Berlin: The Downfall 1945

At the end of March, while the British and American chiefs of staff disagreed over Eisenhower’s plans, the Stavka in Moscow put the finishing touches to the plan for ‘the Berlin operation’. Zhukov left his headquarters on the morning of 29 March to fly back to Moscow, but bad weather forced him down in Minsk shortly after midday. He spent the afternoon talking with Ponomarenko, the secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and, since the weather had still not improved, he took the train to Moscow.

The atmosphere in the Kremlin was extremely tense. Stalin was convinced that the Germans would do everything possible to make a deal with the Western Allies in order to hold off the Red Army in the east. The American talks in Berne with General Wolff about a possible cease-fire in northern Italy seemed to confirm his worst fears. Yet the Soviet leadership’s intense suspicions failed to take into account Hitler’s fanaticism. Figures around him might make peace overtures, but Hitler himself knew that surrender in any form, even to the Western Allies, offered him no future, save humiliation and the gallows. There could be no deal without some form of palace coup against the Fuhrer.

Zhukov, who was to be responsible for seizing Berlin, also shared Stalin’s fears that the Germans would open their front to the British and Americans. On 27 March, two days before he left for Moscow, the Reuters correspondent at 21st Army Group wrote that British and American troops heading for the heart of Germany were encountering no resistance. The Reuters report rang alarm bells in Moscow.

‘The German front in the west has entirely collapsed,’ was the first thing Stalin said to Zhukov when he finally reached Moscow. ‘It seems that Hitler’s men do not want to take any measures to stop the advance of the allies. At the same time they are strengthening their groups on the main axes against us.’ Stalin gestured to the map, then knocked the ash from his pipe. ‘I think we are going to have a serious fight.’

Zhukov produced his front intelligence map and Stalin studied it. ‘When can our troops start to advance on the Berlin axis?’ he asked.

‘The 1st Belorussian Front will be able to advance in two weeks,’ Zhukov replied. ‘Apparently the 1st Ukrainian Front will be ready at the same time. And according to our information, the 2nd Belorussian Front will be held up liquidating the enemy at Danzig and Gdynia until the middle of April.’

‘Well,’ Stalin replied. ‘We’ll just have to start without waiting for Rokossovsky’s Front.’ He went to his desk and leafed through some papers, then passed Zhukov a letter. ‘Here, read this,’ Stalin said. According to Zhukov, the letter was from ‘a foreign well-wisher’ tipping off the Soviet leadership about secret negotiations between the Western Allies and the Nazis. It did, however, explain that the Americans and British had refused the German proposal of a separate peace, but the possibility of the Germans opening the route to Berlin ‘could not be ruled out’.

‘Well, what have you got to say?’ said Stalin. Not waiting for a reply, he said, ‘I think Roosevelt won’t violate the Yalta agreement, but as for Churchill… that one’s capable of anything.’

At 8 p.m. on 31 March, the United States ambassador, Averell Harriman, and his British counterpart, Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr, went to the Kremlin, accompanied by General Deane. They met Stalin, General Antonov and Molotov. ‘Stalin was given an English and Russian text of the message contained in [Eisenhower’s] SCAF-252,’ Deane reported late that night. ‘After Stalin had read Eisenhower’s message, we pointed out the operations described in the message on the map. Stalin immediately reacted and said that the plan seemed to be a good one, but that he of course could not commit himself definitely until he had consulted his staff. He said that he would give us an answer tomorrow. He seemed to be favourably impressed with the direction of the attack in central Germany and also of the secondary attack in the south. We emphasized the urgency of obtaining Stalin’s views in order that the plans could be properly concerted… Stalin was much impressed with the number of prisoners that had been taken in the month of March and said certainly this will help finish the war very soon.’ Stalin then talked about every front except the crucial Oder front. He estimated that ‘only about a third of the Germans wanted to fight’. He again came back to Eisenhower’s message. He said that the ‘plan for Eisenhower’s main effort was a good one in that it accomplished the most important objective of dividing Germany in half’… ‘He felt that the Germans’ last stand would probably be in the mountains of western Czechoslovakia and Bavaria.’ The Soviet leader was clearly keen to encourage the idea of a German national redoubt in the south.

The very next morning, 1 April, Stalin received Marshals Zhukov and Konev in his large study in the Kremlin, with its long conference table and the portraits of Suvorov and Kutuzov on the wall. General Antonov, the chief of the general staff, and General Shtemenko, the chief of operations, were also present.

‘Are you aware how the situation is shaping up?’ Stalin asked the two marshals. Zhukov and Konev replied cautiously that they were, as far as the information which they had received.

‘Read the telegram to them,’ Stalin told General Shtemenko. This message, presumably from one of the Red Army liaison officers at SHAEF headquarters, claimed that Montgomery would head for Berlin and that Patton’s Third Army would also divert from its drive towards Leipzig and Dresden to attack Berlin from the south. The Stavka had already heard of the contingency plan to drop parachute divisions on Berlin in the event of a sudden collapse of the Nazi regime. All this was evidently conflated into an Allied plot to seize Berlin first under the guise of assisting the Red Army. One cannot, of course, rule out the possibility that Stalin had the telegram faked to put pressure on both Zhukov and Konev.

‘Well, then,’ Stalin said, eyeing his two marshals. ‘Who is going to take Berlin: are we or are the Allies?’

‘It is we who shall take Berlin,’ Konev replied immediately, ‘and we will take it before the Allies.’

‘So that’s the sort of man you are,’ Stalin replied with a faint smile. ‘And how will you be able to organize forces for it? Your main force is on the southern flank [after the Silesian operation] and you’ll have to do a good deal of regrouping.’

‘You needn’t worry, Comrade Stalin,’ said Konev. ‘The Front will carry out all the necessary measures.’ Konev’s desire to beat Zhukov to Berlin was unmistakable and Stalin, who liked to engender rivalry among his subordinates, was clearly satisfied.

Antonov presented the overall plan, then Zhukov and Konev presented theirs. Stalin made only one amendment. He did not agree with the Stavka demarcation line between the two Fronts. He leaned forward with his pencil and scribbled out the line west of Lubben, sixty kilometres south-east of Berlin. ‘In the event,’ he said, turning to Konev, ‘of severe resistance on the eastern approaches to Berlin, which will definitely be the case… the 1st Ukrainian Front should be ready to attack with tank armies from the south.’ Stalin approved the plans and gave orders for the operation to be ready ‘in the shortest time possible and in any case no later than 16 April’.

‘The Stavka’, as the Russian official history puts it, ‘worked in great haste, fearing that the Allies would be quicker than Soviet troops in taking Berlin.’ They had much to coordinate. The operation to capture Berlin involved 2.5 million men, 41,600 guns and mortars, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns and 7,500 aircraft. No doubt Stalin took satisfaction in the fact he was concentrating a far more powerful mechanized force to seize the capital of the Reich than Hitler had deployed to invade the whole of the Soviet Union.

After the main conference on 1 April, Stalin replied to Eisenhower’s message which had provided accurate details of forthcoming American and British operations. The Soviet leader informed the American supreme commander that his plan ‘completely coincided’ with the plans of the Red Army. Stalin then assured his trusting ally that ‘Berlin has lost its former strategic importance’ and that the Soviet command would send only second-rate forces against it. The Red Army would be delivering its main blow to the south, to join up with the Western Allies. The advance of the main forces would start approximately in the second half of May. ‘However, this plan may undergo certain alterations, depending on circumstances.’ It was the greatest April Fool in modern history.

10. The Kamarilla and the General Staff

During the final phase of the Soviet onslaught on Pomerania, General von Tippelskirch gave an evening reception for foreign military attaches out at Mellensee. They went mainly because it offered a good opportunity to hear something other than the official version of events, which hardly anybody believed. The capital was obsessed with rumours. Some were convinced that Hitler was dying from cancer and that the war would end soon. Many