immensely’, a political officer wrote. It was also not long before the political department of the 5th Shock Army began to report on ‘abnormal phenomena’, which covered everything from looting to injuries from drunken driving, and ‘immoral phenomena’.
Many of the true
On 24 April, the 3rd Shock Army used its 5th Artillery Breakthrough Division on one narrow sector where the Germans had resisted bitterly. The heavy guns destroyed seventeen houses, killing 120 defenders. The Soviet attackers claimed that in four of these houses, Germans had put out white flags of surrender and then fired again later. This became a frequent event in the fighting. Some soldiers, especially the Volkssturm, wanted to surrender and surreptitiously waved a white handkerchief, but more fanatical elements still fought on.
The Germans mounted a counter-attack with three assault guns, but this was apparently thwarted by the heroism of reconnaissance soldier Shulzhenok. Shulzhenok, having retrieved three panzerfausts, took up position in a ruined house. A German shell exploded close to him, deafening him and covering him with debris. This did not stop him from engaging the assault guns as they approached. He set the first one on fire and damaged the second. The third withdrew hurriedly. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for this action, but on the following day he ‘was killed by a terrorist in civilian clothes’. In the conditions of the time, this could mean an ill-equipped member of the Volkssturm, but the Soviet view of terrorists was little different from the Wehrmacht definition during Operation Barbarossa.
Not far behind these events, the writer Vasily Grossman stopped his jeep in the Weissensee district of north-east Berlin on the axis of the 3rd Shock Army. In a moment the jeep was surrounded by boys asking for sweets and staring curiously at the map open on his knees. Grossman was surprised by their daring. He really wanted to look around. ‘What contradicts our idea of Berlin as a military barracks are the masses of gardens and allotments in blossom,’ he noted. ‘A great thunder of artillery in the sky. In the moments of silence one can hear birds.’
The dawn of 25 April, as Krukenberg left the battered Reich Chancellery, was cold with a clear sky. West Berlin was still strangely quiet and empty. At Weidling’s headquarters on the Hohenzollerndamm, security was lax. Only pay-books were required as identity by the sentries. Weidling told him how his badly mauled panzer corps was split up to stiffen Hitler Youth detachments and badly armed Volkssturm units, none of which could be expected to fight fiercely. Krukenberg was to take over Defence Sector C in the south-east of Berlin, including the 11th SS Panzergrenadier
Accounts of Ziegler’s dismissal vary considerably. Weidling’s chief of staff, Colonel Refior, believed that ‘Ziegler had secret orders from Himmler ordering him to pull back to Schleswig-Holstein’, and this was why he was arrested. Ziegler certainly seemed to be one of the few SS commanders who saw the pointlessness of fighting on. Shortly before his removal, Ziegler had given Hauptsturmfuhrer Pehrsson leave to go to the Swedish Embassy to find out whether its officials would refuse to offer help to the remaining Swedes to return home.
One eyewitness claims that Ziegler was arrested late that morning at his headquarters on the Hasenheidestrasse just north of Tempelhof aerodrome by an unknown SS Brigadefuhrer. He was backed by an escort with machine pistols who sealed the approaches to divisional headquarters. Ziegler was escorted out to the vehicle. He saluted his astonished officers standing at the entrance and presented his compliments to them: ‘
In any case, the interregnum did not last long. Shortly after midday, Krukenberg arrived, followed a little later by Fenet’s men from the ‘Charlemagne’ battalion. Krukenberg was shaken to learn that the ‘Norge’ and ‘Danmark’ Panzergrenadier Regiments now amounted between them to little more than a battalion. The wounded, taken to the dressing station in a storage cellar on the Hermannplatz, were unlikely to feel in safe hands. They were ‘laid on a blood-smeared table as if it were a butcher’s block’.
The last remaining German bridgehead south of the Teltow Canal at Britz was being abandoned in a panic just as Krukenberg reached his new command. The remnants of his ‘Norge’ and ‘Danmark’ regiments were waiting impatiently by the canal for motor transport, which was having difficulty getting to them through the rubble-blocked streets. Just as the trucks finally arrived, a cry of alarm was heard: ‘
As they escaped north up the Hermannstrasse, they saw scrawled on a house wall ‘SS traitors extending the war!’ There was no doubt in their minds as to the culprits: ‘German Communists at work. Were we going to have to fight against the enemy within as well?’
Soon Soviet tanks were also attacking the remains of the
With Neukolln heavily penetrated by Soviet combat groups, Krukenberg prepared a fall-back position round the Hermannplatz. The twin towers of the Karstadt department store provided excellent observation posts for watching the advance of four Soviet armies — the 5th Shock Army from Treptow Park, the 8th Guards Army and the Ist Guards Tank Army from Neukolln and Konev’s 3rd Guards Tank Army from Mariendorf.
Krukenberg positioned half of the French under Fenet on the other side of the Hermannplatz with their panzerfausts to prepare for a Soviet tank attack. Fenet had over 100 Hitler Youth attached to his group. They were instructed to fire their panzerfausts only at close range and only at the turret. The Waffen SS believed that it was better to aim for the turret, as a direct hit there would disable the crew.
During that evening and night, the French under Fenet accounted for fourteen Soviet tanks. A determined show of resistance could take the Soviets by surprise and hold them back. By the Halensee bridge at the western end of the Kurfurstendamm, three young men from a Reich Labour Service battalion armed with a single machine gun managed to beat back all attacks for forty-eight hours.
The battle for Tempelhof aerodrome was to continue for another day, with Soviet artillery and katyusha rocket launchers blasting the administrative buildings. Inside, the corridors echoed with the screams of the wounded and were filled with smoke and the smell of burning chemicals. ‘The silence which followed the end of a bombardment was a prelude to the roar of engines and rattle of tracks which announced a new tank attack.’
As Weidling’s battered corps retreated towards the centre on that afternoon of 25 April, Hitler insisted to their commander, who had been summoned to the Fuhrer bunker, that things would change for the better. ‘The situation must improve,’ he told Weidling. ‘From the south-west the Twelfth Army of General Wenck will come to Berlin and, together with the Ninth Army, will deliver a crushing blow to the enemy. The troops commanded by Schorner will come from the south. These blows should change the situation to our advantage.’ To underline the disaster along the whole Eastern Front, General von Manteuffel had just reported that Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front had shattered his defence lines south of Stettin. Major General Dethleffsen of the OKW command staff also had to visit the Fuhrer bunker that day and found ‘a self-deception bordering on hypnosis’.
That evening, Krukenberg was warned by General Krebs that the
