Volkssturm marching through Berlin following a speech
from Goebbels. This photo, disseminated through `a neutral nation’, found its
way to American press agencies on 31 December 1944. Though older than most
regular troops, every man is equipped with Panzerfaust antitank weapon,
greatcoat, air defence helmet and Swastika arm band. Some also have pistols.
The parade, and appearance of the picture, helped give an impression of a well-armed,
well disciplined, force.
The hopelessness of the German situation was obvious to
most. As General of Artillery Helmuth Weidling, who was appointed to the
unenviable task of leading the defence of the Reich capital, recorded:
The 24th of April had already convinced me that it was
impossible to defend Berlin, and that it was also senseless from a military
standpoint, since the German High Command did not have sufficient forces. In
addition, the commander did not have a single regular unit at his disposal in
Berlin at the time, with the exception of the Grossdeutschland regiment and an
SS Brigade that was guarding the Reich Chancellery. The entire defence was
handed over to the Peoples’ Reserve (Volkssturm), the police, the fire-brigade
and various troops of the rear area service and various administrative
departments.
The city was divided into eight outer and one inner defence
sector. Communication among the various sectors was poor. Berlin had food and
munitions reserves for thirty days. Since the store houses were on the
outskirts of the city, however, supplying food and munitions became
increasingly difficult the more the ring of Russians tightened around the
defenders. On the last two days we had neither food, nor munitions. I think
that the Volkssturm, the Police detachments, the fire-brigade and the
antiaircraft units consisted of about 90,000 men, not counting the troops of
the rear area services. There were also the Volkssturm of the second
mobilisation as the various firms were closed in the course of the battle. The
LVI Tank Corps reached Berlin, that is, retreated to Berlin, with 13,000 to
15,000 men. It is impossible to give an exact figure of the number of people
who defended Berlin, since I did not receive figures on the troop strength of
the individual units under my command.
The Volkssturm (literally `Storm of the People’ or `People’s
Army’), who provided a significant part of the close defence of the city, were
of greatly varying quality. Effectively a `people’s militia’, the formation was
a last ditch levy for home defence, and in theory could include every
able-bodied German male between 16 and 60 not already under arms. With fit men
from their late teens to late 30s already largely swept up by the regular
forces the emphasis was inevitably on the older, and on the young. Not
technically part of the German Army, but a scion of the Party, the Volkssturm
was originally decreed into existence, by Hitler, on 25 September 1944, but
formally announced on the propitious date of 18 October, anniversary of the
victorious 1813 battle of Leipzig. The vision of the Volkssturm was impressive
indeed, calling for a total of six million men throughout the Reich. These were
to be organized in over 1,000 battalions, in a series of enlistments; the first
being for service in `frontline’ battalions; the second in factory and local
battalions for area defence; the third of youths in the 16 to 19 bracket, as
well as volunteers as young as 15; and the fourth for guard duty, but including
enthusiasts of over 60 who still wished to serve. The best of the crop, the
battalions of the first enlistment, were supposed to be 649-men strong,
organized in three companies, each company having three five-man anti-tank
squads as part of its establishment. In the event about 700 battalions actually
saw service, and those of the third and fourth levies received few arms other
than those they could procure for themselves. Volkssturm training, focusing
essentially on weapons handling, was a basic 48-hour programme, often fitted
around the continuation of work, such as that on fortification construction.
Goebbels in his capacity as both `Reich Defence Commissioner
for the Reich Defence District of Berlin’, and Gauleiter, attended the swearing
in ceremony of the Wilhelmplatz First Battalion on 12 November – a unit
actually including employees of his own Propaganda Ministry. He described them
enthusiastically as `modern troops, with the spirit of 1813, but the weapons of
1944′. This was partially true in that the Volkssturm did receive issues of new
Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck antitank weapons and grenades, plus rifles, some
of them obsolete – but which unit got what, and how much, appears to have been
something of a lottery. The vexed question of uniforms was never really solved
for although the Volkssturm had a ranking system of pips worn on the collar,
not everyone had a suitable costume to put them on. The fortunate got German
Army greatcoats and caps, others wore brown Party uniforms, a few captured
uniform with new badges – but some received nothing more than an arm band. Not
everyone had head protection, but many wore the Luftschutz helmets of the
civilian air defence organization. One provincial newspaper offered
constructive advice:
Uniformity of clothing in the Volkssturm is, in itself,
of no importance: but camouflage is. To wear bright, or very light coloured
clothing is inadvisable. It has therefore been decided that light coloured
clothing, such as the party uniform, shall be dyed the new einsatzbraun
The dyeing of civilian suits, however, will only be carried out if the original colour is unsuitable for field service and provided that the suit, after being dyed, can still be worn by its owner for his lawful, civilian occasions.
Some Volkssturm would fight bravely, virtually to the last
man, knocking out tanks at pointblank range: others failed totally through lack
of weapons or training, and some did not make it into battle at all. At least
one Berlin Volkssturm battalion, receiving no uniform or ammunition for their
limited number of old Danish rifles, were able to procrastinate long enough to
remain uncommitted.
The physical lines of the Berlin defence were formed by a
series of concentric positions. The outer rested on a chain of natural
obstacles between the Dahme and Alte Oder rivers, stretching for about 50
miles, and there were obstacle belts blocking major road junctions north and
south of the city. Another zone of defence, the `green line’, was formed on the
city boundary, supported where possible, by fall back positions. Within this
the next layer of the onion was the main inner defence ring, or
Hauptkampflinie, based on the S-bahn, or suburban rail circuit. Finally came
what was optimistically dubbed the Zitadelle, or citadel, resting on the
strength of what was effectively an island formed by the River Spree, the
Landwehr canal and `bastions’ east and west around Alexanderplatz and Am Knie.
To create a sufficient labour force for the improvement of the physical
defences the only army engineer battalion available was supplemented by two of
the Volkssturm and a mass of semi-skilled personnel drawn from the Reichs
Labour Service (RAD); Organization Todt; civilians; prisoners-of-war; and
outright slave labour. By such means 70,000 were gathered for the works. In the
absence of enough fuel and motor vehicles loads of materials were moved mainly
by rail, or horse and cart.
The outer rings, being of great length, could only be improved
with basic field defences consisting of at least one fire-trench line, and,
over a significant span, an anti-tank ditch. Bridges were blown, or prepared
for demolition. Yet, what should be destroyed and when was a matter for
argument. Hitler’s orders called for crossings to be obliterated
indiscriminately, but at the same time some bridges were useful to the defence,
and others carried gas, electrical and water supplies as well as carriageways.
Speer’s account is that he argued for bridges to be preserved, with an eye to
the post-war situation, while generals Henrici and Reymann conspired to keep
some for tactical reasons. According to one post-war calculation only 127 of
Berlin’s 483 bridges were therefore cut at this stage. The S-bahn was a significant
obstacle to attackers in that the multiple rail lines formed fields of fire,
and in many places cuttings or embankments provided ditches or ready-made
ramparts. Artillery was the main defensive weapon, with many of the
anti-aircraft guns, that had hitherto pointed skyward, being dug in against
tanks alongside existing anti-tank weapons. In the city centre masonry and more
limited fields of fire were turned to advantage with barricades blocking
streets, machine-gun positions on roofs and in cellars and holes broken between
buildings allowing defenders to move unseen from one place to another. Blocks
were created in some U-bahn tunnels, and others were prepared for demolition or
flooding. Weidling’s communications problems were exacerbated by the fact that
many of the recently raised militia had no radios, and therefore had to rely on
the civilian telephone network – and runners who might fall victim to a
sniper’s bullet or bombardment at any moment. Like an orange, viewed from
above, the eight main segments of the city were lettered clockwise `A’ to `H’.
Each had its own commander, but the citadel was entrusted to SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm
Mohnke whose final reserve was a 1,200 man detachment of the Liebstandarte
Adolf Hitler.
The Red Army Assault
Soviet strategy, as assessed by General Krebs, was
essentially tripartite. The first objective would be to encircle in general;
the second to divide the larger isolated area into parts; and the third to
mount specific thrusts to fragment the city centre into ever smaller and
manageable parts. The final assaults were likely to be made against Potsdamer
Platz, Alexanderplatz and the Charlottenburg railway station. Tank rider
Lieutenant Evgeni Bessonov encountered the enemy on a reinforced railway line
position as the Soviet forces enveloped Berlin from the south:
At dawn on 22 April we approached a high railway
embankment and were stopped by intensive fire. We could quickly have destroyed
the German delaying force and moved on forward, but the problem was that the passage
under the railway bridge was filled with sand and fortified with big logs,
connected with metal girders. We did not manage to destroy that barricade. We
rode on tanks for some time and all of a sudden came under fire from trenches
on the right-hand side of the road. The tanks stopped, I ordered, `Dismount!
Fire!’ and the whole company ran towards those trenches firing non-stop from
our submachine guns. Right in front of me was a Fritz in a trench. I tried to
cut him down with my German submachine gun, but apparently during the skirmish
at the embankment some sand had got into the bolt. I jerked the bolt, pulled
the trigger, but it did not fire. The German did not think long, grabbed his
rifle and aimed it at me. Right at that time a submachine gun burst sounded in
the air and the German dropped dead at the bottom of the trench. It turned out
that it was Drozd who cut him down with a Soviet PPsh submachine gun, which
never jammed in battle. Why the hell did I carry that German submachine gun? We
jumped across the trenches, some Germans fled, while the rest were killed.
Andrey took away my submachine gun, took out the magazine and threw the
submachine gun away.
By the last days Soviet and German soldiers were so closely
locked in street battles that air power ceased to have much meaning, for
aircraft were as likely to strike friend as foe. Instead it became a
short-range infantryman’s war. As Soviet infantry officer Jakov Jarchin
explained:
I can give you an idea. For example when we attacked an
individual building, before entering, we used guns and mortars, to shell the
building so that the soldiers would have easier access. Then, under support of
our mortars, we attempted to surround the building, and cause the Germans to
surrender. Then we threw grenades into the building. If that didn’t work we had
to go in – despite the danger, advancing step by step, and sometimes fighting
hand-to-hand with the Germans. In my unit we had rifles, submachine guns and
spades. That’s all. Berlin was all in ruins, all because of massive American
and British [air] bombardment. The population was in basements; no water and no
electricity; lacking food. Equally some men were completely ruined.
Early in the afternoon of 30 April Red Army Sergeant
Kantaria reached the second floor of the Reichstag and succeeded in waving the
Red banner. Although German troops were still on the floor above him the
distance to the Fürherbunker in the Chancellery garden in Wilhelmstrasse could
now be measured in just hundreds of metres. Soon afterwards Eva Braun took
poison and Hitler put his pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. By that
evening the Red flag had finally reached the top of the Reichstag.
An important witness of the final fall of Berlin was Vasily
Grossman, special correspondent for the Russian Army’s Red Star newspaper.
Grossman was an experienced journalist, and had witnessed both Stalingrad and
the aftermath of the liberation of the concentration camp at Treblinka. Yet
even he was almost dumbfounded by this `monstrous concentration of
impressions’, wreathed in fire and smoke, where he saw:
Enormous crowds of prisoners. Their faces are full of
drama. In many faces there’s sadness, not only personal suffering, but also the
suffering of a citizen. This overcast, cold and rainy day is undoubtedly the
day of Germany’s ruin. In smoke, among the ruins, in flames, amid hundreds of
corpses in the streets. Corpses squashed by tanks, squeezed out like tubes.
Almost all of them are clutching grenades and sub-machine guns in their hands.
They have been killed fighting. Most of the dead men are dressed in brown
shirts. They were party activists who defended the approaches to the Reichstag
and Reichschancellery. Prisoners – policemen, officials, old men and next to
them schoolboys, almost children.
With the Western Allies reaching the Elbe river the Soviet
Armies began their encirclement of Berlin and the final destruction of the
German armed forces (here depicted in blue). Marshal Zhukov began his main
attack on 16 April 1945. Just nine days later the encirclement of the capital
was complete. (c Osprey Publishing Ltd.) Other sights he observed that day
ranged from the homely to the terrible: a little child crushed into the mud by
tank or shell; infantry making a bonfire in the Reichstag to heat their mess
tins; celebrations, looting and laughing; dead animals and hungry lions in the
Tiergarten; curious soldiery and Hitler’s furniture together with his
appropriately crushed globe. As Leonid Sheinker recalled, `we were happy and
sad at the same time . [we] were euphoric, we hugged and kissed each other’.
An idealized view of the young Soviet soldier complete
with rolled greatcoat, bayonet and red star with hammer and sickle. From a
painting in the Latvian military museum, Riga.
Grossman also hinted at other occurrences when he described
a meeting with a young Frenchman arguing that the Soviet Army’s treatment of
women in the city was going to damage its fine `fighting reputation’. Indeed,
one of the most remarkable things about the violation of Berlin was its scope
and variety. One Danish journalist who witnessed it described it as less to do
with sex than a `destructive, hateful, and wholesale act of vengeance’. At one
end of the scale were children and old women gang raped to death: at the other
some Russian officers, endowed with a strangely old world gentility, who made
more or less willing German women semi-official mistresses, so preserving them
from the worst defilement. Rape was certainly very widespread, and although a
round figure of 100,000 Berlin women attacked is often quoted the true figure
may never be known: some victims went unreported, some suffered more than once.
Much was down to guesswork. A significant number of people – men as well as
women – committed suicide, either before or after facing the rough hand, or
summary justice and pillage, of the victors. As General Weidling himself
described it, `the moment had come to settle the bill for the sins of the past
years’.
