The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin

by Cornelius Ryan

  *“The British have had a long economic affiliation with the northern zone,” McCloy wrote General Marshall on December 12, “and Winant tells me that the plan was brought out after consultation with their political and economic people. I do not know to what extent the President wishes to adhere to the occupation of these areas in the face of heavy English opposition…. On the whole I would favor the northern area, but I do not think it is worth the big fight.” The State Department apparently did not care one way or the other. In his own handwriting, McCloy added that Cordell Hull had called and said “he had no preference as between the northern and southern areas.”

  *One of the great myths that has developed since the end of World War II is that Roosevelt was responsible for the zones of occupation. The fact is that the plan was British throughout. It was conceived by Anthony Eden, developed by the Attlee Committee (which used Morgan’s strictly military concept as the vehicle), approved by Churchill and his cabinet, and presented by Strang at the EAC. Many U.S. and British accounts refer to the zonal division as a Russian plan. This erroneous conclusion derives from the fact that when Gusev, at the second meeting of the EAC, accepted the British proposal, he also submitted a Soviet draft covering surrender terms for Germany. One section dealt with the zones: it was the British plan in toto.

  *What transpired between Roosevelt and Winant at their meeting, or what the President’s position was on the Berlin transit question is not known. There is further confusion as to whether the War Department did or did not oppose Winant’s “corridor” plan. Major General John H. Hildring, Chief of the Civil Affairs Division, is reported to have told Winant that “access to Berlin should be provided for.” The version here reflects the views of the three principal U.S. historians on this period: Professor Philip Mosely (The Kremlin and World Politics); Herbert Feis (Churchill Roosevelt Stalin); and William M. Franklin, Director of the State Department’s Historical Office (Zonal Boundaries and Access to Berlin—World Politics, October 1963). “Winant,” Franklin writes, “apparently made no memoranda of these conversations…. This much, however, is clear: Winant received neither instructions nor encouragement from anyone in Washington to take the matter up with the Russians.”

  *For reasons which would always remain obscure, Winant’s position on access to Berlin had changed after his return from Washington. Veteran diplomat Robert Murphy recalls that soon after joining Supreme Headquarters in September, 1944, he lunched with Winant in London and discussed the Berlin transit question. Murphy urged Winant to reopen the matter. In his memoirs, Diplomat Among Warriors, he writes: “Winant argued that our right of free access to Berlin was implicit in our right to be there. The Russians … were inclined to suspect our motives anyway and if we insisted on this technicality we would intensify their distrust.” According to Murphy, Winant was not willing to force the issue in the EAC.

  *At the Conference, another controversial issue boiled up when the President and the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, introduced a severe and far-reaching economic plan calling for Germany to be turned into an agricultural nation, without industry. At first Churchill subscribed to this scheme, but under pressure from his advisors later retreated from his original position. Months later Roosevelt abandoned the controversial Morgenthau plan.

  *This incident comes from a private conversation with Mrs. Rosenberg (now Mrs. Paul Hoffman). Mrs. Roosevelt was also present; the two women later compared notes and agreed on the President’s exact words.

  4

  THE RAID took Berlin’s defenders completely by surprise. Shortly before 11 A.M. on Wednesday, March 28, the first planes appeared. Immediately, batteries all over the city crashed into action, belching shells into the sky. The racket of the guns, coupled with the belated wailing of air raid sirens, was earsplitting. These planes were not American. U.S. raids were almost predictable: they usually occurred at 9 A.M. and then again at midday. This attack was different. It came from the east, and both the timing and tactics were new. Screaming in at rooftop level, scores of Russian fighters emptied their guns into the streets.

  In Potsdamer Platz, people ran in all directions. Along the Kurfürstendamm, shoppers dived for doorways, ran for subway entrances, or headed for the protective ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church. But some Berliners, who had been standing for hours in long queues waiting to buy their weekly rations, refused to budge. In Wilmersdorf, 36-year-old Nurse Charlotte Winckler was determined to get food for her two children, Ekkehart, six, and Barbara, nine months old. In Adolf-Hitler-Platz, Gertrud Ketzler and Inge Rühling, long-time friends, waited calmly with others before a grocery store. Some time ago both had decided to commit suicide if the Russians ever reached Berlin, but they weren’t thinking about that now. They intended to bake an Easter cake, and for days had been shopping and storing the items they would require. Over in Köpenick, plump 40-year-old Hanna Schultze was hoping to get some extra flour for a holiday marble cake. During the day’s shopping, Hanna also hoped to find something else: a pair of suspenders for her husband, Robert. His last remaining pair was almost beyond saving.

  During air raids Erna Saenger always worried about “Papa,” as she called her husband Konrad. He obstinately refused to go into a Zehlendorf shelter and, as usual, he was out. Konrad was trudging toward his favorite restaurant, the Alte Krug, on Königin-Luise Strasse. No air raid yet had ever stopped the 78-year-old veteran from meeting with his World War I comrades every Wednesday, He wouldn’t be stopped today, either.

  One Berliner was actually enjoying every minute of the attack. Wearing an old army helmet, young Rudolf Reschke ran back and forth between the door of his Dahlem home and the center of the street, deliberately taunting the low-flying planes. Each time Rudolf waved to the pilots. One of them, apparently seeing his antics, dived right for him. As Rudolf ran, a burst of fire ripped across the sidewalk behind him. It was just part of the game for Rudolf. As far as he was concerned, the war was the greatest thing that had ever happened in his fourteen years of life.

  Wave after wave of planes hit the city. As fast as squadrons exhausted their ammunition, they peeled off to the east, to be replaced by others swarming in to the attack. The surprise Russian raid added a new dimension of terror to life in Berlin. Casualties were heavy. Many civilians were hit not by enemy bullets, but by the returning fire from the city’s defenders. To get the low-flying planes in their sights, anti-aircraft crews had to depress their gun barrels almost to tree-top level. As a result, the city was sprayed with red-hot shrapnel. The shell fragments came mainly from the six great flak towers that rose above the city at Humboldthain, Friedrichshain, and from the grounds of the Berlin Zoo. These massive bombproof forts had been built in 1941-42 after the first Allied attacks on the city. Each was huge, but the largest was the anti-aircraft complex built, incongruously, near the bird sanctuary in the zoo. It had twin towers. The smaller, called L Tower, was a communications control center, bristling with radar antennae. Next to it, guns now erupting with flame, stood G Tower.

  G Tower was immense. It covered almost the area of a city block and stood 132 feet high—equivalent to a 13-story building. The reinforced concrete walls were more than 8 feet thick, and deep-cut apertures, shuttered by 3- to 4-inch steel plates, lined its sides. On the roof a battery of eight 5-inch guns was firing continuously, and in each of the four turreted corners multiple-barreled, quick-firing “pom pom” cannons pumped shells into the sky.

  Inside the fort the noise was almost intolerable. Added to the firing of the batteries was the constant rattling of automatic shell elevators, which carried ammunition in an endless stream from a ground floor arsenal to each gun. G Tower was designed not only as a gun platform but as a huge five-story warehouse, hospital and air raid shelter. The top floor, directly underneath the batteries, housed the 100-man military garrison. Beneath that was a 95-bed Luftwaffe hospital, complete with X-ray rooms and two fully equipped operating theaters. It was staffed by six doctors, twenty nurses and
some thirty orderlies. The next floor down, the third, was a treasure trove. Its storerooms contained the prize exhibits of Berlin’s top museums. Housed here were the famous Pergamon sculptures, parts of the huge sacrificial altar built by King Eumenes II of the Hellenes around 180 B.C.; various other Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, including statues, reliefs, vessels and vases; “The Gold Treasure of Priam,” a huge collection of gold and silver bracelets, necklaces, earrings, amulets, ornaments and jewels, excavated by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1872 on the site of the ancient city of Troy. There were priceless Gobelin tapestries, a vast quantity of paintings—among them the fine portraits of the 19th-century German artist Wilhelm Leibl—and the enormous Kaiser Wilhelm coin collection. The two lower floors of the tower were mammoth air raid shelters, with large kitchens, food storerooms and emergency quarters for the German broadcasting station, Deutschlandsender.

  Entirely self-contained, G Tower had its own water and power, and easily accommodated fifteen thousand people during air raids. The complex was so well stocked with supplies and ammunition that the military garrison believed that, no matter what happened to the rest of Berlin, the zoo tower could hold out for a year if need be.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the raid was over. The guns atop G Tower stuttered to a stop. Here and there over Berlin black smoke curled up from fires started by incendiary bullets. The raid had lasted slightly longer than twenty minutes. As quickly as they had emptied, the Berlin streets filled again. Outside the markets and shops, those who had left the queues now angrily tried to regain their former places from others who just as stubbornly refused to give them up.

  In the zoo itself, one man hurried outside as soon as the guns of G Tower stopped firing. Anxious as always after a raid, 63-year-old Heinrich Schwarz headed for the bird sanctuary, carrying with him a small pail of horse meat. “Abu, Abu,” he called. A strange clapping sound came from the edge of a pond. Then the weird-looking bird from the Nile, with the blue-gray plumage and the huge beak resembling an up-ended Dutch clog, stepped daintily out of the water on thin stilt-like legs and came toward the man. Schwarz felt an immense relief. The rare Abu Markub stork was still safe.

  Even without the raids, the daily encounter with the bird was becoming more and more of an ordeal for Schwarz. He held out the horse meat. “I have to give you this,” he said. “What can I do? I have no fish. Do you want it or not?” The bird closed its eyes. Schwarz sadly shook his head. The Abu Markub made the same refusal every day. If its stubbornness persisted, the stork would surely die. Yet there was nothing Schwarz could do. The last of the tinned tuna was gone and fresh fish was nowhere to be found in Berlin—at least not for the Berlin Zoo.

  Of the birds still remaining, the Abu Markub was the real pet of head bird-keeper Schwarz. His other favorites had long since gone—“Arra,” the 75-year-old parrot which Schwarz had taught to say “Papa,” had been shipped to the Saar for safety two years ago. All the German “Trappen” ostriches had died from concussion or shock during the air raids. Only Abu was left—and he was slowly dying of starvation. Schwarz was desperate with worry. “He is getting thinner and thinner,” he told his wife Anna. “His joints are beginning to swell. Yet each time I try to feed him, he looks at me as though to say, ‘Surely you have made a mistake. This is not for me.’”

  Of the fourteen thousand animals, birds, reptiles and fish which had populated the zoo in 1939, there were now only sixteen hundred of all species left. In the six years of the war, the sprawling zoological gardens—which included an aquarium, insectarium, elephant and reptile houses, restaurants, movie theaters, ballrooms and administration buildings—had been hit by more than a hundred high-explosive bombs. The worst raid had been in November, 1943, when scores of animals had been killed. Soon after, many of those remaining had been evacuated to other zoos in Germany. Finding supplies for the remaining sixteen hundred animals and birds was becoming daily more difficult in food-rationed Berlin. The zoo’s requirements, even for its reduced menagerie, were staggering: not only large quantities of horse meat and fish, but thirty-six different kinds of other food, ranging from noodles, rice and cracked wheat to canned fruit, marmalade and ant larvae. There was plenty of hay, straw, clover and raw vegetables, but nearly everything else had become almost unobtainable. Although ersatz food was being used, every bird or animal was on less than half-rations—and looked it.

  Of the zoo’s nine elephants, only one now remained. Siam, his skin hanging in great gray folds, had become so bad-tempered that keepers were afraid to enter his cage. Rosa, the big hippo, was miserable, her skin dry and crusted, but her 2-year-old baby, Knautschke, everybody’s favorite, still maintained his youthful jauntiness. Pongo, the usually good-natured 530-pound gorilla, had lost more than 50 pounds and sat in his cage, sometimes motionless for hours, glowering morosely at everyone. The five lions (two of them cubs), the bears, zebras, hartebeests, monkeys and the rare wild horses, all were showing effects of diet deficiencies.

  There was a third threat to the existence of the zoo creatures. Every now and then, Keeper Walter Wendt reported the disappearance of some of his rare cattle. There was only one possible conclusion: some Berliners were stealing and slaughtering the animals to supplement their own meager rations.

  Zoo Director Lutz Heck was faced with a dilemma—a dilemma that not even the friendship of his hunting companion, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, or anyone else for that matter, could alleviate. In the event of a prolonged siege, the birds and animals would surely die from starvation. Worse, the dangerous animals—the lions, bears, foxes, hyenas, Tibetan cats and the zoo’s prize baboon, one of a rare species which Heck had personally brought back from the Cameroons—might escape during the battle. How soon, wondered Heck, should he destroy the baboon and the five lions he loved so much?

  Gustav Riedel, the lion-keeper, who had bottle-fed the g-month-old lion cubs, Sultan and Bussy, had made up his mind about one thing: despite any orders, he intended to save the little lions. Riedel was not alone in his feeling. Almost every keeper had plans for the survival of his favorite. Dr. Katherina Heinroth, wife of the 74-year-old director of the bombed-out aquarium, was already caring for a small monkey, Pia, in her apartment. Keeper Robert Eberhard was obsessed with protecting the rare horses and the zebras entrusted to his care. Walter Wendt’s greatest concern were the ten wisent—near cousins of the American bison. They were his pride and joy. He had spent the best part of thirty years in scientific breeding to produce them. They were unique and worth well over one million marks—roughly a quarter of a million dollars.

  As for Heinrich Schwarz, the bird-keeper, he could no longer stand the suffering of the Abu Markub. He stood by the pond and called the great bird once more. When it came, Schwarz bent over and tenderly lifted it into his arms. From now on the bird would live—or die—in the Schwarz family bathroom.

  In the baroque red and gold Beethoven Hall, the sharp rapping of the baton brought a sudden hush. Conductor Robert Heger raised his right arm and stood poised. Outside, somewhere in the devastated city, the sound of a fire engine’s wailing siren faded slowly away. For a moment longer Heger held the pose. Then his baton dropped and, heralded by four muffled drumbeats, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto welled softly out from the huge Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

  As the woodwinds began their quiet dialogue with the drums, soloist Gerhard Taschner waited, his eyes on the conductor. Most of the audience that crowded the undamaged concert hall on Köthenerstrasse had come to hear the brilliant 23-year-old violinist, and as the bell-clear notes of his violin suddenly soared, faded away and soared again, they listened, rapt. Witnesses present at this afternoon concert in the last week of March recall that some Berliners were so overcome by Taschner’s playing that they quietly wept.

  All during the war the 105-man Philharmonic had offered Berliners a rare and welcome release from fear and despair. The orchestra came under Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, and its members had been
exempted from military service, since the Nazis considered the Philharmonic good for morale. With this, Berliners completely agreed. For music lovers the orchestra was like a tranquilizer transporting them away from the war and its terrors for a little while.

  One man who was always deeply moved by the orchestra was Reichsminister Albert Speer, Hitler’s Armament and War Production chief, now sitting in his usual seat in the middle of the orchestra section. Speer, the most cultured member of the Nazi hierarchy, rarely missed a performance. Music, more than anything else, helped him shed his anxieties—and he had never needed its help more than he did now.

  Reichsminister Speer was facing the greatest problem of his career. All through the war, despite every conceivable kind of setback, he had kept the Reich’s industrial might producing. But long ago his statistics and projections had spelled out the inevitable: the Third Reich’s days were numbered. As the Allies penetrated ever deeper into Germany the realistic Speer was the only cabinet minister who dared tell Hitler the truth. “The war is lost,” he wrote the Führer on March 15, 1945. “If the war is lost,” Hitler snapped back, “then the nation will also perish.” On March 19, Hitler issued a monstrous directive: Germany was to be totally destroyed. Everything was to be blown up or burned—power plants, water and gas works, dams and locks, ports and waterways, industrial complexes and electrical networks, all shipping and bridges, all railroad rolling stock and communications installations, all vehicles and stores of whatever kind, even the country’s highways.

  The incredulous Speer appealed to Hitler. He had a special. personal stake in getting this policy reversed. If Hitler succeeded in eliminating German industry, commerce and architecture, he would be destroying many of Speer’s own creations—his bridges, his broad highways, his buildings. The man who, more than anyone else, was responsible for forging the terrible tools of Hitler’s total war could not face their total destruction. But there was another, more important consideration as well. No matter what happens to the regime, Speer told Hitler, “we must do everything to maintain, even if only in a primitive manner, a basis for the existence of the nation…. We have no right to carry out demolitions which might affect the life of the people….”