Berlin: The Downfall 1945

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 were useless, such as the Volkshandgranate 45. This ‘people’s hand grenade’ was 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 the Vlasovtsy 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.

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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 Kustrin, 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