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

by Cornelius Ryan

  At Zossen the alarm had been sounded. It now seemed likely that the Soviets would reach the High Command headquarters within twenty-four hours, and the order had been given to move. Key officers had left already for a new command post near Potsdam. The remainder of the headquarters personnel, along with the office typewriters, decoding machines, safes and crates of documents, were loaded into buses and trucks. As the packing and loading went on, people walked about anxiously, eager to get going. At that moment, said General Erich Dethleffsen, who had taken over Krebs’s old job as Assistant Chief of Staff, “we offered the enemy air force a rewarding target.” Shortly before dark the convoys moved out, heading for Bavaria. Dethleffsen, driving toward Berlin to attend the Führer’s night conference, was happy to see a flight of Luftwaffe planes heading over him going south. Later at the briefing he heard a Luftwaffe officer tell Hitler about a “successful attack upon Soviet tanks pushing toward Zossen, to defend the area from attack.” The bombers of the Luftwaffe had been more than successful: the “Soviet tanks” had been the buses and trucks of the OKH command column heading south. The Germans had shot up their own convoy.

  At midnight on April 20 Heinrici grimly surveyed his maps and tried to analyze the situation. A few hours earlier, one of his fears had been realized: he now commanded not only the Army Group Vistula but Berlin as well. Almost immediately upon receiving the order he had called Reymann and told him that no bridges were to be destroyed in the city. Reymann had complained that the city was defenseless anyway, now that the best part of his Volkssturm had been pulled out to man defense lines. Heinrici knew all about it; in fact, he now told Reymann to send along the remainder of the Home Guard. “Reymann,” said Heinrici wearily, “don’t you understand what I’m trying to do? I’m trying to make sure that fighting takes place outside the city, and not in it.”

  Under the present circumstances, Heinrici knew, Berlin could not be defended. He had no intention of allowing his armies to fall back into the city. Tanks would not be able to maneuver there. Because of the buildings, artillery could not be used: they would have no field of fire. Furthermore, if any attempt was made to fight in the city there would be an enormous loss of civilian life. At all costs Heinrici hoped to avoid the horror of block-to-block, street-to-street fighting.

  His main concern at the moment was Busse’s army; he was sure that if it was not pulled back quickly it would be encircled. Before leaving for the front early in the morning, lie had given a message to his Chief of Staff for Krebs: “I cannot accept responsibility or direct this situation if Busse’s army is not withdrawn immediately—and have him tell that to the Führer.”

  Then he had driven all over the front. Signs of disintegration were everywhere. He saw “roads covered with the vehicles of refugees, often with military transport among them.” For the first time, he ran into troops who were obviously retreating. On the way to Eberswalde, he noted, “I didn’t find one soldier who didn’t claim to have orders to get munitions, fuel or something else from the rear.” He was appalled, and swung into action. North of Eberswalde he “found men marching toward the northwest, saying that their division was to be reformed near Joachimsthal”; he stopped them and reorganized them near Eberswalde. At canal crossing-points in the same area he found “parts of the 4th SS Police Division being unloaded. They were young, newly organized, but only partially armed. They had been told they would get weapons in Eberswalde.” South of there he found the road jammed with a mass of civilians and soldiers. Heinrici got out of his car and ordered the noncommissioned officers to turn their men around. “Go back to the front,” he said.

  In the town of Schönholz he saw “younger officers inactive and just looking around. They had to be energetically ordered to build a line to catch scattered troops.” The forests between there and Trampe were “filled with groups of soldiers either resting or retreating. No one claimed to have any orders or assignments.” In another area he discovered “a tank reconnaissance section resting next to its parked vehicles.” He ordered the unit to “move on Biesenthal at once and recapture this very important crossroads.” There was so much confusion around Eberswalde, Heinrici later recalled, that “no one could tell me if a front existed at all.” But by midnight he had restored order in the region and had issued fresh commands.

  It was clear that his forces were undermanned, underarmed and often without competent leadership, and Heinrici knew that the front could not hold for long. Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army in the north had achieved some defensive success against Rokossovskii, but it was only a question of time before Von Manteuffel would be forced to retreat also.

  At 12:30 A.M. he called Krebs. He told him that the situation was becoming almost impossible to control. In particular he talked about the 56th Panzer Corps which, “in spite of all counterattacks against the Soviets, is being pushed farther and farther back.” The situation there, he said, was “tense to the point of bursting.” Twice during the day he had talked personally to Krebs about the Ninth Army’s rapidly worsening situation; each time Krebs had again given him the Führer’s decision: “Busse is to hold on the Oder.” Now Heinrici fought for Busse again.

  “Consistently,” Heinrici told Krebs now, “I have been denied freedom of movement for the Ninth Army. Now I demand it—before it’s too late. I must point out that I am not resisting the Führer’s orders because of stubbornness or unjustified pessimism. From my record in Russia you know that I do not give up easily. But it is essential to act now in order to save the Ninth from destruction.

  “I have received the order,” he said, “that the Army Group must hold the front line in its present positions and that all available forces must be pulled out to close the gap between the Ninth and Schörner on the southern flank. I regret what I’m going to say with all my heart, but the order cannot be carried out. The move simply has no chance of success. I demand the approval of my request to withdraw the Ninth Army. It is in the interest of the Führer himself that I make this request.

  “Actually,” said Heinrici, “what I should do is go to the Führer and say, ‘My Führer, since this order endangers your well-being, has no chance of success and cannot be carried out, I request you to relieve me of command and give it to somebody else. Then I could do my duty as a Volkssturm man and fight the enemy.’” Heinrici was putting his cards squarely on the table: he was stating to his superior officer that he would rather fight in the lowest ranks than carry out an order that could result only in the useless sacrifice of lives.

  “Do you really want me to pass this on to the Führer?” asked Krebs. Heinrici’s answer was short. “I demand it,” he said. “My Chief of Staff and my operations officers are my witnesses.”

  A short while later Krebs rang back. The Ninth was to hold its position. At the same time, all forces that could be made available were to try to close the gap with Schörner on the southern flank, “so as to set up a continuous front once more.” Heinrici knew then that the Ninth was as good as lost.

  In the Führerbunker Hitler’s nightly military conference broke up at 3 A.M. During the meeting Hitler had blamed the Fourth Army—the army that had been crushed by Koniev’s attack in the opening day of his offensive—for all the problems that had since arisen. He accused the army of treason. “My Führer,” asked General Dethleffsen, shocked, “do you really believe that the command committed treason?” Hitler looked at Dethleffsen “with pitying eyes, as if only a fool could ask such a stupid question.” Then he said: “All our failures in the east can be traced to treachery—nothing else but treachery.”

  As Dethleffsen was about to leave the room, Ambassador Walter Hewel, Von Ribbentrop’s representative from the Foreign Ministry, entered, his expression deeply concerned. “My Führer,” he said, “do you have any orders for me?” There was a pause, and then Hewel said: “If we still want to achieve anything on a diplomatic level, now is the time.” According to Dethleffsen, Hitler, “in a voice soft and completely changed,” said: “Politics. I have n
othing to do with politics any more. That just disgusts me.” He walked toward the door—“slowly,” recalls Dethleffsen, “tired and with flagging gait.” Then he turned and said to Hewel, “When I am dead you will have to busy yourself plenty with politics.” Hewel pressed. “I think we should do something now,” he said. As Hitler got to the door Hewel added most earnestly: “My Führer, it is five seconds before twelve.” Hitler seemed not to hear.

  *The Ruhr pocket was completely erased by April 18. Three days later Model committed suicide.

  *Goering may have had even more than twenty-four trucks. Heinrici believes he had “four columns.” This, however, may have included the additional Luftwaffe convoys that left Berlin later in the day. The fantastic fact is that at this moment with planes grounded and vehicles unable to move because of fuel, Goering had at his disposal not only trucks but ample supplies of gasoline.

  *Completely surrounded in the Baltic States, the remnants of the Courland Army were finally evacuated by boat and arrived at Swinemünde at the beginning of April. Of the eighteen divisions only a few boatloads of men, minus equipment, reached Germany.

  *Hitler’s remark to Jodl was written down by Luise Jodl in her detailed diary. The entry is followed by this note: “My husband remarked that ‘save for one other occasion, after the death of my first wife, this is the only personal remark Hitler has ever made to me.’”

  *Testimony at the Nuremberg trials disclosed that Grawitz in his additional capacity as Himmler’s Chief Surgeon had authorized medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

  3

  THE SOUND WAS unlike anything Berliners had heard before, unlike the whistle of falling bombs, or the crack and thud of anti-aircraft fire. Puzzled, the shoppers who were queued up outside Karstadt’s department store on Hermannplatz listened: it was a low keening coming from somewhere off in the distance, but now it rose rapidly to a terrible piercing scream. For an instant the shoppers seemed mesmerized. Then suddenly the lines of people broke and scattered. But it was too late. Artillery shells, the first to reach the city, burst all over the square. Bits of bodies splashed against the boarded-up store front. Men and women lay in the street screaming and writhing in agony. It was exactly 11:30 A.M., Saturday, April 21. Berlin had become the front line.

  Shells now began to strike everywhere. Tongues of flame leaped from rooftops all over the center of the city. Bomb-weakened buildings collapsed. Automobiles were up-ended and set afire. The Brandenburg Gate was hit and one cornice crashed down into the street. Shells plowed the Unter den Linden from one end to the other; the Royal Palace, already wrecked, burst into flames again. So did the Reichstag; the girders that had once supported the building’s cupola collapsed and hunks of metal showered down. People ran wildly along the Kurfürstendamn, dropping briefcases and packages, bobbing frantically from doorway to doorway. At the Tiergarten end of the street, a stable of riding horses received a direct hit. The screams of the animals mingled with the cries and shouts of men and women; an instant later the horses stampeded out of the inferno and dashed down the Kurfürstendamm, their manes and tails blazing.

  Barrage after barrage pounded the city, systematically and methodically. Correspondent Max Schnetzer of the Swiss paper Der Bund, standing by the Brandenburg Gate, noted that in the center of the government section of the Wilhelmstrasse at least one shell was landing every five seconds. Then there would be a pause of half a minute or a minute and once again the shells would start to fall. From where he stood the newspaperman could see fires shooting up toward the skies from the direction of the Friedrichstrasse Station. “Because the smoke and haze diffuses the light,” he later wrote, “it looks as if the very clouds are on fire.”

  The shelling was just as intense in other parts of the city. In Wilmersdorf, Ilse Antz, her mother and sister felt their building shudder. The two girls threw themselves to the floor. Their mother clung to the doorpost, screaming, “My God! My God! My God!” In Neukölln, Dora Janssen watched her husband, a Wehrmacht major, walk down the driveway to his limousine. The major’s batman opened the car door and suddenly was “torn completely to pieces” by a shell. When the dust cleared she saw her husband still standing by the car, his head high but his face distorted with pain. As Frau Janssen ran toward the major, she saw that “one leg of his trousers was soaked in blood which was running over his boot and onto the sidewalk.” Later, as she watched him being carried away on a stretcher, she found a curious emotion competing with her concern for her husband’s safety. She could not help thinking, “How upright he stood in spite of his injury. A real officer!”

  Not far away was another officer who had never believed that the Russians could come this close. The fanatical Luftwaffe accountant, Captain Gotthard Carl, who still greeted his family with the Hitler salute, was growing desperate. As the Russians had come closer, Carl’s sartorial splendor had gleamed undiminished; indeed, it had become even more evident. Though she would never dare tell him so, his wife Gerda thought Carl looked ridiculous in his gala dress uniform, complete with gold cufflinks and those rows of meaningless ribbons. These days, too, he was never without his signet ring, on which a swastika was outlined in diamonds.

  But Gotthard Carl was fully aware of the turn events were taking. Returning home at noon from his Tempelhof office, he threw up his hand in his usual “Heil Hitler” greeting and then gave his wife some instructions. “Now that the bombardment has begun,” he told her, “you are to go to the cellar and remain there permanently. I want you to sit right opposite the cellar entrance.” Gerda looked at him in amazement; it seemed the least safe place to be. But Gotthard was insistent. “I have heard that in other cities the Russians enter the cellars with flame throwers and most people are burned alive. I want you to sit directly before the cellar door so that you will be killed first. You won’t have to sit and wait your turn.” Then, without another word he clasped his wife’s hands, gave the Nazi salute and walked out of the apartment.

  Numbly, Gerda did as she was told. Sitting well ahead of the other occupants and just inside the entrance to the shelter, she prayed steadily as the bombardment raged overhead. For the first time since their marriage she did not include Gotthard in her prayers. In the afternoon, at the time her husband usually arrived home, Gerda, defying his orders, ventured upstairs. Trembling and frightened, she waited awhile, but Gotthard did not return. She never saw him again.

  The artillery shelling had begun just as the aerial bombing ended. The last Western air raid on Berlin, the 363rd of the war, was delivered at 9:25 A.M. by elements of the U. S. Eighth Air Force. For forty-four months the Americans and British had pounded “Big B,” as the U.S. fliers called it. Berliners had shaken their fists at the bombers, and they had mourned the deaths of friends and relatives and the destruction of their homes. Yet their anger, like the bombs themselves, had been impersonal, directed at men they would never see. The shelling was different. It came from an enemy who stood outside their doors, who would soon be facing them.

  There was another difference, too. Berliners had learned to live with the bombing and to anticipate the almost clocklike regularity of the raids. Most people could tell by the very whistle of a falling bomb approximately where it would land; many had grown so accustomed to the raids that often they did not even bother to seek shelter. Artillery fire was somehow more dangerous. Shells landed suddenly and unexpectedly. The razor-sharp, scythelike shrapnel ripped and cut in every direction, often striking yards away from the initial explosion.

  Journalist Hans Wulle-Wahlberg, making his way across Potsdamer Platz as it was raked by shell bursts, saw dead and dying everywhere. It seemed to him that some people had been killed by the blast of air pressure “which had torn out their lungs.” As he dodged the bursts the thought struck him that Berliners, formerly bound together against their common enemy, the bombers, “now had no time to bother about the dead and the wounded. Everyone was too busy trying to save his own skin.”

  The merciless shelling had
no pattern. It was aimless and incessant. Each day it seemed to increase in intensity. Mortars and the grinding howl of rocket-firing Katushkas soon added to the din. Most people now spent much of their time in cellars, air raid shelters, flak tower bunkers and subway stations. They lost all sense of time. The days blurred amid the fear, confusion and death that was all about them. Berliners who had kept meticulous diaries up to April 21 suddenly got their dates mixed. Many wrote that the Russians were in the center of the city on April 21 or 22, when the Red Army was still fighting in the suburbs. Their terror of the Russians was often intensified by a certain guilty knowledge. Some Germans, at least, knew all about the way German troops had behaved on Soviet soil, and about the terrible and secret atrocities committed by the Third Reich in concentration camps. Over Berlin, as the Russians drew closer, hung a night-marish fear unlike that experienced by any city since the razing of Carthage.

  Elfriede Wassermann and her husband Erich had taken shelter in the huge bunker next to the Anhalter railway station. Erich had lost his left leg on the Russian front in 1943, and could walk only with the aid of crutches. He had quickly recognized the sound of the artillery fire for what it was, and had rushed his wife off to the bunker. Elfriede had packed their belongings in two suitcases and two other large bags. Over her own clothes she put on a pair of Erich’s old military pants and, on top of everything, both her woolen and fur coats. Since her husband needed both hands for his crutches, she had strapped one bag on his back, the other across his chest. One of the parcels contained food: some hard-crusted bread, and a few tins of meat and vegetables. In one of her suitcases Elfriede had a large pot of butter.