We had to go back to the January idea of taking Berlin by means of out-flanking attacks by the 1st Byelorussian Front from the north and north-west and the 1st Ukrainian Front from the south-west and west. The two fronts were to link up in the Brandenburg–Potsdam area.
We based all our further calculations on the most unfavourable assumptions: the inevitability of heavy and prolonged fighting in the streets of Berlin, the possibility of German counterattacks from outside the ring of encirclement from the west and south-west, restoration of the enemy’s defence to the west of Berlin and the consequent need to continue the offensive. We even envisaged a situation in which the Western Allies for some reason might be unable to overcome the resistance of the enemy forces opposing them and find themselves held up for a long time.[5]
Zhukov arrived in Moscow on 29 March and saw Stalin that evening. Stalin gave him two days to sort out the final details of his plans with the General Staff. He and Koniev were to present their plans for Stavka approval on 1 April. Shtemenko then went on to describe the events of the 1945 Easter weekend in Moscow:
By this time the General Staff had all the basic ideas for the Berlin operation worked out. In the course of this work we kept in very close contact with the front Chiefs of Staff, A. M. Bogolyubov, M. S. Malin and V. D. Sokolovsky (later with I. Y. Petrov) and, as soon as the first symptoms appeared that the Allies had designs on Berlin, Zhukov and Koniev were summoned to Moscow.
On March the 31st they and the General Staff considered what further operations the Fronts were to carry out. Marshal Koniev got very excited over the demarcation line between his front and the 1st Byelorussian Front, which gave him no opportunity of striking a blow at Berlin. No one on the General Staff, however, could remove this obstacle.
On the next day, 1st April 1945, the plan of the Berlin operation was discussed at GHQ. A detailed report was given on the situation at the Fronts, and on Allied operations and their plans. Stalin drew the conclusion from this that we must take Berlin in the shortest possible time. The operation would have to be started not later than the 16th April and completed in not more than 12 to 15 days. The Front Commanders agreed to this and assured GHQ that the troops would be ready in time.
The Chief of the General Staff considered it necessary to draw the Supreme Commander’s attention once again to the demarcation line between the two Fronts. It was emphasized that this line virtually excluded the armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front from direct participation in the fighting for Berlin, and this might make it difficult to carry out the operation as scheduled. Marshal Koniev spoke in the same vein, arguing in favour of aiming part of the forces of the 1st Ukrainian Front, particularly the tank armies, at the south-western suburbs of Berlin.
Stalin decided on a compromise. He did not completely abandon his own idea, nor did he entirely reject Marshal Koniev’s considerations, supported by the General Staff. On the map showing the plan of the operation he silently crossed out the section of the demarcation line that cut off the Ukrainian Front from Berlin, allowing it to go as far as Lübben (sixty kilometres to the south-east of the capital) and no further.
‘Let the one who is first to break in, take Berlin,’ he told us later.[6]
In his memoirs, Koniev wrote of this event:
To me, in any case, the end of the boundary at Lübben meant that the rapidity of the penetration, as well as the speed and manoeuvrability of the operations on the right flank of our Front, might subsequently create a situation which would make our attack against Berlin from the south advantageous.
Could this halting of the boundary at Lübben have been designed to create competition between the two fronts? I admit that that could have been the case. At any rate, I do not exclude this possibility. This becomes all the more plausible if we think back to that time and recall what Berlin meant to us and how ardently we all, from soldier to general, wished to see that city with our own eyes and capture it by the force of our arms.
Naturally, this was also my passionate desire. I am not afraid to admit this now. It would be strange to portray myself during the last months of the war as a person devoid of strong emotions. On the contrary, we were overflowing with them.
As a matter of fact, the drawing of the line of demarcation brought the planning of the operation to a conclusion. The GHQ directives were approved.[7]
So this operation was to become not only a race against time to beat the Western Allies to Berlin, but also a race between the front commanders for the glory of taking the enemy capital, and within the capital what to them was the symbolic Reichstag building. Although it had been burnt out twelve years previously and remained a desolate shell, its significance to the Soviets was akin to that of the Kremlin in their own country, as the centre of Nazi power.
Instead of the usual three to four months to prepare for an operation of this magnitude, the Soviets could now only allow themselves two weeks.
Stalin signed the directive approving Zhukov’s plans for the 1st Byelorussian Front’s operation on the night of 1 April and Koniev’s the following day. The directive for Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovsky’s 2nd Byelorussian Front was not issued for another week, for he was still heavily engaged in mopping up the German forces remaining in East Prussia and was not expected to launch his part of the Berlin operation against the 3rd Panzer Army north of Berlin until 20 April.[8]
Zhukov’s orders gave him the primary task of taking Berlin by 21 April and pushing on to the Elbe by 1 May. Koniev would support the Berlin operation by destroying the German forces to the south of the city, and would have the secondary task of taking Dresden and Leipzig, both important industrial cities in the future Soviet Zone of Occupation. The 2nd Byelorussian Front would engage the German forces north of the capital, while other fronts further south would maintain pressure on the Germans to prevent the redeployment of strategic reserves to the Berlin area.[9]
The main problem for Zhukov in the breakthrough battle would be the clearing of the commanding Seelow Heights. He proposed doing this with a simultaneous attack from his bridgehead in the Oderbruch valley bottom by four reinforced combined-arms formations to clear breaches in the defences. This would enable his two tank armies to pass through and take Berlin in a pincer movement. The 2nd Guards Tank Army would penetrate the heart of Berlin from the north-east, while 1st Guards Tank Army would bypass Berlin and Potsdam to the south, pushing on to the west. A further two armies would conduct river crossings across the Alte Oder and Oder, press on to cover the northern flank and block off Berlin from the west. Meanwhile, 69th Army would cover the southern flank of the main attack while containing the Frankfurt-an-der-Oder garrison in conjuction with 33rd Army. The latter, with 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps, would break out of its own bridgehead, and together these two armies would push westward along the line of the autobahn with the objectives of Fürstenwalde and eventually Brandenburg. (This move, in conjunction with that of 1st Guards Tank Army, could also be interpreted as intended to forestall any attempt by Koniev to break into the city from the south.) The 3rd Army would form the front’s second echelon, and 7th Guards Cavalry Corps the front reserve.[10]
9
Zhukov, Reminiscences and Reflections, pp. 346–51; The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union [hereafter cited as GPW], pp. 376–8; Erickson, The Road to Berlin, pp. 531–5.
10
GPW, pp. 88–9; Erickson, The Road to Berlin, pp. 535–7. The role of the tank armies after the breakthrough is taken from a map used by General Ivanov in the 1993 film Der Todeskampf der Reichshauptstadt [Chronos-Film].