The Battle for Berlin 1945 - Part 1

Thursday, 29 March 1945. Berlin was in ruins.  The city was falling apart at the seams, the night bombing raids becoming heavier and more destructive, the piles of rubble increasing; remaining shops were mostly empty; infrastructure barely functioning. The fabric of the entire city was ripping apart.  Yet, the Wehrmacht was still recruiting because the Führer was insisting that Germany should fight on.  That day, 17 year-old Helmut Altner has just been called up and told to report to a barracks in Spandau in western Berlin.  In fact, earlier that month Hitler had announced on 5 March that the ‘class of 1929’ were eligible for conscription: fifteen year-olds.

Altner had reached the city at Henningsdorf via the S-Bahn that was still just about running, although this was as far as the line went; travel in the Third Reich was not easy.  So, clutching an old cardboard Persil carton containing something to eat and some underwear, he exited along with number of other teenagers.  Fortunatley, he was able to find a dilapidated tram heading to Spandau, so jumped on and continued his journey.  The RAF had been over the previous night and as they clattered along the wrecked streets Altner saw houses still on fire, trees torn to spreads and even a bunch of boys collecting body parts; he spotted one lad watching the others while calming eating an apple.  At length, the tram halted - cables had been broken and were strewn like snakes across the road so it could go not further.

He and several others then managed to stop a truck and get a lift.  On they went, past a burn-out factory, with beams that glowed every time the wind blew.  Glass and rubble littered the street. Several women were crying.  Spandau town hall was also burning with firemen desperately trying to put out the flames.  An apocalypse had covered Berlin in its shroud, but Hitler had always told the German people there was a choice: a thousand-year Reich or Armageddon.  So it had come to pass.  Armageddon it was.

Altner eventually reached the large and still-standing barracks to which he’d been ordered to report.  Despite the carnage, the bureaucracy of the Third Reich still appeared to be functioning because there a clerk told him to report to the Grenadier Training and Relpacement Battalion 309 in Alexander Barracks in Ruhleben.  To his amazement, just as he was heading out again he was told his mother was waiting; he hadn’t seen her for several months; he’d been away with the Arbeitsdienst, the Reich’s public works organisation for teenagers. He was, though, happy to be briefly reunited and together they walked to the nearby Alexander Barracks.  Eventually, however, it was time for her to leave him. “You won’t experience much happiness, my boy,” she told him, “but my best wishes go with you all the same.”  Then she left him.

The next day training began.  There were as many 60 year-olds as teenagers in Grenadier Training and Replacement Battalion 309.  Uniforms were issued, most ill-fitting; Altner’s jacket was far too big for him.  He thought they all looked like scarecrows.  They then began to be turned into soldiers with some marches and drill, although they didn’t see a weapon at all until a few days later; it was 3 April when they were first marched to the firing ranges.  First, though, they were to witness an execution of three prisoners.  This, they were told, was to stiffen their nerves.

The executioners were drawn from the new recruits, most of whom had never before held a rifle let alone fired one.  Three young men clambered out of a truck and then all concerned - the condemned, the firing squad and the watching recruits - were made to hang around while an appeal for clemency was considered.  Eventually the answer came through: there was to be no clemency.  When they heard this, the three condemned men hung their heads.  Altner reckoned the youngest was barely eighteen, the other two barely much older.  They were then fastened to posts with leather straps. Why expensive leather and not rope? It made little sense.   The firing squad was ordered to take aim. “Goodbye, comrades!’ the youngest of them called out in a high-pitched voice. And then the officer’s shining dirk dropped. “Fire!” he called out.  A poorly timed fusillade cracked.

Suddenly all the posts were empty and blood ran from the woods as if it itself had been killed.  The doctor checked the prostrate men.  The youngest one then raised himself once more; Altner saw blood flow from his mouth.  The doctor put his pistol to the boy’s temple and pressed the trigger.  Altner was appalled and revolted in equal measure by this spectacle. The message was clear: if any of the new recruits tried running away this would be their fate too.

Just four days later, Altner and his new comrades were all woken early and told they were now heading to the front.  It was Saturday, 7 April, and their destination was the small town of Seelow, forty miles east of Berlin and overlooking the River Oder.  This had been the front line since the Red Army had called a halt to the last ultra-violent and extremely costly offensive back in February.

Altner and his fellows had been soldiers for barely a week but were now expected to halt one of the most formidable forces ever assembled.  They didn’t have a chance, as everyone knew.  That Berlin could be held was simply impossible.  The city and its inhabitants were doomed.

Eighty years ago, in the second half of April 1945, the Battle for Berlin was raging, marking one of the final - and one of the bloodiest - battles of the Second World War in Europe.  The Red Army had halted on the Oder after losing a staggering 626,000 casualties between 12 January, when the offensive had begun, and 2 February, when it was brought to a halt.  behind lay a 250-mile stretch of total carnage: blackened tanks, vehicles, smashed farmsteads, villages and towns and nearly 200,000 dead, the majority of which were Red Army troops. The halt to his insane typhoon of steel meant Soviet troops had been just 50 miles from Berlin at the same time the Allies were more than 250 from the German capital.  However, by 11 April, when the US Ninth Army reached the River Elbe to the west of the city, both American and Soviet troops were roughly equidistant from Berlin.

Had the Allies decided to assault the capital there is every reason to suggest they would have reached Berlin first and with comparatively fewer casualties, partly because the were fighting a far more effective and manpower-conserving war than the Red Army and also because by this time, the overriding priority for the vast majority of German troops - and commanders - was to fall into Western Allied hands rather than those of the Red Army.  Back in June 1941, when Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, they had begun a campaign of brutal and cruel terror in which the normal rules of warfare had been kicked into the long grass.  Millions of Red Army troops and even more millions of civilians had died since then.  Germans knew they could expect little mercy now.  They had to reap what they had sowed.  Hence there was now a huge desire to fall into the hands of the Allies, who would, for the most part, treat German prisoners humanely.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, however, had decided not to contest Berlin.  The United States had less concerns over the finishing boundary between East and West when the war was finally over, but did have considerable anxieties over how the war might still play out against Imperial Japan; for in the Pacific, the closer the Allies got to the Japanese home islands, the harder the Japanese seemed to fight.  Peleliu, Iwo Jima and now Okinawa had become bywords for untold brutality in which the enemy defenders literally fought to the last man.  On Peleliu just 360 out of more than 12,000 Japanese had been taken prionser; on Iwo Jima, only 216 enemy troops had been captured out of more than 18,000.  On both islands, the rest had all fought themselves to death, and at great loss to the Americans.  Meanwhile, Okinawa was proving even bloodier a fight - as if such a scenario had been even possible before it had begun.

In April 1945, there was still no guarantee at all that the atomic bomb currently in development would be ready for Japan; or, that it would be used even if it was.  This meant Allied leaders now faced the prospect of invading mainland Japan with all the horrors that would incur.  Casualties were expected to be in their millions, which was why the Allies were continuing to bomb Germany with mounting frustration and fury; Nazi Germany was defeated already, finished.  Kaput.  So, why were the Germans still fighting?  Stop, and the bombing would stop too.  Surrender, and then the Allies - and especially the United States - could focus on beating Imperial Japan and finishing the war once and for all.  Even if Berlin could be taken cheaply, what was the point in sacrificing any more Allied lives here in Europe?  As many young men as possible would be needed for Japan.

And so, Eisenhower had told Stalin, the Soviet leader, that the River Elbe would be his halt line.  If the Red Army wanted Berlin, it was theirs.  Stalin responded with nonchalance; he would probably restart his offensive in early May, he told Eisenhower.  This, though, was a lie, as was so much that came out of his mouth.  Rather, he intended to launch an unimaginably large-scale assault on Berlin in mid-April.  In fact, final plans were agreed on 1 April 1945, after Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front had finally cleared the East Prussian city of Köningsburg and the Baltic coast of what had briefly been Poland.  Danzig, over which Germany had invaded Poland back on 1 September 1940, had fallen to the Red Army on 30 March.

To attack Berlin and Eastern Germany, Stalin had amassed three groups of armies, or ‘fronts’ as they were known: Rokossovky’s 2nd Belorussian to the north of Berlin, Marshal Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front a little of the south, and Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front in the centre, directly to the east of Berlin and staring at the Seelow Heights - to where Helmut Altner and Grenadier Training and Replacement Battalion 309 had been sent.

Stalin had already promised Berlin to Zhukov.  Despite this, at the planning meeting of the GKO - the State Defence Committee and effectively the war cabinet - on 1 April, he had taunted Zhukov, his most senior battlefield commander.  Zhukov had successfully beaten the Japanese in 1939, defended Moscow in December 1941, and encircled the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad to emphatically turn the tide on the Eastern Front at the end of 1942.  Now, though, he humiliated him.

“So,” Stalin said, despite already knowing the Allies had abandoned plans for such an attack, “who is going to take Berlin, we or the Allies?”

“We will,” Konev replied.

“Whoever breaks in first,” Stalin then said, eyeing both Zhukov and Konev, “Let him take Berlin.”  It was not what Zhukov had wanted to hear and set him at competitive loggerheads with his colleague but now rival, Konev.  Both men were hugely ambitious, both had immense egos and both fully intended to be the victors of Berlin.  Their men would pay for this grotesque duel with ther lives

Rokossovky had the smallest front with a mere 442,000 men, although he had lost 125,000 killed in taking the Baltic coast.  Konev had 550,900 in his armies, while Zhukov has 908,000 men spread across eleven armies, and more than 3,000 tanks and 16,934 artillery pieces.  In all, the waiting Germans - a handful of Warren SS, a few veterans and the rest old men and teenagers - were facing almost two million men, 6,520 tanks, 41,600 field guns and anti-tank guns, 3,255 rocket launchers, 95,383 vehicles and 7,500 aircraft.

Defending Berlin were the German Ninth and Fourth Panzer Armies, with perhaps 750 tanks  and a similar number of artillery pieces.  Including Volkssturm - the Home Guard - there are perhaps 1.2 million troops but these are ‘soldiers’ in the very loosest sense, with minimal equipment, minimal experience, and minimal training.  They should be brushed aside like flies against this immense weight of Red Army men and fire-power.

For all his enormous experience, however, Zhukov’s plan for the centre of the line, where the German defences - for what they are worth - were at their strongest, was truly terrible.  So much has been made by the Russians about the incredibly high sacrifice made by the Red Army during the ‘Great Patriotic War’ - and by a succession of subsequent Anglophone historians - and yet for all the undoubted barbarity of the Germans on the Easternn Front, the Soviet leadership was  nothing if not reckless and cruel with the lives of thir soldiers and civilians.  Both Stalin and his military commanders were spectacularly inept during the German invasion in 1941; Stalin’s scorched earth policy as they pulled back denied the Germans but also consigned millions to starvation, capture, death and disease.  Even once they finally began winning, they always did so at a cost in men and materiel that far exceeded those of the defeated Germans. Victors were not supposed to win the battlefield but lose the balance sheet and certainly not by such a terrible margin. Many of these lives were entirely avoidable.  Today, we should admire the astonishing bravery and resilience of those who fought and died for Mother Russia, but for the most part, the senior command deserves little more than contempt.  And Zhukov’s plan for Berlin was especially reprehensible.

Marshal Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front had actually got itself into a good position from which to launch an attack.  The Seelow Heights were a pronounced ridgeline a few hundred feet high overlooking the Oder’s flood plain.  Yet while this ridge ran roughly north-south and followed the course of the river, just a few miles to the south of Seelow, the ridge then curved eastwards like a fish-hook, to the Reitwein Spur, and this end of the hook had already been captured by Zhukov’s men.  In other words, they had secured a vital bridgehead over the river.

The most obvious course of action was for Zhukov’s men to gradually force their way down this ridge, unfolding the German positions and so giving himself a decent stretch of the Heights.  This way, he could have expanded his bridgehead considerably before launching his main assault.  This would have been immeasurably helpful to his attacking forces because crossing the Oder en masse, in full view of German guns on the heights, was asking for trouble.  This was because on the heights were German observers able to direct artillery fire.  Anything trying to move in bulk on the floodplains below would get hammered: the bunching up of men and machines at crossing points over the river and then on the soggy ground of the flood plain itself would present themselves as sitting ducks.

Zhukov eschewed any plans to infiltrate and gradually unfold the German positions and instead decided to simply pull back the battering ram and swing it towards the heights head on, relying on weight of force to do the trick.  He also planned to launch the attack at night behind an immense thirty-minute artillery barrage.  Some 7 million artillery shells were stockpiled for the battle.  His plan was to pulverise the enemy for half an hour then turn 140 anti-aircraft searchlights horizontally into the eyes of the enemy.  This, he told his subordinates, would blind them while the men and armour crossed the river and surged over the floodplain.

That was the plan but it was fatally flawed.  First, the ground was soggy and huge amounts of shells would not improve any part of it.  Second, it should have been startlingly obvious that a barrage by thousands of guns would cause enormous amounts of smoke.  Equally obvious was that light hitting smoke and fog merely rebounded - it’s why we use dipped headlights when driving in mist and fog. The more vehicles going over this soggy, churned-up ground - heavy tanks especially - the more they were likely to struggle in the growing mire.  This was, to use a pun, blindingly obvious.  Zhukov, however, preferred the techniques honed over the past couple of years: the bull-in-a-china shop approach. Zero subtlety; zero finesse; and zero regard for the lives of his men.  A giant hammer was to be swung into the German lines.  Numbers would win through.

Today, the Reitwein spur is wooded but it was not in 1945.  Zhukov’s command post at the end of the fish hook can also still be seen, dug into the side of the hill.  Scrapes where guns had been in position also remain, hewn into the wooded slopes.  From here, the Seelow Heights were only 3-6 miles away; zigzag German trenches still score the folds and crests of the ridge.  It’s actually a rather lovely spot although sinister too; the trench lines, the craters, as well as peppered and ruined brick barns all speak of the violence unleashed here eighty years ago.

Meanwhile, Marshal Konev was taking a different approach. Unlike Zhukov, he didn’t have a bridgehead.  Here, his 1st Ukrainian Front faced not the Oder, which curved away to the east to the north of his lines, but the River Neisse, a tributary which ran roughly northwards.  Konev knew he needed to get his armour across the Neisse quickly before meeting the admittedly depleted Fourth Panzer Army.  Unlike Zhukov, he opted for a longer artillery barrage.  Under the cover of darkness, he would blast the German lines, also using smoke shells to hide the launch of his forces over the river.  Behind this smoke and fog, but with no searchlights, his infantry would swim or cross the Neisse in boats, then engineers quickly set up foot bridges then larger vehicle bridges.  The artillery barrage would last for almost two-and-a-half hours. It was a better plan than that of Zhukov, although hardly subtle either.

Meanwhile, in charge of the German defences opposite Zhukov and Rokossovsky was General Gotthard Heinrici’s Army Group Vistula - still named despite the loss of the River Vistula back in January.  Heinrici had risen to prominence during the years of retreat and had become Germany’s most competent general in defence.  Aware that the Red Army would offer very little subtlety in their attack, he rightly suspected Zhukov’s men opposite Ninth Army would blast the German front lines as a prelude to attack.  His plan was to wait until the last moment then pull his men back to a prepared second line of defence, where, he hoped, they would be largely safe from much of the initial artillery fire of 1st Belorussian Front.

Preliminary shelling along the Oder front began on 14 January, although Heinrici was not fooled by this. A Red Army soldier was then captured the following day and quickly told his captors the renewed offensive was due to begin the following day, 16 January.  Overnight on the 15th, on Heinrici’s instructions, General Theodore Busse, commander of the Ninth Army, duly pulled his men back to the second lines of defence - and to where Helmut Altner was also waiting for the battle to begin…

I am going to post another piece continuing this story within the next day or so.  And if you found this interesting there is much more to read about the end of World War II in a new book I have written with Al Murray called ‘Victory ‘45.’