The Fall of Berlin 1945 (12 page)

Goebbels apparently shook with fury on hearing the news. He wanted to execute as many prisoners of war as the number of civilians killed in the attack. The idea appealed to Hitler. Such an extreme measure would tear up the Geneva Convention in the face of the Western Allies and force his own troops to fight to the end. But General Jodl, supported by Ribbentrop, Field Marshal Keitel and Grand Admiral Dönitz finally persuaded him that such an escalation of terror would turn out worse for Germany. Goebbels nevertheless extracted all he could from this 'terror attack'. Soldiers with relatives in the city were promised compassionate leave. Hans-Dietrich Genscher remembers some of them returning from their visit. They were reluctant to talk about what they had seen.

On the Western Front, the Americans and the British had not been advancing anything like as rapidly as the Red Army. The battle for the Rhineland, which began during the talks at Yalta, was also slow and deliberate. Eisenhower was in no hurry. He thought that spring floodwater would make the Rhine impassable until the beginning of May. It was to take another six weeks before all Eisenhower's armies were ready on the west bank of the Rhine. Only the miracle of capturing intact the Rhine bridge at Remagen allowed an acceleration of the programme.

Eisenhower was deeply irritated by the continuing British criticism of his methodical broad-front strategy. Churchill, Brooke and Field Marshal Montgomery all wanted a reinforced breakthrough to head for Berlin. Their reasons were mainly political. The capture of Berlin before the Red Army arrived would help to restore the balance of power with Stalin. Yet they also felt on military grounds that to seize the capital of the Reich would deal the greatest psychological blow to German resistance and shorten the war. British arguments for the single thrust into the heart of Germany, however, had not been helped by the insufferable Field Marshal Montgomery. At the end of the first week of January, he had tried to take far more credit for the defeat of the German offensive in the Ardennes than was his due. This crass and unpleasant blunder naturally infuriated American generals and deeply embarrassed Churchill. It certainly did not help persuade Eisenhower to allow Montgomery to lead a major push through northern Germany to Berlin. Eisenhower, as supreme commander, continued to insist that it was not his job to look towards the post-war world. His task was to finish the war effectively with as few casualties as possible. He felt that the British were allowing post-war politics to rule military strategy.

Eisenhower was genuinely grateful to Stalin for the effort made to advance the date of the January offensive, even if he was unaware of Stalin's ulterior motive of securing Poland before the Yalta conference. United States policy-makers simply did not wish to provoke Stalin in any way. John G. Winant, the United States ambassador in London, when discussing zones of occupation on the European Advisory Commission, even refused to raise the issue of a land corridor to Berlin in case it spoiled his relationship with his Soviet opposite number. The policy of appeasing Stalin came from the top and was widely accepted. Eisenhower's political adviser, Robert Murphy, had been told by Roosevelt that 'the most important thing was to persuade the Russians to trust us'. This could not have suited Stalin better. Roosevelt's claim, 'I can handle Stalin', was part of what Robert Murphy acknowledged to be 'the all-too-prevalent American theory' that individual friendships can determine national policy. 'Soviet policy-makers and diplomats never operate on that theory,' he added. The American longing to be trusted by Stalin blinded them to the question of how far they should trust him. And this was a man whose lack of respect for international law had led him to suggest quite calmly that they should invade Germany via neutral Switzerland, thus 'outflanking the West Wall'.

Soviet resentment was based on the fact that the United States and Britain had suffered so little in comparison. Nazi Germany also treated Allied prisoners in a totally different way from Red Army prisoners. A ist Belorussian Front report on the liberation of a prisoner-of-war camp near Torn underlined the contrast in fates. The appearance of the Americans, British and French inmates was healthy. 'They looked more like people on holiday than prisoners of war,' the report stated, 'while Soviet prisoners were emaciated, wrapped in blankets.' Prisoners from the Western Allied countries did not have to work, they were allowed to play football and they received food parcels from the Red Cross.

Meanwhile, in the other part of the camp, '17,000 Soviet prisoners had been killed or died from starvation or illness. The "special regime" for Soviet prisoners consisted of 300 grams of ersatz bread and i litre of soup made from rotten mangelwurzels per day. Healthy prisoners were made to dig trenches, the weak ones were killed or buried alive.'

They were guarded by 'traitors' from the Red Army, recruited with the promise of better rations. These volunteers treated 'Soviet prisoners of war with more cruelty than the Germans'. Some of the guards were said to have been Volga Germans. They ordered prisoners to strip and set dogs on them. The Germans had apparently carried out 'a massive propaganda' attempt to persuade prisoners to join the ROA, General Vlasov's army of former Soviet soldiers in Wehrmacht uniform. 'Many Ukrainians and Uzbeks sold themselves to the Germans,' stated a prisoner. He was described as an 'ex-Party member' and 'former senior lieutenant'. This was because members of the Red Army were stripped of all status simply for having allowed themselves to be taken prisoner.

The punishments inflicted on Soviet prisoners included forcing them to do knee-bends for up to seven hours, 'which completely crippled the victim'. They were also made to run up and down stairs past guards armed with rubber truncheons on every landing. In another camp, wounded officers were placed under cold showers in winter and left to die of hypothermia. Soviet soldiers were subjected to the 'saw-horse', the eighteenth-century torture of strapping a prisoner astride a huge trestle. Some were made to run as live targets for shooting practice by SS guards. Another punishment was known as '
Achtung!'
A Soviet prisoner was made to strip and kneel in the open. Handlers with attack dogs waited on either side. The moment he stopped shouting, '
Achtung! Achtung! Achtung!'
the dogs were set on him. Dogs were also used when prisoners collapsed after being forced to do 'sport marches', goose-stepping in rapid time. It may have been news of these sorts of punishment which inspired similar practices against German prisoners taken by Soviet troops in their recent advances. An escaped British prisoner of war, a fighter pilot, picked up by a unit of the 1st Ukrainian Front and taken along, saw a young SS soldier forced to play a piano for his Russian captors. They made it clear in sign language that he would be executed the moment he stopped. He managed to play for sixteen hours before he collapsed sobbing on the keyboard. They slapped him on the back, then dragged him out and shot him.

The Red Army advanced into German territory with a turbulent mixture of anger and exultation. 'Everybody seems to have German harmonicas,' noted Grossman, 'a soldier's instrument because it is the only one possible to play on a rattling vehicle or cart.' They also mourned their comrades. Yakov Zinovievich Aronov, an artilleryman, was killed near Königsberg on 19 February. Shortly before his death he wrote a typical soldier's letter home: 'We are beating and destroying the enemy, who is running back to his lair like a wounded beast. I live very well and I'm alive and I'm healthy. All my thoughts are about beating the enemy and coming home to you all.' Another of his letters was much more revealing, because it was to a fellow soldier who would understand. 'I love life so much, I have not yet lived. I am only nineteen. I often see death in front of me and I struggle with it. I fight and so far I am winning. I am an artillery reconnaissance man, and you can imagine what it is like. To make a long story short, I very often correct the fire of my battery and only when shells hit the target, I feel joy.'

Aronov was killed 'one foggy Prussian morning', wrote his closest friend to the dead boy's sister Irina. The two of them had fought together all the way from Vitebsk to Königsberg. 'So, Ira, the war has separated many friends and a lot of blood has been shed, but we comrades in arms are taking vengeance on Hitler's serpents for our brothers and friends, for their blood.' Aronov's body was buried by his comrades 'on the edge of the forest'. Presumably its site was marked like others by a stick with a small bit of red rag tied to it. If refound by the pioneers responsible, it would be replaced by a small wooden plaque. There were too many bodies spread too widely for reburying in cemeteries.

Red Army soldiers were also marked by their encounters with slave workers, attempting to return home. Many were peasant women with knotted headkerchiefs covering their foreheads and wearing improvised puttees for warmth. Captain Agranenko, the dramatist, encountered a cart full of women in East Prussia. He asked who they were. 'We are Russian. Russian,' they answered, overjoyed to hear a friendly voice. He shook hands with each one of them. An old woman suddenly began to cry. 'It is the first time in three years that someone has shaken my hand,' she explained.

Agranenko also encountered 'a beauty from the region of Orel called Tatyana Khilchakova'. She was returning home with a two-month-old baby. In the German camp for slave labourers she had met a Czech and fallen in love with him. They had exchanged marriage vows, but when the Red Army arrived, her Czech had immediately volunteered to fight the Germans. 'Tatyana does not know his address. He does not know hers. And it is unlikely that the war will ever throw them together again.' Perhaps, even more unfortunately, she would probably be made to suffer on her return home to Orel for having had relations with a foreigner.

The chief concern for the
Stavka
at this time continued to be the wide gap across the 'Baltic balcony' between Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front and the left flank of Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front. On 6 February, Stalin had rung Zhukov from Yalta. He asked what he was doing. Zhukov replied that he was in a meeting of army commanders to discuss the advance on Berlin from the new Oder bridgeheads. Stalin retorted that he was wasting his time. They should consolidate on the Oder, and then turn north to join up with Rokossovsky.

Chuikov, the commander of the 8th Guards Army, who appears to have resented Zhukov since Stalingrad, was contemptuous that Zhukov did not argue forcefully for a push on Berlin. The bitter debate continued well into the post-war years. Chuikov argued that a rapid push at the beginning of February would have caught Berlin undefended. But Zhukov and others felt that with exhausted troops and serious supply shortages, to say nothing of the threat of a counter-attack from the north on their exposed right flank, the risk was far too great.

In East Prussia, meanwhile, German forces were contained but not yet defeated. The remains of the Fourth Army, having failed to break out at the end of January, was squeezed in the Heiligenbeil
Kessel
, with its back to the Frisches Haff. Its main artillery support came from the heavy guns of the cruisers
Admiral Scheer
and
Lützow
, firing from out in the Baltic across the sandbar of the Frische Nehrung and the frozen lagoon.

The remnants of the Third Panzer Army in Königsberg had been cut off from the Samland Peninsula, but on 19 February, a joint attack from both sides created a land corridor which was then bitterly defended. The evacuation of civilians and wounded from the small port of Pillau at the tip of the Samland Peninsula was intensified, but many civilians feared to leave by ship after the torpedo attacks on the
Wilhelm Gustloff
and other refugee ships. In the early hours of 12 February, the hospital ship
General von Steuben
was torpedoed after leaving Pillau with 2,680 wounded. Almost all were drowned.

The Second Army, meanwhile, had been forced back towards the lower Vistula and its estuary, defending Danzig and the port of Gdynia. It formed the left flank of Himmler's Army Group Vistula. In the centre, in eastern Pomerania, a new Eleventh SS Panzer Army was being formed. Himmler's right flank on the Oder consisted of the remnants of General Busse's Ninth Army, which had been so badly mauled in western Poland.

Himmler seldom ventured out of his luxurious special train, the
Steiermark
, which he had designated his 'field headquarters'. The Reichsführer SS now realized that the responsibilities of military command were rather greater than he had imagined. His 'insecurity as a military leader,' wrote Colonel Eismann, 'made him incapable of a determined presentation of the operational situation to Hitler, let alone of asserting himself. Himmler used to return from the Führer situation conference a nervous wreck. Staff officers received little pleasure from the paradox that the feared Himmler should be so fearful. His 'servile attitude' towards Hitler and his fear of admitting the disastrous state of his forces, 'caused great damage and cost a vast amount of unnecessary blood'.

Himmler, seeking refuge in the Führer's own aggressive cliches, talked of more counter-attacks. Following the Demmlhuber debacle, Himmler set his mind on establishing the so-called Eleventh SS Panzer Army. In fact the whole of Army Group Vistula in the early days contained only three under-strength panzer divisions. At best, the formations available constituted a corps, 'but panzer army', observed Eismann, 'has a better ring to it'. Himmler had another motive, however. It was to promote Waffen SS officers on the staff and in field command. Obergruppenführer Steiner was named as its commander. Steiner, an experienced soldier, was certainly a much better choice than other senior Waffen SS officers. But he did not have an easy task.

General Guderian, determined to keep a corridor open to the edge of East Prussia, argued at a situation conference in the first week of February that an ambitious operation was needed. He was even more outspoken than usual that day, having drunk a certain amount at an early lunch with the Japanese ambassador. Guderian wanted a pincer movement from the Oder south of Berlin and an attack down from Pomerania to cut off Zhukov's leading armies. To assemble enough troops, more of the divisions trapped uselessly in Courland and elsewhere needed to be brought back by sea and the offensive in Hungary postponed. Hitler refused yet again.