Berlin: The Downfall 1945

me keep on proposing the evacuation of Courland. I can see no other way left to us of accumulating reserves, and without reserves we cannot hope to defend the capital. I assure you I am acting solely in Germany’s interests.’ Hitler began trembling in anger as he jumped to his feet. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you think I’m fighting for Germany? My whole life has been one long struggle for Germany!’ Colonel de Maiziere, the new operations officer at Zossen, had never seen such a row and stood there shocked and afraid for the chief of staff. To bring an end to Hitler’s frenzy, Goring led Guderian out of the room to find some coffee while everyone calmed down.

Guderian’s main fear was that the Second Army, trying to maintain a link between East Prussia and Pomerania, was in danger of being cut off. He therefore argued instead for a single attack southwards from the ‘Baltic balcony’. This attack on Zhukov’s right flank would also deter the Soviets from trying to attack Berlin immediately. On 13 February, a final conference on the operation was held in the Reich Chancellery. Himmler, as commander-in-chief of Army Group Vistula, was present, and so was Oberstgruppenfuhrer Sepp Dietrich. Guderian also brought his extremely capable deputy, General Wenck. Guderian made plain right from the start that he wanted the operation to start in two days’ time. Himmler objected, saying that not all the fuel and ammunition had arrived. Hitler supported him and soon the Fuhrer and his army chief of staff were having another row. Guderian insisted that Wenck should direct the operation.

‘The Reichsfuhrer SS is man enough to carry out the attack on his own,’ Hitler said.

‘The Reichsfuhrer SS has neither the requisite experience nor a sufficiently competent staff to control the attack single-handed. The presence of General Wenck is therefore essential.’

‘I don’t permit you,’ Hitler shouted, ‘to tell me that the Reichsfuhrer SS is incapable of performing his duties.’

The argument raged for a long time. Hitler was literally raving in anger and screaming. Guderian claims to have glanced up at a helmeted portrait of Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, and wondered what he thought of what was happening in the country he had helped to create. To Guderian’s surprise, Hitler suddenly stopped his pacing up and down and told Himmler that General Wenck would join his headquarters that night and direct the offensive. He then sat down again abruptly and smiled at Guderian. ‘Now please continue with the conference. The general staff has won a battle this day.’ Guderian ignored Keitel’s remonstrances later in the anteroom that he might have caused the Fuhrer to suffer a stroke. He feared that his limited triumph might be short-lived.

On 16 February, the Pomeranian offensive, known as the Stargard tank battle, began under Wenck’s direction. Over 1,200 tanks had been allocated, but the trains to transport them were lacking. Even an under- strength panzer division needed fifty trains to move its men and vehicles. Far more serious was the shortage of ammunition and fuel, of which there were enough for only three days of operations. The lesson of the Ardennes offensive had not been learned.

Army staff officers had intended to give the offensive the codename ‘Husarenritt’, or Hussar ride, which in itself seemed to acknowledge that this could be no more than a raid. But the SS insisted on a much more dramatic name: ‘Sonnenwende’, or solstice. In the event it was neither a Hussar ride — a sudden thaw meant that the armoured vehicles were soon bogged down in the mud — nor a solstice, since it changed very little. The Wehrmacht could ill afford the heavy loss of tanks when the 2nd Guards Tank Army counter-attacked.

The highest-ranking casualty was General Wenck, who, driving back to his headquarters from briefing the Fuhrer on the night of 17 February, fell asleep at the wheel and was badly hurt. He was replaced by General Krebs, a clever staff officer who had been military attache in Moscow before Operation Barbarossa. The attempt to force back the Soviet counter-attack, however, had to be abandoned after two days. All that can be said in favour of the offensive is that it bought time. The Kremlin became convinced that a quick dash to Berlin was out of the question until the Pomeranian coastline was secured.

Hitler’s attempts to designate ‘fortress’ towns and to refuse to allow the evacuation of encircled troops, were part of a suicidal pattern of enforced sacrifice and useless suffering. He knew that they were doomed because the Luftwaffe lacked the fuel and aircraft to supply them, and yet his policy deprived Army Group Vistula of experienced troops.

Konigsberg and Breslau held out, but other towns designated as fortresses or breakwaters by Hitler soon fell. In southern Pomerania, Schneidemuhl, the smallest and the least well defended, fell on 14 February after a desperate defence. For once, even Hitler had no complaints and awarded Knight’s Crosses to both the commander and the second-in-command. Four days later, on 18 February, just as Operation Sonnenwende became bogged down in the mud, General Chuikov gave the signal for the storming of the fortress of Poznan. His 7th Department, as at Stalingrad, had preceded the bombardment with loudspeaker programmes of lugubrious music interspersed with messages that surrender was the only way to save your life and return home. The Germans were told that they had no hope of escape because they were now over 200 kilometres behind the front line.

Siege artillery had begun the softening-up process nine days before, but by the morning of 18 February, 1,400 guns, mortars and katyusha launchers were ready for the four-hour bombardment. Storm groups fought into the fortress, whose superstructure had been crushed by explosive fire. When resistance from a building continued, a 203mm howitzer was brought up and blasted the walls over open sights. Flamethrowers were used and explosive charges dropped down ventilation shafts. German soldiers who tried to surrender were shot by their own officers. But the end was imminent. On the night of 22–23 February, the commandant, Major General Ernst Gomell, spread out the swastika flag on the floor of his room, lay down on it and shot himself. The remnants of the garrison capitulated.

The siege of Breslau was to be even more prolonged: the city held out even after Berlin had fallen. As a result it was one of the most terrible of the war. The fanatical Gauleiter Hanke was determined that the capital of Silesia should remain unconquered. It was he who used loudspeaker vans to order women and children to flee the city in late January. Those who froze to death were entirely his responsibility.

The city had good stocks of food but little ammunition. The attempts to drop ammunition by parachute were a terrible waste of Luftwaffe resources. Colonel General Schorner, the commander-in-chief of Army Group Centre, then decided to send part of the 25th Parachute Regiment at the end of February to strengthen the garrison. The regimental commander protested strenuously that there was no landing zone, but on 22 February the battalion boarded Junkers 52 transports at Juterbog, south of Berlin. At midnight the aircraft approached Breslau. ‘Over the city,’ one of the paratroopers wrote later, ‘we could see extensive fires and we encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire.’ A hit on the radio left them out of contact with ground control and they landed at an airfield near Dresden. Another attempt was made two nights later. The Soviet flak was even more intense as they circled the burning city for twenty minutes, trying to find a landing place. Three of the aircraft were lost: one of them crashed into a factory chimney.

Hanke’s disciplinary measures, backed by General Schorner’s policy of ‘strength through fear’, were terrible. Execution was arbitrary. Even ten-year-old children were put to work under Soviet air and artillery attack to clear an air strip within the city. Any attempt to surrender by those who sought to ‘preserve their pitiful lives’ would be met by a death sentence instantly carried out. ‘Decisive measures’ would also be taken against their families. Schorner argued that ‘almost four years of an Asiatic war’ had changed the soldier at the front completely: ‘It has hardened him and fanaticized him in the struggle against the Bolsheviks… The campaign in the east has developed the political soldier.’

Stalin’s boast at Yalta that the populations of East Prussia and Silesia had fled was not yet true. All too many were still trapped in besieged cities. German civilians in East Prussia also continued to suffer wherever they were, whether in Konigsberg and the Heiligenbeil Kessel, attempting to leave the port of Pillau by ship, escaping on foot to the west or remaining at home. The February thaw meant that the ice of the Frisches Haff could be crossed only on foot and not by cart. The exit to Danzig, Pomerania and the west still remained open, but everyone realized that it was only a matter of time before the 1st Belorussian Front cut through to the Baltic.

Beria was informed by a senior SMERSH officer that the ‘significant part of the population of East Prussia’ which had fled into Konigsberg had found that there was little room for them and even less food. They were lucky if