Hitler looked at least two decades older than his fifty-six years. He was stooped and grey-faced and his left arm shook. That morning on the radio, Goebbels had called on all Germans to trust blindly in him. Yet it was clear to even his most devoted colleagues that the Führer was in no state to think rationally. Himmler, having drunk his leader’s health in champagne at midnight according to his private custom, was secretly trying to make contact with the Americans. He believed that Eisenhower would recognize that they needed him to maintain order in Germany.
The leaders who gathered in the half-wrecked grandeur of the Reichschancellery included Grossadmiral Dönitz, Ribbentrop, Speer, Kaltenbrunner and Generalfeldmarschall Keitel. It soon became apparent that only Goebbels intended to stay with his Führer in Berlin. Dönitz, who was given supreme command in northern Germany, was leaving with Hitler’s blessing. All the others were simply finding excuses to get out of Berlin before it was completely surrounded and its airfields seized by the Red Army. Hitler was disappointed in his supposedly loyal paladins, particularly Göring, who claimed that he would organize resistance in Bavaria. Several urged their Führer to leave for the south, but he refused. That day marked what became known as ‘the flight of the Golden Pheasants’, as senior Nazi Party members shed their brown, red and gold uniforms to escape Berlin with their families while routes to the south remained open.
In the city, housewives queued for a last issue of ‘crisis rations’. They could clearly hear the sound of guns in the distance. That afternoon heavy artillery from the 3rd Shock Army opened fire on the northern suburbs of Berlin. Zhukov ordered Katukov to send tank brigades into Berlin whatever the cost. He knew that Konev’s 3rd Guards Tank Army was heading for the southern edge of the city. But, unknown to Zhukov, they had run into strong forces which they had not expected. A large part of Busse’s Ninth Army was escaping through the Spreewald across their path.
The German retreat from the Oder front into the city was greatly hampered by the thousands of civilians trying to flee in panic from the advancing enemy. Some decided to stay. ‘The farmers stand at their garden fences at the side of the road and watch the flight with solemn faces,’ wrote a young soldier. ‘Their wives tearfully dispense coffee, which we gulp down greedily. We march and run, without rest or peace.’ Many German soldiers indulged in looting houses on the way, and some sought oblivion in the alcohol they found. By the time they awoke, they would find themselves prisoners.
The SS Nordland Division in the pine forests east of the city fought some costly delaying actions, but few other formations were in any condition to put up an effective resistance. Rumours spread that American aircraft had dropped leaflets urging the Germans to hang on as they were coming to their aid, but few believed it. Squads of Feldgendarmerie and SS guarded crossroads, not against the enemy but to seize stragglers to form into improvised detachments. Any who had thrown away their weapon, pack and helmet were arrested and shot. A police battalion was sent to Strausberg to execute those retreating without orders, but most of the policemen slipped away to hide before they got there.
On 21 April the last Allied air raid on Berlin ended early in the morning. An unnatural silence settled over the city, but a few hours later a series of explosions creating a different noise emphasized that Soviet artillery was now within range of the city centre. Hitler, who usually slept late, was woken. He emerged from his bedroom in the bunker to ask what was happening. The explanation clearly shook him. Zhukov’s artillery commander, Colonel General Vasily Kazakov, had sent forward his heavy gun batteries of 152mm and 203mm howitzers. Housewives still queueing for rations were the main casualties, for few wanted to lose their place when this was clearly their last chance to stock up. The intensity of the shelling soon forced most of them back into cellars and air-raid shelters.
Although the circle round Berlin was almost closed, Stalin’s paranoia still infected the NKVD’s 7th Department interrogators. Any senior German officer captured was asked what he knew about plans for the Americans to join the Wehrmacht in an attempt to push Soviet forces back from Berlin. Stalin bullied Zhukov to complete the encirclement rapidly, using a totally invented threat. ‘Due to the slowness of our advance,’ he signalled, ‘the Allies are approaching Berlin and will soon take it.’ Zhukov was just as interested in blocking Konev’s advance on the city. He pushed Katukov’s 1st Guards Tank Army and Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army further round towards the south-west.
One of Konev’s tank spearheads was sighted approaching Zossen. General Krebs was informed that his staff’s defence detachment of armoured cars had been destroyed, in an unequal battle against T-34s. He telephoned the Reichschancellery, but Hitler refused to allow them to leave. Krebs and his staff officers began to wonder what Soviet prison camps would be like, but they were saved from capture only because the Soviet tanks ran out of fuel a few kilometres down the road. Another call from Berlin finally gave them permission to evacuate, and they left in a convoy of trucks.
As Berliners awaited the arrival of the Red Army, people prepared to meet their conquerors in different ways, either frivolous or tragic. In the Adlon Hotel, staff and customers listened to the sound of artillery shells. ‘In the dining room,’ wrote a Norwegian journalist, ‘the few guests were overwhelmed by the readiness of waiters to pour the wine in a constant stream.’ They did not want to leave any for the Russians. Some fathers, as they left to join their Volkssturm unit, thought only of the fate awaiting their families. ‘It’s all over, my child,’ one told his daughter, handing her his pistol. ‘Promise me that when the Russians come you will shoot yourself.’ He then kissed her and left. Others killed their wife and children, then committed suicide themselves.
The city was divided into eight sectors, with the Landwehr Canal on the south and the River Spree on the north of the central district forming the last defence lines. Only Weidling’s LVI Panzer Corps from the Ninth Army would bolster the garrison, bringing it up to 80,000 men. The CI Corps had withdrawn north of the city. The rest, including the XII SS Panzer Corps and the V SS Mountain Corps, were still fighting their way through Konev’s forces in the forests to the south of Berlin. Konev had pushed forward the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies and hurried his infantry armies forward to deal with Busse’s forces. Although these German troops were a disorganized mass, with many civilian refugees mingled among them, there could be no doubt about their desperation to fight through to the Elbe to escape Soviet labour camps.
Ignorant of the situation and resorting to fantasy, Hitler gave orders that the Ninth Army should hold its positions on the Oder front. He accused the Luftwaffe of doing nothing, and threatened its chief of staff General der Flieger Karl Koller with execution. Remembering that Heinrici had a reserve, the III SS Germanische Corps, Hitler had a call put through to Obergruppenführer Steiner. He told him to launch a major counter-attack against the 1st Belorussian Front’s northern flank. ‘You will see, the Russians will suffer the greatest defeat of their history, before the gates of Berlin. It is expressly forbidden to fall back towards the west. Officers who do not comply unconditionally with this order are to be arrested and shot immediately. You, Steiner, are answerable with your head for execution of this order.’ Steiner was speechless with disbelief. The Germanische Corps, which had been stripped of almost all its troops to strengthen the Ninth Army, had no more than a few battalions left. After recovering from the shock, Steiner rang back to remind General Krebs of the true situation, but Krebs repeated the order and said that he could not speak to the Führer who was busy.
Hitler’s refusal to face reality was even more striking since he already knew that Model’s army group in the Ruhr pocket had surrendered with 325,000 men. Model went off into a wood and shot himself, as a Nazi field marshal was supposed to do. In northern Germany the British 7th Armoured Division was approaching Hamburg, while the 11th Armoured Division advanced rapidly ahead towards Lübeck on the Baltic. This followed Churchill’s secret instruction to Field Marshal Montgomery, three
days before, to prevent the Red Army from seizing Denmark. The French First Army also entered Stuttgart, where many of its North African troops began to pillage and rape the local population.
On 22 April Himmler had a secret meeting in Lübeck with Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross. He asked him to approach the Americans and British about a surrender in the west. As a token of good faith, he promised to send 7,000 women prisoners from Ravensbrück to Sweden, but since almost all of them had been marched westwards, this was hardly convincing. As soon as Churchill heard of Himmler’s approach, he informed the Kremlin to avoid another row with Stalin after the aborted negotiations over Italy with SS Oberstgruppenführer Wolff.
Hitler became feverish with impatience for news of Steiner’s attack. But when he finally heard that ‘Army Detachment Steiner’, as he insisted on calling it, had failed to advance, a suspicion of treason within the SS began to grow. He screamed and yelled in fury during the midday situation conference, then collapsed weeping in a chair. For the first time he said openly that the war was lost. His entourage tried to convince him to leave for Bavaria, but he insisted that he would stay in Berlin and shoot himself. He was too weak to fight. Goebbels came over to calm him down, but did nothing to encourage him to depart. The propaganda minister had decided that he would stay with him to the end to create a Nazi legend for the future. Thinking in cinematic terms, just like his Führer, Goebbels considered that their deaths in the fall of Berlin would be more dramatic than in the isolation of the Berghof.
Hitler reappeared, braced by his talk with Goebbels. He seized on Jodl’s suggestion that Wenck’s Twelfth Army facing the Americans on the Elbe should be brought back to Berlin in a counter-attack. This was a futile plan. The Twelfth Army was far too weak, and the encirclement of Berlin was now virtually complete. Oberstleutnant Ulrich de Maizière, a general staff officer who witnessed the emotional storms in the Führer bunker that day, became convinced that Hitler’s ‘mental sickness consisted of a hyper-trophic self-identification with the German people’. Hitler now felt that the population of Berlin should share his suicide. Magda Goebbels, who believed that a Germany without Hitler was a world not worth living in, brought her six children down into the bunker that night. Staff officers gazed in horror, sensing immediately the end in store for them.
By that evening Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army had reached the Teltow Canal on the southern edge of Berlin. Heavy guns were brought up as it prepared to attack the next day. The NKVD’s 7th Department, responsible for prisoner interrogation and propaganda, had leaflets dropped on the city addressed to the women of Berlin, urging them to persuade officers to surrender. It reflected the change of party line, but not the reality on the ground. ‘Because the fascist clique is afraid of punishment,’ it stated, ‘it is hoping to prolong the war. But you women have nothing to be afraid of. No one will touch you.’ Radio broadcasts repeated a similar message.
On 23 April, Generalfeldmarschall Keitel reached Wenck’s headquarters. He addressed the assembled officers as if they were a Nazi Party rally, waving his field marshal’s baton at them as he ordered them to advance on Berlin to save the Führer. Wenck already had a very different plan. He intended to attack eastwards, but not towards Berlin. He wanted to open a corridor to enable Busse’s Ninth Army to escape from the forests to the Elbe.
General Weidling of the LVI Panzer Corps rang the Führer bunker that morning to report, now that his corps had pulled back into Berlin. General Krebs told him that he had been condemned to death for cowardice. Weidling, showing considerable courage, insisted on coming in immediately to face his accusers. He had not withdrawn his headquarters to the west of Berlin, as had been reported. Hitler was so impressed by Weidling’s firm rebuttal of the charges against him that he promptly placed him in command of all of Berlin’s garrison and defences. As one senior officer observed, it was a ‘tragi-comedy’ typical of the Nazi regime. For Weidling, this appointment was a poisoned chalice.
Weidling redeployed his forces, keeping just the 20th Panzergrenadier Division as a reserve. There was little time. That afternoon the 8th Guards Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army, working together, advanced into south-eastern Berlin. They were soon involved in vicious fighting against the SS Nordland on and around Tempelhof airfield, amid the wreckage of burned-out Focke-Wulf fighters. The 5th Shock Army advanced in from the east, the 3rd Shock Army entered the northern suburbs, the 47th Army tackled Spandau in the north-west with its massive brick fortress, and Konev’s 3rd Guards Tank Army and the 28th Army began their assault across the Teltow Canal. All the time General Kazakov’s massed artillery continued to bombard the city–it would fire 1.8 million shells by the end of the battle–while the supporting air armies roved overhead, strafing and bombing at will.
Albert Speer returned to Berlin that evening by light aircraft to see Hitler for the last time. Hitler told Speer of his intention to commit suicide with Eva Braun. A short time later Martin Bormann brought in a signal from Göring in Bavaria. Göring had heard a garbled version of events in Berlin and of Hitler’s emotional outburst the day before. He proposed taking over ‘total leadership of the Reich’. Bormann suggested to Hitler that this was treason, and a message was sent in reply stripping the Reichsmarschall of all his appointments and honours. Bormann sent another message to Bavaria telling the SS to put him under house arrest.
In a number of cases SS officers appeared readier to give up than army officers. On that day Fritz Hockenjos, the army officer with the SS corps which was now surrounded in the Black Forest by French troops, recorded in his diary a conversation with his commanding general. ‘Do you really believe that fighting on still has a purpose?’ the SS general asked him. ‘Yes, as a soldier I believe it,’ Hockenjos replied. ‘The situation also appears hopeless to me, but so long as no order comes to cease fighting, I believe that the supreme leadership still sees a way.’
On the morning of 24 April, Konev’s attack on the Teltow Canal began with heavy artillery. Zhukov had been dismayed to hear from the 1st Guards Tank Army that Rybalko’s tank brigades had reached Berlin. He was even less happy when he learned that his infantry had crossed the canal that morning, and that his tanks were trundling over pontoon bridges soon after midday. But Konev too had an unpleasant moment when, after watching the crossing of the canal, he discovered that Wenck’s divisions were marching east to his rear to link up with the remnants of the Ninth Army.
Many Berliners, who still had batteries for their radios, were thrilled to hear an announcement by Goebbels that Wenck’s Twelfth Army was advancing on Berlin. Others feared that this would only prolong the fighting. Hitler’s spirits rose again with the prospect. He gave orders that Busse’s Ninth Army should join the ‘Armee Wenck’ in an advance on Berlin. It never occurred to him that neither Wenck nor Busse had any intention of following such an order. Dönitz also promised to fly in sailors from the northern ports to assist the defence. They would arrive by Junkers 52 transport planes landing on the East-West Axis, the avenue across the Tiergarten to the west of the Brandenburg Gate. The most surprising reinforcements to reach Berlin that night were ninety volunteers from the remnants of the French SS Charlemagne Division, who threaded their way in trucks through Soviet forces to the north of Berlin.
Crammed in their cellars, air-raid shelters and the vast concrete flak towers, Berliners just longed for the battle to end. The air became almost unbreathable and the crush was so great that nobody could reach the lavatories or obtain water to drink. Not even a trickle emerged from taps. Water was available only from stand-pipe handpumps out on the streets, under shellfire. The smashed urban landscape was now called the ‘Reichsscheiterhaufen’–the ‘Reich’s funeral pyre’. Yet as Soviet troops fought their way in towards the centre, cellars too became dangerous in the house-to-house fighting. Red Army soldiers sometimes threw in grenades when they encountered resistance near by.
Volkssturm, Hitler Youth and small combat groups of the Waffen-SS fought from behind ba
rricades, from windows and on rooftops using their Panzerfausts against Soviet tanks. At first the tanks had advanced straight down the middle of the road, then they changed tactics to hug the sides, spraying likely positions with machine-gun fire. The 3rd Shock Army in the north of the city used its anti-aircraft guns against roofs, because its tanks could not elevate their main armament sufficiently. And to counter the Panzerfaust’s hollow-charge explosive, tank crews strapped metal mattress springs to the front and sides of their vehicles to detonate the missile prematurely. Barricades were destroyed with heavy artillery guns, brought up and fired horizontally over open sights. Soviet casualties from their own supporting fire, or more often that of other Soviet armies, increased as they advanced towards the centre. With the smoke and clouds of dust covering the city, Shturmovik pilots found it hard to see whom they were attacking. Chuikov pushed part of his 8th Guards Army over towards the west, to block the advance of the rival 3rd Guards Tank Army. This led to many losses among his men from Konev’s heavy guns and Katyusha rocket launchers.
That day, the Italian Committee for National Liberation called for an uprising against all German forces remaining in the north. The resistance attacked retreating German columns, and the next day they took control of Milan.
On 25 April, American troops from the 69th Infantry Division and Soviet soldiers from the 58th Guards Rifle Division met at Torgau on the Elbe. News that the Nazi Reich had been split in two was proclaimed all round the world. Stalin urged his front commanders to push troops forward to the Elbe wherever they could, although he was now finally reassured that the Americans were not making a dash for Berlin. General Serov of the NKVD brought in three frontier guard regiments to prevent German officers from sneaking out of the city. Beria’s picked troops prepared to follow the 3rd Guards Tank Army into Dahlem, to secure the nuclear research facilities.
The Second World War Page 103