In comparison, the opposing 9th Army could only muster some 200,000 men, 512 tanks and self-propelled guns (SPGs) of all kinds, and 2,625 artillery pieces, while air support was reduced to a minimum for lack of fuel for the aircraft available.
The statistics were such that the outcome of the Berlin Operation could be regarded as a foregone conclusion by the Soviets, but with different effects at either end of the rank structure. For the leadership, and that meant Josef Stalin, this entailed thinking and playing one step ahead of imminent victory, and for the rank and file seeing the war out, not taking unnecessary risks in combat, and making the most of their opportunities when not in action.
The attitude of the Soviet soldier since crossing the German frontier had proved a serious problem for the command. Encouraged to take revenge on the Germans by the Soviet press and radio for the outrages committed in the Soviet Union, they had indulged in endless atrocities of murder, rape, looting, arson and wilful damage, bringing about a serious collapse in army discipline. Consequently, the political departments in the command structure had a difficult task in motivating and inspiring the troops, apart from the necessary reimposition of discipline.
For Stalin the war had served to reinforce his position as leader of his country, in which role he would brook no potential rival, but it was inevitable during the course of the war that certain of his generals should have attracted public attention, and he now saw the opportunity to cut them down to size, the rival Marshals Zhukov and Koniev in particular. Zhukov did not like or particularly trust Koniev, the former political commissar turned professional soldier, and the latter’s brief experience under Zhukov’s command had led him to dislike Zhukov intensely. As Boris Nicolaevsky wrote in his book Power and the Soviet Elite, Stalin, with his great talent for exploiting human weaknesses, had:
…quickly sized up Koniev and cleverly used his feelings towards Zhukov. If we trace the history of Stalin’s treatment of the two soldiers, the chronology of their promotions and awards, we shall see that as early as the end of 1941 Stalin was grooming Koniev, the politician, as a rival whom he could play off against the real soldier, Zhukov. This was typical of Stalin’s foresight and bears all the marks of his style. He confers honours on Zhukov only when he has no choice, but on Koniev he bestowed them even when there was no particular reason for doing so. This was necessary in order to maintain the balance between the ‘indispensable organiser of victory’ and the even more indispensable political counterweight to him.[2]
In fact Zhukov posed no threat to Stalin, whose authority Zhukov accepted without question, whether he thought Stalin right or wrong in his military decisions, in the same spirit in which Zhukov demanded total obedience from his own subordinates. Yet he had reason to be apprehensive for, as early as 1942, Stalin had sought some means of curbing Zhukov, tasking Viktor Abakumov, Head of the Special Department of the Ministry of the Interior (later to become SMERSH) with this. Although officially subordinate to Lavrenti Beria, Abakumov had direct access to Stalin, and began by arresting Zhukov’s former Chief of Operations with the Western Front in an unsuccessful attempt to gain incriminating evidence. Although Zhukov was nominally Deputy Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces, Stalin retained all the power for himself. By the autumn of 1944 Stalin was becoming ever more openly critical of the directions Zhukov was giving to his subordinate fronts on behalf of Stavka, this time tasking Nikolai Bulganin, then Deputy Commissar for Defence, with finding some error or omission with which Zhukov could be charged. Eventually two artillery manuals were found that Zhukov had personally approved, without first clearing them with Stavka. An order was then distributed throughout the upper echelons of the command structure, openly warning Zhukov not to be hasty when serious questions were being decided. Zhukov’s appointment as commander of the 1st Byelorussian Front then followed as a humiliating demotion, and placed him on a par with Koniev commanding the 1st Ukrainian Front. Consequently, Zhukov was now in a far from enviable position, being under constant threat of arrest.
With Zhukov’s East Pomeranian and Koniev’s Silesian clearance operations successfully completed, Stalin summoned them to Moscow to finalize the planning for the capture of Berlin. The matter was pressing because, despite the agreements reached at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 about the zoning of postwar Germany, the Soviet leaders generally expected that the Western Allies would try to get to Berlin ahead of them. The Soviets were fully aware of the political significance of taking the German capital, a point that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander in the West, and his superior, General George C. Marshall in Washington, failed to grasp, despite urging from their British allies. On 28 March Eisenhower signalled Stalin to the effect that he had decided to disregard Berlin and direct his main thrust on the Erfurt–Leipzig–Dresden area and the mythical Alpine Redoubt.[3] Stalin had promptly and deceitfully replied approving these proposals and announcing his own intentions of a main thrust on Dresden with only subsidiary forces directed on Berlin. From German signal traffic the Western Allies had been alerted to the imminence of the Soviet offensive and had pressed Stalin for details, but it was not until the eve of the attack that he was to divulge the date to them, again emphasizing quite untruthfully that his main thrust would be in the south.[4]
General Sergei M. Shtemenko, Chief of the Operations Department of the Soviet General Staff, wrote about the preliminary planning for Operation Berlin:
The work of the General Staff in planning the culminating attacks was made extremely complicated by Stalin’s categorical decision concerning the special role of the 1st Byelorussian Front. The task of overcoming such a large city as Berlin, which had been prepared well in advance for defence, was beyond the capacity of one front, even such a powerful front as the 1st Byelorussian. The situation insistently demanded that at least the 1st Ukrainian Front should be aimed additionally at Berlin. Moreover, it was, of course, necessary to avoid an ineffectual frontal attack with the main forces.
3
Eisenhower,
4
Gosztony,