Berlin Endgame 1945 – Prit Buttar

are storming over the bridge of the Gods … the citadel of the Gods is tottering and all seems lost. But suddenly a new citadel rises, more beautiful than the one before, and Baldur lives again.37 For the thousands of soldiers fighting and dying in the front line, any such talk would have been incomprehensible.

Similarly, the inhabitants of Berlin were about to learn the true horror of warfare. They had endured much from bombing raids, but their ordeal was about to worsen a hundredfold. Chapter 7 19 April During the night of 18–19 April, Heinrici received numerous messages from his subordinate formations.

In the north, Manteuffel reported that the Soviet units facing Third Panzer Army across the lower Oder looked as if they had almost completed their preparations for an offensive. He doubted the ability of his army to hold back the attack for long, particularly as he had no reserves available for counterattacks. Many of the soldiers of 7th Panzer Division, which had been fighting in the small German-held pocket immediately to the north of Danzig, had been evacuated by sea and brought to the west to be re-equipped, but at present they had little significant combat strength.

A few tanks had been made available to the division, but fuel and ammunition shortages rendered them of little value. In Berlin, the growing threat posed by the Soviet tank armies from 1st Ukrainian Front received little attention. Many in the upper echelons of the regime continued to believe that these units were intending to drive towards Dresden in order to link up with the US forces advancing from the west, rather than angling to the northwest towards the German capital.

There was far more concern about the growing signs of collapse of Busse’s Ninth Army. In addition to fighting a desperate battle with diminishing resources, Busse had to deal with constant telephone calls from Goebbels. In addition to his role as propaganda minister, Goebbels was also the Gauleiter of Berlin and therefore in control of the city’s Volkssturm, and Generalbevollmächtigten für Total Kriegeinsatz Ber li n (‘Plenipotentiary for Total War’). He therefore regarded the battle to defend Berlin as being part of his overall sphere of interest and bombarded Busse with requests for information.

On 19 April, he spoke to Oberst Johannes Hölz, Busse’s chief of staff, and offered another four battalions of soldiers – some were Volkssturm and others had been designated as part of Berlin’s garrison in anticipation of the fighting reaching the city. This raised a vital matter: was the decisive battle for Berlin to be fought in the city itself, or on the approaches?

For Robert, my agent; and for Kate, Marcus, Emily, Gemma, and everyone else at Osprey who have all walked this long road with me. PRIT BUTTAR BERLIN ENDGAME 1945 CONTENTS List of Illustrations 7 List of Maps 9 Dramatis Personae 10 Introduction: The Road to Berlin 17 Chapter 1: The City on the Spree 25 Chapter 2: ‘Call Me Meier’ 57 Chapter 3: Preparing for the Last Stand: The German Defences 81 Chapter 4: The Red Army: Plans For Vengeance 117 Chapter 5: The Storm Bursts: 16 April 147 Chapter 6: Breakthrough: 17–18 April 177 Chapter 7: To the Gates of Berlin: 19–20 April 207 Chapter 8: Der Krieg ist verloren: 21–22 April 239 Chapter 9: Into the City: 23–25 April 269 Chapter 10: Disintegration: 26–28 April 307 Ber li n Chapter 11: The Bitterest of Ends: Berlin, 29 April–2 May 341 Chapter 12: The Roads to the West: 29 April–8 May 365 Chapter 13: Conclusion: An Uneasy Silence 393 Notes 413 Bibliography 429 Index 436 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ‘That’s how Berlin is going to look!’: the soldiers of the Red Army were eager to exact revenge for the destruction of Stalingrad by the Germans in 1942–1943.

(RIA Novosti Archive, image #602161 / Zelma, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) Members of Volkssturm heading for the front on the River Oder in March 1945. These civilians, previously regarded as too young, too old, or too infirm for military service, were deployed in the final defence of Germany with very limited equipment and almost no training.

(Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images) A Soviet fighter-bomber squadron over Berlin, 28 April 1945. While the Red Army infantry and tank units were supported by air strikes, it was notoriously difficult to carry out attacks on precise targets and indiscriminate devastation was inflicted across the city. (Photo by Mark Redkin/FotoSoyuz/ Getty Images) Members of the Hitler Youth defending Berlin with a machine gun in April 1945.

After being under the influence of Nazi indoctrination for almost all their lives, many of these teenagers were fanatically committed to defending Germany at all costs. (Photo by Arthur Grimm/ullstein bild via Getty Images) Soviet artillery positioned to fire at the at the German defences on the Seelow Heights. For the Red Army, its artillery was the ‘god of war’, and there was widespread expectation that, if used effectively, it could smash the enemy defences and make an advance relatively simple.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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