down next to Ribbentrop to listen. Wohlermann’s ‘report had a devastating effect on the foreign minister’. Ribbentrop asked one or two questions in a hoarse, barely audible voice. All he could do was make evasive references to a possible ‘twelfth-hour’ change in the situation and hint at negotiations with the Americans and the British. It was perhaps this assertion that prompted General Busse to send the signal, ‘Hold on for two more days, then everything will be sorted out’. This suggestion of a deal with the Western Allies was the ultimate lie of the Nazi leadership.
Stragglers from the Oder flood plain pulled back into woods on the steep slope of the Seelow escarpment, often to find Soviet infantry and tank formations ahead of them. Groups of nervous soldiers often fired at their own side and both Soviet artillery and aviation continued to bombard their own men as much as the Germans. The Luftwaffe put up as many Focke-Wulf fighters that day as it could to oppose the onslaught and towards evening German aircraft attacked the pontoon bridges over the Oder, but in vain. A report from an unidentified source claimed that ‘German pilots frequently death-dive into Russian bombers, causing both [to] plunge flaming groundwards’. If true, this would have signified a notable reversal of roles from 1941, when desperately brave Soviet pilots rammed their Luftwaffe attackers on the first day of Operation Barbarossa.
What is even more striking is the reported use of a kamikaze squadron against the Soviet bridges across the Oder. The Luftwaffe appears to have invented its own term —
The next morning, the first of the so-called ‘total missions’ were flown against the thirty-two ‘over-water and under-water bridges’ repaired or built by Soviet engineers. The Germans used a variety of aircraft — Focke-Wulf 190, Messerschmitt 109 and Junkers 88 — whatever was available. One of the ‘self-sacrifice pilots’ flying the next day was Ernst Beichl, in a Focke-Wulf with a 500-kilogram bomb. His target was the pontoon bridge near Zellin. Air reconnaissance later reported it destroyed, but claims that a total of seventeen bridges were destroyed in the course of three days seem wildly exaggerated. The only other one that genuinely appears to have been hit was the railway bridge at Kustrin. Thirty-five pilots and aircraft were a high price to pay for such a limited and temporary success. This did not stop Major General Fuchs from sending their names in a special birthday message ‘to the Fuhrer on his imminent fifty-sixth birthday’. It was just the sort of present that he appreciated most.
The whole operation had to be abandoned suddenly because Marshal Konev’s tank armies, charging unexpectedly towards Berlin from the south-east, threatened their base at Juterbog.
The fortunes of war still favoured Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front after its attack across the Neisse. The 13th Army and the 5th Guards Army had broken open the second line of German defence. Even while heavy fighting continued on either side, Konev sent through his leading tank brigades to race for the River Spree between Cottbus and Spremberg. Large patches of pine forest burned fiercely from the renewed bombardments of both artillery and ground-attack Shturmoviks. These fires were dangerous for tanks which carried their fuel reserves in barrels strapped to the back. But speed was vital, because they had a chance of breaching the Spree barrier before the Fourth Panzer Army could reorganize a new line of defence. Konev’s troops scented victory. There was a feeling in the 4th Guards Tank Army that ‘if the Germans could not hold on to the Neisse, they can’t do anything now’. Commanders carried out a weapon inspection before the assault. A young Communist was found to have a rusty weapon. ‘How are you going to fire it?’ the officer yelled at him. ‘You should be an example to everyone, but your own weapon is dirty!’
An armoured breakthrough towards Berlin ran the risk of a German counter-thrust to its lines of communications. Konev therefore angled Zhadov’s 5th Guards Army to the left towards Spremberg and the 3rd Guards Army to the right to force the Germans back on Cottbus.
That evening, when the leading brigades of the 3rd Guards Tank Army reached the Spree, General Rybalko, their army commander, who took pride in leading from the front, did not wait for bridging equipment to come up. He selected a point which looked as if it might not be too deep, then sent a tank straight into the river, which was about fifty metres wide at this point. The water rose above the tracks but no more. The tank brigade followed across in line, fording the river like cavalry. Unlike cavalry, however, they could ignore the German machine guns firing at them from the far bank. The bulk of both tank armies was able to follow on across the Spree during the night.
Konev knew that his tanks would find the lakes, marshes, watercourses and pine forests of the Lausitz region difficult going, but if they were quick, the roads to Berlin would be sparsely defended. The German Fourth Panzer Army had already committed its operational reserve in an attempt to hold the second line, while commanders in Berlin would be more preoccupied by the threat from Zhukov’s armies.
Konev had come to a similar conclusion to Zhukov, that it was easier to break the enemy early in the open than later in Berlin. But he did not mention this when he spoke to Stalin that evening on the radio-telephone from his forward command post, a castle perched on a small hill with views across the top of the surrounding pine forests.
Konev had almost finished his report when Stalin suddenly interrupted him. ‘With Zhukov things are not going so well yet. He is still breaking through the enemy defences.’ A long pause followed, which Konev decided not to break. ‘Couldn’t we,’ Stalin continued, ‘redeploy Zhukov’s mobile troops and send them against Berlin through the gap formed in the sector of your Front?’ This was probably not a serious proposal, but a gambit to make Konev put forward his own plan.
‘Comrade Stalin,’ he replied, ‘this will take too much time and will add considerable confusion… The situation for our Front is developing favourably, we have enough forces and we can turn both tank armies against Berlin.’ Konev then said that he would advance via Zossen, which they both knew was the headquarters of OKH.
‘Very good,’ Stalin replied. ‘I agree. Turn the tank armies towards Berlin.’
In the government quarter of Berlin during the course of 17 April, nobody really knew what to do except draft stirring declarations combined with further threats of execution. ‘No German town will be declared an open city’, read the order sent by Himmler to all military commanders. ‘Every village and every town will be defended with all possible means. Any German who offends against this self-evident duty to the nation will lose his life as well as his honour.’ He ignored the fact that the German artillery was virtually out of ammunition, tanks were already being abandoned for lack of fuel and the soldiers themselves were without food.
Nazi bureaucracy, even at the lowest levels, did not change in the face of annihilation. The little town of Woltersdorf, just south of the Reichstrasse 1 to Berlin, found itself overrun with refugees on 17 April. Yet the local authorities still allowed just their ‘non-employed [inhabitants] and those not liable for Volkssturm service’ to leave, and then only if they had ‘written confirmation from their host location’ that shelter was available. In addition, each person had to seek permission of the Kreisabschnittsleiter, the Nazi district chief. The local spirit of resistance, however, was far from fanatical. The town’s Volkssturm emergency platoon asked permission to be excused further duty.
Konev’s forces were now less than eighty kilometres to the south-east of the OKH and OKW command centres at Zossen. Yet neither the Fourth Panzer Army nor Field Marshal Schorner’s Army Group Centre had reported that the Soviet 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies were crossing the Spree in force and that there were no further reserves to stop them. The attention of staff officers at Zossen was fixed primarily on the struggle for the Seelow Heights.
General Heinrici had already sent the major part of his army group reserve — Steiner’s 111 S S
