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

by Cornelius Ryan

  Zhukov learned of Koniev’s drive on Berlin from Stalin himself —and for the General it apparently was not a pleasant conversation. What was said no one knew, but the headquarters staff could see its effect on the commander. As Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Troyanoskii, senior correspondent for the military paper Red Star, was later to recall the incident: “The attack had stalled and Stalin reprimanded Zhukov. It was a serious situation and a reprimand from Stalin was often couched in not very mild language.” Troyanoskii could plainly see that “Zhukov, a man with all the marks of an iron will about his face and a man who did not like to share his glory with anyone, was extremely worked up.” General Popiel described Zhukov’s state of mind more succinctly. “We have a lion on our hands,” he told his fellow staff members. The lion was not long in showing his claws. That evening the word went out from a grim Zhukov to the entire First Belorussian army group: “Now take Berlin!”

  By now confusion was beginning to sweep the German lines. Shortages were apparent everywhere and in everything. A critical lack of transport, an almost total absence of fuel, and roads thronged with refugees made large-scale troop movements almost impossible. This immobility was producing dire consequences: as units shifted position, their equipment, including precious artillery, had to be abandoned. Communication networks, too, were faltering and in some places no longer existed. As a result, orders were often obsolete when they reached their destinations—or even when they were issued. The chaos was compounded as officers arriving at the front to take over units discovered nothing to take over, because their commands had already been captured or annihilated. In some areas, inexperienced men, left leaderless, did not know exactly where they were or who was fighting on their flanks. Even in veteran outfits, headquarters were forced to move with such frequency that often the troops did not know where their command post was or how to contact it.

  Units were trapped and captured or simply overrun and slaughtered. Others, demoralized, broke and ran. In only two places did the Vistula front remain intact. The northern area held by General Hasso von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army had not been hit by Zhukov’s massive assault—but Von Manteuffel was expecting an attack at any moment by Marshal Konstantin Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussians. Farther south, part of Busse’s Ninth Army was still holding. But it was beginning to be affected by the general disintegration: its left flank had already started to crumble before Zhukov’s avalanche of tanks; the right was halfway encircled by Koniev’s sledgehammer drive south of Berlin. In truth, the Army Group Vistula was breaking up piece by piece, in chaos, confusion and death—exactly as Heinrici had known it would.

  Von Manteuffel, like Heinrici, had never underestimated the Russians; he, too, had fought them many times before. Now, in his Storch reconnaissance plane over the Oder, he studied the enemy. Rokossovskii’s men were making no effort to hide their assault preparations. Artillery and infantry units were being openly moved up into position. Von Manteuffel marveled at the Russians’ cockiness. For days now, as he flew back and forth over their lines, they had not even bothered to look up.

  Von Manteuffel knew that when the drive came he would not be able to hold for very long. He was a panzer general without panzers. To halt Zhukov’s drive in the Ninth Army sector, Heinrici had denuded Von Manteuffel’s army of the few panzer divisions it had left. They had come from the 3rd SS Corps, holding the southern edge of his sector in the forests of Eberswalde. SS General Felix Steiner, who was regarded by Wehrmacht officers as one of the best of the SS generals, reported that though he had lost the tanks he had been given other reinforcements. Solemnly he reported to Von Manteuffel: “I have just received five thousand Luftwaffe pilots, each with his little Iron Cross hanging around his neck. Tell me, what do I do with them?”

  “I have no doubt,” Von Manteuffel told his staff, “that on Hitler’s maps there is a little flag saying 7TH PANZER DIV., even though it got here without a single tank, truck, piece of artillery or even a machine gun. We have an army of ghosts.”

  Now, looking down on the Russians’ preparations from his plane, Von Manteuffel figured that he could expect their main assault sometime around the twentieth. He knew exactly what he was going to do then. He would hold as long as possible and then he intended to retreat “step by step, with my soldiers arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder, all the way to the west.” Von Manteuffel had no intention of allowing even one of them to fall into Russian hands.

  The situation of the Ninth Army was now bordering on the catastrophic, yet its commander was not considering pulling back. To General Theodor Busse, retreat, except under orders, was comparable to treason—and Hitler’s orders were to stand fast. Zhukov’s tanks, storming on after their breakthrough on Seelow Heights, had ripped a gash in the army’s northern flank, and now the First Belorussians were charging at breakneck speed toward Berlin. The near-absence of communications made it impossible for Busse to assess the extent of the breakthrough. He did not even know if counterattacks could close the tear in his lines. His best information was that Zhukov’s tanks were already within twenty-five miles of Berlin’s outskirts. Even more alarming was Koniev’s blistering drive along the Ninth’s southern flank. The First Ukrainians, now beyond Luübben, were arching back behind the Ninth and racing northward for the city. Would the Ninth be cut off, Busse wondered, just as Model’s army group had been in the Ruhr? Model had been lucky in one respect: he had been encircled by the Americans.*

  The situation was particularly galling for General Karl Weidling, whose 56th Panzer Corps had absorbed the full brunt of Zhukov’s breakthrough on the Seelow Heights. His corps had held off Zhukov for forty-eight hours, inflicting staggering casualties. But the promised reserve divisions that Weidling so anxiously awaited—the SS Nordland Division and the powerful, fully operational 18th Panzer Grenadier Division—had not arrived in time for the counterattacks that might have stopped Zhukov’s tanks.

  One man from the Nordland Division did show up—the commander, SS Major General Jürgen Ziegler. Arriving by car at Weidling’s headquarters north of Müncheberg, Ziegler announced calmly that his division was miles away; it had run out of fuel. Weidling was livid. Every panzer division carried reserves for just such emergencies. But Ziegler, who disliked fighting under Wehrmacht officers, apparently did not consider his division’s arrival urgent. Now, twenty precious hours had been lost in refueling and Ziegler was still not in position. The 18th Panzer Grenadier Division, which should have reached Weidling the day before, on the seventeenth, had just arrived. The counterattacks that had been planned for this force would not take place: the division had arrived just in time to retreat.

  Weidling seemed dogged by bad luck. When Zhukov’s massive columns of tanks surged out from the plateau, among the German units hit hardest had been the one force that Heinrici had worried about most: Goering’s 9th Parachute Division. Already demoralized by their initial exposure to the battle on the Heights, Goering’s paratroopers panicked and broke as the Russian tanks, guns blazing, smashed into their lines. Colonel Hans Oscar Wöhlermann, Weidling’s new artillery commander, who had arrived on the opening day of the Russian offensive across the Oder, witnessed the rout that followed. Everywhere, he said, were soldiers “running away like madmen.” Even when he drew his pistol, the frantic paratroopers did not halt. Wöhlermann found the division’s commander “utterly alone and completely disheartened by the flight of his men, trying to hold back whatever there was left to hold back.” Eventually the headlong flight was stopped, but Goering’s much-vaunted paratroopers “remained”—in Wöhlermann’s words—“a threat to the course of the whole battle.” As for Heinrici, when he heard the news he rang Goering at Karinhall. “I have something to tell you,” he said acidly. “Those Cassino troops of yours, those famous paratroopers—well, they have run away.”

  Although Weidling tried desperately to stem the Russian armored assaults, the 56th Corps front could not hold. Weidling’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Theodor von Dufving, saw th
at the Russians were “beginning to force us back by applying terrific pressure in a kind of horseshoe-like maneuver—hitting us from both sides and encircling us again and again.” The Corps was also subjected to merciless air attack: Von Dufving had to take cover thirty times within four hours. The Soviet pincer tactics had forced Weidling to evacuate two headquarters since noon. As a result, he had lost communications with Busse’s headquarters.

  At nightfall Weidling found himself in a candlelit cellar at Waldsieversdorf, northwest of Müncheberg. There he received a visitor: Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, looking shaky and apprehensive. “He kept looking at us expectantly,” Wöhlermann was to remember, “with anxious, sad eyes.” When he heard the truth about the 56th Corps situation, “it seemed to have a crushing effect upon him.” Hesitantly, the Foreign Minister asked a few questions in a hoarse, quiet voice, and shortly thereafter he took his leave. Wöhlermann and other members of the headquarters staff had half expected Von Ribbentrop “to tell us that negotiations had begun from our side with the English and the Americans. It would have given us hope at this last hour.” He left no such word.

  On the heels of the Foreign Minister arrived the one-armed 32-year-old leader of the Hitler Youth, Artur Axmann. He brought news he was sure would please Weidling. The youngsters of the Hitler Youth, Axmann announced, were ready to fight and were even now manning the roads in the 56th Corps rear. Weidling’s reaction to the news was not what Axmann had expected. As Wöhlermann remembers, Weidling was so enraged that for a moment he was almost inarticulate. Then, “using extremely coarse language,” he denounced Axmann’s plan. “You cannot sacrifice these children for a cause that is already lost,” he angrily told the Youth Leader. “I will not use them and I demand that the order sending these children into battle be rescinded.” The pudgy Axmann hurriedly gave Weidling his word that the order would be countermanded.

  If such a directive was issued, it never reached hundreds of Hitler Youth boys lying under arms on the approaches to the city. They remained in position. In the next forty-eight hours they were steamrollered by Russian attacks. Willy Feldheim and the 130 boys in his company were swamped; they fell back helter-skelter and finally stopped and tried to hold a line in the protection of some ditches and a bunker. At last Willy, exhausted by fear, stretched out on a bench during a lull in the fighting and fell asleep.

  Hours later he woke up with a strange sense that something was wrong. A voice said, “I wonder what’s up? It’s so silent.”

  The boys rushed out of the bunker—and were confronted by a “fantastic, incredible scene, like an old painting of the Napoleonic Wars.” The sun was shining and there were bodies everywhere. Nothing was standing. Houses were in ruins. There were cars wrecked and abandoned, some of them still burning. The worst shock was the dead. They were heaped in piles, in “a weird tableau, with their rifles and Panzerfäuste lying beside them. It was lunatic. And then we realized that we were all alone.”

  They had slept through the entire attack.

  In Berlin the tension was building hour by hour. General Reymann’s scanty forces, manning the outer perimeter rings, had been warned that the signal “Clausewitz,” code name for the attack on the city, might come at any time. Various emergency measures had gone into effect, making clear to all Berliners that the moment of truth was at hand. Among other things, along the main roads and thoroughfares the closing of the barricades had begun.

  Not even Goebbels could ignore the threat any longer. A torrent of hysterical news and slogans poured out of the Propaganda Ministry. The official Nazi Party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, announced the Soviet drive across the Oder, and said: “A new and heavy trial, perhaps the heaviest of all, is before us.” The newspaper continued, “Each square meter of territory which the enemy has to battle for, each Soviet tank which a Grenadier, a Volkssturm man, or a Hitler lad destroys bears more weight today than at any other time in this war. The word for the day is: Clench your teeth! Fight like the devil! Don’t give up one foot of soil easily! The hour of decision demands the last, the greatest, effort!” Berliners were warned that the Russians had already decided the fate of the city’s inhabitants. Those who were not killed at the barricades, Goebbels warned, would be liquidated “by deportation as slave labor.”

  On the afternoon of the eighteenth, General Reymann received an order from the Reichskanzlei, later confirmed by a personal call from Goebbels, that “all forces available, including Volkssturm, have been requested by the Ninth Army to hold second-line positions.” In other words, the city was to be stripped to man the outer defenses. Reymann was astounded. Hurriedly ten Volkssturm battalions were rounded up, along with a regiment of anti-aircraft defense units of the “Great Germany” Guard regiment. After hours of search and requisition, a miscellaneous collection of vehicles was assembled and the force headed east. As he watched them go, Reymann turned to Goebbels’ deputy. “Tell Goebbels,” he said angrily, “that it is no longer possible to defend the Reich capital. The inhabitants are defenseless.”

  Carl Wiberg’s face betrayed no emotion but he noticed that his hands were trembling. After the long months of his quest, he could hardly believe his ears. Standing among other customers near the main counter of the black market food store, he leaned down and patted his little dachshunds; the action also enabled him to hear a little better, although the two well-dressed women standing next to him had made no attempt at secrecy.

  Most Berliners knew nothing about this well-stocked shop. It sold only to selected customers, including those well up in Nazi echelons. Wiberg had been patronizing the place for a long time, and he had picked up many choice and accurate items of information just by listening to such customers as these two well-fed ladies. Their information ought to be accurate, he thought; their husbands were both important Nazis.

  Wiberg decided he had heard enough. He collected his purchases, doffed his Homburg to the proprietor and strolled out of the store. In the street his pace quickened as he hurried to find Jessen-Schmidt.

  Several hours later, after a lengthy discussion, both men agreed that Wiberg’s news had to be true. By the afternoon of Wednesday, April 18, a message was en route to London. Though all their other hopes had been dashed, Wiberg fervently hoped the Allies would act on this report. According to what he had overheard in the food shop, Hitler was definitely in the Berlin area—at a headquarters in Bernau, only about fourteen miles northeast of the city. What better present could they give him for his fifty-sixth birthday, April 20, than a massive air raid?

  General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s Chief of Operations, returned home at 3 A.M. on April 20. His face was lined with worry and exhaustion. The crisis had been reached, he told his wife Luise. “You’d better start packing and get ready to leave,” he said. Luise argued; she wanted to continue with her Red Cross work. But Jodl was insistent. “With your name, the Russians would not wait a single day before shipping you off to Lubianka,” he said. Where were they going? she asked. Jodl shrugged. “To the north or south—nobody knows,” he said. “But I hope we can face the end together.” They talked most of the night. A little before 10 A.M. the sirens sounded. “I’ll bet Berlin gets an extra ration of bombs today,” Jodl said. “It always happens on Hitler’s birthday.”

  Jodl hurried upstairs to shave before going back to the Führer-bunker. This birthday was to be no different from the Führer’s others: there would be the usual parade of government officials and Cabinet members arriving to congratulate Hitler, and Jodl was expected to be present. As he came down the stairs, Luise handed him his cap and belt. He picked up his map case and kissed her good-bye. “I must hurry for the congratulations,” he said. Luise wondered, as she did every day now, whether they would ever see each other again. “Bless you,” she called after her husband as he got into his car.

  Another of Hitler’s court was also ready to leave for the ceremonies. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering intended to show up just to prove he was still loyal, but from there he was
heading south. Goering had decided that the moment had come for him to bid farewell to his huge castle and estate at Karinhall, about fifty miles northwest of Berlin. He had reached the decision shortly after the Soviet bombardment began at 5:30 A.M. Goering had promptly called Heinrici’s headquarters in nearby Prenzlau. The attack in the north had begun, he was told: Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussians had finally launched their offensive against Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army. Goering was well aware that Von Manteuffel’s strength was inadequate. The Reichsmarschall had toured that front several times in the previous weeks, loudly telling one general after another that because of “all the loafing around nothing is prepared. The Russians will just laugh their way through your lines.”

  Goering himself had prepared well for this moment. Lined up on the main road outside the gates of his estate were twenty-four Luftwaffe trucks loaded with the contents of Karinhall—his antiques, paintings, silver and furniture. This convoy was to head south immediately. Most of the Luftwaffe headquarters people in Berlin, along with their equipment, were to leave in other convoys later in the day.*

  Now, standing by the main gates, Goering spoke a few final words to the commander of the truck column. Surrounded by motorcylists, it moved off. Goering stood looking at the huge castle with its magnificent wings and buttresses. A Luftwaffe engineering officer came up; everything, he said, was ready. As a few of his men and some of the local villagers watched, Goering walked across the road, bent over a detonator and pushed down the plunger. With a tremendous roar Karinhall blew up.

  Without waiting for the dust to settle, Goering walked back to his car. Turning to one of his engineering officers he said calmly, “Well, that’s what you have to do sometimes when you’re a crown prince.” Slamming the car door he set out for Berlin and the Führer’s birthday celebration.