The Road to Berlin (128 page)

On the evening of 29 April, at the final battle conference in the
Führerbunker
, General Weidling painted a stark picture: no
Panzerfausts
, no means to repair tanks, no ammunition, no air-drops and no hope. The fighting in Berlin must inevitably come to an end within the next twenty-four hours, by 30 April at the
latest. No one appeared keen to break the silence which followed Weidling’s report, but at last Hitler asked ‘in a tired voice’ what
SS
Colonel Mohnke (the commandant of the ‘Citadel’) thought: Mohnke replied that he could only agree with Weidling’s assessment. General Weidling then returned to the theme of a break-out, at which Hitler ‘looking like a man completely resigned to his fate’, pointed to a map, a map marked up only through reports from enemy radio stations since German staffs no longer replied and which showed formations which no longer obeyed Hitler’s orders. Completely nonplussed, Weidling went on to ask what was to happen when his troops ran out of ammunition. Hitler turned to consult General Krebs and after a few moments told Weidling that his troops might break out ‘in small groups’ but he, Hitler, categorically forbade the surrender of Berlin. (Later in the day Weidling received from an
SS Sturmführer
a letter written by Hitler in the early hours repeating that there was to be no surrender: if ammunition ran out, then ‘small groups’ might make their escape.) Not long after the conference with Weidling whatever hopes Hitler entertained of relief from outside vanished when Keitel reported the answers to urgent queries made during the evening. Hitler had demanded to know the location of Wenck’s spearheads, the time of their attack, the location of Ninth Army and the direction of its breakthrough and, finally, the location of ‘Corps Holste’ spearheads. Keitel at 1 am on 30 April at length returned answers which signalled the crack of doom: Wenck’s spearhead was stalled south of the Schwielow lake, Twelfth Army could no longer continue its attack towards Berlin, Ninth Army was completely encircled and ‘Corps Holste’ had been forced on to the defensive. This was the end. Hitler prepared to kill himself within a matter of hours.

Towards midday on 30 April, as the regiments of the 150th and 171st Rifle Divisions took up their positions for the final assault on the
Reichstag
, a hush settled over the squares in front of this gaunt and battered building. ‘Himmler’s house’ had been finally captured at 0430 hours in the morning, and Soviet units proceeded to entrench themselves in the lower parts of the structure to prepare for the next assault. Soviet military maps showed green belts ahead of the infantry but all the squads could see was pock-marked earth and stumps of trees wrenched out of the ground; by way of unpleasant surprise there was also a large trench, part of the city’s expanding underground railway, with bridges of steel beams overlaid with planks, most of which had been destroyed. The assault sections from 150th Division began to deploy round the trench and settled into their start positions for the attack. Though the day was generally sunny, the assault battalions could see little or nothing of the sun or the sky through the smoke blowing down on them. But first came the battle ceremonial. At the beginning of the offensive against Berlin the military soviet of the 3rd Shock Army had distributed nine Red Victory Banners to divisions for hoisting over the
Reichstag:
now the 150th Division stood on the very threshold of the
Reichstag
and up in
the forward positions Maj.-Gen. Shatilov as divisional commander assigned Banner No. 5 to Colonel Zinchenko’s 756th Rifle Regiment and this it passed to the best battalion, Captain Neustroyev’s 1st. More banners went to units deployed for the assault—to Captain Davydov’s 1st Battalion from the 674th Regiment, to Senior Lieutenant Samsonov’s 1st Battalion from the 380th Regiment, and to the two special assault squads formed by 79th Rifle Corps command, one commanded by Major Bondar and the other by Captain Makov, both squads manned predominantly by volunteer Party and
Komsomol
members.

At 1300 hours eighty-nine Soviet guns opened fire on the
Reichstag
, heavy-calibre 152mm and 203mm howitzers joined by tank guns,
SP
guns,
Katyusha
rocket launchers and even Soviet soldiers firing captured
Panzerfausts
at point-blank range. The
Reichstag
vanished under rolling clouds of smoke as the three Soviet battalions received orders to attack. In his best military style Sergeant Ishchanov crouched next to Captain Neustroyev and asked: ‘Permission to be the first to break into the
Reichstag
with my section?’ Permission granted, Ishchanov’s section slipped from a window on the first floor of ‘Himmler’s house’ and crawled across the open ground: Neustroyev took the reconnaissance troop—with the precious Red Banner—with him and the forward company literally bounded to the
Reichstag
, broke through doors and breaches in the wall and rushed the central staircase. The assault party cleared the first storey, only to discover that the substantial German garrison held both the extensive underground chambers and the upper storeys. Almost at once the Germans counter-attacked, fighting off a battalion from the Soviet 380th Regiment deploying amidst the half-smashed concrete installation to the north-west comer of the building; the 380th was forced to call urgently for help from an anti-tank battalion to beat off the German tanks.

Meanwhile Neustroyev’s battalion was fighting for possession of the second storey. Sergeants Yegorov and Kantariya from the reconnaissance troop blasted their way forward with hand-grenades and raised the Red banner on the half-ruined staircase only to be brought to a halt at the third storey by extensive damage and German machine-gun fire. The Red banner waved from the second floor of the
Reichstag
at 1425 hours but the Soviet attempt to rush the whole building had not succeeded. Neustroyev called up a combat group to support the standard bearers, put Lieutenant Berest in command and ordered him to clear the German tommy-gunners from the whole second storey.
‘Gde Znamiya?’
—‘Where is the Banner?’: Colonel Zinchenko’s repeated question was answered with the report that it was in good hands, everyone in the battalion knew Yegorov and Kantariya and that the Banner was well on the way to being raised over the
Reichstag
. In the thick and murky atmosphere of the entrance hall to the
Reichstag
Zinchenko summoned Yegorov and Kantariya, talked briefly with them and then addressed them in very homely terms: ‘Well then, off you go, lads and stick the Banner up there.’ At 1800 hours on the evening of 30 April a second assault went in, bursting through the machine-gunners in the upper levels and
succeeding at 2250 hours in planting the Victory Banner high over the
Reichstag
, though it was many hours before the entire building was cleared. The garrison entrenched in the basement was powerful and well armed, as Soviet scouts soon discovered, bringing about a weird and tense situation as 300 Soviet riflemen literally sat on a much larger enemy force clustered round their machine-guns.

Not much more than an hour after Sergeant Kantariya managed to brandish the Victory Banner from the second floor of the
Reichstag
, Hitler accompanied by Eva Braun retired to his study in the
Führerbunker
and, seated side by side, both committed suicide by biting on their cyanide ampoules. Soviet tanks continued to crunch through the city, blasting their way forward against a wearied, decimated, disorganized and dispirited defence, running low on ammunition and bereft of information. To the west Perkhorovich’s 47th Army was holding a line running from Potsdam to Spandau, including the western bank of the Havel; the 125th Rifle Division was now engaged on reducing German resistance at Kladow and clearing Pichelsdorf. Bogdanov’s 2nd Guards Tank Army continued to fight in the south-eastern sector of Charlottenburg and the western edge of the
Tiergarten
, while Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army also cut its way into the
Tiergarten
, though the main progress was on the flanks—with 4th Guards Rifle Corps on the right breaking into the Potsdam station and closing on the
Reichskanzlei
, while on the left 28th Guards Rifle Corps reached the southern edge of the Zoological Gardens and was within striking distance of 2nd Guards Tank. Although the Zoological Gardens were held by at least 5,000 German troops with substantial artillery and the approaches covered by bunkers and barricades, Kuznetsov’s 3rd Shock Army had already reached the
Reichstag
and in a matter of hours must link up with Chuikov’s 8th Guards, leaving the German troops in the
Tiergarten
with only a strip extending for a thousand yards or so—and entirely covered by Soviet guns. Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army worked its way north-west, attacking the Wilmersdorf district with tank and infantry units; on Koniev’s orders 7th Guards Tank Corps—reinforced with the 55th Rifle Division (28th Army) speeded all the way from Zossen—attacked German units holding Westend but failed for the moment to close the 500-yard gap separating Rybalko’s tanks from 2nd Guards Tank Army.

The fighting intensified in the
Tiergarten
and throughout the Zoo; Soviet heavy tanks began their approach to the Unter den Linden and Soviet guns were deploying along the ‘East–West axis’. In the shell of the
Reichstag
Soviet and German assault parties still stalked each other in the gloom, while the Soviet companies hurriedly set about organizing a defence. Berlin was set in a red, purplish glow of seething fires and the flash of guns, hammering at a garrison which had now been cut into four isolated groups. General Weidling found himself facing an almost hopeless situation and an anguishing dilemma about the nature of his orders: it could only be a matter of hours before the Soviet formations striking from the north and the south linked up at the Zoo station, Soviet divisions had crashed into the Potsdamerplatz and the Anhalt station, and
had ripped a great hole in the German line running from the Alexanderplatz to the Spittalmarkt—yet was he to order a break-out or carry on fighting? The
Führers
letter seemed to countenance a break-out in small groups but this instruction or authorization was countermanded later in the evening. His plight was momentarily resolved by a summons to the
Führerbunker
, a 1,500-yard journey from the Bendlerstrasse which took him almost an hour. In the
Führer’s
room in the bunker Goebbels, Bormann and Krebs met Weidling, who learned almost at once that Hitler was dead and his body burned. Sworn to secrecy, Weidling was told that only Marshal Stalin would be informed of Hitler’s death and meanwhile Colonel Seifert, commander of Sector Z, had been empowered to negotiate a time and place with the Soviet command for General Krebs to cross the lines and explain the new developments. General Krebs intended to inform the Soviet command about the death of Hitler and the contents of his testament appointing a new government, while seeking a cease-fire which would enable the new government to assemble in Berlin and negotiate terms of capitulation with the Russians.

At 2330 hours on the evening of 30 April Lt.-Col. Seifert appeared as a German emissary at the junction of 5th Shock and 8th Guards. Conducted to the staff of the 102nd Guards Rifle Regiment, Seifert informed the Soviet officers that he was bearing important papers for the attention of the Soviet command, information passed up the Soviet chain of command from 35th Guards Rifle Division to 4th Guards Rifle Corps. Conditions were arranged for General Krebs and Weidling’s chief of staff, the newly promoted Colonel von Dufving, accompanied by an interpreter
(Sonderführer
Neilandis) and a single soldier to cross the Russian lines; one by one they left the bunker, rushed across the road and made for the subway, making their way to Sector Z command post by way of an underground tunnel. General Chuikov had already been informed of the train of events involving Seifert and the arrangements to allow General Krebs through the Soviet positions. He instructed General Glazunov (commanding 4th Corps) to cease fire on the allotted sector and to pass the German emissaries to his forward command post. Chuikov, enjoying some of the immediate fruits of victory, had sat down to supper with his political staff and some prominent Soviet war correspondents—Vishnevskii, the poet Dolmatovskii and Blanter, the composer sent to Berlin to pen the victory hymn. At 0350 hours on 1 May the German plenipotentiaries finally appeared, at which Blanter was at once bundled into a cupboard since he was the only one not wearing military uniform; the others Chuikov passed off as part of his staff. General Krebs entered, wearing the Iron Cross round his neck and with a swastika on his sleeve. He made a form of salute with his right hand and proffered his service book. Colonel von Dufving and the interpreter accompanied him. Soviet soldiers attempted to strip Krebs of his side-arms but stiffly Krebs refused, demanding that an honourable opponent under the rules of war be allowed to keep his personal weapons. This the Russians somewhat shamefacedly allowed. The talk began at once, without any preliminaries:

Krebs:
I am going to tell you something top secret: you are the first foreigner to whom I am giving the news that on 30 April Hitler committed suicide.

Chuikov:
We know that.

Krebs:
According to the
Führer’s
testament … [at this point Krebs read out Hitler’s testament and Goebbels’ declaration]. The aim of this declaration—to find the most favourable way out for those peoples who have borne the greatest losses in the war. The document may be passed to your command.

Chuikov:
Is this document concerned with Berlin or with the whole of Germany?

Krebs:
I am empowered to speak on behalf of the entire German Army. I am Goebbels’ plenipotentiary.

Chuikov:
I shall report to Marshal Zhukov.