12
Waiting for the Onslaught

During early April, as Berlin awaited the final Soviet onslaught along the Oder, the atmosphere in the city became a mixture of febrile exhaustion, terrible foreboding and despair.

'Yesterday,' the Swedish military attache reported to Stockholm, 'the well-meaning von Tippelskirch invited us to another evening at Mellensee, and I went more out of curiosity than anything else. The expectation of hearing anything interesting was not high, since now everything happens from one moment to the next. The evening was quite tragic. The atmosphere was one of hopelessness. Most of them did not even pretend to keep up appearances, but showed the situation as it really was. Some became maudlin, seeking comfort in the bottle.' Fanatical determination existed only among those Nazis who believed that surrender in any form meant execution. They, like Hitler, were determined to ensure that everyone else shared the same fate as themselves. In September 1944, when the Western Allies and the Red Army had been advancing towards the Reich with great speed, the Nazi leadership wanted to fight on against its sworn enemies even after defeat. It decided to set up a resistance movement to be known by the codename Werwolf.

The name Werwolf-as inspired by a novel set in the Thirty Years War by Hermann Löns, an extreme nationalist killed in 1914 and revered by the Nazis. In October 1944, when the idea started to be put into effect, SS Obergruppenführer Hans Prützmann was appointed General-inspekteur für Spezialabwchr - General Inspector for Special Defence. Prützmann, who had studied Soviet partisan tactics during his time in the Ukraine, was summoned back from Königsberg to establish a headquarters. But, as with many Nazi projects, rival factions wanted to create their own set-up or bring existing ones under their control. Even within the SS, there were to be two organizations, Werwolf and Otto Skorzeny's SS Jagdverbände. The figure rises to three if you include the unactivated Gestapo and SD version to be known by the codename Bundschuh.

In theory, the training programmes covered sabotage using tins of Heinz oxtail soup packed with plastic explosive and detonated with captured British time pencils. A whole range of items and even garments made of Nipolit explosive were designed, including raincoats with linings made of explosive. Werwolf recruits were taught to kill sentries with a slip-knotted garrotte about a metre long or a Walther pistol with silencer. Captured documents showed that their watchword was to be, 'Turn day into night, night into day! Hit the enemy wherever you meet him. Be sly! Steal weapons, ammunition and rations! Women helpers, support the battle of the Werwolf wherever you can.' They were to operate in groups of three to six men, and were to receive rations for sixty days. 'Special emphasis was put on gasoline and oil supplies' as targets. The Nazi authorities ordered 2,000 radios and 5,000 explosive kits, but few were ready in time. American incendiary bombs dropped in bombing raids were collected and concentration camp inmates were forced to check them and extract the material for re-use.

On 1 April at 8 p.m., an appeal was broadcast to the German people to join the Werwolf. 'Every Bolshevik, every Englishman, every American on our soil must be a target for our movement . . . Any German, whatever his profession or class, who puts himself at the service of the enemy and collaborates with him will feel the effect of our avenging hand ... A single motto remains for us: "Conquer or die."' A few days later, Himmler issued a new order: 'Every male in a house where a white flag appears must be shot. Not a moment must be wasted in executing these measures. By male persons who must be considered responsible for their actions this means everyone aged fourteen years and upwards.' The true objective of Werwolf, as a document of 4 April confirmed, came from the Nazi obsession with 1918. 'We know the plans of the enemy and we know that following a defeat there would be no chance of German) ever rising again like after 1918.' The threat of killing anyone who collaborated with the allies was to prevent a 'Stresemann-Politik', a reference to Gustav Stresemann's signature of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The Nazi Party was rooted in the humiliation of that defeat and it brought Germany back there again with terrible interest.

Hitler Youth boys were sent off to their selected areas, where they were told to bury their explosive, then contact the local Nazi Kreisleiter for accommodation and rations. They were all given single unspecified missions, then told to go home as if nothing had happened. Towards the end, the training became very hurried, so many of them were more likely to blow themselves up rather than the enemy.

Ultimately, Werwolf achieved very little, apart from a couple of assassinations - the mayors of Aachen and Krankenhagcn - and the intimidation of civilians. Hitler Youth chalked slogans on walls such as, 'Traitor take care, the Werwolf is watching.' Both Skorzeny and Prützmann seem to have become less enamoured of the project as the allies closed in - if one is to believe Skorzeny's account in his interrogation. (Prützmann committed suicide after one brief interview.) In any case, Himmler also had a change of heart in mid-April, just when negotiations via Sweden were on his mind. He instructed Prützmann to change Werwolf activity 'to that - exclusively - of propaganda'. The only problem was that the Werwolfsender radio transmitter, under the control of Goebbels, continued to order partisan action.

On the Eastern Front, the rapid advances of the Red Army from January to March meant that hardly any groups were trained or equipped in time, and the only stay-behind groups were usually Volkssturm members, who had been cut off. The Werwolfpropaganda simply lent SMERSH and the NKVD rifle regiments an urgent focus to their usual paranoia. In the west, the Allies found that Werwolf was a fiasco. Bunkers prepared for Werwolf operations had supplies 'for 10-15 days only' and the fanaticism of the Hitler Youth members they captured had entirely disappeared. They were 'no more than frightened, unhappy youths'. Few resorted to the suicide pills which they had been given 'to escape the strain of interrogation and, above all, the inducement to commit treason'. Many, when sent off by their controllers to prepare terrorist acts, had sneaked home.

Some have pointed out that the whole Werwolf project did not fit with the national character. 'We Germans are not a nation of partisans,' wrote an anonymous woman diarist in Berlin. 'We wait for leadership, for orders.' She had travelled in the Soviet Union just before the Nazis came to power and, during long discussions on trains, Russians made jokes about the German lack of revolutionary spirit. 'German comrades would storm a railway station,' one said, 'only if they could first of all buy platform tickets!'

Reports also indicate that, although not part of the Werwolf programme, members of the Gestapo had been transferred to the Kriminal- polizei on the grounds that the Western Allies were sure to reinstate them later once military government was installed. As the reality of final collapse sank in, supposedly fanatical believers turned rapidly to self-preservation. Some SS members, to avoid prosecution, simply snaffled for themselves the false documents prepared for Werwolf members. Others procured Wehrmacht uniforms and the pay-books of dead men to provide themselves with new identities. German soldiers were furious that while the SS had been carrying out random executions for desertion, many of their officers were preparing their own escape. German prisoners of war told their American interrogators that tailors had been ordered to stitch a large P on jackets so that SS men trying to hide could masquerade as Polish workers.

The Nazi leadership did not just rely on the 'flying courts martial' and SS execution squads to terrorize soldiers into continuing the fight. The tales of atrocities from the propaganda ministry never ceased. Stories of women commissars castrating wounded soldiers, for example, were circulated. The ministry also had its own squads both in Berlin and close to the Oder front, painting slogans on walls as if they were the spontaneous expression of the civilian population, such as 'We believe in victory!', 'We will never surrender' and 'Protect our women and children from the Red beasts!' There was, however, one group who could demonstrate their feelings about the war without fear of reprisal. German wounded who had lost hands or arms would say 'Heil Hitler!' and 'raise their stumps ostentatiously'.

The man with the least enviable task at this time was Lieutenant General Reymann, the officer appointed Commander of the Greater Berlin Defence Area. He faced the culmination of the Nazis' organizational chaos. General Halder, the army chief of staff sacked in 1942, was scathing on the subject. Both Hitler and Goebbels, the Reich Commissar for Defence of the capital, he wrote later, refused to give any 'thought to defending the city until it was much too late. Thus, the city's defence was characterized only by a mass of improvisations.'

Reymann was the third person to hold the post since Hitler had declared Berlin a fortress at the beginning of February. He found that he had to deal with Hitler, Goebbels, the Replacement Army commanded by Himmler, the Luftwaffe, Army Group Vistula headquarters, the SS, the Hitler Youth and also the local Nazi Party organiz- ation, which controlled the Volkssturm. Hitler, having ordered that Berlin should be prepared for defence, then refused to allocate any troops to the task. He simply assured Reymann that sufficient forces would be provided if the enemy reached the capital. Neither Hitler nor Goebbels could face the reality of defeat. Goebbels in particular had convinced himself that the Red Army could be held on the Oder.

Berlin's population in early April stood at anything between 3 and 3.5 million people, including around 120,000 infants. When General Reymann raised the problem of feeding these children at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery bunker, Hitler stared at him. 'There are no children of that age left in Berlin,' he said. Reymann finally understood that his supreme commander had no contact with human reality. Goebbels, meanwhile, insisted that there were large reserves of tinned milk and that, if the city were encircled, cows could be brought into the centre. Reymann asked what the cows would be fed on. Goebbels had no idea. To make matters worse, the food depots were all situated on the outskirts of the city and were vulnerable to capture. Nothing was done to move either Wehrmacht or civilian supplies closer in.

Reymann and his chief of staff, Colonel Hans Refior, knew that Berlin had no hope of holding out with the forces at their disposal, so they recommended to Goebbels that civilians, especially women and children, should be allowed to leave. 'Evacuation,' replied Goebbels, 'is best organized by the SS and the police commander for the Spree region. I will give the order for evacuation at the right time.' It was quite clear that he had not for a moment seriously considered the logistic implications of evacuating such a mass of people by road and rail, to say nothing of feeding them on the way. There were not nearly enough trains still in service, and few vehicles with fuel capable of transporting the weak and the sick. The bulk of the population would have had to walk. One suspects that Goebbels, like Stalin at the start of the battle of Stalingrad, did not want to evacuate civilians in the hope that it would force the soldiers to defend the city more desperately.

From the regional headquarters for the Berlin district, a solid building on the Hohenzollerndamm, Reymann and his staff tried to find out how many soldiers and how many weapons could be counted on. Colonel Refior rapidly discovered that the 'Berlin Defence Area' carried no significance. It was just another phrase, like 'Fortress', coined in Führer headquarters which people were still supposed to defend to the death. He found that dealing with such 'short-sightedness, bureaucracy and bloody-mindedness, was enough to turn anybody's hair white'.

To defend the outer perimeter alone, ten divisions were needed. In fact, the Berlin Defence Area possessed in theory only a flak division, nine companies of the Grossdeutschland guard regiment, a couple of police battalions, a couple of pioneer battalions and twenty Volkssturm battalions which had been called up, but not trained. Another twenty would be called up if the city were surrounded. But although the Berlin Volkssturm amounted to 60,000 men on paper, it included both 'Volkssturm I', who had some weapons, and 'Volkssturm II', who had no weapons at all. In many cases, a former regular officer would send his unarmed Volkssturm soldiers home when the Red Army approached the city, but commanders who were Party functionaries seldom showed even the most basic humanity. One of the Nazi Kreisleiters was convinced that the only thing to do was to keep the men away from the influence of their wives, from the 'Muttis', who might undermine their will to resist. But this was doomed to failure. No rations had been allocated for the Volkssturm, so they had to be fed by their families. In any case, commanders in charge of the defence soon found that only veterans of the First World War showed 'a sense of duty'. Most of the rest slipped away whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The most heavily armed force in Berlin was the 1st Flak Division, and yet it did not come under Reymann's command until the battle started. Based on the three vast concrete flak towers - the Zoobunker in the Tiergarten, the Humboldthain and the Friedrichshain - this Luftwaffe division had an impressive arsenal of 128mm, 88mm and 20mm guns, as well as the necessary ammunition to go with them. Reymann's artillery otherwise consisted of obsolete guns of various calibres taken earlier in the war from the French, Belgians and Yugoslavs. There were seldom more than half a dozen rounds per gun, often less. The only guideline on conducting a defence of the city was a pre-war instruction, which Renor described as a 'masterpiece of German bureaucratic art'.

The Nazi Party in Berlin talked of mobilizing armies of civilians to work on defences - both an 'obstacle ring' thirty kilometres out and a perimeter ring. But the maximum workforce ever achieved on one day was 70,000; it was usually no more than 30,000. Transport and a shortage of tools were the main problems, apart from the fact that most Berlin factories and offices continued to work as if nothing were amiss.

Reymann appointed Colonel Lohbeck, an engineer officer, to take over the Party-led chaos of defence works and he called on the school of military engineering at Karlshorst to provide demolition teams. Army officers were nervous about Speer's attempts to save the bridges within Berlin. They could not forget the execution of the officers over the bridge at Remagen. Reymann's sappers supervised the Todt Organization and the Reich Labour Service, both of which were far better equipped than the civilian corvée, but they found it impossible to obtain fuel and spare parts for the mechanical diggers. Most of the 17,000 French prisoners of war from Stalag III D were put to work in the city, creating barricades and digging foxholes in pavements at street corners. How much they achieved is open to question, however, especially since French prisoners round Berlin were those most regularly accused of being 'Arbeitsunlustig' - reluctant to work - and of escaping from their camps, usually to visit German women.

Attempts to liaise with the field commanders, who were supposed to provide fighting troops for the defence of the city, were far from successful. When Refior went to visit Heinrici's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Kinzel, at Army Group Vistula headquarters, Kinzel simply glanced at the plans he presented for the defence of Berlin and said, 'Those madmen in Berlin should stew in their own juice.' The Ninth Army's chief of staff", Major General Hölz, regarded the plans as irrelevant for other reasons. 'The Ninth Army,' said Hölz, in a manner which Refior found rather too theatrical, 'stands and stays on the Oder. If it should be necessary, we will fall there, but we will not retreat.'

Neither Reymann nor Refior realized fully at the time that General Heinrici and his staff at Army Group Vistula had a very different plan from the Nazi leadership. They were hoping to prevent a last-ditch defence of the capital for the sake of the civil population. Albert Speer had suggested to Heinrici that the Ninth Army should withdraw from the Oder, bypassing Berlin entirely. Heinrici agreed in principle. In his view, the best way to avoid fighting in the city would be to order Reymann to send all his troops forward to the Oder at the last moment to strip Berlin of its defenders.

Another strong reason for avoiding a battle in the city was the Nazis' resort to boys as young as fourteen as cannon fodder. So many houses had a framed photograph on the wall of a son killed in Russia that a silent prayer arose that the regime would collapse before these children were sent into battle. Some did not shrink from openly calling it infanticide, whether it was exploiting the fanaticism of deluded Hitler Youth or forcing frightened boys into uniform through threat of execution. Older teachers in schools risked denunciation by advising their pupils on how to avoid being called up. The sense of bitterness was even greater after Goebbels's speech a few weeks before. 'The Führer once coined the phrase,' he reminded them,' "Each mother who has given birth to a child has struck a blow for the future of our people." But it was now clear that Hitler and Goebbels were about to throw those children's lives away for a cause which had no possible future.

The fourteen-year-old Erich Schmidtke in Prenzlauerberg had been called up as a 'flak helper' to man anti-aircraft guns and ordered to report to the Hermann Göring barracks in Reinickendorf. His mother, whose husband was trapped with the army in Courland, was understandably upset and accompanied him to the barracks with his little suitcase.

He felt more awed than afraid. After three days in the barracks, they were ordered to join the division being assembled at the Reichssportsfeld in the west of the city, next to the Olympic stadium. But on his way there, he thought of his father's words when on leave from the Eastern Front, telling him that he was now responsible for the family. He decided to desert and went into hiding until the war was over. Most of his contemporaries who joined the division were killed.

The so-called Hitler Youth Division raised bv the Reich Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, was also being trained at the Reichssportsfeld on the use of the panzerfaust. Axmann lectured them on the heroism of Sparta and tried to inspire an unwavering hatred of the enemy and an unwavering loyalty to Adolf Hitler. 'There is only victory or defeat,' he told them. Some of the young found their suicidal task ahead deeply stirring. Reinhard Appel thought of Rilke's Cornet charging out against the Turks, just as the lost generation of 1914 had when they volunteered.

The fact that a detachment of 'Blitzmädel' girls was also billeted on the Reichssportsfeld no doubt heightened the romantic appeal.

The Nazi leadership was also preparing at this time a Wehrmachthelferinnenkorps of female military auxiliaries. Young women had to swear an oath of allegiance which began, 'I swear that I will be true and obedient to Adolf Hitler, the Führer and commander in chief of the Wehrmacht.' The words made it sound like a mass marriage. For somebody who had perhaps diverted his sexual drive into the pursuit of power, this may have provided its own form of ersatz fantasy.

In the Wilhelmstrasse district of ministries, government officials were trying to convince any diplomats who remained in the city that they were 'deciphering telegrams between Roosevelt and Churchill within two hours of their dispatch'. Meanwhile, rumours circulated of Communist shock troops being formed in the eastern 'Red' part of the city to liquidate Nazi Party members. 'There is an atmosphere of desperation at the top,' the Swedish military attache reported to Stockholm. 'A determination to sell their lives dearly.' In fact, the only sabotage groups came from the other side of the lines, when members of the Soviet-controlled Freies Deutschland in Wehrmacht uniform slipped through German positions and moved towards Berlin. They cut cables, but little more. Freies Deutschland later claimed that its resistance group Osthafen had blown up a munitions dump in Berlin, but this is far from certain.

On 9 April, a number of well-known opponents of the regime were butchered by the SS in a variety of concentration camps. The order was given to ensure their deaths before the enemy could release them. In Dachau, Johann Georg Elser, the Communist who had tried to assassin- ate Hitler in the Burger Brau on 8 November 1939, was killed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Admiral Canaris and General Oster were executed in Flossenbürg and Hans von Dohnanyi in Sachsenhausen.

'Revenge is coming!' - 'Die Vergeltung kommt! - had been the Nazi propaganda slogan for the V-weapons. But this now had a hollow echo for officers on the Oder front as they awaited the onslaught. It was Soviet revenge which was coming and they knew that there were no more miracle weapons to save them. Many of them, under heavy pressure from above, lied to their men even more than before other similar defeats, with promises of miracle weapons, of rifts in the enemy coalition and of reinforcements. This was to contribute to the breakdown in discipline at the end of the battle.

Even the Waffen SS began to suffer from an unprecedented resentment between soldiers and officers. Eberhard Baumgart, the clerk with the SS Division 30. Januar, went back to headquarters to deal with a report, but found that the sentries would not let him in. A look through the windows soon explained why. 'I thought I was dreaming,' he wrote later. 'Glittering dress uniforms swirled around with tarted-up wromen, music, noise, laughter, shrieking, cigarette smoke and clinking glasses.' Baumgart's mood next day was not helped when Georg, the Volga German interpreter, showed him a cartoon from Pravda of Hitler, Goring and Goebbels in an orgy in the Reich Chancellery. The caption read, 'Every day the German soldier holds on lengthens our lives.'

Instead of miracle weapons, many of the Volkssturm and other improvised units received weapons that wrere useless, such as the Volks- handgranate 45. This 'people's hand grenade' wras simply a lump of concrete around a small explosive charge and a No. 8 detonator. It was more dangerous to the thrower than to the target. One detachment of officer cadets facing a Guards tank army received rifles captured from the French army in 1940 and just five rounds each. It was typical of Nazi corporate bluster that they continued to create impressive-sounding units - whether the Sturmzug, which lacked the weapons to storm anything, or the Panzerjadgkompanie, which was supposed to stalk tanks on foot.

Another formation, which had better reason than most to fear the consequences of capture, was the 1st Division of General Vlasov's Russian Army of Liberation. It had been Himmler's idea to bring the Vlasov division to the Oder front. He had trouble persuading Hitler, who still disliked the idea of using Slav troops. The German general staff had supported the idea earlier in the war of raising a Ukrainian army of a million men, but Hitler vetoed the plan, determined to maintain the separation of'Herrenmensch und das Sklavenvolk'. And then the terrible treatment of the Ukrainian people under Rosenberg and Gauleiter Koch in the Ukraine had put an end to Wehrmacht hopes.

Early in April, General Vlasov, accompanied by a liaison officer and an interpreter, came to Army Group Vistula headquarters to discuss matters with General Heinrici. Vlasov was a tall, rather gaunt man, with 'clever eyes' set in a colourless face, with one of those chins which looked grey even when freshly shaved. After a few optimistic expressions by Vlasov, Heinrici asked bluntly how such a recently formed division would perform in combat. German officers were concerned that these Russian volunteers would refuse to fight their fellow countrymen at the last moment. Now that the Third Reich was doomed to destruction, there was little incentive, save desperation, for the Vlasov volunteers.

Vlasov did not try to fool Heinrici. He explained that his plan had been to raise at least six divisions, hopefully ten, from prisoners of war in the camps. The problem was that the Nazi authorities had not come round to the idea until it was too late. He was aware of the risk of Soviet propaganda aimed at his men. Yet he felt that they should be allowed to prove themselves in an attack on one of the Oder bridgeheads.

General Busse chose for them an unimportant sector at Erlenhof, south of Frankfurt an der Oder. Soviet reconnaissance groups from the 33rd Army identified their presence almost immediately and a barrage of loudspeaker activity began. The advance of theVlasovtsy started on 13 April. During two and a half hours' fighting, the 1st Division created a wedge 500 metres deep, but the Soviet artillery fire was so strong that they had to lie down. General Bunyachenko, their commander, seeing no sign of either air or artillery support which he thought that the Germans had promised, withdrew his men, disregarding Busse's order. The Vlasov division lost 370 men, including four officers. Busse was furious, and, on his recommendation, General Krebs ordered the division to be withdrawn from the front and stripped of its weapons, which would be used for 'better purposes'. The Vlasovtsy were deeply embittered. They blamed their reverse on the lack of artillery support, but perhaps nobody had warned them that German batteries were holding back their last rounds for the major attack.

During the first two weeks of April, sporadic fighting continued in the bridgeheads. Soviet attacks were aimed to deepen them. Behind the Oder, the activity was even more intense. Altogether, twenty-eight Soviet armies were involved in regrouping and redeploying in fifteen days. The commander of the 70th Army, Colonel General Popov, had to issue orders to corps commanders even before he received final instructions from above.

Several armies had large distances to cover and very little time. According to Soviet field regulations, a mechanized column was supposed to move 150 kilometres a day, but the 200th Rifle Division of the 49th Army managed to cover 358 kilometres in just twenty-five hours.

In the 3rd Shock Army, which had been diverted for the Pomeranian operation, soldiers feared that they would never make it back in time and 'would only get to Berlin when everybody else would be picking up their hats [to go home]'. No true frontovik wanted to miss the climax of the war. He knew the jealousy which formations of the 1st Belorussian Front inspired in the rest of the Red Army.

Although the real frontoviki were determined to see victory in Berlin, desertions increased as the offensive came closer. Most of those who disappeared were conscripts from the recent drafts, especially Poles, Ukrainians and Romanians. An increase in desertions also meant a growing level of banditry, looting and violence towards the civilian population: 'Some deserters seize carts from local citizens, load them with different sorts of property and, pretending that they are carts belonging to the army, move from the front zone to the rear areas.' NKVD rifle regiments behind the 1st Ukrainian Front arrested 355 deserters in the first part of April. The 1st Belorussian Front was even more concerned about discipline, as a report of 8 April reveals. 'Many soldiers are still hanging around in rear areas and describing themselves as separated from their units. They are in fact deserters. They carry out looting, robbery and violence. Recently up to 600 people were arrested in the sector of the 61st Army. All the roads are jammed with vehicles and carts used by military personnel on both legitimate missions and looting missions. They leave their vehicles and carts in the streets and in yards and wander around depots and apartments looking for things. Many officers, soldiers and NCOs are no longer looking like members of the Red Army. Some very serious deviations from standard uniform are being overlooked. It becomes difficult to distinguish between a soldier and an officer and between soldiers and civilians. Dangerous cases of disobedience to senior officers have taken place.'

NKVD rifle regiments and SMERSH were also continuing their work of rounding up suspects. They were, in Beria's view, both insufficiently selective and over-zealous. They had dispatched 148,540 prisoners to NKVD camps in the Soviet Union, yet 'barely one half were in a condition to perform physical labour'. They had simply packed off 'the people who were arrested as a result of clearing the rear areas of the Red Army'. Some priorities, however, did not change. Polish patriots were still considered as dangerous as Nazis. And NKVD regiments continued to encounter small groups of German stragglers trying to slip through Red Army lines after the fighting in Pomerania and Silesia.

These small groups often ambushed the odd vehicle for food on the way, and the Soviet military authorities would respond, just as the Germans themselves had in the Soviet Union, by destroying the nearest village and shooting civilians.

The mood of Red Army officers and soldiers was tense but confident. Pyotr Mitrofanovich Sebelev, the second-in-command of an engineer brigade, had just been promoted to lieutenant colonel at the age of twenty-two. 'Hello Papa, Mama, Shura and Taya,' he wrote home on 10 April. 'At the moment, there is an unusual and therefore scaring quietness here. I was at a concert yesterday. Yes, don't be surprised, at a concert! given by artistes from Moscow. It cheered us up. We can't help thinking if only the war would finish as soon as possible, but I think it depends on us mainly. Two cases occurred yesterday which I must tell you about. I went to the front line with a man from the rear areas. We walked out of the forest and up a sandy mound, and lay down. The Oder was in front of us with a long spit of sand sticking out. The spit was occupied by Germans. Behind the Oder, the town of Küstrin, an ordinary town. Suddenly wet sand flew all around me and immediately I heard a shot: the Germans had spotted us and had begun shooting from this spit.

'Two hours ago, our recce men brought a captured German corporal to me who clicked his heels and immediately asked me through the interpreter, "Where am I, Mr Officer? Among Zhukov's troops, or in Rokossovsky's band?" I laughed and said to the German, "You are with the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front, which is commanded by Marshal Zhukov. But why do you call Marshal Rokossovsky's troops a band?" The corporal answered, "They don't follow the rules when fighting. This is why German soldiers call them a band."

'Another piece of news. My adjutant, Kolya Kovalenko, was wounded in the arm but he escaped from hospital. I reprimanded him for this and he cursed and said, "You are depriving me of the honour of being one of the first to enter Berlin with our boys." . . . Goodbye, kisses to all of you. Your Pyotr.'

For the truly committed majority, the greatest concern was the rapid advance of the Western Allies. In the 69th Army, the political department reported the soldiers as saying, 'Our advance is too slow and the Germans will surrender their capital to the English and Americans.'

Komsomol members in the 4th Guards Tank Army prepared for the offensive by getting experienced soldiers to talk to the newcomers about the reality of battle. Komsomol members also helped the barely literate ones write letters home. They were particularly proud of having bought a T-34 tank with their own money. Their tank 'Komsomolets' had already 'destroyed a few enemy tanks and other armoured vehicles and crushed many Fritzes under its tracks'. At Party meetings members were reminded that 'all Communists have a duty to speak out against looting and drinking'.

Artillery regiments, meanwhile, paid 'special attention to the replacement of casualties'. They foresaw that losses would increase sharply once they reached Berlin, because gun crews would be firing over open sights. Crew members therefore had to train hard in each other's tasks. And each regiment prepared a reserve of trained gun layers, ready to replace casualties.

To preserve secrecy, 'the local population was sent twenty kilometres back from the front line'. Radio silence was imposed and signs were placed by every field telephone: 'Don't speak about things you should not speak about.'

German preparations, on the other hand, emphasized the reprisals that would be carried out against all those who failed in their duty and against their families, whatever their rank. An announcement was made that General Lasch, the commander of Königsberg, had been condemned to death by hanging in absentia and his whole family arrested under the Sippenhaft law to persecute the closest relatives of traitors to the Nazi cause.

The final agony of East Prussia affected morale in Berlin almost as much as the threat from the Oder. On 2 April, Soviet artillery began its softening-up barrage on the centre of Königsberg. The Soviet artillery officer Senior Lieutenant Inozemstev recorded in his diary on 4 April that sixty shells from his battery had reduced one fortified building into 'a pile of stones'. The NKVD was concerned that nobody escaped.

'Encircled soldiers in Königsberg are putting on civilian clothes to get away. Documents must be checked more carefully in East Prussia.' 'The aviation is very effective,' Inozemstev wrote on 7 April. 'We are using flame-throwers on a massive scale. If there is only one German in a building he is chased out by the fire. There is no fighting for a storey or a staircase. It is already clear to everyone now that the storming of Königsberg will go down as a classic example of storming a big city.'

The next day, when his comrade Safonov was killed, the regiment fired a salute of salvoes at the citadel.

The destruction was terrible. Thousands of soldiers and civilians were buried by the bombardments. There was a 'smell of death in the air', Inozemstev wrote, 'literally - because thousands of corpses are decomposing under the ruins'. As the wounded filled every usable cellar, General Lasch knew that there was no hope. The 11th Guards Army and the 43rd Army had fought their way right into the city. Even Koch's deputy Gauleiter urged the abandonment of the city, but all links with the Samland Peninsula had been severed. A counter-attack was mounted to force a way through, but it collapsed in chaos on the night of 8 April.

The bombardment had blocked many of the routes leading to the start-line. The local Party leadership, without telling Lasch, had passed the word to civilians to assemble ready for the breakout, but their concentration attracted the attention of Soviet artillery observation officers and they were massacred.

The city was so enveloped in smoke the next day that only the fire-streaks of katyusha rockets were visible. Any civilians left alive hung sheets from windows in a signal of surrender and even tried to take rifles from German soldiers. Lasch knew that the end had come. He could expect no help from the Reich and did not want to impose any more useless suffering on the refugees and townsfolk. Only the SS wanted to fight on, but their attempts were useless. On the morning of 10 April, Lasch and other German officers acting as parliamentaries reached Marshal Vasilevsky's headquarters. The surviving garrison of just over 30,000 troops marched out to imprisonment. Their watches and any useful items were promptly grabbed by Red Army soldiers, who had managed to find stores of alcohol. The rape of women and girls went unchecked in the ruined city.

Inozemstev toured the smoking capital of East Prussia. 'A bronze Bismarck is gazing with one eye — part of his head had been knocked off by a shell — at the Soviet girl conducting the traffic, at the passing Red Army vehicles and at the mounted patrols. It looked as if he were asking, "Why are there Russians here? Who allowed that?"'

The end of East Prussia and Pomerania was underlined in a terrible fashion. On the night of 16 April, the hospital ship Goya, packed with over 7,000 refugees, was sunk by a Soviet submarine. It was the greatest disaster in maritime history. Only 165 people were saved.

The attack on Berlin was expected at any moment. On 6 April, Army Group Vistula headquarters noted in its war diary: 'On Ninth Army front, lively enemy activity — sounds of engines and tank tracks both on the Reitwein sector south-west of Küstrin and to the north-east near Kienitz.' They estimated that the attack would come in two days' time. Five days later, however, they were still waiting. General Krebs at Zossen signalled to Heinrici on 11 April, 'Führer expects the Russian offensive against Army Group Vistula on 12 or 13 April.' Next day, Hitler told Krebs to telephone Heinrici to insist 'the Führer is instinc- tively convinced that the attack would really come in one to two days, that is to say on the 13 or 14 April'. Hitler had tried to predict the exact date of the Normandy invasion the year before, but failed. Now he again wanted to amaze his admirers with a show of uncanny foresight. It seemed to be one of the few ways left to him in which he could attempt to demonstrate some sort of control over events.

On the evening of 12 April, the Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance. Albert Speer, who organized it, had invited Grand Admiral Dönitz and also Hitler's adjutant, Colonel von Below. The hall was properly lit for the occasion, despite the electricity cuts. 'The concert took us back to another world,' wrote Below. The programme included Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Bruckner's 8th Symphony - (Speer later claimed that this was his warning signal to the orchestra to escape Berlin immediately after the performance to avoid being drafted into the Volkssturm) - and the finale to Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Even if Wagner did not bring the audience back to present reality, the moment of escapism did not last long. It is said that, after the performance, the Nazi Party had organized Hitler Youth members to stand in uniform with baskets of cyanide capsules and offer them to members of the audience as they left.

On 14 April, when the attack had still not materialized, Hitler issued an 'Order of the Day' to Army Group Vistula. Predictably, it emphasized that 'whoever does not fulfil his duty will be treated as a traitor to our people'. It continued with a rambling distortion of history, and a reference to the repulse of the Turks before Vienna: 'The Bolshevik will this time experience the ancient fate of Asiatics.' Vienna had in fact just fallen to the eastern hordes and there was no hope of retaking it.

The following day, a sixteen-year-old Berliner called Dieter Borkovsky described what he witnessed in a crowded S-Bahn train from the Anhalter Bahnhof. 'There was terror on the faces of people. They were full of anger and despair. I had never heard such cursing before. Suddenly someone shouted above the noise, "Silence!" We saw a small dirty soldier with two Iron Crosses and the German Cross in Gold. On his sleeve he had a badge with four metal tanks, which meant that he had destroyed four tanks at close quarters. "I've got something to tell you," he shouted, and the carriage fell silent. "Even if you don't want to listen to me, stop whingeing. We have to win this war. We must not lose our courage. If others win the war, and if they do to us only a fraction of what we have done in the occupied territories, there won't be a single German left in a few weeks." It became so quiet in that carriage that one could have heard a pin drop.'

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