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

by Cornelius Ryan

  Koniev’s plan was equally monumental and, fed by his burning ambition, more complex and difficult. As he was later to say: “Berlin for us was the object of such ardent desire that everyone, from soldier to general, wanted to see Berlin with their own eyes, to capture it by force of arms. This too was my ardent desire … I was overflowing with it.”

  But the fact was that at their closest point Koniev’s forces were more than seventy-five miles from the city. Koniev was counting on speed to see him through. Craftily he had massed his tank armies on the right so that when a breakthrough was achieved he could wheel northwest and strike out for Berlin, perhaps slipping into the city ahead of Zhukov. This was the idea he had been nurturing for weeks. Now, in light of Zhukov’s presentation, he hesitated to tip his hand. Instead, for the moment he stuck to operational details. His plans called for a dawn attack across the Neisse, under the protection of a heavy smoke screen laid down by low-flying squadrons of fighter planes. Into the assault he planned to hurl five field and two tank armies—511,700 men. Remarkably, he was requesting the same almost incredible artillery density as Zhukov—250 guns per kilometer of front—and he meant to get even greater use from them. “Unlike my neighbor,” Koniev recalled, “I planned to saturate the enemy positions with artillery fire for two hours and thirty-five minutes.”

  But Koniev badly needed reinforcements. Whereas Zhukov had eight armies along the Oder, Koniev, on the Neisse, had a total of only five. To put his plan into effect he needed two more. After some discussion Stalin agreed to give him the Twenty-eighth and Thirty-first armies, because “the fronts have been reduced in the Baltic and East Prussia.” But much time might elapse before these armies would reach the First Ukrainian Front, Stalin pointed out. Transport was at a premium. Koniev decided to gamble. He could begin the attack while the reinforcements were still en route, he told Stalin, then commit them the moment they arrived.

  Having listened to the two propositions, Stalin now approved them both. But to Zhukov went the responsibility of capturing Berlin. Afterward, he was to head for the line of the Elbe. Koniev was to attack on the same day as Zhukov, destroy the enemy along the southern fringes of Berlin and then let his armies flood west for a meeting with the Americans. The third Soviet army group, Marshal Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussians, massing along the lower Oder and all the way to the coast north of Zhukov, would not be involved in the Berlin assault. Rokossovskii, with 314,000 men, would attack later, driving across northern Germany for a link-up with the British. Together, the three Russian army groups would have a total of 1,593,800 men.

  It appeared that Koniev had been relegated to a supporting role in the Berlin attack. But then, leaning over the map on the table, Stalin drew a dividing line between Zhukov’s and Koniev’s army groups. It was a curious boundary. It began east of the Russian front, crossed the river and ran straight to the 16th-century town of Lübben on the Spree, approximately sixty-five miles southeast of Berlin. There, Stalin suddenly stopped drawing. Had he continued the line right across Germany, thereby marking a boundary that Koniev was not to cross, the First Ukrainian armies would clearly have been denied any participation in the Berlin attack. Now Koniev was elated. Although “Stalin did not say anything …” he recalled later, “the possibility of a show of initiative on the part of the command of the front was tacitly assumed.” Without a word being spoken the green light to Berlin had been given Koniev’s forces—if he could make it. To Koniev, it was as though Stalin had read his mind. With what he was to term this “secret call to competition … on the part of Stalin,” the meeting ended.

  Immediately the marshals’ plans were incorporated into formal directives. The next morning the rival commanders, orders in hand, drove out in a swirling fog to Moscow airport, each eager to reach his headquarters. Their orders called for them to mount the offensive a full month earlier than the date Stalin had given Eisenhower. For security reasons, the written directives were undated, but Zhukov and Koniev had been given the word by Stalin himself. The attack on Berlin would begin on Monday, April 16.

  Even as Zhukov and Koniev began feverishly preparing to hurl thirteen armies with more than a million men at Berlin, Adolf Hitler had another of his famous intuitive flashes. The massing of the Russian armies at Küstrin, directly opposite the capital, was nothing more than a mighty feint, he concluded. The main Soviet offensive would be aimed at Prague in the south—not at Berlin. Only one of Hitler’s generals was gifted with the same insight. Colonel General Ferdinand Schörner, now commander of Army Group Center on Heinrici’s southern flank, had also seen through the Russian hoax. “My Führer,” warned Schörner, “it is written in history. Remember Bismarck’s words, ‘Whoever holds Prague holds Europe.’” Hitler agreed. The brutal Schörner, a Führer favorite and among the least talented of the German generals, was promptly promoted to Field Marshal. At the same time, Hitler issued a fateful directive. On the night of April 5 he ordered the transfer south of four of Heinrici’s veteran panzer units—the very force Heinrici had been depending on to blunt the Russian drive.

  *Russian quotes not otherwise attributed, like other Soviet material used throughout the book, were obtained during a research trip to Moscow, in April, 1963. The Soviet Government allowed the author, assisted by Professor John Erickson of the University of Manchester, to interview participants—from marshals to privates—in the battle for Berlin (for a full list of names, see the appendix). The only Soviet marshal the author was prohibited from interviewing was Zhukov. The others—Koniev, Sokolovskii, Rokossovskii and Chuikov—each contributed an average of three hours of private conversations. In addition, the author was given access to military archives and allowed to copy and take out of Russia voluminous documentation, including battle maps, after-action reports, monographs, photographs and military histories hitherto circulated only within Soviet government circles.

  *As, of course, they were.

  *Stalin’s crucial conference with his marshals is well known to the upper echelon of the Soviet military, although it has never before been published in the West. A number of versions have appeared in Russian military histories and journals. One such is Zhukov’s account of the meeting to his staff officers, as recorded by the Russian historian, Lieutenant General N. N. Popiel. Marshal Koniev explained the background of the conference to the author and supplied details hitherto unknown. He also recounts part of the details in the first part of his memoirs, published in Moscow in 1965. There are some differences, between his version and Zhukov’s. For example, Zhukov did not mention Montgomery’s drive on Berlin; Koniev makes no reference to a proposed Anglo-American airborne drop on the city.

  The source material for the report read by General Shtemenko has never been revealed. In the author’s judgment it was a grossly exaggerated military evaluation of Eisenhower’s message of the night before—an evaluation based partly on suspicion of Eisenhower’s motives, partly as a concoction intended to furnish a rationale for Stalin’s own aims.

  4

  COLONEL GENERAL HEINRICI’S car moved slowly through the rubble of Berlin, making for the Reichskanzlei and the full-dress meeting ordered by Hitler nine days earlier. Sitting in back alongside his Operations Chief, Colonel Eismann, Heinrici stared silently out at the burned and blackened streets. In two years he had made only one other trip to the city. Now, the evidence of his own eyes overwhelmed him. He would never have recognized the place as Berlin.

  In normal times the trip from his headquarters to the Reichskanzlei would have taken about ninety minutes, but they had been en route nearly twice that long. Again and again clogged streets forced them to make complicated detours. Even main thoroughfares were often impassable. Elsewhere, crazily canted buildings threatened to collapse at any moment, making every street a danger. Water gushed and gurgled from immense bomb holes; escaping gas flared from ruptured mains; and all over the city, areas were cordoned off and marked with signs that warned, “Achtung! Minen!” signifying the location of still-unexploded
aerial mines. Heinrici, his voice bitter, said to Eismann. “So this is what we’ve finally come to—a sea of rubble.”

  Although buildings on both sides of the Wilhelmstrasse were in ruins, apart from some splinter damage nothing about the Reichskanzlei appeared to have changed. Even the faultlessly dressed SS sentries just outside the entrance seemed the same. They snapped smartly to attention as Heinrici, Eismann behind him, entered the building. Despite the delays, the General was on time. The conference with Hitler was scheduled for 3 P.M., and Heinrici had given it much thought over the past few days. As bluntly and precisely as possible, he intended to tell Hitler and those around him the true facts of the situation confronting the Army Group Vistula. Heinrici knew perfectly well the danger of speaking out, but the possible consequences did not seem to bother him. Eismann, on the other hand, was greatly disturbed. “It looked to me,” he later said, “as if Heinrici was planning an all-out attack against Hitler and his advisors, and there were very few men who could do that and survive.”

  In the main hall an SS officer, immaculate in a white tunic, black breeches and highly polished cavalry boots, greeted Heinrici and informed him that the meeting would take place in the Führerbunker. Heinrici had heard that a vast labyrinth of underground installations existed beneath the Chancellery, the adjoining buildings and the enclosed gardens at back, but he had never before been in any of them. Following a guide, he and Eismann walked down to the basement and out into the gardens. Though the facade of the Reichskanzlei was intact, the rear of the building showed severe damage. Once, magnificent gardens with a complex of fountains had been here. They were gone now, along with Hitler’s tea pavilion and the botanical greenhouses that had stood to one side of it.

  To Heinrici the area resembled a battlefield, with “huge craters, lumps of concrete, smashed statuary and uprooted trees.” In the soot-stained walls of the Chancellery were “great black holes where windows used to be.” Eismann, looking at the desolation, was reminded of a line from “The Singer’s Curse,” by the 19th-century German balladier, Uhland. It went, “Only one high column tells of the vanished glory; this one can fall overnight.” Heinrici was more literal-minded. “Just think,” he murmured to Eismann. “Three years ago Hitler had Europe under his command, from the Volga to the Atlantic. Now he’s sitting in a hole under the earth.”

  They crossed the garden to an oblong blockhouse guarded by two sentries. Their credentials were examined and then the guards opened a heavy steel door, allowing the officers to pass through. As the door clanged shut behind them, Heinrici was always to remember, “We stepped into an unbelievable underworld.” At the bottom of a winding concrete staircase two young SS officers received them in a brilliantly lighted foyer. Courteously their coats were taken and then, with equal courtesy, Heinrici and Eismann were searched. Eismann’s briefcase, in particular, received attention: it had been a briefcase containing explosives that had nearly ended Hitler’s life in July, 1944. Since then, the Führer’s elite guards had allowed no one near him without first subjecting them to a search. Heinrici, despite the apologies of the SS men, seethed at the indignity. Eismann felt “ashamed that a German general should be treated in this manner.” The search over, they were shown into a long narrow corridor, partitioned into two sections, the first of which had been converted into a comfortable lounge. Domed lights protruded from the ceiling, giving the light beige stucco walls a yellowish cast. An Oriental carpet on the floor had apparently been brought down from a larger Chancellery room, for its edges were folded under at each side. Although the room was comfortable, the furniture—like the carpet—seemed out of keeping. There were various chairs, some plain, some covered in rich upholstery. A narrow oak table was set against one wall and several large oil paintings, landscapes by the German architect and painter Schinkel, were hung about the room. To the right of the entrance an open door gave onto a small conference room set up for the meeting. Heinrici could only make a guess as to the size and depth of the Führerbunker. From what he could see, it appeared relatively spacious, with doors leading to rooms on either side of the corridor lounge and beyond. Because of its low ceiling, narrow metal doors and the absence of windows, this might have been the passageway in a small liner—except that, by Heinrici’s estimate, they were at least forty feet below ground.

  Almost immediately a tall, elegantly dressed SS officer appeared. He was Hitler’s personal aide and bodyguard, Colonel Otto Günsche. Pleasantly he inquired about their trip and offered them refreshments; Heinrici accepted a cup of coffee. Soon, other conference members began to arrive. Hitler’s adjutant, General Wilhelm Burgdorf, came next. He greeted them, as Eismann remembers, “with some noises about success.” Then Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the OKW Chief of Staff, arrived, followed by Himmler, Admiral Karl Doenitz and the man reputed to be Hitler’s closest confidant, Martin Bormann. In Eismann’s words, “All greeted us loudly. Seeing them, I was really proud of my commander. With his familiar stiff posture, serious and measured, he was a soldier from head to toe among court asses.”

  Eismann saw Heinrici tense as Himmler started across the room toward him. In an undertone the General growled, “That man is never going to set foot in my headquarters. If he ever announces a visit, tell me quickly so I can leave. He makes me vomit.” And, indeed, Eismann thought Heinrici looked pale as Himmler dragged him into conversation.

  At that moment General Hans Krebs, Guderian’s successor, came into the room and, seeing Heinrici, came across to him immediately. Earlier in the day Heinrici had learned from Krebs of the transfer of his vital armored units to Schörner’s army group. Though he blamed Krebs for not vigorously protesting the decision, Heinrici now seemed almost cordial to the new Chief of the OKH. At least he did not have to continue talking with Himmler.

  Krebs, as usual, was diplomatic and solicitous. He had no doubt that everything would work out all right at the conference, he assured Heinrici. Doenitz, Keitel and Bormann now joined them and listened as Heinrici mentioned some of his problems. All three promised their support when Heinrici made his presentation to Hitler. Turning to Eismann, Bormann asked, “What’s your opinion about the Army Group situation—since all this has a direct bearing on Berlin and Germany in general?” Eismann was dumbfounded. With the Russians only thirty-eight miles from the capital and the Allies racing across Germany from the west, the question seemed to border on madness. Bluntly he replied, “The situation is serious. That’s why we’re here.” Bormann patted him soothingly on the shoulder. “You shouldn’t worry so much,” he told Eismann. “The Führer is sure to grant you help. You’ll get all the forces you need.” Eismann stared. Where did Bormann think the forces were to come from? For a moment he had the uncomfortable feeling that he and Heinrici were the only sane people in the room.

  More and more officers and staff were filing into the already crowded corridor. Hitler’s Operations Chief, General Alfred Jodl, aloof and composed, arrived with his deputy; the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff, General Karl Koller, and OKW’s Staff Chief in charge of supplies and reinforcements, Major General Walter Buhle, came in together. Nearly every man seemed to be followed by an aide, an orderly or a deputy. The resulting noise and confusion reminded Eismann of a swarm of bees.

  In the packed corridor Heinrici now stood silent, listening impassively to the din of conversation. For the most part, it consisted of small talk, trivial and irrelevant. The bunker and its atmosphere were stifling and unreal. Heinrici had the disquieting feeling that the men around Hitler had retreated into a dream world in which they had convinced themselves that by some miracle catastrophe could be averted. Now, as they waited for the man who, they believed, would produce this miracle, there was a sudden movement in the corridor. General Burgdorf, hands high above his head, waved the group into silence. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, “the Führer is coming.”

  “Gustav! Gustav!” Radios sputtered out the warning code for Tempelhof as the planes approached the district. In stationmasters’
offices along the route of the U-Bahn, loudspeakers blared out, “Danger 15!” Another city-wide saturation raid had begun.

  Earth erupted. Glass ripped through the air. Chunks of concrete smashed down into the streets, and tornadoes of dust whirled up from a hundred places, covering the city in a dark gray, choking cloud. Men and women raced one another, stumbling and clawing their way into shelters. Ruth Diekermann, just before she reached safety, looked up and saw the bombers coming over in waves, “like an assembly line.” In the Krupp und Druckenmüller plant, French forced laborer Jacques Delaunay dropped the ghastly remnant of a human arm he had just recovered from the battle-scarred tank he was overhauling, and ran for shelter. In the Sieges Allee the marble statues of Brandenburg-Prussian rulers rocked and groaned on their pedestals; and the crucifix held aloft by the 12th-century leader, Margrave Albert the Bear, shattered against the bust of his eminent contemporary, Bishop Otho of Bamberg. Nearby in Skagerrak Square, police ran for cover, leaving the swaying body of a suicide still hanging from a tree.

  A shower of incendiaries smashed through the roof of Wing B of the Lehrterstrasse Prison and set off a dozen flaring magnesium fires on the second floor. Frantic prisoners, turned loose to fight the flames, stumbled through the acrid smoke with buckets of sand. Two men suddenly stopped working. The prisoner from Cell 244 stared at the man from Cell 247. Then they embraced. The brothers Herbert and Kurt Kosney discovered they had been on the same floor for days.

  In Pankow, in the Möhrings’ ground-floor two-room apartment where the Weltlinglers hid, Siegmund hugged his sobbing wife Margarete as they stood together in the kitchen. “If this keeps up,” he shouted over the din of anti-aircraft fire, “even Jews can go openly to the shelters. They’re all too scared of the bombs to turn us in now.”