The Road to Berlin (121 page)

Assured finally that his tank units were advancing west of the Spree, Koniev contacted the
Stavka
. The Front commander reported his progress to Stalin, who listened for a moment and then suddenly broke in with a statement about Zhukov’s relatively slow progress, only to fall into an abrupt silence. Koniev also held his tongue, wisely as it proved. After a moment or so Stalin returned with a proposal to redeploy Zhukov’s mobile forces and send them through the gap opened by Koniev. Punctilious as ever, Marshal Koniev rendered a considered reply: ‘Comrade Stalin, this will take too much time and will add considerable confusion … the situation on our Front is developing favourably, we have adequate forces and we can turn both tank armies towards Berlin.’ Koniev went on to describe the axis on which the tank armies would operate and cited Zossen as a reference point. Silent for a moment, Stalin asked Koniev whether he knew that Zossen was the headquarters of the German General Staff and what scale of map he was using. Koniev replied that he was using a 1:200 map and that he was perfectly well aware that Zossen housed the German General Staff. Stalin spoke quite decisively:
‘Ochen khorosho. Ya soglasen. Povernite tankovye armii na Berlin’
—‘Good. I agree. Turn your tank armies on Berlin.’ At that the line went dead.

Koniev lost no time at all in making radio contact with his tank army commanders—what had earlier gone unsaid could now be spelled out in detailed operational orders specifying Berlin as the objective. Rybalko at 3rd Guards received orders to force the Spree in strength on the night of 17 April, drive
towards Fetschau–Golsen–Barut–Teltow and break into the southern outskirts of Berlin on the night of 20 April; Lelyushenko at 4th Guards was instructed to force the Spree north of Spremberg during the night of 17 April, strike towards Drebkau–Calau–Danne–Luckenwalde, capture the Beelitz–Treuenbrietzen–Luckenwalde area, and invest Potsdam and the south-western suburbs of Berlin, also securing the Treuenbrietzen area with 5th Mechanized Corps. The tank armies must bypass towns and avoid frontal attacks, for Koniev demanded speed above all—‘I demand a firm understanding that the success of the tank armies depends on boldness of manoeuvre and swiftness of operations.’ This Front directive, numbered 00215 and dated 17 April, was issued at 0247 hours on 18 April, by which time both Lelyushenko and Rybalko were already turning their tank columns to the north-west with all possible speed, confident that the flanks would hold.

Suffused with anger Zhukov heard from Stalin of the new demarcation line between 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts, all a reflection of Koniev’s rapid progress. More than ever he was intent on ramming his armies on to Berlin, but Stalin demanded of him those ‘requisite measures’ for speeding up his attack and in galling fashion offered help from the
Stavka
. In fact there was some cause for concern that Zhukov’s forces would expend themselves before they embarked on the actual storming of Berlin. Stalin now envisaged two outflanking movements against the Germans, from the south and south-west with Koniev’s front and from the north when Rokossovskii took the offensive on 20 April. The reproof to Zhukov was very plain and the Marshal had no intention of taking it lying down. Warning signals went out from the Front staff to army commanders, demanding an acceleration in the pace of the offensive—otherwise the main strength and reserves of the armies would be consumed in this battle—and requiring that all army commanders proceed forthwith to those corps mounting the main attacks, an order accompanied by Zhukov’s own categorical refusal to allow any to the rear. All artillery would be moved up to the first echelon, even the heaviest siege guns, and under no circumstances should it be held back more than a few thousand yards from the echelon engaged in the assault; artillery fire must be concentrated on the decisive breakthrough sectors. The attack must be relentless, the Front must fight by day and by night—then the sooner would Berlin be theirs.

Zhukov proceeded to lay the lash across the backs of his commanders. Nor was he a novice in this practice. Inadequate knowledge of the German defensive system and inefficient use of artillery and air resources contributed substantially to Zhukov’s failure—a costly one in terms of men, machines and time—but he now thrust the responsibility on to subordinate commanders. In a stern and menacing order issued on 18 April Zhukov demanded that all commanders from army down to brigade personally inspect forward units and investigate the situation, to establish exactly where the Germans were and in what strength, where Soviet forces were and just what they with their supporting arms were doing and how
much ammunition supporting units had at their disposal. Further, how was the control of supporting units organized? The Front formations were given until 1200 hours on 19 April to put their units in order, to issue precise operational orders and replenish ammunition; at 1200 hours on that day the offensive would be renewed and the advance ‘developed
according to plan
’. The commanders of 8th Guards and 5th Shock Armies would be responsible for co-ordinating infantry and armour; strict traffic control would be enforced, transport vehicles would be taken off the roads and mechanized infantry must move on foot. To implement co-ordination between rifle divisions and tank brigades, 5th Shock and 8th Guards must send their own officers to the tank brigades of 1st and 2nd Guards Tank Army, while the tank armies would send officers to the rifle divisions. Officers who showed themselves ‘incapable of carrying out assignments’ or displayed ‘lack of resolution’ faced immediate dismissal. Advance or face dire consequences: such was Zhukov’s dictum.

This order had yet to filter throughout the assault armies, but whatever ‘lack of resolution’ and crass inability had been so far displayed, the sheer weight of metal and gross numbers now began to tell on the German defenders. Ominous cracks started to appear in the German lines as units were simply obliterated in storms of fire or were slaughtered to a man, as troops on the move found themselves boxed in by refugee columns and as contact between units was slowly lost. On the morning of 18 April, after yet another heavy barrage, Zhukov renewed the assault on the Seelow defences, more than ever determined to break through, though the infantry was red-eyed and like Soviet tank units drastically thinned—the price of frontal assault on the 500 feet of the Seelow Heights. Busse’s Ninth Army still held its positions but his left flank was beginning to buckle and the right was now seriously menaced by Koniev’s sweeping drive from the south. To the north, von Manteuffel in command of the Third
Panzer
Army cruised in his reconnaissance plane over Rokossovskii’s front, noting all the preparations for an attack and the obvious unconcern at the appearance of a German aircraft: this additional blow must fall soon. On the Seelow Heights Weidling’s LVI
Panzer
Corps—now a shadow of that famous formation—desperately needed reinforcement and waited expectantly on
SS Nordland
and 18th
Panzer
Division. Neither arrived; the
SS
troops milled about trying to obtain fuel and the heavily armed 18th Division arrived just in time to join an enforced retreat. By this time also the 9th Parachute Division, which had already taken the brunt of that first furious Soviet assault, could no longer hold and was breaking into pieces. Much to Weidling’s disgust and anger, the unctuous leader of the
Hitler Jugend
, Axmann, promised him schoolboys to hold the rear of LVI Corps, an order the corps commander rescinded at once: if the
SS
frittered away vital time and the
Wehrmacht
fumbled, then mere boys should not die in their place.

Pouring on the fire, Zhukov’s assault armies waged a furious battle on 18 April across the Seelow positions, rutted and gashed by constant bombardment.
At 1000 hours 47th Army, after a forty-minute artillery barrage, jumped off with three corps in the first echelon in an attack aimed at Wriezen. An hour earlier 3rd Shock with 9th Guards Tank Corps in support launched another attack in the direction of Kunersdorf, probing towards open country; fighting near Batzlow Soviet tanks bumped into the third line of German defences and found their operations once again cramped by lack of space. Striking early in the morning, at 7 am, 5th Shock attacked under cover of a short artillery bombardment—ten minutes—and cut its way through wooded ridges towards Reichenberg and Münchehof, only to be brought to a halt by infantry counter-attacks and
Panzerfaust
fire.

Chuikov’s 8th Guards also struck at 7 am after a short artillery barrage. Yushchuk’s 11th Tank Corps supporting 4th Guards Rifle Corps ground its way forward, beating off repeated German counter-attacks and driving inexorably towards Müncheberg, though slowly. Chuikov was becoming increasingly concerned about his left flank where 69th Army seemed scarcely to have moved for the past seventy-two hours. Clearly the German plan was to deflect 8th Guards southwards—away from Berlin—and any complaint on Chuikov’s part about the inertia of 69th Army would have meant diverting his own troops in that very direction southwards. Chuikov decided to press on without pointing up the dangers on his left flank, and rammed his divisions on to Müncheberg, covering the eastern approaches to Berlin itself. By the evening of 18 April 8th Guards were on the Treibutz–Jahnsfelde line and fighting for Marxdorf and Lietzen, while to his right Soviet troops had reached the Marxwalde–Wulkov line; the left flank remained a problem, with 69th Army stalled, so that Chuikov sent in two divisions from his own 28th Corps to stiffen the flank. North-west of Seelow, 3rd Shock Army found itself engaged in very heavy fighting for Batzlow, with every approach road covered by artillery and mortar fire, literally rained down on the Soviet troops from the surrounding high ground; Lt.-Gen. A.F. Kazankin commanding 12th Guards Rifle Corps decided to mount a night attack after a thirty-minute artillery bombardment, with two divisions fighting their way through gaps in the German defences to the north of Batzlow itself. Under cover of the guns, the infantry, with tanks and
SP
guns in support, started the attack at 11 o’clock at night, but it was almost dawn before the village was cleared of German troops. Berzarin’s 5th Shock Army took over the business of ripping open this breach in the defences where they stretched into 5th Shock’s operational area.

Now fully two days late, Zhukov could only hope that on this fourth day of offensive operations he would attain the objectives prescribed for the second. The Soviet offensive was cutting deeply into the third line of German defences, with fierce fighting taking place at Müncheberg, a key position: two corps (4th and 29th Guards) from 8th Guards Army used a reinforced battalion from each division to crack this strong-point, with the attack going in shortly after noon on 19 April and preceded by a thirty-minute barrage. Outflanked by 11th Guards Tank Corps to the south and 11th Tank Corps to the north-west, Müncheberg
finally fell towards 9 o’clock on the evening of 19 April, when 82nd Guards Rifle Division burst into the town from the east and cleared it of Germans. The fall of Müncheberg, east of Berlin, and the capture of Wriezen to the north clearly marked the beginning of the end. By the evening of 19 April Zhukov’s forces had cracked all three German defence lines across a 45-mile front running from the Alt-Oder to Kunersdorf, and were eighteen miles further on their way to the west and to Berlin.

That same night, 19 April, Marshal Rokossovskii reported to Stalin that 2nd Belorussian Front stood ready to take the offensive. Von Manteuffel’s misgivings were fully justified. During the night of 19–20 April Soviet bombers with the Women’s Night Bomber Regiment in the van, attacked the German defences, while the three assault armies—65th, 70th and 49th—made their last-minute preparations, sending out hand-picked fighting squads and patrols to stiffen the positions already won on the western bank of the West Oder, as well as investing those all-important dykes which crisscrossed the floodland. Rokossovskii intended to launch his attack across a thirty-mile front from Altdamm to Schwedt, with each army allocated a relatively narrow breakthrough sector (little more than 2–2½ miles); the artillery barrage would be fired off at 0700 hours on 20 April and last one hour exactly. Like Koniev, Rokossovskii intended to make considerable use of smokescreens and included a large-scale diversionary attack by 19th and 2nd Shock Armies to the north of Stettin, an assault crossing of the river in this area which was designed to mislead the German command about the main axis of the offensive.

The actual timing of the offensive had been the cause of considerable debate at 2nd Belorussian Front. Batov commanding 65th Army did not care for the original plan, which called for an opening barrage at 9 o’clock, preferring a dawn attack which could take advantage of the morning mists; the duration of the barrage should also be reduced from 90 minutes to 45, since staff calculations at 65th Army showed that the assault troops should be astride the West Oder in 45 minutes. Rokossovskii took his time to ponder this problem, which involved timing the attacks of 49th and 70th Armies and only at the last minute decided in favour of Batov’s suggestions. Meanwhile Batov became much concerned with the level of the water in the flood valley, a level which had been rising during the past few days when reconnaissance activity was being intensified, but now an added hazard came from strong winds forcing more water into Batov’s path; to allay Batov’s growing anxiety and to allow him to provide the speediest possible support to his detachments already on the western bank, Rokossovskii authorized him to attack even earlier. At 0630 hours Batov’s guns opened fire and laid smoke in the sector of the 37th Guards Rifle Division. Grishin and Popov with 49th and 70th Armies elected to stick to the original plan and waited—a less than happy decision, as events all too soon showed.

Batov’s 65th Army opened the assault crossing and under cover of smoke the 109th Guards Rifle Regiment (37th Guards Rifle Division) made for the western
bank of the West Oder in a motley fleet of small boats and rafts. Fierce struggles broke out for the dykes on the western bank as Soviet troops tried to invest them in order to land the tanks and guns being ferried over by pontoon, but by 8 o’clock units already on the western bank began to strike out at the German defences. The thick morning mist, made the more dense by smoke, dispersed only slowly and the air support which was promised failed to materialize until after 9 o’clock, but Batov’s first bridgehead expanded yard by yard, the main divisional force making ready to follow the lead battalions. Though a few 45mm guns were ferried over to the bridgehead the great need was for tanks and artillery in some quantity; finally, at 1300 hours, two sixteen-ton ferry crossings were in operation and delivering artillery and
SP
guns to the western bank. By the evening Batov had 31 battalions across the river, together with 50 artillery pieces, 70 mortars and 15 SU-76
SP
guns, all in a bridgehead now holding four divisions and extending for more than three miles and a mile or so deep.