The Road to Berlin (126 page)

While the carnage in the south raged on and the chaos in the north multiplied, on 26 April 464,000 Soviet troops—supported by 12,700 guns and mortars, 21,000
Katyusha
multiple rocket launchers, and 1,500 tanks and
SP
guns—swarmed forward for the final assault on the centre of the blazing, shell-torn city. Two Soviet air armies, the 16th and the 18th, launched hundreds of aircraft in repeated bombing raids and added to the holocaust already created by the guns and rocket launchers. The guns continued relentlessly, ploughing up the streets, carving up squares and gardens, and piling up masses of rubble as buildings crashed down in great slabs; with windows and doors barred or walled up, the Soviet gunners simply blasted away to destroy any firing ports and send German snipers or machine-gunners toppling into the crazed ruins. The bunkers, some multi-storeyed with thick walls and equally thick roofs, presented difficult targets and added dangers to Soviet assault groups since they mounted AA guns on the concrete platforms—a menace to Soviet tanks and
SP
guns. The streets, strewn with dead, were also littered with burning tanks and shattered vehicles; the wounded who could not crawl away died in their bloodied tracks. The women scuttled from their shelters and cellars to collect what water they could from the standpipes in the streets, but the shells ripped into them and flung more bodies against walls and into doorways; when none would venture out of doors, the dead were packed into cupboards or shunted into passage ways.

Casualties multiplied at a horrendous rate, the hospitals were crammed and still refugees closed on the centre or clawed their way to the western districts. In ‘G Tower’, one of the two massive 130-foot-high Flak towers in the central district, troops and civilians by the thousand jammed its floors and stairways, the resolute and the sane trapped with the dead, the dying and demented. Soviet shells thudded into the massive concrete walls of this modern ziggurat and shrapnel rattled piercingly on the steel-shuttered windows. Outside on the streets the dust raised by the bombardment hung in a persistent fog and beneath the Flak towers the open space of the
Tiergarten
, Berlin’s famous zoo, was a nightmare of flapping, screeching birds and broken, battered animals. The ‘cellar tribes’ who dominated the life of the city crept and crawled about, but adding to the horror of these tribalized communities clinging to life, sharing a little warmth and desperately improvised feeding, when the shelling stopped and the assault troops rolled through the houses and across the squares there followed a brute, drunken, capricious mob of rapists and ignorant plunderers. Doors crashed open: a flashlight illuminated some cellar or shelter, the beam passing across the faces of assorted women, the rough search for and seizure of women inmates, held fast and then pinioned by groups of soldiers or trapped singly at the point of a gun. Where the Russians did not as yet rampage, the
SS
hunted down deserters and lynching commandos hanged simple soldiers on the orders of young, hawk-faced officers who brooked no resistance or excuse.

The jagged yellow bomb-bursts pointed the way forward for the Red Army covered by yet more guns and the roaring ripple of the
Katyushas
. The newest and heaviest tanks, the ‘Joseph Stalins’, were in action, mighty and virtually invulnerable to German gunfire. Massed batteries—including the heaviest-calibre pieces sent up at Koniev’s special and urgent request—blasted a path across the Teltow canal for Rybalko’s tanks and Luchinskii’s riflemen; raising great palls of smoke, the guns steadily shattered the houses on the northern bank, throwing huge lumps of concrete, stone and timber high in the air, a cascade of broken masonry and tumbling structures pounded into smaller dust by the bombing attack supplementing the artillery. In the Lankwitz area 9th Mechanized Corps took a bloody knock from the defenders, with tanks and infantry retiring to the southern bank to recoup, but 6th Guards Tank Corps made the northern bank and the 22nd Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade used a demolished bridge to gain a foothold on the opposite bank; within a matter of hours assault engineers had one pontoon bridge in position, followed by a second and the tanks were over the Teltow canal. Rybalko sensibly decided to use these crossings to transfer 7th and 9th Corps across the Teltow; Koniev for his part ordered Lelyushenko—trying to force the Teltow canal to the west of Rybalko—to shunt his divisions sideways and use Rybalko’s crossings. Lelyushenko then swung west and turned towards the Havel.

During the course of 25 April Rybalko’s tanks with infantry support cleared Zehlendorf and Lichterfelde, with Lelyushenko’s 4th Guards fighting for the crossings over the Havel. Koniev’s troops were driving through the southern suburbs and on to the central districts when the
Stavka
guillotine fell with a sudden but irresistible rush, chopping away Rybalko’s corps from the centre of Berlin with the new demarcation line set between 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Front. Towards the close of 25 April—on the eve of the storming of the central districts—eight Soviet armies were throttling Berlin, crushing the resistance and much of the life out of one sector after another: Perkhorovich’s 47th Army with 9th Guards Tank Corps was now well to the west and south, fighting in the north-west approaches to Potsdam; Bogdanov’s 2nd Guards Tank Army (operating with two corps, 1st Mechanized and 12th Guards Tank), finding an open zone between 47th and 3rd Shock Army, fought its way south-westwards through Siemensstadt and on to the Spree; while Kuznetsov’s 3rd Shock Army cut through the northern suburbs with a front running from the eastern edge of Siemensstadt–Weissensee–Friedrichshain and was about to assault the centre of the city. Berzarin’s 5th Shock Army with Yushchuk’s 11th Tank Corps pushed along both banks of the Spree in a westerly direction to the Silesian Station, while Chuikov’s riflemen from 8th Guards with Katukov’s tanks had already sliced into the south-eastern edge of the central district—closing on the
Tiergarten
—as left-flank divisions invested Mariendorf and linked up with Rybalko’s tank troops. Meanwhile Rybalko with his tank army supported by three divisions of Luchinskii’s 28th Army was well astride the Teltow canal and making for
Schmargendorf to link up with the Soviet tanks carving their way from the north-west.

On 26 April all the honours went to Rybalko, who scored considerable success on his left flank. His 7th Tank Corps pushed through the woods bordering the Havel and were within a couple of thousand yards of Bogdanov’s tanks to the north-west. The tanks cleared Steglitz, Schmargendorf and the southern reaches of Grunewald, and swept round to Pichelsdorf, cutting the lines of communication between the Berlin defence and those German troops holding Potsdam and the island of Wannsee, plunging a Soviet dagger in the back of the whole Berlin garrison. Chuikov’s Guardsmen also forced the Teltow canal on their drive to the Tempelhof airfield, from which the Soviet command suspected that the Nazi leadership might make a bolt for freedom and fly out of the Soviet ring. Masked by the smoke from blazing buildings, units of the 39th Guards Rifle Division drove on the Spree; using the remnants of a shattered bridge Soviet rifle units got a foothold on the western bank and broke into a large building, clearing some rooms in hand-to-hand fighting and bursting into a neighbouring house.

Unaware of the immediate whereabouts and possible escape plans of Hitler and his entourage, the Soviet command determined to deny him Tempelhof. The airfield was defended by AA guns,
SS
troops and dug-in tanks—prisoners reported that all available fuel was assigned to the
Luftwaffe
for the aircraft in the underground hangars. Chuikov ordered units of the 39th and 79th Guards Rifle Divisions to outflank the aerodrome from the east and west before opening the main attack from the southern perimeter, when tanks and infantry raced across runways to block any access to them from the underground hangars, at the same time sweeping the area with machine-gun fire and bombardment with tank guns. By noon on 26 April the runways and the airport buildings were firmly in Soviet hands. Chuikov’s assault groups pressed on, blasting their way forward by dynamiting gaps in walls to pass from street to street, a tunnelling operation obstructed by the massive ruins and also by the demolition set in train by the defenders, bent on destroying everything in the path of the Soviet armies—though the Berlin garrison soon ran short of explosives and had to use improvised aerial bombs as charges; demolition plans were further frustrated by Speer’s failure to hand over the bridge plans. Weidling pleaded for air drops, and a few Me 109s appeared and parachuted medical supplies into the city, but desperately needed ammunition was not forthcoming. Some Ju-52s managed to use the ‘East–West axis’ as a runway much to Speer’s apoplectic displeasure since the ornamental bronze lamp-standards had to be removed to clear a flight path—but only a small quantity of anti-tank ammunition was brought in.

Fewer Soviet aircraft flew over Berlin on 26 April—while a few German planes tried to fly in, making a last desperate use of Gatow and the hair-raising route to the ‘East–West axis’. Soviet activity was dictated by the diminished visibility, with columns of smoke rising more than a thousand feet and visibility on the ground reduced, by more smoke, to a few hundred yards in most places;
only hand-picked crews were selected for ground-support operations instead of the massed air onslaughts of previous days. As the fighting swept up to the heart of the city with its tall imposing buildings, every available gun was brought to bear, with assault squads supported by at least 3–4 guns; the Soviet gunners also went for targets on the flanks and to the rear, aiming to cut off any outside support for the garrisons holding strong-points and buildings—and then switching to knocking out fire-points. Flame-throwers burned out desperadoes who refused to surrender or who holed up in basements, cellars and even sewers. As the attack sectors narrowed, both Zhukov and Koniev urged their commanders to speed up the elimination of trapped garrisons. Koniev vented his anger on Lelyushenko at 4th Guards for taking too much time to reduce the German forces on Wannsee island. While grudgingly recognizing that Lelyushenko could scarcely ignore 20,000 German troops on Wannsee, Koniev categorically insisted that 4th Guards use 10th Mechanized Corps to take the island by 28 April and push 6th Mechanized Corps on to Brandenburg to the west. Within his own boundary Zhukov ordered Kuznetsov’s 3rd Shock to drive towards the
Tiergarten
, attacking south-eastwards in order to link up with Chuikov whose units had closed on the
Landwehr
canal. Meanwhile Berzarin’s 5th Shock Army also advanced on the
Tiergarten
from the east, hacking its way along a very narrow sector—with two corps operating along a front not much more than a quarter of a mile wide.

At the end of 27 April only a drastically reduced strip of Berlin—running for some ten miles from east to west and a mere three and a half miles across at its widest—remained to the defenders, though General Krebs assured the
Führer
that all defence lines were holding and that south of the Picheldorf bridge (to the west, on the Havel) preparations were in hand to cover Wenck’s arrival, the long-awaited relief. The
Luftwaffe
was standing by to fly in more troops, though Soviet fighters and AA guns were covering the approaches along the ‘East–West axis’ which, in any event, was temporarily blocked since a Ju-52 had careered into a house. There were plans to air-drop ammunition, but this could scarcely match the near-catastrophic supply situation, which not only starved the guns but also deprived the populace of food—and water—and the wounded of medicines. Fires raged on all sides and thick smoke rolled along the streets, shells exploded on and around the
Reichskanzlei
, the reverberations reaching into Hitler’s bunker where the ventilators drew in air reeking with fumes from shell bursts. In addition to this hot sulphurous blast, the wraith of Wenck—
‘Wo ist Wenck?’
—hung in the air, fed with wisps of news about Wenck’s approach towards the Potsdam garrison, even as Hitler began to realize that time was running out.

To the north it had run out completely. Rokossovskii’s 2nd Belorussian Front was fully free of its bridgeheads, making for Prenzlau and slicing through von Manteuffel’s Third
Panzer
, which was withdrawing in the best possible order to the west—away from the Russians, towards the Americans. A relief attack on Berlin from the north was no longer feasible in any form and Steiner’s two armoured divisions, long a bone of contention, were not even attempting to close
the gap at Prenzlau but had joined in the defiance of the
Führer’s
orders.

The retreat on the ground had its counterpart in the retreat from reality in the
Führerbunker
, though the former aimed to save lives while the latter drove yet more men, women and children to their deaths. Hitler’s world, ringed now with Russian tanks and pounded by Russian guns, shrank malignantly on 28 April when he learned the news of Himmler’s treachery in contacting Britain and the United States to offer Germany’s unconditional surrender. Aghast at this report, the
Führer
then roused himself to a fury of revenge made more intense by the fact that the
SS
was the source of this betrayal, not the ever-suspect officer corps: within hours
SS
General Fegelein, liaison officer to Himmler and husband of Eva Braun’s sister, was summarily shot. At 2200 hours at the evening conference on 28 April General Karl Weidling, Battle Commandant of Berlin, reported to the
Führer
on the rapidly deteriorating situation throughout the city, with ammunition left for only two days’ fighting, supply dumps now largely in Russian hands, masses of wounded lying untended and food virtually unavailable. Weidling proposed a final break-out to the west, using three echelons: the first, stiffened with those tanks and guns still left, would consist of 9th Parachute and 18th Motorized Division, the second—including Hitler’s own headquarters staff—would be formed from ‘Group Mohnke’ and a Marine battalion, and the third, from the remnants of the Müncheberg
Panzer
Division, the Bährenfanger battle group, 11th
SS
Nordland Division and a rearguard of 9th Parachute. Adamantly Hitler refused to entertain any idea of escape.