Zhukov’s offensive began at 3.30 a.m. on 16 April with an immense artillery barrage amid a battery of searchlights aimed at blinding the enemy and illuminating the path of attack. But German defences held for two days before, after ferocious fighting and huge losses on both sides, the heavily fortified Seelow Heights, a steep outcrop of hills ranging 90 metres above the Oder valley between Seelow and Wriezen and the last formidable natural defensive barrier outside Berlin, fell to Zhukov’s troops. With this, Busse’s 9th Army was split into three parts and forced into retreat in the north, centre and south of the front. Konev’s offensive from the Neiße, meanwhile, had broken through more easily, driving the defenders back towards Dresden but, even more menacingly, rapidly advancing northwards towards Berlin and the rear of Busse’s army. By 20 April, the 1st Belorussian Front had forced its way through the outer defensive ring around Berlin and its right flank was preparing to press the advance to the north of the city. Berlin was on the verge of being encircled. South of Berlin, Konev’s tanks had reached Jüterbog, the German army’s major ammunition depot, and were about to overrun Zossen, its communications centre. Zhukov’s forces had taken Bernau, north of the capital, early in the morning. A few hours later, his guns opened fire directly on Berlin.16
III
In the last desperate weeks, in which the gains from fighting on were hard to rationalize, Hitler’s front commanders remained paralysed from taking any action other than continuing the struggle, whatever the cost in lives and destruction. Since they had attempted nothing to halt the gathering self-destructive (as well as massively devastating) momentum over previous months, there was no likelihood of their doing anything when the end was so close. On the contrary, through an almost Darwinistic selection achieved by the dismissal of so many generals, only hardline loyalists, committed to continuing the fight whatever the cost, were left in key posts.
Field-Marshal Kesselring, Commander-in-Chief West (though by now with little of a western front to command), had for a time in the 1930s been Chief of Staff in the Luftwaffe, commanded an air fleet in the early years of the war, then sealed his reputation as a tough commander-in-chief in Italy, a military leader of high professional competence who took care to keep out of politics.17 He was an arch-loyalist, always exuding real or contrived optimism, however grim the military situation, and invariably impressed by Hitler’s will to hold out. It was little surprise that Speer had no success in trying to persuade him not to implement Hitler’s ‘Nero Order’ to destroy Germany’s economic infrastructure on retreat.18 Speer was again disappointed in the field-marshal when Kesselring arrived in the Führer Bunker in early April to inform Hitler of the hopelessness of the situation. After only a few sentences, Hitler interrupted with a lengthy disquisition on how he was going to turn the tables on the Americans. Whether he was genuinely convinced, or, more likely, taking the easy way out, Kesselring was soon agreeing with Hitler’s fantasies.19
After the war, in his self-serving memoirs, Kesselring gave a glimpse of his mindset in mid-April, with the Ruhr lost and the battle for central Germany unfolding. He saw meaning in sustaining the fight in the Harz Mountains in order to hold up the enemy’s advance ‘until a stronger, organised striking force came to the rescue’. He had in mind the 12th Army, scraped together at the end of March and stationed east of the Elbe and in the region stretching from Dessau to Bitterfeld and Wittenberg. ‘Only with its help could there be a certain assurance that the course of events on the Russian front would not be influenced from the west and the splitting of Germany into two halves be prevented.’ His views, he stated, coincided with those of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. ‘At that moment I did not examine the question of the effect of these operations on the outcome of the war, which was no longer a matter for profitable thought. All I was trying to do was to prolong the battle by all available means in front of the Harz to give time for our operations on the Russian front to mature.’ Even if the Russians and the western Allies were to meet on the Elbe or in Berlin there would still be a justification for continuing the war: ‘the imperative necessity to gain time for the German divisions engaged in the east to fight their way back into the British and American zones’.20
The Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, encircled in the Ruhr, Field-Marshal Model, had long been numbered among Hitler’s most trusted generals, and was described by the Dictator towards the end of April 1945 as having been his ‘best field-marshal’.21 Like Kesselring, Model had disingenuously insisted, while serving Hitler to the best of his ability, that he was ‘unpolitical’. Like almost all of his fellow generals, in fact, he shared at the least partial identities with Nazism – including detestation of Bolshevism, and belief in both the superiority of German culture and Germany’s rightful supremacy in Europe. As the war had turned irredeemably against Germany, his own fanatical will to stave off defeat and prevent the victory of the Reich’s enemies was reflected in his unwaveringly confident proclamations to his soldiers and orders for ruthless punishment of ‘inferior elements in the civilian population’ who displayed a defeatist or hostile attitude.22 He echoed demands of the regime to ‘hold out’ at all costs, and even the vocabulary of Nazi propaganda. At the end of March, his proclamation to his sub-commanders had described the duty of officers as setting an example to their men, if need be through their own deaths, and convincing them of the need to continue the struggle ‘even more than before… down to self-sacrifice’. He demanded immediate action against those sections of the civilian population who had been ‘infected by Jewish and democratic poison of materialist ideas’ and put the protection of their own belongings above ‘unconditional support for the fighting troops’.23
Model remained conscious of his loyalty and obedience to Hitler even as German hopes crumbled. This was still the case after his strategic recommendations on the Ardennes offensive had been ignored, and even after a confrontation with Kesselring about a possible breakout from the Ruhr had led to his vehement denunciation of Keitel and Jodl at Wehrmacht High Command.24 Increasingly in conflict with this, as the end approached, was his sense of soldierly duty. Unlike Kesselring, he was amenable to Speer’s entreaties not to destroy vital economic infrastructure. But he refused all attempts to persuade him to surrender his encircled army. (Feelers towards a possible capitulation had initially been made by Walther Rohland, Speer’s tank expert, with Colonel-General Josef Harpe, now commanding the 5th Panzer Army in the west. Harpe, who had been dismissed from his command during the retreat in the east in January, refused to act since going against the will of Model and the five western Gauleiter would have meant certain condemnation to death.)25 Hitler’s order, following the fall of Königsberg, to have families arrested in the event of capitulation or refusal to accept orders, apparently weighed heavily with Model.
By 17 April the fighting in the Ruhr was over. When all hope had gone for his troops, Model dissolved his Army Group rather than formally capitulate to the enemy. Some 317,000 German soldiers and 30 generals entered captivity. Model had long seen suicide as the only honourable way out for a field-marshal, and had hinted for some weeks at his own death in defeat. He shot himself in the woods near Duisburg on 21 April.26
Field-Marshal Schörner – Hitler’s favourite commander and the last one to whom he gave the field-marshal’s baton, on 5 April – was, as we have had cause to note in earlier chapters, notorious for his brutality even among his peer group of tough generals, all of them strict displinarians. Anything other than driving his troops on to continue the fight against what he saw as an ‘Asiatic’ enemy was here inconceivable. While Schörner did not have an equivalent anywhere else in the army, he had no monopoly of ruthlessness towards his own troops. The successor to SS Colonel-General Hausser as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group G in southern Germany, General Schulz, issued orders for ‘the most severe measures’ to be taken to prevent the possibility of soldiers taking to flight at the appearance of enemy tanks. Every soldier leaving his position in battle without a command ha
d to be made aware of what awaited him. Acknowledging the shortage of weaponry, he demanded that soldiers compensate with small arms and the Panzerfaust.27
Fighting on had become an end in itself. As Kesselring’s reflection, quoted above, indicated, it was not thought worthwhile to contemplate how actions might affect the outcome of the war. Most generals were perfectly capable of rational assessment of the situation. They chose instead to overlook their own dire assessments of the lack of weaponry, shortage of men and minimal prospects against overwhelming force to stress the need to do everything ‘not to disappoint the onward-driving will of the Führer’.28
This fitted par excellence the stance of those in Hitler’s own direct military entourage. Here, independence of judgement had never existed. Though General Jodl had on earlier occasions not refrained from speaking frankly to Hitler, he remained an ultra-loyalist, still in thrall to the ‘genius’ of the Führer. Field-Marshal Keitel had never throughout his career shown a flicker of willingness to stand up to Hitler, and was not going to start now. And with Guderian’s dismissal as Chief of the General Staff at the end of March, the last semblance of feisty determination to counter what he saw as calamitous operational decisions was gone. His replacement, General Hans Krebs, was a capable staff officer, but had scarcely been selected for his readiness to challenge higher authority. Personally far more emollient than Guderian, he was quickly assimilated into the bunker community and amounted to little more than a cipher. The division of responsibilities between the High Commands of the Wehrmacht and of the Army had long been a structural weakness in the running of the war. Now, with the war almost over, the division ceased to be significant. But the new unity, in kowtowing to Hitler at every turn, was even more disastrous than the former split had been. And, certainly, nothing to deflect Hitler from his decisions was to be expected of the commanders-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and navy, Göring and Dönitz. Göring had long been out of favour. But when he attended military briefings his lasting humiliation made him, if anything, even more determined to show his mettle and back Hitler. Dönitz, for his part, proved himself in these last weeks to be among the most fanatical of Hitler’s military leaders in insisting on the fight to the last.
On 7 April, Dönitz, echoing Hitler’s own sentiments, declared: ‘We soldiers of the navy know how we have to act. Our military duty, which we unerringly fulfil, whatever happens around us, leaves us standing as a rock of resistance, bold, hard and loyal. Anyone not acting in this way is a scumbag and must be hanged with a notice round his neck saying “Here hangs a traitor who from the most base cowardice has helped German women and children to die instead of protecting them like a man”.’ On 19 April he commended the example of a prisoner of war in Australia who had ‘quietly bumped off’ Communists in the camp and said he would be promoted to a leadership position on his return. ‘There are more such men in the navy’, he added, who show their ‘mastery of difficult positions’ and prove their ‘inner value’. Just over a week earlier, Dönitz expounded his own views on the presence of the enemy deep inside German territory. Capitulation, he stated, meant the destruction of Germany through Bolshevism. He defended National Socialism, and Hitler’s policies, as necessary to prevent the Russians overrunning Germany. Grumbling, moaning and complaining was fruitless, and born of weakness, he declared. ‘Cowardice and weakness make people stupid and blind.’ The leadership was aware of all possibilities. The Führer alone, years ago, had clearly seen the threat of Bolshevism. ‘At the latest in a year, perhaps within this year, the whole of Europe will recognise Adolf Hitler as the only statesman of standing.’ Europe’s blindness would one day be removed and result in political possibilities for Germany. Dönitz urged a commitment to duty, honour, obedience, hardness and loyalty. He demanded of his commanders ruthless action against any officers failing in their soldierly duty. A crew would always go down with their ship in honour rather than surrender it. The same principle applied to the fight on land. Every naval base would be defended to the last, in accordance with the Führer’s orders. It was victory or death. The navy would fight to the end. This would earn it respect in coming times. It had to represent the will to existence of the people. There was no situation that could not be improved by heroism. Every alternative led to ‘chaos and inextinguishable disgrace’.29
Dönitz’s unconditional obedience to Hitler’s will and conviction in the need to continue the fight was equally plainly expressed in a meeting with a number of Gauleiter and other leading Party figures in northern Germany on 25 April. Interestingly, the question was raised at the meeting – by whom is not stated – whether it might be better to end the fighting ‘in the interest of maintaining the substance of the German people’. Dönitz replied that the assessment of this question was ‘exclusively a matter of the state leadership embodied by the Führer and nobody had the right to deviate from the line laid down by him. The action of the Führer was exclusively determined by concern for the German people’ – though, as we know, Hitler had actually stated on more than one occasion that they did not deserve to survive. ‘Since the capitulation must in any case mean the destruction of the substance of the German people, it is from this standpoint too correct to fight on,’ Dönitz added. He stated his determination ‘to put into action what was ordered by the Führer’.30
Among the very few frontline generals to show any independence of mind and try to assert himself against Hitler in the last weeks was Colonel-General Gotthard Heinrici, presented with the unenviable task of defending against massively superior forces the coming attack on Berlin from the Oder. Other than Model, there was no general better equipped to conduct a defensive struggle. But Heinrici was well aware that his forces were weak in armour and heavy artillery, and had large numbers of young, ill-trained soldiers. He was therefore appalled to learn at the beginning of April that Hitler was depriving him of several reserve divisions (including two panzer divisions) and relocating them to Army Group Centre, now forced back into defending what was left of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heinrici had been summoned to Berlin on 6 April to outline his defensive preparations for the forthcoming offensive.
At the meeting in the Führer Bunker, the general, accompanied only by his operations chief, Colonel Hans-Georg Eismann, had to face not just Hitler but his entire supporting military entourage, including Keitel, Jodl, Dönitz, Göring, Krebs and Himmler. He coolly summarized the situation of his Army Group. A particular weakness was the front near Frankfurt an der Oder, where defences depended heavily upon the Volkssturm. Heinrici asked for ‘fortress’ status for Frankfurt to be given up, and the eighteen battalions holding the city to be redeployed in his own defensive forces. Hitler, seeming at first to accept the proposal, suddenly erupted into a thunderous outburst of fury at generals and advisers who failed to understand him. The rage soon subsided, but Heinrici was granted only six out of the eighteen battalions he had wanted. The general emphasized the weakness of his infantry reserves and requested reinforcements of at least three divisions. For an imminent battle of such significance, the situation was unacceptable, he stated. For a moment there was silence. Then Göring volunteered 100,000 men from the Luftwaffe, followed by Dönitz and Himmler, who said they would provide between them 30,000–40,000 men from the navy and SS. Heinrici’s objection that these were young recruits not trained and inexperienced in hard infantry defensive warfare was ignored. Weapons for them could only be provided by taking them from units of foreign troops serving with the Germans.
When Heinrici pointed out the weakness not just of his infantry, but also of his armoured formations, after losing important units to Schörner, Hitler told him that the Red Army would launch its offensive not at first towards Berlin but towards Dresden, then Prague. Heinrici looked in astonishment at General Krebs, but the Chief of the General Staff backed Hitler, saying the possibility could not be ruled out. Throughout, Hitler, supported by his entourage, had swept over the serious problems which Heinrici had raised and provided the most opti
mistic gloss possible. At the end of the audience, Heinrici questioned whether the fighting quality of the troops could withstand the opening barrage of the attack, and asked again where, since the outcome of the battle depended on it, he could find replacements for the inevitable losses. Hitler reminded him of the reinforcements promised by the Luftwaffe, navy and SS. On the first question, he told Heinrici that he bore the responsibility for conveying ‘faith and confidence’ to the troops. If all possessed this faith, ‘this battle will be the bloodiest defeat of the war for the enemy and the greatest defensive success’, he concluded. Leaving the Reich Chancellery some while later, after a prolonged wait in the bunker because of an air raid, Heinrici and Eismann sat in silence in their car until the general said simply: ‘It’s come to this for us.’31
Heinrici was to undergo worse conflict with Hitler’s military advisers in the High Command of the Wehrmacht later in the month as the battle of Berlin reached its denouement. But his audience with the Dictator on 6 April already highlighted the ambivalence of his continuing stance. He thought Hitler was mistaken and wrong-headed in his decisions. Nevertheless, he felt obliged to implement these decisions to the best of his ability. As he saw it (making every allowance for the fact that his post-war memoirs were intended to vindicate his own actions), his duty was a patriotic one – to defend Germany, not serve Hitler and National Socialism. But carrying out what his conscience and upbringing told him was his duty could only be done by helping to sustain the regime. He was, it is true, unlike Kesselring open to Speer’s request not to implement Hitler’s ‘scorched earth’ decree. But that was about as far as his defiance went, as an incident in mid-April demonstrates. Speer, visiting Heinrici in his headquarters near Prenzlau, broached the question of assassinating Hitler and asked whether the general was prepared to act. (The question was purely rhetorical since Speer’s talk of killing Hitler was no more than hypothetical, and backed by no preparation. He possibly raised the matter with thoughts already in mind of his defence when faced with charges of participation in the regime’s crimes.) The answer was prompt and straightforward. In a personal sense, Heinrici said he had no bonds to Hitler or his entourage. But as a soldier he had sworn an oath of allegiance and as a Christian he had learnt ‘thou shalt not kill’ (killing in war was plainly a different matter). He could imagine that in extreme circumstances he could reject the obedience bound up in the oath. ‘But as a soldier, to murder the supreme commander, to whom I swore an oath of loyalty, in the face of enemy attack, that I cannot do!’ He was, moreover, sure that it would prompt later belief in a ‘stab in the back’. Speer agreed. They were, he acknowledged, trapped. They could only go on.32