The Last Battle

1

A GREAT PROCESSION of Army supply trucks rolled along the narrow, dusty main street of the French city. In endless lines the convoys roared through, heading northeast on the long haul to the Rhine and the Western Front. No one was permitted to stop; MP’s stood everywhere to keep the traffic flowing. To the drivers, there was no reason to stop anyway. This was just another sleepy French city with the usual cathedral, just another checkpoint on the high-speed “Red Ball Highway.” They did not know that at this moment in the war Reims was perhaps the most important city in Europe.

For centuries battles had raged about this strategic crossroad in northeast France. The Gothic cathedral rising majestically from the city’s center had endured countless bombardments, and again and again its fabric had been restored. On its site or within its sanctuary every French monarch, from Clovis I in 496 to Louis XVI in 1774, had been crowned. In this war, mercifully the city and its monument had been spared. Now, in the shadow of the great twin-spired cathedral stood the headquarters of another great leader. His name was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces was tucked away on a back street close to the railway station in a plain, modern three-story building. The building was the Collège Moderne et Technique, a former technical school for boys. Box-like, its four sides surrounding an inner courtyard, the red brick school was originally designed to hold more than 1,500 students. Staff members called it the “little red school house.” Perhaps because of SHAEF’s requirements, it seemed small: the headquarters had almost doubled its strength since 1944 and now had nearly 1,200 officers and some 4,000 enlisted men. As a result, the college could accommodate only the Supreme Commander, his immediate general staff officers and their departments. The remainder worked in other buildings throughout Reims.

In the second-floor classroom that he used for an office, the General had worked almost without pause all day. The room was small and spartan. Blackout curtains hung by the two windows overlooking the street. There were a few easy chairs on the highly polished oak floor, but that was all. Eisenhower’s desk, set in an alcove at one end of the room, was on a slightly raised platform—once used by the teacher. On the desk were a blue leather desk set, an intercom, leather-framed photos of his wife and son, and two black phones—one for regular use, the other a special instrument for “scrambled” calls to Washington and London. There were also several ashtrays, for the Supreme Commander was a chain-smoker who consumed more than sixty cigarettes a day.[18] Behind the desk stood the General’s personal flag and, in the opposite corner, Old Glory.

The previous afternoon Eisenhower had made a quick flight to Paris for a press conference. The big news was the victory on the Rhine. The Supreme Commander announced that the enemy’s main defense in the west had been shattered. Although Eisenhower told reporters he did not want to “write off the war for the Germans are going to stand and fight where they can,” in his opinion the German was “a whipped enemy.” Buried in the conference was a reference to Berlin. Someone asked who would get to the capital first, “the Russians or us?” Eisenhower answered that he thought “mileage alone ought to make them do it,” but he quickly added that he did not “want to make any predictions”; although the Russians had a “shorter race to run” they were faced with “the bulk of the German forces.”

Eisenhower spent the night at the Hotel Raphael; then, leaving Paris shortly after dawn, he flew back to Reims. At 7:45 A.M. he was in his office and conferring with his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith. Waiting for Eisenhower, in General Smith’s blue leather snap-top folder, were a score of overnight cables that only the Supreme Commander could answer. They were labeled with the highest security tag: “For Eisenhower’s Eyes Only.” Among them was Montgomery’s message, seeking approval for his dash to the Elbe and Berlin. But the most important cable was from Eisenhower’s superior, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. By coincidence Marshall’s and Montgomery’s messages had arrived at SHAEF within two hours of each other the previous evening—and both were to have a major influence on Eisenhower. On this Wednesday, March 28, they would act as catalysts in finally crystallizing for the Supreme Commander the strategy he would follow to the war’s end.

Months before, Eisenhower’s mission as Supreme Commander had been spelled out by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in one sentence: “You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” He had carried out this directive brilliantly. By dint of personality, administrative ability and tact, he had welded the soldiery of more than a dozen nations into the most awesome force in history. Few men could have achieved this while keeping animosities to such a minimum. Yet the 55-year-old Eisenhower did not conform to the traditional European concept of the military leader. Unlike British generals, he was not trained to consider political objectives as part of military strategy. Eisenhower, though a master diplomat in the politics of compromise and placation, was in international terms politically unaware—and proud of it. In the American military tradition he had been schooled never to usurp civilian supremacy. In short, he was content to fight and win; politics he left to the statesmen.

Even now, at this crucial turning point of the war, Eisenhower’s objectives remained, as always, purely military. He had never been given a political directive regarding post-war Germany, nor did he regard that problem as his responsibility. “My job,” he later said, “was to get the war over quickly… to destroy the German Army as fast as we could.”

Eisenhower had every reason to be elated with the way the job was going: in twenty-one days his armies had catapulted across the Rhine and burst into the German heartlands far ahead of schedule. Yet their headline-making advances, so eagerly followed by the free world, were now presenting the Supreme Commander with a series of complex command decisions. The unanticipated speed of the Anglo-American offensive had made obsolete some strategic moves planned months before. Eisenhower had to tailor his plans to meet the new situation. This meant changing and redefining the roles of some armies and their commanders—in particular, Field Marshal Montgomery and his powerful Twenty-first Army Group.

Montgomery’s latest message was a clarion call for action. The 58-year-old Field Marshal was not asking how the battle would be fought; he was demanding the right to lead the charge. Quicker than most commanders to realize the political implications of a military situation, Montgomery felt that the Allied capture of Berlin was vital—and he was convinced that it should be undertaken by the Twenty-first Army Group. His cable, indicative as it was of Montgomery’s intractability, made clear there were still vital differences of opinion between him and the Supreme Commander. Eisenhower’s reaction to the Field Marshal’s cable, as General Smith and others at SHAEF were to recall, was “like that of a horse with a burr under his saddle.”

The crucial difference between the military philosophies of Montgomery and Eisenhower concerned the single thrust versus the broad-front strategy. For months Montgomery and his superior, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, had agitated for a lightning-like single thrust into the heart of Germany. Almost immediately after the fall of Paris, while the Germans were still disorganized and fleeing France, Montgomery had first put his plan up to Eisenhower. “We have now reached a stage,” he wrote, “where one really powerful and full-blooded thrust toward Berlin is likely to get there and thus end the German war.”

Montgomery spelled out his scheme in nine terse paragraphs. He reasoned that the Anglo-American forces lacked the supply and maintenance capabilities for two side-by-side drives into Germany. In his view there could be only one—his own—and it would need “all the maintenance resources… without qualification.” Other operations would have to get along with whatever logistical support remained. “If,” warned Montgomery, “we attempt a compromise solution and split our maintenance resources so that neither thrust is full-blooded, we will prolong the war.” Time was “of such vital importance… that a decision is required at once.”

The plan was boldly imaginative and, from Montgomery’s viewpoint, accurately timed. It also marked a strange reversal in the Field Marshal’s usual approach to battle. As Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, now Eisenhower’s Assistant Chief of Staff, later described the situation: “Put succinctly, Montgomery, principally celebrated hitherto for cautious deliberation, had conceived the notion that were he to be accorded every priority to the detriment of the American Army Groups, he could, in the shortest order, overwhelm the enemy, drive to Berlin and bring the war to a speedy end.”

Obviously the plan involved a gigantic gamble. To hurl two great army groups of more than forty divisions northeast into Germany in a single massive thrust might invite speedy and decisive victory—but it might also result in total and perhaps irreversible disaster. To the Supreme Commander, the risks far outweighed any chance of success, and he had said as much in a tactful message to Montgomery. “While agreeing with your conception of a powerful thrust towards Berlin,” Eisenhower said, “I do not agree that it should he initiated at this moment.” He felt that it was essential first to open the ports of Le Havre and Antwerp “to sustain a powerful thrust deep into Germany.” Further, Eisenhower said, “no reallocation of our present resources would be adequate to sustain a thrust to Berlin.” The Supreme Commander’s strategy was to advance into Germany on a broad front, cross the Rhine and capture the great industrial valley of the Ruhr before driving for the capital.

That exchange had taken place in the first week of September, 1944. A week later in a message to his three army group commanders, Montgomery, Bradley and Devers, Eisenhower further elaborated on his plan: “Clearly Berlin is the main prize and the prize in defense of which the enemy is likely to concentrate the bulk of his forces. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that we should concentrate all our energies and resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin. Our strategy, however, will have to be coordinated with that of the Russians, so we must also consider alternative objectives.”

The possible objectives as Eisenhower saw them, varied widely: the northern German ports (“they might have to be occupied as a flank protection to our thrust on Berlin”); the important industrial and communication centers of Hanover, Brunswick, Leipzig and Dresden (“the Germans will probably hold them as intermediate positions covering Berlin”); and finally, in southern Germany, the Nuremberg-Munich areas, which would have to be taken (“to cut off enemy forces withdrawing from Italy and the Balkans”). Thus, warned the Supreme Commander, “We must be prepared for one or more of the following:

“A. To direct forces of both north and central army groups on Berlin astride the axes Ruhr-Hanover-Berlin or Frankfurt-Leipzig-Berlin or both.

“B. Should the Russians beat us to Berlin, the northern group of armies would seize the Hanover area and the Hamburg group of The central group… would seize part, or the whole of the area Leipzig-Dresden depending on the progress of the Russian advance.

“C. In any event the southern group of armies would seize Augsburg-Munich. The area Nuremberg-Regensburg would be seized by the central or southern groups… depending on the situation at the time.”

Eisenhower summarized his strategy in these words: “Simply stated, it is my desire to move on Berlin by the most direct and expeditious route, with combined U.S.-British forces supported by other available forces moving through key centers and occupying areas on the flanks, all in one coordinated, concerted operation.” But, he added, all this would have to wait, for it was “not possible at this stage to indicate the timing of these thrusts or their strengths.”

Whether the broad-front strategy was right or wrong, Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander and Montgomery had to take his orders. But he was bitterly disappointed. To the British people he was the most popular soldier since Wellington; and to his troops Monty was a legend in his own time. Many Britons considered him the most experienced field commander in the European theater (as he was well aware), and the denial of his plan, which he believed could have ended the war within three months, left Montgomery deeply aggrieved.[19] This strategic dispute in the autumn of 1944 had opened up a split between the two commanders that had never completely healed.

In the seven months since then, Eisenhower had not deviated from his concept of a broad coordinated pattern of attack. Nor had Montgomery ceased to express his opinions on how, where, and by whom the war should be won. His own Chief of Staff, Major General Sir Francis de Guingand, later wrote, “Montgomery… feels justified in bringing all influences to bear in order to win his point: in fact the end justifies almost any means.” One of the influences he brought to bear was powerful indeed: the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Brooke, saw Eisenhower as vague and indecisive. He once summarized the Supreme Commander as a man with “a most attractive personality and, at the same time, a very, very limited brain from a strategic point of view.”

Eisenhower was perfectly well aware of the biting comments that emanated out of the War Office and Montgomery’s headquarters. But if this whispering campaign over his strategic policies hurt, Eisenhower did not reveal it. And he never hit back. Even when Brooke and Montgomery advocated the appointment of a “Land Forces Commander”—a sort of field marshal sandwiched in between Eisenhower and his army groups—the Supreme Commander displayed no anger. Finally, after months of “sitting with clenched teeth”—to use General Omar Bradley’s expression—Eisenhower lost his temper. The issue came to an explosive boil after the German attack through the Ardennes.

Because the enemy drive split the Anglo-American front, Eisenhower was forced to place all troops on the northern salient under Montgomery’s command. These forces included two thirds of General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group—that is, the First and Ninth U.S. armies.

After the Germans had been thrown back, Montgomery gave an extraordinary press conference in which he implied that he had almost singlehandedly rescued the Americans from disaster. He had neatly tidied up the front, the Field Marshal declared, and “headed off… seen off… and… written off” the enemy. “The battle has been most interesting. I think possibly one of the most tricky… I have ever handled.” He had, Montgomery said, “employed the whole available power of the British group of armies… you thus have the picture of British troops fighting on both sides of the Americans who have suffered a hard blow.”

Montgomery had indeed mounted the main counteroffensive from the north and east and had directed it superbly. But, at the Field Marshal’s press conference, to use Eisenhower’s words, “he unfortunately created the impression that he had moved in as the savior of the Americans.” Montgomery failed to mention the part played by Bradley, Patton and the other American commanders, or that for every British soldier there were thirty to forty Americans engaged in the fighting. Most important, he neglected to point out that for every British casualty forty to sixty Americans had fallen.[20][21]

German propagandists were quick to make matters worse. Enemy radio transmitters put out an exaggerated, distorted version of the conference and beamed the broadcasts directly toward the American lines; it was this version that gave many Americans their first news of the incident.

On the heels of the press conference and the uproar it caused, the old controversy about a land forces commander flared again, this time supported by an active campaign in the British press. Bradley blew up. If the Field Marshal were appointed ground forces commander, he declared, he would resign his command. “After what has happened,” he told Eisenhower, “if Montgomery is to be put in charge… you must send me home… this is one thing I cannot take.” Patton told Bradley: “I’ll be quitting with you.”

Never had there been such a rift in the Anglo-American camp. As the “promote-Montgomery” campaign intensified—a campaign which seemed to some Americans to originate directly from Montgomery’s headquarters—the Supreme Commander finally found the situation intolerable. He decided to end the bickering once and for all: he would fire Montgomery by making an issue of the whole matter before the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

At that point Montgomery’s Chief of Staff, General de Guingand, learned of the impending blow-up and hastened to the rescue of Anglo-American unity. He flew to SHAEF and met with the Supreme Commander. “He showed me a signal that he was about to send to Washington,” De Guingand later recounted. “I was stunned when I read it.” With the aid of General Bedell Smith he prevailed on Eisenhower to delay the message twenty-four hours. Eisenhower agreed with great reluctance.

Returning to Montgomery’s headquarters, De Guingand bluntly laid the facts before the Field Marshal. “I told Monty that I had seen Ike’s message,” De Guingand said, “and that, in effect, it said ‘It is either me or Monty.’” Montgomery was shocked. De Guingand had never seen him “so lonely and deflated.” He looked up at his Chief of Staff and said quietly, “Freddie, what do you think I should do?” De Guingand had already drafted a message. Using this as a basis, Montgomery sent Eisenhower a thoroughly soldierly dispatch in which he made clear that he had no desire to be insubordinate. “Whatever your decision may be,” he said, “you can rely on me one hundred per cent.” The message was signed “Your very devoted subordinate, Monty.”[22]

There the matter had ended—for the moment anyhow. But now, at his headquarters in Reims, on this day of decision, March 28, 1945, Eisenhower was hearing again the distinct echo of an old refrain: not the agitation for a land forces commander once more, but the older, more basic issue—single thrust versus broad front. Without conferring with Eisenhower, Montgomery had, in his own words, “issued orders to Field Commanders for the operations eastwards” and now hoped to make a single great push toward the Elbe and Berlin, obviously intending to enter the capital in a blaze of glory.

The fact was that in making the main thrust north of the Ruhr, Montgomery was actually following agreed strategy—the Eisenhower plan approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Malta in January. What Montgomery now proposed was simply a logical extension of that drive—a move that would carry him to Berlin. If he was acting in haste, his eagerness was understandable. Like Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Brooke, Montgomery believed that time was running out, that the war might be lost politically unless Anglo-American forces reached Berlin before the Russians.

The Supreme Commander, on the other hand, had received no policy directive from his superiors in Washington reflecting this British sense of urgency. And although he was Commander of the Allied Forces, Eisenhower still took his orders from the U.S. War Department. In the absence of any redefinition of policy from Washington, his objective remained the same: the defeat of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces. And, as he now saw it, the method by which he could most quickly achieve that military objective had changed radically since the presentation of his plans to the Combined Chiefs of Staff in January.

Originally, under Eisenhower’s plan, General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group in the center was to have a limited role, supplementing Montgomery’s main effort in the north. But who could have foreseen the spectacular successes achieved by Bradley’s armies since the beginning of March? Good fortune and brilliant leadership had produced dazzling results. Even before Montgomery’s massive Rhine assault, the U.S. First Army had captured the Remagen bridge and had quickly crossed the river. Farther south, Patton’s Third Army had slipped across the Rhine almost unimpeded. Since then, Bradley’s forces had been on a rampage, going from victory to victory. Their achievements had fired the imagination of the U.S.public, and Bradley was now seeking a larger role in the final campaign. In this respect Bradley and his generals were no different from Montgomery: they, too, wanted the prestige and glory of ending the war—and, if they got the chance, of capturing Berlin.

At the right moment, Eisenhower had promised, he would launch one massive drive to the east, but he had not specified what group—or groups—would make the final thrust. Now, before making a decision, Eisenhower had to consider a variety of factors, all of which affected the design of his final campaign.

The first of these was the unexpected speed of the Russian advance to the Oder. At the time the Supreme Commander formulated his plans for the Rhine assault and Montgomery’s offensive north of the Ruhr, it looked as if months might pass before the Russians got to within striking distance of Berlin. But now the Red Army was barely 38 miles from the city—while British and American forces were still more than 200 miles away. How soon would the Russians launch their offensive? Where and how did they intend to mount the attack—with Zhukov’s army group in the center opposite Berlin, or with all three groups simultaneously? What was their estimate of the German strength opposing them and how long would it take the Red Army to break through those defenses? And, after they crossed the Oder, how long would it take the Soviets to reach and capture Berlin? The Supreme Commander could not answer these questions, all of them vitally important in his planning.

The simple truth was that Eisenhower knew almost nothing of the Red Army’s intentions. There was no day-to-day military coordination between Anglo-American and Soviet commanders in the field. There was not even a direct radio link between SHAEF and the Anglo-American military liaison mission in Moscow. All messages between the two fronts were funneled through normal diplomatic channels—a method totally inadequate now because of the speed of events. Although Eisenhower knew the Russians’ approximate strength, he had no idea of their battle order. Apart from occasional data collected from various intelligence sources—most of it of doubtful accuracy[23]—SHAEF’s chief source of information on Russian moves was the Soviet communiqué broadcast each evening by the BBC.

One fact, however, was clear: the Red Army had almost reached Berlin. With the Russians so close should the Supreme Commander try for the city at all?

The problem had many dimensions. The Russians had been on the Oder for more than two months, and with the exception of some local advances and patrol activity they appeared to have come to a full stop. Their lines of supply and communications must be stretched to the utmost, and it hardly seemed likely that they could attack until after the spring thaw. Meanwhile the western armies, moving at astonishing speeds, were driving deeper and deeper into Germany. At places they were averaging better than thirty-five miles per day. The Supreme Commander had no intention of letting up, no matter what Russian plans were. But he was reluctant to enter into a contest with the Russians for Berlin. That might prove not only embarrassing for the loser but—in the event of an unexpected meeting between the onrushing armies—catastrophic for both forces.

A headlong collision involving the Russians had occurred once before, when they were allied by treaty with the Germans. In 1939, after Hitler’s undeclared blitzkrieg into Poland and the subsequent division of that country between Germany and Russia, Wehrmacht troops advancing east had smashed head on into Red Army forces racing west : no prearranged line of demarcation had been established. The result was a minor battle, with fairly heavy casualties on both sides. A similar clash could occur now, but between the Anglo-Americans and the Russians—and on a much larger scale. It was a nightmarish thought. Wars had been set off by less. Obviously coordination of movement had to be effected with the Russians, and quickly.

Furthermore, there was one tactical problem that hung over Eisenhower like a thunderhead. In the great map room near his office there was a carefully drawn intelligence chart bearing the legend “Reported National Redoubt.” It showed an area of mountainous territory lying south of Munich and straddling the alpine regions of Bavaria, western Austria and northern Italy. In all, it covered almost twenty thousand square miles. Its heart was Berchtesgaden. On the nearby Obersalzberg—surrounded by peaks seven to nine thousand feet high, each studded with concealed anti-aircraft guns—was Hitler’s mountaintop hideaway, the “Eagle’s Nest.”

Covering the map’s face was a rash of red marks, each one a military symbol denoting some kind of defense installation. There were food, ammunition, gasoline and chemical warfare dumps; radio and power stations; troop concentration points, barracks and headquarters; zigzagging lines of fortified positions, ranging from pillboxes to massive concrete bunkers; even bombproof underground factories. Each day now, more and more symbols were added to the chart, and though all of them were labeled “unconfirmed,” to SHAEF this formidable mountain defense system was the greatest threat remaining in the European war. The area was sometimes referred to as the Alpenfestung, Alpine Fortress, or the “National Redoubt.” In this craggy citadel, according to intelligence, the Nazis, with Hitler at their head, intended to make a last-ditch, Wagnerian stand. The rugged stronghold was considered almost impregnable and its fanatical defenders might hold out for as long as two years. There was another, even more chilling aspect; specially trained commando-type forces—Goebbels called them “Werewolves”—were expected to sally out from the alpine bastion and create havoc among the occupation armies.

Did the Alpenfestung really exist? In Washington the military seemed to think so. Information had been accumulating ever since September. 1944, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), in a general study of southern Germany, predicted that as the war neared its end the Nazis would probably evacuate certain government departments to Bavaria. Since then, intelligence reports and appreciations had poured in, from the field, from neutral countries, even from sources inside Germany. Most of these evaluations were guarded, but some bordered on the fantastic.

On February 12, 1945, the War Department issued a straightfaced counterintelligence paper which said: “Not enough weight is given the many reports of the probable Nazi last stand in the Bavarian Alps…. The Nazi myth which is important when you are dealing with men like Hitler requires a Götterdämmerung. It may be significant that Berchtesgaden itself, which would be the headquarters, is on the site of the tomb of Barbarossa who, in German mythology, is supposed to return from the dead.”[24] The memo urged that field commanders “down to corps level” be alerted to the danger.

On February 16, Allied agents in Switzerland sent Washington a bizarre report obtained from neutral military attachés in Berlin: “The Nazis are undoubtedly preparing for a bitter fight from the mountain redoubt…. Strongpoints are connected by underground railroads… several months’ output of the best munitions have been reserved and almost all of Germany’s poison gas supplies. Everybody who participated in the construction of the secret installations will be killed off—including the civilians who happen to remain behind… when the real fighting starts.”

Although British intelligence agencies and the OSS both issued cautious statements intended to dampen the scare reports, over the next twenty-seven days the specter of the National Redoubt grew. By March 21, the threat had begun to influence tactical thinking. Headquarters of Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group put out a memorandum entitled “Re-Orientation of Strategy” in which it was stated that Allied objectives had changed, rendering “obsolete the plans we brought with us over the beaches.” One of the changes: the significance of Berlin was much diminished. “The metropolitan area can no longer occupy a position of importance,” the report read. “…all indications suggest that the enemy’s political and military directorate is already in the process of displacing to the ‘Redoubt’ in lower Bavaria.”

To meet the threat, instead of making a thrust in the north, Bradley suggested that his army group split Germany in two by driving through the center. This would “prevent German forces from withdrawing” toward the south and “into the Redoubt.” In addition it would drive the enemy “northwards where they can be rounded up against the shores of the Baltic and North Seas.” Later, suggested the memorandum, Twelfth Army Group forces would pivot south to reduce any remaining resistance in the Alpenfestung.

The most alarming analysis came on March 25 from the Intelligence Chief of Lieutenant General Patch’s Seventh Army, which was fighting along the southern wing of the front. It foresaw the possible creation in the redoubt of “an elite force, predominantly SS and mountain troops, of between 200,000 and 300,000 men.” Already, the report said, supplies were arriving in the redoubt area at the rate of “three to five very long trains… each week (since 1 Feb. 1945)…. A new type of gun has been reported observed on many of these trains….” There was even mention of an underground aircraft factory “capable of producing… Messerschmitts.”

Day after day the reports had flooded into SHAEF. No matter how the evidence was analyzed and re-analyzed, the picture remained the same: though the Alpenfestung might be a hoax, the possibility of its existence could not be ignored. It’s own concern was clearly indicated in a March 11 intelligence evaluation on the redoubt: “Theoretically… within this fortress… defended both by nature and the most efficient secret weapons yet invented, the powers that have hitherto guided Germany will survive to organize her resurrection…. The main trend of German defense policy does seem directed primarily to the safeguarding of the Alpine zone…. The evidence indicates that considerable numbers of SS and specially chosen units are being systematically withdrawn to Austria…. It seems reasonably certain that some of the most important ministries and personalities of the Nazi regime are already established in the redoubt area…. Goering, Himmler, Hitler… are said to be in the process of withdrawing to their respective personal mountain strongholds….”

SHAEF’s Intelligence Chief, British Major General Kenneth W. D. Strong, commented to the Chief of Staff: “The redoubt may not be there, but we have to take steps to prevent it being there.” Bedell Smith agreed. There was, in his opinion, “every reason to believe that the Nazis intend to make their last stand among the crags.”

As the considered views of the SHAEF staff and U.S. field commanders piled up in Eisenhower’s office, there arrived the most significant message of all. It came from the Supreme Commander’s superior, General Marshall, a man Eisenhower venerated almost above all others.[25]

“From the current operations report,” Marshall’s cable read, “it looks like the German defense system in the west may break up. This would permit you to move a considerable number of divisions rapidly eastwards on a broad front. What are your views on… pushing U.S. forces rapidly forward on, say, the Nuremberg-Linz or Karlsruhe-Munich axes? The idea behind this is that… rapid action might prevent the formation of any organized resistance areas. The mountainous country in the south is considered a possibility for one of these.

“One of the problems which arises with disintegrating German resistance is that of meeting the Russians. What are your ideas on control and coordination to prevent unfortunate instances…? One possibility is an agreed line of demarcation. The arrangements we now have… appear inadequate… steps should be initiated without delay to provide for communication and liaison…”

Marshall’s carefully worded message finally jelled the Supreme Commander’s plans. Having weighed all the problems, having consulted with his staff, having discussed the situation over the weeks with his old friend and West Point classmate, General Bradley, and, most important, having been acquainted with the views of his superior, Eisenhower now molded his strategy and made his decisions.

On this chill March afternoon he drafted three cables. The first was historic and unprecedented: it was sent to Moscow with a covering message to the Allied Military Mission. SHAEF’s operations, Eisenhower wired, had now reached a stage “where it is essential I should know the Russians’ plans in order to achieve the most rapid success.” Therefore, he wanted the Mission to “transmit a personal message from me to Marshal Stalin” and do everything possible “to assist in getting a full reply.”

Never before had the Supreme Commander communicated directly with the Soviet leader, but now the matter was urgent. He had been authorized to deal with the Russians directly on military matters pertaining to coordination, so Eisenhower saw no particular reason to consult beforehand with the Combined Chiefs of Staff nor with the U.S. or British governments. Indeed, not even the Deputy Supreme Commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, knew about it. Copies were prepared for them, however.

The Supreme Commander approved the draft of the Stalin cable shortly after three. At 4 P.M., after it had been encoded, Eisenhower’s “Personal Message to Marshal Stalin” was dispatched. In it the General asked the Generalissimo for his plans, and at the same time revealed his own. “My immediate operations,” he said, “are designed to encircle and destroy the enemy defending the Ruhr…. I estimate that this phase… will end late in April or even earlier, and my next task will be to divide the remaining enemy forces by joining hands with your forces…. The best axis on which to effect this junction would be Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden. I believe… this is the area to which main German Government Departments are being moved. It is along this axis that I propose to make my main effort. In addition, as soon as possible, a secondary advance will be made to effect junction with your forces in the area Regensburg-Linz, thereby preventing the consolidation of German resistance in the Redoubt in southern Germany.

“Before deciding firmly on my plans, it is most important that they should be coordinated… with yours both as to direction and timing. Could you… tell me your intentions and… how far the proposals outlined… conform to your probable action. If we are to complete the destruction of German armies without delay, I regard it as essential that we coordinate our action and… perfect the liaison between our advancing forces…”

Next he prepared cables for Marshall and Montgomery. These were dispatched at 7 P.M. and within five minutes of each other. Eisenhower told the U.S. Chief of Staff that he had communicated with Stalin “on the question of where we should aim to link up…” He then pointed out that “my views agree closely with your own, although I think that the Leipzig-Dresden area is of primary importance…” because it offered the “shortest route to present Russian positions” and also would “overrun the one remaining industrial area in Germany to which… the High Command Headquarters and Ministries are reported moving.”

Regarding Marshall’s fears of a “National Redoubt,” Eisenhower reported that he too was aware of the “importance of forestalling the possibilities of the enemy forming organized resistance areas” and would make “a drive towards Linz and Munich as soon as circumstances allowed.” Eisenhower added that as regards coordination with the Russians he did not think that “we can tie ourselves down to a demarcation line” but would approach them with the suggestion that “when our forces meet, either side will withdraw to its own occupational zone at the request of the opposite side.”

The third Eisenhower cable of the day, to Montgomery, contained disappointing news. “As soon as you have joined hands with Bradley… [east of the Ruhr]… the Ninth U.S. Army will revert to Bradley’s command,” the Supreme Commander said; “Bradley will be responsible for mopping up… the Ruhr and with the minimum delay will deliver his main thrust on the axis Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden to join hands with the Russians.…” Montgomery was to head for the Elbe; at that point it might be “desirable for the Ninth Army to revert to your operational control again to facilitate the crossing of that obstacle.” Eisenhower, after reading the draft, added one last line in pencil, “As you say, the situation looks good.”

The Supreme Commander had refined his plans to this extent: instead of making the major drive across northern Germany as originally considered, he had decided to strike directly across the center of the country. The U.S. Ninth Army had been returned to Bradley, who would now have the major role. He would launch the last offensive, aiming to put his forces in the Dresden area, about one hundred miles south of Berlin.

Although Eisenhower had accepted part of Marshall’s recommendations, his moves were similar to those suggested by General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group in its “Re-Orientation of Strategy” memorandum. But, in all three of Eisenhower’s cables on his campaign plans, there was one significant omission: the objective which the Supreme Commander had once referrred to as “clearly the main prize.” There was no mention of Berlin.

The battered Brandenburg Gate loomed large in the dusk. From his villa nearby, Dr. Joseph Goebbels stared out at the monument through the partly boarded-up windows of his study. Almost contemptuously, Hitler’s gnomelike propaganda chief had turned his back on his visitors—at least so it appeared to the man who was speaking, the Berlin Commandant, Major General Hellmuth Reymann. The General was trying to get a decision on the one matter that he considered of the utmost urgency: the fate of the city’s population on this eve of battle.

It was the fourth time within a month that Reymann and his Chief of Staff, Colonel Hans Refior, had met with Goebbels. Next to Hitler, the 47-year-old Goebbels was now the most important man in Berlin. He was not only Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda; he was also Gauleiter of Berlin. As such he was a Reich Defense Commissioner, responsible for all measures regarding the city’s civilian population, the organization and training of Home Guard units and the construction of fortifications. At a time when the absence of any clearly defined division of authority between the military and civilian agencies was creating trouble for soldiers and civil leaders alike, Goebbels had added to the confusion. Though he was totally ignorant of military or municipal matters, he had made it quite clear that he alone was assuming responsibility for defending Berlin. As a result, Reymann found himself in an impossible position. From whom was he to take his orders—from Hitler’s military headquarters or from Goebbels? He was not sure, and no one seemed eager to clarify the command position. Reymann was desperate.

At each of the previous meetings Reymann had raised the issue of evacuation. At first Goebbels said that it “was out of the question.” Then he informed the General that a scheme did exist, prepared by “higher SS authorities and the police.” Reymann’s Chief of Staff had promptly investigated. Refior had indeed found a plan. “It consists,” he told Reymann, “of a map, scale 1 to 300,000, on which the responsible official, a police captain, has neatly marked evacuation routes running out of Berlin to the west and south with red ink.” There were, he reported, “no sanitation stations, no food points, no transportation for the sick or weak.” He added that, “as far as I can see, the plan calls for evacuees to set out along these roads with only hand luggage, march 20 to 30 kilometers to entraining stations where they will be transported to Thüringen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg. All this is supposed to take place when Goebbels presses a button. But exactly where the rail transport is to come from has not been made clear.”

Reymann tried to discuss the matter with Hitler. He had seen him only twice: on assuming command and a few days later when he was invited to attend one of the Führer’s nightly conferences. At that meeting the discussion was mostly about the Oder front and Reymann did not get an opportunity of explaining the situation in Berlin. But at one point during a lull in the proceedings, he spoke to Hitler and urged that he immediately order the evacuation of all children under ten from the capital. In the sudden silence that followed Reymann’s suggestion, Hitler turned toward him and asked icily, “What do you mean? What exactly do you mean?” Then, slowly, emphasizing each word, he said, “There are no children in that age group left in Berlin!” No one had dared contradict him. Hitler quickly passed on to other matters.

The rebuff did not deter the Berlin Commandant. Reymann now pressed Goebbels on the same subject. “Herr Reichsminister,” he said, “how will we support the population in the event of a siege? How will we feed them? Where is the food to come from? According to the mayor’s statistics there are 110,000 children under ten with their mothers in the city right now. How are we to provide babies with milk?”

Reymann paused, waiting for an answer. Goebbels continued to stare out the window. Then, without turning, he snapped: “How will we feed them? We’ll bring livestock in from the surrounding countryside—that’s how we’ll feed them! As for the children, we have a three months’ supply of canned milk.” The canned milk was news to Reymann and Refior. The livestock proposal seemed madness. In a battle cows would prove more vulnerable than human beings, who could at least take shelter. Where did Goebbels plan to herd the animals? And what would they feed on? Reymann spoke up earnestly: “Surely we must consider an immediate evacuation plan. We cannot wait any longer. Each day that passes will multiply the difficulties later on. We must at least move out the women and children now—before it’s too late.”

Goebbels did not answer. There was a long silence. Outside it was growing dark. Suddenly he reached up, grabbed a cord by the window, and yanked it. The blackout curtains closed with a rattle. Goebbels turned. Club-footed from birth, he limped across to his desk, snapped on the light, looked at the watch lying on the blotting pad and then at Reymann. “My dear General,” he said mildly, “when and if an evacuation becomes necessary I will be the one to make the decision.” Then he snarled: “But I don’t intend to throw Berlin into panic by ordering it now! There’s plenty of time! Plenty of time!” He dismissed them. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

As Reymann and Refior left the building, they paused for a moment on the steps. General Reymann gazed out over the city. Although the sirens had not sounded, in the far distance searchlights had begun fingering the night sky. As Reymann slowly pulled on his gloves he said to Refior: “We are faced with a task that we cannot solve; that has no chance of success. I can only hope that some miracle happens to change our fortunes, or that the war ends before Berlin comes under siege.” He looked at his Chief of Staff. “Otherwise,” he added, “God help the Berliners.”

A short while later, at his command post on the Hohenzollerndamm, Reymann received a call from the OKH (Army High Command). Besides the Supreme Commander, Hitler and the Berlin Gauleiter, Goebbels, Reymann now learned that he was subordinated to yet another authority. Arrangements were being made, he was told, for the Berlin Defense Area to come eventually under the direction of the Army Group Vistula and its commander, Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici. Reymann felt the first stirrings of hope at reading Heinrici’s name. He directed Refior to brief the Army Group Vistula staff at the earliest opportunity. There was only one thing that worried him. He wondered how Heinrici would feel about taking Berlin under his wing while at the same time preparing to hold the Russians on the Oder. Reymann knew Heinrici well. He could imagine the Giftzwergs reaction when he heard the news.

“It’s absurd!” growled Heinrici. “Absurd!”

Army Group Vistula’s new Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Eberhard Kinzel, and its Operations Chief, Colonel Hans Eismann, looked at each other and remained silent. There was nothing to say. “Absurd” seemed an understatement. The proposal to attach the Berlin Defense Area to Heinrici’s hard-pressed command at this particular moment seemed impossible to both officers. Neither could see how Heinrici was supposed to direct or even oversee Reymann’s defense operations. Distance alone made the plan impractical; Vistula’s headquarters was more than fifty miles from Berlin. And it was clear that whoever had suggested the idea appeared to know very little about the staggering problems facing Heinrici.

Earlier in the evening, operations department officers of OKH (Army High Command) had carefully presented the Berlin defense proposal to Kinzel. The idea was put forth tentatively—almost as a suggestion. Now, as Heinrici paced his office, the mud of the front still on his old-fashioned leggings, he made it plain to his subordinates that so far as he was concerned the plan would remain just that—a suggestion. Army Group Vistula had one task: to stop the Russians on the Oder. “Unless I’m forced,” said Heinrici, “I do not intend to accept responsibility for Berlin.”

That did not mean he was unaware of the plight of the city’s people. Indeed, the fate of Berlin’s population of almost three million was often in Heinrici’s thoughts. He was haunted by the possibility of Berlin’s becoming a battlefield; he knew better than most what happened to civilians caught in the fury of artillery fire and street fighting. He believed that the Russians were merciless, and in the heat of battle he did not expect them to discriminate between soldiers and civilians. Nevertheless, at this moment it was unthinkable that he should be expected to take on the problem of Berlin and its civilian population. The Army Group Vistula was the sole barrier between Berlin and the Russians, and as always Heinrici’s main concern was with his soldiers. The crusty, belligerent Giftzwerg was furious at Hitler and the Chief of OKH, Guderian, for what seemed to him the deliberate sacrifice of his soldiers’ lives.

Turning to Kinzel, he said: “Get me Guderian.”

Since assuming command a week before, Heinrici had been constantly at the front. Tirelessly he had traveled from headquarters to headquarters, mapping out strategy with division commanders, visiting front-line troops in their dugouts and bunkers. He had quickly discovered that his suspicions were well founded: his forces were armies in name only. He was appalled to find that most units had been fattened with splinter troops and the remnants of once-proud divisions long since destroyed. Among his forces Heinrici even found non-German units. There were the “Nordland” and “Nederland” divisions composed of pro-Nazi Norwegian and Dutch volunteers, and a formation of former Russian prisoners of war under the leadership of the erstwhile defender of Kiev, a distinguished soldier named Lieutenant General Andrei A. Vlasov. After his surrender in 1942 he had been persuaded to organize a pro-German anti-Stalinist Russian army. Vlasov’s troops worried Heinrici : it seemed to him that they were likely to desert at the slightest opportunity. Some of Heinrici’s panzer forces were in good shape, and he was depending greatly on them. But the overall picture was bleak. Intelligence reports indicated that the Russians might have as many as three million men. Between Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army in the north and Busse’s Ninth Army in the southern sector, Heinrici had a total of about four hundred eighty-two thousand, and there were almost no reserves.

Besides being desperately short of combat-tested troops, Heinrici was handicapped by acute shortages of equipment and supplies. He needed tanks, motorized guns, communications equipment, artillery, gasoline, ammunition, even rifles. So short were supplies that Colonel Eismann, the Operations officer, discovered that some replacements had arrived at the front with bazooka-like anti-tank weapons instead of rifles—and only one rocket-projectile apiece for the weapons.

“It’s madness!” Eismann told Heinrici. “How are these men supposed to fight after they fire their one round? What does OKH expect them to do—use their empty weapons like billy clubs? It’s mass murder.” Heinrici agreed. “OKH expects the men to wait for what fate may bring them. I do not.” By every means in his power Heinrici was trying to rectify his equipment and supply situation, even though some commodities had all but disappeared.

His greatest lack was artillery. The Russians were beginning to construct bridges across the Oder and its marshy approaches. In some places the flood-swollen river was more than two miles wide. Special naval forces attached to Heinrici’s command had floated mines down the river to destroy the pontoons, but the Russians had promptly countered by erecting protective nets. Bombing the bridge construction from the air was out of the question. Luftwaffe officials had informed Heinrici that they had neither the aircraft nor the gasoline for the job. The most they could provide was single planes for reconnaissance missions. There was only one way left to stop the Russians’ feverish bridge building: artillery. And Heinrici had precious little of that.

To make up for this crippling shortage he had ordered anti-aircraft guns to be used as field pieces. Although it meant less protection from Russian air attacks, Heinrici reasoned that the guns would be used to better advantage in the field. And, indeed, the move had alleviated the situation. From the Stettin area alone, Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army acquired 600 flak guns. Each had to be set in concrete; for they were too large and unwieldy to be mounted on vehicles, but they were helping to fill out the gaps. Yet, though they stood menacingly in place, they fired only when absolutely necessary. The lack of ammunition was so severe that Heinrici was determined to husband what little he had for the opening of the Red Army’s onslaught. Still, as he told his staff, “While we do not have enough guns or ammunition to stop the Russians’ building, at least we’re slowing them up.” Colonel Eismann viewed the situation more pessimistically. “The Army Group could be compared to a rabbit,” he later recalled, “watching spellbound a snake which wants to devour him. He can’t move a muscle, but waits for the moment when the snake will strike in a lightning-fast manner… . General Heinrici did not want to admit the fact that the Army Group could not take any more meaningful measures on the basis of its own strength.”

Yet in just one week of command, Heinrici had bulldozed his way through scores of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Like the Heinrici of Moscow he had cajoled and goaded his troops, growled at and praised them in an effort to give them a fighting morale that would gain him time and help save their lives. Whatever his private feelings, to his officers and men he was the unintimidated, unbreakable Heinrici of legend. And true to character he was still fighting the “madness and bad judgment” of the higher command.

Right now his fiery temper was directed at Hitler and the Chief of OKH, Guderian. On March 23 General Busse’s Ninth Army had attacked twice in a desperate effort to break through to the isolated defenders of Küstrin, the city the Russians had encircled the day Heinrici had assumed command from Himmler. Heinrici had agreed to Busse’s tactics. He felt they offered the only chance to free the city before the Russians consolidated their positions. But the Russians were much too strong; both attacks proved disastrous.

Heinrici, reporting the outcome to Guderian, was told bluntly: “There must be another attack.” Hitler wanted it; so did Guderian. “It’s crazy,” Heinrici replied stiffly. “I would suggest that the panzer units in Küstrin receive orders to break out. It’s the only sensible thing left to do.” Guderian flared at the proposal. “The attack must be mounted,” he had shouted. On March 27 Busse had once again thrown his troops at Küstrin. So ferocious was the attack that some of his panzer forces actually did break through to the city. But then the Russians smashed the German drive with artillery fire. At staff headquarters, Heinrici minced no words. “The attack,” he said, “is a massacre. The Ninth Army has suffered incredible losses for absolutely nothing.”

Even now, the day after, his anger had not abated. As he waited for his call to Guderian, he paced his office muttering over and over the one word, “Fiasco!” Regardless of what might happen to him personally, when Guderian came on the phone Heinrici intended to charge his superior with the bloody massacre of eight thousand men—nearly a division had been lost in the Küstrin attack.

The phone rang and Kinzel answered. “It’s Zossen,” he told Heinrici.

The smooth voice of Lieutenant General Hans Krebs, OKH Chief of Staff, was not what Heinrici expected. “I meant to talk to Guderian,” he said. Krebs began speaking again. Heinrici’s face hardened as he listened. The staff officers watching him wondered what was happening. “When?” asked Heinrici. He listened again, then abruptly said, “Thank you,” and put down the phone. Turning to Kinzel and Eismann, Heinrici said quietly, “Guderian is no longer Chief of OKH. Hitler relieved him of command this afternoon.” To his astonished staff Heinrici added, “Krebs says that Guderian is sick, but that he doesn’t really know what happened.” Heinrici’s rage had completely evaporated. He made only one further observation. “It’s not like Guderian,” he said thoughtfully. “He didn’t even say good-bye.”

It was late that night before Heinrici’s staff was able to piece the story together. Guderian’s dismissal had followed one of the wildest scenes ever witnessed in the Reichskanzlei. Hitler’s midday conference had begun quietly enough but there were undertones of barely repressed hostility. Guderian had written the Führer a memorandum explaining why the Küstrin attack had failed. Hitler disliked not only the tone Guderian adopted but also Guderian’s defense of the Ninth Army and of General Busse in particular. The Führer had settled on Busse as the scapegoat and had ordered him to attend the meeting and make a full report.

As usual Hitler’s top military advisors were in attendance. In addition to Guderian and Busse there were Hitler’s Chief of Staff, Keitel; his Operations Chief, Jodl; the Führer’s adjutant, Burgdorf; several other senior officers and various aides. For several minutes Hitler listened to a general briefing on the current situation, then Busse was invited to give his report. He began by briefly outlining how the attack was launched and the forces that were employed. Hitler began to show annoyance. Suddenly he interrupted. “Why did the attack fail?” he yelled. Without pausing, he answered his own question. “Because of incompetence! Because of negligence!” He heaped abuse on Busse, Guderian and the entire High Command. They were all “incompetent.” The Küstrin attack was launched, he ranted, “without sufficient artillery preparation!” Then he turned on Guderian: “If Busse didn’t have enough ammunition as you claim—why didn’t you get him more?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Guderian began to speak quietly. “I have already explained to you…” Hitler, waving his arm, cut him off. “Explanations! Excuses! That’s all you give me!” he shouted. “Well! Then you tell me who let us down at Küstrin— the troops or Busse?” Guderian suddenly boiled. “Nonsense!” he spluttered. “This is nonsense!” He almost spat the words out. Furious, his face reddening, he launched into a tirade. “Busse is not to blame!” he bellowed. “I’ve told you that! He followed orders! Busse used all the ammunition that was available to him! All that he had!” Guderian’s anger was monumental. He struggled for words. “To say that the troops are to blame—look at the casualties!” he raged. “Look at the losses! The troops did their duty! Their self-sacrifice proves it!”

Hitler yelled back. “They failed!” he raged. “They failed.”

Guderian, his face purpling, roared at the top of his voice: “I must ask you… I must ask you not to level any further accusations at Busse or his troops!”

Both men were beyond reasonable discussion, but they did not stop. Facing each other, Guderian and Hitler engaged in such a furious and terrifying exchange that officers and aides stood frozen in shock. Hitler, lashing out at the General Staff, called them all “spineless,” “fools” and “fatheads.” He ranted that they had constantly “misled,” “misinformed” and “tricked” him. Guderian challenged the Führer on his use of the words “misinformed” and “misled.” Had General Gehlen in his intelligence estimate “misinformed” about the strength of the Russians? “No!” roared Guderian. “Gehlen is a fool!” Hitler retorted. What of the surrounded eighteen divisions still in the Baltic States, in Courland? “Who,” barked Guderian, “has misled you about them? Exactly when,” he demanded of the Führer, “do you intend to evacuate the Courland army?”

So loud and violent was the encounter that afterward no one could remember exactly the sequence of the quarrel.[26] Even Busse, the innocent perpetrator of the argument, was unable to tell Heinrici later what had transpired in any detail. “We were almost paralyzed,” he said. “We couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Jodl was the first to snap into action. He grabbed the yelling Guderian by the arm. “Please! Please,” he implored, “calm down.” He pulled Guderian to one side. Keitel and Burgdorf began ministering to Hitler who had slumped, exhausted, into a chair. Guderian’s horrified aide, Major Freytag von Loringhoven, certain that his chief would be arrested if he did not get him immediately out of the room, ran outside and called Krebs, the Chief of Staff, at Zossen and told him what was happening. Von Loringhoven implored Krebs to speak to Guderian on the phone, on the pretense that there was urgent news from the front and to hold him in conversation until the General calmed down. With difficulty, Guderian was persuaded to leave the room. Krebs, a past master at the art of manipulating information to suit the occasion, had no trouble in claiming Guderian’s undivided attention for more than fifteen minutes—and by that time the Chief of the Army High Command was in control of his emotions again.

During the interval the Führer had calmed down, too. When Guderian returned, Hitler was conducting the conference as though nothing had happened. Seeing him enter, the Führer ordered everyone out of the room except Keitel and Guderian. Then he said, coldly, “Colonel General Guderian, your physical health requires that you immediately take six weeks’ convalescent leave.” His voice betraying no emotion, Guderian said, “I’ll go.” But Hitler was not quite finished. “Please wait until the conference is over,” he ordered. It was several hours before the meeting broke up. By that time, Hitler was almost solicitous. “Please do your best to get your health back,” he said. “In six weeks the situation will be very critical. Then I shall need you urgently. Where do you think you will go?” Keitel wanted to know, too. Suspicious at their sudden concern, Guderian prudently decided not to tell them his plans. Excusing himself, he left the Reichskanzlei. Guderian was out. The innovator of the panzer techniques, the last of Hitler’s big-name generals was gone; with him went the last vestiges of sound judgment in the German High Command.

By 6 A.M. the following morning, Thursday, March 29, Heinrici had good reason to feel Guderian’s loss. He had just been handed a teletyped message informing him that Hitler had appointed Krebs as Chief of the OKH. Krebs was a smooth-talking man who was a fanatical supporter of Hitler; he was widely and cordially disliked. Among the Vistula staff, the news of his appointment, following so closely that of Guderian’s departure, produced an atmosphere of gloom. The Operations Chief, Colonel Eismann, summed up the prevailing attitude. As he was later to record: “This man, with his eternally friendly smile, reminded me somehow of a fawn… it was clear what we could expect. Krebs had only to spout out a few confident phrases—and the situation was rosy again. Hitler would get much better support from him than from Guderian.”

Heinrici made no comment on the appointment. Guderian’s spirited defense of Busse had saved that commander and there would be no more suicidal attacks against Küstrin. For that Heinrici was grateful to a man with whom he had often disagreed. He would miss Guderian, for he knew Krebs of old and expected little support from him. There would be no outspoken Guderian to back up Heinrici when he saw Hitler to discuss the problems of the Oder front. He was to see the Führer for a full-dress conference on Friday, April 6.

The car pulled up outside Vistula’s main headquarters building a little after 9 A.M., on March 29, and the broad-shouldered, sixfoot Berlin Chief of Staff bounded out. The energetic Colonel Hans “Teddy” Refior was looking forward enthusiastically to his meeting with Heinrici’s Chief of Staff, General Kinzel. He had high hopes that the conference would go well; coming under Heinrici’s command would be the best thing that could happen to the Berlin Defense Area. Lugging maps and charts for his presentation, the husky 39-year-old Refior entered the building. Small though the Berlin garrison was, Refior believed, as he later wrote in his diary, that Heinrici “would be delighted at this increase in his forces.”

He had his first moments of doubt on meeting the Chief of Staff. Kinzel’s greeting was restrained, though not unfriendly. Refior had hoped that his old classmate Colonel Eismann would be present—they had gone over the Berlin situation together a few weeks before—but Kinzel received him alone. The Vistula Chief of Staff seemed harassed, his manner bordering on impatience. Taking his cue from Kinzel, Refior opened his maps and charts and quickly began the briefing. The lack of a major authority to direct Reymann had produced an almost impossible situation for the Berlin command, he explained. “When we asked the OKH if we came under them,” he elaborated, “we were told ‘the OKH is responsible only for the eastern front. You people come under the OKW [Armed Forces High Command].’ So we went to OKW. They said, ‘Why come to us? Berlin’s front faces east—you are the responsibility of OKH.’” As Refior talked, Kinzel examined the maps and disposition of the Berlin forces. Suddenly Kinzel looked up at Refior and quietly told him of Heinrici’s decision of the night before not to accept responsibility for the city’s defense. Then, as Refior later recorded, Kinzel spoke briefly of Hitler, Goebbels and the other bureaucrats. “As far as I am personally concerned,” he said, “those madmen in Berlin can fry in their own juice.”

On the drive back to Berlin, Refior, his buoyant enthusiasm shattered, realized for the first time what it meant to be “a rejected orphan.” He loved Berlin. He had attended the War Academy, married and raised his two children—a boy and girl—in the capital. Now, it seemed to him that he was working in ever-increasing loneliness to defend the city in which he had spent the happiest years of his life. No one in the chain of command was prepared to make what Refior saw as the gravest of all decisions: the responsibility for the defense and preservation of Berlin.

All that was left to do was to put the few possessions on his desk into a small case. He had said good-bye to his staff, briefed his successor, Krebs, and now Colonel General Heinz Guderian was ready to leave his Zossen headquarters, his eventual destination a well-guarded secret. First, however, he intended to go with his wife to a sanatorium near Munich where Guderian could get treatment for his ailing heart. Afterward he planned to head for the only peaceful place left in Germany: Southern Bavaria. The only activities in that region centered around army hospitals and convalescent homes, retired or dismissed generals and evacuated government officials and their departments. The General had chosen carefully. He would sit out the war in the unwarlike climate of the Bavarian Alps. As former Chief of the OKH, Guderian knew that absolutely nothing was happening down there.

2

IT WAS Good Friday, March 30, the beginning of the Easter weekend. In Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt had arrived for a stay at the Little White House; near the railroad station crowds stood in the hot sun waiting, as always, to greet him. At the first appearance of the President a murmur of surprise swept the onlookers. He was being carried from the train in the arms of a Secret Service man, almost inert, his body sagging. There was no jaunty wave, no good-humored joke shared with the crowd. To many, Roosevelt seemed almost comatose, only vaguely aware of what was happening. Shocked and apprehensive, the people watched in silence as the Presidential limousine moved slowly away.

In Moscow the weather was unseasonably mild. From his second-floor apartment in the embassy building on Mokhavaya Street, Major General John R. Deane gazed out across the square at the green Byzantine domes and minarets of the Kremlin. Deane, the Chief of the U.S. Military Mission, and his British counterpart, Admiral Ernest R. Archer, were awaiting confirmation from their respective ambassadors, W. Averell Harriman and Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, that a meeting with Stalin had been arranged. At that conference they would deliver to Stalin “SCAF 252,” the cable which had arrived from General Eisenhower the day before (and which the ailing U.S. President had not seen).

In London Winston Churchill, cigar jutting from his mouth, waved to onlookers outside No. 10 Downing Street. He was preparing to leave by car for Chequers, the 700-acre official residence of British Prime Ministers in Buckinghamshire. Despite his cheerful appearance, Churchill was both worried and angry. Among his papers was a copy of the Supreme Commander’s cable to Stalin. For the first time in almost three years of close cooperation, the Prime Minister was furious with Eisenhower.

British reaction to Eisenhower’s cable had been mounting for more than twenty-four hours. The British had been bewildered at first, then shocked, and finally angered. Like the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington, London had learned of the message at second hand—through copies passed along “for information.” Not even the British Deputy Supreme Commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, had known of the cable beforehand; London had heard nothing from him. Churchill himself was caught completely off balance. Remembering Montgomery’s signal of March 27 announcing his drive to the Elbe and “thence by autobahn to Berlin, I hope,” the Prime Minister whipped off an anxious note to his Chief of Staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay. Eisenhower’s message to Stalin, he wrote, “seems to differ from Montgomery who spoke of Elbe. Please explain.” For the moment Ismay could not.

At that point Montgomery gave his superiors another surprise. The powerful U.S. Ninth Army, he reported to Field Marshal Brooke, was to be switched back from his command to General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group, which would then make the central thrust to Leipzig and Dresden. “I consider we are about to make a terrible mistake,” Montgomery said.

Once again the British were incensed. In the first place, such information should have come from Eisenhower, not Montgomery. But worse, the Supreme Commander seemed to London to be taking too much into his own hands. In the British view he had not only stepped far beyond his authority by dealing directly with Stalin, but he had also changed longstanding plans without warning. Instead of attacking across Germany’s northern plains with Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army Group, which had been specially built up for the offensive, Eisenhower had suddenly tapped Bradley to make the last drive of the war through the heart of the Reich. Brooke bitterly summed up the British attitude: “To start with, Eisenhower has no business to address Stalin direct, his communications should be through the Combined Chiefs of Staff; secondly, he produced a telegram which was unintelligible; and finally, what was implied in it appeared to be adrift and a change from all that had been agreed on.” On the afternoon of March 29, an irate Brooke, without consulting Churchill, fired off a sharp protest to Washington. A bitter and vitriolic debate was slowly building up about SCAF 252.

At about the same time, General Deane in Moscow, having taken the first steps to arrange a meeting with Stalin, sent an urgent cable to Eisenhower. Deane wanted “some additional background information in case [Stalin] wishes to discuss your plans in more detail.” After months of frustrating dealings with the Russians, Deane knew full well what the Generalissimo would ask for, and he spelled it all out for Eisenhower: “1) The present composition of Armies; 2) A little more detail on the scheme of maneuver; 3) Which Army or Armies you envisage making the main and secondary advances…; 4) Brief current estimate of enemy dispositions and intentions.” SHAEF quickly complied. At eight-fifteen that night the intelligence was on its way to Moscow. Deane got the composition of the Anglo-American armies and their order of battle from north to south. So detailed was the information that it even included the fact that the U.S. Ninth Army was to revert back from Montgomery to Bradley.

Fifty-one minutes later SHAEF heard from Montgomery. He was understandably distressed. With the loss of Simpson’s Army the strength of his drive was sapped and his chance of triumphantly capturing Berlin seemed gone. But he still hoped to persuade Eisenhower to delay the transfer. He sent an unusually tactful message. “I note,” he said, “that you intend to change the command set up. If you feel this is necessary I pray you not to do so until we reach the Elbe as such action would not help the great movement which is now beginning to develop.”

Montgomery’s British superiors were in no mood to be tactful, as Washington officials quickly discovered. At the Pentagon Brooke’s protest was formally delivered to General Marshall by the British representative to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson. The British note condemned the procedure Eisenhower had adopted in communicating with Stalin and charged that the Supreme Commander had changed plans. Marshall, both surprised and concerned, promptly radioed Eisenhower. His message was mainly a straightforward report on the British protest. It argued, he said, that existing strategy should be followed—that Montgomery’s northern drive would secure the German ports and thereby “to a great extent annul the U-boat war,” and that it would also free Holland, Denmark and open up communications with Sweden again, making available “nearly two million tons of Swedish and Norwegian shipping now lying idle in Swedish ports.” The British Chiefs, Marshall quoted, “feel strongly that the main thrust… across the open plains of N.W. Germany with the object of capturing Berlin should be adhered to…”

To fend off Eisenhower’s British critics and to patch up Anglo-American unity as quickly as possible, Marshall was prepared to give latitude and understanding to both sides. Yet his own puzzlement and annoyance with the Supreme Commander’s actions showed through the last paragraph of his message: “Prior to your dispatch of SCAF 252 had the naval aspects of the British been considered?” He ended with: “Your comments are requested as a matter of urgency.”

One man above all others felt urgency—and, indeed, impending chaos—in the situation. Winston Churchill’s anxiety had been mounting almost hourly. The Eisenhower incident had arisen at a moment when relations among the three allies were not going well. It was a critical period, and Churchill felt very much alone. He did not know how ill Roosevelt was, but for some time previous he had been puzzled and uneasy about his correspondence with the President. As he was later to put it: “In my long telegrams I thought I was talking to my trusted friend and colleague… [but] I was no longer being fully heard by him… various hands drafted in combination the answers which were sent in his name… Roosevelt could only give general guidance and approval… these were costly weeks for all.”

Even more worrisome was the rapid political deterioration that was evident between the West and Russia. Churchill’s suspicions about Stalin’s post-war aims had grown steadily since Yalta. The Soviet Premier had contemptuously disregarded the promises made there; nearly every day now, new and ominous trends appeared. Eastern Europe was slowly being swallowed up by the U.S.S.R.; Anglo-American bombers, downed behind Red Army lines because of fuel or mechanical problems, were being interned along with their crews; air bases and facilities promised by Stalin for the use of American bombers had been suddenly denied; the Russians, granted free access to liberated prisoner-of-war camps in western Germany for the repatriation of their troops, refused similar permission to Western representatives to enter, evacuate or in any way aid Anglo-American soldiers in eastern European camps. Worse, Stalin had charged that “Soviet ex-prisoners of war in U.S. camps… were subjected to unfair treatment and unlawful persecution, including beating.” When the Germans in Italy tried to negotiate secretly the surrender of their forces, Russian reaction was to fire off an insulting note accusing the Allies of treacherously dealing with the enemy “behind the back of the Soviet Union, which is bearing the brunt of the war…”[27]

And now had come the Eisenhower message to Stalin. At a time when the choice of military objectives might well determine the future of post-war Europe, Churchill considered that Eisenhower’s communication with the Soviet dictator constituted a dangerous intervention into global and political strategy—realms that were strictly the concern of Roosevelt and the Prime Minister. To Churchill, Berlin was of crucial political importance and it now looked as though Eisenhower did not intend to make an all-out effort to capture the city.

Before midnight on March 29 Churchill had called Eisenhower on the scrambler telephone and asked for a clarification of the Supreme Commander’s plans. The Prime Minister carefully avoided mentioning the Stalin cable. Instead he stressed the political significance of Berlin and argued that Montgomery should be allowed to continue the northern offensive. It was of paramount importance, Churchill felt, that the Allies capture the capital before the Russians. Now, on this March 30, as he began the 60-odd-mile drive to Chequers, he pondered Eisenhower’s answer with profound concern. “Berlin,” the Supreme Commander had said, “is no longer a major military objective.”

In Reims, Dwight Eisenhower’s temper was mounting in pace with the British protests. The London reaction to the curbing of Montgomery’s northern drive had surprised him by its vehemence, but more astonishing to Eisenhower was the storm raging over his cable to Stalin. He could see no reason for any controversy. He believed his action was both correct and militarily essential, and he was incensed to find his decision challenged. Short-tempered at best, Eisenhower was now the angriest Allied leader of all.

On the morning of March 30 he began to respond to the messages from Washington and London. His first move was to send a brief acknowledgment of Marshall’s overnight cable. He promised a more detailed answer within a few hours, but for the moment simply stated that he had not changed plans, and that the British charge “has no possible basis in fact…. My plan will get the ports and all the other things on the north coast more speedily and decisively than will the dispersion now urged upon me by Wilson’s message to you.”

Next, in reply to the Prime Minister’s nighttime telephone request, he sent Churchill additional details clarifying the orders which had been issued Montgomery. “Subject to Russian intentions” a central drive to Leipzig and Dresden under Bradley’s command seemed called for because it would cut the German armies “approximately in half “ and destroy the major part of the remaining enemy forces in the West.” Once its success was assured, Eisenhower intended “to take action to clear the northern ports.” Montgomery, said the Supreme Commander, would be “responsible for these tasks, and I propose to increase his forces if that should seem necessary.” Once “the above requirements have been met,” Eisenhower planned to send General Devers and his Sixth Army Group southeast toward the Redoubt area “to prevent any possible German consolidation in the south, and to join hands with the Russians in the Danube valley.” The Supreme Commander closed by remarking that his present plans were “flexible and subject to changes to meet unexpected situations.” Berlin was not mentioned.

Eisenhower’s message to the Prime Minister was restrained and correct; it did not reflect his anger. But his fury was clearly evident in the detailed cable he sent, as promised earlier, to Marshall. Eisenhower told the U.S. Chief of Staff that he was “completely in the dark as to what the protest concerning ‘procedure’ involved. I have been instructed to deal directly with the Russians concerning military coordination.” As for his strategy, Eisenhower insisted again that there was no change. “The British Chiefs of Staff last summer,” he said, “always protested against my determination to open up the [central]… route because they said it would be futile and… draw strength away from a northern attack. I have always insisted that the northern attack would be the principal effort in… the isolation of the Ruhr, but from the very beginning, extending back before D-Day, my plan… has been to link up… primary and secondary efforts… and then make one great thrust to the eastward. Even cursory examination… shows that the principal effort should… be toward the Leipzig region, in which area is concentrated the greater part of the remaining German industrial capacity and to which area German ministries are believed to be moving.”

Harking back to the old Montgomery-Brooke agitation for a single-thrust strategy, Eisenhower said: “Merely following the principle that Field Marshal Brooke has always shouted to me, I am determined to concentrate on one major thrust and all that my plan does is to place the Ninth U.S. Army back under Bradley for that phase of operations involving the advance of the center… the plan clearly shows that Ninth Army may again have to move up to assist the British and Canadian armies in clearing the whole coastline to the westward of Lübeck.” Afterward, “we can launch a movement to the southeastward to prevent Nazi occupation of the mountain citadel.”

The National Redoubt, which Eisenhower called “the mountain citadel,” was now clearly a major military goal—of more concern, in fact, than Berlin. “May I point out,” the Supreme Commander said, “that Berlin itself is no longer a particularly important objective. Its usefulness to the German has been largely destroyed and even his government is preparing to move to another area. What is now important is to gather up our forces for a single drive, and this will more quickly bring about the fall of Berlin, the relief of Norway and the acquisition of the shipping and the Swedish ports than will the scattering around of our effort.”

By the time Eisenhower reached the final paragraph of his message his anger at the British was barely contained. “The Prime Minister and his Chiefs of Staff,” he declared, “opposed ‘Anvil’ [the invasion of Southern France]; they opposed my idea that the German should be destroyed west of the Rhine before we made our great effort across the river; and they insisted that the route leading northeastward from Frankfurt would involve us merely in slow, rough-country fighting. Now they apparently want me to turn aside on operations in which would be involved many thousands of troops before the German forces are fully defeated. I submit that these things are studied daily and hourly by me and my advisors and that we are animated by one single thought which is the early winning of this war.”[28]

In Washington, later that day, General Marshall and the Combined Chiefs of Staff received an amplification of the British Chiefs of Staff protest of the day before. For the most part the second telegram was a lengthy reiteration of the first, but there were two important additions. In the interim the British had learned from Admiral Archer in Moscow of the supplementary intelligence forwarded from SHAEF to Deane. The British strongly urged that this information be withheld from the Russians. In the event that discussions had already begun, London wanted the talks suspended until the Combined Chiefs of Staff had reviewed the situation.

But by now the British were beginning to disagree among themselves—not just over the propriety of the Eisenhower message, but over which parts of it should be attacked. The British Chiefs of Staff had neglected to show Churchill their protests before sending them off to Washington. And Churchill’s objections differed from those of his military advisors. To him, the “main criticism of the new Eisenhower plan is that it shifts the axis of the main advance upon Berlin to the direction through Leipzig and Dresden.” As the Prime Minister saw it, under this plan British forces “might be condemned to an almost static role in the North.” Worse, “all prospect also of the British entering Berlin with the Americans is ruled out.”

Berlin, as always now, was uppermost in the Prime Minister’s thoughts. It seemed to him that Eisenhower “may be wrong in supposing Berlin to be largely devoid of military or political importance.” Although government departments had “to a great extent oved to the south, the dominating fact on German minds of the fall of Berlin should not be overlooked.” He was haunted by the danger involved in “neglecting Berlin and leaving it to the Russians.” He declared: “As long as Berlin holds out and withstands a siege in the ruins as it may easily do, German resistance will be stimulated. The fall of Berlin might cause nearly all Germans to despair.”

While agreeing in principle with the arguments of his Chiefs of Staff, Churchill felt they had brought into their objections “many minor extraneous matters.” He pointed out that “Elsenhower’s credit with the U.S. Chiefs of Staff stands very high… the Americans will feel that, as the victorious Supreme Commander, he had a right, and indeed a vital need, to try to elicit from the Russians… the best point for making contact by the armies of the West and of the East.” The British protest, Churchill feared, would only provide “argumentative possibilities… to the U.S. Chiefs of Staff.” He expected them to “riposte heavily.” And they did.

On Saturday, March 31, the American military chiefs gave Eisenhower their unqualified support. They agreed with the British on only two points: that Eisenhower should amplify his plans for the Combined Chiefs of Staff and that additional details to Deane should be held up. In the view of the U.S. Chiefs, “the battle of Germany is now at the point where the Commander in the Field is the best judge of the measures which offer the earliest prospect of destroying the German armies or their power to resist.… General Eisenhower should continue to be free to communicate with the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Army.” To the American military leaders there was only one aim, and it did not include political considerations. “The single objective,” they said, “should be quick and complete victory.”

Still, the controversy was far from over. In Reims, a harassed Eisenhower was still explaining and re-explaining his position. During the day, following Marshall’s instructions, Eisenhower sent the Combined Chiefs of Staff a long and detailed exposition of his plans. Next, he cabled Moscow and ordered Deane to withhold from Stalin the additional information sent from SHAEF. After that he assured Marshall in still another message, “You may be sure that, in future, policy cables passing between myself and the military mission in Moscow will be repeated to the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the British.” And finally, he came to Montgomery’s still-unanswered plea, which had arrived nearly forty-eight hours before.

It was more than the urgency of his previous cables that caused Eisenhower to answer Montgomery last. Relations between the two men had become so strained that Eisenhower was now communicating with the Field Marshal only when absolutely necessary. As the Supreme Commander explained years later:[29] “Montgomery had become so personal in his efforts to make sure that the Americans—and me, in particular—got no credit, that, in fact, we hardly had anything to do with the war, that I finally stopped talking to him.” The Supreme Commander and his staff—including, interestingly, the senior British generals at SHAEF—saw Montgomery as an egocentric troublemaker who in the field was overcautious and slow. “Monty wanted to ride into Berlin on a white charger wearing two hats,” recalled British Major General John Whiteley, SHAEF’s Deputy Operations Chief, ” but the feeling was that if anything was to be done quickly, don’t give it to Monty.” Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, SHAEF’s Deputy Chief of Staff, put it another way: “At that moment Monty was the last person Ike would have chosen for a drive on Berlin—Monty would have needed at least six months to prepare.” Bradley was a different sort. “Bradley,” Eisenhower told his aide, “has never held up, never paused to regroup, when he saw an opportunity to advance.”

Now, Eisenhower’s anger over the criticism of his cable to Stalin, coupled with his longstanding antagonism toward Montgomery, was clearly reflected in his reply to the Field Marshal. It exuded annoyance. “I must adhere,” it said, “to my decision about Ninth Army passing to Bradley’s command…. As I have already told you, it appears from this distance that an American formation will again pass to you at a later stage for operations beyond the Elbe. You will note that in none of this do I mention Berlin. That place has become, as far as I am concerned, nothing but a geographical location, and I have never been interested in these. My purpose is to destroy the enemy’s forces…”

Even as Eisenhower was making his position evident to Montgomery, Churchill at Chequers was writing the Supreme Commander a historic plea. It was in nearly every respect the antithesis of Eisenhower’s words to Montgomery. A little before 7 P.M. the Prime Minister wired the Supreme Commander: “If the enemy’s position should weaken, as you evidently expect… why should we not cross the Elbe and advance as far eastward as possible? This has an important political bearing, as the Russian army… seems certain to enter Vienna and overrun Austria. If we deliberately leave Berlin to them, even if it should be in our grasp, the double event may strengthen their conviction, already apparent, that they have done everything.

“Further, I do not consider myself that Berlin has lost its military and certainly not its political significance. The fall of Berlin would have a profound psychological effect on German resistance in every part of the Reich. While Berlin holds out, great masses of Germans will feel it their duty to go down fighting. The idea that the capture of Dresden and the juncture with the Russians there would be a superior gain does not commend itself to me…. Whilst Berlin remains under the German flag, it cannot in my opinion fail to be the most decisive point in Germany.

“Therefore I should greatly prefer persistence in the plan on which we crossed the Rhine, namely that the Ninth U.S. Army should march with the 21st Army Group to the Elbe and beyond to Berlin…”

In Moscow, as darkness fell, the American and British Ambassadors, together with Deane and Archer, met with the Soviet Premier and delivered Eisenhower’s message. The conference was brief. Stalin, as Deane later reported to the Supreme Commander, “was impressed with the direction of the attack in central Germany” and he thought “Eisenhower’s main effort was a good one in that it accomplished the most important objective of dividing Germany in half.” He felt too that the Germans’ “last stand would probably be in western Czechoslovakia and Bavaria.” While approving of Anglo-American strategy, Stalin was noncommittal about his own. The final coordination of Soviet plans, the Premier said, would have to wait until he had a chance to consult with his staff. At the conclusion of the meeting he promised to reply to Eisenhower’s message within twenty-four hours.

Moments after his visitors left, Stalin picked up the phone and called Marshals Zhukov and Koniev. He spoke tersely but his orders were clear: the two commanders were to fly to Moscow immediately for an urgent conference the following day, Easter Sunday. Although he did not explain the reason for his orders, Stalin had decided that the Western Allies were lying; he was quite sure Eisenhower planned to race the Red Army for Berlin.

3

THE THOUSAND-MILE FLIGHT to Moscow from the eastern front had been long and tiring. Marshal Georgi Zhukov sat wearily back in his field-gray staff car as it joggled up the cobblestone hill and into the vastness of Red Square. The car sped past the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed with its multihued, candy-striped cupolas, swung left and entered the Kremlin’s fortress walls through the western gate. Immediately behind Zhukov, in another army sedan, was Marshal Ivan Koniev. On the clockface of the great Savior’s Tower guarding the entrance, the gilt hands showed almost 5 P.M.

Crossing the windswept interior courtyards, the two staff cars advanced into the architectural thicket of frescoed palaces, golden-domed cathedrals and massive yellow-fronted government buildings, once the domain of Russian czars and princes, and headed for the center of the Kremlin compound. Near the monumental 17th-century white brick bell tower of Ivan the Great, the cars slowed, rolled past a line of ancient cannon and came to a stop outside a long, three-story, sand-colored building. Moments later the two men, in well-cut dun-colored uniforms with heavy gold epaulettes bearing the one-inch-wide single star of a Soviet field marshal, were in the elevator headed for Stalin’s second-floor offices. In those brief moments, surrounded by aides and escorting officers, the two men chatted affably together. A casual observer might have thought them close friends. In truth, they were bitter rivals.

Both Zhukov and Koniev had reached the peak of their profession. Each was a tough, pragmatic perfectionist, and throughout the officer corps it was considered both an honor and an awesome responsibility to serve under them. The short, stocky, mild-looking Zhukov was the better known, idolized by the public and Russian enlisted men as the Soviet Union’s greatest soldier. Yet there were those among the commissioned ranks who saw him as a monster.

Zhukov was a professional who had begun his career as a private in the Czar’s Imperial Dragoons. When the Russian Revolution began in 1917 he had joined the revolutionaries; as a Soviet cavalryman, he had fought the anti-Bolsheviks with such courage and ferocity that in the post-civil war Red Army he was rewarded with a commission. Although he was gifted with a brilliant imagination and a natural flair for command, he might have remained a relatively unknown officer but for Stalin’s brutal purging of the Red Army’s generals in the thirties. Most of those purged were veterans of the Revolution, but Zhukov, possibly because he was more “Army” than “Party,” escaped. The ruthless removal of the old guard speeded up his promotion. By 1941 he had risen to the highest military job in the U.S.S.R.: Chief of the Soviet General Staff.

Zhukov was known as “the soldier’s soldier.” Perhaps because he had once been a private himself, he had a reputation for leniency with enlisted men. So long as his troops fought well, he considered the spoils of war no more than their just deserts. But with his officers he was a harsh disciplinarian. Senior commanders who failed to measure up were often fired on the spot and then punished for failing. The punishment usually took one of two forms: the officer either was sent to join a penal battalion or was ordered to serve on the most exposed part of the front line—as a private. Sometimes he was given a choice.

Once during the Polish campaign of 1944 Zhukov had stood with Marshal Konstantin Rokossovskii and General Pavel Batov, Commander of the Sixty-fifth Army, watching the troops advance. Suddenly Zhukov, viewing the scene through binoculars, yelled at Batov: “The corps commander and the commander of the 44th Rifle Division—penal battalion!” Both Rokossovskii and Batov began to plead for the two generals. Rokossovskii was able to save the corps commander. But Zhukov remained firm regarding the second officer. The general was immediately reduced in rank, sent to the front lines, and ordered to lead a suicidal attack. He was killed almost instantly. Zhukov thereupon recommended Russia’s highest military award, Hero of the Soviet Union, for the fallen officer.

Zhukov himself was a Hero of the Soviet Union thrice over—as was his arch competitor, Koniev. Honors had been heaped on both marshals, but while Zhukov’s fame had spread throughout the U.S.S.R., Koniev remained virtually unknown—and the anonymity rankled.

Koniev was a tall, gruff, vigorous man with a shrewd twinkle in his blue eyes. He was 48 years old, a year younger than Zhukov, and in some respects his career had paralleled the other man’s. He, too, had fought for the Czar, crossed over to the revolutionaries and continued to serve with the Soviet forces. But there was one difference, and to men like Zhukov it was a big one. Koniev had come into the Red Army as a political commissar and, although he switched to the command side in 1926 and became a regular officer, to other soldiers his background was forever tainted. Political officers had always been heartily disliked by the regular military. So powerful were they that a commander could not issue an order unless it was countersigned by the ranking commissar. Zhukov, though a loyal Party man, had never regarded former commissars as true army professionals. It had been a constant irritant to him that in the pre-war years he and Koniev had commanded in the same theaters and had been promoted at about the same pace. Stalin, who had handpicked them both for his cadre of young generals in the thirties, was cannily aware of the intense rivalry between the men: he had made it a point to play one off against the other.

Koniev, despite his rough, outspoken manner, was generally regarded by the military as the more thoughtful and better educated of the two. A voracious reader, he kept a small library at his headquarters and occasionally surprised his staff by quoting passages from Turgenev and Pushkin. The rank and file of his armies knew him as a stern disciplinarian. But unlike Zhukov, he was considerate of his officers, reserving his wrath for the enemy. On the battlefield he could be barbarous. During one phase of the Dnieper campaign, after his troops had surrounded several German divisions, Koniev demanded their immediate surrender. When the Germans refused he ordered his saber-wielding Cossacks to attack. “We let the Cossacks cut for as long as they wished,” he told Milovan Djilas, head of the Yugoslav Military Mission to Moscow, in 1944. “They even hacked off the hands of those who raised them to surrender.” In this respect at least, Zhukov and Koniev saw eye to eye: they could not forgive Nazi atrocities. For Germans, they had neither mercy nor remorse.

Now, as the two marshals walked along the second-floor corridor toward Stalin’s suite of offices, both were reasonably certain that the matter to be discussed was Berlin. Tentative plans called for Zhukov’s First Belorussian group of armies, in the center, to take the city. Marshal Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussian forces to the north and Koniev’s First Ukrainian Army Group on the south could be called in to help. But Zhukov was determined to take Berlin by himself. He had no intention of asking for assistance—especially not from Koniev. Koniev, however, had been giving Berlin a lot of thought himself. Zhukov’s forces could be held up by terrain—especially in the heavily defended Seelow Heights region lying just beyond the western banks of the Oder. If that happened, Koniev thought he saw a chance to steal Zhukov’s thunder. He even had a rough scheme of action in mind. Of course, everything would depend on Stalin but this time Koniev fervently hoped to beat out Zhukov and reap a long-awaited glory. If the opportunity presented itself, Koniev thought that he just might race his rival for Berlin.

Midway along the red-carpeted corridor, the escorting officers ushered Zhukov and Koniev into a conference room. It was high-ceilinged, narrow and almost filled by a long, massive, highly polished mahogany table surrounded by chairs. Two heavy chandeliers with clear, unfrosted bulbs blazed over the table. At an angle in one corner was a small desk and leather chair and on the wall nearby hung a large picture of Lenin. The windows were draped and there were no flags or insignia in the room. There were, however, chrome-lithographs, in identical dark frames, of two of Russia’s most famous military technicians: Catherine II’s brilliant Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov, and General Mikhail Kutuzov, who had destroyed Napoleon’s armies in 1812. At one end of the room double doors led to Stalin’s private office.

The marshals were not unfamiliar with the surroundings. Zhukov had worked down the hall when he was Chief of Staff in 1941; and both men had met here with Stalin many times before. But this conference was not to be a small private session. Within minutes after the two marshals entered the room, they were followed by the seven most important men, after Stalin, in the wartime U.S.S.R.—the members of the State Defense Committee, the all-powerful decision-making body of the Soviet war machine.

Without formality or deference to rank, the Soviet leaders filed into the room: Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the committee’s Deputy Chairman; Lavrenti P. Beria, the thickset, myopic Chief of the Secret Police and one of the most feared men in Russia; Georgi M. Malenkov, the rotund Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Military Procurement Administrator; Anastas I. Mikoyan, thin-faced and hawk-nosed, the Production Coordinator; Marshal Nikolai A. Bulganin, the distinguished-looking, goateed Supreme Headquarters Representative to the Soviet fronts; stolid, mustachioed Lazar M. Kaganovich, Transportation Specialist and the lone Jew on the committee; and Nikolai A. Voznesenskii, the Economic Planner and Administrator. Representing the operational side of the military were the Chief of the General Staff, General A. A. Antonov and the Operations Chief, General S. M. Shtemenko. As the top Soviet leaders took chairs, the doors to the Premier’s office opened and the short, stocky figure of Stalin appeared.

He was simply dressed in a mustard-colored uniform, without epaulettes or rank insignia; his trousers, each seamed with a thin red stripe, were tucked into soft black, knee-length boots. On the left side of his tunic, he wore a single decoration: the red-ribboned gold star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. Clamped in his teeth was one of his favorite pipes: a British Dunhill. He wasted little time in formalities. As Koniev was later to recall, “We barely managed to greet each other before Stalin began to talk.”[30]

Stalin asked Zhukov and Koniev a few questions about conditions on the front. Then abruptly he got to the point. In his low voice, characterized by the peculiar singsong accent of Georgia, he said quietly and with great effect: “The little allies (soyuznichki) intend to get to Berlin ahead of the Red Army.”

He waited a moment before continuing. He had received information about Anglo-American plans, Stalin said, and it was clear that “their intentions are less than ‘allied.’” He did not mention Eisenhower’s message of the night before, nor did he give any other source for his information. Turning to General Shtemenko he said: “Read the report.”

Shtemenko stood up. Eisenhower’s forces planned to surround and destroy the Ruhr concentrations of the enemy, he announced, then advance to Leipzig and Dresden. But just “on the way” they intended to take Berlin. All of this, said the General, “will look like helping the Red Army.” But it was known that taking Berlin before the arrival of Soviet troops was “Eisenhower’s main aim.” Furthermore, he intoned, it had been learned by the Stavka (Stalin’s Supreme Headquarters ) that “two Allied airborne divisions are being rapidly readied for a drop on Berlin.”[31]

Koniev, in his version of the meeting, was later to remember that the Allied plan, as described by Shtemenko, also included a drive by Montgomery north of the Ruhr “along the shortest route separating Berlin from the basic groupings of the British forces.” Shtemenko finished, Koniev recalled, “by saying that ‘according to all the data and information, this plan—to take Berlin earlier than the Soviet Army—is looked upon at the Anglo-American headquarters as fully realistic and that preparation for its fullfillment is in full swing.’”[32]

As Shtemenko ended the military evaluation, Stalin turned to his two marshals. “So,” he said softly. “Who will take Berlin? We or the Allies?”

Koniev later remembered proudly that he was the first to answer. “We will,” he said, “and before the Anglo-Americans.”

Stalin looked at him, a slight smile flickering over his face. “So,” he said again softly. With ponderous humor, he added, “Is that the sort of fellow you are?” Then, in an instant, as Koniev remembers, Stalin was once more cold and businesslike, stabbing out questions. Exactly how was Koniev, on the south, prepared to capture Berlin in time? “Wouldn’t a great regrouping of your forces be necessary?” he asked. Too late Koniev saw the trap. Stalin was up to his old tricks again, pitting one man against the other, but by the time he realized this Koniev had already begun to answer. “Comrade Stalin,” he said, “all the measures needed will be carried out. We shall regroup in time to take Berlin.”

It was the moment Zhukov had waited for. “May I speak?” he asked quietly, almost condescendingly. He did not wait for an answer. “With due consideration,” he said, nodding to Koniev, “the men of the First Belorussian Front need no regrouping. They are ready now. We are aimed directly at Berlin. We are the shortest distance from Berlin. We will take Berlin.”

Stalin looked at the two men in silence. Once again a smile showed briefly. “Very well,” he said mildly. “You will both stay in Moscow and, with the General Staff, prepare your plans. I expect them ready within forty-eight hours. Then you can return to the front with everything approved.”

Both men were shocked by the brief time period allotted for the preparation of their plans. Up to now they had understood that the target date for attacking Berlin was early May. Now Stalin obviously expected them to attack weeks earlier. To Koniev, in particular, this was a sobering thought. Although he had a tentative plan which he believed would get him into Berlin before Zhukov, he had nothing on paper. The meeting now made him desperately aware of immense logistical problems that he must solve quickly. All kinds of equipment and supplies would now have to be rushed to the front. Worse, Koniev was short of troops. After the fighting in Upper Silesia, a considerable part of his forces was still spread out to the south. Some were miles from Berlin. These would have to be transferred immediately, posing a major transportation problem.

Zhukov, listening to Stalin speak, was equally worried. Although his staff officers had been preparing for the attack, he was far from ready. His armies were in position but he, too, was still bringing up supplies and rushing replacements to the front to fill out his badly depleted forces. Some of his divisions, usually 9,000 to 12,000 men strong, were down to 3,500. Zhukov believed the Berlin operations would be enormously difficult and he wanted to be ready for every eventuality. His intelligence had reported that “the city itself and its environs have been carefully prepared for stubborn defense. Each street, square, crossroad, house, canal and bridge is a component part of the overall defense….” Now, everything would have to be speeded up if he was to beat the Western forces to Berlin. How soon could he attack? That was the question Stalin wanted answered—and quickly.

As the meeting broke up Stalin spoke once again. There was no warmth in his voice. To the two marshals he said, with great emphasis: “I must tell you that the dates of the beginning of your operations will attract our special attention.”

The rivalry between the two commanders, never far beneath the surface, was being exploited once again. With a brief nod to the men around him, Stalin turned and left the room.

Now, having set his plans in motion, the Soviet Premier still faced one important task: the careful detailing of an answer to Eisenhower’s cable. Stalin began work on the prepared draft. By 8 P.M. his reply was finished and dispatched. “I have received your telegram of March 28,” Stalin wired Eisenhower. “Your plan to cut the German forces by joining… [with] Soviet Forces entirely coincides with the plan of the Soviet High Command.” Stalin fully agreed that the link-up should be in the Leipzig-Dresden area, for the “main blow of the Soviet Forces” would be made “in that direction.” The date of the Red Army’s attack? Stalin gave that particular notice. It would be “approximately the second half of May.”

The most important part of his message came in the third paragraph. There he implanted the impression that he had no interest in Germany’s capital. “Berlin,” he stated, “has lost its former strategic importance.” In fact, Stalin said, it had become so unimportant that “the Soviet High Command therefore plans to allot secondary forces in the direction of Berlin.”

Winston Churchill had conferred with the British Chiefs of Staff nearly all afternoon. He was feeling embarrassed and upset. His embarrassment stemmed from an Eisenhower message that had been garbled in transmission. One sentence in the cable Churchill received had read: “Montgomery will be responsible on patrol tasks….” Sharply, Churchill had replied that he thought His Majesty’s forces were being “relegated… to an unexpected restricted sphere.” The bewildered Eisenhower had wired back: “I am disturbed, if not hurt… Nothing is further from my mind and I think my record… should eliminate any such idea.” It turned out that Eisenhower had never used the words “on patrol tasks.” He had said, “on these tasks,” and somehow the expression had been transmitted wrong. Churchill was chagrined by the incident which, trivial though it was, had compounded the mounting confusion.

Far from trivial, in the Prime Minister’s eyes, was the continuing American apathy toward Berlin. With the tenacity that had characterized him all his life he now took on both problems—Allied relations and Berlin—at once. In a long telegram to the ailing Roosevelt—his first to FDR since the beginning of the SCAF 252 controversy—the Prime Minister first recorded at length his complete confidence in Eisenhower. Then, “having disposed of these misunderstandings between the truest friends and allies that have ever fought side by side,” Churchill hammered away at the urgency of taking the German capital. „Nothing will exert a psychological effect of despair upon German forces… equal to that of the fall of Berlin,” he argued. “It will be the supreme signal of defeat… If the [Russians] take Berlin, will not their impression that they have been the overwhelming contributor to the common victory be unduly imprinted in their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future? I therefore consider that from a political standpoint… should Berlin be in our grasp we should certainly take it…”

The following day Churchill’s concern deepened still more when he received a copy of Stalin’s message to Eisenhower. Its contents, the Prime Minister believed, were highly suspicious. At ten forty-five that night he cabled Eisenhower, “I am all the more impressed with the importance of entering Berlin which may well be open to us by the reply from Moscow to you which in paragraph three says ‘Berlin has lost its former strategic importance.’ This should be read in the light of what I mentioned of the political aspects.” Churchill added fervently that he now deemed it “highly important that we should shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible…”

Despite everything, Churchill’s determination to win Berlin had not flagged. He was still optimistic. He ended his message to Eisenhower: “Much may happen in the West, before the date of Stalin’s main offensive.” His great hope now was that the momentum and enthusiasm of the Allied drive would carry the troops forward into Berlin well ahead of Stalin’s target date.

At Stalin’s headquarters, Marshals Zhukov and Koniev had worked around the clock. By Tuesday, April 3, within the 48-hour deadline, their plans were ready. Once again they saw Stalin.

Zhukov gave his presentation first. He had been considering the attack for months and the projected moves of his massive First Belorussian group of armies were at his fingertips. His main attack would take place in the pre-dawn, he said, from the 44-kilometer-long bridgehead over the Oder west of Küstrin-directly opposite Berlin. Additional attacks on the north and south would support this stroke.

The logistics of the Zhukov plan were staggering. No less than four field and two tank armies would be thrown into his main thrust and two armies each would be employed for the supporting assaults. Including secondary forces coming up behind, he would have 768,100 men. Leaving nothing to chance, Zhukov hoped to secure for the Küstrin bridgehead a minimum of 250 artillery pieces for each kilometer—approximately one cannon for every thirteen feet of front! He planned to open his assault with a stupefying barrage from some 11,000 guns, not counting smaller caliber mortars.

Now he came to his favorite part of the plan. Zhukov had devised an unorthodox and bizarre stratagem to befuddle the enemy. He would launch his offensive in the hours of darkness. At the very instant of attack he intended to blind and demoralize the Germans by turning upon them the fierce glare of 140 high-powered antiaircraft searchlights beamed directly at their positions. He fully expected his plan to result in massacre.

Koniev’s plan was equally monumental and, fed by his burning ambition, more complex and difficult. As he was later to say: “Berlin for us was the object of such ardent desire that everyone, from soldier to general, wanted to see Berlin with their own eyes, to capture it by force of arms. This too was my ardent desire… I was overflowing with it.”

But the fact was that at their closest point Koniev’s forces were more than seventy-five miles from the city. Koniev was counting on speed to see him through. Craftily he had massed his tank armies on the right so that when a breakthrough was achieved he could wheel northwest and strike out for Berlin, perhaps slipping into the city ahead of Zhukov. This was the idea he had been nurturing for weeks. Now, in light of Zhukov’s presentation, he hesitated to tip his hand. Instead, for the moment he stuck to operational details. His plans called for a dawn attack across the Neisse, under the protection of a heavy smoke screen laid down by low-flying squadrons of fighter planes. Into the assault he planned to hurl five field and two tank armies—511,700 men. Remarkably, he was requesting the same almost incredible artillery density as Zhukov—250 guns per kilometer of front—and he meant to get even greater use from them. “Unlike my neighbor,” Koniev recalled, “I planned to saturate the enemy positions with artillery fire for two hours and thirty-five minutes.”

But Koniev badly needed reinforcements. Whereas Zhukov had eight armies along the Oder, Koniev, on the Neisse, had a total of only five. To put his plan into effect he needed two more. After some discussion Stalin agreed to give him the Twenty-eighth and Thirty-first armies, because “the fronts have been reduced in the Baltic and East Prussia.” But much time might elapse before these armies would reach the First Ukrainian Front, Stalin pointed out. Transport was at a premium. Koniev decided to gamble. He could begin the attack while the reinforcements were still en route, he told Stalin, then commit them the moment they arrived.

Having listened to the two propositions, Stalin now approved them both. But to Zhukov went the responsibility of capturing Berlin. Afterward, he was to head for the line of the Elbe. Koniev was to attack on the same day as Zhukov, destroy the enemy along the southern fringes of Berlin and then let his armies flood west for a meeting with the Americans. The third Soviet army group, Marshal Rokossovskii’s Second Belorussians, massing along the lower Oder and all the way to the coast north of Zhukov, would not be involved in the Berlin assault. Rokossovskii, with 314,000 men, would attack later, driving across northern Germany for a link-up with the British. Together, the three Russian army groups would have a total of 1,593,800 men.

It appeared that Koniev had been relegated to a supporting role in the Berlin attack. But then, leaning over the map on the table, Stalin drew a dividing line between Zhukov’s and Koniev’s army groups. It was a curious boundary. It began east of the Russian front, crossed the river and ran straight to the 16th-century town of Lübben on the Spree, approximately sixty-five miles southeast of Berlin. There, Stalin suddenly stopped drawing. Had he continued the line right across Germany, thereby marking a boundary that Koniev was not to cross, the First Ukrainian armies would clearly have been denied any participation in the Berlin attack. Now Koniev was elated. Although “Stalin did not say anything…” he recalled later, “the possibility of a show of initiative on the part of the command of the front was tacitly assumed.” Without a word being spoken the green light to Berlin had been given Koniev’s forces—if he could make it. To Koniev, it was as though Stalin had read his mind. With what he was to term this “secret call to competition… on the part of Stalin,” the meeting ended.

Immediately the marshals’ plans were incorporated into formal directives. The next morning the rival commanders, orders in hand, drove out in a swirling fog to Moscow airport, each eager to reach his headquarters. Their orders called for them to mount the offensive a full month earlier than the date Stalin had given Eisenhower. For security reasons, the written directives were undated, but Zhukov and Koniev had been given the word by Stalin himself. The attack on Berlin would begin on Monday, April 16.

Even as Zhukov and Koniev began feverishly preparing to hurl thirteen armies with more than a million men at Berlin, Adolf Hitler had another of his famous intuitive flashes. The massing of the Russian armies at Küstrin, directly opposite the capital, was nothing more than a mighty feint, he concluded. The main Soviet offensive would be aimed at Prague in the south—not at Berlin. Only one of Hitler’s generals was gifted with the same insight. Colonel General Ferdinand Schörner, now commander of Army Group Center on Heinrici’s southern flank, had also seen through the Russian hoax. “My Führer,” warned Schörner, “it is written in history. Remember Bismarck’s words, ‘Whoever holds Prague holds Europe.’” Hitler agreed. The brutal Schörner, a Führer favorite and among the least talented of the German generals, was promptly promoted to Field Marshal. At the same time, Hitler issued a fateful directive. On the night of April 5 he ordered the transfer south of four of Heinrici’s veteran panzer units—the very force Heinrici had been depending on to blunt the Russian drive.

4

COLONEL GENERAL HEINRICI’S car moved slowly through the rubble of Berlin, making for the Reichskanzlei and the full-dress meeting ordered by Hitler nine days earlier. Sitting in back alongside his Operations Chief, Colonel Eismann, Heinrici stared silently out at the burned and blackened streets. In two years he had made only one other trip to the city. Now, the evidence of his own eyes overwhelmed him. He would never have recognized the place as Berlin.

In normal times the trip from his headquarters to the Reichskanzlei would have taken about ninety minutes, but they had been en route nearly twice that long. Again and again clogged streets forced them to make complicated detours. Even main thoroughfares were often impassable. Elsewhere, crazily canted buildings threatened to collapse at any moment, making every street a danger. Water gushed and gurgled from immense bomb holes; escaping gas flared from ruptured mains; and all over the city, areas were cordoned off and marked with signs that warned, “Achtung! Minen!” signifying the location of still-unexploded aerial mines. Heinrici, his voice bitter, said to Eismann. “So this is what we’ve finally come to—a sea of rubble.”

Although buildings on both sides of the Wilhelmstrasse were in ruins, apart from some splinter damage nothing about the Reichskanzlei appeared to have changed. Even the faultlessly dressed SS sentries just outside the entrance seemed the same. They snapped smartly to attention as Heinrici, Eismann behind him, entered the building. Despite the delays, the General was on time. The conference with Hitler was scheduled for 3 P.M., and Heinrici had given it much thought over the past few days. As bluntly and precisely as possible, he intended to tell Hitler and those around him the true facts of the situation confronting the Army Group Vistula. Heinrici knew perfectly well the danger of speaking out, but the possible consequences did not seem to bother him. Eismann, on the other hand, was greatly disturbed. “It looked to me,” he later said, “as if Heinrici was planning an all-out attack against Hitler and his advisors, and there were very few men who could do that and survive.”

In the main hall an SS officer, immaculate in a white tunic, black breeches and highly polished cavalry boots, greeted Heinrici and informed him that the meeting would take place in the Führerbunker. Heinrici had heard that a vast labyrinth of underground installations existed beneath the Chancellery, the adjoining buildings and the enclosed gardens at back, but he had never before been in any of them. Following a guide, he and Eismann walked down to the basement and out into the gardens. Though the facade of the Reichskanzlei was intact, the rear of the building showed severe damage. Once, magnificent gardens with a complex of fountains had been here. They were gone now, along with Hitler’s tea pavilion and the botanical greenhouses that had stood to one side of it.

To Heinrici the area resembled a battlefield, with “huge craters, lumps of concrete, smashed statuary and uprooted trees.” In the soot-stained walls of the Chancellery were “great black holes where windows used to be.” Eismann, looking at the desolation, was reminded of a line from “The Singer’s Curse,” by the 19th-century German balladier, Uhland. It went, “Only one high column tells of the vanished glory; this one can fall overnight.” Heinrici was more literal-minded. “Just think,” he murmured to Eismann. “Three years ago Hitler had Europe under his command, from the Volga to the Atlantic. Now he’s sitting in a hole under the earth.”

They crossed the garden to an oblong blockhouse guarded by two sentries. Their credentials were examined and then the guards opened a heavy steel door, allowing the officers to pass through. As the door clanged shut behind them, Heinrici was always to remember, “We stepped into an unbelievable underworld.” At the bottom of a winding concrete staircase two young SS officers received them in a brilliantly lighted foyer. Courteously their coats were taken and then, with equal courtesy, Heinrici and Eismann were searched. Eismann’s briefcase, in particular, received attention: it had been a briefcase containing explosives that had nearly ended Hitler’s life in July, 1944. Since then, the Führer’s elite guards had allowed no one near him without first subjecting them to a search. Heinrici, despite the apologies of the SS men, seethed at the indignity. Eismann felt “ashamed that a German general should be treated in this manner.” The search over, they were shown into a long narrow corridor, partitioned into two sections, the first of which had been converted into a comfortable lounge. Domed lights protruded from the ceiling, giving the light beige stucco walls a yellowish cast. An Oriental carpet on the floor had apparently been brought down from a larger Chancellery room, for its edges were folded under at each side. Although the room was comfortable, the furniture—like the carpet—seemed out of keeping. There were various chairs, some plain, some covered in rich upholstery. A narrow oak table was set against one wall and several large oil paintings, landscapes by the German architect and painter Schinkel, were hung about the room. To the right of the entrance an open door gave onto a small conference room set up for the meeting. Heinrici could only make a guess as to the size and depth of the Führerbunker. From what he could see, it appeared relatively spacious, with doors leading to rooms on either side of the corridor lounge and beyond. Because of its low ceiling, narrow metal doors and the absence of windows, this might have been the passageway in a small liner—except that, by Heinrici’s estimate, they were at least forty feet below ground.

Almost immediately a tall, elegantly dressed SS officer appeared. He was Hitler’s personal aide and bodyguard, Colonel Otto Günsche. Pleasantly he inquired about their trip and offered them refreshments; Heinrici accepted a cup of coffee. Soon, other conference members began to arrive. Hitler’s adjutant, General Wilhelm Burgdorf, came next. He greeted them, as Eismann remembers, “with some noises about success.” Then Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the OKW Chief of Staff, arrived, followed by Himmler, Admiral Karl Doenitz and the man reputed to be Hitler’s closest confidant, Martin Bormann. In Eismann’s words, “All greeted us loudly. Seeing them, I was really proud of my commander. With his familiar stiff posture, serious and measured, he was a soldier from head to toe among court asses.”

Eismann saw Heinrici tense as Himmler started across the room toward him. In an undertone the General growled, “That man is never going to set foot in my headquarters. If he ever announces a visit, tell me quickly so I can leave. He makes me vomit.” And, indeed, Eismann thought Heinrici looked pale as Himmler dragged him into conversation.

At that moment General Hans Krebs, Guderian’s successor, came into the room and, seeing Heinrici, came across to him immediately. Earlier in the day Heinrici had learned from Krebs of the transfer of his vital armored units to Schörner’s army group. Though he blamed Krebs for not vigorously protesting the decision, Heinrici now seemed almost cordial to the new Chief of the OKH. At least he did not have to continue talking with Himmler.

Krebs, as usual, was diplomatic and solicitous. He had no doubt that everything would work out all right at the conference, he assured Heinrici. Doenitz, Keitel and Bormann now joined them and listened as Heinrici mentioned some of his problems. All three promised their support when Heinrici made his presentation to Hitler. Turning to Eismann, Bormann asked, “What’s your opinion about the Army Group situation—since all this has a direct bearing on Berlin and Germany in general?” Eismann was dumbfounded. With the Russians only thirty-eight miles from the capital and the Allies racing across Germany from the west, the question seemed to border on madness. Bluntly he replied, “The situation is serious. That’s why we’re here.” Bormann patted him soothingly on the shoulder. “You shouldn’t worry so much,” he told Eismann. “The Führer is sure to grant you help. You’ll get all the forces you need.” Eismann stared. Where did Bormann think the forces were to come from? For a moment he had the uncomfortable feeling that he and Heinrici were the only sane people in the room.

More and more officers and staff were filing into the already crowded corridor. Hitler’s Operations Chief, General Alfred Jodl, aloof and composed, arrived with his deputy; the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff, General Karl Koller, and OKW’s Staff Chief in charge of supplies and reinforcements, Major General Walter Buhle, came in together. Nearly every man seemed to be followed by an aide, an orderly or a deputy. The resulting noise and confusion reminded Eismann of a swarm of bees.

In the packed corridor Heinrici now stood silent, listening impassively to the din of conversation. For the most part, it consisted of small talk, trivial and irrelevant. The bunker and its atmosphere were stifling and unreal. Heinrici had the disquieting feeling that the men around Hitler had retreated into a dream world in which they had convinced themselves that by some miracle catastrophe could be averted. Now, as they waited for the man who, they believed, would produce this miracle, there was a sudden movement in the corridor. General Burgdorf, hands high above his head, waved the group into silence. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, “the Führer is coming.”

“Gustav! Gustav!” Radios sputtered out the warning code for Tempelhof as the planes approached the district. In stationmasters’ offices along the route of the U-Bahn, loudspeakers blared out, “Danger 15!” Another city-wide saturation raid had begun.

Earth erupted. Glass ripped through the air. Chunks of concrete smashed down into the streets, and tornadoes of dust whirled up from a hundred places, covering the city in a dark gray, choking cloud. Men and women raced one another, stumbling and clawing their way into shelters. Ruth Diekermann, just before she reached safety, looked up and saw the bombers coming over in waves, “like an assembly line.” In the Krupp und Druckenmüller plant, French forced laborer Jacques Delaunay dropped the ghastly remnant of a human arm he had just recovered from the battle-scarred tank he was overhauling, and ran for shelter. In the Sieges Allee the marble statues of Brandenburg-Prussian rulers rocked and groaned on their pedestals; and the crucifix held aloft by the 12th-century leader, Margrave Albert the Bear, shattered against the bust of his eminent contemporary, Bishop Otho of Bamberg. Nearby in Skagerrak Square, police ran for cover, leaving the swaying body of a suicide still hanging from a tree.

A shower of incendiaries smashed through the roof of Wing B of the Lehrterstrasse Prison and set off a dozen flaring magnesium fires on the second floor. Frantic prisoners, turned loose to fight the flames, stumbled through the acrid smoke with buckets of sand. Two men suddenly stopped working. The prisoner from Cell 244 stared at the man from Cell 247. Then they embraced. The brothers Herbert and Kurt Kosney discovered they had been on the same floor for days.

In Pankow, in the Möhrings’ ground-floor two-room apartment where the Weltlinglers hid, Siegmund hugged his sobbing wife Margarete as they stood together in the kitchen. “If this keeps up,” he shouted over the din of anti-aircraft fire, “even Jews can go openly to the shelters. They’re all too scared of the bombs to turn us in now.”

Fourteen-year-old Rudolf Reschke had only time enough to see that the planes glinted like silver in the sky—too high for the dangerous game of tag he liked to play with strafing fighters. Then his mother, yelling and nearly hysterical, dragged him down into the cellar where his 9-year-old sister, Christa, sat shivering and crying. The whole shelter seemed to be shaking. Plaster fell from the ceiling and the walls; then the lights flickered and went out. Frau Reschke and Christa began to pray aloud, and after a minute Rudolf joined them in the “Our Father.” The noise of the bombing was getting worse and the shelter now seemed to be shuddering all the time. The Reschkes had been through many raids, but nothing like this. Frau Reschke, her arms about both children, began to sob. Rudolf had seldom heard his mother cry before, even though he knew that she was often worried, especially with his father at the front. Suddenly he was angry at the planes for making his mother frightened—and for the first time Rudolf felt frightened himself. With some embarrassment he discovered that he was crying, too.

Before his mother could detain him, Rudolf rushed out of the shelter. He ran up the stairs to the family’s ground-floor apartment; there he headed straight for his room and his collection of toy soldiers. He chose the most imposing figure among them, with distinct features painted on its china face. He went to the kitchen and took down his mother’s heavy meat cleaver. Oblivious now of the air raid, Rudolf went out into the apartment house courtyard, laid the doll on the ground, and with one stroke chopped off its head. “There!” he said, standing back. Tears still staining his face, he looked down without remorse upon the severed head of Adolf Hitler.

He came shuffling into the bunker corridor—half bent, dragging his left foot, the left arm shaking uncontrollably. Although he was 5 feet 8½ inches tall, now, with his head and body twisted to the left, he looked much smaller. The eves that admirers had called “magnetic” were feverish and red, as if he had not slept for days. His face was puffy, and its color was a blotchy, faded gray. A pair of pale green spectacles dangled from his right hand; bright light bothered him now. For a moment he gazed expressionlessly at his generals as their hands shot up and out to a chorus of “Heil Hitler.”[33]

The corridor was so crowded that Hitler had some difficulty getting past everyone to reach the small conference room. Eismann noticed that the others began talking again as soon as the Führer passed; there was not the respectful silence he had expected. As for Heinrici, he was shocked by the Führer’s appearance. Hitler, he thought, “looked like a man who had not more than twenty-four hours to live. He was a walking corpse.”

Slowly, as though in pain, Hitler scuffled to his place at the head of the table. To Eismann’s surprise, he seemed to crumple “like a sack into the armchair, not uttering a word, and held that prostrate condition, his arms propped up on the sides of the chair.” Krebs and Bormann moved in behind the Führer to sit on a bench against the wall. From there, Krebs informally presented Heinrici and Eismann. Hitler feebly shook hands with them both. Heinrici noted that he “could hardly feel the Führer’s hand, for there was no returning pressure.”

Because of the smallness of the room, not everyone could sit, and Heinrici stood on the Führer’s left, Eismann on his right. Keitel, Himmler and Doenitz took chairs on the opposite side of the table. The remainder of the group stayed outside in the corridor; to Heinrici’s amazement, they continued to talk, although their voices were now subdued. Krebs began the conference. “In order that the commander”—he looked at Heinrici—“can get back to his army group as soon as possible,” he said, “I propose that he give his report immediately.” Hitler nodded, put on his green glasses, and gestured to Heinrici to begin.

In his measured and precise manner, the General got straight to the point. Looking directly at each man around the table, then at Hitler, he said, “My Führer, I must tell you that the enemy is preparing an attack of unusual strength and unusual force. At this moment they are preparing in these areas—from south of Schwedt to south of Frankfurt.” On Hitler’s own map lying on the table, Heinrici slowly ran his finger down along the threatened section of the Oder front, a line roughly seventy-five miles long, touching briefly on the cities where he expected the heaviest blows—at Schwedt, in the Wriezen area, around the Küstrin bridgehead, and south of Frankfurt. He entertained no doubts., he said, that “the main attack will hit Busse’s Ninth Army” holding this central area; also, “it will strike the southern flank of Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army around Schwedt.”

Carefully Heinrici described how he had juggled his forces to build up Busse’s Ninth Army against the expected Russian onslaught. But because of this need to strengthen Busse, Von Manteuffel had suffered. Part of the Third Panzer Army front was now being held by inferior troops: aged Home Guardsmen, a few Hungarian units and some divisions of Russian defectors—whose dependability was questionable—under General Andrei Vlasov. Then, said Heinrici flatly : “While the Ninth Army is now in better shape than it was, the Third Panzer Army is in no state to fight at all. The potential of Von Manteuffel’s troops, at least in the middle and northern sectors of his front, is low. They have no artillery whatsoever. Anti-aircraft guns cannot replace artillery and, in any case, there is insufficient ammunition even for these.”

Krebs hastily interrupted. “The Third Panzer Army,” he said emphatically, “will receive artillery shortly.”

Heinrici inclined his head but made no comment—he would believe Krebs when he actually saw the guns. Continuing as though there had been no interruption, he explained to Hitler that the Third Panzer owed its present safe situation to one thing only—the flooded Oder. “I must warn you, he said, “that we can accept the Third Panzer’s weak condition only as long as the Oder remains flooded.” Once the waters drop, Heinrici added, “the Russians will not fail to attack there, too.”

The men in the room listened attentively, if a little uneasily, to Heinrici’s presentation. Such directness at a Hitler conference was unusual; most officers presented the gains and skipped the drawbacks. Not since Guderian’s departure had anyone spoken so frankly—and it was clear that Heinrici was only beginning. Now he turned to the matter of the garrison holding out at Frankfurt-on-Oder. Hitler had declared the city a fortress, like the ill-fated Küstrin. Heinrici wanted Frankfurt abandoned. He felt the troops there were being sacrificed on the altar of Hitler’s “fortress” mania. They could be saved and used to advantage elsewhere. Guderian, who had shared the same opinion regarding Küstrin, had been broken for his views about that city. Heinrici might meet the same fate for his opposition now. But the Vistula commander saw the men of Frankfurt as his responsibility; whatever the consequences, he was not to be intimidated. He raised the issue.

“In the Ninth Army’s sector,” he began, “one of the weakest parts of the front is around Frankfurt. The garrison strength is very low, as is their ammunition. I believe we should abandon the defense of Frankfurt and bring the troops out.”

Suddenly Hitler looked up and uttered his first words since the meeting began. He said harshly, “I refuse to accept this.”

Up to this point Hitler had sat not only silent but unmoving, as though completely disinterested. Eismann had had the impression that he wasn’t even listening. Now, the Führer suddenly “came awake and began to take an intense interest.” He began asking about the garrison’s strength, supplies and ammunition, and even, for some incomprehensible reason, about the deployment of Frankfurt’s artillery. Heinrici had the answers. Step by step he built his case, taking reports and statistics from Eismann and placing them on the table before the Führer. Hitler looked at the papers as each was handed over and seemed impressed. Sensing his opportunity, Heinrici said quietly but emphatically, “My Führer, I honestly feel that giving up the defense of Frankfurt would be a wise and sound move.”

To the astonishment of most of those in the room, Hitler, turning to the Chief of OKH, said, “Krebs, I believe the General’s opinion on Frankfurt is sound. Make out the necessary orders for the Army Group and give them to me today.”

In the stunned silence that followed, the babble of voices in the corridor outside seemed unduly loud. Eismann sensed a sudden and new respect for Heinrici. “Heinrici himself seemed completely unmoved,” he remembered, “but he gave me a look which I interpreted as ‘Well, we’ve won.’” The victory, however, was short-lived.

At that moment there was a loud commotion in the corridor and the vast bulk of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering filled the doorway of the little conference room. Pushing his way in, Goering heartily greeted those present, pumped Hitler’s hand vigorously and excused himself for being late. He squeezed in next to Doenitz, and there was an uncomfortable delay while Krebs brought him quickly up to date on Heinrici’s briefing. When Krebs had finished, Goering got up and, placing both hands on the map table, leaned toward Hitler as though to make some comment on the proceedings. Instead, smiling widely and with obvious good humor, he said, “I must tell you a story about one of my visits to the 9th Parachute Division…”

He got no further. Hitler sat suddenly bolt upright in his chair and then jerked himself to his feet. Words poured from his mouth in such a torrent that those present could scarcely understand him. “Before our eyes,” recalled Eismann, “he went into a volcanic rage.”

His fury had nothing to do with Goering. It was a diatribe against his advisors and generals for deliberately refusing to understand him on the tactical use of forts. “Again and again,” he yelled, “forts have fulfilled their purpose throughout the war. This was proven at Posen, Breslau and Schneidemühl. How many Russians were pinned down by them? And how difficult they were to capture! Every one of those forts was held to the very last man! History has proved me right and my order to defend a fort to the last man is right!” Then, looking squarely at Heinrici, he screamed, “That’s why Frankfurt is to retain its status as a fort!”

As suddenly as it had begun, the tirade ended. But Hitler, though slack with exhaustion, could no longer sit still. He seemed to Eismann to have lost all control of himself. “His entire body trembled,” he recalled. “His hands, in which he was holding some pencils, flew wildly up and down, the pencils beating on the arms of the chair in the process. He gave the impression of being mentally deranged. It was all so unreal—especially the thought that the fate of an entire people lay in the hands of this human ruin.”

Despite Hitler’s choleric outburst, and despite his mercurial change of mind about Frankfurt, Heinrici doggedly refused to give up. Quietly, patiently—almost as though the outburst had not occurred—he went over all the arguments again, underlining every conceivable reason for abandoning Frankfurt. Doenitz, Himmler and Goering supported him. But it was token support at best. The three most powerful generals in the room remained silent. Keitel and Jodl said nothing—and just as Heinrici had expected, Krebs offered no opinion one way or the other. Hitler, apparently spent, only made tired gestures with his hands as he dismissed each argument. Then, with renewed vitality he demanded to know the credentials of the commander of the Frankfurt garrison, Colonel Bieler. “He is a very reliable and experienced officer,” replied Heinrici, “who has proven himself time and again in battle.”

“Is he a Gneisenau?” snapped Hitler, referring to General Graf von Gneisenau, who had successfully defended the fortress of Kolberg against Napoleon in 1806.

Heinrici kept his composure. Evenly, he replied that “the battle for Frankfurt will prove whether he is a Gneisenau or not.” Hitler snapped back, “All right, send Bieler to see me tomorrow so that I can judge him. Then I shall decide what’s to be done about Frankfurt.” Heinrici had lost the first battle for Frankfurt and, he believed, the second, too, in all probability. Bieler was an unprepossessing man who wore thick-lensed glasses. He was not likely to make much of an impression on Hitler.

There now approached what Heinrici regarded as the crisis of the meeting. As he began to speak again, he regretted that he had no skill in diplomatic niceties. He knew only one way to express himself; now, as always, he spoke the unvarnished truth. “My Führer,” he said, “I do not believe that the forces on the Oder front will be able to resist the extremely heavy Russian attacks which will be made upon them.”

Hitler, still trembling, was silent. Heinrici described the lack of combat fitness among the hodgepodge of troops—the very scrapings of Germany’s manpower—that made up his forces. Most units in the line were untrained, inexperienced or so watered down by green reinforcements as to be unreliable. The same was true of many of the commanders. “For example,” explained Heinrici, “the 9th Parachute Division worries me. Its commanders and noncommissioned officers are nearly all former administration officers, both untrained and unaccustomed to lead fighting units.”

Goering suddenly bristled. “My paratroopers!” he said in a loud voice. “You are talking about my paratroopers! They are the best in existence! I won’t listen to such degrading remarks! I personally guarantee their fighting capabilities!”

“Your view, Herr Reichsmarschall,” remarked Heinrici icily, “is somewhat biased. I’m not saying anything against your troops, but experience has taught me that untrained units—especially those led by green officers—are often so terribly shocked by their first exposure to artillery bombardment that they are not much good for anything thereafter.”

Hitler spoke again, his voice now calm and rational. “Everything must be done to train these formations,” he declared. “There is certainly time to do this before the battle.”

Heinrici assured him that every effort would be made in the time still remaining, but he added, “Training will not give them combat experience, and that is what’s lacking.” Hitler dismissed this theory. “The right commanders will provide the experience, and anyway the Russians are fighting with substandard troops, too.” Stalin, claimed Hitler, is “nearing the end of his strength and about all he has left are slave soldiers whose capabilities are extremely limited.” Heinrici found Hitler’s misinformation incredible. Emphatically he disagreed. “My Führer,” he said, “the Russian forces are both capable and enormous.”

The time to hammer home the truths of the desperate situation had, to Heinrici’s mind, arrived. “I must tell you,” he said bluntly, “that since the transfer of the armored units to Schörner, all my troops—good and bad—must be used as front-line troops. There are no reserves. None. Will they resist the heavy shelling preceding the attack? Will they withstand the initial impact? For a time, perhaps, yes. But, against the kind of attack we expect, every one of our divisions will lose a battalion a day. This means that all along the battle front we will lose divisions themselves at the rate of one per week. We cannot sustain such losses. We have nothing to replace them with.” He paused, aware that all eyes were upon him. Then Heinrici plunged ahead. “My Führer, the fact is that, at best, we can hold out for just a few days.” He looked around the room. “Then,” he said, “it must all come to an end.”

There was dead silence. Heinrici knew that his figures were indisputable. The men gathered there were as familiar with casualty statistics as he. The difference was that they would not have spoken of them.

Goering was the first to break the paralyzing silence. “My Führer,” he announced, “I will place immediately at your disposal 100,000 Luftwaffe men. They will report to the Oder front in a few days.”

Himmler glanced owlishly up at Goering, his arch rival, then at Hitler, as if sampling the Führer’s reaction. Then he, too, made an announcement. “My Führer,” he said, in his high-pitched voice, “the SS has the honor to furnish 25,000 fighters for the Oder front.”

Doenitz was not to be outdone. He had already sent a division of marines to Heinrici; now he declared that he, too, would subscribe further forces. “My Führer,” he announced, “12,000 sailors will be released immediately from their ships and rushed to the Oder.”

Heinrici stared at them. They were volunteering untrained, unequipped, unqualified forces from their own private empires, spending lives instead of money in a sort of ghastly auction. They were bidding against one another, not to save Germany, but to impress Hitler. And suddenly the auction fever became contagious. A chorus of voices sounded as each man tried to suggest other forces that might be available. Someone asked for the reserve army figures and Hitler called out, “Buhle! Buhle!”

Outside in the corridor, where the crowd of waiting generals and orderlies had turned from coffee to brandy, the cry was taken up. “Buhle! Buhle! Where is Buhle?” There was a further commotion as Major General Walter Buhle, Staff Chief in charge of supplies and reinforcements, pushed through the crowd and entered the conference room. Heinrici looked at him, and then away in disgust. Buhle had been drinking and he smelled of it.[34] Nobody else seemed to notice or care—including Hitler. The Führer put a number of questions to Buhle—about reserves, supplies of rifles, small arms and ammunition. Buhle answered thickly and, Heinrici thought, stupidly, but the answers seemed to satisfy Hitler. According to what he made of Buhle’s replies, another 13,000 troops could be scraped up from the so-called reserve army.

Dismissing Buhle, Hitler turned to Heinrici. “There,” he said. “You have 150,000 men—about twelve divisions. There are your reserves.” The auction was over. Hitler apparently considered the Army Group’s problems settled. Yet all he had done was to buy, at most, twelve more days for the Third Reich—and probably at a tremendous cost in human lives.

Heinrici struggled to preserve his control. “These men,” he stated flatly, “are not combat-trained. They have been in rear areas and in offices or on ships, in maintenance work at Luftwaffe bases…. They have never fought at the front. They have never seen a Russian.” Goering cut in. “The forces I have presented are, for the most part, combat fliers. They are the best of the best. And also there are the troops who were at Monte Cassino—troops whose fame outshone all others.” Flushed and voluble, he hotly informed Heinrici, “These men have the will, the courage, and certainly the experience.”

Doenitz, too, was angry. “I tell you,” he snapped at Heinrici, “the crews of warships are every bit as good as your Wehrmacht troops.” For just a moment Heinrici himself flared. “Don’t you think there’s a big difference between fighting at sea and fighting on land?” he asked scathingly. “I tell you, all these men will be slaughtered at the front! Slaughtered!”

If Heinrici’s sudden outburst shocked Hitler, he did not show it. As the others fumed, Hitler seemed to have grown icily calm. “All right,” he said. “We will place these reserve troops in the second line about eight kilometers behind the first. The front line will absorb the shock of the Russian preparatory artillery fire. Meanwhile, the reserves will grow accustomed to battle and if the Russians break through, they will then fight. To throw back the Russians if they break through, you will have to use the panzer divisions.” And he gazed at Heinrici as though awaiting agreement on what was really a very simple matter.

Heinrici did not find it so. “You have taken away my most experienced and combat-ready armored units,” he said. “The Army Group has made a request for their return.” Enunciating each word clearly, Heinrici said: “I must have them back.”

There was a startled movement behind him and Hitler’s adjutant, Burgdorf, whispered angrily in Heinrici’s ear. “Finish!” he ordered Heinrici. “You must finish.” Heinrici stood his ground. “My Führer,” he repeated, ignoring Burgdorf, “I must have those armored units back.”

Hitler waved his hand almost apologetically. “I am very sorry,” he replied, “but I had to take them from you. Your panzers are needed much more by your southern neighbor. The main attack of the Russians is clearly not aimed at Berlin. There is a stronger concentration of enemy forces to the south of your front in Saxony.” Hitler waved his hand over the Russian positions on the Oder. “All of this,” he announced in an exhausted, bored voice, “is merely a support attack in order to confuse. The main thrust of the enemy will not be directed at Berlin—but there.” Dramatically, he placed a finger on Prague. “Consequently,” the Führer continued, “the Army Group Vistula should be well able to withstand the secondary attacks.”

Heinrici stared unbelievingly at Hitler.[35] Then he looked at Krebs; certainly all this must seem equally irrational to the Chief of OKH. Krebs spoke up. “Based on the information we have,” he explained, “there is nothing to indicate that the Führer’s assessment of the situation is wrong.”

Heinrici had done all he could. “My Führer,” he concluded, “I have completed everything possible to prepare for the attack. I cannot consider these 150,000 men as reserves. I also cannot do anything about the terrible losses we must surely sustain. It is my duty to make that absolutely clear. It is also my duty to tell you that I cannot guarantee that the attack can be repelled.”

Hitler came suddenly to life. Struggling to his feet, he pounded on the table. “Faith!” he yelled. “Faith and strong belief in success will make up for all these insufficiencies! Every commander must be filled with confidence! You!” he pointed a finger at Heinrici. “You must radiate this faith! You must instill this belief in your troops!”

Heinrici stared unflinchingly at Hitler. “My Führer,” he said, “I must repeat—it is my duty to repeat—that hope and faith alone will not win this battle.”

Behind him a voice whispered, “Finish! Finish!”

But Hitler was not even listening to Heinrici. “I tell you. Colonel General,” he yelled, “if you are conscious of the fact that this battle should be won, it will be won! If your troops are given the same belief—then you will achieve victory, and the greatest success of the war!”

In the tense silence which followed, Heinrici, white-faced, gathered his papers and handed them to Eismann. The two officers took their leave of the still-silent room. Outside, in the corridor lounge, they were told that an air raid was in progress. Numbly, both men stood waiting, each in a kind of stupor, almost unaware of the continuing chatter around them.

After a few minutes they were permitted to leave the bunker. They climbed the stairs and went out into the garden. There, for the first time since he left the conference room, Heinrici spoke. “It’s all of no use,” he said, wearily. “You might just as well try to bring the moon down to earth.” He looked up at the heavy smoke palls over the city and repeated softly to himself, “It’s all for nothing. All for nothing.”[36]

The blue waters of the Chiem See, like a series of moving mirrors, reflected the great stands of pine that blanketed the foothills all the way up to the snow line. Leaning heavily on his stick, Walther Wenck gazed across the lake and beyond to the vast panoramic tumble of mountains around Berchtesgaden a few miles away. It was a scene of extraordinary beauty and peace.

Everywhere the early flowers were out; the snow caps had begun to disappear from the high ranges and, although it was only April 6, even the air was redolent of spring. The peacefulness of his surroundings had done much to speed the convalesence of Guderian’s former Chief of Staff, at 45, the Wehrmacht’s youngest general.

Here, in the heart of the Bavarian Alps, the war seemed a thousand miles away. Except for men recuperating from war wounds or, as in Wenck’s case, accidents, there was hardly a soldier to be seen in the entire area.

Although still weak, Wenck was on the mend. Considering the seriousness of the accident, he was lucky to be alive. He had sustained head wounds and multiple fractures in a car wreck on February 13, and had been hospitalized for nearly six weeks. So many ribs had been smashed that he was still encased in a surgical corset from chest to thighs. The war seemed over for him, and in any case its outcome was sadly clear. He did not believe the Third Reich could survive more than a few weeks longer.

Although Germany’s future seemed bleak, Wenck had much to be thankful for: his wife, Irmgard, and their 15-year-old twins, son Helmuth and daughter Sigried were safe, and staying with him in Bavaria. With painful slowness Wenck walked back to the picturesque little inn where they were living. As he entered the foyer, Irmgard met him with a message. Wenck was to ring Berlin immediately.

Hitler’s adjutant, General Burgdorf, came on the line. Wenck, Burgdorf said, was to report to Hitler in Berlin the following day. “The Führer,” said Burgdorf, “has named you commander of the Twelfth Army.” Wenck was both surprised and puzzled. “The Twelfth Army?” he asked. “Which one is that?”

“You’ll learn all about that when you get here,” Burgdorf replied.

Wenck was still not satisfied. “I’ve never heard of a Twelfth Army,” he pressed. “The Twelfth Army,” Burgdorf said irritably, as though explaining everything, “is being organized now.” Then he hung up.

Hours later, in uniform once more, Wenck said good-bye to his distressed wife. “Whatever you do,” he warned her, “stay in Bavaria. It’s the safest place.” Then, totally ignorant of his assignment, he set out for Berlin. Within the next twenty-one days the name of this virtually unknown general would become synonymous with hope in the mind of almost every Berliner.

The staff was accustomed to seeing an occasional outburst of temper, but nobody had ever seen Heinrici quite like this before. The commander of the Army Group Vistula was in a towering rage. He had just received a report from Bieler, the officer in charge of the “fortress” at Frankfurt, on the young colonel’s visit to Hitler. As Heinrici had feared, the bespectacled, thin-faced officer had not measured up to Hitler’s idea of a Nordic hero. After a few inconsequential remarks, during which Frankfurt was not even mentioned, Hitler shook hands and dismissed the young officer. As soon as Bieler had left the bunker, Hitler ordered a change in the Frankfurt command. “Get someone else,” the Führer told Krebs, “Bieler is certainly no Gneisenau!”

General Busse, whose Ninth Army included the Frankfurt garrison, had heard from Krebs of the impending change and had promptly informed Heinrici. Now, as Bieler stood beside Heinrici’s desk, the blazing Giftzwerg put in a call to Krebs. His staff watched silently. They had learned to tell the measure of Heinrici’s temper by the way he drummed on the table top with his fingers. Now his right hand was beating out a violent tattoo. Krebs came on the phone. “Krebs,” barked Heinrici, “Colonel Bieler is here in my office. I want you to listen carefully. Bieler is to be reinstated as commander of the Frankfurt garrison. I have told this to Burgdorf and now I’m telling you. I refuse to accept any other officer. Do you understand that?” He did not wait for an answer. “Something else. Where is Bieler’s Iron Cross? He has been waiting for that decoration for months. Now he is to get it. Do you understand that?” Still Heinrici did not pause. “And now listen to me, Krebs,” he said. “If Bieler does not get his Iron Cross, if Bieler is not reinstated as commander of Frankfurt, I shall lay down my command! Do you understand that?” Heinrici, still drumming furiously, pressed on. “I expect your confirmation on this matter today! Is that clear?” And he slammed down the phone. Krebs had not uttered a word.

On the afternoon of April 7, Colonel Eismann later recalled, “the Army Group received two teletype messages from the Führer’s headquarters. In the first, Bieler was confirmed as commander of Frankfurt; in the second the Iron Cross was bestowed upon him.”

General Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s Chief of Operations, sat in his Dahlem office awaiting the arrival of General Wenck. The new Twelfth Army commander had just left Hitler and now it was Jodl’s job to brief Wenck on the situation on the western front. On Jodl’s desk was a sheaf of reports from Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Commander-in-Chief, West. They painted a picture that was growing darker almost hourly. Everywhere the Anglo-Americans were breaking through.

In theory, the Twelfth Army was to be the western shield before Berlin, holding about 125 miles of the lower Elbe and Mulde rivers to prevent an Anglo-American drive on the city. Wenck, Hitler had decided, would command an army of ten divisions, composed of panzer training corps officers, Home Guardsmen, cadet forces, various splinter groups, and the remnants of the shattered Eleventh Army in the Harz Mountains. Even if such a force could be organized in time, Jodl was skeptical that it could have much, if any, effect. And on the Elbe it might never get into action at all—although he had no intention of telling Wenck this. In his office safe, Jodl still held the captured Eclipse plan—the document detailing the moves the Anglo-Americans would make in the event of a German surrender or collapse—and the attached maps showing the agreed zones each Ally would occupy at war’s end. Jodl remained convinced that the Americans and British would halt on the Elbe—roughly the dividing line between the Anglo-American and Russian post-hostility zones of occupation. It seemed perfectly clear to him that Eisenhower was going to leave Berlin to the Russians.

“Naturally,” ran the last paragraph of General Eisenhower’s latest cable to Churchill, “if at any moment ‘Eclipse’ conditions [a German collapse or surrender] should come about anywhere along the front we would rush forward… and Berlin would be included in our important targets.” It was as much of a commitment as the Supreme Commander was willing to make. It did not satisfy the British, and their Chiefs of Staff continued to press for a clear-cut decision. They messaged Washington urging a meeting to discuss Eisenhower’s strategy. Stalin’s cable had roused their suspicions. While the Generalissimo had stated that he planned to begin his offensive in the middle of May, said the British Chiefs, he had not indicated when he intended to launch his “secondary forces” in the direction of Berlin. Thus it still seemed to them that Berlin should be captured as soon as possible. Further, they believed it would be “appropriate for the Combined Chiefs of Staff to give Eisenhower guidance on the matter.”

The reply from General Marshall firmly and decisively ended the discussion. “Such psychological and political advantages as would result from the possible capture of Berlin ahead of the Russians,” he said, “should not override the imperative military consideration, which in our opinion is the destruction and dismembering of the German armed forces.”

Marshall did not entirely close the door on the possibility of taking Berlin for, “as a matter of fact, it is within the center of the impact of the main thrust.” But there was no time for the Combined Chiefs of Staff to give the problem any lengthy consideration. The speed of the Allied advance into Germany was now so fast, he said, that it outstripped the possibility of “review of operational matters by this or any other form of committee action.” And Marshall ended with an unequivocal endorsement of the Supreme Commander: “Only Eisenhower is in a position to know how to fight his battle and to exploit to the full the changing situation.”

The harassed Eisenhower, for his part, had declared himself willing to change his plans but only if ordered to do so. On April 7 he wired Marshall, “At any time that we can seize Berlin at little cost we should, of course, do so.” But because the Russians were so close to the capital, he regarded it “as militarily unsound at this stage of the proceedings to make Berlin a major objective.” He was the first, said Eisenhower, “to admit that war is waged in pursuance of political aims, and if the Combined Chiefs of Staff should decide that the Allied effort to take Berlin outweighs purely military considerations in this theater, I would cheerfully re-adjust my plans and thinking so as to carry out such an operation.” He stressed his belief, however, that “the capture of Berlin should be left as something that we should do if feasible and practicable as we proceed on the general plan of (A) dividing the German forces… (B) anchoring our left firmly in the Lübeck area, and (C) attempting to disrupt any German effort to establish a fortress in the southern mountains.”

He gave almost the same answer to Montgomery the following day. Monty had picked up the cudgels where Churchill and the British Chiefs left off. He asked Eisenhower for ten extra divisions to attack toward Lübeck and Berlin. Eisenhower turned him down. “As regards Berlin,” declared the Supreme Commander, “I am quite ready to admit that it has political and psychological significance, but of far greater importance will be the location of the remaining German forces in relation to Berlin. It is on them that I am going to concentrate my attention. Naturally if I can get a chance to take Berlin cheaply, I shall do so.”

At this point Churchill decided to end the controversy before there was further deterioration of the Allied relationship. He informed President Roosevelt that he considered the affair closed. “To prove my sincerity,” he cabled the President, “I will use one of my very few Latin quotations : Amantium irae amoris integratio est.” Translated, it meant, Lovers’ quarrels are a renewal of love.

But while the controversy over SCAF 252 and the Anglo-American objectives had been taking place behind the scenes, the men of the Anglo-American forces had been driving deeper by the hour into Germany. Nobody had told them that Berlin was no longer a major military objective.

5

THE RACE WAS ON. Never in the history of warfare had so many men moved so fast. The speed of the Anglo-American offensive was contagious, and all along the front the drive was taking on the proportions of a giant contest. As the armies concentrated on gaining the banks of the Elbe, to secure the bridgeheads for the last victorious dash that would end the war, every division along the north and center of the western front was determined to reach the river first. Beyond, Berlin, as always, was the final goal.

In the British zone, the 7th Armored Division—the famed Desert Rats—had hardly paused since leaving the Rhine. Once across. Major General Louis Lyne, the 7th’s commander, had emphasized that “for all ranks, your eyes should now be firmly fixed on the river Elbe. Once we get started I do not propose to stop by day or by night till we get there… Good hunting on the next lap.” Now, even against heavy opposition, the Desert Rats were averaging upward of twenty miles a day.

Squadron Sergeant Major Charles Hennell thought it “right and proper for the 7th to take the capital as a reward for our long and arduous efforts in the war from the Western Desert onwards.” Hennell had been with the Desert Rats since El Alamein. Sergeant Major Eric Cole had an even more compelling reason to reach Berlin. A veteran of Dunkirk, he had been driven into the sea by the Germans in 1940. Now Cole was grimly preparing to even the score. He constantly badgered the armored crews to get their mechanized equipment in tiptop running condition. Cole planned to drive the Germans in front of the 7th Armored tanks all the way back to Berlin.

The men of the British 6th Airborne Division had led their countrymen into Normandy on D-Day; they were determined to lead them on to the end. Sergeant Hugh McWhinnie had heard from German prisoners that the moment the British crossed the Elbe, the enemy would “open the door and let them through to Berlin.” He doubted it. The 6th was used to fighting for every mile. Captain Wilfred Davison of the 13th Parachute Battalion was certain that there would be a race for the city but, like most of the division, he had no doubt that “the 6th was in the running to lead the way.” But at division headquarters, Captain John L. Shearer was becoming a little anxious. He had heard a rumor that “Berlin was being left to the Americans.”

U.S. Airborne divisions had heard the same rumor. The trouble was that it made no mention of paratroopers. At General James Gavin’s 82nd Airborne staging area, where chutists had been training for days, it was now all too clear that a fighting drop on Berlin was out. Apparently an airborne operation would result only if a sudden enemy collapse put the Eclipse plan into action, making it necessary for the troopers to go to Berlin on a policing mission. But this seemed remote. SHAEF had already instructed General Lewis Brereton’s First Airborne Army that it would soon be making relief drops on Allied POW camps, under the code name “Operation Jubilant.” Much as they wanted POWs freed, the prospect of a rescue operation instead of a fighting assignment filled the men of the airborne army with something less than jubilance.

Similar frustration characterized other airborne groups. General Maxwell Taylor’s “Screaming Eagles” of the 101st Airborne Division were once more fighting as foot soldiers, this time in the Ruhr. One regiment of Gavin’s 82nd had been ordered there, too. The 82nd had also been alerted to help Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army Group in a later operation across the Elbe.

It was Private Arthur “Dutch” Schultz of the 505th Parachute Regiment who perhaps best summed up the feelings of the men of the airborne divisions. Climbing aboard a truck headed for the Ruhr, he cynically told his pal, Private Joe Tallett, “So. I lead ’em into Normandy, yes? Into Holland, yes? Look at me, kid. I’m a blue-blooded American and the country’s got only one of me. They want to get their money’s worth. They ain’t gonna waste me on Berlin. Hell, no! They’re saving me up! They’re gonna drop me on Tokyo!”

But if the airborne divisions were dispirited, the land armies were brimming over with anticipation.

In the center, U.S. forces were going all out and their strength was enormous. With the return of Simpson’s massive Ninth Army from Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army Group, Bradley had become the first general in American history to command four field armies. Besides the Ninth, his forces included the First, Third and Fifteenth—close to a million men.

On April 2, just nine days after crossing the Rhine, his troops had finished springing the trap encircling the Ruhr. Caught in the 4,000-square-mile pocket was Field Marshal Walter Model’s Army Group B, numbering no fewer than 325,000 men. With Model contained, the western front was wide open and Bradley swept boldly on, leaving part of the Ninth and First armies to mop up the pocket. Now his forces were in full cry. With the British in the north and General Devers’ U.S. Sixth Army Group in the south holding the flanks, Bradley was driving furiously through Germany’s center, toward Leipzig and Dresden. In the north-to-south line-up of U.S. armies the Ninth was the shortest distance from the Elbe, and it looked to commanders as if Bradley had given Simpson the go-ahead for the dash that, by its very momentum, should take U.S. forces to Berlin.

The day the encirclement of the Ruhr was completed, Eisenhower issued orders to his forces. Bradley’s group was to “mop up the… Ruhr “ launch a thrust with its main axis: Kassel-Leipzig… seize any opportunity to capture a bridgehead over the River Elbe and be prepared to conduct operations beyond the Elbe.” On April 4, the day the Ninth was returned to him, Bradley himself gave new commands to his armies. In the Twelfth Army Group’s “Letter of Instructions, No. 20,” the Ninth was directed, first, to drive for a line roughly south of Hanover with the army center in the approximate area of the town of Hildesheim—about seventy miles from the Elbe. Then, “on order,” the second phase would begin. It was this vital paragraph that spelled out the role of the Ninth Army and, to its commander, left no doubt as to the destination of his forces. It read: “Phase 2. Advance on order to the east… exploit any opportunity for seizing a bridgehead over the Elbe and be prepared to continue the advance on BERLIN or to the northeast.” Phase 1—the drive toward Hildesheim—seemed to be simply a directional order. No one expected to be held there. But Phase 2 was the starting flag that every division in the Ninth Army had been awaiting, none more eagerly than the commander, Lieutenant General William “Big Simp” Simpson.[37]

“My people were keyed up,” General Simpson was to recall later. “We’d been the first to the Rhine and now we were going to be the first to Berlin. All along we thought of just one thing—capturing Berlin, going through and meeting the Russians on the other side.” From the time the Letter of Instructions came down from the Army Group, Simpson had not wasted a minute. He expected to reach the Hildesheim phase line in a matter of days. After that, Simpson told his staff officers, he planned “to get an armored and an infantry division set up on the autobahn running just above Magdeburg on the Elbe to Potsdam, where we’ll be ready to close in on Berlin.” Then Simpson intended to commit the rest of the Ninth “as fast as we can… if we get the bridgehead and they turn us loose.” Jubilantly he told his staff, “Damn, I want to get to Berlin and all you people, right down to the last private, I think, want it, too.”

Major General Isaac D. White, the determined, wiry commander of the 2nd Armored “Hell on Wheels” Division, was a good step ahead of Simpson: his plan to take Berlin had been ready even before his men crossed the Rhine. White’s Operations Chief, Colonel Briard P. Johnson, had plotted the drive on the capital weeks before. So thorough was his plan that detailed orders and map overlays were ready by March 25.

The 2nd’s assault plan was somewhat similar to Simpson’s own concept. It, too, followed the autobahn from Magdeburg on the Elbe. Proposed day-by-day advances were drawn on the map overlays and each stage was given a code name. The last dash of about sixty miles from Magdeburg carried phase lines with the names: “Silver,” “Silk,” “Satin,” “Daisy,” “Pansy,” “Jug,” and finally, imposed on a huge blue swastika covering Berlin, the code word “Goal.” At the rate the 2nd was moving, against only spotty opposition, often achieving upward of thirty-five miles a day, White was confident of grabbing the capital. If his men could secure a bridgehead at Magdeburg, now only eighty miles away, White expected to dash into Berlin within forty-eight hours.

Now, along the Ninth Army’s fifty-odd miles of front, White’s 2nd Armored was spearheading the drive. The division was one of the largest formations on the western front. With its tanks, self-propelled guns, armored cars, bulldozers, trucks, jeeps and artillery, it formed a stream more than seventy-two miles long. To create maximum fighting effectiveness, the force had been broken into three armored units—Combat Commands A, B and R, the latter held in reserve. Even so, the division, moving in tandem and averaging about two miles an hour, took nearly twelve hours to pass a given point. This ponderous armored force was running ahead of every other unit of the Ninth Army—with one notable exception.

On its right flank, tenaciously pacing the 2nd mile for mile and fighting all the way, was a wildly assorted collection of vehicles crammed with troops. From the air it bore no resemblance to either an armored or an infantry division. In fact, but for a number of U.S. Army trucks interspersed among its columns, it might easily have been mistaken for a German convoy. Major General Robert C. Macon’s highly individualistic 83rd Infantry Division, the “Rag-Tag Circus,” was going hell-for-leather toward the Elbe in its captured booty. Every enemy unit or town that surrendered or was captured subscribed its quota of rolling stock for the division, usually at gunpoint. Every newly acquired vehicle got a quick coat of olive-green paint and a U.S. star slapped on its side; then it joined the 83rd. The men of the Rag-Tag Circus had even managed to liberate a German airplane and, harder, had found someone to fly it, and it was spreading consternation all over the front. First Sergeant William G. Presnell of the 30th Infantry Division, who had fought all the way from Omaha Beach, knew the silhouette of every Luftwaffe fighter. So when he saw what was obviously a German plane heading in his direction, he yelled “ME-109!” and dived for cover. Puzzled when there was no burst of machine gun fire, he raised his head and stared as the fighter sped away. The plane was painted a blotchy olive-green. On the undersides of the wings were the words “83rd Inf. Div.”

If their compatriots were confused by the 83rd’s vehicles, the Germans were even more so. As the division rushed pell mell toward the Elbe, Major Haley Kohler heard the insistent blowing of a car horn. “This Mercedes came up behind us,” he recalled, “and then began passing everything on the road.” Captain John J. Devenney saw it, too. “The car weaved in and out of our column, going in our direction,” he remembered. As it passed, Devenney was astounded to see that it was a chauffeur-driven German staff car with a full load of officers. A burst of machine gun fire stopped the vehicle, and the bewildered Germans were taken prisoner in the middle of what they had supposed to be one of their own columns. The Mercedes, in top condition, received the usual hurried paint job and was immediately put to use.

General Macon was determined that the 83rd would be the first infantry division to cross the Elbe and advance to Berlin. The rivalry between the 83rd and the 2nd Armored was now so intense that when leading units of the two divisions reached the Weser River at the same time on April 5 “there was considerable argument,” as Macon put it, “as to who was to cross the river first.” Eventually a compromise was reached: the divisions crossed together, by sandwiching their units. Back at 83rd headquarters rumor had it that General White was furious with the Rag-Tag Circus. “No damned infantry division,” the 2nd’s commander was quoted as saying, “is going to beat my outfit to the Elbe.”

The 2nd was running into other competition, too. The 5th Armored “Victory Division” was rolling almost as fast as White’s columns, and its men had plans of their own for taking the capital. “The only big question at the time was who was going to get Berlin first,” remembers Colonel Gilbert Farrand, the 5th’s Chief of Staff. “We planned to cross the Elbe at Tangermünde, Sandau, Arneburg and Werben. We heard that the Russians were ready to go, so we made every possible preparation.” The division was on the move so continuously that, as Farrand remembers it, no one slept more than four or five hours a night—and often no one slept at all. Because of the steadiness of the advance, Farrand’s own half-track was now the division’s headquarters. The 5th’s progress was greatly helped by the spottiness of the opposition. “The advance was really nothing more,” Farrand recalls, “than cracking rear guard actions.” But these could be deadly, as Farrand discovered when a shell plowed through his half-track.

Among the infantry divisions, the 84th, 30th and 102nd had their eyes on Berlin, too. Everywhere in the Ninth, tired and dirty men, eating on the move, were hoping to be in on the kill. The very momentum of the drive was exhilarating. Still, despite the absence of a general pattern of German defense, there was fighting—and at times it was heavy.

In some areas diehards put up fierce resistance before surrendering. Lieutenant Colonel Roland Kolb of the 84th “Railsplitters” Division noticed that the worst fighting came from scattered SS units that hid in the woods and harassed the advancing troops. The armored columns usually bypassed these fanatic remnants and left them to the infantry to mop up. Desperate encounters often took place in small towns. At one point in the advance, Kolb was shocked to find children of twelve and under manning artillery pieces. “Rather than surrender,” he remembers, “the boys fought until killed.”

Other men also experienced moments of horror. Near the wooded ridges of the Teutoburger Wald, Major James F. Hollingsworth, leading the 2nd Armored’s advance guard, found himself suddenly surrounded by German tanks. His column had run directly into a panzer training ground. Luckily for Hollingsworth, the tanks were relics from which the engines had been long since removed. But their guns were in place for use in training recruits, and the Germans quickly opened fire, Staff Sergeant Clyde W. Cooley, a veteran of North Africa and the gunner on Hollingsworth’s tank, swung into action. Revolving his turret, he knocked out a German tank at 1,500 yards. Turning again, he blasted another 75 yards away. “All hell broke loose as everyone opened up,” recalls Hollingsworth. Then just as the fight ended, a German truck filled with soldiers came barreling down the road toward the 2nd Armored’s column. Hollingsworth hastily ordered his men to wait until the truck was in range. At 75 yards, he gave the order to open fire. The truck, riddled by .50 caliber machine gun bullets, blazed, turned over and threw its uniformed occupants out onto the road. Most were dead by the time they hit the ground, but a few were still alive and screaming horribly. It was only when he came up to inspect the torn and riddled bodies that Hollingsworth discovered the soldiers were uniformed German women—the equivalent of U.S. WACs.

The opposition was completely unpredictable. Many areas capitulated without firing a shot. In some towns and cities burgomasters surrendered while the withdrawing German troops were still moving through the populated areas, often no more than a block away from American tanks and infantry. At Detmold, where one of Germany’s largest armament works was located, a civilian met the lead tank of Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler G. Merriam’s 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion, scouting ahead of the 2nd Armored. The German representative announced that the superintendent of the factory wished to surrender. “Shells were falling all about us as we drove in,” Merriam recalls. “Lined up outside the factory were the superintendent, the factory manager and the workers. The superintendent made a little speech of surrender and then presented me with a beautifully chromed Mauser pistol.” A few blocks farther on, Merriam took the surrender of an entire German paymaster company—complete with vast quantities of bank notes. But a few hours later, U.S. infantry coming up behind Merriam fought a bitter and prolonged battle to clean out the same town. Detmold, as it turned out, was in the center of an SS training area.

Similar incidents occurred everywhere. In some small cities the silence of surrender in one area would be suddenly shattered by the din of fierce fighting a few blocks away. On the main street of one such city. General Macon, the 83rd’s commander, remembers “walking quite safely through the front entrance of my headquarters, but when I tried to leave by the back door, I almost had to fight my way out.” On the outskirts of one town, troops of the 30th Infantry were met by German soldiers with white handkerchiefs tied to their rifles. As the Germans tried to surrender to the Americans, they were machine gunned in the back by SS stragglers who still fought on.

Some men developed new techniques for securing surrenders. Captain Francis Schommer of the 83rd Division, who spoke fluent German, several times conducted capitulations by telephone—bolstered by a Colt .45. Schommer, his pistol pointed at a newly captured burgomaster, would inform the mayor that “it might be wise for you to telephone the burgomaster of the next town and inform him that, if he wants the place to remain standing, he better surrender it right now. Tell him to get the people to hang sheets from their windows—or else.” The frightened burgomaster “would usually pour it on, telling his neighbor that the Americans in his town had hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces, and thousands upon thousands of troops. The ruse worked again and again.”

As the great drive gathered momentum, the roads became jammed with motorized troops and armored columns pushing east past thousands of German prisoners going west. There was not even time to take charge of the prisoners. Exhausted and unshaven, Wehrmacht officers and privates trudged back toward the Rhine unaccompanied. Some of them still carried weapons. Chaplain Ben L. Rose of the 113th Mechanized Cavalry Group recalls the hopeless look of two officers who, in full dress uniform, walked alongside his column “trying to get someone to notice them long enough to surrender their side arms.” But the troopers, intent on piling up mileage, simply thumbed them west.

Cities and towns fell to the onrushing forces one after another. Few men had heard their names before and, in any case, no one stayed long enough to remember them. Places like Minden, Bückeburg, Tündern and Stadthagen were merely checkpoints on the way to the Elbe. But the troops of the 30th Division encountered a familiar name—so familiar that most men remember being surprised that it actually existed. The town was Hamelin, of Pied Piper fame. Suicidal opposition from a few SS strongpoints by-passed earlier by the 2nd Armored, and heavy retaliatory shelling by the 30th, reduced the storybook city of gingerbread houses and cobblestoned streets to a burned and blasted rubble by April 5. “This time,” said Colonel Walter M. Johnson of the 117th Regiment, “we got the rats out with a slightly different kind of flute.”

By April 8, the 84th Division had reached the outskirts of 15th-century Hanover. On the long drive from the Rhine, Hanover, with a population of 400,000, was the largest city to fall to any division of the Ninth Army. Major General Alexander R. Bolling, commander of the 84th, had expected to bypass the city, but instructions came down to capture it instead. Bolling was less than happy. To commit his troops at Hanover would lose him precious time in his race against other infantry divisions for the Elbe. The battle was fierce; yet within forty-eight hours resistance had been reduced to small isolated actions. Bolling, proud of the 84th’s prowess, yet chafing to get on with the advance, was both surprised and pleased to be visited in Hanover by the Supreme Commander, his Chief of Staff, General Smith, and the Ninth Army’s General Simpson. At the end of their formal meeting, Bolling remembered, “Ike said to me, ‘Alex, where are you going next?’ I replied, ‘General, we’re going to push on ahead, we have a clear go to Berlin and nothing can stop us.’”

Eisenhower, according to Boiling, “put his hand on my arm and said, ‘Alex, keep going. I wish you all the luck in the world and don’t let anybody stop you.’” When Eisenhower left Hanover, Bolling believed that he had a “clear verbal acknowledgement from the Supreme Commander that the 84th was going to Berlin.”

On that same Sunday, April 8, the 2nd Armored Division, slightly ahead of the 83rd for the moment, pulled up at the first phase line, Hildesheim. Now the 2nd must await orders for the opening of the second stage of the attack. General White was glad of the pause. With the division traveling at such speed, maintenance had become a problem and White needed at least forty-eight hours for repairs. The temporary halt, he understood, would also enable other units to come abreast. But the majority of soldiers, after the frenzied speed of the last few days, wondered why they were being held. Men chafed at the delay; in the past, such stand-downs had given the enemy a chance to reorganize and consolidate. With the end so close no one wanted to push his luck. First Sergeant George Petcoff, a Normandy veteran, was worried about “the fight for Berlin, because I was beginning to think my number was up.” Chaplain Rose remembers that one tanker was so superstitious about the future that he climbed out of his tank, looked at the words “Fearless Joe” painted on the front and painstakingly proceeded to scratch out the word “Fearless.” “From now on,” he announced, “it’s just plain Joe!”

If the men were anxious and fearful of delay, their commanders —including General White’s immediate superiors at 19th Corps headquarters—were even more concerned. Major General Raymond S. McLain, the Corps Commander, hoped nothing would upset his plans. Despite the speed, he was not worried about supplies. The strength of his corps, totaling well over 120,000 men, was now greater than the Union Army’s at Gettysburg, and he had 1,000 armored vehicles. With all this power, McLain, as he later expressed it, had “absolutely no doubt that six days after crossing the Elbe” the entire 19th Corps would be in Berlin.

McLain had heard from Simpson’s headquarters that the pause was only temporary—and that the reason for the delay was both tactical and political. As it turned out, his information was right on both counts. Ahead lay the future frontier of the Soviet zone of occupation, and the halt gave SHAEF time to consider the situation. No geographic “stop line” had yet been decided upon for either the Anglo-American or the Russian forces. Thus, the danger of head-on collision still existed. In the absence of any concentrated German opposition, higher headquarters had no intention of stopping the attack, yet one serious consideration had to be taken into account: once the Soviet occupation line was crossed, every mile captured would, sooner or later, have to be handed back to the Russians.

At the closest point of advance, Berlin was now only 125 miles away, and all along the Ninth Army front, men waited to go, oblivious of the delicate problem that faced the High Command. They had all sorts of reasons for being eager. P.F.C. Carroll Stewart was looking forward to his first glimpse of the German capital because he had heard that, of all the cities in Europe, Berlin could not be matched for its scenic views.

RAF Warrant Officer James “Dixie” Deans stamped to attention before the desk and smartly saluted the German colonel. Hermann Ostmann, commandant of Stalag 357, the Allied prisoner-of-war camp near Fallingbostel, north of Hanover, returned the salute with equal briskness. It was just one of a series of military formalities that Prisoner-of-War Deans and Captor Ostmann played out whenever they met. Each, as always, was a model of correctness.

Between the two men there existed a grudging and wary respect. Deans regarded the commandant—a middle-aged World War I officer whose palsied arm disqualified him from more active service—as a fair-minded warden, doing a job he disliked. For his part, Ostmann knew that the 29-year-old Deans, elected by the prisoners as their spokesman, was an obstinate, determined bargainer who could, and often did, make Ostmann’s life miserable. The Colonel was always aware that the real control of Stalag 357 lay in the slender Deans’s firm handling of the prisoners, and in their unswerving loyalty to him.

Deans was a legend. A navigator who had been shot down over Berlin in 1940, he had been in POW camps ever since. In each, he had learned something more about how to obtain maximum privileges for himself and his fellow inmates. He had also learned much about dealing with prison commandants. According to Deans, the procedure was basic: “You simply give the blighters hell all the time.”

Now, Deans stared down at the aging colonel, waiting to learn the reason for his latest summons to the commandant’s office.

“I have here some orders,” said Ostmann, holding up some forms. “And I am afraid that we must move you and your men.”

Deans was immediately on guard. “Where to, Colonel?” he asked.

“Northeast of here,” said Ostmann. “Exactly where I do not know, but I’ll get instructions along the way.” Then he added, “Of course you understand we are doing this for your own protection.” He paused and smiled weakly. “Your armies are getting a little close.”

Deans had been aware of that for days. “Recreational” activities in the camp had resulted in the production of two highly functional and secret radios. One lay hidden in an old-fashioned, constantly used gramophone. The other, a tiny battery-operated receiver, made the rounds of Stalag 357 broadcasting the latest news from its owner’s mess kit. From these precious sources, Deans knew that Eisenhower’s armies were over the Rhine and fighting in the Ruhr. The extent of the Anglo-American advance was still unknown to the prisoners—but the troops must be near if the Germans were moving the camp.

“How will the transfer be made, Colonel?” Deans asked, knowing full well that the Germans almost always moved POWs one way only—on foot.

“They’ll march in columns,” said Ostmann. Then, with one of his courteous gestures, he offered Deans a special privilege. “You can drive with me if you like.” With equal courtesy, Deans declined.

“How about the sick?” he asked. “There are many men here who can hardly walk.”

“They’ll be left behind with whatever help we can give them. And some of your men can stay with them, too.”

Now Deans wanted to know how soon the prisoners were leaving. There were times when Ostmann suspected that Deans knew almost as much of the war situation as the commandant himself—but there was one thing he was certain Deans could not have heard. According to headquarters information, the British were advancing in the general direction of Fallingbostel and were now only about fifty to sixty miles away, while the Americans, by all reports, were already in Hanover fifty miles to the south.

“You go immediately,” he informed Deans. “Those are my orders.”

As he left the commandant’s office, Deans knew there was little he could do to prepare the men for the march. Food was short and almost all the prisoners were weak and emaciated from malnutrition. A prolonged, arduous journey was almost certain to finish off many of them. But as he returned to barracks to pass the word of the march around camp, he made himself a solemn vow: using every ruse he could think of, from slow-ups to sit-downs to minor mutinies, Dixie Deans somehow intended to reach the Allied lines with all twelve thousand men of Stalag 357.

The whereabouts of the headquarters of the newly organized Twelfth Army had so far eluded the commanding officer, General Walther Wenck. The command post was supposed to be in the area north of the Harz Mountains, about seventy to eighty miles from Berlin, but Wenck had been driving about for hours. The roads were black with refugees and vehicles heading in both directions. Some refugees were milling east, away from the advancing Americans; others, fearful of the Russians, were hurrying to the west. Convoys carrying soldiers seemed equally aimless. Dorn, Wenck’s driver, pressed down the horn again and again as he edged the car along. As they drove deeper, heading south by west, conditions bordered on the chaotic. Wenck was becoming ever more uneasy and restless. What, he wondered, would he find when headquarters was finally reached?

Wenck was taking a roundabout way to reach his command post. He had decided to make a wide swing which would take him first to the city of Weimar, lying southwest of Leipzig, before he headed up to headquarters somewhere near Bad Blankenburg. Though the diversion was adding almost a hundred miles to his journey, Wenck had a reason for the detour. In a Weimar bank were his life savings, some ten thousand marks, and he intended to withdraw the entire sum. But as his car approached the city, the roads became strangely empty and the crack of gunfire sounded in the distance. A few kilometers further, the car was halted and Wehrmacht military police informed the General that tanks of Patton’s U.S. Third Army were already on the outskirts. Wenck felt both shocked and deceived. The situation was much worse than he had been told at Hitler’s headquarters. He could not believe that the Allies had advanced so fast—or that so much of Germany was already overrun. It was also hard to concede that, in all probability, his ten thousand marks were gone, too.[38]

From local headquarters Wehrmacht officers told Wenck that the entire Harz region was endangered, troops were retreating and areas were being outflanked. Obviously, his headquarters had already pulled out of the area. Wenck headed back toward Dessau, where some of his army was supposedly gathering. Near Rosslau, about eight miles north of Dessau, he discovered his headquarters in a former Wehrmacht engineering school. There, too, Wenck discovered the truth about the Twelfth Army.

Its front ran along the Elbe and its tributary, the Mulde, for a distance of about 125 miles—roughly from Wittenberge on the Elbe to the north, then south to a point just below and east of Leipzig on the Mulde. On the northern flank, facing the British, were the forces of Field Marshal Ernst Busch, Commander-in-Chief, North West. On the south were the badly mauled units of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Commander-in-Chief, West. Wenck had little information about the strength of these forces. In his section, between the two, the Twelfth Army existed mainly on paper. Other than troops holding scattered positions along the Elbe he had little but the scant remains of ghost divisions. Other groups, he found, were not yet operational, and there were even shadow units still to be formed. The bulk of his artillery was immobile, set in fixed positions around such towns as Magdeburg, Wittenberge, and near bridge or crossing sites along the Elbe. There were some self-propelled guns, a group of armored cars, and some forty small jeeplike Volkswagen troop carriers. But Wenck’s Twelfth Army at this moment had at best only about a dozen tanks.

Although presumably the scattered and splinter troops would eventually bring his forces up to about 100,000 men, right now he had nowhere near the ten divisions he had been promised. Amid the remnants of units with impressive names—“Clausewitz,” “Potsdam,” “Scharnhorst,” “Ulrich von Hutten,” “Friedrich Ludwig Jahn,” “Theodor Körner”—there remained at most five and a half divisions, about 55,000 men.

Apart from forces already committed to set positions or in actual combat, the bulk of the new Twelfth Army was made up of eager cadets and training officers. Neither Wenck nor his Chief of Staff, Colonel Günther Reichhelm, had any doubt about the eventual outcome of the battles ahead. But Wenck refused to give in to disillusionment. Young and eager himself, he saw what many an older general might have missed: what the Twelfth lacked in strength it might well make up by the fierceness and dedication of young officers and cadets.

Wenck thought he saw a way to use his green but enthusiastic forces as mobile shock troops, rushing them from area to area as needed—at least until his other forces were regrouped and in position. Wenck believed in this fashion his energetic youngsters might buy Germany precious time. Almost his first move as commander was to order his strongest and best-equipped formations into central positions for use on either the Elbe or Mulde rivers. Looking at his map, Wenck circled the areas of probable action—Bitterfeld, Dessau, Belzig, Wittenberge. There was one other site, he thought, where the Americans would surely try to cross the Elbe. Lying within three arms of the river, devastated during the Thirty Years’ War and almost wholly destroyed, the town of Magdeburg had risen again. Now, the great fortress with its island citadel and 11th-century cathedral stood like a beacon in the path of the American armies. Around this area—particularly south of Magdeburg—Wenck assigned the best-equipped of his “Scharnhorst,” “Potsdam” and “Von Hutten” units to stand off the U.S. assault as well as they could.

His defenses were planned down to the last detail, his tactics committed to memory by his officers. Now, at Army Group Vistula headquarters, approximately 120 miles northeast of Wenck, Gotthard Heinrici was ready for the battle.

Behind his first Hauptkampflinie—the main line of resistance—Heinrici had developed a second line. Just before the expected Russian artillery barrage, Heinrici had told his commanders, he would order the evacuation of the front line. Immediately all troops would retreat to the second Hauptkampflinie. It was Heinrici’s old Moscow trick of letting the Russians “hit an empty bag.” As quickly as the Russian bombardment lifted, the troops were to move forward and take up their front-line positions again. The ruse had worked in the past and Heinrici was counting on its success again. The trick, as always, was to determine the exact moment of attack.

There had been several feints already. In Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army sector north of Berlin, General Martin Gareis, commanding the weak 46th Panzer Corps, was convinced that the attack would take place on April 8. The heavy forward movement of vehicles and the deepening concentration of artillery directly in front of Gareis’ area seemed to indicate an imminent assault—and captured Russian soldiers had even boasted of the date. Heinrici did not believe the reports. His own intelligence, plus his old habit of trusting his instinct, told him the date was too early. As it turned out, he was right. All along the Oder front, April 8 was quiet and uneventful.

Yet Heinrici’s vigilance was now unceasing. Each day he flew over the Russian lines in a small reconnaissance plane, observing troop and artillery dispositions. Each night he painstakingly studied late intelligence reports and prisoner interrogations, searching always for the clue that might pinpoint the time of attack.

It was during this tense and critical period that Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering summoned Heinrici to his castle for lunch. Though Heinrici was desperately weary and loath to be gone from his headquarters even for a few hours, he could not refuse. Karinhall, the Reichsmarschall’s huge estate, lay only a few miles from the Vistula headquarters at Birkenhain. The grounds were so vast that Goering even had his own private zoo. As they approached, Heinrici and his aide, Captain von Bila, were amazed by the magnificence of Goering’s parklike holdings, with the vistas of lakes, gardens, landscaped terraces and tree-lined drives. Lining the road from the main gates to the castle itself were units of sprucely uniformed Luftwaffe paratroopers—Goering’s personal defense force.

The castle, like Goering himself, was both massive and opulent. The reception hall reminded Heinrici of “a church so large, so huge, that one’s eye automatically traveled up to the roof beams.̶ Goering, resplendent in a white hunting jacket, greeted Heinrici coolly. His attitude was a portent of what was to come, for the luncheon was a disaster.

The Reichsmarschall and the General disliked each other intensely. Heinrici had always blamed Goering for the loss of Stalingrad where, despite all his promises, the Luftwaffe had been unable to supply the cut-off troops of Von Paulus’ Sixth Army. But Heinrici would have disliked the Reichsmarschall in any case for his arrogance and pomposity. For his part, Goering found Heinrici dangerously insubordinate. He had never forgiven the General for leaving Smolensk unscorched, and in the past few days, his distaste for Heinrici had greatly increased. Heinrici’s remarks about the 9th Paratroopers at the Führer’s conference had rankled deeply. The day following that meeting, Goering had telephoned Vistula headquarters and had spoken to Colonel Eismann. “It is inconceivable to me,” said the Reichsmarschall angrily, “that Heinrici would talk about my paratroopers the way he did. It was a personal insult! I still have the 2nd Parachute Division and you can tell your commander from me that he’s not getting them. No! I’m giving them to Schörner. There’s a real soldier! A true soldier!”

Now, at the luncheon, Goering turned his attack directly on Heinrici. He began by sharply criticizing the troops he had seen during recent trips along the Vistula front. Sitting back in a huge thronelike chair and waving a large silver beaker of beer, Goering accused Heinrici of poor discipline throughout his command. “I’ve driven all over your armies,” he said, “and in one sector after another I found men doing nothing! I saw some in foxholes playing cards! I found men from the labor organization who didn’t even have spades to do their jobs. In some places, I found men without field kitchens! In other sections almost nothing has been done to build defenses. Everywhere I found your people loafing, doing nothing.” Taking a great swallow of beer, Goering said menacingly, “I intend to bring all this to the attention of the Führer.”

Heinrici saw no point in arguing. All he wanted to do was get away. Keeping his temper in check, Heinrici somehow got through the meal. But, as Goering saw his two visitors to the door, Heinrici paused, looking slowly around the magnificent grounds and the impressive castle with its turrets and wings. “I can only hope,” he said, “that my loafers can save this beautiful place of yours from the battles that lie ahead.” Goering stared icily for a moment, then turned on his heel and walked back inside.

Goering would not have Karinhall much longer, Heinrici thought as he drove away. He was beginning to reach a conclusion about the timing of the Russian attack, based on intelligence reports, aerial observations, the steadily dropping flood waters of the Oder and that intuition which had never yet betrayed him. Heinrici believed the attack would begin within the week—somewhere around the fifteenth or sixteenth of April.

Pulling back the covering sheet on the table, Marshal Georgi Zhukov exposed the huge relief map of Berlin. It was more a model than a map, with miniature government buildings, bridges and railroad stations showing in exact replica against the principal streets, canals and airfields. Expected defensive positions, flak towers and bunkers were all neatly marked, and small green tags, each with a number, flagged principal objectives. The Reichstag was labeled 105, the Reichskanzlei 106; 107-8 were the offices of the Ministries of Internal and Foreign Affairs.

The Marshal turned to his officers. “Look at Objective 105,” he said. “Who is going to be the first to reach the Reichstag? Chuikov and his 8th Guards? Katukov and his tanks? Berzarin and his Fifth Shock Army? Or maybe Bogdanov with his 2nd Guards? Who will it be?”

Zhukov was deliberately baiting his officers. Each was in a frenzy to reach the city first and, in particular, to capture the Reichstag. As General Nikolai Popiel later remembered the scene, Katukov, presumably already there in his mind’s eye, said suddenly, “Just think. If I reach 107 and 108, I might grab Himmler and Ribbentrop together!”

All day the briefings had been in progress; along the front preparations for the attacks were nearly complete. Guns and ammunition were positioned in the forests; tanks were moving up so their guns could supplement the artillery when the bombardment began. A vast store of supplies, bridging materials, rubber boats and rafts was ready in the attack areas, and convoy after convoy jammed the roads bringing divisions up to the assembly areas. So frantic were demands for troops that the Russians for the first time were airlifting men from rear areas. It was obvious to Russian soldiers everywhere that the attack would come soon, yet no one below headquarters level had been given the date.

Captain Sergei Ivanovich Golbov, the Red Army correspondent, drove along Zhukov’s front watching the massive preparations. Golbov had tapped all his sources in an effort to find out the date of the attack, but without success. Never before had he witnessed activity such as this prior to an attack and he was convinced that the Germans must be watching every move. But, he commented long afterward, “No one seemed to give a damn what the Germans saw.”

One aspect of the preparations puzzled Golbov. For days now, anti-aircraft searchlights of all sizes and shapes had been arriving at the front. The crews were women. Moreover, these units were being held well back from the front and carefully hidden beneath camouflage netting. Golbov had never seen so many searchlights before. He wondered what they could possibly have to do with the attack.

At the Berlin Reichspostzentralamt, the Postal Services Administration building in Tempelhof, Reich Postal Minister Wilhelm Ohnesorge leaned over the brilliantly colored sheets of stamps on his desk. They were the first run, and Ohnesorge was inordinately pleased by them. The artist had done a fine job and the Führer was certain to be gratified by the results. With delight he examined two of the stamps more closely. One showed an SS soldier with a Schmeisser machine pistol at his shoulder; the other depicted a uniformed Nazi Party leader, a torch upraised in his right hand. Ohnesorge thought the special commemorative issues did justice to the occasion. They would be on sale on Hitler’s birthday, April 20.

A special date was also uppermost in Erich Bayer’s mind. The Wilmersdorf accountant had been worrying for weeks about what he would do on Tuesday, April 10—tomorrow. The payment had to be made by then; otherwise all sorts of trouble and red tape could result. Bayer had the money; that was not his problem. But did it matter now? Would the army that captured Berlin—American or Russian—insist on payment? And what if neither got the city? Bayer considered the matter from all sides. Then he went to his bank and withdrew fourteen hundred marks. Entering the office nearby, he made the required down payment on his income tax for 1945.

It happened so fast that everyone was taken by surprise. On the western front, at his Ninth Army headquarters, General Simpson immediately passed the word down to his two corps commanders, Major General Raymond S. McLain of the 19th and the 13th’s Major General Alvan Gillem. Official orders would follow, Simpson said, but the word was “Go.” Phase 2 was on. It was official. The divisions were to jump off for the Elbe—and beyond. At the 2nd Armored Division headquarters, General White got the news and promptly sent for Colonel Paul A. Disney, commanding the 67th Armored Regiment, the 2nd’s lead unit. Upon arrival, Disney remembered, “I barely had time to say ‘hello’ when White said, ‘Take off for the east.’” For just a moment Disney was taken aback. The stand-down had lasted a bare twenty-four hours. Still confused, he asked, “What’s the objective?” White answered with just one word: “Berlin!”

6

IN FIVE GREAT columns, the men of the 2nd Armored Division sped toward the Elbe and Berlin. They passed lighted German headquarters without slowing their pace. They swept through towns where aged Home Guardsmen, guns in their hands, stood helpless in the streets, too shocked to take action. They raced past German motorized columns moving out in the same direction. Guns blazed but nobody stopped on either side. GIs riding on tanks took potshots at Germans on motorcycles. Where enemy troops tried to make a stand from dug-in positions, some U.S. commanders used their armor-like cavalry. Major James F. Hollíngsworth, coming upon one such situation, lined up thirty-four tanks and gave a command rarely heard in modern warfare: “Charge!” Guns roaring, Hollingsworth’s tanks raced down toward the enemy positions, and the Germans broke and ran. Everywhere tanks chewed through enemy positions and across enemy terrain. By Wednesday evening, April 11, in an unparalleled armored dash, the Shermans had covered fifty-seven miles—seventy-three road miles—in just under twenty-four hours. Shortly after 8 P.M., Colonel Paul Disney flashed headquarters a laconic message: “We’re on the Elbe.”

One small group of armored vehicles had reached the outskirts of Magdeburg even earlier. In the afternoon Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler Merriam’s reconnaissance scout cars, traveling at speeds up to fifty-five miles per hour, had dashed into a suburban area on the western bank of the Elbe. There the cars were stopped, not by German defenses, but by civilian traffic and shoppers. The platoon let loose a high burst of machine gun fire in order to clear the streets. The result was chaos. Women fainted. Shoppers huddled in fearful groups or threw themselves flat on the ground. German soldiers ran helter-skelter, firing wildly. Merriam’s group lacked the strength to hold the area, but scout cars did manage to disentangle themselves from the mess and get to the airport which had been their objective. As they drove along the edge of the field, planes were landing and taking off. American guns began spraying everything in sight, including a squadron of fighters ready to take to the air. Then the defenses rallied and the platoon of scout cars was pinned down under heavy fire. The vehicles got out with the loss of only one armored car, but their appearance had alerted Magdeburg’s defenders. Now, as one American unit after another reached the Elbe on either side of the city, they began to encounter increasingly stiffening resistance. Merriam’s scouts, as they pulled back, had reported one vital piece of information: the Autobahn bridge to the north of the city was still standing. This immediately became the division’s prime objective, for it could carry the 2nd to Berlin. But from the gunfire that met the Americans it was clear that the bridge could not be taken on the run. Magdeburg’s defenders were determined to fight. Meanwhile there were other bridges to the north and south. If any one of these could be grabbed before the enemy destroyed it, the 2nd would be on its way.

Seven miles to the south, at Schönebeck, another bridge crossed the Elbe. It was the objective of Major Hollingsworth of the 67th Armored Regiment. All through Wednesday afternoon, Hollingsworth’s tanks raced unimpeded through town after town until they reached a place called Osterwieck. There, a regiment of Home Guard units forced a halt in the advance. Hollingsworth was puzzled. Many of the elderly Germans seemed ready to surrender—some had even tied handkerchiefs to their rifles and had raised them above their foxholes—yet there was no letup in the fighting. A prisoner, taken within the first few minutes, explained: eleven SS soldiers in the town were forcing the Home Guardsmen to fight. Angrily, Hollingsworth swung into action.

Calling for his jeep, and taking along an extra sergeant and a radio operator as well as the driver, the major circled the area and entered the town along a cow path. He cut a strange figure. Twin Colt automatics were strapped low on his hips, Western style; for added measure, he earned a tommy gun. Hollingsworth was a deadly shot who had personally killed over 150 Germans. Grabbing a passing civilian, he demanded to know where the SS troops were quartered. The terrified man immediately pointed to a large house and barn nearby, surrounded by a high fence. Noting a doorway in the fence, Hollingsworth and his men leaped from the car and, from a running start, smashed the door with their shoulders, ripping it off its hinges. As they crashed into the yard, an SS man rushed toward them, machine pistol raised; Hollingsworth riddled the man with his tommy gun. The other three Americans began throwing grenades into the windows. Looking quickly about, the major spotted another SS man in the open hayloft doors of the barn and beat him to the draw with his .45. Inside the buildings they found the bodies of six grenade victims; the three other SS men surrendered. Hollingsworth rushed back to his column. He had been held up for forty-five precious minutes.

Three hours later, Hollingsworth’s tanks breasted the high ground overlooking the towns of Schönebeck and Bad Salzelmen. Beyond, glittering in the early evening light, lay the Elbe, at this point almost five hundred feet wide. As he surveyed the area through binoculars, Hollingsworth saw that the highway bridge was still standing—and with good reason. German armored vehicles were using it to flee east across the river. How, Hollingsworth wondered, with enemy armor all around could he grab the bridge before it was blown?

As he watched, a plan began to form. Calling two of his company commanders, Captain James W. Starr and Captain Jack A. Knight, Hollingsworth outlined his idea. “They are moving along this north-to-south road running into Bad Salzelmen,” he said. “Then they swing east at the road junction, head into Schönebeck and cross the bridge. Our only hope is to charge into Bad Salzelmen and grab the junction. Now, here’s what we’ll do. When we get to the junction, your company, Starr, will peel off and block the road, holding the Germans coming up from the south. Ill join onto the rear of the German column that has already swung east into Schönebeck and follow it across the bridge. Knight, you come up behind. We’ve got to get that bridge and, by God, we’re going to do it.”

Hollingsworth knew that the plan would work only if they could move fast enough. The light was fading; with luck, the German tanks would never know they had company behind them as they crossed the bridge.

Within moments, Hollingsworth’s tanks were on their way. Hatches buttoned up, they charged into Bad Salzelmen; before the Germans were aware of what was happening, Starr’s vehicles had blocked the road from the south and were engaging the line of panzers. The German tanks leading the column had already made the turn, heading for the bridge. Apparently hearing the sound of firing behind, they began to speed up. At that moment Hollingsworth’s tanks filled the gap in their column and followed along at the same speed.

But then they were spotted. Artillery mounted on flat cars in the nearby railway yard opened fire on the rear of the U.S. column. As Hollingsworth’s Shermans turned into Schönebeck, a German Mark V tank, its turret revolving, drew a bead on the lead American. Staff Sergeant Cooley, Hollingsworth’s gunner, opened fire and blew up the Mark V. Slewing sideways, the panzer smashed into a wall and began burning furiously. There was barely room for Hollingsworth’s tank to get by, but weaving ponderously it edged through, followed by the rest of the column. Firing at the rear of each enemy vehicle and squeezing by the burning panzers, the American tanks charged through the town. By the time they reached its center, as Hollingsworth remembered, “everyone was firing at everyone else. It was the damnedest mess. Germans were hanging out of windows, either shooting at us with their Panzerfäuste or just dangling in death.”

Hollingsworth’s tank had not been hit and he was now only three or four blocks from the bridge. But the last stretch was the worst. As the remaining tanks pressed on, enemy fire seemed to come from everywhere. Buildings were blazing and, although by now it was 11 P.M., the scene was so brightly lit that it might still have been day.

Ahead lay the approach to the bridge. The tanks rushed forward. The entrance, blocked from Hollingsworth’s earlier view from the heights, was a maze of stone walls jutting out at irregular intervals from either side of the road; the vehicles had to slow and make sharp left and right maneuvers before reaching the center span. Jumping from his tank, Hollingsworth reconnoitered to see if he could both lead the way and direct his gunner’s fire via the telephone hooked to the back of the tank. At that instant an anti-tank shell exploded fifteen yards ahead of Hollingsworth. Cobblestone fragments flew through the air and suddenly the major found his face was a mass of blood.

A .45 in one hand and the tank telephone in the other, he doggedly moved toward the bridge. His tank collided with a jeep and Hollingsworth called for infantrymen. Leading them onto the approach, he began working his way through the roadblocks, exchanging steady fire with the Germans who were fiercely defending the way. A bullet struck him in the left knee but he kept the lead, urging the infantry on. At last, staggering and half-blinded by his own blood, Hollingsworth was stopped. A rain of fire was coming from the German positions and Hollingsworth was forced to order a withdrawal. He had come to within forty feet of the bridge. When Colonel Disney, his commanding officer, arrived on the scene he found the major “unable to walk and bleeding all over the place. I ordered him back to the rear.” Hollingsworth had missed taking the bridge by minutes. Had he succeeded, he believed he could have reached Berlin within eleven hours.

At dawn on April 12, as infantry and engineers tried once again to seize the Schönebeck bridge, the Germans blew it up in their faces.

High above the Ninth Army front Lieutenant Duane Francies put the unarmed spotting plane, the Piper Cub Miss Me, into a wide turn. Riding behind Francies was his artillery observer, Lieutenant William S. Martin. The two men had scouted for the 5th Armored all the way from the Rhine, locating strongpoints and radioing the positions to the oncoming tanks. It was not all routine work; more than once Francies and Martin had buzzed enemy troops, taking potshots at columns with their Colt .45’s.

Off to the east the clouds had opened and the fliers could see chimney stacks faint in the distance. “Berlin!” Francies shouted, pointing ahead. “The factories at Spandau.” Each day now, as the 5th advanced steadily, Francies searched for different city landmarks from his lofty vantage point. When the Miss Me led the tanks into Berlin, the young pilot wanted to be able to recognize instantly the main roads and buildings so as to inform the tankers about them. He intended to give “the boys” the full tour treatment as they approached Berlin.

Francies was almost ready to head back to a pasture near the lead columns when he suddenly pushed the stick forward. He had spotted a motorcyclist with a sidecar speeding out of a road close by some of the 5th’s tanks. As he began a dive to check out the vehicle, he glanced to his right and stiffened in amazement. Flying only a few hundred feet above the trees and almost indistinguishable was a Fieseler Storch, a German artillery-spotting plane. As the Miss Me drew closer, the white crosses on fuselage and wings showed prominently against the Storch’s gray-black body. Like the Cub, this was a fabric-covered, high-wing monoplane, but it was larger than Miss Me and, as Francies knew, at least a good thirty miles an hour faster. The American, however, had the advantage of altitude. Even as Francies yelled, “Let’s get him!” he heard Martin urging the same thing.

By radio Martin reported that they had spotted a German plane and announced calmly “we are about to give combat.” On the ground, astounded 5th Armored tankers, hearing Martin’s call, craned their necks skyward searching out the impending dogfight.

Martin got the side doors open as Francies dived. Swinging the Cub into a tight circle over the German plane, both men blasted away with their .45’s. Francies hoped the fire would force the German over the waiting tanks where machine gunners could easily bring it down. But the pilot of the enemy plane, though obviously confused by the unexpected attack, was not that obliging. Violently sideslipping, the Storch began circling wildly. Above it, Francies and Martin, like frontier stagecoach guards, were leaning out of their own plane emptying their automatics as fast as they could pull the triggers. To Francies’ amazement, there was no answering fire from the German. Even as the Americans reloaded, the Storch pilot, instead of putting distance between them, kept on circling. Later, Francies could only surmise that the pilot was still trying to figure out what was happening to him.

Now, dropping to within twenty feet of the enemy plane, the two Americans put bullet after bullet into the German’s windshield. They were so close that Francies saw the pilot “staring at us, his eyeballs as big as eggs.” Then suddenly the German maneuvered wildly and spun in. Martin, who had been giving a rapid running account of the fight on the radio, yelled, “We got him! We got him!” His voice was so blurred with excitement that Lieutenant Colonel Israel Washburn, sitting in his half-track, thought Martin said “We got hit!”

The Storch spiraled down, its right wing hit the ground, snapped off, and the plane cartwheeled and came to rest in the middle of a pasture. Francies set the Miss Me down in the next field and ran across to the downed plane. The German pilot and his observer were already out, but the observer had been hit in the foot and fell to the ground. The pilot dived behind a huge pile of sugar beets until a warning shot from Martin brought him out, hands in the air. As Martin covered the pilot with his gun, Francies examined the wounded observer. When he removed the German’s boot, a .45 slug fell out. As he bandaged the superficial wound, the German kept repeating, “Danke. Danke. Danke.”

Later that day, Francies and Martin posed happily beside their captured prize. They had fought what was probably the last World War II dogfight in the European theater and they were undoubtedly the only airmen in this war to bring down a German plane with a pistol. For Francies “it was a day of pure joy.” The only thing that could top this experience would be guiding the 5th Armored into Berlin. Francies believed he would have only a day or two to wait before the order came.[39]

As the platoon of tanks led by Lieutenant Robert E. Nicodemus approached Tangermünde at noon, they were met by an ominous silence. The objective of this unit of the 5th Armored Division was the bridge in the picturesque little city, which was some forty miles northeast of Magdeburg. Now that the bridge at Schönebeck was gone, the Tangermünde bridge was the most important one in the war, to the Ninth Army at least.

Nicodemus’ tank rolled down the main street of Tangermünde and into the square. The streets here, as elsewhere in the city, were deserted. Then, as the tanks pulled up in the square, air raid sirens began to wail and, Nicodemus said later, “everything happened at once. All hell broke loose.”

From windows, doorways and rooftops that had seemed empty moments earlier, Germans opened fire with bazooka-like anti-tank guns. The Americans answered back. At one moment Sergeant Charles Householder stood in the turret of his tank, blasting away with his tommy gun fire until the tank was hit and he had to jump out. Sergeant Leonard Haymaker’s tank, just behind Householder’s, was also hit; it burst into flames. Haymaker leaped to safety, but his crewmen were pinned inside by enemy fire. Crouching low and revolving in a slow circle, Haymaker fired short bursts from his tommy gun, covering his men as they escaped.

At the height of the battle, an American soldier jumped on the back of Nicodemus’ tank and, shouting above the din, identified himself as an escaped prisoner of war. About five hundred prisoners were being held in the town, he said, in two separate compounds. Nicodemus found himself in a dilemma. He had been about to call for artillery support, but he could hardly shell a town full of American prisoners. He decided to try breaking into the nearest compound to get the prisoners out of the line of fire.

Led by the POW, Nicodemus made his way through buildings and backyards and over fences to an enclosure down by the river. The instant the American prisoners in the compound saw the approaching officer they jumped their guards. The skirmish was brief. As soon as the guards had been disarmed, Nicodemus led the prisoners out. As the group approached the last enemy-held street and saw American tanks beyond, one GI turned to Nicodemus and exulted: “I’m a free man now. They can’t kill me.” He walked into the middle of the street and a German sniper shot him through the head.

While Nicodemus had been freeing the prisoners, desperate house-to-house fighting had been taking place throughout the city. At last, when the bridge was almost in sight, representatives of the German garrison met the U.S. advance guard and announced their wish to surrender. As the negotiations got under way, there was a tremendous explosion. A huge cloud of dust billowed up and rubble stormed down on the city. German engineers had blown the bridge. The Victory Division, closest American unit to the capital, had been stopped a tantalizing fifty-three miles from Berlin.

Anxiety began to spread through the Ninth Army Command. Up to mid-afternoon of April 12 there had been every reason for confidence. The 5th Armored had traveled a phenomenal 200 miles in just thirteen days; the 2nd had advanced the same distance in just one day more. Altogether, Simpson’s army had raced nearly 226 miles since leaving the Rhine. Ninth Army divisions were charging up to the Elbe all along the front.

But no bridges had yet been seized, no bridgeheads established on the river’s eastern bank. Many men had hoped for a repetition of the famous capture of the Rhine bridge at Remagen, which in early March had changed Anglo-American strategy overnight. But there had been no such luck. Now, at 2nd Armored headquarters a decision was reached: the river must be forced. Troops would make an amphibious assault on the Elbe’s eastern bank to secure a bridgehead. Then a pontoon bridge would be built across the river.

At his headquarters, Brigadier General Sidney R. Hinds, commander of the 2nd’s Combat Command B, laid his plans. The operation would take place south of Magdeburg, at a small town called Westerhüsen. At best, the plan was a gamble. Enemy artillery fire might destroy the bridge before its completion or, worse, prevent bridging operations altogether. But the longer Hinds waited, the more concentrated the enemy’s defenses might become. And with each hour of delay, the chance of beating the Russians into Berlin grew slimmer.

At 8 P.M. on April 12, two battalions of armored infantry were quietly ferried across to the eastern bank in the amphibious vehicles known as DUKWs. The crossing was unopposed. By midnight the two battalions were over and by first light a third had joined them. On the eastern bank, troops quickly deployed, digging defensive positions in a tight semicircle about the selected pontoon site. Jubilantly, General White put in a telephone call to the Ninth Army commander, General Simpson: “We’re across!”

The Germans learned of the crossing almost as soon as Simpson. At Magdeburg, the combat commander, a veteran of Normandy, immediately got word to General Wenck at Twelfth Army headquarters.

The Magdeburg officer, an expert artilleryman, had long ago learned not to underestimate the enemy. Early on the morning of June 6, 1944, he had looked out from his forward artillery post and had seen the Allied invasion fleet. Then, as now, he had promptly informed his superiors of the situation. “It’s the invasion,” he had said. “There must be ten thousand ships out there.” His incredible message was not believed. “What way are these ships headed?” he was asked. His reply was stark and simple: “Right for me.”

Now Major Werner Pluskat, the man who had directed the German fire from the center of Omaha Beach, prepared to make a stand on the Elbe. His gunners along the river, north and south of Magdeburg, would hold back the Americans as long as they could. But Pluskat had been around too long to have any doubts about the outcome.

However, the young cadets on whom General Wenck was depending had no pessimistic thoughts. Eager and fresh, they were looking forward to the battles ahead. Now mobile combat units of the Potsdam, Scharnhorst and Von Hutten divisions were rushing into position, preparing to erase the American bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Elbe.

On the west bank of the Elbe, engineers worked frantically. Searchlights, hurriedly positioned, were pointed straight up to refleet off the clouds, and in this artificial moonlight the first pontoons were secured and pushed into the river. One after another, the floating units were locked in place.

Standing close by, Colonel Paul A. Disney, the 67th Armored Regiment commander, watched the bridging operation with growing impatience. Suddenly shells screamed in. As they exploded about the first few pontoons, fountains of water shot up in the air. The fire pattern was unusual: the shells did not land in salvos; they came in singly, apparently from several widely positioned guns. Disney, certain that the fire was being directed by an artillery observer hidden nearby, ordered an immediate search of the rundown four-story apartment houses overlooking the river. The search yielded nothing; the fire continued, accurate and deadly.

Ripped pontoons sank, and the shrapnel lashing the water repeatedly forced the bridge-builders to take cover. Wounded men were dragged to the safety of the river bank; others took their places. All through the night the firing went on, nullifying the grim persistence of the American engineers. The one thing Hinds had feared most had happened. Grimly he ordered an infantry unit on a forced march south. Its instructions: find another site.

The following morning the rest of the bridge was destroyed by German gunfire. When the last shells screamed in and demolished the twisted and battered span, the bridge was only seventy-five yards from the eastern shore. Hinds, set-faced and weary, ordered the site abandoned. As the men assembled with their wounded, a message arrived : infantry on the eastern bank had found a suitable bridging area farther down the river.

By the afternoon of Friday the thirteenth, DUKWs were towing a heavy cable across the river to the newest bridgehead. The cable was intended as a stopgap. Once in place it would haul a string of pontoons back and forth across the river, bearing vehicles, tanks and guns. Although this system was desperately slow it would have to serve until bridging materials could be brought up.

The matter of greatest concern to Hinds now was the fate of the three battalions on the east bank of the river. With their backs to the Elbe, the troops were manning a rough semicircle in the area of the twin villages of Elbenau and Grünewalde. It was a small beachhead, and they had no armor support or artillery except for the batteries on the western banks. If the three battalions were hit by any attack in strength, the situation could become perilous. Hinds now ordered Colonel Disney across the Elbe in a DUKW to take command of the infantry.

Disney found the first of the three battalion command posts, headed by Captain John Finnell, in a patch of woods. Finnell was worried. German pressure was building up. “If we don’t get tanks over here real quick,” he said, “there’s going to be bad trouble.”

After briefing Hinds on the situation by radio, Disney set out to find the second battalion. As he moved down near the river, shells began to land all around him. Disney dived into a ditch, but the shells came closer, so he climbed out and started for another one. This time luck was against him. He felt a rain of shrapnel, then another. A third burst knocked him down. Disney lay there, barely conscious and severely wounded. His left upper arm was gouged and riddled and a large piece of shrapnel had torn away the upper part of his right thigh.

Within thirty-six hours, Hollingsworth and Disney, two of the men most fiercely dedicated to leading American forces to Berlin, had been put out of action.

At 1:15 P.M. on April 12, at about the time lead tanks of the 5th Armored Division were rolling into Tangermünde, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died at his desk in Warm Springs.

An artist was working on a portrait of him when suddenly the President put a hand to his head and complained of a headache. A short while later he was dead. On his desk lay a copy of the Atlanta Constitution. The headline read: 9TH—57 MILES FROM BERLIN.

It was nearly twenty-four hours later before news of the President’s death began filtering down to the front-line troops. Major Alcee Peters of the 84th Division heard the news from a German. At a railroad crossing near Wahrenholz an aging flagman came up to offer him sympathy because “the news is so terrible.” Peters felt shock and disbelief but before he fully absorbed what he had heard, his column moved out again, heading for the Elbe, and he had other matters to think about. Lieutenant Colonel Norman Carnes, commanding a battalion of the 333rd Infantry Regiment, was traveling through a bombed-out oil field north of Brunswick when he learned of FDR’s death. He felt regret, but his mind, too, was on his work. “It was just another crisis,” he later said. “My next objective was Wittingen and I was busy thinking about that. Roosevelt, dead or alive, couldn’t help me now.” Chaplain Ben Rose wrote to his wife Anne: “All of us were sorry… but we’ve seen so many men die that most of us know that even Roosevelt is not indispensable…. I was surprised how calmly we heard the news and talked about it.”

Joseph Goebbels could scarcely contain himself. The moment he heard the news he telephoned Hitler in the Führerbunker. “My Führer, I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead!“ he exulted. “It is written in the stars. The last half of April will be the turning point for us. This is Friday, April 13. It is the turning point!”

Sometime earlier Goebbels had passed along two astrological predictions to Count Schwerin von Krosigk, Reichsminister of Finance. One had been prepared for Hitler the day he took power, January 30, 1933. The other, dated November 9, 1918, had dealt with the future of the Weimar Republic. Krosigk noted in his diary: “An amazing fact had become evident. Both horoscopes predicted the outbreak of war in 1939, the victories until 1941, and the subsequent series of reversals—with the hardest blows during the first months of 1945, especially in the first half of April. Then, there was to be an overwhelming victory in the second half of April, stagnation until August, and peace the same month. For the following three years Germany would have a difficult time, but starting in 1948 she would rise again.”

Goebbels also had been reading Thomas Carlyle’s History of Friedrich II of Prussia, and it had given him further cause for delight. One chapter told of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) when Prussia had stood alone against a coalition of forces that included France, Austria and Russia. In the sixth year of this struggle, Frederick had told his advisors that if by February 15 there was no change in his fortunes, he would commit suicide. Then on January 5, 1762, Czarina Elizabeth died and Russia withdrew from the conflict. “The miracle of the House of Brandenburg,” wrote Carlyle, “had come to pass.” The whole character of the war had changed for the better. Now, in the sixth year of World War II, Roosevelt was dead. The parallel was inescapable.

The Propaganda Minister was in ecstasy. At the Ministry of Propaganda he ordered champagne for everyone.

“Get across! Get across! And keep moving!” Colonel Edwin “Buckshot” Crabill of the 83rd Division stalked up and down the river bank, pushing men into assault boats and, here and there, helping slow starters with the toe of his boot.

“Don’t waste this opportunity,” he yelled at another boatload. “You’re on your way to Berlin!” As other men began to move across in DUKWs, the short, peppery Crabill admonished them, “Don’t wait to organize! Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do! Get over there in any shape you can! If you move now, you can make it without a shot being fired!”

Crabill was right. At the town of Barby, fifteen miles southeast of Magdeburg and just below the spot where their arch rivals, the 2nd Armored, were desperately trying to make use of their cable ferry, the men of the 83rd were crossing the river in droves, unopposed. They had entered the town to find that the bridge had been blown but, without waiting for orders from the 83rd’s commanding officer, Crabill had ordered an immediate crossing. Assault boats had been rushed up and in a matter of hours a full battalion had been put across. Now another was en route. Simultaneously, artillery was being floated over on pontoons and engineers were building a treadway bridge that should be finished by nightfall. Even Crabill was impressed by the frenetic activity his orders had set off. As he dashed from group to group urging more speed, he kept repeating triumphantly to the other officers, “They’ll never believe this back at Fort Benning!”

Watching the feverish scene in silence was an audience of Germans, standing on a balcony below the clock tower of the town hall. For hours, as Lieutenant Colonel Granville Sharpe, commanding an infantry battalion, cleaned up what little resistance there was in the town, he had been aware of the audience, and he had grown increasingly annoyed. “My men were being shot at, but there stood the Germans watching the fighting and the river assault with intense interest,” he recalled. Now Sharpe had had enough. Going up to a tank, he told the gunner. “Put one round through the clock face at, say, about five o’clock.” The tanker obliged, scoring a clean bull’s-eye on the number five. The gallery suddenly dispersed.

In any case, the show was over. The 83rd was across. The first solid bridgehead had been established on the east bank of the Elbe.

By the evening of the thirteenth, engineers had finished their task and, thorough to the end, had put up a sign on the approach to the bridge. In honor of the new President and, with the division’s customary high morale and keen appreciation for the value of advertising, it read: TRUMAN BRIDGE. GATEWAY TO BERLIN. COURTESY OF THE 83RD INFANTRY DIVISION.

The news was flashed back to General Simpson and from there to General Bradley. He immediately telephoned Eisenhower. Suddenly the 83rd’s bridgehead was uppermost in everybody’s thoughts. The Supreme Commander listened carefully to the news. Then, at the end of the report, he put a question to Bradley. As Bradley later reconstructed the conversation, Eisenhower asked: “Brad, what do you think it might cost us to break through from the Elbe and take Berlin?”

Bradley had been considering that same question for days. Like Eisenhower, he did not now see Berlin as a military objective, but if it could be taken easily he was for its capture. Still, Bradley, like his chief, was concerned about too deep a penetration into the future Soviet zone and about the casualties that would occur as U.S. troops moved forward into areas from which, eventually, they would have to withdraw. He did not believe losses on the way to Berlin would be too high, but it might be a different story in the city itself. Taking Berlin might be costly.

Now he answered the Supreme Commander, “I estimate that it might cost us 100,000 men.”

There was a pause. Then Bradley added, “It would be a pretty stiff price to pay for a prestige objective, especially when we know that we’ve got to pull back and let the other fellow take over.”[40]

There the conversation ended. The Supreme Commander did not reveal his intentions. But Bradley had made his own opinion unmistakably clear: U.S. lives were more important than mere prestige or the temporary occupation of meaningless real estate.

At headquarters of the 19th Corps, General McLain stood before his map studying the situation. In his opinion the enemy line on the eastern bank of the Elbe was a hard crust, nothing more. Once his divisions got across and broke through it, nothing would stop them from rolling into Berlin. Colonel George B. Sloan, McLain’s Operations Officer, believed the Americans would hit the same sort of opposition they had encountered en route from the Rhine—pockets of last-ditch resistance that could be bypassed by fast-moving forces. He had every confidence that within forty-eight hours of resuming the attack, leading elements of U.S. armored units would enter Berlin.

McLain made a few quick decisions. The surprising accomplishment of the Rag-Tag Circus in grabbing a bridgehead, rushing troops across and then straddling the Elbe with a bridge, all within a few hours, had changed the whole river picture. The men of the 83rd were not merely expanding the beachhead on the eastern bank; they were advancing out of it. McLain was sure that the 83rd’s bridgehead was permanent. He was not so sure that the 2nd Armored’s puny cable ferry operation would survive the shelling. Still, the 2nd had three battalions across and they were holding. Arrangements had been made for part of the 2nd Armored to begin crossing the 83rd’s “Truman Bridge.” McLain, therefore, saw no reason for the 30th Division, now moving into position, to attack Magdeburg and go for the Autobahn bridge. At the rate the troops were moving now, the 83rd’s bridgehead could be quickly expanded to link with the cut-off battalions opposite the and’s cable ferry site. From this vastly enlarged bridgehead, the drive could continue. McLain decided to bypass Magdeburg entirely. The Truman Bridge, as the 83rd had anticipated, would be the gateway to Berlin.

At dawn, Saturday, April 14, at the 2nd Armored’s cable ferry, General Hinds waited for the three pontoons to be strapped together. They would form the ferry platform which the cable would pull back and forth pending construction of a bridge. Shells were still falling about both banks of the bridgehead and troops on the eastern side were involved in heavy fighting. They could hold out for some time against opposing infantry, but Hinds’s great fear was of a panzer attack. The Americans on the east bank were still without supporting artillery or armor.

The first vehicle to roll onto the pontoon ferry was a bulldozer; the eastern bank of the river had to be scraped and graded before tanks and heavy weapons could climb it. A DUKW would tow the platform, speeding the ferry by helping the cable move faster. Hinds watched anxiously. Two cables had been damaged and washed downstream. He had only one left; and his last outsized pontoons had gone to make the ferry.

The cumbersome operation began. As men watched, the ferry moved slowly out into the middle of the Elbe. Then, as it neared the eastern shore, the unbelievable happened. A single shell screamed in and, in a million-to-one shot, severed the cable. Hinds stood frozen in shock as cable, ferry and bulldozer disappeared down the river. Bitterly he said, “There it goes to hell!”

As though the incredible bull’s-eye had been a signal for total disaster, word now came that the troops on the eastern bank were being attacked by armored vehicles.

On the eastern side of the Elbe, through the wisps of morning haze and the smoke from artillery fire, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Anderson watched the German armor smashing through his infantry defense lines. There were seven or eight armored vehicles, among them a couple of tanks. Through his glasses Anderson saw the group, well out of range of his own anti-tank bazookas, firing methodically into the American foxholes. Even as he watched, one of his companies holding positions on the far right of his command post was overrun. Troops dashed from their foxholes, making for the safety of the woods. Now the Germans were working over the positions of Anderson’s other two companies, blasting the foxholes one by one. Frantically Anderson radioed the batteries on the Elbe’s western bank for help. But the attack had taken place so fast that even as the 2nd Armored’s shells came screaming in, Anderson knew they were too late.

Farther along the bridgehead, Lieutenant Bill Parkins, commanding I Company, suddenly heard his machine guns open up and then the answering fire of German burp guns. A platoon runner dashed up. Three German vehicles with infantry, he reported, were coming down along the line, “cleaning out everything as they go.” Parkins sent back word to the troops to remain in position and to keep firing. Then he dashed out of his command post to find out for himself what was happening. “I saw three Mark V tanks about a hundred yards away, approaching from the east,” he later reported, “and each one appeared to have a platoon of infantry with it. They had American prisoners marching in front. Their guns were firing right through them.” Some of Parkins’ men returned the fire with their bazookas, but the range was too great; those projectiles that hit merely ricocheted off the tanks. His men were being chewed up. Parkins ordered them to pull back, before they were all captured or killed.

From north, east and south of the bridgehead German vehicles came in fast. Staff Sergeant Wilfred Kramer, in charge of an infantry platoon, saw a German tank about 220 yards away. Infantry was fanned out about it and coming up behind. Kramer ordered his men to wait. Then, when the Germans were about forty yards away, he yelled to open fire. “We were doing all right and holding our own,” he later explained. “But then the tank opened up. The first round landed about ten yards from our machine gun. Then Jerry went right down the line. He could see where every one of our holes was. It was point-blank fire.” Kramer held out for as long as he dared; then he, too, ordered his men back.

The fighting was so fierce around Grünewalde that Lieutenant Colonel Carlton E. Stewart, commanding a battalion, got a call for artillery from one of his companies and was told to “throw it right on our positions as our men are in the cellars of the houses.” Everyone was asking for air strikes to knock out the tanks, but only a few planes showed up during the entire dawn-to-noon battle. In the dash to the Elbe, fighter strips had been left so far behind that the planes had to carry extra gasoline wing tanks to keep up with the ground advance and that meant they couldn’t carry bombs.

By noon General Hinds had ordered all infantry on the east bank to withdraw back across the Elbe. Although casualties were at first thought to be high, men kept trickling in for days. Total cast bank casualties were ultimately set at 304; one battalion lost 7 officers and 146 enlisted men killed, wounded or missing. The fight ended the last hope of getting a 2nd Armored bridge or bridgehead across the Elbe. Now General White, the 2nd’s commander, had no choice but to use the 83rd’s bridge at Barby. The Germans had halted successfully, and with lightning speed, the great momentum that the 2nd Armored had built up.

The erasing of the bridgehead had been so sudden and the lighting so fierce that American commanders did not even know what units had attacked them. In fact, they were scarcely units at all. As General Wenck had foreseen, his fledgling cadets and training officers had served him well. Ambitious and eager for glory, they had pushed themselves and their meager equipment to the limit, buying the time Wenck needed. In throwing back the 2nd Armored Division these mobile shock troops had accomplished something no other German unit had managed in thirty months of combat. Had the division been able to secure either a bridge or a bridgehead across the Elbe, the 2nd might have roared right on to Berlin without ever waiting for orders.

The Supreme Commander’s plan of attack on Germany had unfolded brilliantly; indeed, the speed of the great Anglo-American advance had clearly surprised even him. In the north Montgomery’s Twenty-first Army Group was moving steadily. The Canadians, closing on Arnhem, were ready to begin clearing out the big enemy pocket that remained in northeast Holland. The British Second Army had crossed the river Leine, captured the town of Celle and were on the outskirts of Bremen. In the center of the Reich the surrounded Ruhr was almost reduced and, most important, Simpson’s Ninth Army, along with the U.S. First and Third armies, had almost cut Germany in two. The First was advancing on Leipzig. Patton’s Third was nearing the Czech border.

But these whirlwind gains had taken a toll: they had stretched Eisenhower’s supply lines almost to the limit. Apart from truck convoys, there was virtually no land transport available to Bradley’s forces; only one railroad bridge was still in operation over the Rhine. The fighting forces remained well supplied, but SHAEF staff officers were disturbed by the total picture. To serve the farflung armies, hundreds of Troop Carrier Command planes had been ordered to fly around the clock, bringing up supplies. On April 5 alone, a flying train of C-47S had carried more than 3,500 tons of ammunition and supplies and almost 750,000 gallons of gasoline to the front.

In addition, as the Allies pushed deeper and deeper into Germany, they had to supply increasing thousands of noncombatants. Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war had to be fed. Forced laborers from a score of countries and liberated British and American POWs had to be given shelter, food and medical services. Hospitals, ambulance convoys and medical supplies were only now moving up. And although these medical facilities were vast, an unforeseen demand was suddenly thrust upon them.

In recent days, what would prove to be the greatest hidden horror of the Third Reich had begun to be uncovered. All along the front in this tremendous week of advance, men had recoiled in shock and revulsion as they encountered Hitler’s concentration camps, their hundreds of thousands of inmates, and the evidence of their millions of dead.

Battle-hardened soldiers could scarcely believe what they were seeing as scores of camps and prisons fell into their hands. Twenty years later men would remember those scenes with grim anger: the emaciated walking skeletons who tottered toward them, their will to survive the only possession they had saved from the Nazi regime; the mass graves, pits and trenches; the lines of crematoriums filled with charred bones, mute and awful testimony to the systematic mass extermination of “political prisoners”—who had been put to death, as one Buchenwald guard explained, because “they were only Jews.”

Troops found gas chambers, set up like shower rooms except that cyanide gas instead of water sprayed from the nozzles. In the Buchenwald commandant’s home there were lampshades made from human skin. The commandant’s wife, Ilse Koch, had book covers and gloves made from the flesh of inmates; two human heads, shrunken and stuffed, were displayed on small wooden stands. There were warehouses full of shoes, clothing, artificial limbs, dentures and eyeglasses—sorted and numbered with detached and methodical efficiency. Gold had been removed from the dentures and forwarded to the Reich finance ministry.

How many had been exterminated? In the first shock of discovery no one could even estimate. But it was clear as reports came in from all along the front that the total would be astronomical. As to who the victims were, that was only too obvious. They were, by the Third Reich’s definition, the “non-Aryans,” the “culture-tainting inferiors,” peoples of a dozen nations and of a dozen faiths, but predominantly Jews. Among them were Poles, Frenchmen, Czechs, Dutchmen, Norwegians, Russians, Germans. In history’s most diabolical mass murder, they had been slain in a variety of unnatural ways. Some were used as guinea pigs in laboratory experiments. Thousands were shot, poisoned, hanged or gassed; others were simply allowed to starve to death.

In the camp at Ohrdruf, overrun by the U.S. Third Army on April 12, General George S. Patton, one of the U.S. Army’s most hard-bitten officers, walked through the death houses, then turned away, his face wet with tears, and was uncontrollably ill. The next day Patton ordered the population of a nearby village, whose inhabitants claimed ignorance of the situation within the camp, to view it for themselves; those who hung back were escorted at rifle point. The following morning the mayor of the village and his wife hanged themselves.

Along the British route of advance, the discoveries were equally terrible. Brigadier Hugh Glyn Hughes, the British Second Army’s Senior Medical Officer, had been worrying for days about the possibility of infectious diseases in a camp he had been warned about at a place called Belsen. Upon arrival there, Hughes discovered that typhus and typhoid were the least of his worries. “No photograph, no description could bring home the horrors I saw,” he said, years later. “There were 56,000 people still alive in the camp. They were living in 45 huts. There were anywhere from 600 to 1,000 people living in accommodations which could take barely 100. The huts overflowed with inmates in every state of emaciation and disease. They were suffering from starvation, gastroenteritis, typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis. There were dead everywhere, some in the same bunks as the living. Lying in the compounds, in uncovered mass graves, in trenches, in the gutters, by the side of the barbed wire surrounding the camp and by the huts, were some 10,000 more. In my thirty years as a doctor, I had never seen anything like it.”

To save those still living, armies all along the front had to get immediate medical help. In some instances military needs had to take second place. “I do not believe,” Hughes later said, “that anyone realized what we were going to be faced with or the demands that would be made on the medical services.” Doctors, nurses, hospital beds and thousands of tons of medical stores and equipment were urgently needed. Brigadier Hughes alone required a 14,000-bed hospital—even though he knew that, no matter what steps were taken, at least 500 inmates would die each day until the situation could be brought under control.

General Eisenhower made a personal tour of a camp near Gotha. Ashen-faced, his teeth clenched, he walked through every part of the camp. “Up to that moment,” he later recalled, “I had known about it only generally or through secondary sources…. I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.”

The psychological effect of the camps on officers and men was beyond assessment. On the Ninth Army front in a village near Magdeburg, Major Julius Rock, a medical officer with the 30th Infantry, came up to inspect a freight train which the 30th had stopped. It was loaded with concentration camp inmates. Rock, horrified, immediately unloaded the train. Over the local burgomaster’s vehement protests, Rock billeted the inmates in German homes—but not until his battalion commander had given a crisp command to the complaining burgomaster. “If you refuse,” he said simply, “I’ll take hostages and shoot them.”

A cold determination to win and win quickly was replacing every other emotion in the men who had seen concentration camps. The Supreme Commander felt much the same way. On his return to SHAEF from Gotha he wired Washington and London urging that editors and legislators be sent immediately to Germany to see the horror camps at first hand so that the evidence could be “placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.”

But before Eisenhower could press on to end the war, he had to consolidate his farflung forces. On the night of the fourteenth, from his office in Reims, Eisenhower cabled Washington of his future plans.

Having successfully completed his thrust in the center, Eisenhower said, he was confronted by two main tasks: “the further sub-division of the enemy’s remaining forces; and the capture of those areas where he might form a last stand effectively.” Those latter places, Eisenhower thought, would be Norway and the National Redoubt of Bavaria. In the north, he planned to throw Montgomery’s forces forward across the Elbe, to secure Hamburg and drive for Lübeck and Kiel. In the south, he planned to send General Devers’ Sixth Army Group toward the Salzburg area.

“Operations in the winter,” Eisenhower stated, “would be extremely difficult in the National Redoubt…. The National Redoubt could remain in being even after we join the Russians… so we must move rapidly before the Germans have the opportunity to thoroughly prepare its defenses with men and material.”

As for the German capital, Eisenhower thought it would also be “most desirable to make a thrust to Berlin as the enemy may group forces around his capital and, in any event, its fall would greatly affect the morale of the enemy and that of our own peoples.” But, said the Supreme Commander, that operation “must take a low priority in point of time unless operations to clear our flanks proceed with unexpected rapidity.”

In brief, then, his plan was:

(1) “to hold a firm front in the central area on the Elbe”

(2) to begin operations toward Lübeck and Denmark;

and (3) to initiate a powerful thrust” to meet Soviet troops in the Danube valley and break up the National Redoubt. “Since the thrust on Berlin must await the outcome of the first three above,” Eisenhower said, “I do not include it as a part of my plan.”

On the Elbe, all through the night of the fourteenth, men of the Rag-Tag Circus and the 2nd Armored moved across the 83rd’s bridges at Barby. Although a second bridge had been built near the first, the movement across remained slow. General White’s armored column, however, planned to begin the Berlin drive again the moment it reassembled on the western bank. Among the troops of the 83rd the story was going the rounds that Colonel Crabill had offered to lend the 2nd Armored a large, newly confiscated red bus, capable of holding fifty soldiers, which he had liberated in Barby. The 83rd had every reason to feel triumphant. Already its patrols were north of the town of Zerbst, less than forty-eight miles from Berlin.

Early Sunday morning, April 15, the Ninth Army commander, General Simpson, got a call from General Bradley. Simpson was to fly immediately to the Twelfth Army Group headquarters at Wiesbaden. “I’ve something very important to tell you,” Bradley said, “and I don’t want to say it on the phone.”

Bradley was waiting for his commander at the airfield. “We shook hands,” Simpson recalled, “and there and then he told me the news. Brad said, ‘You must stop on the Elbe. You are not to advance any farther in the direction of Berlin. I’m sorry, Simp, but there it is.’”

“Where in the hell did you get this?” Simpson demanded.

“From Ike,” Bradley said.

Simpson was so stunned he could not “even remember half of the things Brad said from then on. All I remember is that I was heartbroken and I got back on the plane in a kind of a daze. All I could think of was, How am I going to tell my staff, my corps commanders and my troops? Above all, how am I going to tell my troops?”

From his headquarters Simpson passed the word along to his corps commanders; then he left immediately for the Elbe. General Hinds encountered Simpson at the 2nd’s headquarters and seeing him became worried. “I thought,” Hinds recalled, “that maybe the old man didn’t like the way we were crossing the river. He asked how I was getting along.” Hinds answered, “I guess we’re all right now, General. We had two good withdrawals. There was no excitement and no panic and our Barby crossings are going good.”

“Fine,” said Simpson. “Keep some of your men on the east bank if you want to. But they’re not to go any farther.” He looked at Hinds. “Sid,” he said, “this is as far as we’re going.” Hinds was shocked into insubordination. “No, sir,” he said promptly. “That’s not right. We’re going to Berlin.” Simpson seemed to struggle to control his emotions. There was a moment of uneasy silence. Then Simpson said in a flat, dead voice, “We’re not going to Berlin, Sid. This is the end of the war for us.”

Between Barleben and Magdeburg where elements of the 30th Division troops were still advancing toward the river, the news spread quickly. Men gathered in groups, gesturing and talking both angrily and excitedly. P.F.C. Alexander Korolevich of the 120th Regiment, Company D, took no part in the conversation. He wasn’t sure if he was sad or happy, but he simply sat down and cried.

Heinrici recognized all the signs. At one part of the front the Russians had laid down a short artillery barrage; in another section they had launched a small attack. These were feints and Heinrici knew it. He had learned all the Russian ruses years before. These small actions were the prelude to the main attack. Now, his main concern was how soon he should order his men back to the second line of defense.

While he was pondering the question, Reichsminister Albert Speer, the Armament and Production Chief, arrived. This was one day Heinrici did not want visitors—especially someone as nervous and obviously harassed as Speer. In the confines of Heinrici’s office, Speer explained the nature of his visit. He wanted the General’s support. Heinrici must not follow Hitler’s “scorched-earth” orders to destroy German industry, power plants, bridges and the like. “Why,” Speer asked, “should everything be destroyed with Germany even now defeated? The German people must survive.”

Heinrici heard him out. He agreed that the Hitler order was “vicious,” he told Speer, and he would do everything in his power to help. “But,” cautioned Heinrici, “all I can do right now is to try and fight this battle as well as I can.”

Suddenly Speer pulled a pistol out of his pocket. “The only way to stop Hitler,” he said suddenly, “is with something like this.”

Heinrici looked at the gun, his eyebrows raised.

“Well,” he said coldly, “I must tell you that I was not born to murder.”

Speer paced the office. He seemed not even to have heard Heinrici. “It is absolutely impossible to make it clear to Hitler that he should give up,” he said. “I have tried three times, in October, 1944, in January and in March of this year. Hitler’s reply to me on the last occasion was this: ‘If a soldier had talked to me this way I would consider he had lost his nerve and I would order him shot.’ Then he said, ‘In this serious crisis leaders must not lose their nerves. If they do they should be done away with.’ It is impossible to persuade him that everything is lost. Impossible.”

Speer put the pistol back in his pocket. “It would be impossible to kill him anyway,” he said in a calmer voice. He did not tell Heinrici that for months he had been thinking of assassinating Hitler and his entire court. He had even thought up a scheme to introduce gas into the ventilating system of the Führerbunker, but it had proved impossible: a twelve-foot-high chimney had been built around the air intake pipe. Now Speer said: “I could kill him if I thought I could help the German people, but I can’t.” He looked at Heinrici. “Hitler has always believed in me,” he said. Then he added, “Anyway it would somehow be indecent.”

Heinrici did not like the tone of the conversation. He was also worried about Speer’s manner and inconsistencies. If it ever became known that Speer had talked to him this way, everyone at his headquarters would probably be shot. Heinrici deftly brought the conversation back to the original subject, the protection of Germany from the scorched-earth policy. “All I can do,” the Vistula commander reiterated, “is to perform my duty as a soldier as well as I can. The rest lies in the hands of God. I will assure you of this. Berlin will not become a Stalingrad. I will not let that happen.”

The fighting in Stalingrad had been street by street, block by block. Heinrici had no intention of letting his troops fall back to Berlin under Russian pressure and there fight a similar kind of battle. As for Hitler’s instructions to destroy vital installations, throughout his army group area Heinrici had already privately countermanded that order. He told Speer that he expected the Berlin Commandant, General Reymann, momentarily. He had invited Reymann, Heinrici said, to discuss these very matters and to explain personally why it was impossible to take the Berlin garrison under the Vistula command. A few moments later Reymann arrived. With him was Heinrici’s Chief of Operations, Colonel Eismann. Speer remained throughout the military conference.

Heinrici told Reymann, as Eismann was later to note, “not to depend on the Vistula Army Group for support.” Reymann looked as though his last hope was gone. “I do not know, then,” he said, “how I can defend Berlin.” Heinrici expressed the hope that his forces could bypass Berlin. “Of course,” he added, “I may be ordered to send units into Berlin, but you should not depend on it.”

Reymann told Heinrici that he had received orders from Hitler to destroy bridges and certain buildings in the city. Heinrici replied angrily, “Any demolition of bridges or anything else in Berlin will merely paralyze the city. If by any chance I am ordered to include Berlin in my command I will forbid such demolitions.”

Speer added his weight to the discussion, begging Reymann not to carry out the orders. In such a case, he said, most of the city would be cut off from water and electric supplies. As Eismann recalled Speer’s words, he said, “If you destroy these supply lines, the city will be paralyzed for at least a year. It will lead to epidemic and hunger for millions. It’s your duty to prevent this catastrophe! It’s your responsibility not to carry out these orders!”

The atmosphere, as Eismann remembered, was charged with tension. “A hard struggle was going on within Reymann,” he said. “Finally he answered in a hoarse voice that he had done his duty as an officer in an honorable manner; his son had fallen at the front; his home and possessions were gone; all he had left was his honor. He reminded us of what had happened to the officer who failed to blow up the Remagen bridge: he had been executed like a common criminal. The same, Reymann thought, would happen to him if he did not carry out his orders.”

Both Heinrici and Speer tried to dissuade him, but they could not change his mind. At last Reymann took his leave. Shortly thereafter Speer drove away, too. Finally Heinrici was alone—to concentrate on the one thing uppermost in his mind: the timing of the Russian attack.

The latest batch of intelligence reports had arrived at the headquarters and they seemed to point to an immediate assault. General Reinhard Gehlen, OKH Chief of Intelligence, had even included the most recent prisoner interrogations. One report told of a Red Army soldier from the 49th Rifle Division who “stated that the major offensive operation will begin in about five to ten days.” There was talk, the prisoner had said, “among Soviet soldiers that Russia will not allow the U.S. and England to claim the conquest of Berlin.” A second report was similar and contained even more speculation. A prisoner of the 79th Corps taken earlier in the day near Küstrin said that when the attack began, its main purpose would be “to get to Berlin ahead of the Americans.” According to the soldier, “brushes were expected with the Americans” who would be “covered ‘by mistake’ with artillery fire so that they will feel the force of Russian artillery.”

In Moscow on this same day, Sunday, April 15, Ambassador Averell Harriman met with Stalin to discuss the war in the Far East. Prior to the meeting, General Deane of the U.S. Military Mission had drawn Harriman’s attention to German radio reports which stated that the Russians were expected to attack Berlin at any moment. Harriman, as the conference with Stalin ended, casually brought up the matter. Was it true, he asked, that the Red Army was about to renew its offensive on Berlin? The Marshal’s answer, as General Deane was to cable Washington that evening, was: “Stalin said there was indeed going to be an offensive and that he did not know if it would be successful. However the main blow of this attack would be aimed toward Dresden, not Berlin, as he had already told Eisenhower.”

All through the remainder of the afternoon, Heinrici went over intelligence reports and talked with his staff and army officers on the telephone. Then, a little after 8 P.M., he made a decision. He had analyzed all the reports from the field; he had assessed and evaluated every nuance of his old enemy’s moves. Now, as he walked the length of his office, hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed in concentration, he paused; to an intently watching aide “it was as though he had suddenly sniffed the very air.” He turned to his staff. “I believe,” he said quietly, “the attack will take place in the early hours, tomorrow.” Beckoning to his Chief of Staff, he issued a one-line order to General Busse, commanding the German Ninth Army. It read: “Move back and take up positions on the second line of defense.” The time was now 8:45 P.M. In exactly seven hours and fifteen minutes, on Monday, April 16, the Giftzwerg would begin to fight Germany’s last battle.

THE FUHRER’S COURT