34s. On the left, Katukov’s leading brigade was ambushed by Tiger tanks of the SS Heavy Panzer Battalion 502. Only in the centre did they have any success where the 9th Fallschirmjäger Division collapsed. By nightfall, Zhukov’s armies had still failed to seize the crest of the Seelow Heights.
In the Führer bunker under the Reichschancellery, telephone calls were constantly being made to OKH headquarters out at Zossen demanding news. But Zossen itself, which lay to the south of Berlin, was vulnerable if Marshal Konev’s forces broke through.
The 1st Ukrainian Front, as Stalin had told Zhukov, was doing rather better, despite having had no bridgeheads across the Neisse. Konev’s artillery and supporting aircraft kept the Germans deep in their trenches as the leading battalions rushed the river in assault boats. A wide smokescreen was also laid by the 2nd Air Army, aided by a gentle breeze in the right direction. It was impossible for the Fourth Panzer Army to identify where the attack was concentrated. Bridgeheads were established and soon tanks were ferried across while sappers began constructing pontoon bridges.
Konev did not suffer from Zhukov’s disastrous change of mind. He had already planned for the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies to lead his offensive. Soon after midday, the first bridges were ready and their tanks rumbled across. While the Germans were still shaken from the bombardment and confused by the smokescreen, Konev sent his leading tank brigades straight through the German lines with orders not to stop. The infantry would mop up behind them.
That night of 16 April was a humiliating one for Zhukov. He had to call Stalin again on the radio-telephone to admit that his troops had not yet taken the Seelow Heights. Stalin told him that it was his fault for having changed the plan of attack. He then asked Zhukov whether he was sure he would secure the heights by the next day. Zhukov assured him that he would. He argued that it was easier to destroy the German forces in the open than in Berlin itself, so time would not be lost in the long run. Stalin then warned him that he would tell Konev to divert his two tank armies northwards towards the southern side of Berlin. He hung up abruptly. Soon afterwards he spoke to Konev. ‘Zhukov is not getting on very well,’ he said. ‘Turn Rybalko [3rd Guards Tank Army] and Lelyushenko [4th Guards Tank Army] towards Zehlendorf.’
Stalin’s choice of Zehlendorf was significant. It was the most southwestern suburb of Berlin and the closest to the American bridgehead across the Elbe. Perhaps it was also no coincidence that it adjoined Dahlem, with the nuclear research facilities of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Three hours earlier, in response to an American request for information about the Soviet offensive against Berlin, General Antonov was instructed to reply that the Soviet forces were simply ‘undertaking a large-scale reconnaissance on the central sector of the front for the purpose of finding out details of the German defences’. The April Fool continued. Never before had a ‘reconnaissance’ been carried out by forces 2.5 million strong.
With Stalin’s support, Konev forced on his tank brigades to satisfy his ambition to beat his rival to the glorious prize. Zhukov was becoming frantic at the lack of progress. On the Seelow Heights the chaotic battle continued under clearer skies, which helped the Shturmovik fighter-bombers. The collapse of the 9th Fallschirmjäger Division, whose ranks had been filled with Luftwaffe ground personnel rather than paratroopers, eased the situation for Katukov’s tank units but they still faced counterattacks, both by the Kurmark Division with Panther tanks and by soldiers and Hitler Youth fighting with Panzerfausts at close range.
Conditions in German dressing stations and field hospitals were gruesome. The surgeons were completely overwhelmed by the numbers of wounded. On the Soviet side, things were little better. Soldiers wounded on the first day had still not been collected and cared for, as reports revealed afterwards. The numbers rose all the time as the artillery of the 5th Shock Army began shelling Katukov’s tank brigades by mistake.
German aircraft of the Leonidas Squadron based at Jüterbog imitated the Japanese kamikaze pilots in mostly vain attempts to destroy the bridges over the Oder. This sort of suicide attack was termed a Selbstopfereinsatz–‘a self-sacrifice mission’. Thirty-five pilots died in this way. Their commander Generalmajor Robert Fuchs sent their names ‘to the Führer on his imminent fifty-sixth birthday’, assuming that it was the sort of present he would appreciate. But the insane scheme was soon halted by the advance of the 4th Guards Tank Army towards the squadron’s airfield.
Konev’s tank brigades raced for the River Spree south of Cottbus, in order to cross it before the Germans could organize any defence. General Rybalko, up with his lead brigade, did not want to waste time bringing up pontoon bridges. He simply ordered the first tank straight into the Spree, which was some fifty metres wide at that point. The water came to just above the tracks, but below the driver’s hatch. He drove on through, and the rest of the brigade followed in line ahead, ignoring the machine-gun bullets rattling against their armour. The Germans had no anti-tank guns in the area. The road to OKH headquarters in Zossen lay open.
Staff officers in Zossen had no idea of the breakthrough to the south. Their attention was still fixed on the Seelow Heights, where Generaloberst Gotthard Heinrici had thrown in his only reserve, Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner’s III SS Germanische Panzer Corps. This included the 11th SS Division Nordland manned by Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Estonian volunteers.
On the morning of 18 April, the fighting on the Seelow Heights reached a new intensity. Zhukov had heard from Stalin that Konev’s tank armies were forging ahead to Berlin, and that if his 1st Belorussian Front did not make better progress he would tell Rokossovsky to the north to turn his 2nd Belorussian Front towards Berlin as well. This was an empty threat since Rokossovsky’s forces had been so delayed that they did not cross the Oder until 20 April, but Zhukov was so desperate that he ordered attack after attack. Finally the breakthrough came later that morning. One of Katukov’s tank brigades charged through along the Reichsstrasse 1, the main highway from Berlin which ran all the way to the now destroyed East Prussian capital of Königsberg. Generaloberst Theodor Busse’s Ninth Army was split, and disintegration soon followed. The cost had been high. The 1st Belorussian Front had lost more than 30,000 men killed, as opposed to 12,000 German soldiers. Zhukov showed little remorse. He was interested only in the objective.
That day, Konev was troubled only by an attack launched against the 52nd Army on his southern flank by Generalfeldmarschall Schörner’s forces. This was a hurried, ill-prepared operation and easily rebuffed. His two tank armies managed to advance between thirty-five and forty-five kilometres. He would have been even more encouraged if he had known of the chaos caused in Berlin as Nazi leaders interfered with those trying to organize the defence of the city.
Goebbels, the Reich defence commissar for Berlin, tried to act as a military commander. He ordered that all the Volkssturm units in the city should march out to create a new defence line. The commander of the Berlin garrison was appalled and protested. He did not know that secretly this was exactly what both Albert Speer and General Heinrici had wanted in order to avoid the destruction of the city. General Helmuth Weidling who commanded the LVI Panzer Corps was distracted by visits from Ribbentrop and Artur Axmann, the head of the Hitler Youth, who offered
to send in more of his teenagers armed with Panzerfausts. Weidling tried to persuade him to desist from ‘the sacrifice of children for an already doomed cause’.
The approach of the Red Army increased the Nazi regime’s murderous instincts. Another thirty political prisoners were beheaded in Plötzensee Prison that day. SS patrols in the city centre did not arrest suspected deserters, but hanged them from lamp-posts with placards round their necks announcing their cowardice. Such accusations from the SS were hypocritical to say the least. While their patrols executed army deserters and even some Hitler Youth, Heinrich Himmler and senior officers of the Waffen-SS were secretly planning to disengage their units and pull them back to Denmark.
On 19 April the Ninth Army, irretrievably split in three, reeled back. Women and girls in the area, terrified of what awaited them, begged the soldiers to take them with them. The 1st Guards Tank Army supported by Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army reached Müncheberg in their advance along Reichsstrasse 1. While they headed for the eastern and south-eastern suburbs of Berlin, Zhukov’s other armies began to advance around the northern edge of the city. Stalin insisted on a full encirclement to ensure that no American attempt might be made to break through, even at the eleventh hour. American troops were entering Leipzig that day and took Nuremberg after heavy fighting, but Simpson’s divisions on the Elbe remained where they were as Eisenhower had ordered.
The dawn of 20 April, Hitler’s birthday, followed the tradition of Führerwetter by providing a beautiful spring day. Allied air forces marked the day with their own greeting. Göring spent the morning supervising the evacuation of his looted paintings and other treasures from his ostentatious country house of Karinhall north of Berlin. After his possessions had been loaded on to Luftwaffe trucks, he pressed the plunger wired to the explosives planted inside. The house collapsed in a cloud of dust. He turned and walked to his car to be driven to the Reichschancellery, where along with the other Nazi leaders he would congratulate the Führer on what they all knew would be his last birthday.
The Second World War Page 102