Slaughter at Halbe

FOUR Destroy the 9th Army ^{22 APRIL 1945}

At 1100 hours on Sunday, 22 April, General Heinrici telephoned General Krebs to say that, unless 9th Army was allowed to withdraw, it would be split in two by nightfall. This time his words must have had some effect, for at 1450 hours Krebs telephoned back with permission for the Frankfurt Garrison to abandon the city and fall back on the 9th Army, thus allowing some adjustment to the army’s over-extended dispositions.

At this stage the 9th Army’s northern flank was still firm from Frankfurt to a Soviet bridgehead north of Fürstenwalde. From there a battlegroup of the 32nd SS Volunteer Grenadier Division 30. Januar provided a light screen as far as Wernsdorf at the western end of the Oder–Spree Canal.

That evening, with his normal supply routes severed, General Busse sent the following message to Army Group Weichsel:

In turn, Army Group Weichsel reported the loss of Cottbus after a day’s heavy fighting. V Corps’ front for two kilometres to the north of there was under heavy pressure, and on 9th Army’s northern front the Soviets had reached as far as the Berlin–Frankfurt autobahn. Rapidly diminishing stocks of fuel and ammunition were making things extremely difficult for 9th Army.[2]

LVI Panzer Corps had by now been forced back to the south-eastern corner of Berlin and its troops were already crossing the Spree at Köpenick with a view to rejoining their parent formation. However, during the retreat the corps had lost contact with 9th Army. Turncoat German Seydlitz-Troops working for the Soviets had been particularly active during the withdrawal in disseminating false orders for the troops to reassemble at Döberitz, west of Berlin, and other locations outside the city, and the rumour then spread that the corps had withdrawn to Döberitz.[3] When General Busse and Hitler heard of this that evening, they both ordered Weidling’s arrest and execution.

At a conference with his divisional and regimental commanders held at his corps headquarters in the eastern suburb of Kaulsdorf, Weidling told them that General Busse had threatened to have him shot if he failed to link up with 9th Army, and that Hitler had threatened him with the same fate if he did not go to the defence of the city. They all agreed that to go into the city would mean the end of the corps, and decided that they should try and hold on to their present positions in the south-eastern suburbs to enable 9th Army to withdraw in their direction.[4] This was an astonishing decision in that the participants were showing an unusually independent line of thought in rejecting the demands of both their superior headquarters and implementing their own solution to 9th Army’s predicament. However, this was to come to nothing next day over a point of personal honour, as we shall see.

A further consequence of the Seydlitz-Troops’ activities was that, when 20th Panzergrenadier Division was later allocated to the defence of the Wannsee area, only 90 men turned up with their divisional commander, the rest having gone on to Döberitz immediately west of Berlin, from where they eventually reformed as an armoured brigade under 3rd Panzer Army. Others were misdirected to regroup at Güterfelde east of Potsdam, and many of those who followed these false orders were caught by the Soviets in Marienfelde.[5]

At 1900 hours Hitler summoned Keitel and Jodl for another conference, at which he formally announced his intention of committing suicide in the event of the city falling to the Soviets, rejecting all their protestations.[6] He then turned to his maps and began discussing possible means of saving the situation. It was agreed that 12th Army had nothing to fear from the Americans, who clearly had no intention of crossing the Elbe, and therefore 12th Army’s units could afford to turn their backs on the river and march to the relief of Berlin. Simultaneously 9th Army could send its strongest infantry division westward to meet up with 12th Army, mopping up any Soviet formations encountered on the way, and then make a joint thrust on the capital. Field Marshal Keitel would deliver the orders to General Wenck of 12th Army in person, while Jodl would see to the organization of the OKW staff at Krampnitz in preparation for their move to Plön, from where they would serve both Grand Admiral Dönitz, commanding the German forces in the north, and Hitler. General Krebs would remain as Hitler’s military adviser. The conference broke up at about 2000 hours.[7]

The departure of Keitel and Jodl left only General Krebs and his aide, Major Bernd Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven, representing the General Staff in the Führerbunker, so a third officer, Cavalry Captain Gerhard Boldt, was summoned from the OKW at Krampnitz to assist with the preparation of situation reports for presentation to Hitler.[8]

That night Moscow issued a directive ordering 1st Byelorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts to surround the German group south-east of Berlin by 24 April at the latest and to prevent 9th Army’s forces breaking out towards Berlin or the west by all means. The withdrawal of the bulk of 9th Army into the Spreewald had not been anticipated in the planning for Operation Berlin, so this major development had now to be contended with on the move. A German concentration of this size could not be ignored.

Marshal Koniev reacted the same night, ordering:

To comply with Moscow’s instructions, Marshal Zhukov issued the following directive:

Zhukov’s orders to 3rd Army show how totally ignorant he was of Koniev’s progress and deployment when he issued them, for occupying the line Wildau–Michendorf was the role he had originally intended for 1st Guards Tank Army in securing the southern approaches to Berlin. On the other hand, Koniev’s directive would appear to reflect his preoccupation with the attack on Berlin, in which he was hoping to beat Zhukov to the prize of the Reichstag, whereas Zhukov was now sufficiently confident in his advance on the city centre to allocate resources and plan the destruction of the ‘Frankfurt–Guben group’ in some detail, while still trying to block Koniev from Berlin.

By pushing forward the bulk of 69th Army, together with 3rd Army from his second echelon, Zhukov was applying pressure on the truncated 9th Army from the north and also protecting the southern flank of his thrust on Berlin. By evening his 3rd Army had a bridgehead across the Spree south of Erkner and was probing down to the Oder–Spree Canal, where the 32nd SS Volunteer Grenadier Division 30. Januar was hastily trying to establish a defensive screen.[10]

The arrival of advance units of Colonel-General Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army in the southern outskirts of Berlin on 23 April was the high point of Koniev’s day. It would take another day for the remainder of the army to catch up and prepare to cross the major obstacle of the Teltow Canal, for which he ordered an attack on the morning of 24 April. In addition to the infantry reinforcements already allocated, he sent 10th Breakthrough Artillery Corps and 25th Breakthrough and 23rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Divisions, which were to travel by night to avoid detection. He also allocated 5th Air Fighter Corps of 2nd Air Army in support. In the meantime 3rd Guards Tank Army was to secure the suburb of Buckow on its right flank and to try and establish contact with 1st Byelorussian Front, whose troops were expected in that area.[11]

Koniev had beaten Zhukov to the southern suburbs of Berlin, but he needed to use the 23rd to amass sufficient strength for his attack on the city proper next day, which he intended to supervise in person. A major threat to his lines of communication having been removed with the elimination of the Cottbus defence, 3rd Guards Army was now ordered to turn its attention to the western flank of the German 9th Army.[12]

The redeployment of forces on 9th Army’s northern front as a defensive screen proved to be too weak and too late to be effective. Although Battlegroup Krauss had reached the Oder–Spree Canal at Wernsdorf and SS-Major Egger’s 1st Battalion, 86th SS Grenadier Regiment, had reached Neu Zittau the day before, the Soviets arrived soon afterwards and forced a crossing near Neu Zittau, thus bypassing Wernsdorf and obliging SS-Captain Krauss’ troops to fall back on Königs Wusterhausen via Niederlehme.

However, this withdrawal was not all one-sided, as SS-Second Lieutenant Porsch of Tank-Hunting Company Dora II of the 500/600th SS Punishment Battalion wrote:

At the railway station in Königs Wusterhausen Krauss found an ambulance train that had already been attacked several times by Soviet aircraft that had no respect for the Red Cross. His own troops were under fire from a column of T-34s that were firing at anything that moved, including civilians trying to help the wounded, so he withdrew to Prieros.[14]

Further east the 561st SS Tank-Hunting Battalion, together with 1st Battalion, SS-Regiment Falke, deployed in the Biegen-Pillgram area, launched a counterattack on Rosengarten, opening and holding open a breach in the Soviet cordon around Frankfurt through which the garrison was able to evacuate that night.[15]