By the end of the day the preparations for the forcing of the canal were complete. As we had been reckoning on some tedious fighting, we had distributed the infantry among the tank companies and formed storm troops out of the submachine-gun battalions, the headquarters platoon, the sapper company and the scouts. They would drive the enemy out of his hiding places in the roofs, buildings and cellars. Every tank was allocated five or six men.
However, it was also clear to me that these measures were still insufficient. As before, we lacked the infantry essential for street fighting. But where could we get more? I consulted with the head of the political section and the chief of staff. ‘Could we not redeploy the tank-men that have lost their tanks in the previous fighting as infantry?’
My comrades agreed and the tank soldiers were also not against it. Assault groups were formed with machine-pistols and machine-guns taken from the destroyed tanks. The workshop specialists, clerks and soldiers from the supply units also joined them, all wanting to take part in the storming of Berlin, and I understood their desire. But the men remained just men and I feared that every inherent self-preservation instinct could be seen in them. Who would want to lose his life so shortly before imminent victory. The men might thus avoid taking risks and the momentum of the attack would falter. In such a situation conviction alone is insufficient, and the personal example of the commanders, Communists and Komsomolz was necessary.
There were no such problems in the difficult years of 1941 and 1942. In the fighting in those days everyone had little hope of survival. We plunged into the fighting, thinking of victory even though we were not convinced that we would survive. I have often seen how soldiers have gone to certain death for a small patch of earth. And it was straight from these individual small successes that the greater success of the country in deadly fighting with Fascism depended.
At this time the front-line soldiers had a saying: ‘A man cannot die twice, and once does not avoid him.’ There was a grain of truth in this. Next to personal bravery and hatred of the enemy, these words showed a certain doubt that one could remain alive in war.
My fears were fortunately ungrounded. I had believed I knew my men, who had grown close to me in the years of war. Now their attacking spirit overcame all expectations. The inflexible wish to win, the determination to destroy Fascism as quickly and completely as possible and the deep belief in our rightful cause brought out mass heroism. The men went into battle unhesitatingly. Whoever forced his way into the Fascist capital knew what the words ‘I took Berlin’ would mean to future generations.
The Teltow Canal
The attack began. The approaching dusk was submerged by the artillery preparation’s sea of fire. A mighty shock wave pressed us into the earth. Dmitriev shouted into my ear: ‘What a magnificent concert!’
My enthusiastic chief of staff shouted: ‘Marshal Koniev has excelled himself!’
That was for certain. I had not seen firing of such intensity for a long time. The breakthrough near Kiev, the battle of Lvov, the attack on the Sandomierz bridgehead, all these vast operations could not be compared with what occurred on the Teltow Canal in the morning hours of the 24th April.
A whole artillery corps concentrated within two days on a narrow breakthrough sector, effecting a density of 600 gun barrels per kilometre of front, massing together mortars, organising the fire plan, measuring out the firing positions while on the move and finally coordinating everything, that could only be achieved by a talented army commander like Marshal Koniev and such experienced Generals of Artillery as Korolkov, Volkenschtein and many others.
Then thousands of shells roared over the heads of our tank troops. Behind us rumbled the dull thumps of the mortars. The fire trails of the Katiushas ripped apart the sky. General Riasanov’s bombers and fighters attacked, while Pokryschkin’s fighters covered them from above.
The north bank of the canal and the southern boundary of Berlin were in flames. Buildings and fortified positions fell in rubble and ashes as thick clouds of smoke rose up. The tortured and mutilated earth groaned. Thousands of enemy soldiers were killed. To confront the assault of two Army Fronts, of hundreds of regiments, of 6,000 tanks, 40,000 guns and a whole armada of aircraft was senseless.
Futilely Goebbels cried out that the Russians would never get into the city. In vain many of his believing audience put their hopes in the so-called wonder weapons. Equally fallacious were Hitler’s hopes in the reserves that were supposed to be coming to Berlin from the south and west, but which were being destroyed by the troops of Generals Gordov, Shadov and Puchov in the woods near Cottbus. Those who got through the slaughter then met the blows of the armoured and mechanised brigades of Rybalko and Leliushenko. Nevertheless the Fascists, already enclosed on three sides, put up a fanatical resistance. Right until the last minute they hoped for some miracle or other, but the miracle kept them waiting. Meanwhile our troops cut off their way to the west, but even now they bit back like a wounded animal. They understood that the hour of their downfall was imminent and that we would soon be presenting them with the bill for their crimes and the millions of victims at Auschwitz and Dachau, Mauthausen and Buchenwald, the Warsaw Ghetto and Babi Jar, Lidice and Oradour. Those who had not previously been sullied with foreign blood were now driven into the trenches on the orders of their Fascist leaders. The gallows, courts-martial and firing squads awaited those who left their positions.
The world of those people poisoned by Fascist ideas collapsed. They now realised what the adventurous politics of the Führer had done to their lives. Berlin, the last bastion of the Reich, was in a fight to the death.
The watch’s minute hand crept slowly forward. The murderous artillery fire moved off to the north. The bombs were already exploding somewhat to the side of us. The time for our attack came ever closer.
‘Another five minutes,’ Boris Saveliev, the reconnaissance commander, said near me. Schalunov looked across at me. Dmitriev looked at his watch and silently counted the minutes and seconds.
‘Give the orders!’ My voice seemed completely strange to me.
The chief of staff had the radio operators transmit: ‘Hawk’, ‘Full Speed’, ‘Stopwatch!’ ‘Forward!, forward!’
A series of green Verey lights climbed into the sky. The reconnaissance parties, engineers and submachine-gunners climbed out of their trenches and cover and stormed the canal bank, the engineers dragging up the boats to cross by, and behind them came the landing troops. Major Bystrov, the commander of the engineers, was already working on the bridge with several soldiers of the landing company. These handsome lads astonished me with their resourcefulness, daring and extraordinary ability. They tried out new methods and so found a solution when others would long since have given up. One could almost say that they had a sixth sense to detect the weight capacity of a bridge or a minefield. Now a runner arrived to tell me that the light self-propelled guns would soon be able to cross the bridge.
‘Everything is going according to plan,’ reported Schalunov confidently.
We all knew that our brigade was only a fraction of the assault being carried out in the 3rd Guards Tank Army’s area. At that same moment the combatants of the 6th and 7th Guards Tank Corps attacked.