Our ammunition ran out in the afternoon, but a runner appeared at the last moment carrying several boxes of ammunition, and we made a counterattack with 50 men, the rest being incapable of taking part. Wounded Russians were screaming, and some of the barns and houses had caught fire. We could not have withstood another Russian attack.
Soldiers who rejoined our unit later reported that a so-called Seydlitz officer had said to them: ‘Just tell them that their positions are about to be attacked by two battalions to force a way into the pocket and split up the remaining units.’
We received the order to abandon our positions at 2100 hours on this terrible day. We were to proceed towards Halbe via Hermsdorf. Unfortunately, the sounds of fighting in front of us had become even stronger. Suddenly we were unable to go on. A wounded soldier came back and said that Halbe was seven kilometres away and that there had already been two days of bitter fighting there with a frightful number of dead.[41]
That afternoon the Schill and Hutten Infantry Divisions of General Wenck’s 12th Army continued their advance towards Potsdam. Lieutenant-General Engel of the Schill Division deployed two regiments of infantry, the SPGs and two platoons of tanks in his spearhead, using APCs and armoured cars to cover the flanks.
The Scharnhorst and Körner Infantry Divisions were equally heavily engaged around Beelitz, where an attack on the sanatorium located in the woods outside the town met bitter resistance. The approach to the sanatorium was blocked by a strongly defended transformer building which had first to be reduced by anti-tank gunfire before fighting for the hospital buildings could begin. There the Soviets conducted their defence from the underground corridors connecting the individual buildings – even though the corridors were filled with 3,000 sick and wounded. As soon as the Germans had taken the first building, the evacuation of the patients with their medical attendants was begun. With them were some representatives of the International Red Cross who later negotiated their acceptance by the American forces on the Elbe.[42]
The area now held, extending along the line Nichel–Reesdorf–railway junction north of Beelitz-Ferch, and including Elsholz, Buchholz and Brachwitz, provided a suitable catchment area for receiving break-out groups from either Berlin, Potsdam or Halbe. A situation report by 12th Army read:
The enemy has been able to penetrate Potsdam from the north. Our own attack thrust forward with the right wing farther to the east, taking Salzbronn and Elsholz. Hard fighting around Beelitz. North of there leading elements of the Scharnhorst Division have reached the railway crossing six kilometres north of Beelitz. Spearheads of the Hutten Division have taken Ferch. Striking along the Schwielowsee during the night.[43]
The suggestion was then sent to 9th Army to concentrate its efforts towards the Beelitz area, where the Soviet forces were relatively weak and scattered over a wide area, providing the only reasonable chance of success. The 12th Army would try to hold its ground as long as possible against the already increasing pressure. A signal received from the OKW ordering 12th Army to close up to the line of the Havel between the Schwielowsee and Brandenburg was ignored.[44]
Meanwhile, acting on orders received the day before, 4th Guards Tank Army’s 5th Guards Mechanized Corps took up the offensive from its positions along the line Buchholz–Treuenbrietzen and seized the villages of Brachwitz and Schlalach in the swampy terrain beyond the railway line to the west in some bitter fighting. The Soviets claimed to have destroyed six SPGs in this engagement.[45]
ELEVEN
Breaching Koniev’s Lines
29 APRIL 1945
The repeated attacks by the German armour finally succeeded. The Soviet cordon was breached and their positions overrun. The Red Army troops at Halbe were unable to close the gap fast enough, their artillery and tank fire failing to smash the desperate German assault.
Before it was full light on 29 April the German commanders had to get their people flooding through this breach. It was a hectic scramble, but XI SS Panzer Corps and V Corps managed to get through and away. For the rearguard, as will be recounted later, it was not so easy. It seems that the Soviets also managed to block the gap before V SS Mountain Corps could get through, and that this formation then had to bear the brunt of the Soviet artillery fire in its own struggle to break through an area already strewn with the casualties of the earlier fighting.[1]
SS-Major Hartrampf, commanding 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion, maintained a good grip on his lead tanks and any resistance encountered was soon overcome. Whenever there was a hold-up, Hartrampf would appear in his APC and get his tanks moving again, though he later recalled that XI SS Panzer Corps, more often than he would have liked, sent the radioed question: ‘Where are the leading tanks?’[2]
SS Lieutenant Bärmann, driving along in an SPG, reported:
As it became light on 29 April, we drove on cautiously and soon came to a barrier with two T-34s behind it. They were immediately engaged by the Tigers driving behind us. I called down below: ‘Two o’clock right – aim!’ Together, we overcame the anti-tank guns and tanks.
Spirits improved. At the autobahn west of Halbe, we came up against another anti-tank barrier that we also overcame. With daylight, the Russian ground-attack aircraft began attacking, but our self-propelled Flak fired flat out so that they were unable to aim their bombs.[3]
The lead tanks of 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion reached the Cottbus–Berlin autobahn at dawn and came under fire. One or two well concealed Russian tanks engaged the German vehicles as soon as they approached the autobahn, but SS-Major Hartrampf was on the spot and gave orders for an attack by a Tiger and a hastily assembled infantry storm troop, which soon put them out of action. The lead tanks then crossed the autobahn and waited in the woods opposite for the others to catch up. However, although the first group of opposing tanks had been dealt with, others firing from further off along the autobahn opened up as soon as a German vehicle approached. Even so General Busse managed to get across in his command APC and drove on to the rendezvous at the Massow forest warden’s lodge.[4]
Rudi Lindner’s account of this period continued:
It slowly became light as we slipped along the track under cover of the wood. As this led to the west, it had to lead to the autobahn. Suddenly in front of us was the nose of an armoured vehicle. ‘Take cover! One man forward to reconnoitre!’
After ten minutes came the report that it was an assault gun. Its crew, who had their dead commander aboard, were about to cross the autobahn under cover of the morning haze, but did not know if the woods opposite were occupied by the enemy or not, and were also afraid that there might be flanking anti-tank gun fire along the autobahn, so they were happy to see us and for us to find out for them. A brief order: ‘Under simultaneous covering fire, over the autobahn in bounds.’ We were soon on the other side. All we found on the other side were empty foxholes and dead bodies. We welcomed the chance to drive our assault gun several kilometres in the westerly direction ordered for the break-out to the assembly point at the forest warden’s lodge at Massow. We found ourselves on a woodland track on which soldiers were moving along in groups of all sizes.
42
Wenck, ‘Berlin war nicht mehr zu retten’, pp. 65–6; Gellermann,