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

by Cornelius Ryan

  Hitler was unmoved. “There is no need to consider the basis of even a most primitive existence any longer,” he replied. “On the contrary, it is better to destroy even that, and to destroy it ourselves. The nation has proved itself weak….” With these words Hitler wrote off the German people. As he explained to Speer, “those who remain after the battle are of little value, for the good have fallen.”

  Speer was horrified. The people who had fought so hard for their leader apparently now meant less than nothing to the Führer. For years Speer had closed his eyes to the more brutal side of the Nazis’ operations, believing himself to be intellectually above it all. Now, belatedly, he came to a realization which he had refused to face for months. As he put it to General Alfred Jodl, “Hitler is totally mad … he must be stopped.”

  Between March 19 and 23 a stream of “scorched earth” orders flashed out from Hitler’s headquarters to gauleiters and military commanders all over Germany. Those who were slow to comply were threatened with execution. Speer immediately went into action. Fully aware that he was placing his own life in jeopardy, he set out to stop Hitler’s plan, aided by a small coterie of high-ranking military friends. Speer telephoned industrialists, flew to military garrisons, visited provincial officials, everywhere insisting, even to the most die-hard Nazis, that Hitler’s plan spelled the end of Germany forever.

  Considering the serious purpose of the Reichsminister’s campaign, his presence at the Philharmonic concert might have seemed frivolous—were it not for one fact: high on the list of German resources Speer was fighting to preserve was the Philharmonic itself. A few weeks earlier, Dr. Gerhart von Westermann, the orchestra manager, had asked violinist Taschner, a favorite of Speer’s, to seek the Reichsminister’s help in keeping the Philharmonic intact. Technically, the musicians were exempt from military service. But with the battle for Berlin approaching, Von Westermann feared that any day now the entire orchestra might be ordered into the Volkssturm, the Home Guard. Although the orchestra’s affairs were supposed to be administered by Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, Von Westermann knew there was no hope of assistance from that quarter. He told the violinist, “You’ve got to help us. Goebbels has forgotten us … go to Speer and ask him for help … we’ll all be on our knees to you.”

  Taschner was extremely reluctant: any talk of shirking or flight was considered treasonable and could lead to disgrace or imprisonment. But at last he agreed.

  At his meeting with Speer, Taschner began hesitantly. “Mr. Minister,” he said, “I would like to speak with you about a rather delicate matter. I hope you will not misunderstand … but nowadays some things are difficult to talk about….” Looking at him sharply, Speer quickly put him at his ease and, encouraged, Taschner poured out the story of the orchestra’s plight. The Reichsminister listened intently. Then Speer told Taschner that Von Westermann was not to worry. He had thought of a plan to do much more than keep the musicians out of the Volkssturm. At the very last moment he intended secretly to evacuate the entire 105-man orchestra.

  Speer had now carried out the first part of the plan. The 105 men seated on the stage of Beethoven Hall were wearing dark business suits instead of the usual tuxedos, but of all the audience, only Speer knew the reason. The tuxedos—along with the orchestra’s fine pianos, harps, famous Wagner tubas and musical scores—had been removed quietly from the city by truck convoy three weeks before. The bulk of the precious cargo was cached at Plassenburg near Kulmbach, 240 miles southwest of Berlin—conveniently in the path of the advancing Americans.

  The second part of Speer’s plan—saving the men—was more complicated. Despite the intensity of the air raids, and the proximity of the invading armies, the Propaganda Ministry had never suggested cutting short the Philharmonic’s schedule. Concerts were scheduled at the rate of three or four a week, in between air raids, right through to the end of April, when the season would officially end. Any evacuation of the musicians before that time was out of the question: Goebbels undoubtedly would charge the musicians with desertion. Speer was determined to evacuate the orchestra to the west; he had absolutely no intention of allowing the men to fall into Russian hands. But his scheme was entirely dependent on the speed of the Western Allies’ advance: he was counting on the Anglo-Americans to beat the Russians to Berlin.

  Speer did not intend to wait until the Western Allies entered the city. As soon as they were close enough to be reached by an overnight bus trip, he would give the order to evacuate. The crux of the plan lay in the signal to leave. The musicians would all have to leave at once, and after dark. That meant the flight must start right after the concert. To avoid a breach of security, word of the move would have to be withheld as long as possible. Speer had come up with an ingenious method of alerting the musicians: at the very last minute the orchestra conductor would announce a change in the program and the Philharmonic would then play a specific selection which Speer had chosen. That would be the musicians’ cue; immediately after the performance they would board a convoy of buses waiting in the darkness outside Beethoven Hall.

  In Von Westermann’s possession was the music Speer had requested as the signal. When it was delivered by Speer’s cultural affairs specialist, Von Westermann had been unable to hide his surprise. He queried Speer’s assistant. “Of course you are familiar with the music of the last scenes,” he said. “You know they picture the death of the gods, the destruction of Valhalla and the end of the world. Are you sure this is what the Minister ordered?” There was no mistake. For the Berlin Philharmonic’s last concert, Speer had requested music from Wagner’s Die Götterdämmerung—The Twilight of the Gods.

  In this choice, if Von Westermann had known it, lay a clue to Speer’s final and most ambitious project. The Reichsminister, determined to save as much of Germany as he could, had decided that there was just one way to do it. For weeks now, perfectionist Albert Speer had been trying to find just the right way to murder Adolf Hitler.

  THE ATTACKERS

  The Allied high commanders meet. Left to right, Marshal Sokolovskii, Robert Murphy, Field Marshal Montgomery, Marshal Zhukov, General Eisenhower, General Koenig of France.

  Lieutenant General William Simpson, commander U.S. Ninth Army, talks with Field Marshal Montgomery. To the left of Montgomery, in background, is General Omar Bradley, commander of the U.S. 12th Army Group; behind Montgomery is Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial Green Staff.

  General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army

  General Courtney Hodges, commander of the U.S. First Army.

  Lieutenant General Henry D. Crerar, commander of the Canadian First Army, with Montgomery.

  Major General James M. Gavin (right), the 38-year-old commander of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, ordered to drop on Berlin, discusses his plans with Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey of the British Second Army.

  General Jacob Devers, commander of the 6th Army Group.

  Major General Raymond S. McLain, 19th Corps commander, who expected to reach Berlin “six days after crossing the Elbe.”

  Major General Isaac D. White, 2nd Armored Division. “No damned infantry division is going to beat my outfit to the Elbe.”

  Major General Robert C. Macon, commander 83rd Infantry Division. “The Rag-Tag Circus.”

  Colonel Paul A. Disney, commander 67th Armored Regiment. “What’s the objective?” “Berlin!”

  Major General Alexander R. Boiling, commander 84th Infantry Division. “Alex, keep going … and don’t let anybody stop you.”

  Brigadier General Sidney R. Hinds, commander of the 2nd’s Combat Command B, receives the French Légion d’Honneur in March of 1945. “We’re on the Elbe.”

  Major James Hollingsworth, 67th Armored Regiment, receives the Silver Star from General Isaac White. “He lined up 34 tanks and gave a command rarely heard in modern warfare: ‘Charge!’”

  The Big Three at Teheran.

  Left, U.S. Ambassador John G. Winant, with Winston Churchil
l.

  Above, Lieutenant General Frederick E. Morgan, planner of Rankin C—“… it won’t work, of course, but you must bloody well make it!”

  Above, Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. W. Averell Harriman, who often warned the President of Stalin’s ruthless territorial ambitions.

  Right, Fedor T. Gusev, Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom. “A hard bargainer, already known for his obstinacy.”

  George F. Kennan, Ambassador Winant’s political advisor. Like Harriman he warned again and again of his distrust of Soviet intentions.

  Professor Philip E. Mosley, Acting Chairman of the Working Security Committee, charged with working out American policy in postwar Europe in December, 1943. He contended that provision had to be made “for free and direct territorial access to Berlin from the west.”

  Marshal Ivan S. Koniev, commander of the 1st Ukranian Front (at left), in 1945.

  Koniev with the author, during a four-hour discussion of his part in the capture of Berlin. This is one of the rare occasions on which he has permitted himself to be photographed.

  Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovskii, commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front (at right), in 1945, with Montgomery.

  Marshal Georgi Zhukov, commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Koniev’s rival, photographed in 1945.

  Marshal Vasili I. Chuikov today. In 1945, he was a Colonel General commanding the 8th Guards Army in the attack on Berlin.

  Marshall Vasili Sokoiovskii with the author In 1945 he was appointed Deputy Commander to Zhukov the day before the attack on Berlin.

  Lieutenant (now Colonel) Konstantin Y. Samsonov. In 1945 he was battalion commander of the 171st Rifle Division, which captured the Reichstag.

  Major General (now General) Ivan I. Yushchuk, commander of the 11th Tank Corps.

  The Americans and the Russians meet, April, 1945.

  An American MP and a Russian military policewoman guard a bridge on the Elbe.

  American soldiers hold a makeshift flag made from a bedsheet painted with watercolors with which they identified themselves to the Russians. Second from the right is Pfc. Paul Staub.

  American troops cross the Elbe to meet the Russians (waving, at right) in a captured racing eight!

  Lieutenant Duane Francies (right), pilot of the unarmed Piper Cub scout plane Miss Me, stands beside his kill.

  R.A.F. Warrant Officer James “Dixie” Deans (fifth from left, with left hand showing at waist and R.A.F. pilot’s wings) with German officers of Stalag 357.

  Brigadier Hugh Glyn Hughes, Senior Medical Officer, British Second Army. “No description could bring home the horrors I saw.”

  All along the eastern front the great Russian armies were massing, but they were still far from ready to open the Berlin offensive. The Soviet commanders chafed at the delay. The Oder was a formidable barrier and the spring thaw late: the river was still partly covered with ice. Beyond it lay the German defenses—the bunkers, minefields, anti-tank ditches and dug-in artillery positions. Each day now the Germans grew stronger, and this fact worried the Red Army generals.

  No one was more anxious to get started than the 45-year-old Colonel General Vasili Ivanovich Chuikov, commander of the crack Eighth Guards Army, who had earned great renown in the Soviet Union as the defender of Stalingrad. Chuikov blamed the holdup on the Western Allies. After the surprise German attack in the Ardennes in December, the British and Americans had asked Stalin to ease the pressure by speeding up the Red Army’s drive from the east. Stalin had agreed and had launched the Russian offensive in Poland sooner than planned. Chuikov believed, as he was later to say, that “if our lines of communications had not been so spread out and strained in the rear, we could have struck out for Berlin itself in February.” But so fast was the Soviet advance out of Poland that when the armies reached the Oder they found that they had outrun their supplies and communications. The offensive came to a halt, as Chuikov put it, because “we needed ammunition, fuel and pontoons for forcing the Oder, the riverways and canals that lay in front of Berlin.” The need to regroup and prepare had already given the Germans nearly two months in which to organize their defenses. Chuikov was bitter. Each day’s wait meant more casualties for his Guardsmen when the attack began.

  Colonel General Mikhail Yefimovich Katukov, Commander of the First Guards Tank Army, was equally eager for the offensive to begin, yet he was grateful for the delay. His men needed the rest, and his maintenance crews needed a chance to repair the armored vehicles. “The tanks have traveled, in a straight line, perhaps 570 kilometers,” he had told one of his corps commanders, General Getman, after they reached the Oder. “But, Andreya Levrentevich,” he continued, “their speedometers show more than 2,000. A man has no speedometer and nobody knows what wear and tear has taken place there.”

  Getman agreed. He had no doubt that the Germans would be crushed and Berlin captured, but he, too, was glad of the opportunity to reorganize. “The alphabet of war, Comrade General, ” he told Katukov, “says that victory is achieved not by taking towns but by destroying the enemy. In 1812, Napoleon forgot that. He lost Moscow—and Napoleon was no mean leader of men.”

  The attitude was much the same at other army headquarters all along the front. Everyone, though impatient of delay, was tirelessly taking advantage of the respite, for there were no illusions about the desperate battle that lay ahead. Marshals Zhukov, Rokossovskii and Koniev had received chilling reports of what they might encounter. Their intelligence estimates indicated that more than a million Germans manned the defenses and that up to three million civilians might help fight for Berlin. If the reports were true, the Red Army might be outnumbered more than three to one.

  When would the attack take place? As yet, the marshals did not know. Zhukov’s huge army group was scheduled to take the city— but that, too, could be changed. Just as Anglo-American armies on the western front waited for the word “Go” from Eisenhower, the Red Army commanders waited on their Supreme Commander. What worried the marshals more than anything else was the speed of the Anglo-American drive from the Rhine. Each day now they were drawing closer to the Elbe—and Berlin. If Moscow failed to order the offensive soon, the British and Americans might beat the Red Army into the city. So far the word “Go” had not come down from Josef Stalin. He almost seemed to be waiting himself.

  Part Four

  THE DECISION

  1

  A GREAT PROCESSION of Army supply trucks rolled along the narrow, dusty main street of the French city. In endless lines the convoys roared through, heading northeast on the long haul to the Rhine and the Western Front. No one was permitted to stop; MP’s stood everywhere to keep the traffic flowing. To the drivers, there was no reason to stop anyway. This was just another sleepy French city with the usual cathedral, just another checkpoint on the high-speed “Red Ball Highway.” They did not know that at this moment in the war Reims was perhaps the most important city in Europe.

  For centuries battles had raged about this strategic crossroad in northeast France. The Gothic cathedral rising majestically from the city’s center had endured countless bombardments, and again and again its fabric had been restored. On its site or within its sanctuary every French monarch, from Clovis I in 496 to Louis XVI in 1774, had been crowned. In this war, mercifully the city and its monument had been spared. Now, in the shadow of the great twin-spired cathedral stood the headquarters of another great leader. His name was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces was tucked away on a back street close to the railway station in a plain, modern three-story building. The building was the Collège Moderne et Technique, a former technical school for boys. Box-like, its four sides surrounding an inner courtyard, the red brick school was originally designed to hold more than 1,500 students. Staff members called it the “little red school house.” Perhaps because of SHAEF’s requirements, it seemed small: the headquarters had almost doubled its strength since 1944 and now had nearly 1,200 officers and some 4,000 enlisted me
n. As a result, the college could accommodate only the Supreme Commander, his immediate general staff officers and their departments. The remainder worked in other buildings throughout Reims.

  In the second-floor classroom that he used for an office, the General had worked almost without pause all day. The room was small and spartan. Blackout curtains hung by the two windows overlooking the street. There were a few easy chairs on the highly polished oak floor, but that was all. Eisenhower’s desk, set in an alcove at one end of the room, was on a slightly raised platform—once used by the teacher. On the desk were a blue leather desk set, an intercom, leather-framed photos of his wife and son, and two black phones—one for regular use, the other a special instrument for “scrambled” calls to Washington and London. There were also several ashtrays, for the Supreme Commander was a chain-smoker who consumed more than sixty cigarettes a day.* Behind the desk stood the General’s personal flag and, in the opposite corner, Old Glory.