Berlin: The Downfall 1945

The Third Reich, in its death throes, revealed its frenzied rage against both common sense and common humanity.

Heinrici, having given Manteuffel permission to withdraw, knew that it would not be long before he heard from the two chief ‘gravediggers of the German army’. Field Marshal Keitel, on discovering what had happened, telephoned Heinrici on 29 April, accusing him of ‘disobedience and unsoldierly weakness’. He told him that he was relieved of his command forthwith. Keitel tried to appoint General von Manteuffel as Heinrici’s successor, but he refused. General Jodl rang not long afterwards. In his coldest manner, he also accused Heinrici of cowardice and weak, incompetent leadership. Heinrici was ordered to report to OKW’s new headquarters. His aides, fearing that he would be executed or forced to commit suicide like Rommel, begged him to spin out his journey. He followed their advice and the end of the war saved him.

23. The Betrayal of the Will

During the withdrawal into the centre of Berlin, the SS execution squads went about their hangman’s work with an increased urgency and cold fanaticism. Around the Kurfurstendamm, SS squads entered houses where white flags had appeared and shot down any men they found. Goebbels, terrified of the momentum of collapse, described these signs of surrender as a ‘plague bacillus’. Yet General Mummert, the commander of the Muncheberg Panzer Division, ordered the SS and Feldgendarmerie squads out of his sector round the Anhalter Bahnhof and Potsdamerplatz. He threatened to shoot executioners on the spot.

The conditions for those involved in the fighting became progressively worse. German troops could seldom get near a water pump. They had to quench their thirst, exacerbated by the smoke and dust, with water from canals. There were also more and more cases of nervous breakdowns from the combination of exhaustion and constant artillery fire. The number of wounded in the Anhalter bunker had grown so much that young women had made a Red Cross flag, using sheets and lipsticks. This was a wasted effort. Even if the Soviet artillery observers had seen the Red Cross symbol through the smoke and masonry dust, they would not have diverted their battery fire. A bunker was a bunker. The fact that it contained civilians was irrelevant. Numbers inside were diminishing rapidly, however, as women and children escaped along the U-Bahn and S-Bahn tunnels during the night of 27 April. Troops from the 5th Shock Army and the 8th Guards Army were literally at the door.

The 5th Shock Army, advancing from the east on the north side of the Landwehr Canal, had fought back the remnants of the Nordland and the Muncheberg from Belle- Allianceplatz and carried on to the Anhalter Bahnhof. The 61st Rifle Division of the 28th Army also arrived there from a different direction. The 5th Shock Army then found the 8th Guards Army attacking from the south across the canal into their left rear flank. The commander of the 301st Rifle Division, Colonel Antonov, immediately called in his corps commander, General Rosly. They at once set off in a jeep. ‘Rosly, who is usually very calm, looked worried,’ wrote Antonov. ‘He thought the situation over and said, “How on earth can we get them back over the Landwehr Canal? Don’t let your order of battle get mixed up with the Guards. Continue advancing along the Wilhelmstrasse and the Saarlandstrasse. Storm Gestapo headquarters, the aviation ministry and the Reich Chancellery.”’ Antonov did not waste time, but it took Zhukov’s headquarters nearly thirty hours to sort out the muddle and establish new boundaries between the different armies. Soon the majority of Konev’s troops were pulled out of Berlin — ‘like a nail,’ they said, to emphasize their resentment at being denied the prize — and diverted towards Prague.

Also by 28 April, troops of the 3rd Shock Army, advancing from the northern districts, were in sight of the Siegessaule column in the Tiergarten. Red Army soldiers nicknamed it the ‘tall woman’ because of the statue of winged victory on the top. The German defenders were now reduced to a strip less than five kilometres in width and fifteen in length. It ran from Alexanderplatz in the east to Charlottenburg and the Reichssportsfeld in the west, from where Artur Axmann’s Hitler Youth detachments desperately defended the bridges over the Havel. Weid-ling’s artillery commander, Colonel Wohlermann, gazed around in horror from the gun platform at the top of the vast concrete Zoo flak tower. ‘One had a panoramic view of the burning, smouldering and smoking great city, a scene which again and again shook one to the core.’ Yet General Krebs still pandered to Hitler’s belief that Wenck’s army was about to arrive from the south-west.

To keep resistance alive Bormann, like Goebbels and Ribbentrop, spread the false rumour of a deal with the Western Allies. ‘Stand fast, fight fanatically,’ he had ordered Gauleiters early in the morning of 26 April. ‘We are not giving up. We are not surrendering. We sense some developments in policy abroad. Heil Hitler! Reichsleiter Bormann.’ The lie was soon underlined by the reaction of Hitler and Goebbels to Himmler’s attempts to seek a genuine cease-fire with the western powers.

Truman and Churchill had immediately informed the Kremlin of the approach through Count Bernadotte. ‘I consider your proposed reply to Himmler… absolutely correct,’ Stalin replied to Truman on 26 April. Nobody in the bunker had any inkling of what was afoot, and yet a general suspicion of betrayal had certainly gripped Bormann. On the night of Friday 27 April, he wrote in his diary, ‘Himmler and Jodl stop the divisions that we are throwing in. We will fight and we will die with our Fuhrer, to whom we will remain devoted until the grave. Many are going to act on the basis of “higher motives”. They are sacrificing their Fuhrer. Phooee! What swine. They have lost any honour. Our Reich Chancellery is turning into ruins. “The world is now hanging by a thread.” The Allies are demanding unconditional surrender. This would mean a betrayal of the Fatherland. Fegelein has degraded himself. He tried to run away from Berlin in civilian clothes.’ Bormann rapidly distanced himself from his close companion.

Hitler had suddenly noticed Hermann Fegelein’s absence early in the afternoon at the situation conference. Bormann, probably from their mutual bragging in the sauna, knew of the apartment in Charlottenburg which he used for his affairs. A group of Hitler’s Gestapo bodyguards were sent to bring him back. They found Fegelein, apparently drunk, with a mistress. His bags, containing money, jewels and false passports, were packed ready for departure. He insisted on ringing the bunker and demanded to speak to his sister-in-law, but Eva Braun, shocked that he too had tried to desert her beloved Fuhrer, refused to intervene. She did not believe him when he claimed that he was only trying to leave to be with Gretl, who was about to give birth. Fegelein was brought back under close arrest. He was held in a locked room in the Reich Chancellery cellar.

On 28 April, in the middle of the afternoon, Hitler was told of a report on Stockholm radio that Himmler had been in touch with the Allies. The idea that ‘der treue Heinrich’ could be attempting to make a deal seemed ludicrous, yet Hitler had begun to suspect the SS after Steiner’s failure to relieve Berlin. He rang Donitz, who spoke to Himmler. The Reichsfuhrer SS denied it completely. But that evening, Lorenz, Hitler’s press attache, arrived with a copy of confirmation of the story from Reuters. All Hitler’s resentments and suspicions exploded. He was white with anger and shock. Fegelein was interrogated, apparently by Gruppenfuhrer Muller, the chief of the Gestapo. He admitted that he had known of Himmler’s approach to Bernadotte. Freytag von Loringhoven saw Fegelein being marched upstairs under heavy SS escort. All badges of rank, his Knight’s Cross and other insignia had been torn from his uniform. Fegelein’s swagger had disappeared. He was executed in the Reich Chancellery garden. Hitler was now convinced that the SS had been seething with plots against him, just like the army the year before.

Hitler went straight to the bunker room where the newly promoted Marshal Ritter von Greim lay nursing his wounded leg. He ordered him to fly out of Berlin to organize Luftwaffe attacks on the Soviet tanks which had reached the Potsdamerplatz and to ensure that Himmler did not go unpunished. ‘A traitor must never succeed me as Fuhrer,’ he shouted at Greim. ‘You must go out to ensure that he does not!’ No time was wasted. Hanna Reitsch was summoned to help Greim up the concrete staircase on his crutches. An armoured vehicle was waiting to take them to an Arado 96 trainer, specially ordered from outside and now ready for take-off near the Brandenburg Gate. Soviet soldiers from the 3rd Shock Army who had just fought their way into the Tiergarten stared in amazement as the aircraft took off before their eyes. Their immediate fear, on recovering their military reactions, was that Hitler had escaped them. But the rather tardy explosion of anti-aircraft and machine-gun fire failed to find the target. Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch escaped.

This mouvemente night in the Fuhrer bunker was not over. It held an even greater surprise. Adolf Hitler proceeded to marry the sister-in-law of the man he had just had executed. Goebbels had brought to Hitler’s private sitting room a Herr Walter Wagner, an official of the Gau of Berlin, who had the authority to perform a civil wedding ceremony. Wagner, bemused and overawed by his responsibilities, had come from guard