Zhukov’s orders to 3rd Army show how totally ignorant he was of Koniev’s progress and deployment when he issued them, for occupying the line Wildau–Michendorf was the role he had originally intended for 1st Guards Tank Army in securing the southern approaches to Berlin. On the other hand, Koniev’s directive would appear to reflect his preoccupation with the attack on Berlin, in which he was hoping to beat Zhukov to the prize of the Reichstag, whereas Zhukov was now sufficiently confident in his advance on the city centre to allocate resources and plan the destruction of the ‘Frankfurt–Guben group’ in some detail, while still trying to block Koniev from Berlin.
By pushing forward the bulk of 69th Army, together with 3rd Army from his second echelon, Zhukov was applying pressure on the truncated 9th Army from the north and also protecting the southern flank of his thrust on Berlin. By evening his 3rd Army had a bridgehead across the Spree south of Erkner and was probing down to the Oder–Spree Canal, where the 32nd SS Volunteer Grenadier Division 30. Januar was hastily trying to establish a defensive screen.[10]
The arrival of advance units of Colonel-General Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army in the southern outskirts of Berlin on 23 April was the high point of Koniev’s day. It would take another day for the remainder of the army to catch up and prepare to cross the major obstacle of the Teltow Canal, for which he ordered an attack on the morning of 24 April. In addition to the infantry reinforcements already allocated, he sent 10th Breakthrough Artillery Corps and 25th Breakthrough and 23rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Divisions, which were to travel by night to avoid detection. He also allocated 5th Air Fighter Corps of 2nd Air Army in support. In the meantime 3rd Guards Tank Army was to secure the suburb of Buckow on its right flank and to try and establish contact with 1st Byelorussian Front, whose troops were expected in that area.[11]
Koniev had beaten Zhukov to the southern suburbs of Berlin, but he needed to use the 23rd to amass sufficient strength for his attack on the city proper next day, which he intended to supervise in person. A major threat to his lines of communication having been removed with the elimination of the Cottbus defence, 3rd Guards Army was now ordered to turn its attention to the western flank of the German 9th Army.[12]
The redeployment of forces on 9th Army’s northern front as a defensive screen proved to be too weak and too late to be effective. Although Battlegroup Krauss had reached the Oder–Spree Canal at Wernsdorf and SS-Major Egger’s 1st Battalion, 86th SS Grenadier Regiment, had reached Neu Zittau the day before, the Soviets arrived soon afterwards and forced a crossing near Neu Zittau, thus bypassing Wernsdorf and obliging SS-Captain Krauss’ troops to fall back on Königs Wusterhausen via Niederlehme.
However, this withdrawal was not all one-sided, as SS-Second Lieutenant Porsch of Tank-Hunting Company Dora II of the 500/600th SS Punishment Battalion wrote:
We still had several nuts to crack, tanks as well as Russian infantry. Ehlers bagged his 14th, Schuler his 12th, myself my 17th, the company its 125th. During a reconnaissance near Neu Zittau we took 30 prisoners, and finally Ehlers and myself captured a Soviet battalion headquarters, 14 officers, including some women.[13]
At the railway station in Königs Wusterhausen Krauss found an ambulance train that had already been attacked several times by Soviet aircraft that had no respect for the Red Cross. His own troops were under fire from a column of T-34s that were firing at anything that moved, including civilians trying to help the wounded, so he withdrew to Prieros.[14]
Further east the 561st SS Tank-Hunting Battalion, together with 1st Battalion, SS-Regiment Falke, deployed in the Biegen-Pillgram area, launched a counterattack on Rosengarten, opening and holding open a breach in the Soviet cordon around Frankfurt through which the garrison was able to evacuate that night.[15]
FIVE
12th Army to the Rescue
23 APRIL 1945
Field Marshal Keitel reached General Wenck’s headquarters in the woods east of Magdeburg with some difficulty at about 0100 hours on 23 April. Wenck’s 12th Army, whose boundary extended from the junction of the Havel and Elbe Rivers in the north to below Leipzig in the south, consisted of the following formations:
XXXIX Panzer Corps, under Lieutenant-General Karl Arndt, which had been sent into the Harz Mountains to support 11th Army and had been virtually destroyed within five days. Its remnants had only been re-assigned to 12th Army on 21 April.
XXXXI Panzer Corps, under Lieutenant-General Rudolf Holste, which was based near Rathenow, and consisted of miscellaneous units, some of which were survivors of the Rhine battles.
XX Corps, under Lieutenant-General Carl-Erik Koehler, which was currently engaged in containing the minor American bridgeheads near Zerbst and consisted of:
- Theodor Körner RAD Infantry Division
- Ulrich von Hutten Infantry Division
- Ferdinand von Schill Infantry Division
- Scharnhorst Infantry Division
XXXXVIII Panzer Corps, under General Maximilian Freiherr von Edelsheim, which constituted the army reserve near Coswig, and consisted mainly of miscellaneous units culled from the Leipzig and Halle areas.[1]
Keitel first briefed Wenck on the general situation as he knew it, and then gave him Hitler’s orders for 12th Army. Keitel waited for Wenck to draft out his orders, as he wanted to take a copy with him back to the Führerbunker and he also wanted to deliver the orders in person to General Koehler’s XX Corps, which was to provide the bulk of the attacking force. At dawn he reached one of Koehler’s infantry divisions, which was already preparing for the operation, and addressed the assembled officers.[2]
The 12th Army’s specific orders read:
By extensively disregarding the Elbe defences between Magdeburg and Dessau and on the Mulde front between Dessau and Grimma, an assault group of at least three divisions is to be formed in the area west and south-west of Treuenbrietzen with the task of striking at the Russian forces attacking Potsdam and the southern outskirts of Berlin along the line Jüterbog–Brück towards Zossen and Teltow… 9th Army has orders to hold the line Cottbus–Peitz–Beeskow and, if necessary, to keep east of the line Lübbenau–Schwielochsee, in order to release forces for an attack towards Baruth from the east.[3]
What Keitel failed to realize was that Wenck, unlike his immediate superiors, had formed a very clear appreciation of the situation and had no illusions about the future, which he saw as a simple choice between captivity in either the east or the west. There was no doubt in his own mind which was preferable and he regarded his primary task as that of holding a door open for a general exodus from what would become the Soviet Zone of Occupation.
It became obvious to me that this man [Keitel] and with him the Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Hitler], whom he advised, were long since out of touch with what was happening in this war. After consulting with my staff, I decided to go my own way from then on. We had already started to do so some weeks before, when we stopped demolition squads from destroying supply depots in our area. Now, however, was the time to lead the army guided solely by what we knew ourselves. We could not free Berlin with our forces, but we could help vast numbers of people by opening a way to the west for them with a determined attack. By attacking from the Belzig area towards Potsdam, it would be possible to free the 20,000 troops encircled there. It did not seem impossible for 9th Army to get out of its pocket after such a thrust. Apart from this, the columns of refugees moving behind our front to the west would gain a few extra days time in which to reach the Elbe and escape the Russians.[4]
2
Wenck, ‘Berlin war nicht mehr zu retten’, p. 64; Gorlitz,
3
Lakowski/Stich,
4
Wenck, ‘Berlin war nicht mehr zu retten’, p. 64; Gellermann,