Soviet Conquest: Berlin 1945

Chapter 2 Main Striking Force ^{By High Marshal of Tank Troops Amasasp Chatshaturovitch Babadshanian}

Babadshanian commanded the 11th Guards Tank Corps of the 1st Guards Tank Army with the rank of major general.

The headquarters of the 1st Byelorussian Front was sited on the edge of the little town of Birnbaum. On the 5th April 1945 were assembled there the commander-in-chief, the members of the War Councils and chief of staff of the armies as well as the commanders of the tank and mechanised corps. Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov was escorted by the Member of the War Council of the Front, Telegin, and the Chief of Staff, Malinin.

Zhukov informed us that he had just come from the Supreme Commander in Chief. The situation had developed in such a way that he had to summon us urgently, as the Berlin operation had to commence earlier than planned.

The marshal was quiet for a minute and then explained the reasons for this to us. Since our Allies had dealt with the German group quickly, they were now planning an attack on Leipzig and Dresden, and we must accept that they wanted to reach Berlin before us. This all went under the pretext that they wanted to help us. Our headquarters had also discovered that two parachute divisions were being hastily prepared for an attack on Berlin. That suited the Fascists. While they conducted fierce resistance against us even in the smallest villages, they surrendered whole cities to the western Allies on the western front.

‘That forces the Supreme Headquarters to hurry,’ resumed Zhukov. ‘The exact details of the offensive you will learn later. Now it is necessary to explain the task.’

A curtain was removed, revealing a map on which the enemy defensive sectors were shown exactly. They extended at distances of from 10 to 15 kilometres from the Oder River to the Seelow Heights.

A second curtain slipped aside. Before us hung a relief map of Berlin. Streets, buildings, fortifications, barriers, fixed firing positions, even the destroyed city districts were shown. The important objectives were numbered.

‘Direct your attention, please, to Object Number 105.’ The Field Marshal pointed with his stick to a large square. ‘That is the Reichstag. Who will be the first to reach it? Katukov? Chuikov? Perhaps also Bogdanov or Berzarin?’ Without waiting for a reply, he went on: ‘And that is Number 106, the Reichs Chancellery.’

In this way he presented the future objectives to us.

Chaos reigned in Berlin. The leading circles of Fascist Germany were disintegrating. Out of anxiety for their crimes to be accounted for they turned to total mobilisation. Old men, invalids and young lads were to save them from their certain downfall. Simultaneously the Fascist leadership sought a political way out by negotiating with the Allies for an honourable peace. But it was all in vain; the Fascist rulers could no longer save anything.

On the Oder and Neisse Rivers were concentrated the 1st and 2nd Byelorussian and the 1st Ukrainian Fronts. In this concentration were four tank armies, numerous independent tank and mechanised corps, as well as a vast number of guns and aircraft. We were stronger than ever before.

But the task awaiting us was not an easy one. In the Berlin direction, especially where he expected our main thrust, the enemy had organised a strong defence in depth. All the lines of defence had been occupied by their troops in time. Apart from this it was hilly terrain with numerous rivers, streams, canals, lakes and villages, all ideal for defence purposes.

During the conference with Marshal Zhukov we were entrusted with the basic idea for the coming operation.

The main thrust was to be conducted from the Küstrin bridgehead with five infantry and two tank armies. The infantry armies would break through the tactical defensive zones and take suitable preparatory measures for the introduction of the tank armies. Working on the flanks of the main thrust, the tank armies would thus have the necessary room for manoeuvre and for the decisive thrust into the enemy’s rear. The infantry armies would lighten the future development of the attack. The tank thrusts would go round the north and south of Berlin and, with the 1st Ukrainian Front, close the ring around the city in the Potsdam–Brandenburg area.

Unfortunately this did not involve our 1st Guards Tank Army. During the discussions on the 5th April the commander of the 2nd Guards Tank Army, General Bogdanov, had persistently sought to point out that his army required more freedom of movement for a wide-sweeping circumvention of Berlin in the north. Marshal Zhukov had remarked: ‘Do you want to fight for Berlin or spend the whole time rolling to the north?’

Should the 2nd Guards Tank Army nevertheless have been able to make such an extensive and above all effective by-pass operation, the 1st Guards Tank Army would not have needed to have conducted any similar manoeuvre. Why? I will come back to this later.

On the evening of the 15th April the 1st Guards Tank Army left its concentration area and rolled under cover of darkness to the Oder. High above us droned the engines of enemy bombers. Here and there searchlights tore through the darkness.

Towards midnight our leading elements reached the Oder crossing points. Isolated shots coming from the bank showed that the enemy was nervous and was expecting our attack at any moment.

And then it happened! The night was lit up by signal rockets and muzzle flashes. The earth resounded and rocked. Howitzers crashed, shots from the Katyushas whistled overhead. Our mighty artillery and air preparation had begun. Holding their breath, the soldiers and officers listened to the din. Many of them had already experienced the bombardments of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk, but what was happening now put everything in the shade.

On the 16th April the 1st Byelorussian Front went into the attack from the bridgehead, breaking through the first defensive strip, and shortly afterwards reached the second one before the Seelow Heights. Here the troops were brought to a halt by the strong, concisely organised fire.

The Seelow Heights governed the whole Oder depression and were a serious obstacle on the way to Berlin. The 8th Guards Army – infantry, artillery and allocated armour – became jammed in front of the Heights and were unable to go further.

Already at the conference of the 5th April several generals had drawn the Front commander’s attention to the fact that the main enemy defensive position ran along the Seelow Heights, so the artillery fire and air attacks should be concentrated on these Heights. Unfortunately this advice was not taken.

‘When I now, after a long time, think back over the plans for Operation Berlin,’ wrote Zhukov, ‘I come to the conclusion that the smashing of the enemy’s Berlin group and the taking of the city of Berlin could have gone differently.’

The Front commander could see for himself, from his command post next to that of the 8th Guards Army, that our own forces were not in a position to break through the enemy defences in their whole tactical depth. As further delay put the success of the whole operation in question, he had the 1st Guards Tank Army enter the 8th Guards Army’s sector.

In the night leading to the 18th April, as the second defensive strip was breached and our troops pursued the attack, General G.I. Gerko appeared at my command post. He told me that I was to drive back immediately with him to Seelow to participate in a consultation with War Council Member Telegin.

‘Right now?’

‘Straight away!’

I reported my thoughts about leaving the troops during the attack, but found no listener. General Gerko only shook his shoulders and indicated, orders are orders.

We struggled along a badly damaged road to Seelow. There did not seem to be one stone left on another in the place. After a long search we came across a still undamaged building in which the consultation was to take place.

The weak illumination from some dim trench lights fell on the faces of the assembly. Telegin’s appearance gave the impression of strength, but he could not hide his dejection. I had known him since 1942. Even in complicated situations, Telegin remained for me an example of partiality and strong principles. His correctly stressed appearance reminded me always of the commissar of Tschapaiev’s division. And now this depression. Doubtless, he must have also heard something about the delay in front of the Seelow Heights.

Most of the assembly came from the tank troops. That looked almost as if they were responsible for the fact that their tanks had not had the necessary manoeuvrability in depth, I thought.

It was well past midnight when we received permission to return to our units. Silently we drove back as before to my command post. The head of the corps’ operations department, Colonel Lebediev, briefed us on the situation.

Slowly morning dawned. I was dead tired. I had been unable to close my eyes for almost three days. Lebediev advised me to take a nap, at least half an hour. It was already dawn. Daylight brought the growling of artillery, the clanking tracks of tanks going into the attack with the 8th Guards Army. The terrain made the massive tank attack more difficult. But what else could we do? Manoeuvring between lakes and strongpoints, our tanks and the infantry advanced.

Already during the first days of the Berlin operation the 1st Guards Tank Army had suffered considerable casualties. The fact that the introduction of tanks into the tactical zone of the enemy defences is seldom effective and always unwanted had once more been confirmed here. And it made no difference if Marshal Zhukov in his memoirs emphasised the prominent role of the 1st Byelorussian Front’s 1st Guards Tank Army.

Significantly more effective was the commitment of the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies of Generals Rybalko and Leliushenko. In a brilliant manoeuvre these two armies attached to the 1st Ukrainian Front had covered great distances in the shortest time, thrust towards Berlin and enclosed the city from the south and south-west.

After some bitter fighting for the Seelow Heights, our troops reached the third line of defence in the Müncheberg–Diedersdorf sector.

With some of my corps’ officers I drove to the command post of General Schemenkov’s 29th Guards Rifle Corps to get agreement on the further operations. His staff had set themselves up in a manorial farm.[1] We went through several big rooms and came to the library. Books with expensive bindings occupied the shelves. A grey-haired lieutenant-colonel told us that this library was invaluable and he had come here from Leningrad especially to prevent them being destroyed.

We went through still more rooms and finally ended in the room in which the rifle corps’ staff operated. Immediately after our greeting, Schemenkov disclosed to me that he could not attack at 0800 as ordered and had put back the attack time to 0900 hours.

‘But it must be reported to Chuikov!’

But Schemenkov ignored my objection.

‘What do you mean, delayed?’ Chuikov exploded.

How the conversation continued, I am unable to say, as Katukov took me to one side and whispered: ‘There is nothing more for you to do here. Go back to your people as quickly as possible. The order must be fulfilled exactly as scheduled.’

Yes, orders are orders and the operative–tactical creativity of a commander cannot be opposed. That is the nature of the art of warfare.

I returned head over heels to my corps, gave the necessary orders and shortly afterwards the tanks opened fire. It did not take long before the defence line was broken and our tanks and the 29th Guards Rifle Corps stormed through. Colonel Gussakovski’s 44th Guards Tank Brigade and Colonel Fiodorvich’s 27th Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade developed the attack and reached the Berlin autobahn ring.

On the 20th April a telegram arrived. ‘To Katukov, Popiel! The 1st Guards Tank Army has the historic task of being the first into Berlin and to hoist the banner of victory. The organisation and execution I will take over myself. Send the best brigade of every corps to Berlin and give them the task by at the latest 0400 hours on the 21st April, cost what it might, to break through the city perimeter. I await the immediate report so that Stalin can be informed of the event and that the information can be published by the press. Zhukov. Telegin.’

We read this telegram with mixed feelings. On one side we were happy and proud about the honourable task, but on the other side we were peeved that our tank army was to be committed like a normal formation. We had no idea yet what awaited a tank army in street fighting.

But the feeling of pride won the upper hand. With the elements of the 29th Guards Rifle Corps, we had already penetrated the suburbs of Berlin on the 21st April.

The tanks thrust forward. Our longed-for goal came ever closer. But the nearer we got, the more bitter the fighting became. Our tanks were unable to fully use their fighting capacity in the narrow streets. Although we were used to dealing with incendiaries, we came up against a no less dangerous enemy: the Panzerfaust.

The Hitler clique undertook desperate efforts to avoid their downfall. One ‘hold on’ slogan followed another. Those who retreated without orders could expect death. Until then I had believed that these words applied only to the members of the Fascist armed forces who dared not throw away their weapons. But later, when I read the memoirs of former Fascist officers, I realised how much the consciousness of the population had been poisoned.

‘We were soldiers,’ wrote Guderian, ‘to defend our Fatherland and to bring up our youths as upstanding and fighting men, and we were happily so. Soldiering was for us a high duty born out of the love of our people and our country.’

In order to ‘defend their fatherland’ they had to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway and Denmark? Were there not enough of these for Guderian to overdo the hypocrisy? Do you see anything of the love of their people as they sent millions of people to the ovens of Auschwitz and Maidanak? The end was getting nearer and all further resistance was futile, but blind obedience and fanaticism had no limits. On the walls of buildings gleamed large boasting slogans like: ‘Berlin remains German!’ One of us had added in crayon, ‘But without Fascists!’

Berlin was surrounded. From the north moved in the 2nd Guards Tank Army and the 3rd Shock Army, from the east the 11th Independent Tank Corps and the 5th Shock Army. In the west elements of the 47th Army and the 9th Guards Tank Corps took Nauen and on the 24th April connected with the 4th Guards Tank Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front breaking in from the south. In the south-east were fighting the 8th Guards Army and 1st Guards Tank Army, as well as the 3rd Guards Tank Army and the 28th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front, which were already in the city.

So there lay Berlin before us. Our first objective was not its architectural beauty, although quite near must be the university at which Marx and Engels had studied and where Albert Einstein had been a professor. In Berlin masses of people drunk with victory had celebrated the taking of Prague, Warsaw, the Hague, Brussels and Paris. This is where Fascism had grown. But there was also another Berlin, in which Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had founded the German Communist Party, a Berlin where at the Reichstag tribune Ernst Thälmann had warned of the dangers of Fascism.

The West German historian Jürgen Thorwald wrote in his book The End on the Oder:

There was fighting everywhere in Berlin. Our soldiers drove the enemy out of the cellars and buildings from the ground to the roofs. The tanks slowly crept through the streets, the sappers finding the de-mining of the routes not easy.

Our corps staff were accommodated in a lovely building, at the urging of Colonel Vedenitshev, who had a weakness for art and architecture. When General Katukov sought us out I invited him to enter our apartments. However, he rejected my hospitality, turned his back on the building and stood back a few paces. ‘I’ll not put a foot in that building. And I recommend you to clear out of this palace as soon as possible. This place simply reeks of mines.’

While Vedenitshev was seeing to the immediate removal of the staff, I stood with Katukov in the grassed area in front of the building listening to the roar of the engines of aircraft taking off from the Tiergarten for the west. ‘Hitler and his chums are decamping,’ I said out loud.

‘That is not impossible,’ agreed Michael Yefimovitch Katukov.

Towards the morning the palace blew up. General Katukov had been quite right.

Danger threatened every step in the street fighting. If we shut the enemy up in one building, he escaped by underground passages and appeared again in another building. He also used the extensive drainage system for manoeuvring underground.

Firing was going on everywhere. Leaflets in the Russian language were meant to raise fear in our soldiers: ‘In Berlin there are 600,000 buildings. Each one will be turned into a fortress and will be your grave.’ But our soldiers did not allow themselves to be frightened by them. They had come here to put an end to Fascism and to liberate the German people.

Neither the water supply nor the electricity worked in the destroyed city. Women and children were huddled in the cellars. In order to rescue them we sent in special troops. They carried the people out of the rubble and administered first aid. Where the enemy had mined apartments, numerous Soviet soldiers were killed in these rescue operations. Our soldiers helped the women and their children out of the dangerous areas and shared their rations with them.

The little Berliners came to our field kitchens without the least fear, thrust out cups and spoons and begged for food. Kuschatch – food – was the first Russian word they learnt. Our cook filled the bowl of a little lad to the brim. ‘Danke schön,’ said the little one but made no indication of leaving.

‘What do you want then?’ asked the cook in Russian. ‘Shall I make some more?’

‘For Mama,’ explained the little one, dipped a finger in his bowl, licked it and vanished as quickly as his little legs could carry him. ‘He’ll certainly come again,’ said the cook happily.

Sergeant Darinkov’s submachine-gunners saved about twenty women and children from danger of death from the upper storeys of a burning building. Perhaps these were the wives and children of those men that had been firing at us with Panzerfausts? We Soviet citizens were drawn in the spirit of humanitarianism and discriminated precisely between the Germans and the Fascists. Every time I returned to Berlin later, I visited the Soviet Memorial in Treptow Park. The Soviet soldier with the sword and the child in his arms has become the symbol of members of the Red Army.

Berlin stood in flames. A giant cloud of black smoke hung over the city. Thousands of guns were firing and bombers were dropping their loads on the city, but the Fascists were still not prepared to surrender.

Let us recall: on the 12th October 1941 the German high command had informed the commander-in-chief of Army Group Mitte: ‘The Führer has newly decided not to accept the surrender of Moscow, even should the enemy offer it.’ What was now being played out were the results of this ‘logical’ conclusion. Should thousands, hundreds of thousands die, the main thing was that the Hitler clique would save themselves. ‘If we have to slam the door shut behind us,’ Goebbels had cried, ‘then the whole world will tremble.’

On the evening of the 27th April members of the 27th Motorised Brigade and the 40th Guards Tank Brigade captured several trains. In some of the wagons they found boxes of chocolate. It occurred to no one to keep the booty. The soldiers distributed the chocolate to the starving children. To show the little ones that there was no need to be frightened, the Soviet soldiers broke off a piece from every bar and ate it. It was strictly forbidden to eat captured foodstuffs, but who was thinking about that at the moment.

After several hours I was informed that traces of poisoning had appeared among some soldiers. In view of the previous experience in Gotenhafen, I quickly ordered the train to be set alight. Later it transpired that the men had simply eaten too much chocolate.

On the night leading to the 30th April a German major appeared with his interpreter in the bunker I was occupying with my operational team. The major said that he had been empowered by his commander to inform me that he would surrender with his 900 men if we guaranteed their lives. I assured him that the Red Army would guarantee the safety of everyone who laid down his arms.

‘I have already told him that,’ explained the interpreter in the clearest Russian. To the question of where he had learnt the language so well, the soldier explained that he was German but born and bred in Odessa. As a teacher he had not been evacuated in time and so had been taken into the Wehrmacht by the Germans.

‘I have explained to the commander that the Soviet men will not shoot any prisoners, and assured him that is in accordance with our customs. During my enforced service in the Wehrmacht I have had time to think over many things.’

We believed him, as what he said was truly meant. Life in the Soviet Union had left deep traces in the consciousness of this man.

The enclosing ring around Berlin drew ever tighter. Especially affected were the Müncheberg Battle Group, the 11th Motorised SS Division and other units defending the Tiergarten with the Reichstag, Gestapo Headquarters and the Reichs Chancellery.

On the night leading to the 24th April the 44th and 45th Guards Tank Brigades opened fire on the Reichs Chancellery. Not one of us had any idea what was happening in there at that time. As the sun went down our troops made a determined attack on the Tiergarten and the Reichs Chancellery. As we later learned, Hitler had committed suicide. As his successor he had named Grand Admiral Dönitz, who intended pursuing the war until the end.

Soldiers of the 3rd Shock Army had raised the victory banner over the Reichstag on the evening of the 30th April. The last attack began in the night leading to the 2nd May. In the morning the 1st Guards Tank Army thrust into the Tiergarten and connected with units of the 2nd Guards Tank Army and the Polish troops taking part in the storming of Berlin. The tank soldiers had been fighting for sixteen days in conditions unusual to them against a deeply echeloned defence equipped with anti-tank weapons, leaving heavy losses behind them in the bitter street-fighting. These losses hit us especially hard as we knew how much all had looked forward to the hour of victory.

Under our heavy blows the German troops began striking their weapons on the morning of the 2nd May. Some 7,700 men surrendered to our 1st Guards Tank Army. They came out of cellars and U-Bahn tunnels, from cellars and attics; dirty, ragged, hollow-eyed, with their heads lowered.

Berlin had capitulated.