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

by Cornelius Ryan

  Now, dropping to within twenty feet of the enemy plane, the two Americans put bullet after bullet into the German’s windshield. They were so close that Francies saw the pilot “staring at us, his eyeballs as big as eggs.” Then suddenly the German maneuvered wildly and spun in. Martin, who had been giving a rapid running account of the fight on the radio, yelled, “We got him! We got him!” His voice was so blurred with excitement that Lieutenant Colonel Israel Washburn, sitting in his half-track, thought Martin said “We got hit!”

  The Storch spiraled down, its right wing hit the ground, snapped off, and the plane cartwheeled and came to rest in the middle of a pasture. Francies set the Miss Me down in the next field and ran across to the downed plane. The German pilot and his observer were already out, but the observer had been hit in the foot and fell to the ground. The pilot dived behind a huge pile of sugar beets until a warning shot from Martin brought him out, hands in the air. As Martin covered the pilot with his gun, Francies examined the wounded observer. When he removed the German’s boot, a .45 slug fell out. As he bandaged the superficial wound, the German kept repeating, “Danke. Danke. Danke.”

  Later that day, Francies and Martin posed happily beside their captured prize. They had fought what was probably the last World War II dogfight in the European theater and they were undoubtedly the only airmen in this war to bring down a German plane with a pistol. For Francies “it was a day of pure joy.” The only thing that could top this experience would be guiding the 5th Armored into Berlin. Francies believed he would have only a day or two to wait before the order came.*

  As the platoon of tanks led by Lieutenant Robert E. Nicodemus approached Tangermünde at noon, they were met by an ominous silence. The objective of this unit of the 5th Armored Division was the bridge in the picturesque little city, which was some forty miles northeast of Magdeburg. Now that the bridge at Schönebeck was gone, the Tangermünde bridge was the most important one in the war, to the Ninth Army at least.

  Nicodemus’ tank rolled down the main street of Tangermünde and into the square. The streets here, as elsewhere in the city, were deserted. Then, as the tanks pulled up in the square, air raid sirens began to wail and, Nicodemus said later, “everything happened at once. All hell broke loose.”

  From windows, doorways and rooftops that had seemed empty moments earlier, Germans opened fire with bazooka-like anti-tank guns. The Americans answered back. At one moment Sergeant Charles Householder stood in the turret of his tank, blasting away with his tommy gun fire until the tank was hit and he had to jump out. Sergeant Leonard Haymaker’s tank, just behind Householder’s, was also hit; it burst into flames. Haymaker leaped to safety, but his crewmen were pinned inside by enemy fire. Crouching low and revolving in a slow circle, Haymaker fired short bursts from his tommy gun, covering his men as they escaped.

  At the height of the battle, an American soldier jumped on the back of Nicodemus’ tank and, shouting above the din, identified himself as an escaped prisoner of war. About five hundred prisoners were being held in the town, he said, in two separate compounds. Nicodemus found himself in a dilemma. He had been about to call for artillery support, but he could hardly shell a town full of American prisoners. He decided to try breaking into the nearest compound to get the prisoners out of the line of fire.

  Led by the POW, Nicodemus made his way through buildings and backyards and over fences to an enclosure down by the river. The instant the American prisoners in the compound saw the approaching officer they jumped their guards. The skirmish was brief. As soon as the guards had been disarmed, Nicodemus led the prisoners out. As the group approached the last enemy-held street and saw American tanks beyond, one GI turned to Nicodemus and exulted: “I’m a free man now. They can’t kill me.” He walked into the middle of the street and a German sniper shot him through the head.

  While Nicodemus had been freeing the prisoners, desperate house-to-house fighting had been taking place throughout the city. At last, when the bridge was almost in sight, representatives of the German garrison met the U.S. advance guard and announced their wish to surrender. As the negotiations got under way, there was a tremendous explosion. A huge cloud of dust billowed up and rubble stormed down on the city. German engineers had blown the bridge. The Victory Division, closest American unit to the capital, had been stopped a tantalizing fifty-three miles from Berlin.

  Anxiety began to spread through the Ninth Army Command. Up to mid-afternoon of April 12 there had been every reason for confidence. The 5th Armored had traveled a phenomenal 200 miles in just thirteen days; the 2nd had advanced the same distance in just one day more. Altogether, Simpson’s army had raced nearly 226 miles since leaving the Rhine. Ninth Army divisions were charging up to the Elbe all along the front.

  But no bridges had yet been seized, no bridgeheads established on the river’s eastern bank. Many men had hoped for a repetition of the famous capture of the Rhine bridge at Remagen, which in early March had changed Anglo-American strategy overnight. But there had been no such luck. Now, at 2nd Armored headquarters a decision was reached: the river must be forced. Troops would make an amphibious assault on the Elbe’s eastern bank to secure a bridgehead. Then a pontoon bridge would be built across the river.

  At his headquarters, Brigadier General Sidney R. Hinds, commander of the 2nd’s Combat Command B, laid his plans. The operation would take place south of Magdeburg, at a small town called Westerhüsen. At best, the plan was a gamble. Enemy artillery fire might destroy the bridge before its completion or, worse, prevent bridging operations altogether. But the longer Hinds waited, the more concentrated the enemy’s defenses might become. And with each hour of delay, the chance of beating the Russians into Berlin grew slimmer.

  At 8 P.M. on April 12, two battalions of armored infantry were quietly ferried across to the eastern bank in the amphibious vehicles known as DUKWs. The crossing was unopposed. By midnight the two battalions were over and by first light a third had joined them. On the eastern bank, troops quickly deployed, digging defensive positions in a tight semicircle about the selected pontoon site. Jubilantly, General White put in a telephone call to the Ninth Army commander, General Simpson: “We’re across!”

  The Germans learned of the crossing almost as soon as Simpson. At Magdeburg, the combat commander, a veteran of Normandy, immediately got word to General Wenck at Twelfth Army headquarters.

  The Magdeburg officer, an expert artilleryman, had long ago learned not to underestimate the enemy. Early on the morning of June 6, 1944, he had looked out from his forward artillery post and had seen the Allied invasion fleet. Then, as now, he had promptly informed his superiors of the situation. “It’s the invasion,” he had said. “There must be ten thousand ships out there.” His incredible message was not believed. “What way are these ships headed?” he was asked. His reply was stark and simple: “Right for me.”

  Now Major Werner Pluskat, the man who had directed the German fire from the center of Omaha Beach, prepared to make a stand on the Elbe. His gunners along the river, north and south of Magdeburg, would hold back the Americans as long as they could. But Pluskat had been around too long to have any doubts about the outcome.

  However, the young cadets on whom General Wenck was depending had no pessimistic thoughts. Eager and fresh, they were looking forward to the battles ahead. Now mobile combat units of the Potsdam, Scharnhorst and Von Hutten divisions were rushing into position, preparing to erase the American bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Elbe.

  On the west bank of the Elbe, engineers worked frantically. Searchlights, hurriedly positioned, were pointed straight up to refleet off the clouds, and in this artificial moonlight the first pontoons were secured and pushed into the river. One after another, the floating units were locked in place.

  Standing close by, Colonel Paul A. Disney, the 67th Armored Regiment commander, watched the bridging operation with growing impatience. Suddenly shells screamed in. As they exploded about the first few pontoons, fountains of water shot
up in the air. The fire pattern was unusual: the shells did not land in salvos; they came in singly, apparently from several widely positioned guns. Disney, certain that the fire was being directed by an artillery observer hidden nearby, ordered an immediate search of the rundown four-story apartment houses overlooking the river. The search yielded nothing; the fire continued, accurate and deadly.

  Ripped pontoons sank, and the shrapnel lashing the water repeatedly forced the bridge-builders to take cover. Wounded men were dragged to the safety of the river bank; others took their places. All through the night the firing went on, nullifying the grim persistence of the American engineers. The one thing Hinds had feared most had happened. Grimly he ordered an infantry unit on a forced march south. Its instructions: find another site.

  The following morning the rest of the bridge was destroyed by German gunfire. When the last shells screamed in and demolished the twisted and battered span, the bridge was only seventy-five yards from the eastern shore. Hinds, set-faced and weary, ordered the site abandoned. As the men assembled with their wounded, a message arrived : infantry on the eastern bank had found a suitable bridging area farther down the river.

  By the afternoon of Friday the thirteenth, DUKWs were towing a heavy cable across the river to the newest bridgehead. The cable was intended as a stopgap. Once in place it would haul a string of pontoons back and forth across the river, bearing vehicles, tanks and guns. Although this system was desperately slow it would have to serve until bridging materials could be brought up.

  The matter of greatest concern to Hinds now was the fate of the three battalions on the east bank of the river. With their backs to the Elbe, the troops were manning a rough semicircle in the area of the twin villages of Elbenau and Grünewalde. It was a small beachhead, and they had no armor support or artillery except for the batteries on the western banks. If the three battalions were hit by any attack in strength, the situation could become perilous. Hinds now ordered Colonel Disney across the Elbe in a DUKW to take command of the infantry.

  Disney found the first of the three battalion command posts, headed by Captain John Finnell, in a patch of woods. Finnell was worried. German pressure was building up. “If we don’t get tanks over here real quick,” he said, “there’s going to be bad trouble.”

  After briefing Hinds on the situation by radio, Disney set out to find the second battalion. As he moved down near the river, shells began to land all around him. Disney dived into a ditch, but the shells came closer, so he climbed out and started for another one. This time luck was against him. He felt a rain of shrapnel, then another. A third burst knocked him down. Disney lay there, barely conscious and severely wounded. His left upper arm was gouged and riddled and a large piece of shrapnel had torn away the upper part of his right thigh.

  Within thirty-six hours, Hollingsworth and Disney, two of the men most fiercely dedicated to leading American forces to Berlin, had been put out of action.

  At 1:15 P.M. on April 12, at about the time lead tanks of the 5th Armored Division were rolling into Tangermünde, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died at his desk in Warm Springs.

  An artist was working on a portrait of him when suddenly the President put a hand to his head and complained of a headache. A short while later he was dead. On his desk lay a copy of the Atlanta Constitution. The headline read: 9TH—57 MILES FROM BERLIN.

  It was nearly twenty-four hours later before news of the President’s death began filtering down to the front-line troops. Major Alcee Peters of the 84th Division heard the news from a German. At a railroad crossing near Wahrenholz an aging flagman came up to offer him sympathy because “the news is so terrible.” Peters felt shock and disbelief but before he fully absorbed what he had heard, his column moved out again, heading for the Elbe, and he had other matters to think about. Lieutenant Colonel Norman Carnes, commanding a battalion of the 333rd Infantry Regiment, was traveling through a bombed-out oil field north of Brunswick when he learned of FDR’s death. He felt regret, but his mind, too, was on his work. “It was just another crisis,” he later said. “My next objective was Wittingen and I was busy thinking about that. Roosevelt, dead or alive, couldn’t help me now.” Chaplain Ben Rose wrote to his wife Anne: “All of us were sorry … but we’ve seen so many men die that most of us know that even Roosevelt is not indispensable…. I was surprised how calmly we heard the news and talked about it.”

  Joseph Goebbels could scarcely contain himself. The moment he heard the news he telephoned Hitler in the Führerbunker. “My Führer, I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead!“ he exulted. “It is written in the stars. The last half of April will be the turning point for us. This is Friday, April 13. It is the turning point!”

  Sometime earlier Goebbels had passed along two astrological predictions to Count Schwerin von Krosigk, Reichsminister of Finance. One had been prepared for Hitler the day he took power, January 30, 1933. The other, dated November 9, 1918, had dealt with the future of the Weimar Republic. Krosigk noted in his diary: “An amazing fact had become evident. Both horoscopes predicted the outbreak of war in 1939, the victories until 1941, and the subsequent series of reversals—with the hardest blows during the first months of 1945, especially in the first half of April. Then, there was to be an overwhelming victory in the second half of April, stagnation until August, and peace the same month. For the following three years Germany would have a difficult time, but starting in 1948 she would rise again.”

  Goebbels also had been reading Thomas Carlyle’s History of Friedrich II of Prussia, and it had given him further cause for delight. One chapter told of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) when Prussia had stood alone against a coalition of forces that included France, Austria and Russia. In the sixth year of this struggle, Frederick had told his advisors that if by February 15 there was no change in his fortunes, he would commit suicide. Then on January 5, 1762, Czarina Elizabeth died and Russia withdrew from the conflict. “The miracle of the House of Brandenburg,” wrote Carlyle, “had come to pass.” The whole character of the war had changed for the better. Now, in the sixth year of World War II, Roosevelt was dead. The parallel was inescapable.

  The Propaganda Minister was in ecstasy. At the Ministry of Propaganda he ordered champagne for everyone.

  “Get across! Get across! And keep moving!” Colonel Edwin “Buckshot” Crabill of the 83rd Division stalked up and down the river bank, pushing men into assault boats and, here and there, helping slow starters with the toe of his boot.

  “Don’t waste this opportunity,” he yelled at another boatload. “You’re on your way to Berlin!” As other men began to move across in DUKWs, the short, peppery Crabill admonished them, “Don’t wait to organize! Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do! Get over there in any shape you can! If you move now, you can make it without a shot being fired!”

  Crabill was right. At the town of Barby, fifteen miles southeast of Magdeburg and just below the spot where their arch rivals, the 2nd Armored, were desperately trying to make use of their cable ferry, the men of the 83rd were crossing the river in droves, unopposed. They had entered the town to find that the bridge had been blown but, without waiting for orders from the 83rd’s commanding officer, Crabill had ordered an immediate crossing. Assault boats had been rushed up and in a matter of hours a full battalion had been put across. Now another was en route. Simultaneously, artillery was being floated over on pontoons and engineers were building a treadway bridge that should be finished by nightfall. Even Crabill was impressed by the frenetic activity his orders had set off. As he dashed from group to group urging more speed, he kept repeating triumphantly to the other officers, “They’ll never believe this back at Fort Benning!”

  Watching the feverish scene in silence was an audience of Germans, standing on a balcony below the clock tower of the town hall. For hours, as Lieutenant Colonel Granville Sharpe, commanding an infantry battalion, cleaned up what little resistance there was in the town, he had been aware of the audience, and he had grown i
ncreasingly annoyed. “My men were being shot at, but there stood the Germans watching the fighting and the river assault with intense interest,” he recalled. Now Sharpe had had enough. Going up to a tank, he told the gunner. “Put one round through the clock face at, say, about five o’clock.” The tanker obliged, scoring a clean bull’s-eye on the number five. The gallery suddenly dispersed.

  In any case, the show was over. The 83rd was across. The first solid bridgehead had been established on the east bank of the Elbe.

  By the evening of the thirteenth, engineers had finished their task and, thorough to the end, had put up a sign on the approach to the bridge. In honor of the new President and, with the division’s customary high morale and keen appreciation for the value of advertising, it read: TRUMAN BRIDGE. GATEWAY TO BERLIN. COURTESY OF THE 83RD INFANTRY DIVISION.

  The news was flashed back to General Simpson and from there to General Bradley. He immediately telephoned Eisenhower. Suddenly the 83rd’s bridgehead was uppermost in everybody’s thoughts. The Supreme Commander listened carefully to the news. Then, at the end of the report, he put a question to Bradley. As Bradley later reconstructed the conversation, Eisenhower asked: “Brad, what do you think it might cost us to break through from the Elbe and take Berlin?”

  Bradley had been considering that same question for days. Like Eisenhower, he did not now see Berlin as a military objective, but if it could be taken easily he was for its capture. Still, Bradley, like his chief, was concerned about too deep a penetration into the future Soviet zone and about the casualties that would occur as U.S. troops moved forward into areas from which, eventually, they would have to withdraw. He did not believe losses on the way to Berlin would be too high, but it might be a different story in the city itself. Taking Berlin might be costly.