The Fall of Berlin 1945 (17 page)

On 8 February, Konev's armies attacked from the two bridgeheads either side of Breslau. The main thrust came from the Steinau bridgehead against the so-called Fourth Panzer Army, whose defence line quickly crumbled. To speed the advance from the Ohlau bridgehead, Konev then switched Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army. By 12 February, Breslau was surrounded. Over 80,000 civilians were trapped in the city.

Lelyushenko's 4th Guards Tank Army pushed forward to the Neisse, which it reached in six days. During the advance, the tank troops found that only a few inhabitants had remained behind. Sometimes the local priest would come out to meet them with a letter from the village 'to assure the Russians of their friendship', and the 1st Ukrainian Front noted that on several occasions German civilian doctors 'offered assistance to our wounded'.

Lelyushenko then had a nasty surprise. He found that the remnants of the
Grossdeutschland
Corps and Nehring's XXIV Panzer Corps were attacking his lines of communication and rear echelon. After two days of fighting, however, the Germans had to pull back. The result was that Konev remained in firm control of over 100 kilometres of the Neisse. His start-line for the Berlin operation was secured and Breslau was surrounded. But fighting still continued south of the Ohlau bridgehead throughout the rest of February and March against the German Seventeenth Army.

The Nazis had thought that the fact of fighting on German soil would automatically fanaticize resistance, but this does not always appear to have been the case. 'Morale is being completely destroyed by warfare on German territory,' a prisoner from the 359th Infantry Division told his Soviet interrogator. 'We are told to fight to the death, but it is a complete blind alley.'

General Schörner had the idea of a counter-attack against the town of Lauban, starting on 1 March. The 3rd Guards Tank Army was taken by surprise and the town was reoccupied. Goebbels was ecstatic. On 8 March, he drove down to Görlitz, followed by photographers from the propaganda ministry, where he met Schorner. Together, they drove to Lauban, where they made speeches of mutual congratulation in the market square to a parade of regular troops, Volkssturm and Hitler Youth. Goebbels presented Iron Crosses to some Hitler Youth for the cameras, and then went to visit the Soviet tanks destroyed in the operation.

The following day, Schörner's next operation to recapture a town was launched. This time it was the turn of Striegau, forty kilometres west of Breslau. The German forces who retook the town claimed that they found the few surviving civilians wandering around, psychologically broken by the atrocities committed by Konev's troops. They swore that they would kill every Red Army soldier who fell into their hands. But the behaviour of German troops at this time was certainly not above reproach. The Nazi authorities were not disconcerted by reports of them killing Soviet prisoners with spades, but they were shocked by more and more reports of what Bormann termed 'looting by German soldiers in evacuated areas'. He issued orders through Field Marshal Keitel that officers were to address their soldiers at least once a week on their duty towards German civilians.

The fighting in Silesia was merciless, with both sides imposing a brutal battle discipline on their own men. General Schörner had declared war on malingerers and stragglers, who were hanged by the roadside without even the pretence of a summary court martial. According to soldiers from the 85th Pioneer Battalion taken prisoner, twenty-two death sentences were carried out in the town of Neisse alone during the second half of March. 'The number of death sentences for running away from the field of battle, desertion, self-inflicted wounds and so forth is increasing every week,' the 1st Ukrainian Front reported on prisoner interrogations. 'The death sentences are read out to all soldiers.'

Soviet propaganda specialists in the 7th Department of Front headquarters soon discovered through the interrogation of prisoners that resentment in the ranks against commanders could be exploited. With bad communications and sudden withdrawals, it was quite easy to make German soldiers believe that their commander had run away and left them behind. For example, the 20th Panzer Division, when surrounded near Oppeln, began receiving leaflets which said, 'Colonel General Schörner leaves his troops in Oppeln in the lurch! He takes his armoured command vehicle and drives like hell for the Neisse.' German soldiers were also suffering badly from lice. They had not changed their underclothes or visited a field bath unit since December. All they received was 'a completely useless louse powder'. They had also received no pay for the months of January, February and March and most soldiers had not received any letters from home since before Christmas.

Discipline became harsher on the Soviet side as well. Military reverses were regarded as a failure to observe Stalin's Order No. 5 on vigilance. Colonel V., the Soviet commander at Striegau, was charged with 'criminal carelessness' because his regiment was caught off guard. Although his troops fought well, the town had been abandoned. 'This shameful event was thoroughly investigated by the military council of the Front and the guilty were strictly punished.' Colonel V.'s sentence was not given, but, to judge by another case, it must have been a longish spell in the Gulag. Lieutenant Colonel M. and Captain D. were both charged in front of a military tribunal after the captain left his battery of field guns near houses, without taking up proper position. He then 'went off to have a rest', which was often a Soviet euphemism for incapacity through alcohol. The Germans launched a surprise counter-attack, the guns could not be used and the enemy 'inflicted serious damage'. The captain was dismissed from the Party and sentenced to ten years in the Gulag.

For officers and soldiers alike, the angel of fear in the form of the SMERSH detachment hovered just behind their backs. After all their suffering, their wounds and their lost comrades, they felt great resentment against SMERSH operatives, who longed to accuse them of treason or cowardice without ever facing the dangers of the front themselves. There was a
samizdat
song about SMERSH, still often referred to by its pre-1943 name of the Special Department:

The first piece of metal made a hole in the fuel tank.
I jumped out of the T-34, I don't know how,
And then they called me to the Special Department.
'Why aren't you burnt, along with the tank, you bastard?'
'I'll definitely burn in the next attack,' I answered.

The soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Front were not only exhausted after all the battles and advances, they were also dirty, louse-infested and increasingly ill from dysentery. A large part of the problem was due to the fact that health and safety at work was not a high priority in the Red Army. Underclothes were never washed. Drinking water was seldom boiled and chlorine was not added, despite instructions. Above all, food was prepared in appallingly unsanitary conditions. 'Livestock was slaughtered incorrectly on dirty straw by the side of the road,' a report pointed out, 'then taken to the canteen. Sausages were made on a dirty table and the man making the sausages was wearing a filthy coat.'

By the second week in March, the authorities had woken to the danger of typhus, although three types of typhus had been identified in Poland during the winter. Even the NKVD troops were in a bad state. Between a third and two thirds were lice-ridden. The figure for frontline troops must have been much higher. Things started to improve only when the front line in Silesia became stabilized and each regiment set up its
banya
, or bathhouse, behind the lines. Three baths a month were regarded as perfectly adequate. Underwear had to be treated with a special liquid known as 'SK', which no doubt contained terrifying chemicals. An order was issued that all troops were to be vaccinated against typhus and polio, but there was probably not enough time. On 15 March, Konev, under pressure from Stalin, began his assault on southern Silesia. The left flank of the 1st Ukrainian Front cut off the 30,000 German troops round Oppeln with a thrust southwards towards Neustadt out of the Ohlau bridgehead. This was combined with an attack across the Oder between Oppeln and Ratibor to complete the encirclement. In very little time, the 59th and 21st Armies encircled the Estonian 20th SS Division and the 168th Infantry Division. The Soviet armies' 7th Department propaganda specialists sent in 'anti-fascist' German prisoners of war in an attempt to convince the surrounded troops that Soviet prisons were not as bad as they had heard, but many of these envoys were shot on officers' orders.

The only thing which German soldiers found amusing at this time was the way that Estonians and Ukrainians in the SS picked up Soviet leaflets printed in German and showed them to
Landsers
, asking them what they said. The
Landsers
thought it funny because the mere possession of one of these leaflets, even to roll a cigarette or wipe your bottom, risked a death sentence. On 20 March, near the village of Rinkwitz, Red Army soldiers caught and shot down staff officers of the Estonian 20th SS Division who were hurriedly burning documents. Some half-burned papers, carried on the wind, were retrieved from peasants' back yards. These reports included orders and sentences carried out by SS military tribunals.

German attempts from outside to break the Soviet ring round the Oppeln
Kessel
were repulsed and half of the 30,000 Germans trapped there were killed. Konev was assisted by an attack further to the south-east by the neighbouring 4th Ukrainian Front. On 30 March, the 60th Army and the 4th Guards Tank Army seized Ratibor. The 1st Ukrainian Front now controlled virtually all of Upper Silesia.

Despite the constant loss of German territory, the Nazi leadership still did not change its ways. The grandiose title of Army Group Vistula became not merely unconvincing, but ridiculous. Even this, however, was not quite as preposterous as its commander-in-chief's new field command post west of the Oder.

Himmler's headquarters were established ninety kilometres north of Berlin in a forest near Hassleben, a village to the south-east of Prenzlau. This distance from the capital reassured the Reichsführer SS that there was little risk from bombing raids. The camp consisted mainly of standard wooden barrack blocks surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. The only exception was the 'Reichsführerbaracke', a specially built and much larger building, expensively furnished. 'The bedroom,' noted one of his staff officers, 'was very elegant in reddish wood, with a suite of furniture and carpet in pale green. It was more the boudoir of a great lady than of a man commanding troops in war.'

The entrance hall even had a huge imitation Gobelins wall tapestry with a 'Nordic' theme. Everything came from SS factories, even the expensive porcelain. So much, thought army officers, for the Nazi leadership's practice of 'total warfare', as vaunted by Goebbels. Himmler's routine was equally unimpressive for a field commander. After a bath, a massage from his personal masseur and breakfast, he was finally ready for work at 10.30 a.m. Whatever the crisis, Himmler's sleep was not to be disturbed, even if an urgent decision had to be made. All he really wanted to do was to present medals. He greatly enjoyed such ceremonies, which offered an effortless assertion of his own preeminence. According to Guderian, his one dream was to receive the Knight's Cross himself.

Himmler's performance at situation conferences in the Reich Chancellery, in contrast, remained pathetically inadequate. According to his operations officer, Colonel Eismann, Himmler increasingly repeated at the Reich Chancellery the words
Kriegsgericht
and
Standgericht
, court martial and drumhead court martial, as a sort of deadly mantra. Retreat meant lack of will and that could only be cured by the harshest measures. He also spoke constantly of'incompetent and cowardly generals'. But whatever the faults of generals, they were sent home or transferred to another post. It was the retreating soldiers who were shot.

The
Standgericht
, or summary version, was naturally the method which Führer headquarters advocated. It had already been sketched out in principle. Just after the Red Army reached the Oder at the beginning of February, Hitler had copied Stalin's 'Not one step back' order of 1942, with the creation of blocking detachments. It included, as paragraph 5, the instruction, 'Military tribunals should take the strictest possible measures based on the principle that those who are afraid of an honest death in battle deserve the mean death of cowards.'

This was then elaborated in the Fiihrer order of 9 March setting-up the
Fliegende Standgericht
, the mobile drumhead court martial. Its establishment consisted of three senior officers, with two clerks and typewriters and office material, and, most essential of all, '
1 Unteroffizier und 8 Mann als Exekutionskommando'
. The guiding principle of its actions was simple: 'The justice of mercy is not applicable.' The organization was to start work the next day, ready to judge all members of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS. Hitler's blitzkrieg against his own soldiers was extended to the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine in an instruction signed by General Burgdorf. He instructed them to make sure that the president in each case was 'firmly anchored in the ideology of our Reich'. Martin Bormann, not wanting the Nazi Party to be outdone, also issued an order to Gauleiters to suppress 'cowardice and defeatism' with death sentences by summary courts martial.

Four days after the Führer order on the
Fliegende Standgericht
, Hitler issued yet another order, probably drafted by Bormann, on National Socialist ideology in the army. 'The overriding priority in the duties of a leader of troops is to activate and fanaticize them politically and he is fully responsible to me for their National Socialist conduct.' For Himmler, the man who preached pitilessncss to waverers, the stress of command proved too much. Without warning Guderian, he retired with influenza to the sanatorium of Hohenlychen, some forty kilometres to the west of Hassleben, to be cared for by his personal physician. Guderian, on hearing of the chaotic situation at his head- quarters, drove up to Hassleben. Even Lammerding, Himmler's SS chief of staff, begged him to do something. Learning that the Reichs- führer SS was at Hohenlychen, Guderian went on to visit him there, having guessed the tactic to adopt. He said that Himmler was clearly overworked with all his responsibilities - Reichsfuhrer SS, chief of the German Police, minister of the interior, commander-in-chief of the Replacement Army and commander-in-chief of Army Group Vistula. Guderian suggested that he should resign from Army Group Vistula. Since it was clear that Himmler wanted to, but did not dare tell Hitler himself, Guderian saw his chance. 'Then will you authorize me to say it for you?' he said. Himmler could not refuse. That night Guderian told Hitler and recommended Colonel General Gotthardt Heinrici as his replacement. Heinrici was the commander of the First Panzer Army, then involved in the fighting against Konev opposite Ratibor. Hitler, loath to admit that Himmler had been a disastrous choice, agreed with great reluctance.