THE LAST BATTLE
by
Cornelius Ryan


Published by: Simon and Schuster, New York, New York.

Copyright 1966 by Cornelius Ryan Copyright renewed 1994 by Victoria
Ryan Bida and Geoffrey J. M. Ryan

"A rare accomplishment ... will be of interest to generations to come."
--James A. Michener

Now deceased, Cornelius Ryan was born in 1920 in Dublin, Ireland, where
he was raised. He became one of the preeminent war correspondents of
his time, flying fourteen bombing missions with the Eighth and Ninth
U.s. air forces, and covering the D-Day landings and the advance of
General Patton's Third Army across France and Germany. After the end
of hostilities in Europe, he covered the Pacific war. In addition to
his classic works The Longest Day and The Last Battle, he was the
author of numerous other books, which have appeared throughout the
world in 19 languages. Awarded the Legion of Honor by the French
government in 1973, Mr. Ryan was hailed at that time by Malcolm
Muggeridge as "perhaps the most brilliant reporter now alive." He died
in 1976.

By Cornelius Ryan

THE LAST BATTLE--1966

THE LONGEST DAY--1959

"Of the events of war, I have not ventured to speak from any chance
information, or according to any notion of my own: I have described
nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made
the most careful and particular inquiry. The task was a laborious one
because eyewitnesses of the same occurrence gave different accounts of
them as they remembered, or were interested in the actions of one side
or the other. And very likely the strictly historical character of my
narrative may be disappointing to the ear. But if he who desires to
have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened
... shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be
satisfied." --Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Volume 1, 400 B.c.

This book is for the memory of a boy who was born in Berlin during the
last months of the war. His name was Peter Fechter. In 1962 he was
machine-gunned by his own people and left to bleed to death by the side
of the most tragic memorial to the allied victory--the Berlin wall.

CONTENTS

Foreword: A-Day, Monday, April 16, 1945

One: The City

Two: The General

Three: The Objective

Four: The Decision

Five: The Battle

A Note on Casualties

The Soldiers and Civilians: What They Do Today

Acknowledgments

Index

THE LAST BATTLE

FOREWORD A-Day, Monday, April 16, 1945

The battle for Berlin, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich,
began at precisely 4 A.m., Monday, April 16, 1945--or A-Day as it was
called by the Western Allies. At that moment, less than thirty-eight
miles east of the capital, red flares burst in the night skies above
the swollen river Oder, triggering a stupefying artillery barrage and
the opening of the Russian assault on the city.

At about that same time, elements of the U.s. Ninth Army were turning
away from Berlin--heading back to the west to take up new positions
along the river Elbe between Tangermunde and Barby. On April 14
General Eisenhower had decided to halt the Anglo-American drive across
Germany. "Berlin," he said, "is no longer a military objective." When
U.s. troops got the word, Berlin, for some of them, was only forty-five
miles away.

As the attack began, Berliners waited in the bombed rubble of their
city, numb and terrified, clinging to the only politics that now
counted--the politics of survival. To eat had become more important
than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to endure more
militarily correct than to win.

What follows is the story of the last battle--the assault and capture
of Berlin. Although this book includes accounts of the fighting, it is
not a military report. Rather, it is the story of ordinary people,
both soldiers and civilians, who were caught up in the despair,
frustration, terror and rape of the defeat and the victory.

Part One THE CITY

In the northern latitudes the dawn comes early. Even as the bombers
were turning away from the city, the first rays of light were coming up
in the east. In the stillness of the morning, great pillars of black
smoke towered over the districts of Pankow, Weissensee and Lichtenberg.
On the low clouds it was difficult to separate the soft glow of
daylight from the reflections of the fires that blazed in bomb-battered
Berlin.

As the smoke drifted slowly across the ruins, Germany's most bombed
city stood out in stark, macabre splendor. It was blackened by soot,
pockmarked by thousands of craters and laced by the twisted girders of
ruined buildings. Whole blocks of apartment houses were gone, and in
the very heart of the capital entire neighborhoods had vanished. In
these wastelands what had once been broad roads and streets were now
pitted trails that snaked through mountains of rubble. Everywhere,
covering acre after acre, gutted, windowless, roofless buildings gaped
up at the sky.

In the aftermath of the raid, a fine residue of soot and ash rained
down, powdering the wreckage, and in the great canyons of smashed brick
and tortured steel nothing moved but the eddying dust. It swirled
along the broad expanse of the Unter den Linden, the famous trees bare
now, the leaf buds seared on the branches. Few of the banks, libraries
and elegant shops lining the renowned boulevard were undamaged. But at
the western end of the avenue, Berlin's most famous landmark, the
eight-story-high Brandenburg Gate, though gashed and chipped, still
straddled the via triumphalis on its twelve massive Doric columns.

On the nearby Wilhelmstrasse, lined by government buildings and former
palaces, shards of glass from thousands of windows glittered in the
debris. At No. 73, the beautiful little palace that had been the
official residence of German presidents in the days before the Third
Reich had been gutted by a raging fire. Once it had been described as
a miniature Versailles; now sea nymphs from the ornate fountain in the
forecourt lay shattered against the colonnaded front entrance, and
along the roof line, chipped and gouged by flying fragments, the twin
statues of Rhine maidens leaned headless over the littered courtyard.

A block away, No. 77 was scarred but intact. Piles of rubble lay all
around the three-story, L-shaped building. Its yellowish-brown
exterior was scabrous, and the garish golden eagles above each
entrance, garlanded swastikas in their claws, were pitted and deeply
scored. Jutting out above was the imposing balcony from which the
world had been harangued with many a frenzied speech. The
Reichskanzlei, Chancellery of Adolf Hitler, still remained.

At the top of the battered Kurfurstendamm, Berlin's Fifth Avenue,
bulked the deformed skeleton of the once fashionable Kaiser-Wilhelm
Memorial Church. The hands on the charred clock face were stopped at
exactly 7:30; they had been that way since 1943 when bombs wiped out
one thousand acres of the city on a single November evening.

One hundred yards away was the jungle of wreckage that had been the
internationally famed Berlin Zoo. The aquarium was completely
destroyed. The reptile, hippopotamus, kangaroo, tiger and elephant
houses, along with scores of other buildings, were severely damaged.
The surrounding Tiergarten, the renowned 630-acre park, was a no man's
land of room-sized craters, rubble-filled lakes and partly demolished
embassy buildings. Once the park had been a natural forest of
luxuriant trees. Now most of them were burned and ugly stumps.

In the northeast corner of the Tiergarten stood Berlin's most
spectacular ruin, destroyed not by Allied bombs but by German politics.
The huge Reichstag, seat of parliament, had been deliberately set
ablaze by the Nazis in 1933--and the fire had been blamed on the
Communists, thus providing Hitler with an excuse to seize full
dictatorial power. On the crumbling portico above its six-columned
entrance, overlooking the sea of wreckage that almost engulfed the
building, were the chiseled, blackened words, "Dem Deutschen Volke"--To
the German P.

A complex of statuary had once stood before the Reichstag. All had
been destroyed except one piece--a 200-foot-high, dark red
granite-and-bronze column on a massive colonnaded base. After the 1933
burning Hitler had ordered it moved. Now it stood a mile away on the
Charlottenburger Chaussee, close to the center of the East-West
Axis--the series of linked highways running across the city roughly
from the river Havel on the west to the end of the Unter den Linden on
the east. As the sun rose on this March morning its rays caught the
golden figure at the top of the column: a winged statue bearing a
laurel wreath in one hand, a standard adorned with the Iron Cross in
the other. Rising up out of the wasteland, untouched by the bombing,
was Berlin's slender, graceful memorial--the Victory Column.

Across the tormented city sirens began wailing the All Clear. The
314th Allied raid on Berlin was over. In the first years of the war
the attacks had been sporadic, but now the capital was under almost
continuous bombardment --the Americans bombed by day, the R.a.f. by
night. The statistics of destruction had increased almost hourly; by
now they were staggering. Explosives had laid waste more than ten
square miles of built-up districts--ten times the area destroyed in
London by the Luftwaffe. Three billion cubic feet of debris lay in the
streets--enough rubble for a mountain more than a thousand feet high.
Almost half of Berlin's

1,562,000 dwellings had sustained some kind of damage, and every third
house was either completely destroyed or uninhabitable. Casualties
were so high that a true accounting would never be possible, but at
least 52,000 were dead and twice that number seriously injured--five
times the number killed and seriously injured in the bombing of London.
Berlin had become a second Carthage--and the final agony was still to
come.

In this wilderness of devastation it was remarkable that people could
survive at all--but life went on with a kind of lunatic normality amid
the ruins. Twelve thousand policemen were still on duty. Postmen
delivered the mail; newspapers came out daily; telephone and
telegraphic services continued. Garbage was collected. Some cinemas,
theaters and even a part of the wrecked zoo were open. The Berlin
Philharmonic was finishing its season. Department stores ran special
sales. Food and bakery shops opened each morning, and laundries,
dry-cleaning establishments and beauty salons did a brisk business. The
underground and elevated railways functioned; the few fashionable bars
and restaurants still intact drew capacity crowds. And on almost every
street the strident calls of Berlin's famous flower vendors echoed as
in the days of peace.

Perhaps most remarkable, more than 65 per cent of Berlin's great
factories were in some kind of working condition. Almost 600,000
people had jobs--but getting to them now was a major problem. It often
took hours. Traffic was clogged, there were detours, slowdowns and
breakdowns. As a consequence, Berliners had taken to rising early.
Everyone wanted to get to work on time because the Americans, early
risers themselves, were often at work over the city by 9 A.m.

On this bright morning in the city's sprawling twenty districts,
Berliners came forth like neolithic cave dwellers. They emerged from
the bowels of subways, from shelters beneath public buildings, from the
cellars and basements of their shattered homes. Whatever their hopes
or fears, whatever their loyalties or political beliefs, this much
Berliners had in common: those who had survived another night were
determined to live another day.

The same could be said for the nation itself. In this sixth year of
World War II, Hitler's Germany was fighting desperately for survival.
The Reich that was to last a millennium had been invaded from west and
east. The Anglo-American forces were sweeping down on the great river
Rhine, had breached it at Remagen, and were racing for Berlin. They
were only three hundred miles to the west. On the eastern banks of the
Oder a far more urgent, and infinitely more fearful, threat had
materialized. There stood the Russian armies, less than fifty miles
away.

It was Wednesday, March 21, 1945--the first day of spring. On radios
all over the city this morning, Berliners heard the latest hit tune:
"This Will Be a Spring Without End."

To the dangers that threatened them, Berliners reacted each in his own
way. Some stubbornly disregarded the peril, hoping it would go away.
Some courted it. Others reacted with anger or fear--and some, with the
grim logic of those whose backs are to the wall, prepared bravely to
meet their fate head on.

In the southwestern district of Zehlendorf, milkman Richard Poganowska
was, as usual, up with the dawn. In years past his daily routine had
often seemed monotonous. Now he was grateful for it. He worked for
the 300-year-old Domane Dahlem farm in Zehlendorf's fashionable suburb
of Dahlem, only a few miles from the center of the huge capital. In
any other city the dairy's location would have been considered an
oddity, but not in Berlin. One fifth of the city's total area lay in
parks and woodlands, along

lakes, canals and streams. Still, Poganowska, like many other Domane
employees, wished the farm were somewhere else--far outside the city,
away from the danger and the constant bombing.

Poganowska, his wife Lisbeth and their three children had spent the
night once again in the cellar of the main building on the
Konigin-Luise Strasse. Sleep had been almost impossible because of the
hammering of anti-aircraft guns and the bursting of bombs. Like
everyone else in Berlin, the big 39-year-old milkman was constantly
tired these days.

He had no idea where bombs had dropped during the night, but he knew
none had fallen near the Domane's big cow barns. The precious milk
herd was safe. Nothing seemed to bother those two hundred cows. Amid
the explosion of bombs and the thunder of anti-aircraft fire, they
stood patiently, placidly chewing their cuds, and in some miraculous
way they continued to produce milk. It never ceased to amaze
Poganowska.

Sleepily, he loaded the ancient brown milk wagon and its trailer,
hitched up his two horses, the fox-colored Lisa and Hans, and, with his
gray spitz dog Poldi on the seat beside him, set out on his rounds.
Rattling across the courtyard cobblestones he turned right on Pacelli
Allee and headed north in the direction of Schmargendorf. It was 6
A.m. It would be nine at night before he finished.

Worn out, aching for sleep, Poganowska still had not lost his
cheerfully gruff manner. He had become a kind of morale-builder for
his 1,200 customers. His route lay on the fringes of three major
districts: Zehlendorf, Schoneberg and Wilmersdorf. All three had been
badly bombed; Schoneberg and Wilmersdorf, lying closest to the center
of the city, were almost obliterated. In Wilmersdorf alone, more than
36,000 dwellings were destroyed, and almost half of the 340,000 people
in the two districts had been left homeless. Under the circumstances,
a cheerful face was a rare and welcome sight.

Even at this early hour, Poganowska found people waiting for him at
each intersection. There were queues everywhere these days--for the
butcher, the baker, even for water when the mains

were hit. Despite the lines of customers, Poganowska rang a large
cowbell, announcing his arrival. He had begun the practice early in
the year when the increase in daylight raids made it impossible for him
to deliver door-to-door. To his customers the bell, like Poganowska
himself, had become something of a symbol.

This morning was no different. Poganowska greeted his customers and
doled out their rationed quantities of milk and dairy products. He had
been acquainted with some of these people for nearly a decade and they
knew he could be counted on for a little extra now and then. By
juggling the ration cards, Poganowska could usually produce a little
more milk or cream for special occasions like christenings or weddings.
To be sure, it was illegal and therefore risky--but all Berliners had
to face risks these days.

More and more, Poganowska's customers seemed tired, tense and
preoccupied. Few people talked about the war any more. Nobody knew
what was going on, and nobody could have done anything about it in any
case. Besides, there were enough armchair generals. Poganowska did
not invite discussions of the news. By submerging himself in his
fifteen-hour daily routine and refusing to think about the war, he,
like thousands of other Berliners, had almost immunized himself against
it.

Each day now Poganowska watched for certain signs that helped keep him
from losing heart. For one thing the roads were still open. There
were no roadblocks or tank traps on the main streets, no artillery
pieces or dug-in tanks, no soldiers manning key positions. There was
nothing to indicate that the authorities feared a Russian attack, or
that Berlin was threatened with siege.

There was one other small but significant clue. Every morning as
Poganowska drove through the sub-district of Friedenau, where some of
his more prominent customers lived, he glanced at the home of a
well-known Nazi, an important official in the Berlin postal department.
Through the open living-room windows he could see the big portrait in
its massive frame. The garish painting of Adolf Hitler, features
boldly arrogant, was still there. Poganowska knew the ways of the
Third Reich's bureaucrats; if the

situation were really critical, that shrine to the Fuhrer would have
disappeared by now.

He clucked softly to the horses and continued on his route. Despite
everything he could see no real reason to be unduly alarmed.

No part of the city had been completely spared from the bombing, but
Spandau, Berlin's second largest and most western district had escaped
the kind of attack everyone feared most: saturation bombing. Night
after night the inhabitants expected the blow. They were amazed that
it had not come, for Spandau was the center of Berlin's vast armament
industry.

In contrast to districts in the very heart of the city that had
suffered 50 to 75 per cent destruction, Spandau had lost only 10 per
cent of its buildings. Although this meant that more than one thousand
houses were either destroyed or unusable, by the standards of
raid-toughened Berliners that was a mere flea bite. A caustic remark
was current in the bomb-blackened wastelands of the central districts:
"Die Spandauer Zwerge kommen zuletzt in die Sarge,"--The little
Spandauites are last to reach their coffins.

On Spandau's westernmost fringe, in the quiet, pastoral sub-district of
Staaken, Robert and Ingeborg Kolb were more than grateful to live in a
kind of backwater. The only bombs that had fallen even close were
those that missed the nearby airfield--and the damage was slight. Their
two-story orange and brown stucco home, with its glass-enclosed veranda
and its surrounding lawn and garden, remained unharmed. Life went on
almost normally--except that Robert, the 54-year-old technical director
of a printing plant, was finding the daily trip to his job in the
city's center increasingly arduous. It meant running the gamut of the
daylight raids. It was a constant worry to Ingeborg.

This evening the Kolbs planned, as usual, to listen to the
German-language broadcasts of the BBC, although it was a practice long
forbidden. Step by step they had followed the Allied advances from
east and west. Now the Red Army was only a bus ride from the city's
eastern outskirts. Yet, lulled by the rural atmosphere of their
surroundings, they found the imminent threat to the city unthinkable,
the war remote and unreal. Robert Kolb was convinced they were quite
safe and Ingeborg was convinced that Robert was always right. After
all, he was a veteran of World War I. "The war," Robert had assured
her, "will pass us by."

Quite certain that no matter what happened they would not be involved,
the Kolbs calmly looked to the future. Now that spring was here,
Robert was trying to decide where to hang the hammocks in the garden.
Ingeborg had chores of her own to do: she planned to plant spinach,
parsley, lettuce and early potatoes. There was one major problem:
should she sow the early potatoes in the first part of April or wait
until the more settled spring days of May? * * *

At his headquarters in a gray stucco, three-story house on the
outskirts of Landsberg, twenty-five miles from the Oder, Marshal of the
Soviet Union Georgi K. Zhukov sat at his desk pondering some plans of
his own. On one wall, a large map of Berlin showed in detail Zhukov's
proposed offensive to capture the city. On his desk were three field
phones. One was for general use; another linked him to his colleagues:
Marshals Konstantin Rokossovskii and Ivan Stepanovich Koniev,
commanders of the huge army groups on his northern and southern flanks.
The third phone was a direct line to Moscow and the Supreme Commander,
Josef Stalin. The barrel-chested 49-year-old commander of the First
Belorussian Front spoke to Stalin each night at eleven, reporting the
day's advances. Now Zhukov wondered how soon Stalin would give the
command to take Berlin. He hoped he still had some time. At a pinch
Zhukov thought he could take the city immediately, but he was not quite
ready. Tentatively, he had planned the attack for

around the end of April. With luck, he thought he could reach Berlin
and reduce all resistance within ten or twelve days. The Germans would
contest him for every inch--that he expected. Probably they would
fight hardest on the western edge of the city. There, as far as he
could see, lay the only clear-cut escape route for the German
defenders. But he planned to hit them from both sides as they tried to
get out. By the first week of May he anticipated wholesale slaughter
in the district of Spandau. * * *

In his second-floor Wilmersdorf apartment, Carl Johann Wiberg pushed
open the shuttered French windows of his living room, stepped out onto
the little balcony and took stock of the weather. With him were his
constant companions, Uncle Otto and Aunt Effie, two waddling,
liver-colored dachshunds. They looked up at him expectantly, waiting
for their morning walk.

Walking was about all Wiberg did to pass the time these days. Everyone
in the neighborhood liked the 49-year-old Swedish businessman. They
considered him a "good Berliner" first, a Swede second: he had not left
the city like so many other foreigners when the bombing began.
Moreover, although Wiberg never complained about his troubles, his
neighbors knew that he had lost almost everything. His wife had died
in 1939. His glue factories had been bombed out of business. After
thirty years as a small businessman in Berlin, he had little left now
but his dogs and the apartment. In the opinion of some of his
neighbors he was a better man than many a true German.

Wiberg looked down at Uncle Otto and Aunt Effie. "Time to go out," he
said. He closed the windows and walked across the living room to the
little foyer. He put on his beautifully tailored Chesterfield and
settled his carefully brushed Homburg on his head. Opening the drawer
of a polished mahogany hall table, he took out a pair of suede gloves
and for a moment stood looking at a framed lithograph lying inside the
drawer.

The print, sketched in flamboyant colors, showed a fully armored knight
mounted on a rampaging white stallion. Attached to the knight's lance
was a streaming banner. Through the helmet's open visor the knight
gazed fiercely out. A lock of hair fell over his forehead; he had
piercing eyes and a small black moustache. Across the waving banner
were the words, "Der Bannertrager"--The Standard Bearer.

Wiberg slowly closed the drawer. He kept the lithograph hidden because
the derisive lampoon of Hitler was banned throughout Germany. But
Wiberg did not want to get rid of it; the caricature was too amusing to
throw away.

Snapping leashes on the dogs, he locked the front door carefully behind
him, and went down the two flights of stairs and into the rubble of the
street. Near the apartment house he doffed his hat to some neighbors
and, with the dogs leading, made his way down the street, stepping
carefully around the potholes. He wondered where Der Bannertrager was
now that the end seemed near. In Munich? At his Eagle's Nest in the
mountains at Berchtesgaden? Or, here, in Berlin? No one seemed to
know--although that was not surprising. Hitler's whereabouts was
always a big secret.

This morning Wiberg decided to drop in at his favorite bar, Harry
Rosse's at 7 Nestorstrasse--one of the few left open in the district.
It had a varied clientele: Nazi bigwigs, German officers, and a
smattering of businessmen. There was always good conversation and one
could catch up on the latest news--where last night's bombs had fallen,
which factories had been hit, how Berlin was standing up under it all.
Wiberg liked meeting his old friends in this convivial atmosphere and
he was interested in just about every aspect of the war, especially the
effects of the bombings and the morale of the German people. In
particular he wanted to know where Hitler was. As he crossed the
street he once again tipped his hat to an old acquaintance. Despite
all the questions that crowded his mind, Wiberg knew a few things that
would have surprised his neighbors. For this Swede who was more German
than the Germans was also a member of America's top-secret Office of
Strategic Services. He was an Allied spy.

In his ground-floor apartment in Kreuzberg, Dr. Arthur Leckscheidt,
Evangelical pastor of the Melanchthon Church, was beset by grief and
despair. His twin-spired Gothic church was destroyed and his flock
dissipated. Through the windows he could see the remains of his
church. A few weeks before it had received a direct hit and, minutes
later, incendiaries had set it ablaze. The sorrow he felt each time he
looked at it had not yet abated. At the height of the raid, oblivious
of his own safety, Pastor Leckscheidt had rushed into the blazing
church. The back of the edifice and its magnificent organ were still
intact. Running swiftly up the narrow steps to the organ loft,
Leckscheidt had but one thought: to bid farewell to his beloved organ
and to the church. Singing softly to himself, eyes filled with tears,
Dr. Leckscheidt played his farewell. As bombs burst all over
Kreuzberg, incredulous patients in the nearby Urban Hospital and people
sheltering in adjacent cellars heard the Melanchthon organ pealing out
the ancient hymn, "From Deepest Need I Cry to Thee."

Now he was saying a different kind of good-bye. On his desk was the
draft of a round-robin letter he would send to those many parishioners
who had left the city or were in the armed forces. "Even though
fighting in the east and west is keeping us in tension," he wrote, "the
German capital is constantly the center of air raids ... you can
imagine, dear friends, that death is reaping a rich harvest. Coffins
have become a scarcity. A woman told me that she had offered twenty
pounds of honey for one in which to lay her deceased husband."

Dr. Leckscheidt was also angered. "We ministers are not always called
to burials of air raid victims," he wrote. "Often the Party takes over
the funerals without a minister ... without God's word." And again and
again throughout his letter, he referred to the devastation of the
city. "You cannot imagine what Berlin looks like now. The loveliest
buildings have crumbled into ruins. ...

Often we have no gas, light or water. God keep us from a famine!
Terrific prices are asked for black-market commodities." And he ended
on a note of bitter pessimism: "This is probably the last letter for a
long time. Perhaps we shall soon be cut off from all communication.
Shall we see each other again? It all rests in God's hands."

Cycling purposefully through the littered streets of Dahlem, another
clergyman, Father Bernhard Happich, had decided to take matters into
his own hands. A delicate problem had worried him for weeks. Night
after night he had prayed for guidance and meditated on the course he
should take. Now he had reached a decision.

The services of all clergymen were in great demand, but this was
particularly true of Father Happich. The 55-year-old priest, who
carried the words "Jesuit: not fit for military service" stamped across
his identity card (a Nazi imprint like that reserved for Jews and other
dangerous undesirables), was also a highly skilled doctor of medicine.
Among his many other duties he was the Father Provincial of Haus
Dahlem, the orphanage, maternity hospital and foundling home run by the
Mission Sisters of the Sacred Heart. It was Mother Superior Cunegundes
and her flock who had brought about his problem, and his decision.

Father Happich had no illusions about the Nazis or how the war must
surely end. He had long ago decided that Hitler and his brutal new
order were destined for disaster. Now the crisis was fast approaching.
Berlin was trapped--the tarnished chalice in the conqueror's eye. What
would happen to Haus Dahlem and its good, but less than worldly,
Sisters?

His face serious, Father Happich pulled up outside the home. The
building had suffered only superficial damage and the Sisters were
convinced that their prayers were being heard. Father Happich did not
disagree with them, but being a practical man he

thought that luck and bad marksmanship might have had something to do
with it.

As he passed through the entrance hall he looked up at the great
statue, garbed in blue and gold, sword held high--Saint Michael, "God's
fighting knight against all evil." The Sisters' faith in Saint Michael
was well founded, but just the same Father Happich was glad he had made
his decision. Like everyone else he had heard from refugees who had
fled before the advancing Russians of the horrors that had taken place
in eastern Germany. Many of the accounts were exaggerated, he was
sure, but some he knew to be true. Father Happich had decided to warn
the Sisters. Now he had to choose the right moment to tell them, and
above all he had to find the right words. Father Happich worried about
that. How do you tell sixty nuns and lay sisters that they are in
danger of being raped?

3

The fear of sexual attack lay over the city like a pall, for Berlin,
after nearly six years of war, was now primarily a city of women.

At the beginning, in 1939, there were 4,321,000 inhabitants of the
capital. But huge war casualties, the call-up of both men and women
and the voluntary evacuation of one million citizens to the safer
countryside in 1943-44 had cut that figure by more than one third. By
now the only males left in any appreciable number were children under
eighteen and men over sixty. The 18-to-30 male age group totaled
barely 100,000 and most of them were exempt from military service or
wounded. In January, 1945, the city's

population had been estimated at 2,900,000 but now, in mid-March, that
figure was certainly too high. After eighty-five raids in less than
eleven weeks and with the threat of siege hanging over the city,
thousands more had fled. Military authorities estimated that Berlin's
civil population was now about 2,700,000, of whom more than 2,000,000
were women--and even that was only an informed guess.

Complicating efforts to obtain a true population figure was the vast
exodus of refugees from the Soviet-occupied eastern provinces. Some
put the refugee figure as high as 500,000. Uprooted, carrying their
belongings on their backs or in horse-drawn wagons or pushcarts, often
driving farm animals before them, fleeing civilians had clogged the
roads into Berlin for months. Most did not remain in the city, but
continued west. But in their wake they left a repository of
nightmarish stories; these accounts of their experiences had spread
like an epidemic through Berlin, infecting many citizens with terror.

The refugees told of a vengeful, violent and rapacious conqueror.
People who had trekked from as far away as Poland, or from the captured
parts of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, gave bitter testimony of
an enemy who offered no quarter. In fact, the refugees declared,
Russian propaganda was urging the Red Army to spare no one. They told
of a manifesto, said to have been written by the Soviet Union's top
propagandist, Ilya Ehrenburg, which was both broadcast and distributed
in leaflet form to the Red troops. "Kill! Kill!" went the manifesto.
"In the German race there is nothing but evil! ... Follow the precepts
of Comrade Stalin. Stamp out the fascist beast once and for all in its
lair! Use force and break the racial pride of these Germanic women.
Take them as your lawful booty. Kill! As you storm onward, kill! You
gallant soldiers of the Red Army." * * I have not seen the Ehrenburg
leaflet. But many of those I interviewed did. Furthermore, it is
mentioned repeatedly in official German papers, war diaries and in
numerous histories, the most complete version appearing in Admiral
Doenitz' Memoirs, page 179. That the leaflet existed I have no doubt.
But I question the above version, for German translations from Russian
were notoriously inaccurate. Still Ehrenburg wrote other pamphlets
which were as bad, as anyone can see from his writings, particularly
those officially published in English during the war by the Soviets
themselves, in Soviet War News, 1941-45, Vols. 1-8. His "Kill the
Germans" theme was repeated over and over--and apparently with the full
approval of Stalin. On April 14, 1945, in an unprecedented editorial
in the Soviet military newspaper Red Star, he was officially
reprimanded by the propaganda chief, Alexandrov, who wrote: "Comrade
Ehrenburg is exaggerating ... we are not fighting against the German
people, only against the Hitlers of the world." The reproof would have
been disastrous for any other Soviet writer, but not for Ehrenburg. He
continued his "Kill the Germans" propaganda as though nothing had
happened--and Stalin closed his eyes to it. In the fifth volume of his
memoirs, People, Years and Life, published in Moscow, 1963, Ehrenburg
has conveniently forgotten what he wrote during the war. On page 126
he writes: "In scores of essays I emphasized that we must not, indeed
we cannot, hunt down the people--that we are, after all, Soviet people
and not Fascists." But this much has to be said: no matter what
Ehrenburg wrote, it was no worse than what was being issued by the Nazi
propaganda chief, Goebbels--a fact that many Germans have conveniently
forgotten, too.

The refugees reported that advancing front-line troops were well
disciplined and well behaved, but that the secondary units that
followed were a disorganized rabble. In wild, drunken orgies these Red
Army men had murdered, looted and raped. Many Russian commanders, the
refugees claimed, appeared to condone the actions of their men. At
least they made no effort to stop them. From peasants to gentry the
accounts were the same, and everywhere in the flood of refugees there
were women who told chilling stories of brutal assault --of being
forced at gunpoint to strip and then submit to repeated rapings.

How much was fantasy, how much fact? Berliners were not sure. Those
who knew of the atrocities and mass murders committed by German SS
troops in Russia--and there were thousands who knew--feared that the
stories were true. Those who were aware of what was happening to the
Jews in concentration camps--a new and horrible aspect of National
Socialism of which the free world was yet to learn--believed the
refugees, too. These more knowledgeable Berliners could well believe
that the oppressor was becoming the oppressed, that the wheel of
retribution was swinging full circle. Many who knew the extent of the
horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich were taking no chances. Highly
placed bureaucrats and top-ranking Nazi officials had quietly

moved their families out of Berlin or were in the process of doing
so.

Fanatics still remained, and the average Berliners, less privy to
information and ignorant of the true situation, were also staying. They
could not or would not leave. "Oh Germany, Germany, my Fatherland,"
wrote Erna Saenger, a 65-year-old housewife and mother of six children,
in her diary, "Trust brings disappointment. To believe faithfully
means to be stupid and blind ... but ... we'll stay in Berlin. If
everyone left like the neighbors the enemy would have what he wants.
No--we don't want that kind of defeat."

Yet few Berliners could claim to be unaware of the nature of the
danger. Almost everyone had heard the stories. One couple, Hugo and
Edith Neumann, living in Kreuzberg, actually had been informed by
telephone. Some relatives living in the Russian-occupied zone had
risked their lives, shortly before all communications ceased, to warn
the Neumanns that the conquerors were raping, killing and looting
without restraint. Yet the Neumanns stayed. Hugo's electrical
business had been bombed, but to abandon it now was unthinkable.

Others chose to dismiss the stories because propaganda, whether spread
by refugees or inspired by the government, had little or no meaning for
them any longer. From the moment Hitler ordered the unprovoked
invasion of Russia in 1941, all Germans had been subjected to a
relentless barrage of hate propaganda. The Soviet people were painted
as uncivilized and subhuman. When the tide turned and German troops
were forced back on all fronts in Russia, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the
Reich's club-footed propaganda chief, intensified his efforts--
particularly in Berlin.

Goebbels' assistant, Dr. Werner Naumann, privately admitted that "our
propaganda as to what the Russians are like, as to what the population
can expect from them in Berlin, has been so successful that we have
reduced the Berliners to a state of sheer terror." By the end of 1944
Naumann felt that "we have overdone it--our propaganda has ricocheted
against us."

Now the tone of the propaganda had changed. As Hitler's empire was
sheared off piece by piece, as Berlin was demolished, block by block,
Goebbels had begun to switch from terror-mongering to reassurance; now
the people were told that victory was just around the corner. About
all Goebbels succeeded in doing was to generate among cosmopolitan
Berliners a grotesque, macabre kind of humor. It took the form of a
large, collective raspberry which the population derisively directed at
themselves, their leaders and the world. Berliners quickly changed
Goebbels' motto, "The Fuhrer Commands, We Follow," to "The Fuhrer
Commands, We Bear What Follows." As for the propaganda chief's
promises of ultimate victory, the irreverent solemnly urged all to
"Enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible."

In the atmosphere of near-panic created by the refugees' reports, facts
and reason became distorted as rumor took over. All sorts of atrocity
stories spread throughout the city. Russians were described as
slant-eyed Mongols who butchered women and children on sight. Clergymen
were said to have been burned to death with flamethrowers; the stories
told of nuns raped and then forced to walk naked through the streets;
of how women were made camp followers and all males marched off to
servitude in Siberia. There was even a radio report that the Russians
had nailed victims' tongues to tables. The less impressionable found
the tales too fantastic to believe.

Others were grimly aware of what was to come. In her private clinic in
Schoneberg, Dr. Anne-Marie Durand-Wever, a graduate of the University
of Chicago and one of Europe's most famous gynecologists, knew the
truth. The 55-year-old doctor, well known for her anti-Nazi views (she
was the author of many books championing women's rights, equality of
the sexes and birth control--all banned by the Nazis), was urging her
patients to leave Berlin. She had examined numerous refugee women and
had reached the conclusion that, if anything, the accounts of assault
understated the facts.

Dr. Durand-Wever intended to remain in Berlin herself but now she
carried a small, fast-acting cyanide capsule everywhere she went.
After all her years as a doctor, she was not sure that she would be
able to commit suicide. But she kept the pill in her bag--for if the
Russians took Berlin she thought that every female from eight to eighty
could expect to be raped.

Dr. Margot Sauerbruch also expected the worst. She worked with her
husband, Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Germany's most eminent
surgeon, in Berlin's oldest and largest hospital, the Charite, in the
Mitte district. Because of its size and location close by the main
railway station, the hospital had received the worst of the refugee
cases. From her examination of the victims, Dr. Sauerbruch had no
illusions about the ferocity of the Red Army when it ran amok. The
rapes, she knew for certain, were not propaganda.

Margot Sauerbruch was appalled by the number of refugees who had
attempted suicide-- including scores of women who had not been molested
or violated. Terrified by what they had witnessed or heard, many had
slashed their wrists. Some had even tried to kill their children. How
many had actually succeeded in ending their lives nobody knew--Dr.
Sauerbruch saw only those who had failed--but it seemed clear that a
wave of suicides would take place in Berlin if the Russians captured
the city.

Most other doctors apparently concurred with this view. In
Wilmersdorf, Surgeon Gunther Lamprecht noted in his diary that "the
major topic--even among doctors--is the technique of suicide.
Conversations of this sort have become unbearable."

It was much more than mere conversation. The death plans were already
under way. In every district, doctors were besieged by patients and
friends seeking information about speedy suicide and begging for poison
prescriptions. When physicians refused to help, people turned to their
druggists. Caught up in a wave of fear, distraught Berliners by the
thousands had decided to die by any means rather than submit to the Red
Army.

"The first pair of Russian boots I see, I'm going to commit suicide,"
20-year-old Christa Meunier confided to her friend, Juliane Bochnik.
Christa had already secured poison. So had Juliane's friend Rosie
Hoffman and her parents. The Hoffmans were utterly despondent and
expected no mercy from the Russians. Although Juliane did not know it
at the time, the Hoffmans were related to Reichsfuhrer Heinrich
Himmler, head of the Gestapo and the SS, the man responsible for the
mass murder of millions in the concentration camps.

Poison--particularly cyanide--was the preferred method of
self-destruction. One type of capsule, known as a "KCB" pill, was in
especially great demand. This concentrated hydrocyanic compound was so
powerful that death was almost instantaneous--even the fumes could
kill. With Germanic forethought some government agency had laid down
vast quantities of it in Berlin.

Nazi officials, senior officers, government department heads and even
lesser functionaries were able to get supplies of poison for
themselves, their families and friends with little difficulty. Doctors,
druggists, dentists and laboratory workers also had access to pills or
capsules. Some even improved on the tablets' potency. Dr. Rudolf
Huckel, professor of pathology at the University of Berlin and the
best-known cancer pathologist in the city, had added acetic acid to
cyanide capsules for himself and his wife. If they needed them, he
assured her, the acetic acid would make the poison work even faster.

Some Berliners, unable to get the quick-acting cyanide, were hoarding
barbiturates or cyanide derivatives. Comedian Heinz Ruhmann, often
called the "Danny Kaye of Germany," was so fearful of the future for
his beautiful actress wife Hertha Feiler and their young son that he
had hidden a can of rat poison in a flowerpot, just in case. The
former Nazi ambassador to Spain, retired Lieutenant General Wilhelm
Faupel, planned to poison himself and his wife with an overdose of
medicine. The General had a weak heart. When he suffered attacks he
took a stimulant containing digitalis. Faupel knew that an overdose
would cause cardiac arrest and end matters quickly. He had even saved
enough for some of his friends.

For others a fast bullet seemed the best and bravest end. But an
astonishing number of women, mostly middle-aged, had chosen the
bloodiest way of all--the razor. In the Ketzler family in
Charlottenburg, Gertrud, forty-two, normally a cheerful woman, now
carried a razor blade in her purse--as did her sister and
mother-in-law. Gertrud's friend, Inge Ruhling, had a razor blade too,
and the two women anxiously discussed which was the most effective way
to ensure death--a slash across the wrists or a lengthwise slit up the
arteries.

There was always the chance that such drastic measures might not have
to be taken. For most Berliners there still remained one last hope. In
terror of the Red Army, the vast majority of the population,
particularly the women, now desperately wanted the Anglo-American
forces to capture Berlin. * * *

It was almost noon. Back of the Russian lines, in the city of
Bromberg, Captain Sergei Ivanovich Golbov gazed bleary-eyed about the
large living room of the luxurious third-floor apartment he and two
other Red Army correspondents had just "liberated." Golbov and his
friends were happily drunk. Every day they drove from the headquarters
in Bromberg to the front ninety miles away to get the news, but at the
moment everything was quiet; there would not be much to report until
the Berlin offensive began. In the meantime, after months of
front-line reporting, the good-looking, 25-year-old Golbov was enjoying
himself.

Bottle in hand, he stood looking at the rich furnishings. He had never
seen anything quite like them. Heavy paintings in ornate gold frames
adorned the walls. The windows had satin-lined drapings. The
furniture was upholstered in rich brocaded materials. Thick Turkish
carpets covered the floors, and massive chandeliers hung in the living
room and the adjoining dining room. Golbov was quite sure that an
important Nazi must have owned this apartment.

There was a small door ajar at one end of the living room. Golbov
pushed it open and discovered a bathroom. At the end of a rope hanging
from a hook on the wall was the body of a Nazi official in full
uniform. Golbov stared briefly at the body. He had seen thousands of
dead Germans but this hanging body looked silly. Golbov called out to
his friends, but they were having too much fun in the dining room to
respond. They were throwing German and Venetian crystal at the
chandelier--and at each other.

Golbov walked back into the living room, intending to sit down on a
long sofa he had noticed there--but now he discovered that it was
already occupied. Lying on it at full length, in a long Grecian-like
gown with a tasseled cord at the waist, was a dead woman. She was
quite young and she had prepared for death carefully. Her hair was
braided and hung over each shoulder. Her hands were folded across her
breasts. Nursing his bottle, Golbov sat down in an armchair and looked
at her. Behind him, the laughter and the smashing of glassware in the
dining room continued. The girl was probably in her early twenties,
and from the bluish marks on her lips Golbov thought she had probably
taken poison.

Back of the sofa on which the dead woman lay was a table with silver
framed photographs--smiling children with a young couple, presumably
their parents, and an elderly couple. Golbov thought of his family.
During the siege of Leningrad his mother and father, half-starved, had
tried to make a soup out of a kind of industrial oil. It had killed
them both. One brother had been killed in the first days of the war.
The other, 34-year-old Mikhail, a partisan leader, had been caught by
the SS, tied to a stake and burned alive. This girl lying on the sofa
had died quite peacefully, Golbov thought. He took a long swig at the
bottle, stepped over to the sofa and picked up the dead girl. He
walked over to the closed windows. Behind him, amid shouts of
laughter, the chandelier in the dining room smashed to the ground with
a loud crash. Golbov broke quite a lot of glass himself as he threw
the dead girl's body straight through the window.

Berliners, who almost daily shook their fists at the bombers, who, as
often as not, sorrowed for family, relatives or friends lost in air
raids or in the armed forces, now fervently spoke of the British and
Americans not as conquerors but as "liberators." It was an
extraordinary reversal of attitude and this state of mind produced
curious results.

Charlottenburger Maria Kockler refused to believe the Americans and
British would let Berlin fall into Russian hands. She was even
determined to help the Western Allies. The gray-haired, 45-year-old
housewife told friends she was "ready to go out and fight to hold back
the Reds until the "Amis" get here."

Many Berliners fought down their fears by listening to BBC broadcasts
and noting each phase of the battles being fought on the crumbling
western front--almost as though they were following the course of a
victorious German Army rushing to the relief of Berlin. In between
raids Margarete Schwarz, an accountant, spent night after night with
her neighbors, meticulously plotting the Anglo-American drive across
Western Germany. Each mile gained seemed to her almost like another
step toward liberation. It seemed that way to Liese-Lotte Ravene, too.
Her time was spent in her book-lined apartment in Tempelhof, where she
carefully penciled in the latest American advances on a big map and
feverishly willed the Amis on. Frau Ravene did not like to think of
what might happen if the Russians came in first. She was a
semi-invalid--with steel braces around her hips and running down her
right leg.

Thousands were quite certain the Amis would get to Berlin first. Their
faith was almost childlike-- vague and unclear. Frau Annemaria Huckel,
whose husband was a doctor, began tearing up old Nazi flags to use as
bandages for the great battle she was expecting on the day the
Americans arrived. Charlottenburger Brigitte Weber, 20-year-old bride
of three months, was sure the Americans were coming and she thought she
knew where they intended to live. Brigitte had heard that Americans
enjoyed a high standard of living and liked the finer things of life.
She was ready to bet they had carefully chosen the wealthy residential
district of Nikolassee. Hardly a bomb had fallen there.

Others, while hoping for the best, prepared for the worst. Sober-minded
Pia van Hoeven and her friends Ruby and Eberhard Borgmann reluctantly
reached the conclusion that only a miracle could keep the Russians from
getting to Berlin first. So they jumped at the invitation of their
good friend, the jovial, fat-cheeked Heinrich Schelle, to join him and
his family when the battle for the city began. Schelle managed
Gruban-Souchay, one of the most famous wine shops and restaurants in
Berlin, situated on the ground floor below the Borgmanns. He had
turned one of his cellars into a resplendent shelter, complete with
Oriental rugs, draperies and provisions to withstand the siege. There
was little food except for potatoes and canned tuna fish, but there
were ample supplies of the rarest and most delicate of German and
French wines in the adjacent wine cellar--plus Hennessy cognac and case
after case of champagne. "While we wait for God knows what," he told
them, "we might as well live comfortably." Then he added: "If we run
out of water--there's always the champagne."

Biddy Jungmittag, 41-year-old mother of two young daughters, thought
that all the talk about the Americans and British coming was--in her
own words--"just so much tripe." The British-born wife of a German,
she knew the Nazis only too well. Her husband, suspected of belonging
to a German resistance group, had been executed five months before. The
Nazis, she thought, would fight as fiercely against the Western Allies
as against the Russians, and

a glance at the map showed that the odds were against the
Anglo-Americans getting to Berlin first. But the Red Army's impending
arrival did not unduly alarm Biddy. They would not dare touch her. In
her sensible English way, Biddy intended to show the first Russians she
met her old British passport.

There were some who felt no need for documents to protect them. They
not only expected the Russians, they longed to welcome them. That
moment would be the fulfillment of a dream for which small groups of
Germans had worked and schemed most of their lives. Hunted and
harassed at every turn by the Gestapo and the criminal police, a few
hardened cells had somehow survived. The German Communists and their
sympathizers waited eagerly for the saviors from the east.

Although totally dedicated to the overthrow of Hitlerism, the
Communists of Berlin had been so scattered that their effectiveness--to
the Western Allies, at any rate--was minimal. A loose-knit Communist
underground did exist, but it took its orders solely from Moscow and
worked exclusively as a Soviet espionage network.

Hildegard Radusch, who had been a Communist deputy to the Berlin House
of Assembly from 1927 to 1932, was getting by almost on faith alone.
She was half-starved, half-frozen and in hiding, along with a few other
Communists near the village of Prieros, on the southeastern fringe of
Berlin. With her girl friend Else ("Eddy") Kloptsch, she lived in a
large wooden machinery crate measuring ten feet by eight and set in
concrete. It had no gas, electricity, water or toilet facilities, but
to the burly 42-year-old Hildegard (who described herself as "the man
around the house") it was the perfect refuge.

Hildegard and Eddy had lived together since 1939. They had existed
underground in Prieros for almost ten months. Hildegard was on the
Nazi "wanted" list, but she had outwitted the Gestapo

again and again. Her greatest problem, like that of the other
Communists in the area, was food. To apply for ration cards would have
meant instant disclosure and arrest. Luckily Eddy, though a
sympathizer, was not wanted as a Communist and had weekly rations. But
the meager allowance was hardly enough for one. (the official Nazi
newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, had printed the week's adult
allowance as four and a quarter pounds of bread; two pounds meat and
sausage; five ounces fat; five ounces sugar; and every three weeks two
and a quarter ounces of cheese and three and a half ounces of ersatz
coffee.) Occasionally the two women were able to supplement their diet
by cautious buying on the black market, but prices were exorbitant--
coffee alone cost from $100 to $200 per pound.

Hildegard was preoccupied with two thoughts constantly: food, and
liberation by the Red Army. But waiting was hard, and simply surviving
was growing more difficult month by month--as she methodically recorded
in her diary.

On February 13, 1945 she wrote: "It is high time the Russians got here
... the dogs haven't got me yet."

February 18: "No report since the seventh from Zhukov about the Berlin
front and we are so desperately awaiting their arrival. Come,
Tovarishti, the quicker you are here, the quicker the war will end."

February 24: "To Berlin today. Coffee from thermos; one piece of dry
bread. Three men looked at me suspiciously during the trip. So
comforting to know that Eddy is beside me. Didn't get anything to eat
anywhere. Eddy really took the trip to get cigarettes on the ration
card she bought on the black market--ten cigarettes were due on that.
None in the store, so she took five cigars. She had hoped to barter a
silk dress and two pairs of stockings for something edible. Nothing
doing. No black market bread either."

February 25: "Three cigars are gone. Still no communiques from Zhukov.
None from Koniev either."

February 27: "I'm getting nervous from all this waiting. It is
catastrophic for someone anxious to work to be cooped up here."

March 19: "Wonderful meal at noon-- potatoes with salt. In the evening
potato pancakes fried in cod-liver oil. Taste isn't so hot."

Now, on this first day of spring, Hildegard was still waiting and, her
diary noted, "almost crazy for something to eat." There were no
reports from the Russian front. All she could find to write down was
that "winds are sweeping winter from field and meadow. Snowdrops are
blooming. The sun is shining and the air is warm. The usual air raids
... judging by the detonations the planes are coming closer to us." And
later, noting that the Western Allies were on the Rhine and could, by
her reckoning, "be in Berlin in twenty days," she bitterly recorded
that Berliners "would rather have the men from the capitalistic
countries." She hoped that the Russians would arrive quickly, that
Zhukov would attack by Easter.

About twenty-five miles due north of Prieros, at Neuenhagen on the
eastern fringes of Berlin, another Communist cell grimly waited. Its
members, too, lived in constant fear of arrest and death, but they were
more militant and better organized than their comrades in Prieros and
they were luckier, too: they were barely thirty-five miles from the
Oder and expected that theirs would be one of the first outlying
districts captured.

Members of this group had worked night after night under the very noses
of the Gestapo preparing a master plan for the day of liberation. They
knew the names and whereabouts of every local Nazi, SS and Gestapo
official. They knew who would cooperate and who would not. Some were
marked for immediate arrest, others for liquidation. So well organized
was the group that it had even made detailed plans for the future
administration of the township.

All members of this cell waited anxiously for the Russians to come,
sure that their recommendations would be accepted. But none waited
more anxiously than Bruno Zarzycki. He suffered so badly from ulcers
that he could hardly eat, but he kept saying that the day the Red Army
arrived his ulcers would disappear; he knew it.

Incredibly, all over Berlin, in tiny cubicles and closets, in damp
cellars and airless attics, a few of the most hated and persecuted of
all Nazi victims hung grimly to life and waited for the day when they
could emerge from hiding. They did not care who arrived first, so long
as somebody came, and quickly. Some lived in twos and threes, some as
families, some even in small colonies. Most of their friends thought
them dead--and in a sense they were. Some had not seen the sun in
years, or walked in a Berlin street. They could not afford to be sick
for that would mean getting a doctor, immediate questions and possible
disclosure. Even during the worst bombings they stayed in their hiding
places, for in air raid shelters they would have been spotted
immediately. They preserved an iron calm, for they had learned long
ago never to panic. They owed their very lives to their ability to
quell nearly every emotion. They were resourceful and tenacious and,
after six years of war and nearly thirteen years of fear and harassment
in the very capital of Hitler's Reich, almost three thousand of them
still survived. That they did was a testimonial to the courage of a
large segment of the city's Christians, none of whom were ever to
receive adequate recognition of the fact that they protected the
despised scapegoats of the new order--the Jews. * * The estimated
figure of Jewish survivors comes from Berlin Senate statistics prepared
by Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler of Berlin's Free University. They are
disputed by some Jewish experts-- among them Siegmund Weltlinger, who
was Chairman for Jewish Affairs in the post-war government. He places
the number who survived at only 1,400. Besides those underground, Dr.
Scheffler states that at least another 5,100 Jews who had married
Christians were living in the city under so-called legal conditions.
But at best that was a nightmarish limbo, for those Jews never knew
when they would be arrested. Today 6,000 Jews live in Berlin--a mere
fraction of the 160,564 Jewish population of 1933, the year Hitler came
to power. Of that figure no one knows for certain how many Jewish
Berliners left the city, emigrated out of Germany, or were deported and
exterminated in concentration camps.

Siegmund and Margarete Weltlinger, both in their late fifties, were
hiding in a small, ground-floor apartment in Pankow. A family of
Christian Scientists, the Mohrings, risking their own lives,

had taken them in. It was crowded. The Mohrings, their two daughters
and the Weltlingers all lived together in a two-room flat. But the
Mohrings shared their rations and everything else with the Weltlingers
and had never complained. Only once in many months had the Weltlingers
dared venture out: an aching tooth prompted them to take the chance and
the dentist who extracted it accepted Margarete's explanation that she
was "a visiting cousin."

They had been lucky up to 1943. Although Siegmund was expelled from
the stock exchange in 1938, he was asked soon afterward to take over
special tasks with the Jewish Community Bureau in Berlin. In those
days the bureau, under the leadership of Heinrich Stahl, registered the
wealth and properties of Jews; later it tried to negotiate with the
Nazis to alleviate the sufferings of Jews in concentration camps. Stahl
and Weltlinger knew that it was only a question of time before the
bureau was closed--but they bravely continued their work. Then, on
February 28, 1943, the Gestapo closed down the bureau. Stahl
disappeared into the Theresienstadt concentration camp and the
Weltlingers were ordered to move to a sixty-family "Jews' house" in
Reinickendorf. The Weltlingers stayed in the Reinickendorf house until
dark. Then they removed the Star of David from their coats and slipped
out into the night. Since then they had lived with the Mohrings.

For two years the outside world for them had been only a patch of sky
framed by buildings--plus a single tree which grew in the dismal
courtyard facing the apartment's kitchen window. The tree had become a
kind of calendar of their imprisonment. "Twice we've seen our chestnut
tree decked out with snow," Margarete told her husband. "Twice the
leaves have turned brown, and now it's blooming again." She was in
despair. Would they have to spend yet another year in hiding? "Maybe,"
Margarete told her husband, "God has forsaken us."

Siegmund comforted her. They had a lot to live for, he told her: their
two children--a daughter, seventeen, and a son, fifteen--were in
England. The Weltlingers had not seen them since Siegmund had arranged
to get them out of Germany in 1938. Opening a Bible he turned to the
Ninety-first Psalm and slowly read: "A thousand shall fall at thy side,
and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee."
All they could do was to wait. "God is with us," he told his wife.
"Believe me, the day of liberation is at hand."

In the previous year, more than four thousand Jews had been arrested by
the Gestapo in the streets of Berlin. Many of these Jews had risked
detection because they were unable to stand confinement any longer.

Hans Rosenthal, twenty, was still hiding in Lichtenberg, and was
determined to hold out. He had spent twenty-six months in a cubicle
barely six feet long and five feet wide. It was actually a kind of
small tool shed attached to the back of a house owned by an old friend
of Hans's mother. Rosenthal's existence up to now had been perilous.
His parents were dead and at sixteen he was put into a labor camp. In
March of 1943 he escaped and, without papers, took a train to Berlin
and refuge with his mother's friend. There was no water and no light
in his cell-like hiding place and the only toilet facility available
was an old-fashioned chamber pot. He emptied that at night during the
air raids, the only time he dared leave his hiding place. Except for a
narrow couch, the cubicle was bare. But Hans did have a Bible, a small
radio and, on the wall, a carefully marked map. Much as he hoped for
the Western Allies, it seemed to him that the Russians would capture
Berlin. And that worried him, even though it would mean his release.
But he reassured himself by saying over and over, "I am a Jew. I have
survived the Nazis and I'll survive Stalin, too."

In the same district, in a cellar in Karlshorst, Joachim Lipschitz
lived under the protection of Otto Kruger. On the whole it was quiet
in the Kruger cellar but sometimes Joachim thought he heard the distant
boom of Russian guns. The sound was soft and muttering, like a bored
audience applauding with gloved hands. He put it down to
imagination--the Russians were much too far away. Still he was
familiar with Russian cannonading. The son of

a Jewish doctor and a Gentile mother, he had been inducted into the
Wehrmacht. In 1941 on the eastern front, he had lost an arm on the
battlefield. But service to Germany had not saved him from the crime
of being a half-Jew. In April, 1944, he had been marked for internment
in a concentration camp. From that moment on, he had been in hiding.

The 27-year-old Joachim wondered what would happen now as the climax
approached. Every night the Krugers' eldest daughter, Eleanore, came
down to the basement to discuss the outlook. They had been sweethearts
since 1942 and Eleanore, making no secret of their friendship, had been
disqualified from attending a university because of her association
with an "unworthy" person. Now they longed for the day when they could
marry. Eleanore was convinced that the Nazis were militarily bankrupt
and that the collapse would come soon. Joachim believed otherwise: the
Germans would fight to the bitter end and Berlin was sure to become a
battlefield-- perhaps another Verdun. They also disagreed about who
would capture the city. Joachim expected the Russians, Eleanore the
British and Americans. But Joachim thought they should be prepared for
any eventuality. So Eleanore was studying English--and Joachim was
mastering Russian.

None waited in more anguish for Berlin to fall than Leo Sternfeld, his
wife Agnes and their 23-year-old daughter Annemarie. The Sternfelds
were not in hiding, for the family was Protestant. But Leo's mother
was Jewish, so he was categorized by the Nazis as a half-Jew. As a
result, Leo and his family had lived in a torment of suspense all
through the war; the Gestapo had toyed with them as a cat with a mouse.
They had been allowed to live where they wished, but hanging over them
always was the threat of arrest.

The danger had grown greater as the war had come nearer, and Leo had
struggled to keep up the women's spirits. The night before, a bomb had
demolished the post office nearby, but Leo was still able to joke about
it. "You won't have to go far for the mail any more," he told his
wife. "The post office is lying on the steps."

As he left their home in Tempelhof on this March morning, Leo
Sternfeld, the former businessman now drafted by the Gestapo to work as
a garbage collector, knew that he had put off making his plans until
too late. They could not leave Berlin, and there was no time to go
into hiding. If Berlin was not captured within the next few weeks they
were doomed. Leo had been tipped off that the Gestapo planned to round
up all those with even a drop of Jewish blood on May 19.

* * *

Far to the west, in the headquarters of the British Second Army at
Walbeck, near the Dutch border, the senior medical officer, Brigadier
Hugh Glyn Hughes, tried to anticipate some of the health problems he
might encounter within the coming weeks--especially when they reached
Berlin. Secretly he feared outbreaks of typhus.

Already a few refugees were passing through the front lines, and his
assistants had reported that they carried a variety of contagious
diseases. Like every other doctor along the Allied front, Brigadier
Hughes was watching developments very carefully; a serious epidemic
could be disastrous. Tugging at his moustache, he wondered how he
would cope with the refugees when the trickle became a flood. There
would also be thousands of Allied prisoners of war. And God only knew
what they would find when Berlin was reached.

The Brigadier was also concerned about another related problem: the
concentration and labor camps. There had been some information about
them via neutral countries, but no one knew how they were run, how many
people they contained or what conditions were like. Now it looked as
if the British Second would be the first army to overrun a
concentration camp. On his desk was a report that one lay directly in
the path of their advance, in the area north of Hanover. There was
almost no further information about it. Brigadier Hughes wondered what
they would find. He

hoped the Germans had shown their usual thoroughness in medical
matters, and had the health situation under control. He had never
heard of the place before. It was called Belsen.

Captain Helmuth Cords, a 25-year-old veteran of the Russian front, was
a holder of the Iron Cross for bravery. He was also a prisoner in
Berlin--and he probably would not live to see the end of the war.
Captain Cords was a member of an elite group--the small band of
survivors of the seven thousand Germans who had been arrested in
connection with the attempted assassination of Hitler eight months
before, on July 20, 1944.

Hitler had wreaked his vengeance in a barbaric orgy; almost five
thousand alleged participants had been executed, the innocent and the
guilty alike. Whole families had been wiped out. Anyone even remotely
connected with the plotters had been arrested and, as often as not,
summarily executed. They had been put to death in a manner prescribed
by Hitler himself. "They must all be hanged like cattle," he had
ordered. The principals were hanged in exactly that fashion--from meat
hooks. Instead of rope most of them were strung up with piano wire.

Now, in Wing B of the star-shaped Lehrterstrasse Prison, the last group
of the alleged plotters waited. They were both conservatives and
Communists; they were army officers, doctors, clergymen, university
professors, writers, former political figures, ordinary workingmen and
peasants. Some had no idea why they were imprisoned; they had never
been formally charged. A few had been tried, and were awaiting
retrial. Some had actually been

proved innocent, but were still being held. Others had been given sham
trials, had been hurriedly sentenced, and were now awaiting execution.
No one knew exactly how many prisoners there were in Wing B--some
thought two hundred, others fewer than one hundred. There was no way
of keeping count. Each day prisoners were taken out, never to be seen
again. It all depended on the whims of one man: the Gestapo chief, SS
Gruppenfuhrer Heinrich Muller. The incarcerated expected little mercy
from him. Even if the Allies were at the very prison gates, they
believed Muller would continue the butchery.

Cords was one of the innocent. In July, 1944, he had been stationed at
Bendlerstrasse as a junior officer on the staff of the Chief of Staff
of the Reserve Army, Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg. There was,
as it turned out, just one thing wrong with that assignment: the
distinguished-looking, 36-year-old Von Stauffenberg--he had only one
arm and wore a black patch over his left eye--was the key figure in the
July 20 plot, the man who had volunteered to kill Hitler.

At the Fuhrer's headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia, during one of
Hitler's lengthy military conferences, Von Stauffenberg had placed a
briefcase containing a time bomb beneath the long map table near where
Hitler stood. Minutes after Von Stauffenberg had slipped out of the
room to start back to Berlin, the bomb exploded. Miraculously, Hitler
had survived the blast. Hours later in Berlin, Von Stauffenberg,
without benefit of a formal trial, was shot to death in the courtyard
of the Bendlerstrasse headquarters along with three other key military
figures in the plot. Everyone even remotely associated with him was
arrested-- including Helmuth Cords.

Cords's fiancee, Jutta Sorge, granddaughter of the former German
Chancellor and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, had also been
arrested and imprisoned. So had her mother and father. All of them,
including Helmuth Cords, had been held without trial ever since.

Corporal Herbert Kosney, imprisoned in the same building,

knew even less about the July 20 plot than Cords. But Kosney had been
implicated unwittingly. He was part of a Communist resistance group,
and his participation in the assassination attempt had consisted of
transporting an unknown man from Lichterfelde to Wannsee.

Although not a Communist, Herbert had been on the fringes of various
Red underground groups since 1940. In November, 1942, while he was on
military leave in Berlin, his elder brother Kurt, a member of the
Communist Party since 1931, had violently dissuaded Herbert from
returning to the front: he broke Herbert's arm with a rifle, took him
to a military hospital and explained that he had found the injured
soldier lying in a ditch.

The trick worked. Herbert never returned to the front. He was
stationed with a reserve battalion in Berlin and every three months got
a new medical certificate from Dr. Albert Olbertz which kept him on
"light duty." Dr. Olbertz happened to be a member of a Communist
resistance group, too.

It was Olbertz who brought about Herbert's imprisonment. A few days
after the attempt on Hitler's life, Olbertz told Herbert to come with
him on an urgent transportation job. Taking a military ambulance, they
picked up a man unknown to Herbert--a senior officer in the Gestapo,
General Artur Nebe, Chief of the Criminal Police, who was wanted for
questioning. Some time later Nebe was captured; so were Olbertz and
Herbert. Olbertz committed suicide; Nebe was executed; Herbert was
tried and condemned to death by a civilian court. But because he was
still in the army a retrial by a military court was necessary. Herbert
knew it was a mere formality--and formalities meant little to Gestapo
Chief Muller. As he looked out his cell window, Herbert Kosney
wondered how soon he would be executed.

Not very far away another man sat wondering what the future had in
store for him--Herbert's brother, Kurt Kosney. He had been
interrogated again and again by the Gestapo, but so far he had told
them nothing about his Communist activities. Certainly he had not
revealed anything to incriminate his younger brother. He

worried about Herbert. What had happened to him? Where had he been
taken? Only a few cells separated the two brothers. But neither Kurt
nor Herbert knew that they were in the same prison.

Although they were not in jail, another group of prisoners was living
in Berlin. Uprooted from their families, forcibly removed from their
homelands, they had but one desire--like so many others--and that was
for speedy deliverance, by anybody. These were the slave laborers--the
men and women from almost every country that the Nazis had overrun.
There were Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Belgians,
Luxembourgers, French, Yugoslavs and Russians.

In all, the Nazis had forcibly imported nearly seven million
people--the equivalent of almost the entire population of New York City
--to work in German homes and businesses. Some countries were bled
almost white: 500,000 people were shipped out of diminutive Holland
(population 10,956,000) and 6,000 from tiny Luxembourg (population
296,000). More than 100,000 foreign workers--mostly French and
Russian-- worked in Berlin alone.

The foreign laborers were engaged in every conceivable type of work.
Many top Nazis acquired Russian girls as domestic servants. Architects
engaged in war work staffed their offices with young foreign draftsmen.
Heavy industry filled its quotas of electricians, steelworkers,
diemakers, mechanics and unskilled laborers with these captive peoples.
Gas, water and transportation utility companies "employed" extra
thousands--with virtually no pay. Even German military headquarters on
Bendlerstrasse had its allotment of foreign workers. One Frenchman,
Raymond Legathiere, was employed there full time replacing window panes
as fast as the bomb blasts blew them out.

The manpower situation in Berlin had become so critical that the Nazis
openly flouted the Geneva Convention, using prisoners of war as well as
foreign workers for essential war work. Because

Russia was not a signatory to the Convention, Red Army prisoners were
used in any manner that the Germans saw fit. There was now, in fact,
little distinction between prisoners of war and foreign workers. As
conditions deteriorated day by day, prisoners were being used to build
air raid bunkers, to help rebuild bombed military quarters and even to
shovel coal in industrial power plants. Now, the only difference
between the two groups was that the foreign workers had greater freedom
--and even that depended on the area and the type of work.

Foreign nationals lived in "cities" of wooden barracks-like buildings
near to, or located on, factory premises; they ate in community mess
halls and wore identifying badges. Some concerns closed their eyes to
regulations and allowed their foreign workers to live outside the
compounds, in Berlin itself. Many were free to move about the city, go
to movies or other places of entertainment, provided they observed the
strict curfew. * * There was another category of laborer --the
voluntary foreign worker. Thousands of Europeans--some were ardent
Nazi sympathizers, some believed they were helping to fight Bolshevism,
while the great majority were cynical opportunists--had answered German
newspaper advertisements offering highly paid jobs in the Reich. These
were allowed to live quite freely near their places of employment.

Some guards, seeing the writing on the wall, were relaxing their
attitude. Many foreign workers--and sometimes even the prisoners of
war--found they could occasionally dodge a day's work. One guard, in
charge of twenty-five Frenchmen who journeyed to work in the city by
subway every day, was now so amenable that he no longer bothered to
count the prisoners getting off the train. He did not care how many
got "lost" on the trip--so long as everyone was at the Potsdamer Platz
subway station by 6 P.m. for the journey back to camp.

Not all the foreign workers were so lucky. Thousands were closely
restricted, with virtually no freedom at all. This was particularly
true in municipal or government plants. Frenchmen working for the gas
utility company in Marienfelde in South Berlin had few privileges and
were poorly fed in comparison with

workers at private plants. Still, they were better off than their
Russian counterparts. One Frenchman, Andre Bourdeau, wrote in his
diary that the chief guard, Fesler, "never sends anybody to a
concentration camp," and on a Sunday, to supplement the rations,
"allows us to go into the fields to pick a potato or two." Bourdeau
was glad he was not from the east: the Russian compound, he wrote, was
"terribly overcrowded, with men, women and children all jammed together
... their food, most of the time, inedible." Elsewhere, in some
privately run plants, Russian workers fared as well as those from the
west.

Curiously, western workers all over Berlin noted a change in the
Russians, almost with each passing day. In the Schering chemical plant
in Charlottenburg, the Russians, who might be expected to be elated at
the course of events, were, on the contrary, greatly depressed. The
Ukrainian and Belorussian women, in particular, seemed uneasy about the
possible capture of the city by their compatriots.

On their arrival, two and three years before, the women had been
dressed in simple peasant style. Gradually they had changed, becoming
more sophisticated in dress and manner. Many had begun using cosmetics
for the first time. Hair and dress styles had altered noticeably: the
Russian girls copied the French or German women around them. Now
others noticed that the Russian girls almost overnight had reverted to
peasant dress again. Many workers thought that they anticipated some
sort of reprisals from the Red Army--even though they had been shipped
out of Russia against their will. Apparently the women expected to be
punished because they had become too western.

Among the western workers morale was high all over Berlin. At the
Alkett plant in Ruhleben, where 2,500 French, Belgian, Polish and Dutch
nationals worked on the production of tanks, everyone except the German
guards was planning for the future. The French workers, in particular,
were elated. They spent their evenings talking about the enormous
meals they would have the moment they set foot in France, and singing
popular songs: Maurice

Chevalier's "Ma Pomme" and "Prospere" were among the favorites.

Jean Boutin, 20-year-old machinist from Paris, felt especially
cheerful; he knew he was playing some part in the Germans' downfall.
Boutin and some Dutch workers had been sabotaging tank parts for years.
The German foreman had repeatedly threatened to ship saboteurs off to
concentration camps, but he never did--and there was a very good
reason: the manpower shortage was so acute that the plant was almost
totally dependent on the foreign workers. Jean thought the situation
was pretty amusing. Each ballbearing part he worked on was supposed to
be finished in fifty-four minutes. He tried never to turn in a
finished machined piece in under twenty-four hours--and that was
usually defective. At Alkett the forced laborers had one simple rule:
every unusable part they could sneak by the foreman brought victory and
the capture of Berlin another step closer. So far no one had ever been
caught.

Inevitably, despite the constant bombing, despite the specter of the
Red Army on the Oder, despite the very shrinking of Germany itself as
the Allies pressed in from east and west, there were those who doggedly
refused even to consider the possibilities of catastrophe. They were
the fanatical Nazis. Most of them seemed to accept the hardships they
were undergoing as a kind of purgatory--as a tempering and refining of
their devotion to Nazism and its aims. Once they had demonstrated
their loyalty, everything would surely be all right; they were
convinced not only that Berlin would never fall, but that victory for
the Third Reich was certain.

The Nazis occupied a peculiar place in the life of the city. Berliners
had never fully accepted Hitler or his evangelism. They had always
been both too sophisticated and too international in outlook. In fact,
the Berliner's caustic humor, political cynicism and almost complete
lack of enthusiasm for the Fuhrer and his new order had long plagued
the Nazi Party. Whenever torchlight parades or other Nazi
demonstrations to impress the world were held in Berlin, thousands of
storm troopers had to be shipped in from Munich to beef up the crowds
of marchers. "They look better in the newsreels than we do,"
wisecracked the Berliners, "and they also have bigger feet!"

Try as he might, Hitler was never able to capture the hearts of the
Berliners. Long before the city was demolished by Allied bombs, a
frustrated and angry Hitler was already planning to rebuild Berlin and
shape it to the Nazi image. He even intended to change its name to
Germania, for he had never forgotten that in every free election in the
thirties Berliners had rejected him. In the critical balloting of 1932
when Hitler was sure he would unseat Hindenburg, Berlin gave him its
lowest vote of all--only 23 per cent. Now, the fanatics among the
citizenry were determined to make Berlin, the least Nazi city in
Germany, the last Festung (fortress) of Nazism. Although they were in
the minority, they were still in control.

Thousands of the fanatics were teenagers and, like most of their
generation, they knew only one god-- Hitler. From childhood on they
had been saturated with the aims and ideology of National Socialism.
Many more had also been trained to defend and perpetuate the cause,
using an array of weapons ranging from rifles to bazooka-like tank
destroyers, called Panzergfauste. Klaus Kuster was typical of the
teenage group. A member of the Hitler Youth (there were more than one
thousand of them in Berlin), his specialty was knocking out tanks at a
range of less than sixty yards. Klaus was not yet sixteen.

The most dedicated military automatons of all were the members of the
SS. They were so convinced of ultimate victory and so devoted to
Hitler that to other Germans their mental attitude almost defied
comprehension. Their fanaticism was so strong that it sometimes seemed
to have penetrated the subconscious. Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, in
Charite Hospital, working on the anesthetized form of a seriously
wounded SS man just in from the Oder front, was suddenly, momentarily
frozen. In the stillness of the operating theater, from the depths of
his anesthesia, the SS man began to speak. Quietly and distinctly he
repeated over and over, "Heil Hitler! ... Heil Hitler! ... Heil
Hitler!"

Although these were the real extremists, there were hundreds of
thousands of civilians almost as bad. Some were walking caricatures of
what the free world thought the fanatical Nazi to be. One of them was
47-year-old Gotthard Carl. Although Gotthard was only a minor civil
servant, an accountant on temporary service to the Luftwaffe, he wore
the dashing blue air force uniform with all the pride and arrogance of
an ace fighter pilot. As he entered his apartment in the late
afternoon, he clicked his heels sharply together, shot his right arm
out and shouted, "Heil Hitler." This performance had been going on for
years.

His wife, Gerda, was thoroughly bored with her husband's fanaticism,
but she was worried, and anxious to discuss with him some sort of plan
for their survival. The Russians, she pointed out, were getting very
close to Berlin. Gotthard cut her off. "Rumors!" he fumed, "rumors!
Deliberately put out by the enemy." In Gotthard's disoriented Nazi
world everything was going along as planned. Hitler's victory was
certain. The Russians were not at the gates of Berlin.

Then there were the enthusiastic and impressionable-- those who had
never considered defeat possible--like Erna Schultze. The 41-year-old
secretary in the headquarters of the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine
(navy High Command) had just realized her life's ambition: she had been
made an admiral's secretary and this was her first day on the job.

Shell House, where the headquarters was located, had been badly bombed
in the previous forty-eight hours. Still, the dust and wreckage did
not bother Erna--neither was she perturbed by the order that had just
reached her desk. It stated that all Geheime Kommandosache (top
Secret) files were to be burned. But Erna was saddened on this first
day of her new job to be told at closing time that she and the other
employees were to take "indefinite leave" and that their pay checks
would be forwarded.

Still Erna remained unshaken. Her faith was so strong that she even
refused to believe the official communiques when defeats were reported.
Morale was good throughout Berlin, she believed, and it was only a
question of time before the Reich triumphed. Even now, as she left the
building, Erna was quite certain that within a few days the Navy would
call her back.

There were others so trusting and so involved with the upper clique of
the Nazi hierarchy that they thought little of the war or its
consequences. Caught up in the heady atmosphere and glamor of their
privileged positions, they felt not only secure, but in their blind
devotion to Hitler, totally protected. Such a person was attractive,
blue-eyed Kathe Reiss Heusermann.

At 213 Kurfurstendamm the blond and vivacious 35-year-old Kathe was
immersed in her work as assistant to Professor Hugo J. Blaschke, the
Nazi leaders' top dentist. Blaschke, because he had served Hitler and
his court since 1934, had been honored with the military rank of SS
Brigadefuhrer (brigadier General) and placed in charge of the dental
staff of the Berlin SS Medical Center. An ardent Nazi, Blaschke had
parlayed his association with Hitler into the largest and most
lucrative private practice in Berlin. Now he was preparing to parlay
it a step farther. Unlike Kathe, he could clearly see the writing on
the wall--and he planned to leave Berlin at the earliest opportunity.
If he remained, his SS rank and position might prove embarrassing:
under the Russians, today's prominence might well become tomorrow's
liability.

Kathe was almost completely oblivious of the situation. She was much
too busy. From early morning until late at night she was on

the move, assisting Blaschke at various clinics and headquarters or at
his private surgery on the Kurfurstendamm. Competent and well liked,
Kathe was so completely trusted by the Nazi elite that she had attended
nearly all of Hitler's entourage--and once, the Fuhrer himself.

That occasion had been the highlight of her career. In November, 1944,
she and Blaschke had been urgently summoned to the Fuhrer's
headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia. There they had found Hitler
in acute pain. "His face, particularly the right cheek was terribly
swollen," she later recalled. "His teeth were extremely bad. In all
he had three bridges. He had only eight upper teeth of his own and
even these were backed by gold fillings. A bridge completed his upper
dental work and it was held securely in place by the existing teeth.
One of them, the wisdom tooth on the right side, was badly infected."

Blaschke took one look at the tooth and told Hitler that it had to come
out, there was no way he could save it. Blaschke explained that he
would need to remove two teeth--a false tooth at the rear of the bridge
as well as the infected one next to it. That meant cutting through the
porcelain and gold bridge at a point in front of the false tooth, a
procedure that called for a considerable amount of drilling and sawing.
Then, after making the final extraction, at some later date he would
either make an entirely new bridge or re-anchor the old one.

Blaschke was nervous about the operation: it was intricate and there
was no telling how Hitler would behave. Complicating matters even
further was the Fuhrer's dislike of anesthetics. He told Blaschke,
Kathe remembered, that he would accept "only the bare minimum." Both
Blaschke and Kathe knew he would suffer excruciating pain; furthermore
the operation might last as long as thirty to forty-five minutes. But
there was nothing they could do about it.

Blaschke gave Hitler an injection in the upper jaw and the operation
began. Kathe stood by the Fuhrer's side with one hand pulling back his
cheek, the other holding a mirror. Swiftly Blaschke's rasping drill
bored into the bridge. Then he changed the bit

and began sawing. Hitler sat motionless--"as though frozen," she
recalled. Finally Blaschke cleared the tooth and quickly made the
extraction. "Throughout," Kathe said later, "Hitler neither moved nor
uttered a single word. It was an extraordinary performance. We
wondered how he stood the pain."

That had been five months ago; as yet nothing had been done about the
Fuhrer's dangling bridge. Outside of Hitler's immediate circle, few
knew the details of the operation. One of the cardinal rules for those
who worked for the Fuhrer was that everything about him, especially his
illnesses, remain top secret.

Kathe was good at keeping secrets. For example, she knew that a
special denture was being constructed for the Reich's acknowledged, but
unwed first lady. Blaschke intended to fit the gold bridge next time
she was in Berlin. Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun, certainly needed
it.

Finally, Kathe knew one of the most closely guarded secrets of all. It
was her responsibility to send a complete set of dental tools and
supplies everywhere the Fuhrer went. Moreover, she was preparing a new
bridge with gold crowns for one of Hitler's four secretaries: short,
stout, 45-year-old Johanna Wolf. Soon Kathe would fit "Wolfie's" new
bridge, over in the surgical room of the Reichskanzlei. She had been
traveling back and forth between Blaschke's surgery and the
Reichskanzlei almost daily for the last nine weeks. Adolf Hitler had
been there since January 16.

As the spring night closed in, the city took on a deserted look. The
ruined colossus of Berlin, ghostly and vulnerable, stretched out in the
pale moonlight, offering a clear target for the nighttime enemy. Below
ground, Berliners waited for the bombers and wondered who among them
would be alive by morning.

At 9 P.m. the R.a.f. came back. The sirens wailed for the fourth time
in twenty-four hours, and the 317th attack on the city began. At his
military headquarters on the Hohenzollerndamm, Major General Hellmuth
Reymann, working steadily at his desk, paid scant attention to the
hammering of anti-aircraft fire and the explosion of bombs. He was
desperately fighting for time--and there was little of it left.

Only sixteen days before, the telephone had rung in Reymann's Dresden
home. General Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hitler's adjutant, was on the line.
"The Fuhrer," said Burgdorf, "has appointed you military commander of
Dresden." At first Reymann could not even reply. The 16th-century
Saxony capital with its fairy-tale spires, castles and cobbled streets,
had been almost totally destroyed in three massive air attacks.
Reymann, heartbroken by the destruction of the lovely old city, lost
his temper. "Tell him there's nothing here to defend except rubble,"
he shouted, and hung up. His angry words were a rash indulgence. An
hour later Burgdorf called again and said, "The Fuhrer has named you
commander of Berlin instead."

On March 6 Reymann assumed command. Within a few hours he made an
appalling discovery. Although Hitler had declared Berlin a Festung,
the fortifications existed only in the Fuhrer's imagination. Nothing
had been done to prepare the city against attack. There was no plan,
there were no defenses and there were virtually no troops. Worse, no
provision had been made for the civilian population; an evacuation plan
for the women, children and old people simply did not exist.

Now, Reymann was working around the clock trying feverishly to untangle
the situation. His problems were staggering: where was he to get the
troops, guns, ammunition and equipment to hold

the city? Or the engineers, machinery and materials to build defenses?
Would he be allowed to evacuate the women, children and aged? If not,
how would he feed and protect them when the siege began? And again and
again his mind returned to the big question: time--how much time was
left?

Even securing senior command officers was difficult. Only now, at this
late date, had Reymann been assigned a chief of staff, Colonel Hans
Refior. The able Refior had arrived several hours earlier, and he was
more startled than Reymann by the confusion in Berlin. A few days
before in the illustrated magazine Das Reich, Refior had seen an
article which claimed that Berlin was virtually impregnable. He
recalled particularly one line: "Hedgehog-position Berlin simply
bristles with defenses." If so, they must be carefully hidden. Refior
had not been able to spot more than a few.

In all his years as a professional soldier, the gray-haired,
53-year-old Reymann had never imagined being faced with such a task.
Yet he had to find answers for each problem--and quickly. Was it
possible to save Berlin? Reymann was determined to do all he could.
There were numerous examples in military history where defeat had
seemed inevitable and yet a victory was achieved. He thought of Vienna
which had been successfully defended against the Turks in 1683, and of
General Graf von Gneisenau, Blucher's Chief of Staff, who defended
Kolberg in 1806. True, these were pale comparisons, but perhaps they
offered some hope. Yet, Reymann knew that everything would depend on
the German armies holding the Oder front, and on the general commanding
them.

The great ones were gone--Rommel, Von Rundstedt, Von Kluge, Von
Manstein--the victorious leaders whose names were once household words.
They had all disappeared, were all dead, discredited or forced into
retirement. Now, more than ever, the nation and the armies needed a
master soldier --another dashing Rommel, another meticulous Von
Rundstedt. Berlin's safety and perhaps even the survival of Germany as
a nation would depend on this. But where was that man?

Part Two THE GENERAL

March 22 dawned misty and cold. South of the city, Reichsstrasse 96
stretched away through the dripping pine forests, patches of frost
gleaming dimly on the broad asphalt. Early on this chill second day of
spring the road was crowded with traffic--traffic that even for wartime
Germany had an unreal quality.

Some of the heavy lorries that came down the road carried bulky filing
cabinets, document cases, office equipment and cartons. Others were
piled high with works of art--fine furniture, crated pictures, brasses,
ceramics and statuary. Atop one open truck a sightless bust of Julius
Caesar rocked gently back and forth.

Scattered among the trucks were heavy passenger cars of every
kind--Horchs, Wanderers, Mercedes limousines. All bore the silvered
swastika medallion that marked them as official vehicles of the Nazi
Party. And all were traveling along Reichsstrasse 96 in one direction:
south. In the cars were the party bureaucrats of the Third Reich--the
"Golden Pheasants," those privileged to wear the gilded swastika of the
Nazi elite. Together with their wives, children and belongings, the
Golden Pheasants were emigrating. Hardfaced and somber in their brown
uniforms, the men gazed fixedly ahead, as though haunted by the
possibility that they might be halted and sent back to the one place
where they did not want to be: Berlin.

Speeding northward on the opposite side of the road came a Wehrmacht
staff car, a big Mercedes with the checkerboard black, red and white
metal flag of a Heeresgruppe commander on its left mudguard. Hunched
in an ancient sheepskin coat, a muffler at his throat, Colonel General
Gotthard Heinrici sat beside his driver, and looked out bleakly at the
road. He knew this highway, as did all of the Reich's general
officers. Heinrici's cousin, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, had
once caustically called it "der Weg zur Etvigkeit"--the road to
eternity. It had carried many a senior officer to military oblivion,
for Reichsstrasse 96 was the direct route to the German General Staff
headquarters eighteen miles from Berlin. Outside high-ranking military
circles, few Germans knew the location of this headquarters. Not even
local inhabitants were aware that, heavily camouflaged and hidden deep
in the woods, the military nerve center of Hitler's Germany lay just
outside their 15th-century town of Zossen. Zossen was Heinrici's
destination.

If the oncoming traffic, with its disquieting evidence of government
departments on the move, made any impression on the General, he did not
communicate it to his 36-year-old aide, Captain Heinrich von Bila,
sitting in back with Heinrici's batman, Balzen. There had been little
conversation during the long hours of their 500-mile journey. They had
left before dawn from northern Hungary, where Heinrici had commanded
the First Panzer and Hungarian First armies. They had flown to
Bautzen, near the Czecho-German border, and from there had continued by
car. And now each hour that passed was bringing the 58-year-old
Heinrici, one of the Wehrmacht's masters of defense, closer to the
greatest test of his forty-year military career.

Heinrici would learn the full details of his new post at Zossen--but he
knew already that his concern would not be with the Western Allies, but
with his old enemies, the Russians. It was a bitter and, for Heinrici,
a classic assignment: he was to take command of Army Group Vistula with
orders to hold the Russians on the Oder and save Berlin.

Suddenly an air raid siren blared. Heinrici, startled, swung around to
look back at the cluster of half-timbered houses they had just passed.
There was no sign of bombing or Allied planes. The wailing continued,
the warbling sound fading now in the distance. It was not the sound
that had startled him. He was no stranger to bombing attacks. What
had surprised him was the realization that this deep inside Germany,
even little villages were having air raid alerts. Slowly Heinrici
turned back. Although he had commanded units from the very beginning
of the war in 1939, first on the western front, then after 1941 in
Russia, he had not been in Germany for more than two years and he had
little idea of the impact of total war on the home front. He realized
that he was a stranger in his own country. He was depressed; he had
not expected anything like this.

Yet few German generals had experienced more of the war--and,
conversely, few of such high rank had achieved less prominence. He was
no dashing Rommel, lionized by the Germans for his successes and then
honored by a propaganda-wise Hitler with a field marshal's baton.
Outside of battle orders, Heinrici's name had scarcely appeared in
print. The fame and glory that every soldier seeks had eluded him, for
in his long years as a combat commander on the eastern front, he had
fought the Russians in a role that by its very nature relegated him to
obscurity. His operations had dealt not with the glories of blitzkrieg
advance, but with the desperation of grinding retreat. His specialty
was defense, and at that he had few peers. A thoughtful, precise
strategist, a deceptively mild-mannered commander, Heinrici was
nevertheless a tough general of the old aristocratic school who had
long ago learned to hold the line with the minimum of men and at the
lowest possible cost. "Heinrici," one of his staff officers once
remarked, "retreats only when the air is turned to lead--and then only
after considerable deliberation."

In a war that for him had been a slow and painful withdrawal all the
way from the Moscow suburbs to the Carpathian Mountains, Heinrici had
held out again and again in near-hopeless positions.

Stubborn, defiant and demanding, he had grabbed every chance--even when
it was just a matter of holding one more mile for one more hour. He
fought with such ferocity that his officers and men proudly nicknamed
him "Unser Giftzwerg"--our tough little bastard. * Those meeting him
for the first time were often nonplussed by the description "tough."
Short, slightly built, with quiet blue eyes, fair hair and a neat
moustache, Heinrici seemed at first glance more schoolmaster than
general--and a shabby schoolmaster at that. * Unser Giftzwerg
literally means "our poison dwarf"--and the term was often applied to
Heinrici in this sense by those who disliked him.

It was a matter of great concern to his aide, Von Bila, that Heinrici
cared little about looking the part of a colonel general. Von Bila
constantly fretted about Heinrici's appearance-- particularly his boots
and overcoat. Heinrici hated the highly polished, knee-high jackboot
so popular with German officers. He preferred ordinary low-cut boots,
worn with old-fashioned, World War I leather leggings that buckled at
the side. As for his overcoats, he had several, but he liked his
somewhat ratty sheepskin coat, and despite all of Von Bila's efforts he
refused to part with it. Similarly, Heinrici wore his uniforms until
they were threadbare. And, as he believed in traveling light, Heinrici
rarely had more than one uniform with him--the one on his back.

It was Von Bila who had to take the initiative when Heinrici needed new
clothes-- and Von Bila dreaded these encounters, for he usually came
out the loser. When Von Bila last ventured to bring up the subject he
adopted a cautious approach. Tentatively, he inquired of Heinrici,
"Herr Generaloberst, shouldn't we perhaps try to find a moment to be
measured for a new uniform?" Heinrici had looked at Von Bila over the
top of his reading glasses and had asked mildly, "Do you really think
so, Bila?" For just a moment Von Bila thought he had succeeded. Then
the Giftzwerg asked icily, "What for?" Von Bila had not raised the
question since.

But if Heinrici did not look the part of a general, he acted like

one. He was every inch the soldier, and to the troops he commanded,
particularly after his stand at Moscow, he was a legendary one.

In December, 1941, Hitler's massive blitzkrieg offensive into Russia
had finally ground to a frozen halt before the very approaches to
Moscow. All along the German front more than 1,250,000 lightly clad
troops had been trapped by an early and bitter winter. As the Germans
floundered through ice and snow, the Russian armies that Hitler and his
experts had virtually written off appeared as if from nowhere. In an
all-out attack, the Soviets threw one hundred divisions of
winter-hardened soldiers against the invaders. The German armies were
thrown back with staggering losses, and for a time it seemed as if the
terrible retreat of Napoleon's armies in 1812 would be repeated--on an
even greater and bloodier scale.

The line had to be stabilized. It was Heinrici who was given the
toughest sector to hold. On January 26, 1942, he was placed in command
of the remnants of the Fourth Army, which, holding the ground directly
facing Moscow, was the kingpin of the German line. Any major
withdrawal on its part would jeopardize the armies on either flank and
might trigger a rout.

Heinrici took over on a bitterly cold day; the temperature stood at
minus 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Water froze inside the boilers of
locomotives; machine guns would not fire; trenches and foxholes could
not be dug because the ground was like iron. Heinrici's ill-equipped
soldiers were fighting in waist-deep snow, with icicles hanging from
their nostrils and eyelashes. "I was told to hold out until the big
attack that this time would surely take Moscow," he later recalled.
"Yet all around me my men were dying--and not only from Russian
bullets. Many of them froze to death."

They held out for almost ten weeks. Heinrici used every method
available to him, orthodox and unorthodox. He exhorted his men, goaded
them, promoted, dismissed--and again and again defied Hitler's
long-standing and inflexible order, "Starre Verteidigung"--stand fast.
That spring it was estimated by the staff of the

Fourth Army that during the long winter the Giftzwerg had at times been
outnumbered by at least twelve to one.

Outside Moscow Heinrici had developed a technique for which he became
famous. When he knew a Russian attack was imminent in a particular
sector, he would order his troops to retreat the night before to new
positions one or two miles back. The Russian artillery barrages would
land on a deserted front line. As Heinrici put it: "It was like
hitting an empty bag. The Russian attack would lose its speed because
my men, unharmed, would be ready. Then my troops on sectors that had
not been attacked would close in and reoccupy the original front
lines." The trick was to know when the Russians were preparing for an
attack. From intelligence reports, patrols and the interrogation of
prisoners, plus an extraordinary sixth sense, Heinrici was able to
pinpoint the time and place with almost mathematical precision.

It was not always possible to employ these methods, and when he did,
Heinrici had to use great caution--Hitler had imprisoned and even shot
generals for defying his no-withdrawal order. "While we could hardly
move a sentry from the window to the door without his permission,"
Heinrici was later to record, "some of us, where we could, found ways
to evade his more suicidal orders."

For obvious reasons Heinrici had never been a favorite of Hitler or his
court. His aristocratic and conservative military background demanded
that he faithfully observe his oath of allegiance to Hitler, but the
call of a higher dictatorship had always come first. Early in the war
Heinrici had fallen afoul of the Fuhrer because of his religious
views.

The son of a Protestant minister, Heinrici read a Bible tract daily,
attended services on Sundays and insisted on church parades for his
troops. These practices did not sit well with Hitler. Several broad
hints were dropped to Heinrici that Hitler thought it unwise for a
general to be seen publicly going to church. On his last trip to
Germany, while on leave in the town of Munster, Westphalia, Heinrici
was visited by a high-ranking Nazi Party official sent from Berlin
specifically to talk with him. Heinrici, who had never been a member of
the Nazi Party, was informed that "the Fuhrer considers your religious
activities incompatible with the aims of National Socialism." Stonily
Heinrici listened to the warning. The following Sunday he, his wife,
son and daughter attended church as usual.

Thereafter, he was promoted slowly and reluctantly. Promotion might
have been denied him entirely except for his undeniably brilliant
leadership, and the fact that the various commanders under whom he
served--particularly Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge--kept insisting on
his promotion.

Late in 1943, Heinrici incurred the enmity of Reichsmarschall Hermann
Goering, once again on religious grounds. Goering vehemently
complained to Hitler that during the retreat of the Fourth Army in
Russia Heinrici had failed to carry out the Fuhrer's scorched-earth
policy. Specifically he charged that the General had deliberately
defied the orders "to burn and lay waste every habitable building" in
Smolensk; among other buildings left standing had been the town's great
cathedral. Heinrici explained solemnly that "had Smolensk been fired I
could not have withdrawn my forces through it." The answer failed to
satisfy either Hitler or Goering, but there was just sufficient
military logic in it to prevent a court-martial.

Hitler, however, did not forget. Heinrici, a victim of poison gas in
World War I, had suffered ever since from various stomach disorders.
Some months after the incident with Goering, Hitler, citing these
ailments, placed Heinrici on the non-active list because of "ill
health." He was retired to a convalescent home in Karlsbad,
Czechoslovakia, and there, in Heinrici's words, "they simply let me
sit." A few weeks after his dismissal, the Russians for the first time
broke through his old command, the Fourth Army.

During the opening months of 1944, Heinrici remained in Karlsbad, a
remote spectator to the apocalyptic events that were slowly bringing
Hitler's empire down in ruins: the invasion of Normandy by the Western
Allies in June; the Anglo-American advance up the boot of Italy and the
capture of Rome; the abortive plot to assassinate Hitler on the
twentieth of July; the overwhelming offensives of the Russians as they
drove across eastern Europe. As the situation grew increasingly
critical, Heinrici found his inaction unbearably frustrating. He might
have had a command by entreating the Fuhrer, but that he refused to
do.

At last, in the late summer of '44, after eight months of enforced
retirement, Heinrici was ordered back to duty--this time to Hungary and
command of the hard-pressed First Panzer and Hungarian First armies.

In Hungary Heinrici resumed his old ways. At the height of the battle
there, Colonel General Ferdinand Schorner, Hitler's protege, and
Heinrici's superior in Hungary, issued a directive that any soldier
found behind the front without orders was to be "executed immediately
and his body exhibited as a warning." Heinrici, disgusted by the
command, angrily retorted: "Such methods have never been used under my
command, and never shall be."

Although he was forced to retreat from northern Hungary into
Czechoslovakia, he contested the ground so tenaciously that on March 3,
1945, he was informed that he had been decorated with the Swords to the
Oak Leaves of his Knight's Cross--a remarkable accomplishment for a man
who was disliked so intensely by Hitler. And now, just two weeks
later, he was rushing to Zossen, with orders in his pocket to take over
the command of Army Group Vistula.

As he watched Reichsstrasse 96 rushing away beneath the wheels of his
speeding Mercedes, Heinrici wondered where it would ultimately lead
him. He remembered the reaction of his staff in Hungary when his
appointment became known and he was ordered to report to General Heinz
Guderian, Chief of the General Staff of OKH (oberkommando des
Heeres)--the Army High Command. They were shocked. "Do you really
want the job?" asked his chief of staff.

To his worried subordinates, the outspoken Heinrici seemed headed for
certain trouble. As the commander of the Oder front,

the last major line of defense between the Russians and Berlin, he
would be constantly under the supervision of Hitler and the "court
jesters," as one of Heinrici's officers called them. Heinrici had
never been a sycophant, had never learned to varnish the facts; how
could he avoid clashing with the men around the Fuhrer? And everyone
knew what happened to those who disagreed with Hitler.

As delicately as they could, officers close to Heinrici had suggested
that he find some excuse to turn the command down--perhaps for "health
reasons." Surprised, Heinrici replied simply that he would follow his
orders--"just like Private Schultz or Schmidt."

Now as he approached the outskirts of Zossen, Heinrici could not help
remembering that at his departure his staff had looked at him "as
though I was a lamb being led to the slaughter."

At the main gates of the base, Heinrici's car was quickly cleared. The
inner red-and-black guardrail swung up, and in a flurry of salutes the
car passed into the Zossen headquarters. It was almost as though they
had driven into another world. In a way it was just that--a hidden,
camouflaged, orderly, military world, known only to a few and
identified by the code words "Maybach I" and "Maybach II."

The complex through which they drove was Maybach I --the headquarters
of OKH, the Army High Command, headed by General Guderian. From here
he directed the armies on the eastern front. A mile farther in was
another completely separate encampment Maybach II, the headquarters of
OKW, Armed Forces High Command. Despite its secondary designation
Maybach II was the higher authority--the headquarters of the Supreme
Commander, Hitler.

Unlike General Guderian, who operated directly from his OKH
headquarters, the top echelon of OKW--ITS Chief of Staff, Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel, and Chief of Operations, Colonel General Alfred
Jodl--stayed close to Hitler wherever he chose to be. Only the
operational machinery of OKW remained at Zossen. Through it Keitel and
Jodl commanded the armies on the western front, besides using it as a
clearinghouse for all of Hitler's directives to the entire German armed
forces.

Thus Maybach II was the holy of holies, so cut off from Guderian's
headquarters that few of his officers had even been permitted inside
it. The sealing was so complete that the two headquarters were
physically separated by high barbed-wire fences constantly patrolled by
sentries. No one, Hitler had declared in 1941, was to know more than
was necessary for the carrying out of his duties. In Guderian's
headquarters it was said that "if the enemy ever captures OKW we'll go
right on working as usual: we won't know anything about it."

Beneath the protective canopy of the forest, Heinrici's car followed
one of the many narrow dirt roads that crisscrossed the complex.
Spotted among the trees in irregular rows were low concrete buildings.
They were so spaced that they got maximum protection from the trees,
but just to be sure, they had been painted in drab camouflage colors of
green, brown and black. Vehicles were off the roads--parked by the
sides of the barracks-like buildings beneath camouflaged netting.
Sentries stood everywhere, and at strategic points around the camp the
low humps of manned bunkers rose above the ground.

These were part of a warren of underground installations extending
beneath the entire encampment, for there was more of Maybach I and
Maybach II below ground than above. Each building had three floors
underground and was connected to the

next by passageways. The largest of these subterranean installations
was "Exchange 500" --the biggest telephone, teletype and military radio
communications exchange in Germany. It was completely self-contained,
with its own air conditioning (including a special filtration system
against enemy gas attacks), water supply, kitchens and living quarters.
It was almost seventy feet beneath the surface--the equivalent of a
seven-story building below ground.

Exchange 500 was the only facility shared by OKH and OKW. Besides
connecting all the distant senior military, naval and Luftwaffe
commands with the two headquarters and Berlin, it was the main exchange
for the Reich government and its various administrative bodies. It had
been completed in 1939, designed to serve a far-flung empire. In the
main trunk or long-lines room, scores of operators sat before boards
with blinking lights; above each was a small card bearing the name of a
city--Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Copenhagen, Oslo and so on. But the
lights had gone out on some consoles-- boards that still carried labels
such as Athens, Warsaw, Budapest, Rome and Paris.

Despite all the camouflaging precautions, the Zossen complex had been
bombed--Heinrici could see the evidence plainly as his car rolled to a
stop outside Guderian's command building. The area was pitted with
craters, trees had been uprooted, and some buildings were badly
damaged. But the effect of the bombing had been minimized by the heavy
construction of the buildings--some of which had walls up to three feet
thick. * * Zossen was, in fact, heavily bombed by the Americans just
seven days before, on March 15, at the request of the Russians. The
message from Marshal Sergei V. Khudyakov of the Red Army staff, to
General John R. Deane, chief of the U.s. Military Mission in Moscow,
now on file in Washington and Moscow, and appearing here for the first
time, is an astonishing document for the insight it offers into the
extent of Russian intelligence in Germany: Dear General Deane:
According to information we have, the General Staff of the German Army
is situated 38 kms. south of Berlin, in a specially fortified
underground shelter called by the Germans "The Citadel." It is located
... 5-1/2 to 6 kms. south-southeast of Zossen and from 1 to 1-1/2 kms.
east of a wide highway ... [Reichsstrasse 96] which runs parallel to
the railroad from Berlin to Dresden. The area occupied by the
underground fortifications ... covers about 5 to 6 square kilometers.
The whole territory is surrounded by wired entanglements several rows
in depth, and is very strongly guarded by an SS regiment. According to
the same source the construction of the underground fortification was
started in 1936. In 1938 and 1939 the strength of the fortifications
was tested by the Germans against bombing from the air and against
artillery fire. I ask you, dear General, not to refuse kindness as
soon as possible to give directions to the Allies' air forces to bomb
"The Citadel" with heavy bombs. I am sure that as a result ... the
German General Staff, if still located there, will receive damage and
losses which will stop its normal work ... and [may] have to be moved
elsewhere. Thus the Germans will lose a well-organized communications
center and headquarters. Enclosed is a map with the exact location of
the German General Staff [headquarters]."

There was more evidence of the attack inside the main building. The
first person Heinrici and Von Bila saw was Lieutenant General Hans
Krebs, Guderian's Chief of Staff, who had been injured in the raid.
Monocle rammed in his right eye, he sat behind a desk in an office
close to Guderian's, his head wrapped in a large white turban of
bandages. Heinrici did not care much for Krebs. Though the Chief of
Staff was extremely intelligent, Heinrici saw him as "a man who refused
to believe the truth, who could change black to white so as to minimize
the true situation for Hitler."

Heinrici looked at him. Foregoing the niceties, he asked abruptly,
"What happened to you?"

Krebs shrugged. "Oh, it was nothing," he replied. "Nothing." Krebs
had always been unperturbable. Before the war he had been military
attache at the German Embassy in Moscow, and he spoke near-perfect
Russian. After the signing of the Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact in
1941, Stalin had embraced Krebs, saying, "We shall always be friends."
Now, chatting casually with Heinrici, Krebs mentioned that he was still
learning Russian. "Every morning," he said, "I place a dictionary on a
shelf beneath the mirror and while shaving, learn a few more words."
Heinrici nodded. Krebs might find his Russian useful soon.

Major Freytag von Loringhoven, Guderian's aide, joined them at that
moment. With him was Captain Gerhard Boldt, another member of
Guderian's personal staff. They formally greeted Heinrici and Von
Bila, then escorted them to the General's offices. To Von Bila,
everyone seemed immaculately dressed in shining, high boots, well-cut,
well-pressed field-gray uniforms with the red tabs of staff rank at the
collar. Heinrici, walking ahead with Von Loringhoven, seemed, as
usual, sartorially out of place--especially from behind. The
fur-collared sheepskin coat made Von Bila wince.

Von Loringhoven disappeared into Guderian's office, returned a few
moments later and held the door open for Heinrici. "Herr Generaloberst
Heinrici," He announced as Heinrici passed through. Von Loringhoven
closed the door and then joined Boldt and Von Bila in the anteroom.

Guderian was sitting behind a large, paper-strewn desk. As Heinrici
entered, he rose, warmly greeted the visitor, offered him a chair and
for a few moments talked about Heinrici's trip. Heinrici saw that
Guderian was tense and edgy. Broad-shouldered, of medium height, with
thinning gray hair and a straggling moustache, Guderian seemed much
older than his fifty-six years. Although it was not generally known,
he was a sick man, suffering from high blood pressure and a weak
heart--a condition that was not alleviated by his constant
frustrations. These days the creator of Hitler's massive panzer
forces--the General whose armored techniques had brought about the
capture of France in 1940 in just twenty-seven days and who had nearly
succeeded in accomplishing as much in Russia--found himself almost
completely powerless. Even as Chief of the General Staff he had
virtually no influence with Hitler. A hot-tempered officer at the best
of times, Guderian was now so thwarted, Heinrici had heard, that he was
subject to violent rages.

As they talked Heinrici looked about him. The office was spartan: a
large map table, several straight-backed chairs, two phones, a
green-shaded lamp on the desk, and nothing on the yellow-beige walls
except the usual framed picture of Hitler, which hung over the map
table. The Chief of the General Staff did not even have an easy
chair.

Though Guderian and Heinrici were not intimate friends, they had known
each other for years, respected each other's professional competence
and were close enough to converse freely and informally. As soon as
they got down to business, Heinrici spoke

frankly. "General," he said, "I've been in the wilds of Hungary. I
know almost nothing about Army Group Vistula, what it's composed of or
what the situation is on the Oder."

Guderian was equally blunt. Briskly he replied, "I should tell you,
Heinrici, that Hitler didn't want to give you this command. He had
somebody else in mind."

Heinrici remained silent.

Guderian continued: "I was responsible. I told Hitler that you were
the one man needed. At first he wouldn't consider you at all. Finally,
I got him to agree."

Guderian spoke in a businesslike, matter-of-fact fashion, but as he
warmed to his subject the tone of his voice changed. Even twenty years
later Heinrici would remember in detail the tirade that followed.

"Himmler," Guderian snapped. "That was the biggest problem. Getting
rid of the man you're to replace--Himmler!"

Abruptly he got up from his chair, walked around the desk and began
pacing the room. Heinrici had only recently learned that Reichsfuhrer
Heinrich Himmler was commander of the Army Group Vistula. The news had
so astonished him that at first he did not believe it. He knew of
Himmler as a member of Hitler's inner cabinet--probably the most
powerful man in Germany next to the Fuhrer. He did not know that
Himmler had any experience commanding troops in the field--let alone
directing the activities of a group of armies.

Bitterly Guderian recounted how in January, as the Polish front began
to collapse before the tidal wave of the Red Army, he had desperately
urged the formation of Army Group Vistula. At that time it was
envisioned as a northern complex of armies holding a major defense line
between the Oder and the Vistula, roughly from East Prussia to a point
farther south where it would link with another army group. If the line
held it would prevent the Russian avalanche from driving directly into
the very heart of Germany, through lower Pomerania and Upper Silesia,
then into Brandenburg and finally-- Berlin.

To command the group Guderian had suggested Field Marshal Freiherr von
Weichs. "At the time he was just the man for this situation," Guderian
said. "What happened? Hitler said Von Weichs was too old. Jodl was
present at the conference and I expected him to support me. But he
made some remark about Von Weichs's religious feelings. That ended the
matter.

"Then," thundered Guderian, "whom did we get? Hitler appointed
Himmler! Of all people--Himmler!"

Guderian had, in his own words, "argued and pleaded against the
appalling and preposterous appointment" of this man who had no military
knowledge. But Hitler remained adamant. Under Himmler the front had
all but collapsed. The Red Army had moved exactly as Guderian had
predicted. Once the Russians were across the Vistula, part of their
forces swung north and reached the Baltic at Danzig, cutting off and
encircling some twenty to twenty-five divisions in East Prussia alone.
The remaining Soviet armies sliced through Pomerania and upper Silesia,
and reached the Oder and Neisse rivers. Everywhere along the eastern
front the German line was overwhelmed. But no sector had collapsed so
fast as Himmler's. His failure had opened the gates to the main drive
across Germany and the link-up with the Western Allies. Above all, it
had placed Berlin in jeopardy.

Guderian told Heinrici that, just forty-eight hours before, he had
driven to the Army Group Vistula headquarters at Birkenhain, roughly
fifty miles north of Berlin, to try to persuade Himmler to give up the
command. There, he was informed that Himmler was ill. He had finally
located the SS commander twenty miles away, near the town of Lychen,
"cowering in a sanatorium with nothing more than a head cold."

Guderian quickly saw that Himmler's "illness" could be used to
advantage. He expressed sympathy with the Reichsfuhrer, and suggested
that perhaps he had been overworking, that the number of posts he held
would "tax the strength of any man." Besides being the commander of
Army Group Vistula, the ambitious Himmler was also Minister of the
Interior; Chief of the Gestapo, the

German police forces and security services; head of the SS, and
Commander of the Training Army. Why not relinquish one of these posts,
Guderian suggested--say, the Army Group Vistula?

Himmler grasped at the proposal. It was all too true, he told
Guderian; his many jobs did, indeed, call for enormous endurance.
"But," Himmler asked, "how can I possibly suggest to the Fuhrer that I
give up Vistula?" Guderian quickly told Himmler that, given the
authorization, he would suggest it. Himmler quickly agreed. That
night, added Guderian, "Hitler relieved the overworked, overburdened
Reichsfuhrer, but only after a lot of grumbling and with obvious
reluctance."

Guderian paused, but only for a moment. His acrimonious recital of
disaster had been punctuated by bursts of anger. Now he flared again.
His voice choking with rage, he said: "The mess we're in is fantastic.
The way the war is being run is unbelievable. Unbelievable!"

Through the previous months, Guderian recalled, he had tried to get
Hitler to understand that "the real danger lay on the eastern front,"
and that "drastic measures were necessary." He urged a series of
strategic withdrawals from the Baltic States--particularly from
Courland in Latvia-- and from the Balkans, and even suggested
abandoning Norway and Italy. Everywhere lines needed shortening; each
division relieved could be sped to the Russian front. According to
intelligence, the Russians had twice as many divisions as the Western
Allies--yet there were fewer German divisions fighting in the east than
the west. Furthermore, the best German divisions were facing
Eisenhower. But Hitler refused to go on the defensive; he would not
believe the facts and figures that were placed before him.

Then, Guderian declared, "Hitler made possibly his greatest error." In
December, 1944, he unleashed his massive, last-throw-of-the-dice
offensive against the Western Allies through the rolling forests of the
Ardennes in Belgium and northern Luxembourg. The attack, Hitler
boasted, would split the Allies and change the whole course of the war.
Against the center of the Allied line he

hurled three fully equipped armies--a total of twenty divisions of
which twelve were armored. Their objective: to break through, reach
the Meuse, and then swing north to capture the vital supply port of
Antwerp. Caught off balance, the Allies reeled under the blow and fell
back with heavy losses. But the offensive soon petered out. Swiftly
recovering, Allied troops drove Hitler's shattered armies back behind
Germany's borders in just five weeks.

"When it became obvious that the offensive had failed," Guderian said,
"I begged Hitler to get our troops out of the Ardennes and put them on
the eastern front, where we expected the Russian offensive at any
moment. It was no use--he refused to believe our estimates of their
strength."

On January 9 Guderian told Hitler that the Russians could be expected
to launch their attack from the Baltic to the Balkans with a massive
force totaling some 225 divisions and 22 armored corps. The situation
estimate had been prepared by General Reinhard Gehlen, Guderian's Chief
of Intelligence. It indicated that the Russians would outnumber the
Germans in infantry by eleven to one, in armor by seven to one, in both
artillery and aircraft by at least twenty to one. Hitler pounded the
table and in a frenzy denounced the author of the report. "Who
prepared this rubbish?" he roared. "Whoever he is, he should be
committed to a lunatic asylum!" Three days later the Russians
attacked, and Gehlen was proved right.

"The front virtually collapsed," Guderian told Heinrici, "simply
because most of our panzer forces were tied down in the west. Finally
Hitler agreed to shift some of the armor, but he would not let me use
the tanks to attack the Russian spearheads east of Berlin. Where did
he send them? To Hungary, where they were thrown into a perfectly
useless attack to recapture the oilfields.

"Why, even now," he fumed, "there are eighteen divisions sitting in
Courland--tied down, doing nothing. They are needed here--not in the
Baltic States! If we're going to survive, everything has got to be on
the Oder front."

Guderian paused and, with an effort, calmed himself. Then he

said: "The Russians are looking down our throats. They've halted their
offensive to reorganize and regroup. We estimate that you'll have
three to four weeks--until the floods go down--to prepare. In that
time the Russians will try to establish new bridgeheads on the western
bank and broaden those they already have. These have to be thrown
back. No matter what happens elsewhere, the Russians must be stopped
on the Oder. It's our only hope."

Now Guderian called for maps. In the anteroom outside, one of the
aides peeled several from the top of the prepared pile, brought them
into the office and spread them on the map table before the two
Generals.

This was Heinrici's first look at the overall situation. More than one
third of Germany was gone-- swallowed by the advancing Allies from the
west and east. All that remained lay between two great water barriers:
on the west, the Rhine; on the east, the Oder and its linking river,
the Neisse. And Heinrici knew the great industrial areas of the Reich
that had not yet been captured were being bombed night and day.

In the west, Eisenhower's armies, as Heinrici had heard, were indeed on
the Rhine, Germany's great natural defense line. The Anglo-American
forces stretched for nearly five hundred miles along the western bank--
roughly from the North Sea to the Swiss border. At one point the Rhine
had even been breached. On March 7, the Americans had seized a bridge
at Remagen, south of Bonn, before it could be completely destroyed. Now
a bridgehead

twenty miles wide and five miles deep sprawled along the eastern bank.
Other crossings were expected momentarily.

In the east the Soviets had swarmed across eastern Europe and held a
front of more than eight hundred miles--from the Baltic to the
Adriatic. In Germany itself they stood along the Oder-Neisse river
lines all the way to the Czechoslovakian border. Now, Guderian told
Heinrici, they were feverishly preparing to resume their offensive.
Reconnaissance planes had spotted reinforcements pouring toward the
front. Every railhead was disgorging guns and equipment. Every road
was clogged with tanks, motor- and horse-drawn convoys, and marching
troops. What the Red Army's strength might be at the time of attack
nobody could even estimate, but three army groups had been identified
in Germany-- concentrated for the most part directly opposite Army
Group Vistula's positions.

Looking at the front he had inherited, Heinrici saw for the first time
what he would later describe as "the whole shocking truth."

On the map the thin wavering red line marking the Vistula's positions
ran for 175 miles--from the Baltic coast to the juncture of the Oder
and Neisse in Silesia, where it linked with the forces of Colonel
General Schorner. Most of the front lay on the western bank of the
Oder, but there were three major bridgeheads still on the eastern bank:
in the north, Stettin, the 13th-century capital of Pomerania; in the
south, the town of Kustrin and the old university city of
Frankfurt-on-Oder --both in the vital sector directly opposite
Berlin.

To prevent the Russians from capturing the capital and driving into the
very heart of Germany, he had only two armies, Heinrici discovered.
Holding the front's northern wing was the Third Panzer Army under the
command of the diminutive General Hasso von Manteuffel--after Guderian
and Rommel probably the greatest panzer tactician in the Wehrmacht. He
held positions extending about 95 miles--from north of Stettin to the
juncture of the Hohenzollern Canal and the Oder, roughly 28 miles
northeast of Berlin. Below that, to the confluence of the Neisse 80
miles

away, the defense was in the hands of the bespectacled 47-year-old
General Theodor Busse and his Ninth Army.

Depressed as he was by the overall picture, Heinrici was not unduly
surprised by the huge forces arrayed against him. On the eastern front
it was customary to fight without air cover, with a minimum of tanks,
and while outnumbered by at least nine or ten to one. But everything,
Heinrici knew, depended on the caliber of the troops. What alarmed him
now was the makeup of these two armies.

To the experienced Heinrici the name of a division and its commander
usually served as an indication of its history and fighting abilities.
Now, examining the map, he found that there were few regular divisions
in the east that he even recognized. Instead of the usual identifying
numbers, most of them had odd names such as "Gruppe Kassen,"
"Doberitz," "Nederland," "Kurmark," "Berlin" and "Muncheberg." Heinrici
wondered about the composition of these units. were they splinter
troops--the remnants of divisions simply thrown together? Guderian's
map did not give him a very clear picture. He would have to see for
himself, but he had a dawning suspicion that these were divisions in
name only. Heinrici did not comment on his suspicions, for Guderian
had other, more immediate problems to discuss--in particular,
Kustrin.

Heinrici's biggest army was Busse's Ninth, the defense shield directly
before Berlin. From the rash of red marks on the map it was clear that
Busse faced pressing problems. The Russians, Guderian said, were
concentrating opposite the Ninth Army. They were making a mighty
effort to wipe out the two German-held bridgeheads on the eastern banks
at Kustrin and in the area of Frankfurt. The situation at Kustrin was
the more dangerous.

In that sector during the preceding weeks, the Red Army had succeeded
in crossing the Oder several times and gaining footholds on the western
bank. Most of these attempts had been thrown back, but despite every
defense effort the Russians still held on around Kustrin. They had
secured sizable bridgeheads on either side of the town. Between these
pincer-like lodgments,

a single corridor remained, linking the defenders of Kustrin with the
Ninth Army. Once these pincers snapped shut, Kustrin would fall and
the linking of the two bridgeheads would provide the Russians with a
major springboard on the western bank for their drive on Berlin.

And now Guderian tossed Heinrici another bombshell. "Hitler," he said,
"has decided to launch an attack to wipe out the bridgehead south of
Kustrin, and General Busse has been preparing. I believe it's to take
place within forty-eight hours."

The plan, as Guderian outlined it, called for the attack to be launched
from Frankfurt, thirteen miles below Kustrin. Five Panzer Grenadier
divisions were to cross the river into the German bridgehead and from
there attack along the eastern bank and hit the Russian bridgehead
south of Kustrin from the rear.

Heinrici studied the map. Frankfurt-on-Oder straddles the river, with
its greatest bulk on the western bank. A single bridge connects the
two sections of the city. To the new commander of the Army Group
Vistula two facts were starkly clear: the hilly terrain on the eastern
bank offered ideal conditions for Russian artillery--from the heights
they could stop the Germans dead in their tracks. But worse, the
bridgehead across the river was too small for the assembly of five
motorized divisions.

For a long moment Heinrici pored over the map. There was no doubt in
his mind that the assembling German divisions would be instantly
detected, and first pulverized by artillery, then hit by planes.
Looking at Guderian, he said simply, "It's quite impossible."

Guderian agreed. Angrily he told Heinrici that the only way the
divisions could assemble was "to roll over the bridge, one after the
other--making a column of men and tanks about fifteen miles long." But
Hitler had insisted on the attack. "It will succeed," he had told
Guderian, "because the Russians won't expect such a daring and
unorthodox operation."

Heinrici, still examining the map, saw that the sector between Kustrin
and Frankfurt was jammed with Russian troops. Even if

the attack could be launched from the bridgehead, the Russians were so
strong that the German divisions would never reach Kustrin. Solemnly
Heinrici warned: "Our troops will be pinned with their backs to the
Oder. It will be a disaster."

Guderian made no comment--there was nothing to say. Suddenly he
glanced at his watch, and said irritably, "Oh, God, I've got to get
back to Berlin for the Fuhrer's conference at three." The mere thought
of it set off another furious outburst. "It's impossible to work,"
Guderian spluttered. "Twice a day I stand for hours listening to that
group around Hitler talking nonsense--discussing nothing! I can't get
anything done! I spend all of my time either on the road or in Berlin
listening to drivel!"

Guderian's rage was so violent that it alarmed Heinrici. The Chief of
Staff's face had turned beet red, and for a moment Heinrici feared
Guderian would drop dead on the spot from a heart attack. There was an
anxious silence as Guderian fought for control. Then he said: "Hitler
is going to discuss the Kustrin attack. Perhaps you'd better come with
me."

Heinrici declined. "If I'm supposed to launch this insane attack the
day after tomorrow," he said, "I'd better get to my headquarters as
soon as possible." Then stubbornly he added: "Hitler can wait a few
days to see me."

In the anteroom, Heinrich von Bila was timing the meeting by the
diminishing pile of maps and charts as they were taken into Guderian's
office. There were only one or two left, so the briefing, he thought,
must be almost over. He wandered over to the table and looked idly at
the top map. It showed the whole of Germany but the lines on it seemed
somehow different. Von Bila was about to turn away when something
caught his eye. He looked closer. The map was different from all the
others. It was the lettering that now caught his attention-- it was in
English. He bent down and began to study it carefully.

It was almost six when the weary Heinrici reached his headquarters at
Birkenhain, near Prenzlaucom. During the two-and-a-half-hour drive
from Zossen, he had remained silent. At one point Von Bila tried to
open a conversation by asking the General if he had seen the map. Von
Bila assumed that Guderian had shown a separate copy to Heinrici and
explained its contents. Heinrici, in fact, knew nothing about it, and
Von Bila got no answer. The General simply sat tight-lipped and
worried. Von Bila had never seen him so dejected.

Heinrici's first glimpse of his new headquarters depressed him even
more. The Army Group Vistula command post consisted of a large,
imposing mansion flanked on either side by wooden barracks. The main
building was an architectural monstrosity--a massive, ornate affair
with a row of oversized columns along its front. Years before, Himmler
had built the place as his own personal refuge. On a nearby siding
stood his luxuriously appointed private train, the "Steiermark."

Like Zossen, this headquarters was hidden in the woods, but there the
comparison ended. There was none of the military bustle Heinrici had
come to expect of an active army group headquarters. Except for an SS
corporal in the foyer of the main building, the place seemed deserted.
The corporal asked their names, ushered them to a hard bench and
disappeared.

Some minutes passed, then a tall, immaculately dressed SS lieutenant
general appeared. He introduced himself as Himm- ler's Chief of Staff,
Heinz Lammerding, and smoothly explained that the Reichsftuhrer was
"engaged in a most important discussion" and "could not be disturbed
right now." Polite but cool, Lammerding did not invite Heinrici to
wait in his office, nor did he make any of the usual gestures of
hospitality. Turning on his heel, he left Heinrici and Von Bila to
wait in the foyer. In all his years as a senior officer Heinrici had
never been treated in such a cavalier fashion.

He waited patiently for fifteen minutes, then spoke quietly to Von
Bila. "Go tell that Lammerding," he said, "that I have no intention of
sitting out here one minute longer. I demand to see Himmler
immediately." Seconds later Heinrici was escorted down a corridor and
into Himmler's office.

Himmler was standing by the side of his desk. He was of medium build,
his torso longer than his legs--which one of Heinrici's staff remembers
as being like "the hind legs of a bull." He had a narrow face, a
receding chin, squinting eyes behind plain wire spectacles, a small
moustache and a thin mouth. His hands were small, soft and effeminate,
the fingers long. Heinrici noted the texture of his skin, which was
"pale, sagging and somewhat spongy."

Himmler came forward, exchanged greetings, and immediately launched
into a long explanation. "You must understand," he said, taking
Heinrici's arm, "that it is a most difficult decision for me to leave
the Army Group Vistula." Still talking, he showed Heinrici to a chair.
"But as you must know, I have so many posts, so much work to do--and
also, I'm not in very good health."

Seating himself behind the desk, Himmler leaned back and said: "Now,
I'm going to tell you all that has happened. I've asked for all the
maps, all the reports." Two SS men came into the room; one was a
stenographer, the other carried a large stack of maps. Behind them
came two staff officers. Heinrici was happy to see that the officers
wore Wehrmacht, not SS, uniforms. One of them was Lieutenant General
Eberhard Kinzel, the Deputy Chief of Staff; the other, Colonel Hans
Georg Eismann, the Chief of Operations. Heinrici was particularly glad
to see Eismann, whom he knew as an exceptionally efficient staff
officer. Lammerding was not present.

Himmler waited until all had taken seats. Then he launched into a
dramatic speech of personal justification. It seemed afterward to
Heinrici that "he began with Adam and Eve," and then went into such
laborious explanatory details that "nothing he said made sense."

Both Kinzel and Eismann knew that Himmler could talk like this for
hours. Kinzel after a few minutes took his leave because of "pressing
business." Eismann sat watching Himmler and Heinrici, mentally
comparing them. He saw Heinrici, a "persevering, graying old soldier
--a serious, silent, taut little man for whom courtesy was a thing
taken for granted," being subjected to the flamboyant ranting of an
unsoldierly upstart "who could not read the scale on a map. Looking at
the wildly gesturing Himmler repeating over and over the most
unimportant facts in a theatrical tirade," he knew that Heinrici must
be both shocked and disgusted.

Eismann waited as long as he could, then he, too, asked to be excused
because "there was much to do." A few minutes later, Heinrici noticed
that the stenographer, unable to keep abreast of Himmler's verbal
torrent, had put down his pencil. Heinrici, bored beyond belief, sat
silently, letting the words flow over him.

Suddenly the phone on Himmler's desk rang. Himmler picked it up and
listened for a moment. He looked startled. He handed the phone to
Heinrici. "You're the new commander," he said. "You'd better take
this call."

Heinrici picked up the phone. He said: "Heinrici here, who is this?"

It was General Busse, commander of the Ninth Army. Heinrici froze as
he listened. Disaster had already befallen his new command. The
Russians had spotted Busse's preparations for the Kustrin attack. The
25th Panzer Division, one of Busse's best, which for months had held
the corridor open between the Russian bridgeheads on either side of
Kustrin, had been quietly pulling

out of its positions in preparation for the offensive. Another
division, the 20th Panzer, had been moving into the 25th's positions.
The Russians had seen the exchange and attacked from the north and
south. The pincers had snapped shut, just as Guderian had feared. The
20th Panzer Division was cut off, Kustrin was isolated-- and the
Russians now had a major bridgehead for the assault on Berlin.

Heinrici cupped the phone and grimly told Himmler the news. The
Reichsfuhrer looked nervous and shrugged his shoulders. "Well," he
said, "you are commander of Army Group Vistula."

Heinrici stared. "Now look here," he said sharply. "I don't know a
damn thing about the army group. I don't even know what soldiers I
have, or who's supposed to be where."

Himmler looked blankly at Heinrici and Heinrici saw that he could
expect no help. He turned back to the phone and immediately authorized
Busse to counterattack, at the same time promising the Ninth Army
commander that he would get to the front as soon as possible. As he
replaced the receiver, Himmler began his rambling discourse again as
though nothing had happened.

But Heinrici was now thoroughly exasperated. Bluntly he interrupted.
It was necessary, he told Himmler, that he get the Reichsfuhrer's
considered opinion of the overall situation as far as Germany and her
future were concerned. The question, he later remembered, "was visibly
disagreeable" to Himmler. The Reichsfuhrer rose from his chair, came
around the desk and, taking Heinrici's arm, ushered him across to a
sofa on the far side of the room, out of earshot of the stenographer.
Then in a quiet voice Himmler dropped a bombshell. "Through a neutral
country," he confided, "I have taken the necessary steps to start
negotiations with the West." He paused, and added: "I'm telling you
this in absolute confidence, you understand."

There was a long silence. Himmler looked at Heinrici
expectantly--presumably awaiting some comment. Heinrici was stunned.
This was treason--betrayal of Germany, its armies and its leaders. He
struggled to control his thoughts. Was Himmler telling the

truth? Or was it a ruse to trick him into an indiscretion? The
ambitious Himmler, Heinrici believed, was capable of anything--even of
treason in order to grab power for himself. The experienced front-line
General sat speechless, revolted by Himmler's very presence.

Suddenly the door opened and an SS officer appeared. Himmler seemed
relieved at the interruption. "Herr Reichsfuhrer," the officer
announced, "the staff has assembled to say good-bye." Himmler rose
and, without uttering another word, left the room.

By 8 P.m. Himmler, his SS officers and bodyguard were gone. They took
everything with them, including, as Balzen, Heinrici's batman, soon
discovered, the mansion's flatware, plates, even cups and saucers.
Their departure was so complete that it was almost as though Himmler
had never set foot inside the headquarters. Aboard his luxurious
private train, Himmler headed swiftly into the night away from the Oder
front, toward the west.

Behind him he left a furious Heinrici. The new commander's anger and
disgust mounted as he looked about his headquarters; one of his
officers remembers that "Heinrici's temper rose several degrees" as he
examined the effeminate decor of Himmler's mansion. The enormous
office and everything in it was white. The bedroom was decorated in
soft green--drapes, carpeting, upholstery, even the quilts and
coverlets. Heinrici acidly remarked that the place was more
"appropriate for an elegant woman than a soldier trying to direct an
army."

Later that night Heinrici telephoned his former Chief of Staff in
Silesia, as he had promised, and told him what had occurred. He had
regained control of his emotions, and could think of the encounter more
coolly. Himmler's disclosures, he had decided, were too fantastic to
believe. Heinrici decided to forget about it. On the phone to his old
colleague in Silesia, Heinrici said, "Himmler was only too happy to
leave. He couldn't get out of here fast enough. He didn't want to be
in charge when the collapse comes. No. He wanted just a simple
general for that--and I'm the goat."

In the room assigned him, Heinrici's aide, Captain Heinrich von Bila,
paced restlessly up and down. He was unable to get his mind off the
map he had seen at Guderian's headquarters at Zossen. It was odd, he
thought, that no one had objected when he studied it--yet the map was
obviously a confidential command document. Guderian must have shown it
to him, but Heinrici had made no comment. Was it possible therefore
that the map was less important than he believed? Maybe it had even
been prepared at Guderian's headquarters --as a German estimate of
Allied intentions. Still, Von Bila found that hard to accept--why
print it in English, not German? There was only one other explanation:
that it was an Allied map, captured somehow by German Intelligence.
Where else could it have come from? If this was true--and Von Bila
could think of no other answer--then somehow he had to warn his wife
and three children. According to that map, if Germany was defeated,
his home in Bernberg would lie in the zone controlled by the Russians.
For unless Von Bila was imagining things, he had actually seen a
top-secret plan showing how the Allies proposed to occupy and partition
Germany.

5

Fifty miles away, the original of the map and its supporting papers lay
in a safe at Auf dem Grat 1, Dahlem, Berlin--the emergency headquarters
of Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations of OKW (armed
Forces High Command). And of all the fantastic secrets that had come
into the hands of German Intelligence during the war, this red-covered
dossier was the most brutally revealing document Jodl had ever read.

The file contained a letter and a seventy-page background memorandum;
stitched into the back cover were two pull-out maps, each approximately
twenty by eighteen inches and drawn to a scale of one inch to
twenty-nine miles. Jodl wondered if the Allies had yet discovered that
a copy of the preamble to one of their top-secret war directives was
missing. It had been captured from the British in late January, in the
closing days of the Ardennes offensive.

The Allied plan was considered so explosive by Hitler that only a few
at OKW headquarters were permitted to see it. In the first week of
February, the Fuhrer, after spending one entire evening studying the
dossier, classified the papers as "State Top Secret." His military
advisers and their staffs could study the plan, but no one else. Not
even the members of his own cabinet were informed. But, despite these
restrictions, one civilian saw the documents and maps: Frau Luise Jodl,
the General's bride of only a few weeks.

One evening, just before their marriage, General Jodl decided to show
the papers to his fiancee. She was, after all, the recipient of many
military secrets: she had been a confidential secretary to the German
High Command. Placing the entire file in his briefcase, General Jodl
took it to her apartment, a block away from his headquarters. Almost
as soon as the front door was safely closed behind him, he produced the
papers and said to his fiancee: "That's what the Allies intend to do
with Germany."

Luise took the red-covered file over to a table and began looking
through the pages. She had long ago learned to read military documents
and maps, but in this instance that ability was hardly necessary--the
papers were crystal clear. Her heart sank. What she held in her hands
was the Allied blueprint for the occupation of the Fatherland after
Germany's defeat. Someone at Eisenhower's headquarters, she thought,
had a vindictive bent in choosing code words. Across the cover of the
file was the chilling title, "Operation Eclipse."

Taking the dossier from her, General Jodl unfolded the maps and spread
them flat on the table. "Look," he said bitterly, "look at the
frontiers."

In silence Luise studied the heavy boundary lines drawn across the face
of the map. The north and northwest area bore the inch-high initials
"U.k." The southern, Bavarian zone carried the letters "U.s.a.," and
the remainder of the Reich, roughly the entire central region and from
there due east, was labeled "U.s.s.r." Even Berlin, she noted with
dismay, was sliced up among the "Big Three." Lying in the center of
the Russian zone, it was circled separately and trisected among the
Allies: the Americans had the south; the British part of the north and
all of the northwest; and the Soviets the northeast and east. So this
was to be the price of defeat, she thought. Luise looked at her future
husband. "It's like a nightmare," she said.

Even though she knew the map must be genuine, Luise found the evidence
difficult to accept. Where, she asked, had the Eclipse file come from?
Although she had known General Jodl for years, she knew that about some
things he could be very closemouthed. She had always thought Alfred
"withdrawn, hiding behind a mask, even from me." Now his answer was
evasive. Although confirming that the maps and documents were genuine,
he did not reveal how they were obtained, except to remark that "we got
them from a British headquarters."

It was only much later, after Jodl had returned to his headquarters,
that another fearful aspect of Operation Eclipse occurred to Luise. If
Germany was defeated, her relatives in the Harz Mountains would be
living in the Russian-occupied zone. Although she loved Alfred Jodl
and was completely loyal to her country, Luise made a very human
decision. On this occasion she would disregard his warnings never to
reveal anything she saw, read or heard. She could not allow her
sister-in-law and four small children to fall into Russian hands.

Luise decided to take a chance. She knew the General's priority
telephone code number. Picking up the phone, she spoke to the

operator and called her relatives. Within minutes she got through.
After a brief and innocuous conversation with her surprised
sister-in-law, Luise casually remarked in closing, "You know the east
wind is very strong these days. I really think you and the children
should move west beyond the river."

Slowly she put down the receiver--hoping that her clumsily coded
message had been understood. At the other end of the line, her
sister-in-law heard the click as the receiver was replaced. She
wondered why Luise had called so late at night. It was good to hear
from her, but she had no idea what Luise was talking about. She
thought no more about it.

The General and Luise were married on March 6. Since then Frau Jodl had
worried that somehow her husband might find out about the call. She
need not have been concerned. The overburdened General had more
pressing problems.

By now Jodl and his staff officers had studied and analyzed Operation
Eclipse so thoroughly that they knew every paragraph almost by heart.
Although it was not a strategic document--that is, it did not warn of
imminent enemy moves that called for corresponding German
countermoves--the Eclipse plan was almost as important. For one thing,
it helped answer a series of questions that had bedeviled Jodl and the
OKW for years: How strong, they had wondered, was the alliance between
the Western Powers and the Soviet Union? Would it fall asunder when
they sat down to divide the spoils? Now that Russian forces held most
of Central Europe, did the "unconditional surrender" declaration made
by Churchill and Roosevelt after the 1943 Casablanca Conference still
stand? And did the Allies seriously intend to impose such terms on a
defeated Germany? As Jodl and the German High Command studied the
Eclipse file, all such questions about Allied intentions disappeared.
The Allied document spelled out the answers in unmistakable terms.

Not until the second week in February, however, did Jodl realize the
full importance of the file--in particular, of its maps. On February 9
and for the next three days, Roosevelt, Churchill and

Stalin met in secret conclave at Yalta. In spite of intelligence
efforts to find out exactly what had transpired at the meeting, about
all Jodl learned was contained in the official communique issued to the
world's press on February 12--2 that was enough. Vague and guarded as
the announcement was, it left no doubt that the Eclipse papers and maps
were the key to the announced Allied intentions.

One paragraph in the official communique stated: "We have agreed on
common policies and plans for enforcing the unconditional surrender
terms which we shall impose together ... These terms will not be made
known until the final defeat of Germany. ... Under the agreed plan,
the forces of the Three Powers will each occupy a separate zone of
Germany. ..." It was not necessary for the Allies to state the
"terms"--Jodl had already read them in the Eclipse file. And though
the Yalta communique did not reveal the proposed zones of occupation,
Jodl knew them, too. The position and precise boundaries of each zone
were shown on the Eclipse maps.

There were many other conclusions that could be deduced, but one was
particularly bitter for Jodl. It was clear that whatever else had
occurred at Yalta, the Allied plans for Germany had been merely
ratified at the meeting of the Big Three. While the Yalta communique
gave the impression that the partitioning and occupation blueprint had
originated at the meeting, the dates on the Eclipse documents and maps
proved beyond doubt that the basic decisions had been reached months
before. The covering letter attached to the Eclipse background
memorandum was signed in January. The maps had been prepared before
that: they had been printed in late '44 and carried a November date.
Plainly, Operation Eclipse, which was defined as "planning and
operations for the occupation of Germany," could never have been
produced at all unless there was complete unity among the Allies-- a
sobering fact that withered one of Germany's last hopes.

From the moment the Red Army crossed the Reich's eastern frontiers,
Hitler and his military advisers had waited for the first

cracks of disunity to appear among the Allies. It would surely happen,
they believed, because the West would never allow Soviet Russia to
dominate Central Europe. Jodl shared these views. He was banking
especially on the British, for he felt that they would never tolerate
such a situation. * But that was before he set eyes on Operation
Eclipse. Eclipse indicated clearly that the alliance was still intact
and Yalta had confirmed it. * At his conference on January 27, 1945,
Hitler asked Goering and Jodl: "Do you think that deep down inside, the
English are enthusiastic over all the Russian developments?" Jodl
answered without hesitation. "Certainly not," he replied. "Their
plans were quite different ... later ... the full realization will
come." Goering was also confident. "They certainly didn't plan that
we hold them off while the Russians conquer all of Germany," he said.
"They had not counted on us ... holding them off in the West like mad
men, while the Russians drive deeper and deeper into Germany." Jodl
fully agreed, pointing out that the British "have always regarded the
Russians with suspicion." Goering was so certain that the British
would attempt some sort of compromise with the Reich, rather than see
the heart of Europe fall into the Communist orbit, that he said: "If
this goes on we will get a telegram [from the British] in a few
days."

Beyond that, the very first paragraph of the covering letter-- a
foreword to the entire file--showed the complete agreement among the
Allies. It read: "In order to carry out the surrender terms imposed on
Germany, the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union and the
United Kingdom (the latter also in the name of the Dominions) have
agreed that Germany is to be occupied by the Armed Forces of the three
powers." * And there was no disputing the authority of the letter. It
had been signed in January, 1945, at the British Twenty-first Army
Group Headquarters, then in Belgium, by no less a personage than Major
General Sir Francis de Guingand, Field Marshal Montgomery's Chief of
Staff. * There may be some slight variations between this translation
and the original document. When Eclipse was captured, it was
translated into German and then photographed. The version given above
is a translation of the captured document back into English.

The most crushing blow of all for Jodl was the repeated emphasis on
unconditional surrender; it was mentioned again and again. From the
beginning the Germans had felt sure the unconditional surrender
declaration had been intended much as morale-building propaganda for
the Allied home fronts. Now they knew better:

the Allies had obviously meant every word of it. "The only possible
answer to the trumpets of total war," Eclipse said, "is total defeat
and total occupation. ... It must be made clear that the Germans will
not be able to negotiate in our sense of that word."

The Allied intent promised no hope, no future for Germany. It was
clear that even if the Reich wished to capitulate, there was no way she
could do so short of unconditional surrender. To Jodl, this meant that
there was nothing left for Germany but to fight to the bitter end. * *
At Jodl's trial in Nuremberg in 1946, he was asked why he had not
advised Hitler to capitulate early in 1945. Jodl said: "The reasons
against it were primarily ... unconditional surrender ... and even if
we had any doubt as to what faced us, it was completely removed by the
fact that we captured the English Eclipse." At this point in his
testimony, Jodl looked at the British officers present and said with a
half-smile, "The gentlemen of the British delegation will know what
that is." The fact is that the remark was lost on the Britishers at
the trial: Eclipse had been kept so secret that they knew nothing about
it. It was this mysterious reference, plus several interviews with
Frau Jodl, that led the author to Operation Eclipse and its contents,
revealed here for the first time.

It was during the last week of March--the exact day no one could later
remember--that General Reinhard Gehlen, Guderian's Chief of
Intelligence, drove to Prenzlau for a meeting with the new commander of
Army Group Vistula. In his briefcase was a copy of Operation Eclipse.
Gehlen outlined for Heinrici the latest known dispositions of the
Russian troops on the Oder, then he produced the Eclipse file and
explained what it was. Heinrici slowly looked through the pages. Then
he pored over the maps. For a long time he studied them. Finally,
Heinrici looked at Gehlen and in one line summarized what everyone in
the High Command really knew the document to mean. "Das ist ein
Todesurteil"--This is a death sentence--he said.

A few days later--on Palm Sunday, March 25--Colonel General Jodl
examined the Eclipse maps again. He had good reason to do so. Units
of General George S. Patton's U.s. Third Army had crossed the Rhine on
Thursday night at the farming village of Oppenheim, near Mainz, and
were now heading for Frankfurt. The following day, in the north, Field
Marshal Montgomery's forces swept across the river in a massive assault
on a 25-mile front. Despite everything, the Rhine line was crumbling
--and the Western Allies were driving fast. Now Jodl, anxiously
re-examining the Eclipse maps, wondered how deeply the Allies intended
to drive into Germany. That was one question the Eclipse background
memorandum did not answer. Jodl wished he had the other sections of
the plan-- particularly the part covering military operations.

Still, the maps provided a clue. He had even mentioned the matter to
his wife. It was only a hunch, but Jodl thought he was right. The
maps showed that the line of demarcation between the Anglo-Americans
and the Russians ran roughly along the river Elbe from Lubeck to
Wittenberge, and from there coiled south to the vicinity of Eisenach,
then swung due east to the Czech border. Was that line, besides being
a zonal boundary, also the terminating point of the Anglo-American
advance? Jodl was nearly certain that it was. He told his wife he did
not think the Americans and British were driving for Berlin; he
believed they had decided to leave the capture of the capital to the
Red Army. Unless the Eclipse maps had been changed, it looked to Jodl
as though Eisenhower's forces would grind to a halt on the Eclipse
boundary line.

Part Three THE OBJECTIVE

A little before midnight on Palm Sunday, an American staff car pulled
up outside the gray stone headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division in
Sissonne, northern France. Two officers got out. One was in American
uniform, the other was dressed in British battle dress without
insignia. The second man, tall and lanky, wore a neat green beret and,
in vivid contrast to his blond hair, sported a large, fierce-looking
red moustache. To the British and Americans his name was almost
unpronounceable: Arie D. Bestebreurtje. He was widely known among them
as "Arie," or "Captain Harry." Even those names changed from mission
to mission, for he spent most of his time behind German lines. Arie
was a Special Forces Agent and a member of the Dutch Intelligence
Service.

A few days before, Arie had been called to Brussels by his superiors
and told that he was being assigned to the 82nd Division for a special
operation. He was to report to the youthful 38-year-old Major General
James M. Gavin, 82nd Division commander, to take part in a top-secret
briefing. Now, Arie and his escorting officer entered the
headquarters, hurried up a flight of stairs to the second floor and
down a corridor to a well-guarded map room. Here, their credentials
were checked by a military policeman who then saluted and opened the
door.

Inside, Arie was warmly greeted by General Gavin and his Chief of
Staff, Colonel Robert Wienecke. Most of the men in the room,

Arie saw, were old friends: he had jumped and fought with them during
the 82nd's assault on Nijmegen, Holland. His superiors in Brussels had
not exaggerated the security measures he could expect. There were only
fifteen officers present--regimental commanders and certain members of
their staffs, all clearly hand-picked. The room itself was quite
plain. There were a few benches and tables, some charts on the walls.
At one end of the room a curtain covered a large, wall-sized map.

Each man's name was now called out by a security officer who checked it
off against a roster; then General Gavin quickly opened the
proceedings. Standing by the curtained map, he motioned everyone to
gather around. "Only those of you with an absolute reason to know have
been asked to this briefing," he began, "and I must emphasize that,
until further orders, nothing you hear tonight is to go beyond this
room. In a way, you will be training your men in the dark, for you
will not be able to reveal to them the objective. Actually, you've
already been giving them part of their training, although most of you
were completely unaware of it. Over the last few weeks you and your
men have been jumping or flying onto a specific training area
deliberately marked and laid out to simulate the actual dimensions of
our next assault target.

"Gentlemen, we're going in for the kill. This is the Sunday punch." He
yanked the cords at the side of the map. The curtains slid back,
revealing the target: Berlin.

Arie looked closely at the faces of the officers as they stared at the
map. He thought he saw eagerness and anticipation. It did not
surprise him. These commanders had been frustrated for months. Most
of them had jumped with their units into Sicily, Italy, Normandy and
Holland, but lately the division had been relegated to ground actions,
mainly in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. Arie knew that
as crack airborne troops they felt they had been denied their true
role: assaulting objectives in front of the advancing armies and then
holding on until relieved. The truth was that the Allied advance had
been so fast that planned parachute drops had been canceled again and
again.

The assault on Berlin, Gavin explained, would be part of a First Allied
Airborne Army operation calling for units from three divisions. The
82nd, designated "Task Force A," was to have the major role. Unrolling
a transparent overlay from the top of the map, Gavin pointed to a
series of squares and ovals marked in black grease pencil that outlined
the various objectives and drop zones. "As plans now stand," he said,
"the 101/ Airborne Division will grab Gatow Airfield, west of the city.
A brigade from the British 1/ Airborne Corps is to seize Oranienburg
Airfield to the northwest." He paused and then continued. "Our piece
of real estate is right in Berlin itself--Tempelhof Airport."

The 82nd's target seemed incredibly small. In the sprawling 321 square
miles of the city and its environs, the airport looked like a postage
stamp--a smudge of green barely one and a half miles square, lying in a
heavily built-up area. On its north, east and southern fringes there
were, rather ominously, no less than nine cemeteries. "Two regiments
will hold the perimeters," Gavin said, "and the third will move into
the buildings north of the field, toward the center of Berlin. We'll
hang on to this airhead until the ground forces get to us. That should
not be long--not more than a few days at the most."

"Blind" training of the paratroopers, Gavin said, was to be
intensified. Terrain models of Tempelhof and the surrounding areas
would be set up in a "secure" room of the headquarters; photographic
coverage of the drop zone, intelligence appreciations and other
materials would be made available to the regimental commanders and
their staffs for specific planning. "We are also lucky," said Gavin,
"to have the services of Captain Harry. He is an expert on
Berlin--particularly on Tempelhof and the surrounding region. He will
be jumping with us and from now on will be available for briefings and
to answer all your questions."

Gavin paused again and looked at his officers. "I'm sure all of you
want to know the answer to the big question: how soon? That's up to
the Germans. The airborne plan has been in the works since last
November. There have been constant changes and

we must expect many more before we get a target date. "A-Day," as that
day has been designated, will depend on the speed of the Allied advance
toward Berlin. Certainly the drop won't be scheduled until the ground
forces are within a reasonable distance of the city. But A-Day may
only be a matter of two or three weeks away. So we don't have much
time. That's all I can tell you now."

Gavin stepped back and turned the meeting over to his staff officers.
One after the other they went into each phase of the operation, and as
they talked Gavin sat half listening. As he later recalled, he
regretted the fact that security had prevented him from revealing the
details fully. He had been less than candid, for he had told his men
only one part of the First Allied Airborne operation--the operational
section calling for the assault in conjunction with the Allied drive to
capture Berlin. What he had not mentioned was that the same airborne
drop might be ordered under a different military condition: the sudden
collapse or surrender of Germany and her armed forces. But that part
of the plan was still top secret. It was the logical extension to
Operation Overlord--the invasion of Europe--and for a time had been
known as Operation Rankin, Case C, and later as Operation Talisman.
That last title had been changed in November, 1944, for security
reasons. Now it bore the code name Operation Eclipse.

Eclipse was so secret that, apart from high-ranking staff officers at
Supreme Headquarters, only a score of generals had been permitted to
study it. They were army or corps commanders or those in the other
services with equivalent responsibilities. Few division commanders
knew anything about Eclipse. Gavin had learned only some of the plan's
objectives and those parts of it that specifically concerned him and
his division.

During the previous months, at numerous conferences attended by General
Lewis H. Brereton, Commander the First Allied Airborne Army, and
Gavin's immediate superior, Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, Commander
of the 18th Corps, Eclipse had been referred to as the occupation plan
for Germany. It detailed the operational moves which would immediately
take place in the

event of a German surrender or collapse. Its main objectives were the
enforcement of unconditional surrender and the disarmament and control
of all German forces.

Under Eclipse conditions the airborne assault plan on Berlin called for
the paratroopers to move swiftly to "gain control over the enemy's
capital and foremost administrative and transportation center ... and
display our armed strength." They were to subdue any remaining pockets
of fanatics who might continue to resist; rescue and care for prisoners
of war; seize top-secret documents, files and films before they could
be destroyed; control information centers such as postal and
telecommunications offices, radio stations, newspaper and printing
plants; capture war criminals and surviving principals of the
government, and establish law and order. The airborne troops were to
initiate all these moves pending the arrival of land forces and
military government teams.

That was as much as Gavin had been told about Operation Eclipse. As to
what the plan contained regarding the manner in which Germany or Berlin
was to be occupied or zoned after the defeat, he had no knowledge.
Right now Gavin's only concern was to prepare the 82nd. But as a
result of all the requirements, this meant the preparation of two
distinct plans. The first was the operational assault to capture the
city. The second, as conceived under Eclipse conditions, called for
airborne units to drop on Berlin as an advance guard, but charged with
a police action only. Gavin had told his commanders all he dared
--even though he knew that if the war were to end suddenly the entire
airborne mission would change dramatically. As things stood his orders
were explicit. He was to follow the operational plan and get the 82nd
ready for an airborne assault to capture Berlin.

Gavin was suddenly aware that the Dutch intelligence officer was
concluding his part of the briefing. "I must repeat that if you are
expecting help from anyone in Berlin, forget it," Captain Harry was
saying. "Will you find guides willing to help? Answer: No. Is there
an underground such as we had in France and Holland? Answer: No. Even
if some Berliners are privately sympathetic, they will be too
frightened to show it. We can discuss all these matters in greater
detail later, but right now let me assure you of this: do not have any
illusions that you will be greeted as liberators with champagne and
roses. The army, the SS and the police will fight until the last
bullet, and then they will come out with their hands in the air, tell
you that the whole thing was really a dreadful mistake, that it was all
Hitler's fault and thank you for getting to the city before the
Russians."

The big Dutchman tugged at his moustache. "But they are going to fight
like blazes," he said, "and it may be a bit sticky for a time. It will
be worth it and I'm proud to be going with you. My friends, when we
take Berlin, the war is over."

Taking Berlin would not be easy, Gavin knew, but he thought that the
psychological shock of the assault might in itself overwhelm the German
defenders. It would be one of the war's biggest airborne attacks. In
the initial planning, the operation called for 3,000 protective
fighters, 1,500 transport planes, probably more than 1,000 gliders and
some 20,000 paratroopers--more than had been dropped in Normandy on
D-Day. "All we need now," Gavin told his officers as the meeting broke
up, "is a decision and the word "Go.""

Thirty miles away, at Mourmelon-le-Grand, the tough 101/ Airborne
Division was also in training and stood ready for any operation, but
nobody in the 101/ knew which one would be ordered. So many paratroop
assault plans had "come down the pipe" from higher headquarters that
the commander, Major General Maxwell D. Taylor, his assistant,
Brigadier General Gerald J. Higgins, and the staff found themselves in
a quandary. They had to prepare for all of them, but they seriously
wondered if any of the projected drops would ever take place.

Besides the Berlin project there were plans for an airborne attack on
the German naval base at Kiel (operation Eruption); for

a series of drops on prisoner-of-war camps (operation Jubilant); and
for an assault to seize objectives ahead of the U.s. Seventh Army as it
drove toward the Black Forest (operation Effective). Many others were
under study--and some were quite fantastic. The 101/ headquarters had
learned that the staff of the First Allied Airborne Army was even
considering a jump on the mountains around Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria,
to seize the Eagle's Nest on the Obersalzberg and perhaps its owner,
Adolf Hitler.

Obviously not all the drops could be scheduled. As General Higgins
told the staff: "There just aren't that many transport planes to
accommodate the airborne demands if all these operations are ordered.
Anyway, we're not greedy--all we want is one!" But which operation
would the airborne army get--and, in particular, what would be the role
of the 101/? The Berlin drop seemed the most likely--even though the
operations chief, Colonel Harry Kinnard, thought it would be "quite a
hairy bit of business." Everyone was bitter that in the event of a
Berlin drop the men of the 101/ had drawn Gatow Airfield, while their
arch rivals, the 82nd, had been given the primary objective, Tempelhof.
Still, Berlin was the biggest target of the war; there was enough for
everyone.

To Colonel Kinnard an airborne drop seemed the perfect way to end the
war in Europe. On the war room map he had even drawn a red line from
the staging areas in France to the 101/'s drop zones in Berlin: the
German capital was only 475 air miles away. If they got the green
light he thought the first Americans could be in Berlin in just about
five hours.

General Taylor, the 101/'s Commander, and his assistant, General
Higgins, while eager for the attack, wondered if the airborne would
even get the chance. Higgins morosely studied the map. "The way the
ground forces are moving," he said, "they're going to put us out of
business."

On this same day, Sunday, March 25, the military leaders of the Western
Allies received gratifying news from Supreme Headquarters of the Allied
Expeditionary Force (Shaef). In Washington and London, General George
C. Marshall, U.s. Chief of Staff, and Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke,
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, studied a cable from General
Dwight D. Eisenhower that had arrived the night before. "The recent
series of victories west of the Rhine has resulted as planned in the
destruction of a large proportion of available enemy forces on the
Western Front. While not desiring to appear over-optimistic it is my
conviction that the situation today presents opportunities for which we
have struggled and which must be seized boldly. ... It is my personal
belief that the enemy strength ... is becoming so stretched that
penetrations and advances will soon be limited only by our maintenance.
... I am directing the most vigorous actions on all fronts ... I
intend to reinforce every success with utmost speed."

From 800 feet up, the lines of men and vehicles seemed endless. Peering
out of his unarmed Piper Cub, the scouting plane Miss Me, Lieutenant
Duane Francies gazed down fascinated at the spectacle below. The
landscape swarmed with troops, tanks and vehicles. Ever since late
March, when the last of the armies crossed the Rhine, Francies had
watched the breakout develop. Now the great river was far behind, and
off to the right and left and stretching ahead as far as Francies could
see was a vast khaki panorama.

Francies pushed the stick forward and Miss Me swooped down along the
boundary of the British Second and U.s. Ninth armies.

He waggled the wings, saw the answering waves of the troops, and headed
due east to take up his task as the "eyes" of the leading tank columns
of the 5th Armored Division. Victory was near, of that he was sure.
Nothing could stop this advance. It seemed to the 24-year-old pilot,
he later recalled, that "the very crust of the earth itself had shaken
loose and was rushing like hell for the Elbe," the last major water
barrier before Berlin.

What Francies saw was only a minuscule part of the great Allied
assault. For days now, in biting cold, in driving rain and through
mud, in sleet and over ice, all along the Western Front from Holland
almost to the Swiss border, a 350-mile-wide torrent of men, supplies
and machines had been flooding into the German plains. The last great
offensive was on. To destroy the German military might, seven powerful
armies --eighty-five huge divisions, five of them airborne and
twenty-three armored, the bulk of the immense Western Allied force of
4,600,000 men--were swarming into the Reich for the kill.

Makeshift flags of surrender--white sheets, towels, scraps of
cloth--hung everywhere. In the towns and villages frightened Germans,
still dazed by the battles that had washed over them, stared in
amazement from doorways and shattered windows at the vast strength of
the Allies that flowed all about them. The operation was gigantic, its
speed breathtaking.

Hammering down every road were convoys of tanks, self-propelled guns,
heavy artillery, armored cars, Bren gun carriers, ammunition conveyors,
ambulances, gasoline trucks and huge Diesel transporters towing
block-long trailers loaded with equipment--bridging sections, pontoons,
armored bulldozers and even landing craft. Division headquarters were
on the move, with their jeeps, staff cars, command caravans and massive
radio trucks sprouting forests of trembling antennae. And in wave
after wave, choking every road, were the troops--in trucks and on the
backs of armored vehicles, marching by the sides of the motorized
columns or slogging through the adjoining fields.

They formed a violent, gaudy parade, and in their midst were

battle flags, regimental badges and insignia that had made history in
World War II. In the divisions, brigades and regiments were Guardsmen
who had fought the rearguard action during the evacuation of Dunkirk,
bearded Commandos in faded green berets, veterans of Lord Lovat's
brigade who had raided the coasts of occupied Europe in the darkest
years of the war, tough Canadians of the famous 2nd Division who had
landed at Dieppe in the bloody rehearsal for the Normandy invasion. In
the armored columns, pennants fluttering, were a few of the original
"Desert Rats" of the 7th Armored Division who had helped run Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel to ground in the Libyan sands. And riding high
above the tremendous din of men and arms was the skirling music of the
"Devils in Skirts," the 51/ Highland Division, their pipes sounding the
prelude to battle as they had always done.

In the phalanxes of Americans were divisions with impudent names and
colorful legends--the "Fighting 69th," the 5th Armored "Victory
Division," "The Railsplitters" of the 84th Infantry, the 4th Infantry
"Ivy Division." There was the 2nd Armored, "Hell on Wheels," whose
unconventional tank tactics had caused havoc for the Germans all the
way from the wadis of North Africa to the banks of the Rhine. There
was the 1/ Division, "The Big Red One," with a record of more assault
landings than any other American unit: the 1/, together with one of the
oldest U.s. Forces, the tough, tradition-steeped 29th "Blue and Gray"
Division, had hung on when all seemed lost to a narrow strip of
Normandy beach called "Omaha."

One unit, the illustrious 83rd Infantry Division, which was moving as
fast as an armored task force, had recently been nicknamed "The Rag-Tag
Circus" by the correspondents. Its resourceful commander, Major
General Robert C. Macon, had given orders to supplement the division's
transport with anything that moved; "no questions asked." Now the
Rag-Tag Circus was going flat out in a weird assortment of hurriedly
repainted captured German vehicles: Wehrmacht jeeps, staff cars,
ammunition trucks, Mark Very and Tiger panzers, motor bikes, buses and
two

cherished fire engines. Out in front, with infantrymen hanging all
over it, was one of the fire trucks. On its rear bumper was a large,
flapping banner. It read, Next Stop: Berlin.

There were three great army groups. Between Nijmegen in Holland and
Dusseldorf on the Rhine, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery's
Twenty-first Army Group had erupted across the Rhine on March 23 and
was now racing across the Westphalian plains, north of the great Ruhr
Valley, Germany's industrial mainspring. Under Montgomery's command
and holding his northern flank was the Canadian First Army under
Lieutenant General Henry D. Crerar. In the center was Lieutenant
General Sir Miles Dempsey's British Second Army (the most "allied" of
all the Allied armies, the Second had, besides British, Scottish and
Irish units, contingents of Poles, Dutch, Belgians, Czechs--and even a
U.s. Division, the 17th Airborne). Driving along the Army Group's
southern flank was Montgomery's third force: Lieutenant General William
H. Simpson's powerful U.s. Ninth Army. Already Montgomery's forces had
left the Rhine almost fifty miles behind.

Next in the Allied line, holding a front of about 125 miles along the
Rhine from Dusseldorf to the Mainz area, was the Twelfth Army Group
under the quiet, unassuming General Omar N. Bradley. Like Montgomery,
Bradley had three armies. However, one of them, the U.s. Fifteenth
under Lieutenant General Leonard Gerow, was a "ghost" army; it was
being prepared for occupation duties and for the moment was playing a
relatively non-active role, holding the western bank of the Rhine,
directly in front of the Ruhr, from the Dusseldorf area to Bonn.
Bradley's strength lay with the powerful U.s. First and Third armies, a
force totaling close to 500,000 men. General Courtney Hodges' U.s.
First Army--the "workhorse" of the European theater and the army that
had led the Normandy invasion--was surging south of the Ruhr,

charging east at a breakneck pace. Ever since the capture of the
Remagen bridge on March 7, Hodges had steadily enlarged the bridgehead
on the Rhine's eastern bank. Division after division packed into it.
Then on March 25 the men of the First had burst out of the lodgement
with incredible force. Now, three days later, they were more than
forty miles from their jump-off point. Storming across central Germany
next to the First Army was General George S. Patton's famous U.s. Third
Army. The controversial and explosive Patton--whose boast was that his
Third Army had traveled farther and faster, liberated more square miles
of the continent and killed and captured more Germans than any
other--racked up another first. He had stolen Montgomery's thunder by
secretly crossing the Rhine on the run more than twenty-four hours
before the Twenty-first Army Group's much-publicized assault on March
23. Now Patton's tank columns were advancing eastward at the rate of
thirty miles a day.

Next to Patton and on the right flank of General Bradley's command was
the third great Allied ground force, General Jacob Devers' Sixth Army
Group. Devers' two armies-- Lieutenant General Alexander Patch's U.s.
Seventh and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's French First--held the
front's southern wing for roughly 150 miles. The armies of Patch and
Patton were driving almost abreast of each other. De Tassigny's army
was fighting over some of the most rugged terrain on the entire front,
through the mountainous Vosges and Black Forest. His force, the first
post-liberation French army, had not existed six months before. Now
its 100,000 soldiers hoped there was still time before the war ended to
settle accounts with les boches.

Everyone had a score to settle. But along the Western Front the German
Army scarcely existed any longer as a cohesive, organized force.
Decimated during the Ardennes offensive, the Reich's once-powerful
armies had been finally smashed in the month-long campaign between the
Moselle and the Rhine. Hitler's decision to fight west of the Rhine
rather than withdraw his battered forces to prepared positions on the
eastern banks had proved disastrous;

it would be recorded as one of the greatest military blunders of the
war. Nearly 300,000 men had been taken prisoner and 600,000 were
killed or wounded. In all, the Germans lost the equivalent of more
than twenty full divisions.

Now it was estimated that although more than sixty German divisions
remained, they were merely paper divisions, with only 5,000 men apiece
instead of the full-strength complement of 9- to 12,000 each. In fact,
it was believed that there were barely twenty-six complete divisions
left in the West, and even these were ill-equipped, lacking ammunition,
drastically short of fuel and transport, artillery and tanks. In
addition, there were the shattered remnants of divisions, splintered SS
groups, anti-aircraft gun troops, thousands of Luftwaffe men (the
German air force had almost disappeared), quasi-military organizations,
Home Guard Volkssturm units composed of untrained old men and boys, and
even cadres of teenage officer cadets. Disorganized, lacking
communications and often without competent leaders, the German Army was
unable to stop or even slow up the systematic onslaught of Eisenhower's
armies.

With the offensive from the Rhine barely a week old, the racing armies
from Montgomery's and Bradley's groups were already closing in on the
last German stronghold: the heavily defended Ruhr. Simultaneous with
the developing drive eastward, three U.s. Armies had suddenly and
abruptly wheeled to take on the envelopment of the Ruhr from north and
south. On the north, Simpson's Ninth Army changed direction from due
east and was beginning to march southeast. To the south, Hodges' First
and Patton's Third armies, moving parallel, with Patton on the outside,
were also turning and heading northeast for a link-up with Simpson. The
trap had been sprung so quickly that the Germans--principally Field
Marshal Walter Model's Army Group B, a force of no less than twenty-one
divisions--seemed almost unaware of the pincers closing around them.
Now they were threatened with encirclement, caught up in a pocket some
70 miles long and 55 miles wide--a pocket that Allied Intelligence said
contained more

men and equipment than the Russians had captured at Stalingrad.

In the overall plan to defeat Germany, the crossing of the Rhine and
the capture of the Ruhr had always been considered essential--and
formidable-- objectives. The sprawling industrial Ruhr basin, with its
coal mines, oil refineries, steel mills and armament factories covered
almost 4,000 square miles. It had been thought that its capture might
take months--but that was before the German debacle on the Rhine. Now
the pincer maneuver--the stratagem of the quiet Missourian, Omar
Bradley--was being executed at breathtaking pace. The Americans were
moving so fast that division commanders now talked of completing the
encirclement in a matter of days. Once the Ruhr was sealed, Germany
would have little strength left to impede the progress of the great
Allied offensive. Even now the enemy was so disrupted that there was
no continuous defense line.

So disorganized were the German forces, in fact, that Major General
Isaac D. White, commanding the U.s. 2nd Armored Division, ordered his
men to bypass any major resistance and keep on going. The 2nd,
spearheading the Ninth Army's pincer movement along the northern rim of
the Ruhr, had thereupon dashed more than fifty miles in just under
three days. The Germans fought hard in isolated pockets but the 2nd
encountered more trouble from blown bridges, hurriedly erected
roadblocks, minefields and bad terrain than from enemy action. It was
the same nearly everywhere.

Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler G. Merriam, leading the 2nd's dash with his
82nd Reconnaissance Battalion, was encountering a great deal of
confusion and very little fighting. On March 28, with his tanks spread
out on either side of a main railway line running east and west,
Merriam called a halt to report his new position. As his radio man
tried to raise headquarters, Merriam thought he heard a steam whistle.
Suddenly a German train, filled with troops and hauling flat cars
loaded with armored vehicles and guns, puffed along the line, passing
right through his units. Germans and Americans gazed at each other in
amazement. Merriam, looking up at the Wehrmacht soldiers leaning out
of the train windows, was so close that he distinctly noted "the
individual hairs on men's faces where they hadn't shaved." His men,
flabbergasted, gazed after the train as it headed west. Not a single
shot was fired by either side.

At last, galvanized into action, Merriam grabbed the radio telephone.
Some miles to the west, the Division Commander, Major General White,
saw the train come into sight at almost the same time that he heard
Merriam's excited warning on his jeep radio. White saw an MP,
directing the 2nd's columns, suddenly halt the traffic that was moving
across the tracks--and then White, like Merriam, stood mesmerized as
the train rolled by. Seconds later, field telephone in hand, White was
calling for artillery fire. Within minutes, the 92nd Field Artillery,
set up farther west, let loose a salvo that cut the train cleanly in
two. Later it was discovered that the flat cars carried numerous
anti-tank guns, field pieces and a 16-inch railway gun. Captured
soldiers who had been on the train said that they had been completely
ignorant of the Allied advance. They had thought the Americans and
British were still west of the Rhine.

Confusion was both an ally and a foe. Lieutenant Colonel Ellis W.
Williamson of the 30th Infantry Division was moving so fast that he was
even fired on by the artillerymen of another Allied division. They
thought Williamson's men were Germans retreating to the east.
Lieutenant Clarence Nelson of the 5th Armored had an equally bizarre
experience. His jeep was shot out from under him and Nelson jumped
into a half-track which came under heavy fire. He ordered a tank to
wipe out the enemy strong point. It moved out, breasted a hill, and
fired two rounds into a British armored car. The occupants were irate
but unhurt. They had been lying in wait hoping to find a target of
their own. And Chaplain Ben L. Rose of the 113th Mechanized Cavalry
remembers a tank commander reporting solemnly to the group leader: "We
advanced the last hundred yards, sir--under grass. Resistance is
heavy--both enemy and friendly."

So rapid were the maneuvers and so fast were the German defenses
crumbling that many commanders worried more about fatalities from road
accidents than from enemy fire. Captain Charles King of the famed
British 7th Armored Division begged his men to "be careful driving on
these roads. It would be a pity," he warned, "to die in an accident
just now." A few hours later King, one of the original Desert Rats,
was dead; his jeep had hit a German landmine.

Most men had no idea where they were or who was on their flanks.
Forward units, in many instances, were already running off their maps.
The resourceful scouts of the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion were not in
the least concerned. They were using emergency charts: silken
handkerchief-size U.s. Air Force escape maps supplied to all combat
fliers earlier in the war to help them slip out of enemy territory if
they were shot down. The 82nd scouts confirmed their positions simply
by checking with German signposts. In the 84th Division sector,
Lieutenant Colonel Norman D. Carnes discovered that in his whole
battalion there were only two maps left showing proposed advances. He
was not worried either--not so long as his radios worked and he could
keep in touch with headquarters. Lieutenant Arthur T. Hadley, a
psychological warfare expert attached to the 2nd Armored Division, who
used a loudspeaker on his tank instead of a gun to demand the surrender
of German towns, was now using the maps in an ancient Baedeker guide
intended for tourists. And Captain Francis Schommer of the 83rd
Division always knew where he had led his battalion. He just grabbed
the first German he saw, stuck a gun in his ribs, and in fluent German
demanded to know where he was. He hadn't had a wrong answer yet.

To the men of the armored divisions, the advance from the Rhine was
their kind of warfare. The snaking lines of armor that now thrust,
bypassed, encircled and carved through the German towns and armies were
offering a classic example of armored tactics at their best. Some men
tried to describe in letters the great armored race to the east.
Lieutenant Colonel Clifton Batchelder, commander of the 1/ Battalion,
67th Armored Regiment, thought that the drive had "all the dash and
daring of the great cavalry

operations of the Civil War." Lieutenant Gerald P. Leibman, noting
that as the 5th Armored Division cut through the enemy, thousands of
Germans were left behind fighting in isolated pockets, wrote
tongue-in-cheek that "We are exploiting the enemy's rear areas after
breaching his frontal positions." To Leibman the attack was
reminiscent of General Patton's armored dash out of the Normandy
hedgerows, in which he had also participated. "No one eats or sleeps,"
he noted. "All we do is attack and push on, attack and push on. It is
France all over again--except this time the flags flying from the
houses are not French Tricolors, but flags of surrender." In the
Devonshire Regiment racing along with the British 7th Armored Division,
Lieutenant Frank Barnes told his friend Lieutenant Robert Davey that
"it is wonderful to be going forward all the time." Both men were
elated, for at the briefing before the attack, they had been told that
this was the last great push and that the ultimate objective was
Berlin.

Field Marshal Montgomery had always known that Berlin was the ultimate
objective. Quick to anger, impatient of delays, temperamental and
often tactless, but always both realistic and courageous, Montgomery
had fixed his sights on Berlin as far back as his great victory in the
desert at El Alamein. The one man who had unreservedly said "Go" when
weather might have delayed the invasion of Normandy, he now demanded
the green light again. In the absence of any clearcut decision from
the Supreme Commander, Montgomery had announced his own. At 6:10 P.m.
on Tuesday, March 27, in a coded message to Supreme Headquarters, he
informed General Eisenhower: "Today I issued orders to Army Commanders
for the operations eastwards which are now about to begin. ... My
intention is to drive hard for the line of the Elbe using the Ninth and
Second Armies. The right of the Ninth Army will be directed on
Magdeburg and the left of the Second Army on Hamburg. ...

"Canadian Army will operate ... to clear Northeast Holland and West
Holland and the coastal area to the north of the left boundary of the
Second Army. ...

"I have ordered Ninth and Second Armies to move their armored and
mobile forces forward at once to get through to the Elbe with utmost
speed and drive. The situation looks good and events should begin to
move rapidly in a few days.

"My tactical headquarters move to northwest of Bonninghardt on
Thursday, March 29. Thereafter ... my headquarters will move to
Wesel-Munster-Wiedenbruck-Herford- Hanover--thence by autobahn to
Berlin, I hope." * * *

Turning slowly in midair on the end of their ropes, Aunt Effie and
Uncle Otto gazed mournfully down on the rubble-filled Berlin courtyard.
From the back balcony of his second-story Wilmersdorf flat, Carl Wiberg
spoke softly and encouragingly to the dachshunds as he pulled them up
to safety. He was putting them through the air raid escape procedure
he had devised, and the dogs, after weeks of training, were now well
conditioned. So were Wiberg's neighbors, although they thought that
the Swede's concern for his pets was excessive. Everyone had grown
accustomed to the sight of Aunt Effie and Uncle Otto, coats brushed and
gleaming, going up and down past the windows. No one paid much
attention to the dangling ropes, either, which was exactly the way
Wiberg wanted it. One day, if the Gestapo ever closed in, he might
have to go over the back balcony and make his getaway down the same
ropes.

He had thought out everything very carefully. A single slip could mean
his exposure as an Allied spy, and now, with Berliners growing daily
more suspicious and anxious, Wiberg was taking no chances. He had
still not discovered Hitler's whereabouts. His casual and
innocent-seeming questions apparently evoked no suspicion, but they
turned up no information, either. Even his high-ranking friends in the
Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe knew nothing. Wiberg was beginning to believe
that the Fuhrer and his court were not in Berlin.

Suddenly, as he lifted the dogs onto the balcony, the doorbell

rang. Wiberg tensed; he was not expecting visitors, and he lived with
a gnawing fear that one time he would go to the door and find the
police. He carefully freed the dogs and then went to the door. Outside
stood a stranger. He was tall and husky, dressed in working clothes
and a leather jacket. Balanced on his right shoulder was a large
carton.

"Carl Wiberg?" he asked.

Wiberg nodded.

The stranger dumped the carton inside the door. "A little present from
your friends in Sweden," he said with a smile.

"My friends in Sweden?" said Wiberg warily.

"Oh, you know damned well what it is," said the stranger. He turned
and went quickly down the stairs.

Wiberg softly closed the door. He stood frozen, looking down at the
carton. The only "presents" he got from Sweden were supplies for the
Berlin espionage operation. Was this a trap? Would the police come
bursting into the apartment the moment he opened the box? Quickly he
crossed the living room and looked cautiously down into the street. It
was empty. There was no sign of his visitor. Wiberg returned to the
door and stood for some time listening. He heard nothing out of the
ordinary. At last he lugged the carton onto the living-room sofa and
opened it. The box which had been so casually delivered contained a
large radio transmitter. Wiberg suddenly discovered he was sweating.

Some weeks before, Wiberg had been notified by his superior, a Dane
named Hennings Jessen-Schmidt, that henceforth he was to be
"storekeeper" for the spy network in Berlin. Ever since, he had been
receiving a variety of supplies through couriers. But up to now he had
always been warned beforehand, and the actual deliveries had always
been handled with extreme caution. His phone would ring twice, then
stop; that was the signal that a delivery was to be made. The supplies
arrived only during the hours of darkness, and generally during an air
raid. Never before had Wiberg been approached in broad daylight. He
was furious. "Somebody," he was later to put it, "had acted in a very
naive and amateurish way and seemed bent on wrecking the entire
operation."

Wiberg's position had become increasingly dangerous; he could not
afford a visit from the police. For his apartment was now a virtual
warehouse of espionage equipment. Cached in his rooms were a large
quantity of currency, some code tables and a variety of drugs and
poisons --from quick-acting "knockout" pellets, capable of producing
unconsciousness for varying durations of time, to deadly cyanide
compounds. In his coal cellar and in a rented garage nearby was a
small arsenal of rifles, revolvers and ammunition. Wiberg even had a
suitcase of highly volatile explosives. Because of air raids, this
consignment had worried him considerably. But he and Jessen-Schmidt
had found the perfect hiding place. The explosives were now in a large
safety deposit box in the vault of the Deutsche Union Bank.

Wiberg's apartment had miraculously survived the air raids up to now,
but he dreaded to think of the consequences if it were hit. He would
be immediately exposed. Jessen-Schmidt had told Wiberg that at the
right time the supplies would be issued to various groups of operatives
and saboteurs who would shortly arrive in Berlin. The operations of
these selected agents were to begin on the receipt of a signal sent
either by radio or through the courier network from London. Wiberg
expected the distribution to be made soon. Jessen-Schmidt had been
warned to stand by for the message sometime during the next few weeks,
for the work of the teams would coincide with the capture of the city.
According to the information Jessen-Schmidt and Wiberg had received,
the British and Americans would reach Berlin around the middle of
April.

In the quiet of his study at No. 10 Downing Street, Winston Churchill
sat hunched in his favorite leather chair, telephone cupped to his ear.
The Prime Minister was listening to his Chief of Staff, General Sir
Hastings Ismay, read a copy of Montgomery's message to the Supreme
Commander. The Field Marshal's promise of "utmost speed and drive" was
good news indeed; even better was his declared intention of heading for
Berlin. "Montgomery," the Prime Minister told Ismay, "is making
remarkable progress."

After months of stormy discussion between British and U.s. military
leaders, Allied strategy seemed to have smoothed out. General
Eisenhower's plans, outlined in the fall of 1944 and approved by the
Combined Chiefs of Staff at Malta in January, 1945, called for
Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group to make the main drive over the
Lower Rhine and north of the Ruhr; this was the route that Churchill,
in a letter to Roosevelt, had called "the shortest road to Berlin." In
the south, American forces were to cross the river and head into the
Frankfurt area, drawing off the enemy from Montgomery. This
supplementary advance could become the main line of attack if
Montgomery's offensive faltered. But as far as Churchill was
concerned, the matter was settled. The "Great Crusade" was nearing its
end, and for Churchill it was immensely satisfying that of all the
Allied commanders it was the hero of El Alamein who seemed destined to
capture the enemy capital. The Twenty-first Army Group had been
specially reinforced for the offensive, with top priority in troops,
air support, supplies and equipment. In all, Montgomery had under his
command almost one million men in some thirty-five divisions and
attached units, including the U.s. Ninth Army.

Four days before, Churchill had traveled with General Eisenhower to
Germany to witness the opening phase of the river assault. As he stood
on the banks of the Rhine watching the monumental offensive unfold,
Churchill said to Eisenhower, "My dear General, the German is whipped.
We've got him. He's all through."

And indeed, enemy resistance proved surprisingly light in most areas.
In the U.s. Ninth Army sector, where two divisions--about 34,000
men--crossed shoulder to shoulder with the British, there were only
thirty-one casualties. Now, Montgomery had more than twenty divisions
and fifteen hundred tanks across the river and was driving for the
Elbe. The road to Berlin--which Churchill had called "the prime and
true objective of the Anglo-American armies"--seemed wide open.

It was open politically, too. There had never been any Big Three
discussions about which army would take the city. Berlin was an open
target, waiting to be captured by the Allied army that reached it
first.

However, there had been discussions, plenty of them, regarding the
occupation of the rest of the enemy nation --as the sectors laid out in
the Operation Eclipse maps indicated. And the decisions regarding the
occupation of Germany were to have a crucial effect on the capture and
political future of Berlin. At least one of the Allied leaders had
realized this from the start. "There will definitely be a race for
Berlin," he had said. That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It had been seventeen months earlier, on November 19, 1943, that the
matter was brought before Roosevelt. On that occasion the President
had sat at the head of the table in a conference room of Admiral Ernest
J. King's suite aboard the battleship, U.s.s. Iowa. Flanking him were
assistants and advisors, among them the U.s. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Roosevelt was en route to the Middle East for the Cairo and Teheran
conferences--the fifth and sixth of the Allied leaders' wartime
meetings.

These were momentous days in the global struggle with the Axis powers.
On the Russian front the Germans had suffered their biggest and
bloodiest defeat: Stalingrad, encircled and cut off for twenty-three
days, had fallen, and more than 360,000 Germans had been killed,
wounded or taken prisoner. In the Pacific, where more than one million
Americans were fighting, the Japanese were being forced back on every
front. In the West, Rommel had been routed from North Africa. Italy,
invaded from Africa via Sicily, had surrendered; the Germans were
hanging on grimly to the northern part of the country. And now the
Anglo-Americans were preparing plans for the coup de grace--Operation
Overlord, the all-out invasion of Europe.

Aboard the Iowa, Roosevelt was showing sharp annoyance. The documents
and maps before him were the essentials of a plan called Operation
Rankin, Case C, one of many studies developed in connection with the
forthcoming invasion. Rankin C considered the steps that should be
taken if there was a sudden collapse or capitulation of the enemy. In
that event the plan suggested that the Reich and Berlin should be
divided into sectors, with each of the Big Three occupying a zone. What
troubled the President was the area that had been chosen for his
country by the British planners.

Rankin C had been created under peculiar and frustrating circumstances.
The one man most directly affected by its provisions would be the
Allied Supreme Commander in Europe. But this officer was still to be
appointed. The difficult task of trying to plan ahead for the Supreme
Commander--that is, to prepare both the cross-channel offensive,
Operation Overlord, and a plan in the event Germany crumbled, Operation
Rankin--had been given to Britain's Lieutenant General Frederick E.
Morgan, * known by the * As originally conceived in 1943 there were
actually three parts to Operation Rankin: Case A dealt with a situation
in which the Germans might become so weak that only a "miniature
overlord" invasion might be necessary; Case B conceived a strategic
German withdrawal from some parts of the occupied countries while still
leaving the bulk of their forces along the European coastline to repel
an invasion; and Case C dealt with a sudden German collapse either
before, during or after the actual invasion itself. Cases A and B were
early abandoned and received, as Morgan recalls, only the briefest
consideration.

code name "COSSAC" (chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander,
designate). It was a staggering and thankless job. When he was named
to the post, Morgan was told by Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial
General Staff: "Well there it is; it won't work, of course, but you
must bloody well make it!"

In preparing Rankin C Morgan had to consider all sorts of
imponderables. What would happen if the enemy capitulated so abruptly
that the Allies were caught off balance, as they were in World War I by
the unforeseen German surrender of November, 1918? Whose troops would
go where? What parts of Germany would be occupied by American, British
and Russian forces? Who would take Berlin? These were the basic
questions, and they had to be solved in clear and decisive ways if the
Allies were not to be surprised by a sudden collapse.

Up to that time no specific plan for the war's end had ever been set
down. Although in the United States and Britain various governmental
bodies discussed the problems that would arise on the cessation of
hostilities, little headway was made in the formulation of an overall
policy. There was agreement on only one point: that the enemy country
would be occupied.

The Russians, by contrast, had no difficulty arriving at a policy.
Occupation had always been taken for granted by Josef Stalin and he had
always known exactly how he would go about it. As far back as
December, 1941, he bluntly informed Britain's Foreign Secretary,
Anthony Eden, of his post-war demands, naming the territories he
intended to occupy and annex. It was an impressive list: included in
his victory booty Stalin wanted recognition of his claims to Latvia,
Lithuania and Estonia; that part of Finland which he had taken when he
attacked the Finns in 1939; the province of Bessarabia in Rumania; that
part of eastern Poland which the Soviets had overrun in 1939 by
agreement with

the Nazis; and most of East Prussia. As he calmly laid down his terms
guns were firing only fifteen miles from the Kremlin, in the Moscow
suburbs, where German forces were still fighting desperately.

Although the British considered Stalin's 1941 demands premature to say
the least, * by 1943 they were preparing plans of their own. The
British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, had recommended that Germany
be totally occupied and divided among the Allies into three zones. A
cabinet body called the Armistice and Post-war Committee was thereupon
set up under Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, head of the Labour
Party. The Attlee group issued a broad recommendation which also
advocated a tripartite division, with Britain occupying the industry-
and commerce-rich northwestern areas. Berlin, it was suggested, should
be jointly occupied by the three powers. The only Ally with virtually
no plans for a defeated Germany was the United States. The official
U.s. view was that post-war settlements should await a time nearer the
final victory. Occupation policy, it was felt, was primarily a
military concern. * Stalin's proposals reached Churchill while he was
crossing the Atlantic aboard the battleship H.m.s. Duke of York en
route to meet with Roosevelt. The U.s. had just entered the war and
Churchill had qualms about raising the matter with his powerful new
ally at this time. He wired Eden: "Naturally you will not be rough
with Stalin. We are bound to U.s. not to enter into secret and special
pacts. To approach President Roosevelt with these proposals would be
to court a blank refusal and might cause lasting trouble. ... Even to
raise them informally ... would in my opinion be inexpedient." The
State Department was informed of Eden's conversation with Stalin, but
there is no evidence that anyone ever bothered to tell the President of
the United States at the time. But by March of 1943 Roosevelt was
fully apprised and according to Eden, who discussed the matter with
him, the President foresaw no great difficulties with the Soviet Union.
"The big question which rightly dominated Roosevelt's mind," said Eden,
"was whether it was possible to work with Russia now and after the
war."

But now, with the collective strength of the Allies beginning to be
felt on every front and with the tempo of their offensives mounting,
the need for coordinating political planning had become acute. In
October, 1943, at the Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow, the first
tentative step was taken to define a common Allied post-war policy. The
Allies accepted the idea of joint

responsibility in the control and occupation of Germany, and set up a
tripartite body, the European Advisory Commission (Eac), to "study and
make recommendations to the three governments upon European questions
connected with the termination of hostilities."

But in the meantime Morgan had produced .his plan--a rough blueprint
for the occupation of Germany --"prepared," he later explained, "only
after a powerful amount of crystal-ball gazing." Initially, without
political guidance, Morgan had produced a plan calling for a limited
occupation. But his final Rankin C proposals reflected the Attlee
committee's more elaborate scheme. Morgan had sat down with a map and
divided Germany into mathematical thirds, "faintly sketching in blue
pencil along the existing provincial boundaries." It was obvious that
the Russians, driving from the east, must occupy an eastern sector. The
division between the Anglo-Americans and the Russians in the revised
Rankin C plan was a suggested line running from Lubeck on the Baltic to
Eisenach in central Germany and from there to the Czech border. What
the extent of the Soviet zone would be was of no concern to Morgan. He
had not been asked to consider that since it "would naturally be the
affair of the Russians who were not included in our COSSAC party." But
Berlin did bother him, for it would lie within the Russian sector.
"Were we to continue to regard the place as a capital or was there to
be a capital at all?" he wondered. "The internationality of the
operation suggested that occupation of Berlin or any other capital,
were there to be one, should be in equal tripartite force, by a
division each of United States, British and Russian troops."

As for the British and American zones, their north-south relationship
seemed to Morgan to have been predetermined by one seemingly ridiculous
but relevant fact: the location of the British and American bases and
depots back in England. From the time the first American troops
arrived in the United Kingdom they had been quartered first in Northern
Ireland and later in the south and southwest of England. British
forces were situated in the north

and southeast. Thus the concentration of troops, their supplies and
communications were separate--the Americans always on the right, the
British on the left facing the continent of Europe. As Morgan foresaw
Overlord, this design was to continue across the Channel to the
invasion beaches of Normandy--and, presumably, through Europe to the
heart of Germany itself. The British were to enter northern Germany
and liberate Holland, Denmark and Norway. On the right, the Americans,
following their line of advance through France, Belgium and Luxembourg,
would end up in the southern German provinces.

"I do not believe," Morgan said later, "that anyone at the time could
have realized the full and ultimate implications of the quartering
decision--which in all probability was made by some minor official in
the War Office. But from it flowed all the rest."

Aboard the Iowa, the President of the United States realized the full
and ultimate implications perfectly well. Those implications were
precisely what he did not like about the Rankin C plan. Immediately
the afternoon session began at 3 P.m., Roosevelt launched into the
subject, and he was plainly irritated. Commenting on the accompanying
memorandum, in which the Chiefs of Staff asked for guidance on Morgan's
revised plan, Roosevelt rebuked his military advisors for "making
certain suppositions"--in particular, that the U.s. should accept the
British proposal to occupy southern Germany. "I do not like that
arrangement," declared the President. He wanted northwest Germany. He
wanted access to the ports of Bremen and Hamburg, and also those of
Norway and Denmark. And Roosevelt was firm on something else: the
extent of the U.s. Zone. "We should go as far as Berlin," he said.
"The U.s. should have Berlin." Then he added: "The Soviets can take
the territory to the east."

Roosevelt was also displeased by another aspect of Rankin C. The U.s.,
in the south, would have a sphere of responsibility that included
France, Belgium and Luxembourg. He was worried about France, and
especially about the leader of the Free French Forces, General Charles
de Gaulle, whom he saw as a "political

headache." As forces advanced into that country, the President told
his advisors, De Gaulle would be "one mile behind the troops," ready to
take over the government. Above all, Roosevelt feared that civil war
might break out in France when the war ended. He did not want to be
involved, he said, "in reconstituting France. France," declared the
President, "is a British baby."

And not only France. He felt that Britain should have the
responsibility for Luxembourg and Belgium as well--and for the southern
zone of Germany. As for the American zone--as the President visualized
it, it would sweep across northern Germany (including Berlin) all the
way to Stettin on the Oder. Then once again, measuring his words, he
emphasized his displeasure over proposed zonal arrangements. "The
British plan for the U.s. to have the southern zone," Roosevelt said,
"and I do not like it."

The President's suggestions startled his military advisors. Three
months before, at the Quebec Conference, the Joint Chiefs had approved
the plan in principle. So had the Combined American and British Chiefs
of Staff. At that time, President Roosevelt expressed great interest
in the division of Germany and added his weight to the urgency of the
planning by expressing the desire that troops should "be ready to get
to Berlin as soon as the Russians."

The Joint Chiefs had believed the issues involved in Rankin C were all
settled. They had brought up the plan on the Iowa only because
political and economic matters, as well as military policy, were
involved. Now the President was challenging not only the occupation
plan but the very basis of Operation Overlord itself. If the projected
zones of occupation were switched to accommodate the President's
wishes, a troops changeover would have to be made in England before the
invasion. This would delay--and might thus jeopardize--the
cross-Channel offensive, one of the most complicated operations ever
undertaken in any war. It seemed clear to his military advisors that
President Roosevelt either did not understand the immense logistical
movements involved--or understood them perfectly well and was simply
prepared to pay a phenomenal cost in order to get the northwest zone
and Berlin for the United States. In their view, the cost was
prohibitive.

General Marshall began diplomatically to elaborate on the situation. He
agreed "that the matter should be gone into." But, he said, the Rankin
C proposals stemmed from prime military considerations. From a
logistical standpoint, he reasoned, "We must have U.s. forces on the
right ... the whole matter goes back to the question of the ports of
England."

Admiral Ernest King, U.s. Chief of Naval Operations, backed Marshall;
the invasion plans were so far developed, he said, that it would be
impractical to accept any change in the deployment of troops.

The immensity of the problem was such that Marshall believed an entire
new scheme would be needed just for the switching of troops--one
flexible enough to be applied "at any stage of development" in order to
get the President what he wanted in Germany.

Roosevelt didn't think so. He felt that if there was a total collapse
of Hitler's Reich the U.s. would have to get as many men as possible
into Germany, and he suggested that some of them could be sent "around
Scotland"--thereby entering Germany on the north. It was at this point
that he expressed certainty that the Allies would race for Berlin; in
that case, U.s. divisions would have to get there "as soon as
possible." Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's confidant and advisor, who was
present on the Iowa, had the same sense of urgency: he thought that the
U.s. would have to be "ready to put an airborne division into Berlin
within two hours of the collapse."

Again and again the President's military advisors tried to impress on
him the seriousness of the problems that a change in Rankin C would
entail. Roosevelt remained adamant. Finally he pulled toward him a
National Geographic map of Germany that lay on the table and began
drawing. First he drew a line across Germany's western frontier to
Dusseldorf and south along the Rhine to Mainz. From there, with a
broad stroke, he cut Germany

in half along the 50th parallel roughly between Mainz on the west and
Asch on the Czech border to the east. Then his pencil moved northeast
to Stettin on the Oder. The Americans would have the area above the
line, the British the sector below it. But as Roosevelt outlined it,
the eastern boundary of the U.s. and British zones would form a rough
wedge. Its apex was at Leipzig; from there it ran northeast to Stettin
and southeast to Asch. The President did not say so, but this shallow
triangle was obviously to be the Soviet zone. It contained less than
half of the area allotted to Russia in the Rankin C proposal. Nor was
Berlin located within the territory he left to Russia. It lay on the
boundary line between the Soviet and U.s. zones. It was Marshall's
understanding that the President intended Berlin to be jointly occupied
by U.s., British and Soviet troops.

The map showed unmistakably what the President had in mind. If the
U.s. took the southern zone proposed by COSSAC in the Rankin paper, the
President told his military chiefs, the "British will undercut us in
every move we make." It was quite evident, Roosevelt said, that
"British political considerations are in back of the proposals."

The discussion ended without any clear-cut decision, but Roosevelt had
left no doubt in the minds of his military chiefs as to what he
expected. United States occupation as envisaged by Roosevelt meant the
quartering of one million troops in Europe "for at least one year, or
maybe two." His post-war plan was similar to the American approach to
the war itself-- an all-out effort, but with a minimum of time and
involvement in European affairs. He foresaw a swift and successful
thrust into the enemy's heartland--"a railroad invasion of Germany with
little or no fighting"--that would carry U.s. troops into the northwest
zone and from there, into Berlin. Above all, the President of the
United States was determined to have Berlin. * * The account of the
events aboard the Iowa comes from handwritten minutes which were made
by General George C. Marshall. The actual memorandum contains no
direct quotes, only notes made as points of reference. I have directly
quoted the President and others where it was clearly indicated that a
sentence was being attributed to them.

* * *

Thus was offered the first concrete U.s. plan for Germany. There was
just one trouble. Roosevelt, often criticized for acting as his own
Secretary of State, had told no one his views except his military
chiefs. They were to sit on the plan for almost four months.

After the Iowa conference, General Marshall gave the Roosevelt map--the
one tangible evidence of administration thinking about the occupation
of Germany--to Major General Thomas T. Handy, Chief of the War
Department's Operations Division. When General Handy returned to
Washington the map was filed away in the archives of the top secret
Operations Division. "To the best of my knowledge," he was later to
recall, "we never received instructions to send it to anyone at the
Department of State."

The shelving of the Roosevelt plan by his own military advisors was
just one of a series of strange and costly blunders and errors of
judgment that occurred among American officials in the days following
the Iowa meeting. They were to have a profound influence on the future
of Germany and Berlin.

On November 29, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met for the first time
at the Teheran Conference. At this meeting the Big Three named the
representatives who would sit in London on the all-important European
Advisory Commission--the body charged with drafting surrender terms for
Germany, defining the zones of occupation, and formulating plans for
Allied administration of the country. To the EAC the British named a
close friend of Anthony Eden, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Sir
William Strang. The Russians chose a hard-headed bargainer, already
known for his obstinacy--Fedor T. Gusev, Soviet Ambassador to the
United Kingdom. Roosevelt appointed his envoy to the Court of St.
James's, the dedicated but shy and often inarticulate John G. Winant.
Winant was never briefed on his new job, nor was he told of the
President's objectives in Germany.

However, an opportunity soon arose for the Ambassador to learn the
nature of the policy he was supposed to espouse on the EAC--but the
opportunity was lost. The Cairo Conference (roosevelt, Churchill,
Chiang Kai-shek) ran from November 22 to 26; the Teheran meeting
(roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin) began on November 28 and continued until
December 1; after Teheran, Roosevelt and Churchill met again at Cairo
on December 4. That night, at a long dinner meeting with Churchill,
Eden and the President's Chief of Staff, Fleet Admiral William D.
Leahy, Roosevelt once again voiced objections to the Rankin C
proposals. He told the British-- apparently without divulging the
contents of his map or the extent of his revisions--that he felt the
U.s. should have the northwest zone of Germany. Churchill and Eden
strongly opposed the suggestion, but the matter was passed on to the
Combined Chiefs of Staff for study. They, in turn, recommended that
COSSAC, General Morgan, should consider the possibility of revising the
Rankin C plan.

Winant, although part of the delegation in Cairo, was not invited to
the dinner meeting and apparently was never informed about the matters
discussed there. As Roosevelt set out for home, Winant flew back to
London for the first meeting of the EAC, only vaguely aware of what the
President and the administration really wanted.

Ironically, only a few miles away from the U.s. Embassy in London, at
Norfolk House in St. James's Square, was a man who knew only too well
what President Roosevelt wanted. Lieutenant General Sir Frederick
Morgan, flabbergasted by his new orders to re-examine his Rankin C plan
with a view to switching the British and U.s. zones, put his
hard-pressed staff to work immediately. He very quickly reached the
conclusion that it was impossible--at least until after Germany was
defeated. He so reported to his superiors--and "that," he later
recorded, "ended the affair" so far as he was concerned.

* * *

Meanwhile, the U.s. military chiefs, despite their protestations that
they did not want to be involved in politics, were, in fact, left to
decide U.s. policy in post-war Europe. To them, the zoning and
occupation of Germany were strictly military matters, to be handled by
the Civil Affairs Division of the War Department. As an inevitable
result, the War Department found itself at odds with the State
Department over Germany. The consequence was a tug of war, in the
course of which any hope of achieving a coherent, unified U.s. policy
on the subject was irretrievably lost.

First, it was clear to all that something had to be done to direct
Ambassador Winant in his negotiations with the EAC in London. To
coordinate the conflicting U.s. views, a special group called the
Working Security Committee was established in Washington early in
December, 1943, with representatives from the State, War and Navy
departments. The War Department representatives, officers from the
Civil Affairs Division, actually refused at first to sit on the
committee--or for that matter, to recognize the need for a European
Advisory Commission at all. The entire problem of the surrender and
occupation of Germany, the Army officers maintained, was purely a
military matter that would be decided at the right time, and "at a
military level," by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Because of this
farcical situation, the proceedings were held up for two weeks.
Meanwhile, Winant sat in London without instructions.

At last, the military men agreed to the meetings and the committee
settled down to work--but little was accomplished. Each group on the
committee had to clear recommendations with its departmental superiors
before anything could be cabled to Winant in London. Worse, each of
the department heads could veto a suggested directive--a prerogative
the War Department exercised

repeatedly. The Acting Chairman of the Committee, Professor Philip E.
Mosely of the State Department, who was to become Political Advisor to
Ambassador Winant, commented later that the Civil Affairs officers "had
been given strict instructions to agree to nothing, or almost nothing,
and could only report the discussions back to their superiors. The
system of negotiating at arm's length, under rigid instructions and
with the exercise of the veto, resembled the procedures of Soviet
negotiators in their more intransigent moods."

All through December, 1943, the haggling went on. In the Army's
opinion the zones of occupation probably would be determined more or
less by the final position of troops when the surrender was signed.
Under the circumstances, the Army representatives saw no sense in
permitting Winant to negotiate any agreement about zones in the EAC.

So adamant were the military men that they even turned down a State
Department plan which, though similar to the British scheme--it, too,
divided Germany into three equal parts--had one vital additional
element: a corridor linking Berlin, deep inside the Soviet area, with
the Western zones. The author of the corridor was Professor Mosely. He
fully expected the Soviets to object but he pressed for its inclusion
for, as he was later to explain, "I believed, if the plan was presented
first with impressive firmness, it might be taken into account when the
Soviets began framing their own proposals." Provision had to be made,
he contended, "for free and direct territorial access to Berlin from
the west."

The State Department's plan was submitted to the War Department's Civil
Affairs Division for study prior to a meeting of the full committee.
For some time it was held up. Finally Mosely visited the offices of
the Civil Affairs Division and sought out the colonel who was handling
the matter. He asked the officer if he had received the plan. The
colonel opened a bottom drawer of his desk and said, "It's right
there." Then he leaned back in his chair, put both feet in the drawer
and said, "It's damn well going to stay there, too." The plan was
never transmitted to Winant.

In London the EAC met informally for the first time on December 15,
1943, and for Ambassador Winant it was perhaps just as well that the
meeting dealt only with rules of procedure. He was still without
official instructions. He had learned unofficially from British
sources about the plan which had so upset Roosevelt but he did not know
it as Morgan's Rankin C: it was described to him as the Attlee Plan. He
had also been informed, again unofficially (by U.s. Assistant Secretary
of War John J. McCloy), that the President wanted the northwest zone.
Winant did not expect the British to switch. * Winant's estimate was
absolutely right. * "The British have had a long economic affiliation
with the northern zone," McCloy wrote General Marshall on December 12,
"and Winant tells me that the plan was brought out after consultation
with their political and economic people. I do not know to what extent
the President wishes to adhere to the occupation of these areas in the
face of heavy English opposition. ... On the whole I would favor the
northern area, but I do not think it is worth the big fight." The
State Department apparently did not care one way or the other. In his
own handwriting, McCloy added that Cordell Hull had called and said "he
had no preference as between the northern and southern areas."

On January 14, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the newly appointed
Supreme Commander, arrived in London to take over his post, and all the
machinery of military planning, heretofore in the hands of General
Morgan, was officially transferred to his authority. But there was one
plan that even he could hardly influence at this late date. The day
following Eisenhower's arrival, at the first formal meeting of the EAC,
Morgan's Rankin C plan was presented by Sir William Strang to
Ambassador Winant and the Russian envoy, Fedor Gusev. The U.s.,
because of the deadlock in Washington, had lost the initiative. It
would never regain it. Strang was later to write that he had an
advantage over his colleagues, "in that, whereas they had to telegraph
for instructions to a remote and sometimes unsympathetic and
uncomprehending government, I was at the center of things, usually able
at short notice to have my line of action defined for me. I had a
further advantage in that the Government had begun post-war planning in
good time and in an orderly way."

On February 18, at the EAC'S second formal meeting, in what was surely
a record for a Soviet diplomatic decision, the inscrutable Gusev,
without argument of any kind, solemnly accepted the British zonal
proposals.

The British proposal gave the Soviets almost 40 per cent of Germany's
area, 36 per cent of its population and 33 per cent of its productive
resources. Berlin, though divided between the Allies, lay deep inside
the proposed Soviet zone, 110 miles from the western Anglo-American
demarcation line. "The division proposed seemed fair as any," Strang
later recalled, "and if it perhaps erred somewhat in generosity to the
Soviets, this was in line with the desire of our military authorities
who had preoccupations about post-war shortages of manpower, not to
take on a larger area of occupation than need be." There were many
other reasons. One of them was the fear of both British and American
leaders that Russia might make a separate peace with Germany. Another,
which particularly concerned the U.s. military, was the fear that
Russia would not join the war against Japan. And finally, the British
believed that Russia, if not forestalled, might actually demand up to
50 per cent of Germany because of her wartime sufferings.

As far as the U.s. was concerned, the die now seemed cast. Although
the Big Three still had to approve the British plan, the hard fact for
the U.s. was that Britain and Russia were in agreement. * In a way it
was a fait accompli and there was little that Winant could do except
inform his government. * One of the great myths that has developed
since the end of World War II is that Roosevelt was responsible for the
zones of occupation. The fact is that the plan was British throughout.
It was conceived by Anthony Eden, developed by the Attlee Committee
(which used Morgan's strictly military concept as the vehicle),
approved by Churchill and his cabinet, and presented by Strang at the
EAC. Many U.s. and British accounts refer to the zonal division as a
Russian plan. This erroneous conclusion derives from the fact that
when Gusev, at the second meeting of the EAC, accepted the British
proposal, he also submitted a Soviet draft covering surrender terms for
Germany. One section dealt with the zones: it was the British plan in
toto.

The Soviets' quick acceptance of the British plan caught Washington and
the President off balance. Roosevelt hurriedly dashed off a note to
the State Department. "What are the zones in the British and Russian
drafts and what is the zone we are proposing?" he asked. "I must know
this in order that it conform with what I decided on months ago."
State Department officials were baffled and for a very good reason:
they did not know what decisions Roosevelt had made at Teheran and
Cairo regarding the zones.

There was a flurry of calls between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the
State Department before the President got his information. Then, on
February 21, having seen the Anglo-Russian plan, Roosevelt reacted. "I
disagree with the British proposal of the demarcation of boundaries,"
he bluntly stated in a formal memorandum to the State Department. He
made no mention of the Soviet zone, but instead took sharp exception
once again to the sector proposed for the U.s., repeating even more
forcefully what he had told his military advisors on the Iowa. The
President's memo was a revelation to the State Department.

"Our principal object," he wrote, "is not to take part in the internal
problems in southern Europe but is rather to take part in eliminating
Germany as a possible and probable cause of a third World War. Various
points have been raised about the difficulties of transferring our
troops ... from a French front to a northern German front--what is
called a "leap-frog." These objections are specious because no matter
where British and American troops are on the day of Germany's surrender
it is physically easy for them to go anywhere--north, east or south.
... All things considered, and remembering that supplies come 3,500
miles or more by sea, the United States should use the ports of
Northern Germany --Hamburg and Bremen--and ... the Netherlands. ...
Therefore, I think American policy should be to occupy northwestern
Germany. ...

"If anything further is needed to justify this disagreement with the
British ... I can only add that political considerations in the United
States make my decision conclusive." Then, to make absolutely sure
that his Secretary of State really understood what he wanted, Roosevelt
added, underlining the words: "You might speak to me about this if the
above is not wholly clear."

In a more jocular vein, he explained his position to Churchill. "Do
please don't ask me to keep any American forces in France," he wrote
the Prime Minister. "I just cannot do it! As I suggested before, I
denounce in protest the paternity of Belgium, France and Italy. You
really ought to bring up and discipline your own children. In view of
the fact that they may be your bulwark in future days, you should at
least pay for the schooling now!"

The U.s. Chiefs of Staff apparently heard from the President, too.
Almost immediately the Army officers from the Civil Affairs Division
reversed their position in the Working Security Committee. A few days
after the London EAC meeting, a colonel strode into Professor Mosely's
office in the State Department and spread a map before him. "That's
what the President really wants," he said. Mosely looked at the map.
He had no idea when or under what circumstances it had been prepared.
He had never seen it before--nor had anyone else in the State
Department. The map was the one President Roosevelt had marked aboard
the Iowa.

As mysteriously as it had emerged, the Roosevelt map thereupon again
dropped out of sight. Mosely expected it to be brought up at the next
meeting of the Washington committee. It never was. "What happened to
it, I do not know," Mosely said years later. "The next time we met,
the Civil Affairs officers produced a brand-new map, a variation which
they explained was based on the President's instructions. Who received
these instructions I was never able to discover."

The new concept was somewhat similar to the President's Iowa map; but
not quite. The U.s. zone still lay in the northwest, the British in
the south, but the dividing line between them running along the 50th
parallel now stopped short of the Czech border. Furthermore, the
eastern boundary of the U.s. zone swung sharply due east above Leipzig
to encompass even more territory. There was one other change, more
important than all the others: the U.s. zone no longer included Berlin.
In Roosevelt's original version, the eastern boundary of the U.s. zone
had passed through the capital; now that line swung west in a wavering
semi-circle around the city. Had Roosevelt--after insisting to his
military

chiefs that "We should go as far as Berlin" and that "the U.s. should
have Berlin"--now changed his mind? The Civil Affairs officers did not
say. But they demanded that the new proposal be immediately
transmitted to London, where Winant was to demand its acceptance by

EAC!

It was a preposterous proposal anyway, and the State Department knew
it. Under the new plan both Britain and Russia would get smaller
occupation areas; it seemed hardly likely that they would accept such
an arrangement after both had approved an earlier, more favorable
division of territory. The Civil Affairs officers had produced the
proposal without any accompanying memoranda to assist Winant in
rationalizing it before the EAC; when asked to prepare such background
papers they refused and said that was the State Department's job. The
proposal was finally submitted to Winant without papers of any sort.
The Ambassador frantically cabled for more detailed instructions. When
they were not forthcoming, he shelved the plan; it was never
submitted.

That was the last effort made to introduce a U.s. plan. Roosevelt
continued to hold out against accepting the British scheme until late
March, 1944. At that time, George F. Kennan, Ambassador Winant's
political advisor, flew to Washington to explain to the President the
problems that had arisen in the EAC because of the deadlock. Roosevelt
reviewed the situation and after examining the British proposal once
again, told Kennan that "considering everything, it is probably a fair
decision." He then approved the Soviet zone and the overall plan, but
with one proviso: the U.s., he insisted, must have the northwestern
sector. According to the account that Kennan later gave Mosely, as the
meeting broke up Kennan asked the President what had happened to his
own plan. Roosevelt laughed. "Oh," he said, "that was just an
idea."

All through the momentous months of 1944, as Anglo-American troops
invaded the continent, routed the Germans out of France and began
driving for the Reich, the behind-the-scenes political

battles went on. Roosevelt clung firmly to his demands for the
northwest zone of Germany. Churchill just as tenaciously refused to
budge from his position.

In April Winant verbally informed the EAC of his government's position,
but he did not immediately put the President's desires before the
delegates in writing. The Ambassador was not prepared to do so until
he received instructions on one matter that he thought was crucial. In
the British plan there was still no provision for Western access to
Berlin.

The British foresaw no problem about access. They assumed that when
hostilities ended some form of German authority would sign the
surrender and administer the country under the control of the Supreme
Commander. No zone would be sealed off from any other and, as Strang
saw it, there would be "some free movement of Germans from zone to zone
and from western zones to the capital ... also freedom of movement for
all proper purposes for Allied military and civilian staffs in
Germany." Furthermore, whenever the subject had been mentioned in the
EAC, Russia's Gusev had smoothly assured Strang and Winant that he
foresaw no difficulties. After all, as Gusev repeatedly put it, the
mere presence of U.s. and British forces in Berlin automatically
carried with it rights of access. It was a matter that was taken for
granted, a kind of gentlemen's agreement.

Nevertheless, Winant thought the provision should be nailed down. He
believed that "corridors" such as those originally suggested by Mosely
had to be included before the Big Three formally accepted the British
scheme. He intended to present such a proposal at the same time he
formally placed the President's views on the zones before EAC. He
wanted guarantees of specific rail, highway, and air routes through the
Soviet zone to Berlin.

In May the Ambassador flew to Washington, saw the President, and then
outlined his corridor provisions to the War Department. The Civil
Affairs Division flatly turned down Winant's plan. * Its * What
transpired between Roosevelt and Winant at their meeting, or what the
President's position was on the Berlin transit question is not known.
There is further confusion as to whether the War Department did or did
not oppose Winant's "corridor" plan. Major General John H. Hildring,
Chief of the Civil Affairs Division, is reported to have told Winant
that "access to Berlin should be provided for." The version here
reflects the views of the three principal U.s. historians on this
period: Professor Philip Mosely (The Kremlin and World Politics);
Herbert Feis (Churchill Roosevelt Stalin); and William M. Franklin,
Director of the State Department's Historical Office (Zonal Boundaries
and Access to Berlin --World Politics, October 1963). "Winant,"
Franklin writes, "apparently made no memoranda of these conversations.
... This much, however, is clear: Winant received neither instructions
nor encouragement from anyone in Washington to take the matter up with
the Russians."

officers assured him that the question of access to Berlin was
"strictly a military matter anyway" and would be handled by local
commanding officers through military channels when Germany was
occupied. Winant, defeated, returned to London. On June 1 he formally
agreed to the British plan and the proposed Soviet sector, with the one
exception that the U.s. should have the northwestern zone. The
document contained no clause providing for access to Berlin. * In
tentative form, at least, the Allies had decided the future of the
city: when the war ended it would be a jointly occupied island almost
in the center of the Soviet zone. * For reasons which would always
remain obscure, Winant's position on access to Berlin had changed after
his return from Washington. Veteran diplomat Robert Murphy recalls
that soon after joining Supreme Headquarters in September, 1944, he
lunched with Winant in London and discussed the Berlin transit
question. Murphy urged Winant to reopen the matter. In his memoirs,
Diplomat Among Warriors, he writes: "Winant argued that our right of
free access to Berlin was implicit in our right to be there. The
Russians ... were inclined to suspect our motives anyway and if we
insisted on this technicality we would intensify their distrust."
According to Murphy, Winant was not willing to force the issue in the

EAC.

The power struggle now moved swiftly to its conclusion. In late July,
1944, Gusev, eager to formalize Soviet gains in the EAC, deliberately
brought matters to a head. Unless the Anglo-American dispute was
settled so that the Big Three could sign the agreement, he said
blandly, the U.s.s.r. could see little reason for further EAC
discussions. The implied threat to pull out of the Advisory
Commission, thus nullifying the work of months, had the desired
effect.

On both sides of the Atlantic, anxious diplomats and military advisors
urged their leaders to give in. Both Churchill and Roosevelt remained
adamant. Roosevelt seemed to be the least flustered by the Soviet
threat. Winant was told that since the U.s. had already agreed on the
Soviet zone, the President could not understand why "any further
discussion with the Soviets is necessary at this time."

But Roosevelt was now being pressed from all sides. While the
political squabbles went on, the great Anglo-American armies were
swarming toward Germany. In the middle of August, General Eisenhower
cabled the Combined Chiefs of Staff, warning that they might be "faced
with the occupation of Germany sooner than had been expected." Once
again the disposition of troops as originally foreseen by Morgan in his
Rankin C plan had returned to plague the planners: British troops on
the left were heading for northern Germany, Americans on the right were
advancing toward the south. Eisenhower now sought political guidance
on the occupation zones--the first U.s. military man to do so. "All we
can do," he said, "is approach the problem on a purely military basis"
and that would mean keeping the "present deployment of our armies. ..."
Eisenhower added: "Unless we receive instructions to the contrary, we
must assume this solution is acceptable ... considering the situation
which may confront us and the absence of basic decisions as to the
zones of occupation."

The crisis, long inevitable, had now been reached. The U.s. War and
State departments, for once in complete agreement, were faced with a
dilemma: no one was prepared to reopen the issue with the President
again. In any case, the matter was due to be discussed at a new
Roosevelt-Churchill meeting scheduled for the fall; any final decision
would have to be put off till then. In the meantime, Eisenhower's
planning could not be delayed. Since the U.s. Chiefs had plans already
prepared for a U.s. occupation of either the northwest or southern
zones, on August 18 they advised Eisenhower that they were "in complete
agreement" with his solution. Thus, although Roosevelt had not yet
announced his decision, the assumption that the U.s. would occupy the
southern zone was allowed to stand.

Roosevelt and Churchill met once again in Quebec in September, 1944.
Roosevelt had changed visibly. The usually vital President looked
frail and wan. The crippling polio which his renowned charm and witty
informality cloaked was now evident in the painful hesitancy of his
every move. But there was more than that. He had been in office since
1933--longer than any other U.s. President--and even now was seeking a
fourth term. The campaigning, the diplomacy at home and abroad, the
strain of the heavy burdens of the war years, were fast taking their
toll. It was easy to see why his doctors, family and friends were
begging him not to run again. To the British delegation at Quebec,
Roosevelt appeared to be failing rapidly. Churchill's Chief of Staff,
General Sir Hastings Ismay, was shocked by his appearance. "Two years
before," he said, "the President had been the picture of health and
vitality, but now he had lost so much weight that he seemed to have
shrunk: his coat sagged over his broad shoulders and his collar looked
several sizes too big. We knew the shadows were closing in."

Tired, frustrated, trapped by circumstances and under pressure from his
advisors and Churchill, the President finally gave in and accepted the
southern zone. The British met him halfway. Among other concessions,
they agreed to give the U.s. control of the great harbors and staging
areas of Bremen and Bremerhaven. * * At the Conference, another
controversial issue boiled up when the President and the U.s. Secretary
of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, introduced a severe and far-reaching
economic plan calling for Germany to be turned into an agricultural
nation, without industry. At first Churchill subscribed to this
scheme, but under pressure from his advisors later retreated from his
original position. Months later Roosevelt abandoned the controversial
Morgenthau plan.

The final wartime meeting of the Big Three occurred at Yalta, in
February, 1945. It was a crucial conference. Victory lay ahead, but
it was clear that the bonds binding the Allied leaders were weakening
as political considerations replaced military realities. The Russians
were becoming more demanding and arrogant with every mile they advanced
into central Europe. Churchill, long a foe of Communism, was
particularly concerned about the future of countries like Poland, which
the Red Army had liberated and now controlled.

Roosevelt, gaunt and much weaker than he had been at Quebec, still saw
himself in the role of the Great Arbiter. In his view a peaceful
post-war world could be achieved only with the cooperation of Stalin.
He had once expressed his policy toward the Red leader in these terms:
"I think that if I give him everything I can and ask for nothing in
return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work
with me for a world of democracy and peace." The President believed
that the U.s. could "get along with Russia" and that he could "manage
Stalin" for, as he had once explained, "on a man-to-man basis ... Uncle
Joe ... is get-at-able." Although the President was growing
increasingly concerned about Soviet post-War intentions, he still
seemed almost determinedly optimistic.

At Yalta the last great wartime decisions were made. Among them was
one giving France full partnership in the occupation of Germany. The
French zone of Germany and the French sector of Berlin were carved out
of the British and U.s. areas; Stalin, who was opposed to French
participation, refused to contribute any part of the Russian zone. On
February 11, 1945, the Big Three formally accepted their respective
zones.

Thus, after sixteen months of confusion and squabbling, the U.s. and
Britain at last were in accord. The occupation plan, based on a scheme
originally called Rankin C but now known to the military as Operation
Eclipse, contained one staggering omission: there was no provision
whatever for Anglo-American access to Berlin.

It took just six weeks for Stalin to violate the Yalta agreement.
Within three weeks of the conference, Russia had ousted the government
of Soviet-occupied Rumania. In an ultimatum to King Michael, the Reds
bluntly ordered the appointment of Petru Groza, the Rumanian Communist
chief, as Prime Minister. Poland was lost, too: the promised free
elections had not taken place.

Contemptuously, Stalin seemed to have turned his back on the very heart
of the Yalta pact, which stated that the Allied powers would assist
"peoples liberated from the dominion of Nazi Germany and ... former
Axis satellite states ... to create democratic institutions of their
own choice." But Stalin saw to it that any Yalta provisions that
favored him--such as the division of Germany and Berlin--were carried
out scrupulously.

Roosevelt had been warned often of Stalin's ruthless territorial
ambitions by his Ambassador to Moscow, W. Averell Harriman, but now the
Soviet leader's flagrant breach of faith came to him as a staggering
shock. On the afternoon of Saturday, March 24, in a small room on the
top floor of the White House, Roosevelt had just finished lunch with
Mrs. Anna Rosenberg, his personal representative charged with studying
the problems of returning veterans, when a cable arrived from Harriman
on the Polish situation. The President read the message and erupted in
a violent display of anger, repeatedly pounding the arms of his
wheelchair. "As he banged the chair," Mrs. Rosenberg later recalled,
"he kept repeating: "Averell is right! We can't do business with
Stalin! He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta!"" *
* This incident comes from a private conversation with Mrs. Rosenberg
(now Mrs. Paul Hoffman). Mrs. Roosevelt was also present; the two
women later compared notes and agreed on the President's exact words.

In London, Churchill was so disturbed by Stalin's departure from the
spirit of Yalta that he told his secretary he feared the world might
consider that "Mr. Roosevelt and I have underwritten a fraudulent
prospectus." On his return from Yalta he had told the British people
that "Stalin and the Soviet leaders wish to live in honorable
friendship and equality with the western democracies. I feel ... Their
word is their bond." But on this same Saturday, March 24, the worried
Prime Minister remarked to his aide: "I hardly like dismembering
Germany until my doubts about Russia's intentions have been cleared
away."

With Soviet moves becoming "as plain as a pikestaff," Churchill felt
that the Western Allies' most potent bargaining force would

be the presence of Anglo-American troops deep inside Germany, so they
could meet with the Russians "as far to the east as possible." Thus,
Field Marshal Montgomery's message announcing his intention of dashing
for the Elbe and Berlin was heartening news indeed: to Churchill, the
quick capture of Berlin now seemed vital. But, despite the Montgomery
message, no commander along the western front had as yet been ordered
to take the city. That order could come from only one man: the Supreme
Commander, General Eisenhower.

The raid took Berlin's defenders completely by surprise. Shortly
before 11 A.m. on Wednesday, March 28, the first planes appeared.
Immediately, batteries all over the city crashed into action, belching
shells into the sky. The racket of the guns, coupled with the belated
wailing of air raid sirens, was earsplitting. These planes were not
American. U.s. raids were almost predictable: they usually occurred at
9 A.m. and then again at midday. This attack was different. It came
from the east, and both the timing and tactics were new. Screaming in
at rooftop level, scores of Russian fighters emptied their guns into
the streets.

In Potsdamer Platz, people ran in all directions. Along the
Kurfurstendamm, shoppers dived for doorways, ran for subway entrances,
or headed for the protective ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial
Church. But some Berliners, who had been standing for hours in long
queues waiting to buy their weekly rations, refused to budge. In
Wilmersdorf, 36-year-old Nurse Charlotte Winckler was determined to get
food for her two children, Ekkehart, six,

and Barbara, nine months old. In Adolf-Hitler-Platz, Gertrud Ketzler
and Inge Ruhling, long-time friends, waited calmly with others before a
grocery store. Some time ago both had decided to commit suicide if the
Russians ever reached Berlin, but they weren't thinking about that now.
They intended to bake an Easter cake, and for days had been shopping
and storing the items they would require. Over in Kopenick, plump
40-year-old Hanna Schultze was hoping to get some extra flour for a
holiday marble cake. During the day's shopping, Hanna also hoped to
find something else: a pair of suspenders for her husband, Robert. His
last remaining pair was almost beyond saving.

During air raids Erna Saenger always worried about "Papa," as she
called her husband Konrad. He obstinately refused to go into a
Zehlendorf shelter and, as usual, he was out. Konrad was trudging
toward his favorite restaurant, the Alte Krug, on Konigin-Luise
Strasse. No air raid yet had ever stopped the 78-year-old veteran from
meeting with his World War I comrades every Wednesday. He wouldn't be
stopped today, either.

One Berliner was actually enjoying every minute of the attack. Wearing
an old army helmet, young Rudolf Reschke ran back and forth between the
door of his Dahlem home and the center of the street, deliberately
taunting the low-flying planes. Each time Rudolf waved to the pilots.
One of them, apparently seeing his antics, dived right for him. As
Rudolf ran, a burst of fire ripped across the sidewalk behind him. It
was just part of the game for Rudolf. As far as he was concerned, the
war was the greatest thing that had ever happened in his fourteen years
of life.

Wave after wave of planes hit the city. As fast as squadrons exhausted
their ammunition, they peeled off to the east, to be replaced by others
swarming in to the attack. The surprise Russian raid added a new
dimension of terror to life in Berlin. Casualties were heavy. Many
civilians were hit not by enemy bullets, but by the returning fire from
the city's defenders. To get the low-flying planes in their sights,
anti-aircraft crews had to depress their gun barrels almost to tree-top
level. As a result, the city was sprayed

with red-hot shrapnel. The shell fragments came mainly from the six
great flak towers that rose above the city at Humboldthain,
Friedrichshain, and from the grounds of the Berlin Zoo. These massive
bombproof forts had been built in 1941-42 after the first Allied
attacks on the city. Each was huge, but the largest was the
anti-aircraft complex built, incongruously, near the bird sanctuary in
the zoo. It had twin towers. The smaller, called L Tower, was a
communications control center, bristling with radar antennae. Next to
it, guns now erupting with flame, stood G Tower.

G Tower was immense. It covered almost the area of a city block and
stood 132 feet high --equivalent to a 13-story building. The
reinforced concrete walls were more than 8 feet thick, and deep-cut
apertures, shuttered by 3- to 4-inch steel plates, lined its sides. On
the roof a battery of eight 5-inch guns was firing continuously, and in
each of the four turreted corners multiple-barreled, quick-firing "pom
pom" cannons pumped shells into the sky.

Inside the fort the noise was almost intolerable. Added to the firing
of the batteries was the constant rattling of automatic shell
elevators, which carried ammunition in an endless stream from a ground
floor arsenal to each gun. G Tower was designed not only as a gun
platform but as a huge five-story warehouse, hospital and air raid
shelter. The top floor, directly underneath the batteries, housed the
100-man military garrison. Beneath that was a 95-bed Luftwaffe
hospital, complete with X-ray rooms and two fully equipped operating
theaters. It was staffed by six doctors, twenty nurses and some thirty
orderlies. The next floor down, the third, was a treasure trove. Its
storerooms contained the prize exhibits of Berlin's top museums. Housed
here were the famous Pergamon sculptures, parts of the huge sacrificial
altar built by King Eumenes II of the Hellenes around 180 B.c.; various
other Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, including statues,
reliefs, vessels and vases; "The Gold Treasure of Priam," a huge
collection of gold and silver bracelets, necklaces, earrings, amulets,
ornaments and jewels, excavated by the German archaeologist Heinrich
Schliemann in 1872 on the site of the ancient city of Troy. There

were priceless Gobelin tapestries, a vast quantity of paintings--among
them the fine portraits of the 19th-century German artist Wilhelm
Leibl--and the enormous Kaiser Wilhelm coin collection. The two lower
floors of the tower were mammoth air raid shelters, with large
kitchens, food storerooms and emergency quarters for the German
broadcasting station, Deutschlandsender.

Entirely self-contained, G Tower had its own water and power, and
easily accommodated fifteen thousand people during air raids. The
complex was so well stocked with supplies and ammunition that the
military garrison believed that, no matter what happened to the rest of
Berlin, the zoo tower could hold out for a year if need be.

As suddenly as it had begun, the raid was over. The guns atop G Tower
stuttered to a stop. Here and there over Berlin black smoke curled up
from fires started by incendiary bullets. The raid had lasted slightly
longer than twenty minutes. As quickly as they had emptied, the Berlin
streets filled again. Outside the markets and shops, those who had
left the queues now angrily tried to regain their former places from
others who just as stubbornly refused to give them up.

In the zoo itself, one man hurried outside as soon as the guns of G
Tower stopped firing. Anxious as always after a raid, 63-year-old
Heinrich Schwarz headed for the bird sanctuary, carrying with him a
small pail of horse meat. "Abu, Abu," he called. A strange clapping
sound came from the edge of a pond. Then the weird-looking bird from
the Nile, with the blue-gray plumage and the huge beak resembling an
up-ended Dutch clog, stepped daintily out of the water on thin
stilt-like legs and came toward the man. Schwarz felt an immense
relief. The rare Abu Markub stork was still safe.

Even without the raids, the daily encounter with the bird was becoming
more and more of an ordeal for Schwarz. He held out the horse meat. "I
have to give you this," he said. "What can I do? I have no fish. Do
you want it or not?" The bird closed its eyes. Schwarz sadly shook
his head. The Abu Markub made the same

refusal every day. If its stubbornness persisted, the stork would
surely die. Yet there was nothing Schwarz could do. The last of the
tinned tuna was gone and fresh fish was nowhere to be found in
Berlin--at least not for the Berlin Zoo.

Of the birds still remaining, the Abu Markub was the real pet of head
bird-keeper Schwarz. His other favorites had long since gone--"Arra,"
the 75-year-old parrot which Schwarz had taught to say "Papa," had been
shipped to the Saar for safety two years ago. All the German "Trappen"
ostriches had died from concussion or shock during the air raids. Only
Abu was left--and he was slowly dying of starvation. Schwarz was
desperate with worry. "He is getting thinner and thinner," he told his
wife Anna. "His joints are beginning to swell. Yet each time I try to
feed him, he looks at me as though to say, "Surely you have made a
mistake. This is not for me.""

Of the fourteen thousand animals, birds, reptiles and fish which had
populated the zoo in 1939, there were now only sixteen hundred of all
species left. In the six years of the war, the sprawling zoological
gardens--which included an aquarium, insectarium, elephant and reptile
houses, restaurants, movie theaters, ballrooms and administration
buildings-- had been hit by more than a hundred high-explosive bombs.
The worst raid had been in November, 1943, when scores of animals had
been killed. Soon after, many of those remaining had been evacuated to
other zoos in Germany. Finding supplies for the remaining sixteen
hundred animals and birds was becoming daily more difficult in
food-rationed Berlin. The zoo's requirements, even for its reduced
menagerie, were staggering: not only large quantities of horse meat and
fish, but thirty-six different kinds of other food, ranging from
noodles, rice and cracked wheat to canned fruit, marmalade and ant
larvae. There was plenty of hay, straw, clover and raw vegetables, but
nearly everything else had become almost unobtainable. Although ersatz
food was being used, every bird or animal was on less than
half-rations--and looked it.

Of the zoo's nine elephants, only one now remained. Siam, his

skin hanging in great gray folds, had become so bad-tempered that
keepers were afraid to enter his cage. Rosa, the big hippo, was
miserable, her skin dry and crusted, but her 2-year-old baby,
Knautschke, everybody's favorite, still maintained his youthful
jauntiness. Pongo, the usually good-natured 530-pound gorilla, had
lost more than 50 pounds and sat in his cage, sometimes motionless for
hours, glowering morosely at everyone. The five lions (two of them
cubs), the bears, zebras, hartebeests, monkeys and the rare wild
horses, all were showing effects of diet deficiencies.

There was a third threat to the existence of the zoo creatures. Every
now and then, Keeper Walter Wendt reported the disappearance of some of
his rare cattle. There was only one possible conclusion: some
Berliners were stealing and slaughtering the animals to supplement
their own meager rations.

Zoo Director Lutz Heck was faced with a dilemma--a dilemma that not
even the friendship of his hunting companion, Reichsmarschall Hermann
Goering, or anyone else for that matter, could alleviate. In the event
of a prolonged siege, the birds and animals would surely die from
starvation. Worse, the dangerous animals--the lions, bears, foxes,
hyenas, Tibetan cats and the zoo's prize baboon, one of a rare species
which Heck had personally brought back from the Cameroons--might escape
during the battle. How soon, wondered Heck, should he destroy the
baboon and the five lions he loved so much?

Gustav Riedel, the lion-keeper, who had bottle-fed the 9-month-old lion
cubs, Sultan and Bussy, had made up his mind about one thing: despite
any orders, he intended to save the little lions. Riedel was not alone
in his feeling. Almost every keeper had plans for the survival of his
favorite. Dr. Katherina Heinroth, wife of the 74-year-old director of
the bombed-out aquarium, was already caring for a small monkey, Pia, in
her apartment. Keeper Robert Eberhard was obsessed with protecting the
rare horses and the zebras entrusted to his care. Walter Wendt's
greatest concern were the ten wisent--near cousins of the American
bison. They were his pride and joy. He had spent the best part of
thirty years

in scientific breeding to produce them. They were unique and worth
well over one million marks --roughly a quarter of a million dollars.

As for Heinrich Schwarz, the bird-keeper, he could no longer stand the
suffering of the Abu Markub. He stood by the pond and called the great
bird once more. When it came, Schwarz bent over and tenderly lifted it
into his arms. From now on the bird would live--or die--in the Schwarz
family bathroom.

In the baroque red and gold Beethoven Hall, the sharp rapping of the
baton brought a sudden hush. Conductor Robert Heger raised his right
arm and stood poised. Outside, somewhere in the devastated city, the
sound of a fire engine's wailing siren faded slowly away. For a moment
longer Heger held the pose. Then his baton dropped and, heralded by
four muffled drumbeats, Beethoven's Violin Concerto welled softly out
from the huge Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

As the woodwinds began their quiet dialogue with the drums, soloist
Gerhard Taschner waited, his eyes on the conductor. Most of the
audience that crowded the undamaged concert hall on Kothenerstrasse had
come to hear the brilliant 23-year-old violinist, and as the bell-clear
notes of his violin suddenly soared, faded away and soared again, they
listened, rapt. Witnesses present at this afternoon concert in the
last week of March recall that some Berliners were so overcome by
Taschner's playing that they quietly wept.

All during the war the 105-man Philharmonic had offered Berliners a
rare and welcome release from fear and despair. The orchestra came
under Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, and its members had been
exempted from military service, since the Nazis considered the
Philharmonic good for morale. With this, Berliners completely agreed.
For music lovers the orchestra was like a tranquilizer transporting
them away from the war and its terrors for a little while.

One man who was always deeply moved by the orchestra was Reichsminister
Albert Speer, Hitler's Armament and War Production chief, now sitting
in his usual seat in the middle of the orchestra section. Speer, the
most cultured member of the Nazi hierarchy, rarely missed a
performance. Music, more than anything else, helped him shed his
anxieties--and he had never needed its help more than he did now.

Reichsminister Speer was facing the greatest problem of his career. All
through the war, despite every conceivable kind of setback, he had kept
the Reich's industrial might producing. But long ago his statistics
and projections had spelled out the inevitable: the Third Reich's days
were numbered. As the Allies penetrated ever deeper into Germany the
realistic Speer was the only cabinet minister who dared tell Hitler the
truth. "The war is lost," he wrote the Fuhrer on March 15, 1945. "If
the war is lost," Hitler snapped back, "then the nation will also
perish." On March 19, Hitler issued a monstrous directive: Germany was
to be totally destroyed. Everything was to be blown up or
burned--power plants, water and gas works, dams and locks, ports and
waterways, industrial complexes and electrical networks, all shipping
and bridges, all railroad rolling stock and communications
installations, all vehicles and stores of whatever kind, even the
country's highways.

The incredulous Speer appealed to Hitler. He had a special, personal
stake in getting this policy reversed. If Hitler succeeded in
eliminating German industry, commerce and architecture, he would be
destroying many of Speer's own creations--his bridges, his broad
highways, his buildings. The man who, more than anyone else, was
responsible for forging the terrible tools of Hitler's total war could
not face their total destruction. But there was another, more
important consideration as well. No matter what happens to the regime,
Speer told Hitler, "we must do everything to maintain, even if only in
a primitive manner, a basis for the existence of the nation. ... We
have no right to carry out demolitions which might affect the life of
the people. ..."

Hitler was unmoved. "There is no need to consider the basis of even a
most primitive existence any longer," he replied. "On the contrary, it
is better to destroy even that, and to destroy it ourselves. The
nation has proved itself weak. ..." With these words Hitler wrote off
the German people. As he explained to Speer, "those who remain after
the battle are of little value, for the good have fallen."

Speer was horrified. The people who had fought so hard for their
leader apparently now meant less than nothing to the Fuhrer. For years
Speer had closed his eyes to the more brutal side of the Nazis'
operations, believing himself to be intellectually above it all. Now,
belatedly, he came to a realization which he had refused to face for
months. As he put it to General Alfred Jodl, "Hitler is totally mad
... he must be stopped."

Between March 19 and 23 a stream of "scorched earth" orders flashed out
from Hitler's headquarters to gauleiters and military commanders all
over Germany. Those who were slow to comply were threatened with
execution. Speer immediately went into action. Fully aware that he
was placing his own life in jeopardy, he set out to stop Hitler's plan,
aided by a small coterie of high-ranking military friends. Speer
telephoned industrialists, flew to military garrisons, visited
provincial officials, everywhere insisting, even to the most diehard
Nazis, that Hitler's plan spelled the end of Germany forever.

Considering the serious purpose of the Reichsminister's campaign, his
presence at the Philharmonic concert might have seemed frivolous--were
it not for one fact: high on the list of German resources Speer was
fighting to preserve was the Philharmonic itself. A few weeks earlier,
Dr. Gerhart von Westermann, the orchestra manager, had asked violinist
Taschner, a favorite of Speer's, to seek the Reichsminister's help in
keeping the Philharmonic intact. Technically, the musicians were
exempt from military service. But with the battle for Berlin
approaching, Von Westermann feared that any day now the entire
orchestra might be ordered into the Volkssturm, the Home Guard.
Although the orchestra's affairs were supposed to be administered by
Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, Von Westermann knew there was no
hope of assistance from that quarter. He told the violinist, "You've
got to help us. Goebbels has forgotten us ... go to Speer and ask him
for help ... we'll all be on our knees to you."

Taschner was extremely reluctant: any talk of shirking or flight was
considered treasonable and could lead to disgrace or imprisonment. But
at last he agreed.

At his meeting with Speer, Taschner began hesitantly. "Mr. Minister,"
he said, "I would like to speak with you about a rather delicate
matter. I hope you will not misunderstand ... but nowadays some things
are difficult to talk about. ..." Looking at him sharply, Speer
quickly put him at his ease and, encouraged, Taschner poured out the
story of the orchestra's plight. The Reichsminister listened intently.
Then Speer told Taschner that Von Westermann was not to worry. He had
thought of a plan to do much more than keep the musicians out of the
Volkssturm. At the very last moment he intended secretly to evacuate
the entire 105-man orchestra.

Speer had now carried out the first part of the plan. The 105 men
seated on the stage of Beethoven Hall were wearing dark business suits
instead of the usual tuxedos, but of all the audience, only Speer knew
the reason. The tuxedos--along with the orchestra's fine pianos,
harps, famous Wagner tubas and musical scores--had been removed quietly
from the city by truck convoy three weeks before. The bulk of the
precious cargo was cached at Plassenburg near Kulmbach, 240 miles
southwest of Berlin--conveniently in the path of the advancing
Americans.

The second part of Speer's plan--saving the men--was more complicated.
Despite the intensity of the air raids, and the proximity of the
invading armies, the Propaganda Ministry had never suggested cutting
short the Philharmonic's schedule. Concerts

were scheduled at the rate of three or four a week, in between air
raids, right through to the end of April, when the season would
officially end. Any evacuation of the musicians before that time was
out of the question: Goebbels undoubtedly would charge the musicians
with desertion. Speer was determined to evacuate the orchestra to the
west; he had absolutely no intention of allowing the men to fall into
Russian hands. But his scheme was entirely dependent on the speed of
the Western Allies' advance: he was counting on the Anglo-Americans to
beat the Russians to Berlin.

Speer did not intend to wait until the Western Allies entered the city.
As soon as they were close enough to be reached by an overnight bus
trip, he would give the order to evacuate. The crux of the plan lay in
the signal to leave. The musicians would all have to leave at once,
and after dark. That meant the flight must start right after the
concert. To avoid a breach of security, word of the move would have to
be withheld as long as possible. Speer had come up with an ingenious
method of alerting the musicians: at the very last minute the orchestra
conductor would announce a change in the program and the Philharmonic
would then play a specific selection which Speer had chosen. That
would be the musicians' cue; immediately after the performance they
would board a convoy of buses waiting in the darkness outside Beethoven
Hall.

In Von Westermann's possession was the music Speer had requested as the
signal. When it was delivered by Speer's cultural affairs specialist,
Von Westermann had been unable to hide his surprise. He queried
Speer's assistant. "Of course you are familiar with the music of the
last scenes," he said. "You know they picture the death of the gods,
the destruction of Valhalla and the end of the world. Are you sure
this is what the Minister ordered?" There was no mistake. For the
Berlin Philharmonic's last concert, Speer had requested music from
Wagner's Die Gotterdammerung--The Twilight of the Gods.

In this choice, if Von Westermann had known it, lay a clue to

Speer's final and most ambitious project. The Reichsminister,
determined to save as much of Germany as he could, had decided that
there was just one way to do it. For weeks now, perfectionist Albert
Speer had been trying to find just the right way to murder Adolf
Hitler. * * *

All along the eastern front the great Russian armies were massing, but
they were still far from ready to open the Berlin offensive. The
Soviet commanders chafed at the delay. The Oder was a formidable
barrier and the spring thaw late: the river was still partly covered
with ice. Beyond it lay the German defenses--the bunkers, minefields,
anti-tank ditches and dug-in artillery positions. Each day now the
Germans grew stronger, and this fact worried the Red Army generals.

No one was more anxious to get started than the 45-year-old Colonel
General Vasili Ivanovich Chuikov, commander of the crack Eighth Guards
Army, who had earned great renown in the Soviet Union as the defender
of Stalingrad. Chuikov blamed the holdup on the Western Allies. After
the surprise German attack in the Ardennes in December, the British and
Americans had asked Stalin to ease the pressure by speeding up the Red
Army's drive from the east. Stalin had agreed and had launched the
Russian offensive in Poland sooner than planned. Chuikov believed, as
he was later to say, that "if our lines of communications had not been
so spread out and strained in the rear, we could have struck out for
Berlin itself in February." But so fast was the Soviet advance out of
Poland that when the armies reached the Oder they found that they had
outrun their supplies and communications. The offensive came to a
halt, as Chuikov put it, because "we needed ammunition, fuel and
pontoons for forcing the Oder, the riverways and canals that lay in
front of Berlin." The need to re-group and prepare had already given
the Germans nearly two months in which to organize their defenses.
Chuikov was bitter. Each day's wait meant more casualties for his
Guardsmen when the attack began.

Colonel General Mikhail Yefimovich Katukov, Commander of the First
Guards Tank Army, was equally eager for the offensive to begin, yet he
was grateful for the delay. His men needed the rest, and his
maintenance crews needed a chance to repair the armored vehicles. "The
tanks have traveled, in a straight line, perhaps 570 kilometers," he
had told one of his corps commanders,

General Getman, after they reached the Oder. "But, Andreya
Levrentevich," he continued, "their speedometers show more than 2,000.
A man has no speedometer and nobody knows what wear and tear has taken
place there."

Getman agreed. He had no doubt that the Germans would be crushed and
Berlin captured, but he, too, was glad of the opportunity to
reorganize. "The alphabet of war, Comrade General," he told Katukov,
"says that victory is achieved not by taking towns but by destroying
the enemy. In 1812, Napoleon forgot that. He lost Moscow--and
Napoleon was no mean leader of men."

The attitude was much the same at other army headquarters all along the
front. Everyone, though impatient of delay, was tirelessly taking
advantage of the respite, for there were no illusions about the
desperate battle that lay ahead. Marshals Zhukov, Rokossovskii and
Koniev had received chilling reports of what they might encounter.
Their intelligence estimates indicated that more than a million Germans
manned the defenses and that up to three million civilians might help
fight for Berlin. If the reports were true, the Red Army might be
outnumbered more than three to one.

When would the attack take place? As yet, the marshals did not know.
Zhukov's huge army group was scheduled to take the city--but that, too,
could be changed. Just as Anglo-American armies on the western front
waited for the word "Go" from Eisenhower, the Red Army commanders
waited on their Supreme Commander. What worried the marshals more than
anything else was the speed of the Anglo-American drive from the Rhine.
Each day now they were drawing closer to the Elbe--and Berlin. If
Moscow failed to order the offensive soon, the British and Americans
might beat the Red Army into the city. So far the word "Go" had not
come down from Josef Stalin. He almost seemed to be waiting himself.

Part Four THE DECISION

A great procession of Army supply trucks rolled along the narrow, dusty
main street of the French city. In endless lines the convoys roared
through, heading northeast on the long haul to the Rhine and the
Western Front. No one was permitted to stop; MP'S stood everywhere to
keep the traffic flowing. To the drivers, there was no reason to stop
anyway. This was just another sleepy French city with the usual
cathedral, just another checkpoint on the high-speed "Red Ball
Highway." They did not know that at this moment in the war Reims was
perhaps the most important city in Europe.

For centuries battles had raged about this strategic crossroad in
northeast France. The Gothic cathedral rising majestically from the
city's center had endured countless bombardments, and again and again
its fabric had been restored. On its site or within its sanctuary
every French monarch, from Clovis I in 496 to Louis XVI in 1774, had
been crowned. In this war, mercifully the city and its monument had
been spared. Now, in the shadow of the great twin-spired cathedral
stood the headquarters of another great leader. His name was Dwight D.
Eisenhower.

Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces was tucked away
on a back street close to the railway station in a plain, modern
three-story building. The building was the College Moderne et
Technique, a former technical school for boys. Box-like, its four
sides surrounding an inner courtyard, the red brick school was
originally designed to hold more than 1,500 students. Staff members
called it the "little red school house." Perhaps because of SHAEF'S
requirements, it seemed small: the headquarters had almost doubled its
strength since 1944 and now had nearly 1,200 officers and some 4,000
enlisted men. As a result, the college could accommodate only the
Supreme Commander, his immediate general staff officers and their
departments. The remainder worked in other buildings throughout
Reims.

In the second-floor classroom that he used for an office, the General
had worked almost without pause all day. The room was small and
spartan. Blackout curtains hung by the two windows overlooking the
street. There were a few easy chairs on the highly polished oak floor,
but that was all. Eisenhower's desk, set in an alcove at one end of
the room, was on a slightly raised platform--once used by the teacher.
On the desk were a blue leather desk set, an intercom, leather-framed
photos of his wife and son, and two black phones--one for regular use,
the other a special instrument for "scrambled" calls to Washington and
London. There were also several ashtrays, for the Supreme Commander
was a chain-smoker who consumed more than sixty cigarettes a day. *
Behind the desk stood the General's personal flag and, in the opposite
corner, Old Glory. * In 1948, following a sudden rise in pulse rate,
his doctors told him to give up tobacco. Eisenhower never smoked
again.

The previous afternoon Eisenhower had made a quick flight to Paris for
a press conference. The big news was the victory on the Rhine. The
Supreme Commander announced that the enemy's main defense in the west
had been shattered. Although Eisenhower told reporters he did not want
to "write off the war for the Germans are going to stand and fight
where they can," in his opinion the German was "a whipped enemy."
Buried in the conference was a reference to Berlin. Someone asked who
would get to the capital first, "the Russians or us?" Eisenhower
answered that he thought "mileage alone ought to make them do it," but
he quickly

added that he did not "want to make any predictions"; although the
Russians had a "shorter race to run" they were faced with "the bulk of
the German forces."

Eisenhower spent the night at the Hotel Raphael; then, leaving Paris
shortly after dawn, he flew back to Reims. At 7:45 A.m. he was in his
office and conferring with his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General
Walter Bedell Smith. Waiting for Eisenhower, in General Smith's blue
leather snap-top folder, were a score of overnight cables that only the
Supreme Commander could answer. They were labeled with the highest
security tag: "For Eisenhower's Eyes Only." Among them was
Montgomery's message, seeking approval for his dash to the Elbe and
Berlin. But the most important cable was from Eisenhower's superior,
the U.s. Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. By
coincidence Marshall's and Montgomery's messages had arrived at SHAEF
within two hours of each other the previous evening--and both were to
have a major influence on Eisenhower. On this Wednesday, March 28,
they would act as catalysts in finally crystallizing for the Supreme
Commander the strategy he would follow to the war's end.

Months before, Eisenhower's mission as Supreme Commander had been
spelled out by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in one sentence: "You will
enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United
Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the
destruction of her armed forces." He had carried out this directive
brilliantly. By dint of personality, administrative ability and tact,
he had welded the soldiery of more than a dozen nations into the most
awesome force in history. Few men could have achieved this while
keeping animosities to such a minimum. Yet the 55-year-old Eisenhower
did not conform to the traditional European concept of the military
leader. Unlike British generals, he was not trained to consider
political objectives as part of military strategy. Eisenhower, though
a master diplomat in the politics of compromise and placation, was in
international terms politically unaware--and proud of it. In the
American military tradition he had been schooled never to usurp

civilian supremacy. In short, he was content to fight and win;
politics he left to the statesmen.

Even now, at this crucial turning point of the war, Eisenhower's
objectives remained, as always, purely military. He had never been
given a political directive regarding post-war Germany, nor did he
regard that problem as his responsibility. "My job," he later said,
"was to get the war over quickly ... to destroy the German Army as fast
as we could."

Eisenhower had every reason to be elated with the way the job was
going: in twenty-one days his armies had catapulted across the Rhine
and burst into the German heartlands far ahead of schedule. Yet their
headline-making advances, so eagerly followed by the free world, were
now presenting the Supreme Commander with a series of complex command
decisions. The unanticipated speed of the Anglo-American offensive had
made obsolete some strategic moves planned months before. Eisenhower
had to tailor his plans to meet the new situation. This meant changing
and re-defining the roles of some armies and their commanders--in
particular, Field Marshal Montgomery and his powerful Twenty-first Army
Group.

Montgomery's latest message was a clarion call for action. The
58-year-old Field Marshal was not asking how the battle would be
fought; he was demanding the right to lead the charge. Quicker than
most commanders to realize the political implications of a military
situation, Montgomery felt that the Allied capture of Berlin was
vital--and he was convinced that it should be undertaken by the
Twenty-first Army Group. His cable, indicative as it was of
Montgomery's intractability, made clear there were still vital
differences of opinion between him and the Supreme Commander.
Eisenhower's reaction to the Field Marshal's cable, as General Smith
and others at SHAEF were to recall, was "like that of a horse with a
burr under his saddle."

The crucial difference between the military philosophies of Montgomery
and Eisenhower concerned the single thrust versus the broad-front
strategy. For months Montgomery and his superior, Chief of the
Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, had agitated for
a lightning-like single thrust into the heart of Germany. Almost
immediately after the fall of Paris, while the Germans were still
disorganized and fleeing France, Montgomery had first put his plan up
to Eisenhower. "We have now reached a stage," he wrote, "where one
really powerful and full-blooded thrust toward Berlin is likely to get
there and thus end the German war."

Montgomery spelled out his scheme in nine terse paragraphs. He
reasoned that the Anglo-American forces lacked the supply and
maintenance capabilities for two side-by-side drives into Germany. In
his view there could be only one--his own--and it would need "all the
maintenance resources ... without qualification." Other operations
would have to get along with whatever logistical support remained.
"If," warned Montgomery, "we attempt a compromise solution and split
our maintenance resources so that neither thrust is full-blooded, we
will prolong the war." Time was "of such vital importance ... that a
decision is required at once."

The plan was boldly imaginative and, from Montgomery's viewpoint,
accurately timed. It also marked a strange reversal in the Field
Marshal's usual approach to battle. As Lieutenant General Sir
Frederick Morgan, now Eisenhower's Assistant Chief of Staff, later
described the situation: "Put succinctly, Montgomery, principally
celebrated hitherto for cautious deliberation, had conceived the notion
that were he to be accorded every priority to the detriment of the
American Army Groups, he could, in the shortest order, overwhelm the
enemy, drive to Berlin and bring the war to a speedy end."

Obviously the plan involved a gigantic gamble. To hurl two great army
groups of more than forty divisions northeast into Germany in a single
massive thrust might invite speedy and decisive victory--but it might
also result in total and perhaps irreversible disaster. To the Supreme
Commander, the risks far outweighed any chance of success, and he had
said as much in a tactful

message to Montgomery. "While agreeing with your conception of a
powerful thrust towards Berlin," Eisenhower said, "I do not agree that
it should be initiated at this moment." He felt that it was essential
first to open the ports of Le Havre and Antwerp "to sustain a powerful
thrust deep into Germany." Further, Eisenhower said, "no reallocation
of our present resources would be adequate to sustain a thrust to
Berlin." The Supreme Commander's strategy was to advance into Germany
on a broad front, cross the Rhine and capture the great industrial
valley of the Ruhr before driving for the capital.

That exchange had taken place in the first week of September, 1944. A
week later in a message to his three army group commanders, Montgomery,
Bradley and Devers, Eisenhower further elaborated on his plan: "Clearly
Berlin is the main prize and the prize in defense of which the enemy is
likely to concentrate the bulk of his forces. There is no doubt
whatsoever in my mind that we should concentrate all our energies and
resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin. Our strategy, however, will
have to be coordinated with that of the Russians, so we must also
consider alternative objectives."

The possible objectives as Eisenhower saw them, varied widely: the
northern German ports ("they might have to be occupied as a flank
protection to our thrust on Berlin"); the important industrial and
communication centers of Hanover, Brunswick, Leipzig and Dresden ("the
Germans will probably hold them as intermediate positions covering
Berlin"); and finally, in southern Germany, the Nuremberg-Munich areas,
which would have to be taken were"to cut off enemy forces withdrawing
from Italy and the Balkans"). Thus, warned the Supreme Commander, "We
must be prepared for one or more of the following:

"A. To direct forces of both north and central army groups on Berlin
astride the axes Ruhr-Hanover-Berlin or Frankfurt-Leipzig-Berlin or
both.

"B. Should the Russians beat us to Berlin, the northern group of
armies would seize the Hanover area and the Hamburg group of

ports. The central group ... would seize part, or the whole of the
area Leipzig-Dresden depending on the progress of the Russian
advance.

"C. In any event the southern group of armies would seize
Augsburg-Munich. The area Nuremberg-Regensburg would be seized by the
central or southern groups ... depending on the situation at the
time."

Eisenhower summarized his strategy in these words: "Simply stated, it
is my desire to move on Berlin by the most direct and expeditious
route, with combined U.s.-British forces supported by other available
forces moving through key centers and occupying areas on the flanks,
all in one coordinated, concerted operation." But, he added, all this
would have to wait, for it was "not possible at this stage to indicate
the timing of these thrusts or their strengths."

Whether the broad-front strategy was right or wrong, Eisenhower was the
Supreme Commander and Montgomery had to take his orders. But he was
bitterly disappointed. To the British people he was the most popular
soldier since Wellington; and to his troops Monty was a legend in his
own time. Many Britons considered him the most experienced field
commander in the European theater (as he was well aware), and the
denial of his plan, which he believed could have ended the war within
three months, left Montgomery deeply aggrieved. * This strategic
dispute in the autumn of 1944 had opened up a split between the two
commanders that had never completely healed. * His pride was somewhat
restored when, shortly after this incident, the British showed their
confidence in Montgomery and his policies by naming him a Field
Marshal. For the man who had turned the tide of British defeat in the
desert and chased Rommel out of North Africa, it was an honor long
overdue.

In the seven months since then, Eisenhower had not deviated from his
concept of a broad coordinated pattern of attack. Nor had Montgomery
ceased to express his opinions on how, where, and by whom the war
should be won. His own Chief of Staff, Major General Sir Francis de
Guingand, later wrote, "Montgomery ... feels justified in bringing all
influences to bear in order

to win his point: in fact the end justifies almost any means." One of
the influences he brought to bear was powerful indeed: the Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Brooke, saw Eisenhower as vague
and indecisive. He once summarized the Supreme Commander as a man with
"a most attractive personality and, at the same time, a very, very
limited brain from a strategic point of view."

Eisenhower was perfectly well aware of the biting comments that
emanated out of the War Office and Montgomery's headquarters. But if
this whispering campaign over his strategic policies hurt, Eisenhower
did not reveal it. And he never hit back. Even when Brooke and
Montgomery advocated the appointment of a "Land Forces Commander"--a
sort of field marshal sandwiched in between Eisenhower and his army
groups--the Supreme Commander displayed no anger. Finally, after
months of "sitting with clenched teeth"--to use General Omar Bradley's
expression--Eisenhower lost his temper. The issue came to an explosive
boil after the German attack through the Ardennes.

Because the enemy drive split the Anglo-American front, Eisenhower was
forced to place all troops on the northern salient under Montgomery's
command. These forces included two thirds of General Bradley's Twelfth
Army Group--that is, the First and Ninth U.s. armies.

After the Germans had been thrown back, Montgomery gave an
extraordinary press conference in which he implied that he had almost
singlehandedly rescued the Americans from disaster. He had neatly
tidied up the front, the Field Marshal declared, and "headed off ...
seen off ... and ... written off" the enemy. "The battle has been most
interesting. I think possibly one of the most tricky ... I have ever
handled." He had, Montgomery said, "employed the whole available power
of the British group of armies ... you thus have the picture of British
troops fighting on both sides of the Americans who have suffered a hard
blow."

Montgomery had indeed mounted the main counteroffensive from the north
and east and had directed it superbly. But, at the

Field Marshal's press conference, to use Eisenhower's words, "he
unfortunately created the impression that he had moved in as the savior
of the Americans." Montgomery failed to mention the part played by
Bradley, Patton and the other American commanders, or that for every
British soldier there were thirty to forty Americans engaged in the
fighting. Most important, he neglected to point out that for every
British casualty forty to sixty Americans had fallen. These figures
were given by Winston Churchill on January 18, 1945, in a speech before
the House of Commons. Appalled by the breakdown in amity, he announced
that "U.s. troops have done almost all the fighting" in the Ardennes,
suffering losses "equal to those of both sides at the Battle of
Gettysburg." Then, in what could only be interpreted as a direct slap
at Montgomery and his supporters, he warned the British not to "lend
themselves to shouting of mischief makers." *2 "I should never have
held the press conference at all," Montgomery told the author in 1963.
"The Americans seemed over-sensitive at the time and many of their
generals disliked me so much that no matter what I said, it would have
been wrong.

German propagandists were quick to make matters worse. Enemy radio
transmitters put out an exaggerated, distorted version of the
conference and beamed the broadcasts directly toward the American
lines; it was this version that gave many Americans their first news of
the incident.

On the heels of the press conference and the uproar it caused, the old
controversy about a land forces commander flared again, this time
supported by an active campaign in the British press. Bradley blew up.
If the Field Marshal were appointed ground forces commander, he
declared, he would resign his command. "After what has happened," he
told Eisenhower, "if Montgomery is to be put in charge ... you must
send me home ... this is one thing I cannot take." Patton told
Bradley: "I'll be quitting with you."

Never had there been such a rift in the Anglo-American camp. As the
"promote-Montgomery" campaign intensified --a campaign which seemed to
some Americans to originate directly from Montgomery's
headquarters--the Supreme Commander finally found the situation
intolerable. He decided to end the bickering once

and for all: he would fire Montgomery by making an issue of the whole
matter before the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

At that point Montgomery's Chief of Staff, General de Guingand, learned
of the impending blow-up and hastened to the rescue of Anglo-American
unity. He flew to SHAEF and met with the Supreme Commander. "He
showed me a signal that he was about to send to Washington," De
Guingand later recounted. "I was stunned when I read it." With the
aid of General Bedell Smith he prevailed on Eisenhower to delay the
message twenty-four hours. Eisenhower agreed with great reluctance.

Returning to Montgomery's headquarters, De Guingand bluntly laid the
facts before the Field Marshal. "I told Monty that I had seen Ike's
message," De Guingand said, "and that, in effect, it said "It is either
me or Monty."" Montgomery was shocked. De Guingand had never seen him
"so lonely and deflated." He looked up at his Chief of Staff and said
quietly, "Freddie, what do you think I should do?" De Guingand had
already drafted a message. Using this as a basis, Montgomery sent
Eisenhower a thoroughly soldierly dispatch in which he made clear that
he had no desire to be insubordinate. "Whatever your decision may be,"
he said, "you can rely on me one hundred per cent." The message was
signed "Your very devoted subordinate, Monty." * * "Montgomery,"
Eisenhower later stated, "believed in the appointment of a field
commander as a matter of principle. He even offered to serve under
Bradley if I would approve."

There the matter had ended--for the moment anyhow. But now, at his
headquarters in Reims, on this day of decision, March 28, 1945,
Eisenhower was hearing again the distinct echo of an old refrain: not
the agitation for a land forces commander once more, but the older,
more basic issue--single thrust versus broad front. Without conferring
with Eisenhower, Montgomery had, in his own words, "issued orders to
Field Commanders for the operations eastwards" and now hoped to make a
single great push toward the Elbe and Berlin, obviously intending to
enter the capital in a blaze of glory.

The fact was that in making the main thrust north of the Ruhr,

Montgomery was actually following agreed strategy--the Eisenhower plan
approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Malta in January. What
Montgomery now proposed was simply a logical extension of that drive--a
move that would carry him to Berlin. If he was acting in haste, his
eagerness was understandable. Like Winston Churchill and Field Marshal
Brooke, Montgomery believed that time was running out, that the war
might be lost politically unless Anglo-American forces reached Berlin
before the Russians.

The Supreme Commander, on the other hand, had received no policy
directive from his superiors in Washington reflecting this British
sense of urgency. And although he was Commander of the Allied Forces,
Eisenhower still took his orders from the U.s. War Department. In the
absence of any redefinition of policy from Washington, his objective
remained the same: the defeat of Germany and the destruction of her
armed forces. And, as he now saw it, the method by which he could most
quickly achieve that military objective had changed radically since the
presentation of his plans to the Combined Chiefs of Staff in January.

Originally, under Eisenhower's plan, General Bradley's Twelfth Army
Group in the center was to have a limited role, supplementing
Montgomery's main effort in the north. But who could have foreseen the
spectacular successes achieved by Bradley's armies since the beginning
of March? Good fortune and brilliant leadership had produced dazzling
results. Even before Montgomery's massive Rhine assault, the U.s.
First Army had captured the Remagen bridge and had quickly crossed the
river. Farther south, Patton's Third Army had slipped across the Rhine
almost unimpeded. Since then, Bradley's forces had been on a rampage,
going from victory to victory. Their achievements had fired the
imagination of the U.s. public, and Bradley was now seeking a larger
role in the final campaign. In this respect Bradley and his generals
were no different from Montgomery: they, too, wanted the prestige and
glory of ending the war--and, if they got the chance, of capturing
Berlin.

At the right moment, Eisenhower had promised, he would

launch one massive drive to the east, but he had not specified what
group--or groups--would make the final thrust. Now, before making a
decision, Eisenhower had to consider a variety of factors, all of which
affected the design of his final campaign.

The first of these was the unexpected speed of the Russian advance to
the Oder. At the time the Supreme Commander formulated his plans for
the Rhine assault and Montgomery's offensive north of the Ruhr, it
looked as if months might pass before the Russians got to within
striking distance of Berlin. But now the Red Army was barely 38 miles
from the city--while British and American forces were still more than
200 miles away. How soon would the Russians launch their offensive?
Where and how did they intend to mount the attack--with Zhukov's army
group in the center opposite Berlin, or with all three groups
simultaneously? What was their estimate of the German strength
opposing them and how long would it take the Red Army to break through
those defenses? And, after they crossed the Oder, how long would it
take the Soviets to reach and capture Berlin? The Supreme Commander
could not answer these questions, all of them vitally important in his
planning.

The simple truth was that Eisenhower knew almost nothing of the Red
Army's intentions. There was no day-to-day military coordination
between Anglo-American and Soviet commanders in the field. There was
not even a direct radio link between SHAEF and the Anglo-American
military liaison mission in Moscow. All messages between the two
fronts were funneled through normal diplomatic channels--a method
totally inadequate now because of the speed of events. Although
Eisenhower knew the Russians' approximate strength, he had no idea of
their battle order. Apart from occasional data collected from various
intelligence sources --most of it of doubtful accuracy * --SHAEF'S
chief source of information * On March 11, for example, SHAEF
intelligence reported that Zhukov's "spearheads" had reached Seelow,
west of the Oder and just twenty-eight miles from Berlin. When the
author interviewed Soviet defense officials in Moscow in 1963, he
learned that Zhukov did not actually reach Seelow, in the center of the
German Oder defense system, until April 17.

on Russian moves was the Soviet communique broadcast each evening by
the BBC.

One fact, however, was clear: the Red Army had almost reached Berlin.
With the Russians so close should the Supreme Commander try for the
city at all?

The problem had many dimensions. The Russians had been on the Oder for
more than two months, and with the exception of some local advances and
patrol activity they appeared to have come to a full stop. Their lines
of supply and communications must be stretched to the utmost, and it
hardly seemed likely that they could attack until after the spring
thaw. Meanwhile the western armies, moving at astonishing speeds, were
driving deeper and deeper into Germany. At places they were averaging
better than thirty-five miles per day. The Supreme Commander had no
intention of letting up, no matter what Russian plans were. But he was
reluctant to enter into a contest with the Russians for Berlin. That
might prove not only embarrassing for the loser but--in the event of an
unexpected meeting between the onrushing armies-- catastrophic for both
forces.

A headlong collision involving the Russians had occurred once before,
when they were allied by treaty with the Germans. In 1939, after
Hitler's undeclared blitzkrieg into Poland and the subsequent division
of that country between Germany and Russia, Wehrmacht troops advancing
east had smashed head on into Red Army forces racing west: no
prearranged line of demarcation had been established. The result was a
minor battle, with fairly heavy casualties on both sides. A similar
clash could occur now, but between the Anglo-Americans and the
Russians--and on a much larger scale. It was a nightmarish thought.
Wars had been set off by less. Obviously coordination of movement had
to be effected with the Russians, and quickly.

Furthermore, there was one tactical problem that hung over Eisenhower
like a thunderhead. In the great map room near his office there was a
carefully drawn intelligence chart bearing the legend "Reported
National Redoubt." It showed an area of mountainous territory lying
south of Munich and straddling the alpine regions of Bavaria, western
Austria and northern Italy. In all, it covered almost twenty thousand
square miles. Its heart was Berchtesgaden. On the nearby
Obersalzberg--surrounded by peaks seven to nine thousand feet high,
each studded with concealed anti-aircraft guns--was Hitler's
mountaintop hideaway, the "Eagle's Nest."

Covering the map's face was a rash of red marks, each one a military
symbol denoting some kind of defense installation. There were food,
ammunition, gasoline and chemical warfare dumps; radio and power
stations; troop concentration points, barracks and headquarters;
zigzagging lines of fortified positions, ranging from pillboxes to
massive concrete bunkers; even bombproof underground factories. Each
day now, more and more symbols were added to the chart, and though all
of them were labeled "unconfirmed," to SHAEF this formidable mountain
defense system was the greatest threat remaining in the European war.
The area Was sometimes referred to as the Alpenfestung, Alpine
Fortress, or the "National Redoubt." In this craggy citadel, according
to intelligence, the Nazis, with Hitler at their head, intended to make
a last-ditch, Wagnerian stand. The rugged stronghold was considered
almost impregnable and its fanatical defenders might hold out for as
long as two years. There was another, even more chilling aspect;
specially trained commando-type forces--Goebbels called them
"Werewolves"--were expected to sally out from the alpine bastion and
create havoc among the occupation armies.

Did the Alpenfestung really exist? In Washington the military seemed
to think so. Information had been accumulating ever since September,
1944, when the Office of Strategic Services (Oss), in a general study
of southern Germany, predicted that as the war neared its end the Nazis
would probably evacuate certain government departments to Bavaria.
Since then, intelligence reports and appreciations had poured in, from
the field, from neutral countries, even from sources inside Germany.
Most of these evaluations were guarded, but some bordered on the
fantastic.

On February 12, 1945, the War Department issued a straight faced
counterintelligence paper which said: "Not enough weight is given the
many reports of the probable Nazi last stand in the Bavarian Alps. ...
The Nazi myth which is important when you are dealing with men like
Hitler requires a Gotterdammerung. It may be significant that
Berchtesgaden itself, which would be the headquarters, is on the site
of the tomb of Barbarossa who, in German mythology, is supposed to
return from the dead." * The memo urged that field commanders "down to
corps level" be alerted to the danger. * Whoever prepared the
counterintelligence paper was in error about Barbarossa's last resting
place. Barbarossa (red Beard) --the surname of Frederick I
(1121-aaij)--is not buried in Berchtesgaden. As the myth goes, "he
never died, but merely sleeps" in the hills of Thuringia. He sits at a
"stone table with his six knights waiting for the fullness of time when
he will rescue Germany from bondage and give her the foremost place in
the world ... his beard has already grown through the stone slab, but
must wind itself thrice around the table before his second advent."

On February 16, Allied agents in Switzerland sent Washington a bizarre
report obtained from neutral military attaches in Berlin: "The Nazis
are undoubtedly preparing for a bitter fight from the mountain redoubt.
... Strongpoints are connected by underground railroads ... several
months' output of the best munitions have been reserved and almost all
of Germany's poison gas supplies. Everybody who participated in the
construction of the secret installations will be killed off--including
the civilians who happen to remain behind ... when the real fighting
starts."

Although British intelligence agencies and the OSS both issued cautious
statements intended to dampen the scare reports, over the next
twenty-seven days the specter of the National Redoubt grew. By March
21, the threat had begun to influence tactical thinking. Headquarters
of Bradley's Twelfth Army Group put out a memorandum entitled
"Re-Orientation of Strategy" in which it was stated that Allied
objectives had changed, rendering "obsolete the plans we brought with
us over the beaches." One of the changes: the significance of Berlin
was much diminished. "The metropolitan area can no longer occupy a
position of importance,"

the report read. "... all indications suggest that the enemy's
political and military directorate is already in the process of
displacing to the "Redoubt" in lower Bavaria."

To meet the threat, instead of making a thrust in the north, Bradley
suggested that his army group split Germany in two by driving through
the center. This would "prevent German forces from withdrawing" toward
the south and "into the Redoubt." In addition it would drive the enemy
"northwards where they can be rounded up against the shores of the
Baltic and North Seas." Later, suggested the memorandum, Twelfth Army
Group forces would pivot south to reduce any remaining resistance in
the Alpenfestung.

The most alarming analysis came on March 25 from the Intelligence Chief
of Lieutenant General Patch's Seventh Army, which was fighting along
the southern wing of the front. It foresaw the possible creation in
the redoubt of "an elite force, predominantly SS and mountain troops,
of between 200,000 and 300,000 men." Already, the report said,
supplies were arriving in the redoubt area at the rate of "three to
five very long trains ... each week (since 1 Feb. 1945). ... A new
type of gun has been reported observed on many of these trains. ..."
There was even mention of an underground aircraft factory "capable of
producing ... Messerschmitts."

Day after day the reports had flooded into SHAEF. No matter how the
evidence was analyzed and re-analyzed, the picture remained the same:
though the Alpenfestung might be a hoax, the possibility of its
existence could not be ignored. SHAEF'S own concern was clearly
indicated in a March 11 intelligence evaluation on the redoubt:
"Theoretically ... within this fortress ... defended both by nature and
the most efficient secret weapons yet invented, the powers that have
hitherto guided Germany will survive to organize her resurrection. ...
The main trend of German defense policy does seem directed primarily to
the safeguarding of the Alpine zone. ... The evidence indicates that
considerable numbers of SS and specially chosen units are being
systematically withdrawn to Austria. ... It seems reasonably certain
that some of the most important ministries and personalities of the
Nazi regime are already established in the redoubt area. ... Goering,
Himmler, Hitler ... are said to be in the process of withdrawing to
their respective personal mountain strongholds. ..."

SHAEF'S Intelligence Chief, British Major General Kenneth W. D. Strong,
commented to the Chief of Staff: "The redoubt may not be there, but we
have to take steps to prevent it being there." Bedell Smith agreed.
There was, in his opinion, "every reason to believe that the Nazis
intend to make their last stand among the crags."

As the considered views of the SHAEF staff and U.s. field commanders
piled up in Eisenhower's office, there arrived the most significant
message of all. It came from the Supreme Commander's superior, General
Marshall, a man Eisenhower venerated almost above all others. * * One
of Marshall's senior staff officers, General John Hull, who in 1945 was
the U.s. Army's Acting Chief of Staff for Operations, says that "Ike
was Marshall's protege and, though Ike might resent me saying this,
there was between the two men a sort of father-son relationship."

"From the current operations report," Marshall's cable read, "it looks
like the German defense system in the west may break up. This would
permit you to move a considerable number of divisions rapidly eastwards
on a broad front. What are your views on ... pushing U.s. forces
rapidly forward on, say, the Nuremberg-Linz or Karlsruhe-Munich axes?
The idea behind this is that ... rapid action might prevent the
formation of any organized resistance areas. The mountainous country
in the south is considered a possibility for one of these.

"One of the problems which arises with disintegrating German resistance
is that of meeting the Russians. What are your ideas on control and
coordination to prevent unfortunate instances ...? One possibility is
an agreed line of demarcation. The arrangements we now have ... appear
inadequate ... steps should be initiated without delay to provide for
communication and liaison ..."

Marshall's carefully worded message finally jelled the Supreme
Commander's plans. Having weighed all the problems, having consulted
with his staff, having discussed the situation over the weeks with his
old friend and West Point classmate, General Bradley, and, most
important, having been acquainted with the views of his superior,
Eisenhower now molded his strategy and made his decisions.

On this chill March afternoon he drafted three cables. The first was
historic and unprecedented: it was sent to Moscow with a covering
message to the Allied Military Mission. SHAEF'S operations, Eisenhower
wired, had now reached a stage "where it is essential I should know the
Russians' plans in order to achieve the most rapid success." Therefore,
he wanted the Mission to "transmit a personal message from me to
Marshal Stalin" and do everything possible "to assist in getting a full
reply."

Never before had the Supreme Commander communicated directly with the
Soviet leader, but now the matter was urgent. He had been authorized
to deal with the Russians directly on military matters pertaining to
coordination, so Eisenhower saw no particular reason to consult
beforehand with the Combined Chiefs of Staff nor with the U.s. or
British governments. Indeed, not even the Deputy Supreme Commander,
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, knew about it. Copies were
prepared for them, however.

The Supreme Commander approved the draft of the Stalin cable shortly
after three. At 4 P.m., after it had been encoded, Eisenhower's
"Personal Message to Marshal Stalin" was dispatched. In it the General
asked the Generalissimo for his plans, and at the same time revealed
his own. "My immediate operations," he said, "are designed to encircle
and destroy the enemy defending the Ruhr. ... I estimate that this
phase ... will end late in April or even earlier, and my next task will
be to divide the remaining enemy forces by joining hands with your
forces. ... The best axis on which to effect this junction would be
Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden. I believe ... this is the area to which main
German Government Departments are being moved. It is along

this axis that I propose to make my main effort. In addition, as soon
as possible, a secondary advance will be made to effect junction with
your forces in the area Regensburg-Linz, thereby preventing the
consolidation of German resistance in the Redoubt in southern
Germany.

"Before deciding firmly on my plans, it is most important that they
should be coordinated ... with yours both as to direction and timing.
Could you ... tell me your intentions and ... how far the proposals
outlined ... conform to your probable action. If we are to complete
the destruction of German armies without delay, I regard it as
essential that we coordinate our action and ... perfect the liaison
between our advancing forces ..."

Next he prepared cables for Marshall and Montgomery. These were
dispatched at 7 P.m. and within five minutes of each other. Eisenhower
told the U.s. Chief of Staff that he had communicated with Stalin "on
the question of where we should aim to link up ..." He then pointed
out that "my views agree closely with your own, although I think that
the Leipzig-Dresden area is of primary importance ..." because it
offered the "shortest route to present Russian positions" and also
would "overrun the one remaining industrial area in Germany to which
... the High Command Headquarters and Ministries are reported
moving."

Regarding Marshall's fears of a "National Redoubt," Eisenhower reported
that he too was aware of the "importance of forestalling the
possibilities of the enemy forming organized resistance areas" and
would make "a drive towards Linz and Munich as soon as circumstances
allowed." Eisenhower added that as regards coordination with the
Russians he did not think that "we can tie ourselves down to a
demarcation line" but would approach them with the suggestion that
"when our forces meet, either side will withdraw to its own
occupational zone at the request of the opposite side."

The third Eisenhower cable of the day, to Montgomery, contained
disappointing news. "As soon as you have joined hands with Bradley ...
[east of the Ruhr] ... the Ninth U.s. Army

will revert to Bradley's command," the Supreme Commander said; "Bradley
will be responsible for mopping up ... the Ruhr and with the minimum
delay will deliver his main thrust on the axis Erfurt-Leipzig-Dresden
to join hands with the Russians. ..." Montgomery was to head for the
Elbe; at that point it might be "desirable for the Ninth Army to revert
to your operational control again to facilitate the crossing of that
obstacle." Eisenhower, after reading the draft, added one last line in
pencil, "As you say, the situation looks good."

The Supreme Commander had refined his plans to this extent: instead of
making the major drive across northern Germany as originally
considered, he had decided to strike directly across the center of the
country. The U.s. Ninth Army had been returned to Bradley, who would
now have the major role. He would launch the last offensive, aiming to
put his forces in the Dresden area, about one hundred miles south of
Berlin.

Although Eisenhower had accepted part of Marshall's recommendations,
his moves were similar to those suggested by General Bradley's Twelfth
Army Group in its "Re-Orientation of Strategy" memorandum. But, in all
three of Eisenhower's cables on his campaign plans, there was one
significant omission: the objective which the Supreme Commander had
once referred to as "clearly the main prize." There was no mention of
Berlin. * * *

The battered Brandenburg Gate loomed large in the dusk. From his villa
nearby, Dr. Joseph Goebbels stared out at the monument through the
partly boarded-up windows of his study. Almost contemptuously,
Hitler's gnomelike propaganda chief had turned his back on his
visitors--at least so it appeared to the man who was speaking, the
Berlin Commandant, Major General Hellmuth Reymann. The General was
trying to get a decision on the one matter that he considered of the
utmost urgency: the fate of the city's population on this eve of
battle.

It was the fourth time within a month that Reymann and his Chief of
Staff, Colonel Hans Refior, had met with Goebbels. Next to Hitler, the
47-year-old Goebbels was now the most important man in Berlin. He was
not only Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda; he was
also Gauleiter of Berlin. As such he was a Reich Defense Commissioner,
responsible for all measures regarding the city's civilian population,
the organization and training of Home Guard units and the construction
of fortifications. At a time when the absence of any clearly defined
division of authority between the military and civilian agencies was
creating trouble for soldiers and civil leaders alike, Goebbels had
added to the confusion. Though he was totally ignorant of military or
municipal matters, he had made it quite clear that he alone was
assuming responsibility for defending Berlin. As a result, Reymann
found himself in an impossible position. From whom was he to take his
orders--from Hitler's military headquarters or from Goebbels? He was
not sure, and no one seemed eager to clarify the command position.
Reymann was desperate.

At each of the previous meetings Reymann had raised the issue of
evacuation. At first Goebbels said that it "was out of the question."
Then he informed the General that a scheme did exist, prepared by
"higher SS authorities and the police." Reymann's Chief of Staff had
promptly investigated. Refior had indeed found a plan. "It consists,"
he told Reymann, "of a map, scale 1 to 300,000, on which the
responsible official, a police captain, has neatly marked evacuation
routes running out of Berlin to the west and south with red ink." There
were, he reported, "no sanitation stations, no food points, no
transportation for the sick or weak." He added that, "as far as I can
see, the plan calls for evacuees to set out along these roads with only
hand luggage, march 20 to 30 kilometers to entraining stations where
they will be transported to Thuringen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg.
All this is supposed to take place when Goebbels presses a button. But
exactly where the rail transport is to come from has not been made
clear."

Reymann tried to discuss the matter with Hitler. He had seen

him only twice: on assuming command and a few days later when he was
invited to attend one of the Fuhrer's nightly conferences. At that
meeting the discussion was mostly about the Oder front and Reymann did
not get an opportunity of explaining the situation in Berlin. But at
one point during a lull in the proceedings, he spoke to Hitler and
urged that he immediately order the evacuation of all children under
ten from the capital. In the sudden silence that followed Reymann's
suggestion, Hitler turned toward him and asked icily, "What do you
mean? What exactly do you mean?" Then, slowly, emphasizing each word,
he said, "There are no children in that age group left in Berlin!" No
one had dared contradict him. Hitler quickly passed on to other
matters.

The rebuff did not deter the Berlin Commandant. Reymann now pressed
Goebbels on the same subject. "Herr Reichsminister," he said, "how
will we support the population in the event of a siege? How will we
feed them? Where is the food to come from? According to the mayor's
statistics there are 110,000 children under ten with their mothers in
the city right now. How are we to provide babies with milk?"

Reymann paused, waiting for an answer. Goebbels continued to stare out
the window. Then, without turning, he snapped: "How will we feed them?
We'll bring livestock in from the surrounding countryside--that's how
we'll feed them! As for the children, we have a three months' supply
of canned milk." The canned milk was news to Reymann and Refior. The
livestock proposal seemed madness. In a battle cows would prove more
vulnerable than human beings, who could at least take shelter. Where
did Goebbels plan to herd the animals? And what would they feed on?
Reymann spoke up earnestly: "Surely we must consider an immediate
evacuation plan. We cannot wait any longer. Each day that passes will
multiply the difficulties later on. We must at least move out the
women and children now--before it's too late."

Goebbels did not answer. There was a long silence. Outside it was
growing dark. Suddenly he reached up, grabbed a cord by the window,
and yanked it. The blackout curtains closed with a rattle. Goebbels
turned. Club-footed from birth, he limped across to his desk, snapped
on the light, looked at the watch lying on the blotting pad and then at
Reymann. "My dear General," he said mildly, "when and if an evacuation
becomes necessary I will be the one to make the decision." Then he
snarled: "But I don't intend to throw Berlin into panic by ordering it
now! There's plenty of time! Plenty of time!" He dismissed them.
"Good evening, gentlemen."

As Reymann and Refior left the building, they paused for a moment on
the steps. General Reymann gazed out over the city. Although the
sirens had not sounded, in the far distance searchlights had begun
fingering the night sky. As Reymann slowly pulled on his gloves he
said to Refior: "We are faced with a task that we cannot solve; that
has no chance of success. I can only hope that some miracle happens to
change our fortunes, or that the war ends before Berlin comes under
siege." He looked at his Chief of Staff. "Otherwise," he added, "God
help the Berliners."

A short while later, at his command post on the Hohenzollerndamm,
Reymann received a call from the OKH (army High Command). Besides the
Supreme Commander, Hitler and the Berlin Gauleiter, Goebbels, Reymann
now learned that he was subordinated to yet another authority.
Arrangements were being made, he was told, for the Berlin Defense Area
to come eventually under the direction of the Army Group Vistula and
its commander, Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici. Reymann felt the
first stirrings of hope at reading Heinrici's name. He directed Refior
to brief the Army Group Vistula staff at the earliest opportunity.
There was only one thing that worried him. He wondered how Heinrici
would feel about taking Berlin under his wing while at the same time
preparing to hold the Russians on the Oder. Reymann knew Heinrici
well. He could imagine the Giftzwerg's reaction when he heard the
news.

"It's absurd!" growled Heinrici. "Absurd!"

Army Group Vistula's new Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Eberhard
Kinzel, and its Operations Chief, Colonel Hans Eismann, looked at each
other and remained silent. There was nothing to say. "Absurd" seemed
an understatement. The proposal to attach the Berlin Defense Area to
Heinrici's hard-pressed command at this particular moment seemed
impossible to both officers. Neither could see how Heinrici was
supposed to direct or even oversee Reymann's defense operations.
Distance alone made the plan impractical; Vistula's headquarters was
more than fifty miles from Berlin. And it was clear that whoever had
suggested the idea appeared to know very little about the staggering
problems facing Heinrici.

Earlier in the evening, operations department officers of OKH (army
High Command) had carefully presented the Berlin defense proposal to
Kinzel. The idea was put forth tentatively--almost as a suggestion.
Now, as Heinrici paced his office, the mud of the front still on his
old-fashioned leggings, he made it plain to his subordinates that so
far as he was concerned the plan would remain just that--a suggestion.
Army Group Vistula had one task: to stop the Russians on the Oder.
"Unless I'm forced," said Heinrici, "I do not intend to accept
responsibility for Berlin."

That did not mean he was unaware of the plight of the city's people.
Indeed, the fate of Berlin's population of almost three million was
often in Heinrici's thoughts. He was haunted by the possibility of
Berlin's becoming a battlefield; he knew better than most what happened
to civilians caught in the fury of artillery fire and street fighting.
He believed that the Russians were merciless, and in the heat of battle
he did not expect them to discriminate between soldiers and civilians.
Nevertheless, at this moment it was unthinkable that he should be
expected to take on the problem of Berlin and its civilian population.
The Army Group Vistula was the sole barrier between Berlin and the
Russians, and as always Heinrici's main concern was with his soldiers.
The crusty, belligerent Giftzwerg was furious at Hitler and the Chief
of OKH,

Guderian, for what seemed to him the deliberate sacrifice of his
soldiers' lives.

Turning to Kinzel, he said: "Get me Guderian."

Since assuming command a week before, Heinrici had been constantly at
the front. Tirelessly he had traveled from headquarters to
headquarters, mapping out strategy with division commanders, visiting
front-line troops in their dugouts and bunkers. He had quickly
discovered that his suspicions were well founded: his forces were
armies in name only. He was appalled to find that most units had been
fattened with splinter troops and the remnants of once-proud divisions
long since destroyed. Among his forces Heinrici even found non-German
units. There were the "Nordland" and "Nederland" divisions composed of
pro-Nazi Norwegian and Dutch volunteers, and a formation of former
Russian prisoners of war under the leadership of the er/while defender
of Kiev, a distinguished soldier named Lieutenant General Andrei A.
Vlasov. After his surrender in 1942 he had been persuaded to organize
a pro-German anti-Stalinist Russian army. Vlasov's troops worried
Heinrici: it seemed to him that they were likely to desert at the
slightest opportunity. Some of Heinrici's panzer forces were in good
shape, and he was depending greatly on them. But the overall picture
was bleak. Intelligence reports indicated that the Russians might have
as many as three million men. Between Von Manteuffel's Third Panzer
Army in the north and Busse's Ninth Army in the southern sector,
Heinrici had a total of about four hundred eighty-two thousand, and
there were almost no reserves.

Besides being desperately short of combat-tested troops, Heinrici was
handicapped by acute shortages of equipment and supplies. He needed
tanks, motorized guns, communications equipment, artillery, gasoline,
ammunition, even rifles. So short were supplies that Colonel Eismann,
the Operation officer, discovered that some replacements had arrived at
the front with bazooka-like anti-tank weapons instead of rifles--and
only one rocket-projectile apiece for the weapons.

"It's madness!" Eismann told Heinrici. "How are these men supposed to
fight after they fire their one round? What does OKH expect them to
do--use their empty weapons like billy clubs? It's mass murder."
Heinrici agreed. "OKH expects the men to wait for what fate may bring
them. I do not." By every means in his power Heinrici was trying to
rectify his equipment and supply situation, even though some
commodities had all but disappeared.

His greatest lack was artillery. The Russians were beginning to
construct bridges across the Oder and its marshy approaches. In some
places the flood-swollen river was more than two miles wide. Special
naval forces attached to Heinrici's command had floated mines down the
river to destroy the pontoons, but the Russians had promptly countered
by erecting protective nets. Bombing the bridge construction from the
air was out of the question. Luftwaffe officials had informed Heinrici
that they had neither the aircraft nor the gasoline for the job. The
most they could provide was single planes for reconnaissance missions.
There was only one way left to stop the Russians' feverish bridge
building: artillery. And Heinrici had precious little of that.

To make up for this crippling shortage he had ordered anti-aircraft
guns to be used as field pieces. Although it meant less protection
from Russian air attacks, Heinrici reasoned that the guns would be used
to better advantage in the field. And, indeed, the move had alleviated
the situation. From the Stettin area alone, Von Manteuffel's Third
Panzer Army acquired 600 flak guns. Each had to be set in concrete;
for they were too large and unwieldy to be mounted on vehicles, but
they were helping to fill out the gaps. Yet, though they stood
menacingly in place, they fired only when absolutely necessary. The
lack of ammunition was so severe that Heinrici was determined to
husband what little he had for the opening of the Red Army's onslaught.
Still, as he told his staff, "While we do not have enough guns or
ammunition to stop the Russians' building, at least we're slowing them
up." Colonel Eismann viewed the situation more pessimistically. "The
Army Group could be compared to a rabbit," he later recalled, "watching
spellbound a snake which wants to devour

him. He can't move a muscle, but waits for the moment when the snake
will strike in a lightning-fast manner. ... General Heinrici did not
want to admit the fact that the Army Group could not take any more
meaningful measures on the basis of its own strength."

Yet in just one week of command, Heinrici had bulldozed his way through
scores of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Like the Heinrici of
Moscow he had cajoled and goaded his troops, growled at and praised
them in an effort to give them a fighting morale that would gain him
time and help save their lives. Whatever his private feelings, to his
officers and men he was the unintimidated, unbreakable Heinrici of
legend. And true to character he was still fighting the "madness and
bad judgment" of the higher command.

Right now his fiery temper was directed at Hitler and the Chief of OKH,
Guderian. On March 23 General Busse's Ninth Army had attacked twice in
a desperate effort to break through to the isolated defenders of
Kustrin, the city the Russians had encircled the day Heinrici had
assumed command from Himmler. Heinrici had agreed to Busse's tactics.
He felt they offered the only chance to free the city before the
Russians consolidated their positions. But the Russians were much too
strong; both attacks proved disastrous.

Heinrici, reporting the outcome to Guderian, was told bluntly: "There
must be another attack." Hitler wanted it; so did Guderian. "It's
crazy," Heinrici replied stiffly. "I would suggest that the panzer
units in Kustrin receive orders to break out. It's the only sensible
thing left to do." Guderian flared at the proposal. "The attack must
be mounted," he had shouted. On March 27 Busse had once again thrown
his troops at Kustrin. So ferocious was the attack that some of his
panzer forces actually did break through to the city. But then the
Russians smashed the German drive with artillery fire. At staff
headquarters, Heinrici minced no words. "The attack," he said, "is a
massacre. The Ninth Army has suffered incredible losses for absolutely
nothing."

Even now, the day after, his anger had not abated. As he waited for
his call to Guderian, he paced his office muttering over and over the
one word, "Fiasco!" Regardless of what might happen to him personally,
when Guderian came on the phone Heinrici intended to charge his
superior with the bloody massacre of eight thousand men--nearly a
division had been lost in the Kustrin attack.

The phone rang and Kinzel answered. "It's Zossen," he told Heinrici.

The smooth voice of Lieutenant General Hans Krebs, OKH Chief of Staff,
was not what Heinrici expected. "I meant to talk to Guderian," he
said. Krebs began speaking again. Heinrici's face hardened as he
listened. The staff officers watching him wondered what was happening.
"When?" asked Heinrici. He listened again, then abruptly said, "Thank
you," and put down the phone. Turning to Kinzel and Eismann, Heinrici
said quietly, "Guderian is no longer Chief of OKH. Hitler relieved him
of command this afternoon." To his astonished staff Heinrici added,
"Krebs says that Guderian is sick, but that he doesn't really know what
happened." Heinrici's rage had completely evaporated. He made only one
further observation. "It's not like Guderian," he said thoughtfully.
"He didn't even say good-bye."

It was late that night before Heinrici's staff was able to piece the
story together. Guderian's dismissal had followed one of the wildest
scenes ever witnessed in the Reichskanzlei. Hitler's midday conference
had begun quietly enough but there were undertones of barely repressed
hostility. Guderian had written the Fuhrer a memorandum explaining why
the Kustrin attack had failed. Hitler disliked not only the tone
Guderian adopted but also Guderian's defense of the Ninth Army and of
General Busse in particular. The Fuhrer had settled on Busse as the
scapegoat and had ordered him to attend the meeting and make a full
report.

As usual Hitler's top military advisors were in attendance. In
addition to Guderian and Busse there were Hitler's Chief of Staff,
Keitel; his Operations Chief, Jodl; the Fuhrer's adjutant, Burgdorf;
several other senior officers and various aides. For several minutes
Hitler listened to a general briefing on the current situation, then
Busse was invited to give his report. He began by briefly outlining
how the attack was launched and the forces that were employed. Hitler
began to show annoyance. Suddenly he interrupted. "Why did the attack
fail?" he yelled. Without pausing, he answered his own question.
"Because of incompetence! Because of negligence!" He heaped abuse on
Busse, Guderian and the entire High Command. They were all
"incompetent." The Kustrin attack was launched, he ranted, "without
sufficient artillery preparation!" Then he turned on Guderian: "If
Busse didn't have enough ammunition as you claim--why didn't you get
him more?"

There was a moment of silence. Then Guderian began to speak quietly.
"I have already explained to you ..." Hitler, waving his arm, cut him
off. "Explanations! Excuses! That's all you give me!" he shouted.
"Well! Then you tell me who let us down at Kustrin--the troops or
Busse?" Guderian suddenly boiled. "Nonsense!" he spluttered. "This
is nonsense!" He almost spat the words out. Furious, his face
reddening, he launched into a tirade. "Busse is not to blame!" he
bellowed. "I've told you that! He followed orders! Busse used all
the ammunition that was available to him! All that he had!" Guderian's
anger was monumental. He struggled for words. "To say that the troops
are to blame--look at the casualties!" he raged. "Look at the losses!
The troops did their duty! Their self-sacrifice proves it!"

Hitler yelled back. "They failed!" he raged. "They failed."

Guderian, his face purpling, roared at the top of his voice: "I must
ask you ... I must ask you not to level any further accusations at
Busse or his troops!"

Both men were beyond reasonable discussion, but they did not stop.
Facing each other, Guderian and Hitler engaged in such a

furious and terrifying exchange that officers and aides stood frozen in
shock. Hitler, lashing out at the General Staff, called them all
"spineless," "fools" and "fatheads." He ranted that they had
constantly "misled," "misinformed" and "tricked" him. Guderian
challenged the Fuhrer on his use of the words "misinformed" and
"misled." Had General Gehlen in his intelligence estimate
"misinformed" about the strength of the Russians? "No!" roared
Guderian. "Gehlen is a fool!" Hitler retorted. What of the
surrounded eighteen divisions still in the Baltic States, in Courland?
"Who," barked Guderian, "has misled you about them? Exactly when," he
demanded of the Fuhrer, "do you intend to evacuate the Courland
army?"

So loud and violent was the encounter that afterward no one could
remember exactly the sequence of the quarrel. * Even Busse, the
innocent perpetrator of the argument, was unable to tell Heinrici later
what had transpired in any detail. "We were almost paralyzed," he
said. "We couldn't believe what was happening." * There are many
versions of the row, ranging from a detailed report in Juergen
Thorwald's Flight in the Winter to a two-line account in Die Leitzen
Tage der Reichskanzlei by Gerhard Boldt, one of Guderian's aides.
Passing lightly over the matter, Boldt writes that Hitler advised the
OKH Chief "to go to a spa for treatment" and Guderian "took the hint."
He gives the conference date as March 20, seven days before the fateful
Kustrin attack. Guderian, in his memoirs Panzer Leader, gives the time
and date as precisely 14.00 hours on March 28. For the most part, my
reconstruction is based on Guderian's memoirs, supplemented by
interviews with Heinrici, Busse and their respective staffs.

Jodl was the first to snap into action. He grabbed the yelling
Guderian by the arm. "Please! Please," he implored, "calm down." He
pulled Guderian to one side. Keitel and Burgdorf began ministering to
Hitler who had slumped, exhausted, into a chair. Guderian's horrified
aide, Major Freytag von Loringhoven, certain that his chief would be
arrested if he did not get him immediately out of the room, ran outside
and called Krebs, the Chief of Staff, at Zossen and told him what was
happening. Von Loringhoven implored Krebs to speak to Guderian on the
phone, on the pretense that there was urgent news from the front and to
hold him in conversation until the General calmed down. With
difficulty, Guderian was persuaded to leave the room. Krebs, a past
master at the art of manipulating information to suit the occasion, had
no trouble in claiming Guderian's undivided attention for more than
fifteen minutes--and by that time the Chief of the Army High Command
was in control of his emotions again.

During the interval the Fuhrer had calmed down, too. When Guderian
returned, Hitler was conducting the conference as though nothing had
happened. Seeing him enter, the Fuhrer ordered everyone out of the
room except Keitel and Guderian. Then he said, coldly, "Colonel
General Guderian, your physical health requires that you immediately
take six weeks' convalescent leave." His voice betraying no emotion,
Guderian said, "I'll go." But Hitler was not quite finished. "Please
wait until the conference is over," he ordered. It was several hours
before the meeting broke up. By that time, Hitler was almost
solicitous. "Please do your best to get your health back," he said.
"In six weeks the situation will be very critical. Then I shall need
you urgently. Where do you think you will go?" Keitel wanted to know,
too. Suspicious at their sudden concern, Guderian prudently decided
not to tell them his plans. Excusing himself, he left the
Reichskanzlei. Guderian was out. The innovator of the panzer
techniques, the last of Hitler's big-name generals was gone; with him
went the last vestiges of sound judgment in the German High Command.

By 6 A.m. the following morning, Thursday, March 29, Heinrici had good
reason to feel Guderian's loss. He had just been handed a teletyped
message informing him that Hitler had appointed Krebs as Chief of the
OKH. Krebs was a smooth-talking man who was a fanatical supporter of
Hitler; he was widely and cordially disliked. Among the Vistula staff,
the news of his appointment, following so closely that of Guderian's
departure, produced an atmosphere of gloom. The Operations Chief,
Colonel Eismann, summed up the prevailing attitude. As he was later to
record: "This man, with his eternally friendly smile, reminded me
somehow of a fawn ... it was clear what we could expect. Krebs had
only to spout out a few confident phrases--and the situation was rosy
again. Hitler would get much better support from him than from
Guderian."

Heinrici made no comment on the appointment. Guderian's spirited
defense of Busse had saved that commander and there would be no more
suicidal attacks against Kustrin. For that Heinrici was grateful to a
man with whom he had often disagreed. He would miss Guderian, for he
knew Krebs of old and expected little support from him. There would be
no outspoken Guderian to back up Heinrici when he saw Hitler to discuss
the problems of the Oder front. He was to see the Fuhrer for a
full-dress conference on Friday, April 6.

The car pulled up outside Vistula's main headquarters building a little
after 9 A.m., on March 29, and the broad-shouldered, six-foot Berlin
Chief of Staff bounded out. The energetic Colonel Hans "Teddy" Refior
was looking forward enthusiastically to his meeting with Heinrici's
Chief of Staff, General Kinzel. He had high hopes that the conference
would go well; coming under Heinrici's command would be the best thing
that could happen to the Berlin Defense Area. Lugging maps and charts
for his presentation, the husky 39-year-old Refior entered the
building. Small though the Berlin garrison was, Refior believed, as he
later wrote in his diary, that Heinrici "would be delighted at this
increase in his forces."

He had his first moments of doubt on meeting the Chief of Staff.
Kinzel's greeting was restrained, though not unfriendly. Refior had
hoped that his old classmate Colonel Eismann would be present--they had
gone over the Berlin situation together a few weeks before--but Kinzel
received him alone. The Vistula Chief of Staff seemed harassed, his
manner bordering on impatience. Taking his cue from Kinzel, Refior
opened his maps and charts and quickly began the briefing. The lack of
a major authority to direct Reymann had produced an almost impossible
situation for the Berlin command, he explained. "When we asked the OKH
if

we came under them," he elaborated, "we were told "the OKH is
responsible only for the eastern front. You people come under the OKW
[Armed Forces High Command]." So we went to OKW. They said, "Why come
to us? Berlin's front faces east--you are the responsibility of OKH.""
As Refior talked, Kinzel examined the maps and disposition of the
Berlin forces. Suddenly Kinzel looked up at Refior and quietly told
him of Heinrici's decision of the night before not to accept
responsibility for the city's defense. Then, as Refior later recorded,
Kinzel spoke briefly of Hitler, Goebbels and the other bureaucrats. "As
far as I am personally concerned," he said, "those madmen in Berlin can
fry in their own juice."

On the drive back to Berlin, Refior, his buoyant enthusiasm shattered,
realized for the first time what it meant to be "a rejected orphan." He
loved Berlin. He had attended the War Academy, married and raised his
two children--a boy and girl--in the capital. Now, it seemed to him
that he was working in ever-increasing loneliness to defend the city in
which he had spent the happiest years of his life. No one in the chain
of command was prepared to make what Refior saw as the gravest of all
decisions: the responsibility for the defense and preservation of
Berlin.

All that was left to do was to put the few possessions on his desk into
a small case. He had said good-bye to his staff, briefed his
successor, Krebs, and now Colonel General Heinz Guderian was ready to
leave his Zossen headquarters, his eventual destination a well-guarded
secret. First, however, he intended to go with his wife to a
sanatorium near Munich where Guderian could get treatment for his
ailing heart. Afterward he planned to head for the only peaceful place
left in Germany: Southern Bavaria. The only activities in that region
centered around army hospitals and convalescent homes, retired or
dismissed generals and evacuated government officials and their
departments. The General had chosen

carefully. He would sit out the war in the unwarlike climate of the
Bavarian Alps. As former Chief of the OKH, Guderian knew that
absolutely nothing was happening down there.

It was Good Friday, March 30, the beginning of the Easter weekend. In
Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt had arrived for a stay at
the Little White House; near the railroad station crowds stood in the
hot sun waiting, as always, to greet him. At the first appearance of
the President a murmur of surprise swept the onlookers. He was being
carried from the train in the arms of a Secret Service man, almost
inert, his body sagging. There was no jaunty wave, no good-humored
joke shared with the crowd. To many, Roosevelt seemed almost comatose,
only vaguely aware of what was happening. Shocked and apprehensive,
the people watched in silence as the Presidential limousine moved
slowly away.

In Moscow the weather was unseasonably mild. From his second-floor
apartment in the embassy building on Mokhavaya Street, Major General
John R. Deane gazed out across the square at the green Byzantine domes
and minarets of the Kremlin. Deane, the Chief of the U.s. Military
Mission, and his British counterpart, Admiral Ernest R. Archer, were
awaiting confirmation from their respective ambassadors, W. Averell
Harriman and Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, that a meeting with Stalin had
been arranged. At that conference they would deliver to Stalin "SCAF
252," the cable which had arrived from General Eisenhower the day
before (and which the ailing U.s. President had not seen).

In London Winston Churchill, cigar jutting from his mouth, waved to
onlookers outside No. 10 Downing Street. He was preparing to leave by
car for Chequers, the 700-acre official residence of British Prime
Ministers in Buckinghamshire. Despite his cheerful appearance,
Churchill was both worried and angry. Among his papers was a copy of
the Supreme Commander's cable to Stalin. For the first time in almost
three years of close cooperation, the Prime Minister was furious with
Eisenhower.

British reaction to Eisenhower's cable had been mounting for more than
twenty-four hours. The British had been bewildered at first, then
shocked, and finally angered. Like the Combined Chiefs of Staff in
Washington, London had learned of the message at second hand--through
copies passed along "for information." Not even the British Deputy
Supreme Commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, had known of
the cable beforehand; London had heard nothing from him. Churchill
himself was caught completely off balance. Remembering Montgomery's
signal of March 27 announcing his drive to the Elbe and "thence by
autobahn to Berlin, I hope," the Prime Minister whipped off an anxious
note to his Chief of Staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay. Eisenhower's
message to Stalin, he wrote, "seems to differ from Montgomery who spoke
of Elbe. Please explain." For the moment Ismay could not.

At that point Montgomery gave his superiors another surprise. The
powerful U.s. Ninth Army, he reported to Field Marshal Brooke, was to
be switched back from his command to General Bradley's Twelfth Army
Group, which would then make the central thrust to Leipzig and Dresden.
"I consider we are about to make a terrible mistake," Montgomery
said.

Once again the British were incensed. In the first place, such
information should have come from Eisenhower, not Montgomery. But
worse, the Supreme Commander seemed to London to be taking too much
into his own hands. In the British view he had not only stepped far
beyond his authority by dealing directly with Stalin, but he had also
changed longstanding plans without warning. Instead of attacking
across Germany's northern plains with Montgomery's Twenty-first Army
Group, which had been specially built up for the offensive, Eisenhower
had suddenly tapped Bradley to make the last drive of the war through
the heart of the Reich. Brooke bitterly summed up the British
attitude: "To start with, Eisenhower has no business to address Stalin
direct, his communications should be through the Combined Chiefs of
Staff; secondly, he produced a telegram which was unintelligible; and
finally, what was implied in it appeared to be adrift and a change from
all that had been agreed on." On the afternoon of March 29, an irate
Brooke, without consulting Churchill, fired off a sharp protest to
Washington. A bitter and vitriolic debate was slowly building up about
SCAF 252.

At about the same time, General Deane in Moscow, having taken the first
steps to arrange a meeting with Stalin, sent an urgent cable to
Eisenhower. Deane wanted "some additional background information in
case [Stalin] wishes to discuss your plans in more detail." After
months of frustrating dealings with the Russians, Deane knew full well
what the Generalissimo would ask for, and he spelled it all out for
Eisenhower: "1) The present composition of Armies; 2) A little more
detail on the scheme of maneuver; 3) Which Army or Armies you envisage
making the main and secondary advances ...; 4) Brief current estimate
of enemy dispositions and intentions." SHAEF quickly complied. At
eight-fifteen that night the intelligence was on its way to Moscow.
Deane got the composition of the Anglo-American armies and their order
of battle from north to south. So detailed was the information that it
even included the fact that the U.s. Ninth Army was to revert back from
Montgomery to Bradley.

Fifty-one minutes later SHAEF heard from Montgomery. He was
understandably distressed. With the loss of Simpson's Army the
strength of his drive was sapped and his chance of triumphantly
capturing Berlin seemed gone. But he still hoped to persuade
Eisenhower to delay the transfer. He sent an unusually tactful
message. "I note," he said, "that you intend to change the

command set up. If you feel this is necessary I pray you not to do so
until we reach the Elbe as such action would not help the great
movement which is now beginning to develop."

Montgomery's British superiors were in no mood to be tactful, as
Washington officials quickly discovered. At the Pentagon Brooke's
protest was formally delivered to General Marshall by the British
representative to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry
Maitland Wilson. The British note condemned the procedure Eisenhower
had adopted in communicating with Stalin and charged that the Supreme
Commander had changed plans. Marshall, both surprised and concerned,
promptly radioed Eisenhower. His message was mainly a straightforward
report on the British protest. It argued, he said, that existing
strategy should be followed--that Montgomery's northern drive would
secure the German ports and thereby "to a great extent annul the U-boat
war," and that it would also free Holland, Denmark and open up
communications with Sweden again, making available "nearly two million
tons of Swedish and Norwegian shipping now lying idle in Swedish
ports." The British Chiefs, Marshall quoted, "feel strongly that the
main thrust ... across the open plains of N.w. Germany with the object
of capturing Berlin should be adhered to ..."

To fend off Eisenhower's British critics and to patch up Anglo-American
unity as quickly as possible, Marshall was prepared to give latitude
and understanding to both sides. Yet his own puzzlement and annoyance
with the Supreme Commander's actions showed through the last paragraph
of his message: "Prior to your dispatch of SCAF 252 had the naval
aspects of the British been considered?" He ended with: "Your comments
are requested as a matter of urgency."

One man above all others felt urgency--and, indeed, impending chaos--in
the situation. Winston Churchill's anxiety had been mounting almost
hourly. The Eisenhower incident had arisen at a moment when relations
among the three allies were not going well. It was a critical period,
and Churchill felt very much alone.

He did not know how ill Roosevelt was, but for some time previous he
had been puzzled and uneasy about his correspondence with the
President. As he was later to put it: "In my long telegrams I thought
I was talking to my trusted friend and colleague ... [but] I was no
longer being fully heard by him ... various hands drafted in
combination the answers which were sent in his name ... Roosevelt could
only give general guidance and approval ... these were costly weeks for
all."

Even more worrisome was the rapid political deterioration that was
evident between the West and Russia. Churchill's suspicions about
Stalin's post-war aims had grown steadily since Yalta. The Soviet
Premier had contemptuously disregarded the promises made there; nearly
every day now, new and ominous trends appeared. Eastern Europe was
slowly being swallowed up by the U.s.s.r.; Anglo-American bombers,
downed behind Red Army lines because of fuel or mechanical problems,
were being interned along with their crews; air bases and facilities
promised by Stalin for the use of American bombers had been suddenly
denied; the Russians, granted free access to liberated prisoner-of-war
camps in western Germany for the repatriation of their troops, refused
similar permission to Western representatives to enter, evacuate or in
any way aid Anglo-American soldiers in eastern European camps. Worse,
Stalin had charged that "Soviet ex-prisoners of war in U.s. camps ...
were subjected to unfair treatment and unlawful persecution, including
beating." When the Germans in Italy tried to negotiate secretly the
surrender of their forces, Russian reaction was to fire off an
insulting note accusing the Allies of treacherously dealing with the
enemy "behind the back of the Soviet Union, which is bearing the brunt
of the war ..." * * Churchill had shown this Russian note to
Eisenhower on March 24 and the Supreme Commander, he later wrote,
"seemed deeply stirred with anger at what he considered most unjust and
unfounded charges about our good faith."

And now had come the Eisenhower message to Stalin. At a time when the
choice of military objectives might well determine the future of
post-war Europe, Churchill considered that Eisenhower's communication
with the Soviet dictator constituted a dangerous intervention into
global and political strategy--realms that were strictly the concern of
Roosevelt and the Prime Minister. To Churchill, Berlin was of crucial
political importance and it now looked as though Eisenhower did not
intend to make an all-out effort to capture the city.

Before midnight on March 29 Churchill had called Eisenhower on the
scrambler telephone and asked for a clarification of the Supreme
Commander's plans. The Prime Minister carefully avoided mentioning the
Stalin cable. Instead he stressed the political significance of Berlin
and argued that Montgomery should be allowed to continue the northern
offensive. It was of paramount importance, Churchill felt, that the
Allies capture the capital before the Russians. Now, on this March 30,
as he began the 60-odd-mile drive to Chequers, he pondered Eisenhower's
answer with profound concern. "Berlin," the Supreme Commander had
said, "is no longer a major military objective."

In Reims, Dwight Eisenhower's temper was mounting in pace with the
British protests. The London reaction to the curbing of Montgomery's
northern drive had surprised him by its vehemence, but more astonishing
to Eisenhower was the storm raging over his cable to Stalin. He could
see no reason for any controversy. He believed his action was both
correct and militarily essential, and he was incensed to find his
decision challenged. Short-tempered at best, Eisenhower was now the
angriest Allied leader of all.

On the morning of March 30 he began to respond to the messages from
Washington and London. His first move was to send a brief
acknowledgment of Marshall's overnight cable. He promised a more
detailed answer within a few hours, but for the moment simply stated
that he had not changed plans, and that the British charge "has no
possible basis in fact. ... My plan will get the ports and all the
other things on the north coast more speedily

and decisively than will the dispersion now urged upon me by Wilson's
message to you."

Next, in reply to the Prime Minister's nighttime telephone request, he
sent Churchill additional details clarifying the orders which had been
issued Montgomery. "Subject to Russian intentions" a central drive to
Leipzig and Dresden under Bradley's command seemed called for because
it would cut the German armies "approximately in half ... and destroy
the major part of the remaining enemy forces in the West." Once its
success was assured, Eisenhower intended "to take action to clear the
northern ports." Montgomery, said the Supreme Commander, would be
"responsible for these tasks, and I propose to increase his forces if
that should seem necessary." Once "the above requirements have been
met," Eisenhower planned to send General Devers and his Sixth Army
Group southeast toward the Redoubt area "to prevent any possible German
consolidation in the south, and to join hands with the Russians in the
Danube valley." The Supreme Commander closed by remarking that his
present plans were "flexible and subject to changes to meet unexpected
situations." Berlin was not mentioned.

Eisenhower's message to the Prime Minister was restrained and correct;
it did not reflect his anger. But his fury was clearly evident in the
detailed cable he sent, as promised earlier, to Marshall. Eisenhower
told the U.s. Chief of Staff that he was "completely in the dark as to
what the protest concerning "procedure" involved. I have been
instructed to deal directly with the Russians concerning military
coordination." As for his strategy, Eisenhower insisted again that
there was no change. "The British Chiefs of Staff last summer," he
said, "always protested against my determination to open up the
[central] ... route because they said it would be futile and ... draw
strength away from a northern attack. I have always insisted that the
northern attack would be the principal effort in ... the isolation of
the Ruhr, but from the very beginning, extending back before D-Day, my
plan ... has been to link up ... primary and secondary efforts ... and
then make

one great thrust to the eastward. Even cursory examination ... shows
that the principal effort should ... be toward the Leipzig region, in
which area is concentrated the greater part of the remaining German
industrial capacity and to which area German ministries are believed to
be moving."

Harking back to the old Montgomery-Brooke agitation for a single-thrust
strategy, Eisenhower said: "Merely following the principle that Field
Marshal Brooke has always shouted to me, I am determined to concentrate
on one major thrust and all that my plan does is to place the Ninth
U.s. Army back under Bradley for that phase of operations involving the
advance of the center ... the plan clearly shows that Ninth Army may
again have to move up to assist the British and Canadian armies in
clearing the whole coastline to the westward of Lubeck." Afterward,
"we can launch a movement to the southeastward to prevent Nazi
occupation of the mountain citadel."

The National Redoubt, which Eisenhower called "the mountain citadel,"
was now clearly a major military goal--of more concern, in fact, than
Berlin. "May I point out," the Supreme Commander said, "that Berlin
itself is no longer a particularly important objective. Its usefulness
to the German has been largely destroyed and even his government is
preparing to move to another area. What is now important is to gather
up our forces for a single drive, and this will more quickly bring
about the fall of Berlin, the relief of Norway and the acquisition of
the shipping and the Swedish ports than will the scattering around of
our effort."

By the time Eisenhower reached the final paragraph of his message his
anger at the British was barely contained. "The Prime Minister and his
Chiefs of Staff," he declared, "opposed "Anvil" [the invasion of
Southern France]; they opposed my idea that the German should be
destroyed west of the Rhine before we made our great effort across the
river; and they insisted that the route leading northeastward from
Frankfurt would involve us merely in slow, rough-country fighting. Now
they apparently want me to turn aside on operations in which would be
involved many thousands of troops before the German forces are fully
defeated. I submit that these things are studied daily and hourly by
me and my advisors and that we are animated by one single thought which
is the early winning of this war." * * Eisenhower's 1,000-word cable
does not appear in the official histories, and the version in his own
Crusade in Europe has been cut and edited. For example, the phrase
"always shouted to me" has been changed to "always emphasized," while
the angry last paragraph cited above has been dropped altogether.
Ironically, the cable was originally drafted by a Britisher, SHAEF'S
Deputy Operations Chief, Major General John Whiteley, but by the time
it left headquarters it bore Eisenhower's clear imprint.

In Washington, later that day, General Marshall and the Combined Chiefs
of Staff received an amplification of the British Chiefs of Staff
protest of the day before. For the most part the second telegram was a
lengthy reiteration of the first, but there were two important
additions. In the interim the British had learned from Admiral Archer
in Moscow of the supplementary intelligence forwarded from SHAEF to
Deane. The British strongly urged that this information be withheld
from the Russians. In the event that discussions had already begun,
London wanted the talks suspended until the Combined Chiefs of Staff
had reviewed the situation.

But by now the British were beginning to disagree among themselves--not
just over the propriety of the Eisenhower message, but over which parts
of it should be attacked. The British Chiefs of Staff had neglected to
show Churchill their protests before sending them off to Washington.
And Churchill's objections differed from those of his military
advisors. To him, the "main criticism of the new Eisenhower plan is
that it shifts the axis of the main advance upon Berlin to the
direction through Leipzig and Dresden." As the Prime Minister saw it,
under this plan British forces "might be condemned to an almost static
role in the North." Worse, "all prospect also of the British entering
Berlin with the Americans is ruled out."

Berlin, as always now, was uppermost in the Prime Minister's thoughts.
It seemed to him that Eisenhower "may be wrong in supposing Berlin to
be largely devoid of military or political importance." Although
government departments had "to a great extent moved to the south, the
dominating fact on German minds of the fall of Berlin should not be
overlooked." He was haunted by the danger involved in "neglecting
Berlin and leaving it to the Russians." He declared: "As long as
Berlin holds out and withstands a siege in the ruins as it may easily
do, German resistance will be stimulated. The fall of Berlin might
cause nearly all Germans to despair."

While agreeing in principle with the arguments of his Chiefs of Staff,
Churchill felt they had brought into their objections "many minor
extraneous matters." He pointed out that "Eisenhower's credit with the
U.s. Chiefs of Staff stands very high ... the Americans will feel that,
as the victorious Supreme Commander, he had a right, and indeed a vital
need, to try to elicit from the Russians ... the best point for making
contact by the armies of the West and of the East." The British
protest, Churchill feared, would only provide "argumentative
possibilities ... to the U.s. Chiefs of Staff." He expected them to
"riposte heavily." And they did.

On Saturday, March 31, the American military chiefs gave Eisenhower
their unqualified support. They agreed with the British on only two
points: that Eisenhower should amplify his plans for the Combined
Chiefs of Staff and that additional details to Deane should be held up.
In the view of the U.s. Chiefs, "the battle of Germany is now at the
point where the Commander in the Field is the best judge of the
measures which offer the earliest prospect of destroying the German
armies or their power to resist. ... General Eisenhower should
continue to be free to communicate with the Commander-in-Chief of the
Soviet Army." To the American military leaders there was only one aim,
and it did not include political considerations. "The single
objective," they said, "should be quick and complete victory."

Still, the controversy was far from over. In Reims, a harassed
Eisenhower was still explaining and re-explaining his position. During
the day, following Marshall's instructions, Eisenhower sent the
Combined Chiefs of Staff a long and detailed exposition of his

plans. Next, he cabled Moscow and ordered Deane to withhold from
Stalin the additional information sent from SHAEF. After that he
assured Marshall in still another message, "You may be sure that, in
future, policy cables passing between myself and the military mission
in Moscow will be repeated to the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the
British." And finally, he came to Montgomery's still-unanswered plea,
which had arrived nearly forty-eight hours before.

It was more than the urgency of his previous cables that caused
Eisenhower to answer Montgomery last. Relations between the two men
had become so strained that Eisenhower was now communicating with the
Field Marshal only when absolutely necessary. As the Supreme Commander
explained years later: * "Montgomery had become so personal in his
efforts to make sure that the Americans--and me, in particular--got no
credit, that, in fact, we hardly had anything to do with the war, that
I finally stopped talking to him." The Supreme Commander and his
staff--including, interestingly, the senior British generals at
SHAEF--SAW Montgomery as an egocentric troublemaker who in the field
was over-cautious and slow. "Monty wanted to ride into Berlin on a
white charger wearing two hats," recalled British Major General John
Whiteley, SHAEF'S Deputy Operations Chief, "but the feeling was that if
anything was to be done quickly, don't give it to Monty." Lieutenant
General Sir Frederick Morgan, SHAEF'S Deputy Chief of Staff, put it
another way: "At that moment Monty was the last person Ike would have
chosen for a drive on Berlin --Monty would have needed at least six
months to prepare." Bradley was a different sort. "Bradley,"
Eisenhower told his aide, "has never held up, never paused to regroup,
when he saw an opportunity to advance." * In a long and detailed taped
interview with the author.

Now, Eisenhower's anger over the criticism of his cable to Stalin,
coupled with his longstanding antagonism toward Montgomery, was clearly
reflected in his reply to the Field Marshal. It exuded annoyance. "I
must adhere," it said, "to my decision about Ninth Army passing to
Bradley's command. ... As I have already told

you, it appears from this distance that an American formation will
again pass to you at a later stage for operations beyond the Elbe. You
will note that in none of this do I mention Berlin. That place has
become, as far as I am concerned, nothing but a geographical location,
and I have never been interested in these. My purpose is to destroy
the enemy's forces ..."

Even as Eisenhower was making his position evident to Montgomery,
Churchill at Chequers was writing the Supreme Commander a historic
plea. It was in nearly every respect the antithesis of Eisenhower's
words to Montgomery. A little before 7 P.m. the Prime Minister wired
the Supreme Commander: "If the enemy's position should weaken, as you
evidently expect ... why should we not cross the Elbe and advance as
far eastward as possible? This has an important political bearing, as
the Russian army ... seems certain to enter Vienna and overrun Austria.
If we deliberately leave Berlin to them, even if it should be in our
grasp, the double event may strengthen their conviction, already
apparent, that they have done everything.

"Further, I do not consider myself that Berlin has lost its military
and certainly not its political significance. The fall of Berlin would
have a profound psychological effect on German resistance in every part
of the Reich. While Berlin holds out, great masses of Germans will
feel it their duty to go down fighting. The idea that the capture of
Dresden and the juncture with the Russians there would be a superior
gain does not commend itself to me. ... Whilst Berlin remains under
the German flag, it cannot in my opinion fail to be the most decisive
point in Germany.

"Therefore I should greatly prefer persistence in the plan on which we
crossed the Rhine, namely that the Ninth U.s. Army should march with
the 21/ Army Group to the Elbe and beyond to Berlin ..."

In Moscow, as darkness fell, the American and British Ambassadors,
together with Deane and Archer, met with the Soviet Premier and
delivered Eisenhower's message. The conference was brief. Stalin, as
Deane later reported to the Supreme Commander, "was impressed with the
direction of the attack in central Germany" and he thought
"Eisenhower's main effort was a good one in that it accomplished the
most important objective of dividing Germany in half." He felt too
that the Germans' "last stand would probably be in western
Czechoslovakia and Bavaria." While approving of Anglo-American
strategy, Stalin was noncommittal about his own. The final
coordination of Soviet plans, the Premier said, would have to wait
until he had a chance to consult with his staff. At the conclusion of
the meeting he promised to reply to Eisenhower's message within
twenty-four hours.

Moments after his visitors left, Stalin picked up the phone and called
Marshals Zhukov and Koniev. He spoke tersely but his orders were
clear: the two commanders were to fly to Moscow immediately for an
urgent conference the following day, Easter Sunday. Although he did
not explain the reason for his orders, Stalin had decided that the
Western Allies were lying; he was quite sure Eisenhower planned to race
the Red Army for Berlin.

The thousand-mile flight to Moscow from the eastern front had been long
and tiring. Marshal Georgi Zhukov sat wearily back in his field-gray
staff car as it joggled up the cobblestone hill and into the va/s of
Red Square. The car sped past the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed
with its multihued, candy-striped cupolas, swung left and entered the
Kremlin's fortress walls through the western gate. Immediately behind
Zhukov, in another army sedan, was Marshal Ivan Koniev. On the
clockface of the great Savior's Tower guarding the entrance, the gilt
hands showed almost 5 P.m.

Crossing the windswept interior courtyards, the two staff cars advanced
into the architectural thicket of frescoed palaces, golden-domed
cathedrals and massive yellow-fronted government buildings, once the
domain of Russian czars and princes, and headed for the center of the
Kremlin compound. Near the monumental 17th-century white brick bell
tower of Ivan the Great, the cars slowed, rolled past a line of ancient
cannon and came to a stop outside a long, three-story, sand-colored
building. Moments later the two men, in well-cut dun-colored uniforms
with heavy gold epaulettes bearing the one-inch-wide single star of a
Soviet field marshal, were in the elevator headed for Stalin's
second-floor offices. In those brief moments, surrounded by aides and
escorting officers, the two men chatted affably together. A casual
observer might have thought them close friends. In truth, they were
bitter rivals.

Both Zhukov and Koniev had reached the peak of their profession. Each
was a tough, pragmatic perfectionist, and throughout the officer corps
it was considered both an honor and an awesome responsibility to serve
under them. The short, stocky, mild-looking Zhukov was the better
known, idolized by the public and Russian enlisted men as the Soviet
Union's greatest soldier. Yet there were those among the commissioned
ranks who saw him as a monster.

Zhukov was a professional who had begun his career as a private in the
Czar's Imperial Dragoons. When the Russian Revolution began in 1917 he
had joined the revolutionaries; as a Soviet cavalryman, he had fought
the anti-Bolsheviks with such courage and ferocity that in the
post-civil war Red Army he was rewarded with a commission. Although he
was gifted with a brilliant imagination and a natural flair for
command, he might have remained a relatively unknown officer but for
Stalin's brutal purging of the Red Army's generals in the thirties.
Most of those purged were veterans of the Revolution, but Zhukov,
possibly because he was more "Army" than "Party," escaped. The
ruthless removal of the old guard speeded up his promotion. By 1941 he
had risen to the highest military job in the U.s.s.r.: Chief of the
Soviet General Staff.

Zhukov was known as "the soldier's soldier." Perhaps because he had
once been a private himself, he had a reputation for leniency with
enlisted men. So long as his troops fought well, he considered the
spoils of war no more than their just deserts. But with his officers
he was a harsh disciplinarian. Senior commanders who failed to measure
up were often fired on the spot and then punished for failing. The
punishment usually took one of two forms: the officer either was sent
to join a penal battalion or was ordered to serve on the most exposed
part of the front line--as a private. Sometimes he was given a
choice.

Once during the Polish campaign of 1944 Zhukov had stood with Marshal
Konstantin Rokossovskii and General Pavel Batov, Commander of the
Sixty-fifth Army, watching the troops advance. Suddenly Zhukov,
viewing the scene through binoculars, yelled at Batov: "The corps
commander and the commander of the 44th Rifle Division--penal
battalion!" Both Rokossovskii and Batov began to plead for the two
generals. Rokossovskii was able to save the corps commander. But
Zhukov remained firm regarding the second officer. The general was
immediately reduced in rank, sent to the front lines, and ordered to
lead a suicidal attack. He was killed almost instantly. Zhukov
thereupon recommended Russia's highest military award, Hero of the
Soviet Union, for the fallen officer.

Zhukov himself was a Hero of the Soviet Union thrice over--as was his
arch competitor, Koniev. Honors had been heaped on both marshals, but
while Zhukov's fame had spread throughout the U.s.s.r., Koniev remained
virtually unknown--and the anonymity rankled.

Koniev was a tall, gruff, vigorous man with a shrewd twinkle in his
blue eyes. He was 48 years old, a year younger than Zhukov, and in
some respects his career had paralleled the other man's. He,

too, had fought for the Czar, crossed over to the revolutionaries and
continued to serve with the Soviet forces. But there was one
difference, and to men like Zhukov it was a big one. Koniev had come
into the Red Army as a political commissar and, although he switched to
the command side in 1926 and became a regular officer, to other
soldiers his background was forever tainted. Political officers had
always been heartily disliked by the regular military. So powerful
were they that a commander could not issue an order unless it was
countersigned by the ranking commissar. Zhukov, though a loyal Party
man, had never regarded former commissars as true army professionals.
It had been a constant irritant to him that in the pre-war years he and
Koniev had commanded in the same theaters and had been promoted at
about the same pace. Stalin, who had handpicked them both for his
cadre of young generals in the thirties, was cannily aware of the
intense rivalry between the men: he had made it a point to play one off
against the other.

Koniev, despite his rough, outspoken manner, was generally regarded by
the military as the more thoughtful and better educated of the two. A
voracious reader, he kept a small library at his headquarters and
occasionally surprised his staff by quoting passages from Turgenev and
Pushkin. The rank and file of his armies knew him as a stern
disciplinarian. But unlike Zhukov, he was considerate of his officers,
reserving his wrath for the enemy. On the battlefield he could be
barbarous. During one phase of the Dnieper campaign, after his troops
had surrounded several German divisions, Koniev demanded their
immediate surrender. When the Germans refused he ordered his
saber-wielding Cossacks to attack. "We let the Cossacks cut for as
long as they wished," he told Milovan Djilas, head of the Yugoslav
Military Mission to Moscow, in 1944. "They even hacked off the hands
of those who raised them to surrender." In this respect at least,
Zhukov and Koniev saw eye to eye: they could not forgive Nazi
atrocities. For Germans, they had neither mercy nor remorse.

Now, as the two marshals walked along the second-floor corridor toward
Stalin's suite of offices, both were reasonably certain

that the matter to be discussed was Berlin. Tentative plans called for
Zhukov's First Belorussian group of armies, in the center, to take the
city. Marshal Rokossovskii's Second Belorussian forces to the north
and Koniev's First Ukrainian Army Group on the south could be called in
to help. But Zhukov was determined to take Berlin by himself. He had
no intention of asking for assistance-- especially not from Koniev.
Koniev, however, had been giving Berlin a lot of thought himself.
Zhukov's forces could be held up by terrain-- especially in the heavily
defended Seelow Heights region lying just beyond the western banks of
the Oder. If that happened, Koniev thought he saw a chance to steal
Zhukov's thunder. He even had a rough scheme of action in mind. Of
course, everything would depend on Stalin but this time Koniev
fervently hoped to beat out Zhukov and reap a long-awaited glory. If
the opportunity presented itself, Koniev thought that he just might
race his rival for Berlin.

Midway along the red-carpeted corridor, the escorting officers ushered
Zhukov and Koniev into a conference room. It was high-ceilinged,
narrow and almost filled by a long, massive, highly polished mahogany
table surrounded by chairs. Two heavy chandeliers with clear,
unfrosted bulbs blazed over the table. At an angle in one corner was a
small desk and leather chair and on the wall nearby hung a large
picture of Lenin. The windows were draped and there were no flags or
insignia in the room. There were, however, chrome-lithographs, in
identical dark frames, of two of Russia's most famous military
technicians: Catherine II'S brilliant Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov,
and General Mikhail Kutuzov, who had destroyed Napoleon's armies in
1812. At one end of the room double doors led to Stalin's private
office.

The marshals were not unfamiliar with the surroundings. Zhukov had
worked down the hall when he was Chief of Staff in 1941; and both men
had met here with Stalin many times before. But this conference was
not to be a small private session. Within minutes after the two
marshals entered the room, they were followed by the seven most
important men, after Stalin, in the wartime U.s.s.r.--the members of
the State Defense Committee, the

all-powerful decision-making body of the Soviet war machine.

Without formality or deference to rank, the Soviet leaders filed into
the room: Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the committee's
Deputy Chairman; Lavrenti P. Beria, the thickset, myopic Chief of the
Secret Police and one of the most feared men in Russia; Georgi M.
Malenkov, the rotund Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party and Military Procurement Administrator; Anastas I.
Mikoyan, thin-faced and hawk-nosed, the Production Coordinator; Marshal
Nikolai A. Bulganin, the distinguished-looking, goateed Supreme
Headquarters Representative to the Soviet fronts; stolid, mustachioed
Lazar M. Kaganovich, Transportation Specialist and the lone Jew on the
committee; and Nikolai A. Voznesenskii, the Economic Planner and
Administrator. Representing the operational side of the military were
the Chief of the General Staff, General A. A. Antonov and the
Operations Chief, General S. M. Shtemenko. As the top Soviet leaders
took chairs, the doors to the Premier's office opened and the short,
stocky figure of Stalin appeared.

He was simply dressed in a mustard-colored uniform, without epaulettes
or rank insignia; his trousers, each seamed with a thin red stripe,
were tucked into soft black, knee-length boots. On the left side of
his tunic, he wore a single decoration: the red-ribboned gold star of a
Hero of the Soviet Union. Clamped in his teeth was one of his favorite
pipes: a British Dunhill. He wasted little time in formalities. As
Koniev was later to recall, "We barely managed to greet each other
before Stalin began to talk." * * Russian quotes not otherwise
attributed, like other Soviet material used throughout the book, were
obtained during a research trip to Moscow, in April, 1963. The Soviet
Government allowed the author, assisted by Professor John Erickson of
the University of Manchester, to interview participants--from marshals
to privates--in the battle for Berlin (for a full list of names, see
the appendix). The only Soviet marshal the author was prohibited from
interviewing was Zhukov. The others--Koniev, Sokolovskii, Rokossovskii
and Chuikov--each contributed an average of three hours of private
conversations. In addition, the author was given access to military
archives and allowed to copy and take out of Russia voluminous
documentation, including battle maps, after-action reports, monographs,
photographs and military histories hitherto circulated only within
Soviet government circles.

Stalin asked Zhukov and Koniev a few questions about conditions

on the front. Then abruptly he got to the point. In his low voice,
characterized by the peculiar singsong accent of Georgia, he said
quietly and with great effect: "The little allies (soyuznichki) intend
to get to Berlin ahead of the Red Army."

He waited a moment before continuing. He had received information
about Anglo-American plans, Stalin said, and it was clear that "their
intentions are less than "allied."" He did not mention Eisenhower's
message of the night before, nor did he give any other source for his
information. Turning to General Shtemenko he said: "Read the
report."

Shtemenko stood up. Eisenhower's forces planned to surround and
destroy the Ruhr concentrations of the enemy, he announced, then
advance to Leipzig and Dresden. But just "on the way" they intended to
take Berlin. All of this, said the General, "will look like helping
the Red Army." But it was known that taking Berlin before the arrival
of Soviet troops was "Eisenhower's main aim." Furthermore, he intoned,
it had been learned by the Stavka (stalin's Supreme Headquarters) that
"two Allied airborne divisions are being rapidly readied for a drop on
Berlin." [As, of course, they were.]

Koniev, in his version of the meeting, was later to remember that the
Allied plan, as described by Shtemenko, also included a drive by
Montgomery north of the Ruhr "along the shortest route separating
Berlin from the basic groupings of the British forces." Shtemenko
finished, Koniev recalled, "by saying that "according to all the data
and information, this plan--to take Berlin earlier than the Soviet
Army--is looked upon at the Anglo-American headquarters as fully
realistic and that preparation for its fullfillment is in full swing.""
* * Stalin's crucial conference with his marshals is well known to the
upper echelon of the Soviet military, although it has never before been
published in the West. A number of versions have appeared in Russian
military histories and journals. One such is Zhukov's account of the
meeting to his staff officers, as recorded by the Russian historian,
Lieutenant General N. N. Popiel. Marshal Koniev explained the
background of the conference to the author and supplied details
hitherto unknown. He also recounts part of the details in the first
part of his memoirs, published in Moscow in 1965. There are some
differences between his version and Zhukov's. For example, Zhukov did
not mention Montgomery's drive on Berlin; Koniev makes no reference to
a proposed Anglo-American airborne drop on the city. The source
material for the report read by General Shtemenko has never been
revealed. In the author's judgment it was a grossly exaggerated
military evaluation of Eisenhower's message of the night before--an
evaluation based partly on suspicion of Eisenhower's motives, partly as
a concoction intended to furnish a rationale for Stalin's own aims.

As Shtemenko ended the military evaluation, Stalin turned to his two
marshals. "So," he said softly. "Who will take Berlin? We or the
Allies?"

Koniev later remembered proudly that he was the first to answer. "We
will," he said, "and before the Anglo-Americans."

Stalin looked at him, a slight smile flickering over his face. "So,"
he said again softly. With ponderous humor, he added, "Is that the
sort of fellow you are?" Then, in an instant, as Koniev remembers,
Stalin was once more cold and businesslike, stabbing out questions.
Exactly how was Koniev, on the south, prepared to capture Berlin in
time? "Wouldn't a great regrouping of your forces be necessary?" he
asked. Too late Koniev saw the trap. Stalin was up to his old tricks
again, pitting one man against the other, but by the time he realized
this Koniev had already begun to answer. "Comrade Stalin," he said,
"all the measures needed will be carried out. We shall regroup in time
to take Berlin."

It was the moment Zhukov had waited for. "May I speak?" he asked
quietly, almost condescendingly. He did not wait for an answer. "With
due consideration," he said, nodding to Koniev, "the men of the First
Belorussian Front need no regrouping. They are ready now. We are
aimed directly at Berlin. We are the shortest distance from Berlin. We
will take Berlin."

Stalin looked at the two men in silence. Once again a smile showed
briefly. "Very well," he said mildly. "You will both stay in Moscow
and, with the General Staff, prepare your plans. I expect them ready
within forty-eight hours. Then you can return to the front with
everything approved."

Both men were shocked by the brief time period allotted for the
preparation of their plans. Up to now they had understood that the
target date for attacking Berlin was early May. Now Stalin obviously
expected them to attack weeks earlier. To Koniev, in particular, this
was a sobering thought. Although he had a tentative plan which he
believed would get him into Berlin before Zhukov, he had nothing on
paper. The meeting now made him desperately aware of immense
logistical problems that he must solve quickly. All kinds of equipment
and supplies would now have to be rushed to the front. Worse, Koniev
was short of troops. After the fighting in Upper Silesia, a
considerable part of his forces was still spread out to the south. Some
were miles from Berlin. These would have to be transferred
immediately, posing a major transportation problem.

Zhukov, listening to Stalin speak, was equally worried. Although his
staff officers had been preparing for the attack, he was far from
ready. His armies were in position but he, too, was still bringing up
supplies and rushing replacements to the front to fill out his badly
depleted forces. Some of his divisions, usually 9,000 to 12,000 men
strong, were down to 3,500. Zhukov believed the Berlin operations
would be enormously difficult and he wanted to be ready for every
eventuality. His intelligence had reported that "the city itself and
its environs have been carefully prepared for stubborn defense. Each
street, square, crossroad, house, canal and bridge is a component part
of the overall defense. ..." Now, everything would have to be speeded
up if he was to beat the Western forces to Berlin. How soon could he
attack? That was the question Stalin wanted answered-- and quickly.

As the meeting broke up Stalin spoke once again. There was no warmth
in his voice. To the two marshals he said, with great emphasis: "I
must tell you that the dates of the beginning of your operations will
attract our special attention."

The rivalry between the two commanders, never far beneath the surface,
was being exploited once again. With a brief nod to the men around
him, Stalin turned and left the room.

Now, having set his plans in motion, the Soviet Premier still faced one
important task: the careful detailing of an answer to Eisenhower's
cable. Stalin began work on the prepared draft. By 8 P.m. his reply
was finished and dispatched. "I have received your telegram of March
28," Stalin wired Eisenhower. "Your plan

to cut the German forces by joining ... [with] Soviet Forces entirely
coincides with the plan of the Soviet High Command." Stalin fully
agreed that the link-up should be in the Leipzig-Dresden area, for the
"main blow of the Soviet Forces" would be made "in that direction." The
date of the Red Army's attack? Stalin gave that particular notice. It
would be "approximately the second half of May."

The most important part of his message came in the third paragraph.
There he implanted the impression that he had no interest in Germany's
capital. "Berlin," he stated, "has lost its former strategic
importance." In fact, Stalin said, it had become so unimportant that
"the Soviet High Command therefore plans to allot secondary forces in
the direction of Berlin." * * *

Winston Churchill had conferred with the British Chiefs of Staff nearly
all afternoon. He was feeling embarrassed and upset. His
embarrassment stemmed from an Eisenhower message that had been garbled
in transmission. One sentence in the cable Churchill received had
read: "Montgomery will be responsible on patrol tasks. ..." Sharply,
Churchill had replied that he thought His Majesty's forces were being
"relegated ... to an unexpected restricted sphere." The bewildered
Eisenhower had wired back: "I am disturbed, if not hurt ... Nothing is
further from my mind and I think my record ... should eliminate any
such idea." It turned out that Eisenhower had never used the words "on
patrol tasks." He had said, "on these tasks," and somehow the
expression had been transmitted wrong. Churchill was chagrined by the
incident which, trivial though it was, had compounded the mounting
confusion.

Far from trivial, in the Prime Minister's eyes, was the continuing
American apathy toward Berlin. With the tenacity that had
characterized him all his life he now took on both problems--Allied
relations and Berlin--at once. In a long telegram to the

ailing Roosevelt--his first to FDR since the beginning of the SCAF 252
controversy--the Prime Minister first recorded at length his complete
confidence in Eisenhower. Then, "having disposed of these
misunderstandings between the truest friends and allies that have ever
fought side by side," Churchill hammered away at the urgency of taking
the German capital. "Nothing will exert a psychological effect of
despair upon German forces ... equal to that of the fall of Berlin," he
argued. "It will be the supreme signal of defeat ... If the [Russians]
take Berlin, will not their impression that they have been the
overwhelming contributor to the common victory be unduly imprinted in
their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise
grave and formidable difficulties in the future? I therefore consider
that from a political standpoint ... should Berlin be in our grasp we
should certainly take it ..."

The following day Churchill's concern deepened still more when he
received a copy of Stalin's message to Eisenhower. Its contents, the
Prime Minister believed, were highly suspicious. At ten forty-five
that night he cabled Eisenhower, "I am all the more impressed with the
importance of entering Berlin which may well be open to us by the reply
from Moscow to you which in paragraph three says "Berlin has lost its
former strategic importance." This should be read in the light of what
I mentioned of the political aspects." Churchill added fervently that
he now deemed it "highly important that we should shake hands with the
Russians as far to the east as possible ..."

Despite everything, Churchill's determination to win Berlin had not
flagged. He was still optimistic. He ended his message to Eisenhower:
"Much may happen in the West, before the date of Stalin's main
offensive." His great hope now was that the momentum and enthusiasm of
the Allied drive would carry the troops forward into Berlin well ahead
of Stalin's target date. * * *

At Stalin's headquarters, Marshals Zhukov and Koniev had worked around
the clock. By Tuesday, April 3, within the 48-hour deadline, their
plans were ready. Once again they saw Stalin.

Zhukov gave his presentation first. He had been considering the attack
for months and the projected moves of his massive First Belorussian
group of armies were at his fingertips. His main attack would take
place in the pre-dawn, he said, from the 44-kilometer-long bridgehead
over the Oder west of Kustrin--directly opposite Berlin. Additional
attacks on the north and south would support this stroke.

The logistics of the Zhukov plan were staggering. No less than four
field and two tank armies would be thrown into his main thrust and two
armies each would be employed for the supporting assaults. Including
secondary forces coming up behind, he would have 768,100 men. Leaving
nothing to chance, Zhukov hoped to secure for the Kustrin bridgehead a
minimum of 250 artillery pieces for each kilometer-- approximately one
cannon for every thirteen feet of front! He planned to open his
assault with a stupefying barrage from some 11,000 guns, not counting
smaller caliber mortars.

Now he came to his favorite part of the plan. Zhukov had devised an
unorthodox and bizarre stratagem to befuddle the enemy. He would
launch his offensive in the hours of darkness. At the very instant of
attack he intended to blind and demoralize the Germans by turning upon
them the fierce glare of 140 high-powered anti-aircraft searchlights
beamed directly at their positions. He fully expected his plan to
result in massacre.

Koniev's plan was equally monumental and, fed by his burning ambition,
more complex and difficult. As he was later to say: "Berlin for us was
the object of such ardent desire that everyone, from soldier to
general, wanted to see Berlin with their own eyes, to capture it by
force of arms. This too was my ardent desire ... I was overflowing
with it."

But the fact was that at their closest point Koniev's forces were more
than seventy-five miles from the city. Koniev was counting on speed to
see him through. Craftily he had massed his tank armies on the right
so that when a breakthrough was achieved he could wheel northwest and
strike out for Berlin, perhaps slipping into the city ahead of Zhukov.
This was the idea he had been nurturing for weeks. Now, in light of
Zhukov's presentation, he hesitated to tip his hand. Instead, for the
moment he stuck to operational details. His plans called for a dawn
attack across the Neisse, under the protection of a heavy smoke screen
laid down by low-flying squadrons of fighter planes. Into the assault
he planned to hurl five field and two tank armies--511,700 men.
Remarkably, he was requesting the same almost incredible artillery
density as Zhukov--250 guns per kilometer of front--and he meant to get
even greater use from them. "Unlike my neighbor," Koniev recalled, "I
planned to saturate the enemy positions with artillery fire for two
hours and thirty-five minutes."

But Koniev badly needed reinforcements. Whereas Zhukov had eight
armies along the Oder, Koniev, on the Neisse, had a total of only five.
To put his plan into effect he needed two more. After some discussion
Stalin agreed to give him the Twenty-eighth and Thirty-first armies,
because "the fronts have been reduced in the Baltic and East Prussia."
But much time might elapse before these armies would reach the First
Ukrainian Front, Stalin pointed out. Transport was at a premium.
Koniev decided to gamble. He could begin the attack while the
reinforcements were still en route, he told Stalin, then commit them
the moment they arrived.

Having listened to the two propositions, Stalin now approved them both.
But to Zhukov went the responsibility of capturing Berlin. Afterward,
he was to head for the line of the Elbe. Koniev was to attack on the
same day as Zhukov, destroy the enemy along the southern fringes of
Berlin and then let his armies flood west for a meeting with the
Americans. The third Soviet army group, Marshal Rokossovskii's Second
Belorussians, massing along the lower Oder and all the way to the coast
north of Zhukov, would not be involved in the Berlin assault.
Rokossovskii, with 314,000 men, would attack later, driving across
northern Germany for a

link-up with the British. Together, the three Russian army groups
would have a total of 1,593,800 men.

It appeared that Koniev had been relegated to a supporting role in the
Berlin attack. But then, leaning over the map on the table, Stalin
drew a dividing line between Zhukov's and Koniev's army groups. It was
a curious boundary. It began east of the Russian front, crossed the
river and ran straight to the 16th-century town of Lubben on the Spree,
approximately sixty-five miles southeast of Berlin. There, Stalin
suddenly stopped drawing. Had he continued the line right across
Germany, thereby marking a boundary that Koniev was not to cross, the
First Ukrainian armies would clearly have been denied any participation
in the Berlin attack. Now Koniev was elated. Although "Stalin did not
say anything ..." he recalled later, "the possibility of a show of
initiative on the part of the command of the front was tacitly
assumed." Without a word being spoken the green light to Berlin had
been given Koniev's forces--if he could make it. To Koniev, it was as
though Stalin had read his mind. With what he was to term this "secret
call to competition ... on the part of Stalin," the meeting ended.

Immediately the marshals' plans were incorporated into formal
directives. The next morning the rival commanders, orders in hand,
drove out in a swirling fog to Moscow airport, each eager to reach his
headquarters. Their orders called for them to mount the offensive a
full month earlier than the date Stalin had given Eisenhower. For
security reasons, the written directives were undated, but Zhukov and
Koniev had been given the word by Stalin himself. The attack on Berlin
would begin on Monday, April 16. * * *

Even as Zhukov and Koniev began feverishly preparing to hurl thirteen
armies with more than a million men at Berlin, Adolf Hitler had another
of his famous intuitive flashes. The massing of the Russian armies at
Kustrin, directly opposite the capital, was nothing more than a mighty
feint, he concluded. The main Soviet offensive would be aimed at
Prague in the south--not at Berlin. Only one of Hitler's generals was
gifted with the same insight. Colonel General Ferdinand Schorner, now
commander of Army Group Center on Heinrici's southern flank, had also
seen through the Russian hozx. "My Fuhrer," warned Schorner, "it is
written in history. Remember Bismarck's words, "Whoever holds Prague
holds Europe."" Hitler agreed. The brutal Schorner, a Fuhrer favorite
and among the least talented of the German generals, was promptly
promoted to Field Marshal. At the same time, Hitler issued a fatal
directive. On the night of April 5 he ordered the transfer south of
four of Heinrici's veteran panzer units--the very force Heinrici had
been depending on to blunt the Russian drive.

Colonel General Heinrici's car moved slowly through the rubble of
Berlin, making for the Reichskanzlei and the full-dress meeting ordered
by Hitler nine days earlier. Sitting in back alongside his Operations
Chief, Colonel Eismann, Heinrici stared silently out at the burned and
blackened streets. In two years he had made only one other trip to the
city. Now, the evidence of his own eyes overwhelmed him. He would
never have recognized the place as Berlin.

In normal times the trip from his headquarters to the Reichskanzlei
would have taken about ninety minutes, but they had been en route
nearly twice that long. Again and again clogged streets forced them to
make complicated detours. Even main thoroughfares were often
impassable. Elsewhere, crazily canted buildings threatened to collapse
at any moment, making every street a

danger. Water gushed and gurgled from immense bomb holes; escaping gas
flared from ruptured mains; and all over the city, areas were cordoned
off and marked with signs that warned, "Achtung! Minen!" signifying
the location of still-unexploded aerial mines. Heinrici, his voice
bitter, said to Eismann. "So this is what we've finally come to--a sea
of rubble."

Although buildings on both sides of the Wilhelmstrasse were in ruins,
apart from some splinter damage nothing about the Reichskanzlei
appeared to have changed. Even the faultlessly dressed SS sentries
just outside the entrance seemed the same. They snapped smartly to
attention as Heinrici, Eismann behind him, entered the building.
Despite the delays, the General was on time. The conference with
Hitler was scheduled for 3 P.m., and Heinrici had given it much thought
over the past few days. As bluntly and precisely as possible, he
intended to tell Hitler and those around him the true facts of the
situation confronting the Army Group Vistula. Heinrici knew perfectly
well the danger of speaking out, but the possible consequences did not
seem to bother him. Eismann, on the other hand, was greatly disturbed.
"It looked to me," he later said, "as if Heinrici was planning an
all-out attack against Hitler and his advisors, and there were very few
men who could do that and survive."

In the main hall an SS officer, immaculate in a white tunic, black
breeches and highly polished cavalry boots, greeted Heinrici and
informed him that the meeting would take place in the Fuhrerbunker.
Heinrici had heard that a vast labyrinth of underground installations
existed beneath the Chancellery, the adjoining buildings and the
enclosed gardens at back, but he had never before been in any of them.
Following a guide, he and Eismann walked down to the basement and out
into the gardens. Though the facade of the Reichskanzlei was intact,
the rear of the building showed severe damage. Once, magnificent
gardens with a complex of fountains had been here. They were gone now,
along with Hitler's tea pavilion and flee botanical greenhouses that
had stood to one side of it.

To Heinrici the area resembled a battlefield, with "huge craters, lumps
of concrete, smashed statuary and uprooted trees." In the soot-stained
walls of the Chancellery were "great black holes where windows used to
be." Eismann, looking at the desolation, was reminded of a line from
"The Singer's Curse," by the 19th-century German balladier, Uhland. It
went, "Only one high column tells of the vanished glory; this one can
fall overnight." Heinrici was more literal-minded. "Just think," he
murmured to Eismann. "Three years ago Hitler had Europe under his
command, from the Volga to the Atlantic. Now he's sitting in the hole
under the earth."

They crossed the garden to an oblong blockhouse guarded by two
sentries. Their credentials were examined and then the guards opened a
heavy steel door, allowing the officers to pass through. As the door
clanged shut behind them, Heinrici was always to remember, "We stepped
into an unbelievable underworld." At the bottom of a winding concrete
staircase two young SS officers received them in a brilliantly lighted
foyer. Courteously their coats were taken and then, with equal
courtesy, Heinrici and Eismann were searched. Eismann's briefcase, in
particular, received attention: it had been a briefcase containing
explosives that had nearly ended Hitler's life in July, 1944. Since
then, the Fuhrer's elite guards had allowed no one near him without
first subjecting them to a search. Heinrici, despite the apologies of
the SS men, seethed at the indignity. Eismann felt "ashamed that a
German general should be treated in this manner." The search over,
they were shown into a long narrow corridor, partitioned into two
sections, the first of which had been converted into a comfortable
lounge. Domed lights protruded from the ceiling, giving the light
beige stucco walls a yellowish cast. An Oriental carpet on the floor
had apparently been brought down from a larger Chancellery room, for
its edges were folded under at each side. Although the room was
comfortable, the furniture --like the carpet--seemed out of keeping.
There were various chairs, some plain, some covered in rich upholstery.
A narrow oak table was set against one wall and

several large oil paintings, landscapes by the German architect and
painter Schinkel, were hung about the room. To the right of the
entrance an open door gave onto a small conference room set up for the
meeting. Heinrici could only make a guess as to the size and depth of
the Fuhrerbunker. From what he could see, it appeared relatively
spacious, with doors leading to rooms on either side of the corridor
lounge and beyond. Because of its low ceiling, narrow metal doors and
the absence of windows, this might have been the passageway in a small
liner--except that, by Heinrici's estimate, they were at least forty
feet below ground.

Almost immediately a tall, elegantly dressed SS officer appeared. He
was Hitler's personal aide and bodyguard, Colonel Otto Gunsche.
Pleasantly he inquired about their trip and offered them refreshments;
Heinrici accepted a cup of coffee. Soon, other conference members
began to arrive. Hitler's adjutant, General Wilhelm Burgdorf, came
next. He greeted them, as Eismann remembers, "with some noises about
success." Then Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the OKW Chief of Staff,
arrived, followed by Himmler, Admiral Karl Doenitz and the man reputed
to be Hitler's closest confidant, Martin Bormann. In Eismann's words,
"All greeted us loudly. Seeing them, I was really proud of my
commander. With his familiar stiff posture, serious and measured, he
was a soldier from head to toe among court asses."

Eismann saw Heinrici tense as Himmler started across the room toward
him. In an undertone the General growled, "That man is never going to
set foot in my headquarters. If he ever announces a visit, tell me
quickly so I can leave. He makes me vomit." And, indeed, Eismann
thought Heinrici looked pale as Himmler dragged him into
conversation.

At that moment General Hans Krebs, Guderian's successor, came into the
room and, seeing Heinrici, came across to him immediately. Earlier in
the day Heinrici had learned from Krebs of the transfer of his vital
armored units to Schorner's army group. Though he blamed Krebs for not
vigorously protesting the decision, Heinrici now seemed almost cordial
to the new Chief of the

OKH. At least he did not have to continue talking with Himmler.

Krebs, as usual, was diplomatic and solicitous. He had no doubt that
everything would work out all right at the conference, he assured
Heinrici. Doenitz, Keitel and Bormann now joined them and listened as
Heinrici mentioned some of his problems. All three promised their
support when Heinrici made his presentation to Hitler. Turning to
Eismann, Bormann asked, "What's your opinion about the Army Group
situation--since all this has a direct bearing on Berlin and Germany in
general?" Eismann was dumbfounded. With the Russians only
thirty-eight miles from the capital and the Allies racing across
Germany from the west, the question seemed to border on madness.
Bluntly he replied, "The situation is serious. That's why we're here."
Bormann patted him soothingly on the shoulder. "You shouldn't worry so
much," he told Eismann. "The Fuhrer is sure to grant you help. You'll
get all the forces you need." Eismann stared. Where did Bormann think
the forces were to come from? For a moment he had the uncomfortable
feeling that he and Heinrici were the only sane people in the room.

More and more officers and staff were filing into the already crowded
corridor. Hitler's Operations Chief, General Alfred Jodl, aloof and
composed, arrived with his deputy; the Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff,
General Karl Koller, and OKW'S Staff Chief in charge of supplies and
reinforcements, Major General Walter Buhle, came in together. Nearly
every man seemed to be followed by an aide, an orderly or a deputy. The
resulting noise and confusion reminded Eismann of a swarm of bees.

In the packed corridor Heinrici now stood silent, listening impassively
to the din of conversation. For the most part, it consisted of small
talk, trivial and irrelevant. The bunker and its atmosphere were
stifling and unreal. Heinrici had the disquieting feeling that the men
around Hitler had retreated into a dream world in which they had
convinced themselves that by some miracle catastrophe could be averted.
Now, as they waited for the man who, they believed, would produce this
miracle, there was a sudden movement in the corridor. General
Burgdorf, hands high above his head,

waved the group into silence. "Gentlemen, gentlemen," he said, "the
Fuhrer is coming."

"Gustav! Gustav!" Radios sputtered out the warning code for Tempelhof
as the planes approached the district. In stationmasters' offices
along the route of the U-Bahn, loudspeakers blared out, "Danger 15!"
Another city-wide saturation raid had begun.

Earth erupted. Glass ripped through the air. Chunks of concrete
smashed down into the streets, and tornadoes of dust whirled up from a
hundred places, covering the city in a dark gray, choking cloud. Men
and women raced one another, stumbling and clawing their way into
shelters. Ruth Diekermann, just before she reached safety, looked up
and saw the bombers coming over in waves, "like an assembly line." In
the Krupp und Druckenmuller plant, French forced laborer Jacques
Delaunay dropped the ghastly remnant of a human arm he had just
recovered from the battle-scarred tank he was overhauling, and ran for
shelter. In the Sieges Allee the marble statues of
Brandenburg-Prussian rulers rocked and groaned on their pedestals; and
the crucifix held aloft by the 12th-century leader, Margrave Albert the
Bear, shattered against the bust of his eminent contemporary, Bishop
Otho of Bamberg. Nearby in Skagerrak Square, police ran for cover,
leaving the swaying body of a suicide still hanging from a tree.

A shower of incendiaries smashed through the roof of Wing B of the
Lehrterstrasse Prison and set off a dozen flaring magnesium fires on
the second floor. Frantic prisoners, turned loose to fight the flames,
stumbled through the acrid smoke with buckets of sand. Two men
suddenly stopped working. The prisoner from Cell 244 stared at the man
from Cell 247. Then they embraced. The brothers Herbert and Kurt
Kosney discovered they had been on the same floor for days.

In Pankow, in the Mohrings' ground-floor two-room apartment where the
Weltlinglers hid, Siegmund hugged his sobbing wife

Margarete as they stood together in the kitchen. "If this keeps up,"
he shouted over the din of anti-aircraft fire, "even Jews can go openly
to the shelters. They're all too scared of the bombs to turn us in
now."

Fourteen-year-old Rudolf Reschke had only time enough to see that the
planes glinted like silver in the sky--too high for the dangerous game
of tag he liked to play with strafing fighters. Then his mother,
yelling and nearly hysterical, dragged him down into the cellar where
his 9-year-old sister, Christa, sat shivering and crying. The whole
shelter seemed to be shaking. Plaster fell from the ceiling and the
walls; then the lights flickered and went out. Frau Reschke and
Christa began to pray aloud, and after a minute Rudolf joined them in
the "Our Father." The noise of the bombing was getting worse and the
shelter now seemed to be shuddering all the time. The Reschkes had
been through many raids, but nothing like this. Frau Reschke, her arms
about both children, began to sob. Rudolf had seldom heard his mother
cry before, even though he knew that she was often worried, especially
with his father at the front. Suddenly he was angry at the planes for
making his mother frightened--and for the first time Rudolf felt
frightened himself. With some embarrassment he discovered that he was
crying, too.

Before his mother could detain him, Rudolf rushed out of the shelter.
He ran up the stairs to the family's ground-floor apartment; there he
headed straight for his room and his collection of toy soldiers. He
chose the most imposing figure among them, with distinct features
painted on its china face. He went to the kitchen and took down his
mother's heavy meat cleaver. Oblivious now of the air raid, Rudolf
went out into the apartment house courtyard, laid the doll on the
ground, and with one stroke chopped off its head. "There!" he said,
standing back. Tears still staining his face, he looked down without
remorse upon the severed head of Adolf Hitler.

* * *

He came shuffling into the bunker corridor-- half bent, dragging his
left foot, the left arm shaking uncontrollably. Although he was 5 feet
8-1/2 inches tall, now, with his head and body twisted to the left, he
looked much smaller. The eyes that admirers had called "magnetic" were
feverish and red, as if he had not slept for days. His face was puffy,
and its color was a blotchy, faded gray. A pair of pale green
spectacles dangled from his right hand; bright light bothered him now.
For a moment he gazed expressionlessly at his generals as their hands
shot up and out to a chorus of "Heil Hitler." * * Contrary to
generally accepted belief, the deterioration of Hitler's health was not
the result of injuries sustained during the attempted bomb plot on his
life in 1944, though it seems to have marked the beginning of a rapid
debilitation. After the war, U.s. counterintelligence teams
interrogated nearly every doctor who had attended Hitler. The author
has read all their reports and, while none of them give a specific
cause for Hitler's palsied condition, the general opinion is that, in
origin, it was partly psychogenic, and partly caused by the manner in
which he lived. Hitler hardly ever slept; night and day had little
distinction for him. In addition, there is abundant evidence that he
was slowly being poisoned by the indiscriminate use of drugs
administered to him in massive injections by his favorite physician,
Professor Theodor Morell. These ranged from prescriptions containing
morphia, arsenic and strychnine to various artificial stimulants and
mysterious "miracle drugs" which the doctor himself compounded.

The corridor was so crowded that Hitler had some difficulty getting
past everyone to reach the small conference room. Eismann noticed that
the others began talking again as soon as the Fuhrer passed; there was
not the respectful silence he had expected. As for Heinrici, he was
shocked by the Fuhrer's appearance. Hitler, he thought, "looked like a
man who had not more than twenty-four hours to live. He was a walking
corpse."

Slowly, as though in pain, Hitler scuffled to his place at the head of
the table. To Eismann's surprise, he seemed to crumple "like a sack
into the armchair, not uttering a word, and held that prostrate
condition, his arms propped up on the sides of the chair." Krebs and
Bormann moved in behind the Fuhrer to sit on a bench against the wall.
From there, Krebs informally presented Heinrici and

Eismann. Hitler feebly shook hands with them both. Heinrici noted
that he "could hardly feel the Fuhrer's hand, for there was no
returning pressure."

Because of the smallness of the room, not everyone could sit, and
Heinrici stood on the Fuhrer's left, Eismann on his right. Keitel,
Himmler and Doenitz took chairs on the opposite side of the table. The
remainder of the group stayed outside in the corridor; to Heinrici's
amazement, they continued to talk, although their voices were now
subdued. Krebs began the conference. "In order that the
commander"--he looked at Heinrici--"can get back to his army group as
soon as possible," he said, "I propose that he give his report
immediately." Hitler nodded, put on his green glasses, and gestured to
Heinrici to begin.

In his measured and precise manner, the General got straight to the
point. Looking directly at each man around the table, then at Hitler,
he said, "My Fuhrer, I must tell you that the enemy is preparing an
attack of unusual strength and unusual force. At this moment they are
preparing in these areas--from south of Schwedt to south of Frankfurt."
On Hitler's own map lying on the table, Heinrici slowly ran his finger
down along the threatened section of the Oder front, a line roughly
seventy-five miles long, touching briefly on the cities where he
expected the heaviest blows-- at Schwedt, in the Wriezen area, around
the Kustrin bridgehead, and south of Frankfurt. He entertained no
doubts, he said, that "the main attack will hit Busse's Ninth Army"
holding this central area; also, "it will strike the southern flank of
Von Manteuffel's Third Panzer Army around Schwedt."

Carefully Heinrici described how he had juggled his forces to build up
Busse's Ninth Army against the expected Russian onslaught. But because
of this need to strengthen Busse, Von Manteuffel had suffered. Part of
the Third Panzer Army front was now being held by inferior troops: aged
Home Guardsmen, a few Hungarian units and some divisions of Russian
defectors--whose dependability was questionable--under General Andrei
Vlasov. Then, said Heinrici flatly: "While the Ninth Army is now in
better

shape than it was, the Third Panzer Army is in no state to fight at
all. The potential of Von Manteuffel's troops, at least in the middle
and northern sectors of his front, is low. They have no artillery
whatsoever. Anti-aircraft guns cannot replace artillery and, in any
case, there is insufficient ammunition even for these."

Krebs hastily interrupted. "The Third Panzer Army," he said
emphatically, "will receive artillery shortly."

Heinrici inclined his head but made no comment-- he would believe Krebs
when he actually saw the guns. Continuing as though there had been no
interruption, he explained to Hitler that the Third Panzer owed its
present safe situation to one thing only--the flooded Oder. "I must
warn you," he said, "that we can accept the Third Panzer's weak
condition only as long as the Oder remains flooded." Once the waters
drop, Heinrici added, "the Russians will not fail to attack there,
too."

The men in the room listened attentively, if a little uneasily, to
Heinrici's presentation. Such directness at a Hitler conference was
unusual; most officers presented the gains and skipped the drawbacks.
Not since Guderian's departure had anyone spoken so frankly--and it was
clear that Heinrici was only beginning. Now he turned to the matter of
the garrison holding out at Frankfurt-on-Oder. Hitler had declared the
city a fortress, like the ill-fated Kustrin. Heinrici wanted Frankfurt
abandoned. He felt the troops there were being sacrificed on the altar
of Hitler's "fortress" mania. They could be saved and used to
advantage elsewhere. Guderian, who had shared the same opinion
regarding Kustrin, had been broken for his views about that city.
Heinrici might meet the same fate for his opposition now. But the
Vistula commander saw the men of Frankfurt as his responsibility;
whatever the consequences, he was not to be intimidated. He raised the
issue.

"In the Ninth Army's sector," he began, "one of the weakest parts of
the front is around Frankfurt. The garrison strength is very low, as
is their ammunition. I believe we should abandon the defense of
Frankfurt and bring the troops out."

Suddenly Hitler looked up and uttered his first words since the meeting
began. He said harshly, "I refuse to accept this."

Up to this point Hitler had sat not only silent but unmoving, as though
completely disinterested. Eismann had had the impression that he
wasn't even listening. Now, the Fuhrer suddenly "came awake and began
to take an intense interest." He began asking about the garrison's
strength, supplies and ammunition, and even, for some incomprehensible
reason, about the deployment of Frankfurt's artillery. Heinrici had
the answers. Step by step he built his case, taking reports and
statistics from Eismann and placing them on the table before the
Fuhrer. Hitler looked at the papers as each was handed over and seemed
impressed. Sensing his opportunity, Heinrici said quietly but
emphatically, "My Fuhrer, I honestly feel that giving up the defense of
Frankfurt would be a wise and sound move."

To the astonishment of most of those in the room, Hitler, turning to
the Chief of OKH, said, "Krebs, I believe the General's opinion on
Frankfurt is sound. Make out the necessary orders for the Army Group
and give them to me today."

In the stunned silence that followed, the babble of voices in the
corridor outside seemed unduly loud. Eismann sensed a sudden and new
respect for Heinrici. "Heinrici himself seemed completely unmoved," he
remembered, "but he gave me a look which I interpreted as "Well, we've
won."" The victory, however, was short-lived.

At that moment there was a loud commotion in the corridor and the vast
bulk of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering filled the doorway of the
little conference room. Pushing his way in, Goering heartily greeted
those present, pumped Hitler's hand vigorously and excused himself for
being late. He squeezed in next to Doenitz, and there was an
uncomfortable delay while Krebs brought him quickly up to date on
Heinrici's briefing. When Krebs had finished, Goering got up and,
placing both hands on the map table, leaned toward Hitler as though to
make some comment on the proceedings. Instead, smiling widely and with
obvious good humor, he said, "I must tell you a story about one of my
visits to the 9th Parachute Division ..."

He got no further. Hitler sat suddenly bolt upright in his chair

and then jerked himself to his feet. Words poured from his mouth in
such a torrent that those present could scarcely understand him.
"Before our eyes," recalled Eismann, "he went into a volcanic rage."

His fury had nothing to do with Goering. It was a diatribe against his
advisors and generals for deliberately refusing to understand him on
the tactical use of forts. "Again and again," he yelled, "forts have
fulfilled their purpose throughout the war. This was proven at Posen,
Breslau and Schneidemuhl. How many Russians were pinned down by them?
And how difficult they were to capture! Every one of those forts was
held to the very last man! History has proved me right and my order to
defend a fort to the last man is right!" Then, looking squarely at
Heinrici, he screamed, "That's why Frankfurt is to retain its status as
a fort!"

As suddenly as it had begun, the tirade ended. But Hitler, though
slack with exhaustion, could no longer sit still. He seemed to Eismann
to have lost all control of himself. "His entire body trembled," he
recalled. "His hands, in which he was holding some pencils, flew
wildly up and down, the pencils beating on the arms of the chair in the
process. He gave the impression of being mentally deranged. It was
all so unreal-- especially the thought that the fate of an entire
people lay in the hands of this human ruin."

Despite Hitler's choleric outburst, and despite his mercurial change of
mind about Frankfurt, Heinrici doggedly refused to give up. Quietly,
patiently--almost as though the outburst had not occurred--he went over
all the arguments again, underlining every conceivable reason for
abandoning Frankfurt. Doenitz, Himmler and Goering supported him. But
it was token support at best. The three most powerful generals in the
room remained silent. Keitel and Jodl said nothing--and just as
Heinrici had expected, Krebs offered no opinion one way or the other.
Hitler, apparently spent, only made tired gestures with his hands as he
dismissed each argument. Then, with renewed vitality he demanded to
know the credentials of the commander of the Frankfurt garrison,
Colonel Bieler. "He is a very reliable and experienced officer,"
replied Heinrici, "who has proven himself time and again in battle."

"Is he a Gneisenau?" snapped Hitler, referring to General Graf von
Gneisenau, who had successfully defended the fortress of Kolberg
against Napoleon in 1806.

Heinrici kept his composure. Evenly, he replied that "the battle for
Frankfurt will prove whether he is a Gneisenau or not." Hitler snapped
back, "All right, send Bieler to see me tomorrow so that I can judge
him. Then I shall decide what's to be done about Frankfurt." Heinrici
had lost the first battle for Frankfurt and, he believed, the second,
too, in all probability. Bieler was an unprepossessing man who wore
thick-lensed glasses. He was not likely to make much of an impression
on Hitler.

There now approached what Heinrici regarded as the crisis of the
meeting. As he began to speak again, he regretted that he had no skill
in diplomatic niceties. He knew only one way to express himself; now,
as always, he spoke the unvarnished truth. "My Fuhrer," he said, "I do
not believe that the forces on the Oder front will be able to resist
the extremely heavy Russian attacks which will be made upon them."

Hitler, still trembling, was silent. Heinrici described the lack of
combat fitness among the hodgepodge of troops--the very scrapings of
Germany's manpower--that made up his forces. Most units in the line
were untrained, inexperienced or so watered down by green
reinforcements as to be unreliable. The same was true of many of the
commanders. "For example," explained Heinrici, "the 9th Parachute
Division worries me. Its commanders and noncommissioned officers are
nearly all former administration officers, both untrained and
unaccustomed to lead fighting units."

Goering suddenly bristled. "My paratroopers!" he said in a loud
voice. "You are talking about my paratroopers! They are the best in
existence! I won't listen to such degrading remarks! I personally
guarantee their fighting capabilities!"

"Your view, Herr Reichsmarschall," remarked Heinrici icily, "is
somewhat biased. I'm not saying anything against your troops,

but experience has taught me that untrained units --especially those
led by green officers--are often so terribly shocked by their first
exposure to artillery bombardment that they are not much good for
anything thereafter."

Hitler spoke again, his voice now calm and rational. "Everything must
be done to train these formations," he declared. "There is certainly
time to do this before the battle."

Heinrici assured him that every effort would be made in the time still
remaining, but he added, "Training will not give them combat
experience, and that is what's lacking." Hitler dismissed this theory.
"The right commanders will provide the experience, and anyway the
Russians are fighting with substandard troops, too." Stalin, claimed
Hitler, is "nearing the end of his strength and about all he has left
are slave soldiers whose capabilities are extremely limited." Heinrici
found Hitler's misinformation incredible. Emphatically he disagreed.
"My Fuhrer," he said, "the Russian forces are both capable and
enormous."

The time to hammer home the truths of the desperate situation had, to
Heinrici's mind, arrived. "I must tell you," he said bluntly, "that
since the transfer of the armored units to Schorner, all my
troops--good and bad--must be used as front-line troops. There are no
reserves. None. Will they resist the heavy shelling preceding the
attack? Will they withstand the initial impact? For a time, perhaps,
yes. But, against the kind of attack we expect, every one of our
divisions will lose a battalion a day. This means that all along the
battle front we will lose divisions themselves at the rate of one per
week. We cannot sustain such losses. We have nothing to replace them
with." He paused, aware that all eyes were upon him. Then Heinrici
plunged ahead. "My Fuhrer, the fact is that, at best, we can hold out
for just a few days." He looked around the room. "Then," he said, "it
must all come to an end."

There was dead silence. Heinrici knew that his figures were
indisputable. The men gathered there were as familiar with casualty
statistics as he. The difference was that they would not have spoken
of them.

Goering was the first to break the paralyzing silence. "My

Fuhrer," he announced, "I will place immediately at your disposal
100,000 Luftwaffe men. They will report to the Oder front in a few
days."

Himmler glanced owlishly up at Goering, his arch rival, then at Hitler,
as if sampling the Fuhrer's reaction. Then he, too, made an
announcement. "My Fuhrer," he said, in his high-pitched voice, "the SS
has the honor to furnish 25,000 fighters for the Oder front."

Doenitz was not to be outdone. He had already sent a division of
marines to Heinrici; now he declared that he, too, would subscribe
further forces. "My Fuhrer," he announced, "12,000 sailors will be
released immediately from their ships and rushed to the Oder."

Heinrici stared at them. They were volunteering untrained, unequipped,
unqualified forces from their own private empires, spending lives
instead of money in a sort of ghastly auction. They were bidding
against one another, not to save Germany, but to impress Hitler. And
suddenly the auction fever became contagious. A chorus of voices
sounded as each man tried to suggest other forces that might be
available. Someone asked for the reserve army figures and Hitler
called out, "Buhle! Buhle!"

Outside in the corridor, where the crowd of waiting generals and
orderlies had turned from coffee to brandy, the cry was taken up.
"Buhle! Buhle! Where is Buhle?" There was a further commotion as
Major General Walter Buhle, Staff Chief in charge of supplies and
reinforcements, pushed through the crowd and entered the conference
room. Heinrici looked at him, and then away in disgust. Buhle had
been drinking and he smelled of it. * Nobody else seemed to notice or
care--including Hitler. The Fuhrer put a number of questions to
Buhle-- about reserves, supplies of rifles, small arms and ammunition.
Buhle answered thickly and, Heinrici thought, stupidly, but the answers
seemed to satisfy Hitler. According to what he made of Buhle's
replies, another 13,000 troops could be scraped up from the so-called
reserve army. * As Heinrici put it in an interview with the author,
"Buhle was waving a large brandy flag in front of him."

Dismissing Buhle, Hitler turned to Heinrici. "There," he said.

"You have 150,000 men--about twelve divisions. There are your
reserves." The auction was over. Hitler apparently considered the
Army Group's problems settled. Yet all he had done was to buy, at
most, twelve more days for the Third Reich--and probably at a
tremendous cost in human lives.

Heinrici struggled to preserve his control. "These men," he stated
flatly, "are not combat-trained. They have been in rear areas and in
offices or on ships, in maintenance work at Luftwaffe bases. ... They
have never fought at the front. They have never seen a Russian."
Goering cut in. "The forces I have presented are, for the most part,
combat fliers. They are the best of the best. And also there are the
troops who were at Monte Cassino--troops whose fame outshone all
others." Flushed and voluble, he hotly informed Heinrici, "These men
have the will, the courage, and certainly the experience."

Doenitz, too, was angry. "I tell you," he snapped at Heinrici, "the
crews of warships are every bit as good as your Wehrmacht troops." For
just a moment Heinrici himself flared. "Don't you think there's a big
difference between fighting at sea and fighting on land?" he asked
scathingly. "I tell you, all these men will be slaughtered at the
front! Slaughtered!"

If Heinrici's sudden outburst shocked Hitler, he did not show it. As
the others fumed, Hitler seemed to have grown icily calm. "All right,"
he said. "We will place these reserve troops in the second line about
eight kilometers behind the first. The front line will absorb the
shock of the Russian preparatory artillery fire. Meanwhile, the
reserves will grow accustomed to battle and if the Russians break
through, they will then fight. To throw back the Russians if they
break through, you will have to use the panzer divisions." And he
gazed at Heinrici as though awaiting agreement on what was really a
very simple matter.

Heinrici did not find it so. "You have taken away my most experienced
and combat-ready armored units," he said. "The Army Group has made a
request for their return." Enunciating each word clearly, Heinrici
said: "I must have them back."

There was a startled movement behind him and Hitler's adjutant,
Burgdorf, whispered angrily in Heinrici's ear. "Finish!" he ordered
Heinrici. "You must finish." Heinrici stood his ground. "My Fuhrer,"
he repeated, ignoring Burgdorf, "I must have those armored units
back."

Hitler waved his hand almost apologetically. "I am very sorry," he
replied, "but I had to take them from you. Your panzers are needed
much more by your southern neighbor. The main attack of the Russians
is clearly not aimed at Berlin. There is a stronger concentration of
enemy forces to the south of your front in Saxony." Hitler waved his
hand over the Russian positions on the Oder. "All of this," he
announced in an exhausted, bored voice, "is merely a support attack in
order to confuse. The main thrust of the enemy will not be directed at
Berlin--but there." Dramatically, he placed a finger on Prague.
"Consequently," the Fuhrer continued, "the Army Group Vistula should be
well able to withstand the secondary attacks."

Heinrici stared unbelievingly at Hitler. * Then he looked at Krebs;
certainly all this must seem equally irrational to the Chief of OKH.
Krebs spoke up. "Based on the information we have," he explained,
"there is nothing to indicate that the Fuhrer's assessment of the
situation is wrong." * Heinrici was later to say: "Hitler's statement
killed me completely. I could hardly argue against it, for I did not
know what the situation opposite Schorner's group was. I did know that
Hitler was completely wrong. All I could think of was, "How can anyone
delude themselves to this extent?"' I realized that they were all
living in a cloud-cuckoo-land (Wolkenkuckucksheim)."

Heinrici had done all he could. "My Fuhrer," he concluded, "I have
completed everything possible to prepare for the attack. I cannot
consider these 150,000 men as reserves. I also cannot do anything
about the terrible losses we must surely sustain. It is my duty to
make that absolutely clear. It is also my duty to tell you that I
cannot guarantee that the attack can be repelled."

Hitler came suddenly to life. Struggling to his feet, he pounded on
the table. "Faith!" he yelled. "Faith and strong belief in success
will make up for all these insufficiencies! Every commander must

be filled with confidence! You!" he pointed a finger at Heinrici.
"You must radiate this faith! You must instill this belief in your
troops!"

Heinrici stared unflinchingly at Hitler. "My Fuhrer," he said, "I must
repeat--it is my duty to repeat--that hope and faith alone will not win
this battle."

Behind him a voice whispered, "Finish! Finish!"

But Hitler was not even listening to Heinrici. "I tell you, Colonel
General," he yelled, "if you are conscious of the fact that this battle
should be won, it will be won! If your troops are given the same
belief--then you will achieve victory, and the greatest success of the
war!"

In the tense silence which followed, Heinrici, white-faced, gathered
his papers and handed them to Eismann. The two officers took their
leave of the still-silent room. Outside, in the corridor lounge, they
were told that an air raid was in progress. Numbly, both men stood
waiting, each in a kind of stupor, almost unaware of the continuing
chatter around them.

After a few minutes they were permitted to leave the bunker. They
climbed the stairs and went out into the garden. There, for the first
time since he left the conference room, Heinrici spoke. "It's all of
no use," he said, wearily. "You might just as well try to bring the
moon down to earth." He looked up at the heavy smoke palls over the
city and repeated softly to himself, "It's all for nothing. All for
nothing." * * The research for Hitler's conference comes principally
from Heinrici's diaries, supplemented by a long (186-page) memoir from
Colonel Eismann. Heinrici kept meticulous notes of everything that
happened, including the exact words Hitler used. There are some
differences between Heinrici's account and that of Eismann's but these
variations were resolved by a long series of interviews with Heinrici
over a three-month period in 1963.

The blue waters of the Chiem See, like a series of moving mirrors,
reflected the great stands of pine that blanketed the foothills all the
way up to the snow line. Leaning heavily on his stick, Walther

Wenck gazed across the lake and beyond to the vast panoramic tumble of
mountains around Berchtesgaden a few miles away. It was a scene of
extraordinary beauty and peace.

Everywhere the early flowers were out; the snow caps had begun to
disappear from the high ranges and, although it was only April 6, even
the air was redolent of spring. The peacefulness of his surroundings
had done much to speed the convalesence of Guderian's former Chief of
Staff, at 45, the Wehrmacht's youngest general.

Here, in the heart of the Bavarian Alps, the war seemed a thousand
miles away. Except for men recuperating from war wounds or, as in
Wenck's case, accidents, there was hardly a soldier to be seen in the
entire area.

Although still weak, Wenck was on the mend. Considering the
seriousness of the accident, he was lucky to be alive. He had
sustained head wounds and multiple fractures in a car wreck on February
13, and had been hospitalized for nearly six weeks. So many ribs had
been smashed that he was still encased in a surgical corset from chest
to thighs. The war seemed over for him, and in any case its outcome
was sadly clear. He did not believe the Third Reich could survive more
than a few weeks longer.

Although Germany's future seemed bleak, Wenck had much to be thankful
for: his wife, Irmgard, and their 15-year-old twins, son Helmuth and
daughter Sigried were safe, and staying with him in Bavaria. With
painful slowness Wenck walked back to the picturesque little inn where
they were living. As he entered the foyer, Irmgard met him with a
message. Wenck was to ring Berlin immediately.

Hitler's adjutant, General Burgdorf, came on the line. Wenck, Burgdorf
said, was to report to Hitler in Berlin the following day. "The
Fuhrer," said Burgdorf, "has named you commander of the Twelfth Army."
Wenck was both surprised and puzzled. "The Twelfth Army?" he asked.
"Which one is that?"

"You'll learn all about that when you get here," Burgdorf replied.

Wenck was still not satisfied. "I've never heard of a Twelfth

Army," he pressed. "The Twelfth Army," Burgdorf said irritably, as
though explaining everything, "is being organized now." Then he hung
up.

Hours later, in uniform once more, Wenck said good-bye to his
distressed wife. "Whatever you do," he warned her, "stay in Bavaria.
It's the safest place." Then, totally ignorant of his assignment, he
set out for Berlin. Within the next twenty-one days the name of this
virtually unknown general would become synonymous with hope in the mind
of almost every Berliner.

The staff was accustomed to seeing an occasional outburst of temper,
but nobody had ever seen Heinrici quite like this before. The
commander of the Army Group Vistula was in a towering rage. He had
just received a report from Bieler, the officer in charge of the
"fortress" at Frankfurt, on the young colonel's visit to Hitler. As
Heinrici had feared, the bespectacled, thin-faced officer had not
measured up to Hitler's idea of a Nordic hero. After a few
inconsequential remarks, during which Frankfurt was not even mentioned,
Hitler shook hands and dismissed the young officer. As soon as Bieler
had left the bunker, Hitler ordered a change in the Frankfurt command.
"Get someone else," the Fuhrer told Krebs, "Bieler is certainly no
Gneisenau!"

General Busse, whose Ninth Army included the Frankfurt garrison, had
heard from Krebs of the impending change and had promptly informed
Heinrici. Now, as Bieler stood beside Heinrici's desk, the blazing
Giftzwerg put in a call to Krebs. His staff watched silently. They
had learned to tell the measure of Heinrici's temper by the way he
drummed on the table top with his fingers. Now his right hand was
beating out a violent tattoo. Krebs came on the phone. "Krebs,"
barked Heinrici, "Colonel Bieler is here in my office. I want you to
listen carefully. Bieler is to be reinstated as commander of the
Frankfurt garrison. I have told this to Burgdorf and now I'm telling
you. I refuse to accept any other officer.

Do you understand that?" He did not wait for an answer. "Something
else. Where is Bieler's Iron Cross? He has been waiting for that
decoration for months. Now he is to get it. Do you understand that?"
Still Heinrici did not pause. "And now listen to me, Krebs," he said.
"If Bieler does not get his Iron Cross, if Bieler is not reinstated as
commander of Frankfurt, I shall lay down my command! Do you understand
that?" Heinrici, still drumming furiously, pressed on. "I expect your
confirmation on this matter today! Is that clear?" And he slammed
down the phone. Krebs had not uttered a word.

On the afternoon of April 7, Colonel Eismann later recalled, "the Army
Group received two teletype messages from the Fuhrer's headquarters. In
the first, Bieler was confirmed as commander of Frankfurt; in the
second the Iron Cross was bestowed upon him."

General Alfred Jodl, Hitler's Chief of Operations, sat in his Dahlem
office awaiting the arrival of General Wenck. The new Twelfth Army
commander had just left Hitler and now it was Jodl's job to brief Wenck
on the situation on the western front. On Jodl's desk was a sheaf of
reports from Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Commander-in-Chief, West.
They painted a picture that was growing darker almost hourly.
Everywhere the Anglo-Americans were breaking through.

In theory, the Twelfth Army was to be the western shield before Berlin,
holding about 125 miles of the lower Elbe and Mulde rivers to prevent
an Anglo-American drive on the city. Wenck, Hitler had decided, would
command an army of ten divisions, composed of panzer training corps
officers, Home Guardsmen, cadet forces, various splinter groups, and
the remnants of the shattered Eleventh Army in the Harz Mountains. Even
if such a force could be organized in time, Jodl was skeptical that it
could have much, if any, effect. And on the Elbe it might never get
into action at all--although he had no intention of telling Wenck this.
In his office safe, Jodl still held the captured Eclipse plan--the
document detailing the moves the Anglo-Americans would make in the
event of a German surrender or collapse--and the attached maps showing
the agreed zones each Ally would occupy at war's end. Jodl remained
convinced that the Americans and British would halt on the Elbe
--roughly the dividing line between the Anglo-American and Russian
post-hostility zones of occupation. It seemed perfectly clear to him
that Eisenhower was going to leave Berlin to the Russians. * * *

"Naturally," ran the last paragraph of General Eisenhower's latest
cable to Churchill, "if at any moment "Eclipse" conditions [a German
collapse or surrender] should come about anywhere along the front we
would rush forward ... and Berlin would be included in our important
targets." It was as much of a commitment as the Supreme Commander was
willing to make. It did not satisfy the British, and their Chiefs of
Staff continued to press for a clear-cut decision. They messaged
Washington urging a meeting to discuss Eisenhower's strategy. Stalin's
cable had roused their suspicions. While the Generalissimo had stated
that he planned to begin his offensive in the middle of May, said the
British Chiefs, he had not indicated when he intended to launch his
"secondary forces" in the direction of Berlin. Thus it still seemed to
them that Berlin should be captured as soon as possible. Further, they
believed it would be "appropriate for the Combined Chiefs of Staff to
give Eisenhower guidance on the matter."

The reply from General Marshall firmly and decisively ended the
discussion. "Such psychological and political advantages as would
result from the possible capture of Berlin ahead of the Russians," he
said, "should not override the imperative military consideration, which
in our opinion is the destruction and dismembering of the German armed
forces."

Marshall did not entirely close the door on the possibility of taking
Berlin for, "as a matter of fact, it is within the center of the impact
of the main thrust." But there was no time for the Combined Chiefs of
Staff to give the problem any lengthy consideration. The speed of the
Allied advance into Germany was now so fast, he said, that it
outstripped the possibility of "review of operational matters by this
or any other form of committee action." And Marshall ended with an
unequivocal endorsement of the Supreme Commander: "Only Eisenhower is
in a position to know how to fight his battle and to exploit to the
full the changing situation."

The harassed Eisenhower, for his part, had declared himself willing to
change his plans but only if ordered to do so. On April 7 he wired
Marshall, "At any time that we can seize Berlin at little cost we
should, of course, do so." But because the Russians were so close to
the capital, he regarded it "as militarily unsound at this stage of the
proceedings to make Berlin a major objective." He was the first, said
Eisenhower, "to admit that war is waged in pursuance of political aims,
and if the Combined Chiefs of Staff should decide that the Allied
effort to take Berlin outweighs purely military considerations in this
theater, I would cheerfully re-adjust my plans and thinking so as to
carry out such an operation." He stressed his belief, however, that
"the capture of Berlin should be left as something that we should do if
feasible and practicable as we proceed on the general plan of (a)
dividing the German forces ... (but) anchoring our left firmly in the
Lubeck area, and (can) attempting to disrupt any German effort to
establish a fortress in the southern mountains."

He gave almost the same answer to Montgomery the following day. Monty
had picked up the cudgels where Churchill and the British Chiefs left
off. He asked Eisenhower for ten extra divisions to attack toward
Lubeck and Berlin. Eisenhower turned him down. "As regards Berlin,"
declared the Supreme Commander, "I am quite ready to admit that it has
political and psychological significance, but of far greater importance
will be the location of the

remaining German forces in relation to Berlin. It is on them that I am
going to concentrate my attention. Naturally if I can get a chance to
take Berlin cheaply, I shall do so."

At this point Churchill decided to end the controversy before there was
further deterioration of the Allied relationship. He informed
President Roosevelt that he considered the affair closed. "To prove my
sincerity," he cabled the President, "I will use one of my very few
Latin quotations: Amantium irae amoris integratio est." Translated, it
meant, Lovers' quarrels are a renewal of love.

But while the controversy over SCAF 252 and the Anglo-American
objectives had been taking place behind the scenes, the men of the
Anglo-American forces had been driving deeper by the hour into Germany.
Nobody had told them that Berlin was no longer a major military
objective.

The race was on. Never in the history of warfare had so many men moved
so fast. The speed of the Anglo-American offensive was contagious, and
all along the front the drive was taking on the proportions of a giant
contest. As the armies concentrated on gaining the banks of the Elbe,
to secure the bridgeheads for the last victorious dash that would end
the war, every division along the north and center of the western front
was determined to reach the river first. Beyond, Berlin, as always,
was the final goal.

In the British zone, the 7th Armored Division--the famed Desert Rats--
had hardly paused since leaving the Rhine. Once across, Major General
Louis Lyne, the 7th's commander, had emphasized that "for all ranks,
your eyes should now be firmly fixed on the

river Elbe. Once we get started I do not propose to stop by day or by
night till we get there ... Good hunting on the next lap." Now, even
against heavy opposition, the Desert Rats were averaging upward of
twenty miles a day.

Squadron Sergeant Major Charles Hennell thought it "right and proper
for the 7th to take the capital as a reward for our long and arduous
efforts in the war from the Western Desert onwards." Hennell had been
with the Desert Rats since El Alamein. Sergeant Major Eric Cole had an
even more compelling reason to reach Berlin. A veteran of Dunkirk, he
had been driven into the sea by the Germans in 1940. Now Cole was
grimly preparing to even the score. He constantly badgered the armored
crews to get their mechanized equipment in tiptop running condition.
Cole planned to drive the Germans in front of the 7th Armored tanks all
the way back to Berlin.

The men of the British 6th Airborne Division had led their countrymen
into Normandy on D-Day; they were determined to lead them on to the
end. Sergeant Hugh McWhinnie had heard from German prisoners that the
moment the British crossed the Elbe, the enemy would "open the door and
let them through to Berlin." He doubted it. The 6th was used to
fighting for every mile. Captain Wilfred Davison of the 13th Parachute
Battalion was certain that there would be a race for the city but, like
most of the division, he had no doubt that "the 6th was in the running
to lead the way." But at division headquarters, Captain John L.
Shearer was becoming a little anxious. He had heard a rumor that
"Berlin was being left to the Americans."

U.s. Airborne divisions had heard the same rumor. The trouble was that
it made no mention of paratroopers. At General James Gavin's 82nd
Airborne staging area, where chutists had been training for days, it
was now all too clear that a fighting drop on Berlin was out.
Apparently an airborne operation would result only if a sudden enemy
collapse put the Eclipse plan into action, making it necessary for the
troopers to go to Berlin on a policing mission. But this seemed
remote. SHAEF had already instructed

General Lewis Brereton's First Airborne Army that it would soon be
making relief drops on Allied POW camps, under the code name "Operation
Jubilant." Much as they wanted POW'S freed, the prospect of a rescue
operation instead of a fighting assignment filled the men of the
airborne army with something less than jubilance.

Similar frustration characterized other airborne groups. General
Maxwell Taylor's "Screaming Eagles" of the 101/ Airborne Division were
once more fighting as foot soldiers, this time in the Ruhr. One
regiment of Gavin's 82nd had been ordered there, too. The 82nd had
also been alerted to help Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group in a
later operation across the Elbe.

It was Private Arthur "Dutch" Schultz of the 505th Parachute Regiment
who perhaps best summed up the feelings of the men of the airborne
divisions. Climbing aboard a truck headed for the Ruhr, he cynically
told his pal, Private Joe Tallett, "S. I lead 'em into Normandy, yes?
Into Holland, yes? Look at me, kid. I'm a blue-blooded American and
the country's got only one of me. They want to get their money's
worth. They ain't gonna waste me on Berlin. Hell, no! They're saving
me up! They're gonna drop me on Tokyo!"

But if the airborne divisions were dispirited, the land armies were
brimming over with anticipation.

In the center, U.s. forces were going all out and their strength was
enormous. With the return of Simpson's massive Ninth Army from
Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group, Bradley had become the first
general in American history to command four field armies. Besides the
Ninth, his forces included the First, Third and Fifteenth--close to a
million men.

On April 2, just nine days after crossing the Rhine, his troops had
finished springing the trap encircling the Ruhr. Caught in the
4,000-square-mile pocket was Field Marshal Walter Model's Army Group B,
numbering no fewer than 325,000 men. With Model contained, the western
front was wide open and Bradley swept boldly on, leaving part of the
Ninth and First armies to

mop up the pocket. Now his forces were in full cry. With the British
in the north and General Devers' U.s. Sixth Army Group in the south
holding the flanks, Bradley was driving furiously through Germany's
center, toward Leipzig and Dresden. In the north-to-south line-up of
U.s. armies the Ninth was the shortest distance from the Elbe, and it
looked to commanders as if Bradley had given Simpson the go-ahead for
the dash that, by its very momentum, should take U.s. forces to
Berlin.

The day the encirclement of the Ruhr was completed, Eisenhower issued
orders to his forces. Bradley's group was to "mop up the ... Ruhr ...
launch a thrust with its main axis: Kassel-Leipzig ... seize any
opportunity to capture a bridgehead over the River Elbe and be prepared
to conduct operations beyond the Elbe." On April 4, the day the Ninth
was returned to him, Bradley himself gave new commands to his armies.
In the Twelfth Army Group's "Letter of Instructions, No. 20," the
Ninth was directed, first, to drive for a line roughly south of Hanover
with the army center in the approximate area of the town of
Hildesheim--about seventy miles from the Elbe. Then, "on order," the
second phase would begin. It was this vital paragraph that spelled out
the role of the Ninth Army and, to its commander, left no doubt as to
the destination of his forces. It read: "Phase 2. Advance on order to
the east ... exploit any opportunity for seizing a bridgehead over the
Elbe and be prepared to continue the advance on BERLIN or to the
northeast." Phase 1--the drive toward Hildesheim--seemed to be simply
a directional order. No one expected to be held there. But Phase 2
was the starting flag that every division in the Ninth Army had been
awaiting, none more eagerly than the commander, Lieutenant General
William "Big Simp" Simpson. * * Simpson had every reason to believe he
had been given the go-ahead. In the same Twelfth Army Group order, the
U.s. First and Third armies were instructed in the second phase to
seize bridgeheads on the Elbe and be prepared to drive east--in the
case of Patton's Third, the expression used was "east or southeast."
But only in Ninth Army's order were the words "on Berlin" included.

"My people were keyed up," General Simpson was to recall later. "We'd
been the first to the Rhine and now we were going

to be the first to Berlin. All along we thought of just one
thing--capturing Berlin, going through and meeting the Russians on the
other side." From the time the Letter of Instructions came down from
the Army Group, Simpson had not wasted a minute. He expected to reach
the Hildesheim phase line in a matter of days. After that, Simpson
told his staff officers, he planned "to get an armored and an infantry
division set up on the autobahn running just above Magdeburg on the
Elbe to Potsdam, where we'll be ready to close in on Berlin." Then
Simpson intended to commit the rest of the Ninth "as fast as we can ...
if we get the bridgehead and they turn us loose." Jubilantly he told
his staff, "Damn, I want to get to Berlin and all you people, right
down to the last private, I think, want it, too."

Major General Isaac D. White, the determined, wiry commander of the 2nd
Armored "Hell on Wheels" Division, was a good step ahead of Simpson:
his plan to take Berlin had been ready even before his men crossed the
Rhine. White's Operations Chief, Colonel Briard P. Johnson, had
plotted the drive on the capital weeks before. So thorough was his
plan that detailed orders and map overlays were ready by March 25.

The 2nd's assault plan was somewhat similar to Simpson's own concept.
It, too, followed the autobahn from Magdeburg on the Elbe. Proposed
day-by-day advances were drawn on the map overlays and each stage was
given a code name. The last dash of about sixty miles from Magdeburg
carried phase lines with the names: "Silver," "Silk," "Satin," "Daisy,"
"Pansy," "Jug," and finally, imposed on a huge blue swastika covering
Berlin, the code word "Goal." At the rate the 2nd was moving, against
only spotty opposition, often achieving upward of thirty-five miles a
day, White was confident of grabbing the capital. If his men could
secure a bridgehead at Magdeburg, now only eighty miles away, White
expected to dash into Berlin within forty-eight hours.

Now, along the Ninth Army's fifty-odd miles of front, White's 2nd
Armored was spearheading the drive. The division was one of the
largest formations on the western front. With its tanks,
self-propelled guns, armored cars, bulldozers, trucks, jeeps and
artillery, it formed a stream more than seventy-two miles long. To
create maximum fighting effectiveness, the force had been broken into
three armored units--Combat Commands A, B and R, the latter held in
reserve. Even so, the division, moving in tandem and averaging about
two miles an hour, took nearly twelve hours to pass a given point.
This ponderous armored force was running ahead of every other unit of
the Ninth Army --with one notable exception.

On its right flank, tenaciously pacing the 2nd mile for mile and
fighting all the way, was a wildly assorted collection of vehicles
crammed with troops. From the air it bore no resemblance to either an
armored or an infantry division. In fact, but for a number of U.s.
Army trucks interspersed among its columns, it might easily have been
mistaken for a German convoy. Major General Robert C. Macon's highly
individualistic 83rd Infantry Division, the "Rag-Tag Circus," was going
hell-for-leather toward the Elbe in its captured booty. Every enemy
unit or town that surrendered or was captured subscribed its quota of
rolling stock for the division, usually at gunpoint. Every newly
acquired vehicle got a quick coat of olive-green paint and a U.s. star
slapped on its side; then it joined the 83rd. The men of the Rag-Tag
Circus had even managed to liberate a German airplane and, harder, had
found someone to fly it, and it was spreading consternation all over
the front. First Sergeant William G. Presnell of the 30th Infantry
Division, who had fought all the way from Omaha Beach, knew the
silhouette of every Luftwaffe fighter. So when he saw what was
obviously a German plane heading in his direction, he yelled "ME-109!"
and dived for cover. Puzzled when there was no burst of machine gun
fire, he raised his head and stared as the fighter sped away. The
plane was painted a blotchy olive-green. On the undersides of the
wings were the words "83rd Inf. Div."

If their compatriots were confused by the 83rd's vehicles, the Germans
were even more so. As the division rushed pell mell toward the Elbe,
Major Haley Kohler heard the insistent blowing of

a car horn. "This Mercedes came up behind us," he recalled, "and then
began passing everything on the road." Captain John J. Devenney saw
it, too. "The car weaved in and out of our column, going in our
direction," he remembered. As it passed, Devenney was astounded to see
that it was a chauffeur-driven German staff car with a full load of
officers. A burst of machine gun fire stopped the vehicle, and the
bewildered Germans were taken prisoner in the middle of what they had
supposed to be one of their own columns. The Mercedes, in top
condition, received the usual hurried paint job and was immediately put
to use.

General Macon was determined that the 83rd would be the first infantry
division to cross the Elbe and advance to Berlin. The rivalry between
the 83rd and the 2nd Armored was now so intense that when leading units
of the two divisions reached the Weser River at the same time on April
5 "there was considerable argument," as Macon put it, "as to who was to
cross the river first." Eventually a compromise was reached: the
divisions crossed together, by sandwiching their units. Back at 83rd
headquarters rumor had it that General White was furious with the
Rag-Tag Circus. "No damned infantry division," the 2nd's commander was
quoted as saying, "is going to beat my outfit to the Elbe."

The 2nd was running into other competition, too. The 5th Armored
"Victory Division" was rolling almost as fast as White's columns, and
its men had plans of their own for taking the capital. "The only big
question at the time was who was going to get Berlin first," remembers
Colonel Gilbert Farrand, the 5th's Chief of Staff. "We planned to
cross the Elbe at Tangermunde, Sandau, Arneburg and Werben. We heard
that the Russians were ready to go, so we made every possible
preparation." The division was on the move so continuously that, as
Farrand remembers it, no one slept more than four or five hours a night
--and often no one slept at all. Because of the steadiness of the
advance, Farrand's own half-track was now the division's headquarters.
The 5th's progress was greatly helped by the spottiness of the
opposition. "The advance was really nothing more," Farrand recalls,
"than cracking

rear guard actions." But these could be deadly, as Farrand discovered
when a shell plowed through his half-track.

Among the infantry divisions, the 84th, 30th and 102nd had their eyes
on Berlin, too. Everywhere in the Ninth, tired and dirty men, eating
on the move, were hoping to be in on the kill. The very momentum of
the drive was exhilarating. Still, despite the absence of a general
pattern of German defense, there was fighting--and at times it was
heavy.

In some areas diehards put up fierce resistance before surrendering.
Lieutenant Colonel Roland Kolb of the 84th "Railsplitters" Division
noticed that the worst fighting came from scattered SS units that hid
in the woods and harassed the advancing troops. The armored columns
usually bypassed these fanatic remnants and left them to the infantry
to mop up. Desperate encounters often took place in small towns. At
one point in the advance, Kolb was shocked to find children of twelve
and under manning artillery pieces. "Rather than surrender," he
remembers, "the boys fought until killed."

Other men also experienced moments of horror. Near the wooded ridges
of the Teutoburger Wald, Major James F. Hollingsworth, leading the 2nd
Armored's advance guard, found himself suddenly surrounded by German
tanks. His column had run directly into a panzer training ground.
Luckily for Hollingsworth, the tanks were relics from which the engines
had been long since removed. But their guns were in place for use in
training recruits, and the Germans quickly opened fire. Staff Sergeant
Clyde W. Cooley, a veteran of North Africa and the gunner on
Hollingsworth's tank, swung into action. Revolving his turret, he
knocked out a German tank at 1,500 yards. Turning again, he blasted
another 75 yards away. "All hell broke loose as everyone opened up,"
recalls Hollingsworth. Then just as the fight ended, a German truck
filled with soldiers came barreling down the road toward the 2nd
Armored's column. Hollingsworth hastily ordered his men to wait until
the truck was in range. At 75 yards, he gave the order to open fire.
The truck, riddled by .50 caliber machine gun bullets,

blazed, turned over and threw its uniformed occupants out onto the
road. Most were dead by the time they hit the ground, but a few were
still alive and screaming horribly. It was only when he came up to
inspect the torn and riddled bodies that Hollingsworth discovered the
soldiers were uniformed German women--the equivalent of U.s. WAC'S.

The opposition was completely unpredictable. Many areas capitulated
without firing a shot. In some towns and cities burgomasters
surrendered while the withdrawing German troops were still moving
through the populated areas, often no more than a block away from
American tanks and infantry. At Detmold, where one of Germany's
largest armament works was located, a civilian met the lead tank of
Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler G. Merriam's 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion,
scouting ahead of the 2nd Armored. The German representative announced
that the superintendent of the factory wished to surrender. "Shells
were falling all about us as we drove in," Merriam recalls. "Lined up
outside the factory were the superintendent, the factory manager and
the workers. The superintendent made a little speech of surrender and
then presented me with a beautifully chromed Mauser pistol." A few
blocks farther on, Merriam took the surrender of an entire German
paymaster company-- complete with vast quantities of bank notes. But a
few hours later, U.s. infantry coming up behind Merriam fought a bitter
and prolonged battle to clean out the same town. Detmold, as it turned
out, was in the center of an SS training area.

Similar incidents occurred everywhere. In some small cities the
silence of surrender in one area would be suddenly shattered by the din
of fierce fighting a few blocks away. On the main street of one such
city, General Macon, the 83rd's commander, remembers "walking quite
safely through the front entrance of my headquarters, but when I tried
to leave by the back door, I almost had to fight my way out." On the
outskirts of one town, troops of the 30th Infantry were met by German
soldiers with white handkerchiefs tied to their rifles. As the Germans
tried to surrender to the Americans, they were machine gunned in the
back by SS stragglers who still fought on.

Some men developed new techniques for securing surrenders. Captain
Francis Schommer of the 83rd Division, who spoke fluent German, several
times conducted capitulations by telephone--bolstered by a Colt .45.
Schommer, his pistol pointed at a newly captured burgomaster, would
inform the mayor that "it might be wise for you to telephone the
burgomaster of the next town and inform him that, if he wants the place
to remain standing, he better surrender it right now. Tell him to get
the people to hang sheets from their windows--or else." The frightened
burgomaster "would usually pour it on, telling his neighbor that the
Americans in his town had hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces, and
thousands upon thousands of troops. The ruse worked again and
again."

As the great drive gathered momentum, the roads became jammed with
motorized troops and armored columns pushing east past thousands of
German prisoners going west. There was not even time to take charge of
the prisoners. Exhausted and unshaven, Wehrmacht officers and privates
trudged back toward the Rhine unaccompanied. Some of them still
carried weapons. Chaplain Ben L. Rose of the 113th Mechanized Cavalry
Group recalls the hopeless look of two officers who, in full dress
uniform, walked alongside his column "trying to get someone to notice
them long enough to surrender their side arms." But the troopers,
intent on piling up mileage, simply thumbed them west.

Cities and towns fell to the onrushing forces one after another. Few
men had heard their names before and, in any case, no one stayed long
enough to remember them. Places like Minden, Buckeburg, Tundern and
Stadthagen were merely checkpoints on the way to the Elbe. But the
troops of the 30th Division encountered a familiar name--so familiar
that most men remember being surprised that it actually existed. The
town was Hamelin, of Pied Piper fame. Suicidal opposition from a few
SS strongpoints bypassed earlier by the 2nd Armored, and heavy
retaliatory shelling by the 30th, reduced the storybook city of
gingerbread houses and

cobblestoned streets to a burned and blasted rubble by April 5. "This
time," said Colonel Walter M. Johnson of the 117th Regiment, "we got
the rats out with a slightly different kind of flute."

By April 8, the 84th Division had reached the outskirts of 15th-century
Hanover. On the long drive from the Rhine, Hanover, with a population
of 400,000, was the largest city to fall to any division of the Ninth
Army. Major General Alexander R. Bolling, commander of the 84th, had
expected to bypass the city, but instructions came down to capture it
instead. Bolling was less than happy. To commit his troops at Hanover
would lose him precious time in his race against other infantry
divisions for the Elbe. The battle was fierce; yet within forty-eight
hours resistance had been reduced to small isolated actions. Bolling,
proud of the 84th's prowess, yet chafing to get on with the advance,
was both surprised and pleased to be visited in Hanover by the Supreme
Commander, his Chief of Staff, General Smith, and the Ninth Army's
General Simpson. At the end of their formal meeting, Bolling
remembered, "Ike said to me, "Alex, where are you going next?"' I
replied, "General, we're going to push on ahead, we have a clear go to
Berlin and nothing can stop us.""

Eisenhower, according to Bolling, "put his hand on my arm and said,
"Alex, keep going. I wish you all the luck in the world and don't let
anybody stop you."" When Eisenhower left Hanover, Bolling believed that
he had a "clear verbal acknowledgement from the Supreme Commander that
the 84th was going to Berlin."

On that same Sunday, April 8, the 2nd Armored Division, slightly ahead
of the 83rd for the moment, pulled up at the first phase line,
Hildesheim. Now the 2nd must await orders for the opening of the
second stage of the attack. General White was glad of the pause. With
the division traveling at such speed, maintenance had become a problem
and White needed at least forty-eight hours for repairs. The temporary
halt, he understood, would also enable other units to come abreast. But
the majority of soldiers, after the frenzied speed of the last few
days, wondered why they were being held. Men chafed at the delay; in
the past, such

stand-downs had given the enemy a chance to reorganize and consolidate.
With the end so close no one wanted to push his luck. First Sergeant
George Petcoff, a Normandy veteran, was worried about "the fight for
Berlin, because I was beginning to think my number was up." Chaplain
Rose remembers that one tanker was so superstitious about the future
that he climbed out of his tank, looked at the words "Fearless Joe"
painted on the front and painstakingly proceeded to scratch out the
word "Fearless." "From now on," he announced, "it's just plain Joe!"

If the men were anxious and fearful of delay, their
commanders--including General White's immediate superiors at 19th Corps
headquarters--were even more concerned. Major General Raymond S.
McLain, the Corps Commander, hoped nothing would upset his plans.
Despite the speed, he was not worried about supplies. The strength of
his corps, totaling well over 120,000 men, was now greater than the
Union Army's at Gettysburg, and he had 1,000 armored vehicles. With
all this power, McLain, as he later expressed it, had "absolutely no
doubt that six days after crossing the Elbe" the entire 19th Corps
would be in Berlin.

McLain had heard from Simpson's headquarters that the pause was only
temporary--and that the reason for the delay was both tactical and
political. As it turned out, his information was right on both counts.
Ahead lay the future frontier of the Soviet zone of occupation, and the
halt gave SHAEF time to consider the situation. No geographic "stop
line" had yet been decided upon for either the Anglo-American or the
Russian forces. Thus, the danger of head-on collision still existed.
In the absence of any concentrated German opposition, higher
headquarters had no intention of stopping the attack, yet one serious
consideration had to be taken into account: once the Soviet occupation
line was crossed, every mile captured would, sooner or later, have to
be handed back to the Russians.

At the closest point of advance, Berlin was now only 125 miles away,
and all along the Ninth Army front, men waited to go, oblivious of the
delicate problem that faced the High Command.

They had all sorts of reasons for being eager. P.f.c. Carroll Stewart
was looking forward to his first glimpse of the German capital because
he had heard that, of all the cities in Europe, Berlin could not be
matched for its scenic views.

* * *

RAF Warrant Officer James "Dixie" Deans stamped to attention before the
desk and smartly saluted the German colonel. Hermann Ostmann,
commandant of Stalag 357, the Allied prisoner-of-war camp near
Fallingbostel, north of Hanover, returned the salute with equal
briskness. It was just one of a series of military formalities that
Prisoner-of-War Deans and Captor Ostmann played out whenever they met.
Each, as always, was a model of correctness.

Between the two men there existed a grudging and wary respect. Deans
regarded the commandant--a middle-aged World War I officer whose
palsied arm disqualified him from more active service--as a fair-minded
warden, doing a job he disliked. For his part, Ostmann knew that the
29-year-old Deans, elected by the prisoners as their spokesman, was an
obstinate, determined bargainer who could, and often did, make
Ostmann's life miserable. The Colonel was always aware that the real
control of Stalag 357 lay in the slender Deans's firm handling of the
prisoners, and in their unswerving loyalty to him.

Deans was a legend. A navigator who had been shot down over Berlin in
1940, he had been in POW camps ever since. In each, he had learned
something more about how to obtain maximum privileges for himself and
his fellow inmates. He had also learned much about dealing with prison
commandants. According to Deans, the procedure was basic: "You simply
give the blighters hell all the time."

Now, Deans stared down at the aging colonel, waiting to learn the
reason for his latest summons to the commandant's office.

"I have here some orders," said Ostmann, holding up some forms.

"And I am afraid that we must move you and your men."

Deans was immediately on guard. "Where to, Colonel?" he asked.

"Northeast of here," said Ostmann. "Exactly where I do not know, but
I'll get instructions along the way." Then he added, "Of course you
understand we are doing this for your own protection." He paused and
smiled weakly. "Your armies are getting a little close."

Deans had been aware of that for days. "Recreational" activities in
the camp had resulted in the production of two highly functional and
secret radios. One lay hidden in an old-fashioned, constantly used
gramophone. The other, a tiny battery-operated receiver, made the
rounds of Stalag 357 broadcasting the latest news from its owner's mess
kit. From these precious sources, Deans knew that Eisenhower's armies
were over the Rhine and fighting in the Ruhr. The extent of the
Anglo-American advance was still unknown to the prisoners--but the
troops must be near if the Germans were moving the camp.

"How will the transfer be made, Colonel?" Deans asked, knowing full
well that the Germans almost always moved POW'S one way only--on
foot.

"They'll march in columns," said Ostmann. Then, with one of his
courteous gestures, he offered Deans a special privilege. "You can
drive with me if you like." With equal courtesy, Deans declined.

"How about the sick?" he asked. "There are many men here who can
hardly walk."

"They'll be left behind with whatever help we can give them. And some
of your men can stay with them, too."

Now Deans wanted to know how soon the prisoners were leaving. There
were times when Ostmann suspected that Deans knew almost as much of the
war situation as the commandant himself--but there was one thing he was
certain Deans could not have heard. According to headquarters
information, the British were advancing in the general direction of
Fallingbostel and were now only about fifty to sixty miles away, while
the Americans, by all

reports, were already in Hanover fifty miles to the south.

"You go immediately," he informed Deans. "Those are my orders."

As he left the commandant's office, Deans knew there was little he
could do to prepare the men for the march. Food was short and almost
all the prisoners were weak and emaciated from malnutrition. A
prolonged, arduous journey was almost certain to finish off many of
them. But as he returned to barracks to pass the word of the march
around camp, he made himself a solemn vow: using every ruse he could
think of, from slow-ups to sit-downs to minor mutinies, Dixie Deans
somehow intended to reach the Allied lines with all twelve thousand men
of Stalag 357.

The whereabouts of the headquarters of the newly organized Twelfth Army
had so far eluded the commanding officer, General Walther Wenck. The
command post was supposed to be in the area north of the Harz
Mountains, about seventy to eighty miles from Berlin, but Wenck had
been driving about for hours. The roads were black with refugees and
vehicles heading in both directions. Some refugees were milling east,
away from the advancing Americans; others, fearful of the Russians,
were hurrying to the west. Convoys carrying soldiers seemed equally
aimless. Dorn, Wenck's driver, pressed down the horn again and again
as he edged the car along. As they drove deeper, heading south by
west, conditions bordered on the chaotic. Wenck was becoming ever more
uneasy and restless. What, he wondered, would he find when
headquarters was finally reached?

Wenck was taking a roundabout way to reach his command post. He had
decided to make a wide swing which would take him first to the city of
Weimar, lying southwest of Leipzig, before he headed up to headquarters
somewhere near Bad Blankenburg. Though the diversion was adding almost
a hundred miles to his journey, Wenck had a reason for the detour. In
a Weimar bank

were his life savings, some ten thousand marks, and he intended to
withdraw the entire sum. But as his car approached the city, the roads
became strangely empty and the crack of gunfire sounded in the
distance. A few kilometers further, the car was halted and Wehrmacht
military police informed the General that tanks of Patton's U.s. Third
Army were already on the outskirts. Wenck felt both shocked and
deceived. The situation was much worse than he had been told at
Hitler's headquarters. He could not believe that the Allies had
advanced so fast--or that so much of Germany was already overrun. It
was also hard to concede that, in all probability, his ten thousand
marks were gone, too. * * The persistent Wenck tried to lay claim to
his money after the war but by then Weimar was in the Soviet zone and
under the administration of Ulbricht's East German Government.
Curiously, the bank continued to send Wenck monthly statements up to
July 4, 1947. He acknowledged the statements repeatedly, asking that
the money be transferred to his own bank in West Germany. No action
was taken until October 23, 1954, when the Weimar bank informed Wenck
that he must take up the matter with the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
District of Weimar. "We have annulled your very old account," the
bank's letter said, "along with the interest accrued. ..."

From local headquarters Wehrmacht officers told Wenck that the entire
Harz region was endangered, troops were retreating and areas were being
outflanked. Obviously, his headquarters had already pulled out of the
area. Wenck headed back toward Dessau, where some of his army was
supposedly gathering. Near Rosslau, about eight miles north of Dessau,
he discovered his headquarters in a former Wehrmacht engineering
school. There, too, Wenck discovered the truth about the Twelfth
Army.

Its front ran along the Elbe and its tributary, the Mulde, for a
distance of about 125 miles--roughly from Wittenberge on the Elbe to
the north, then south to a point just below and east of Leipzig on the
Mulde. On the northern flank, facing the British, were the forces of
Field Marshal Ernst Busch, Commander-in-Chief, North West. On the
south were the badly mauled units of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,
Commander-in-Chief, West. Wenck had little information about the
strength of these forces. In his section, between the two, the Twelfth
Army existed mainly on paper. Other than troops holding scattered
positions along the

Elbe he had little but the scant remains of ghost divisions. Other
groups, he found, were not yet operational, and there were even shadow
units still to be formed. The bulk of his artillery was immobile, set
in fixed positions around such towns as Magdeburg, Wittenberge, and
near bridge or crossing sites along the Elbe. There were some
self-propelled guns, a group of armored cars, and some forty small
jeeplike Volkswagen troop carriers. But Wenck's Twelfth Army at this
moment had at best only about a dozen tanks.

Although presumably the scattered and splinter troops would eventually
bring his forces up to about 100,000 men, right now he had nowhere near
the ten divisions he had been promised. Amid the remnants of units
with impressive names-- "Clausewitz," "Potsdam," "Scharnhorst," "Ulrich
von Hutten," "Friedrich Ludwig Jahn," "Theodor Korner"--there remained
at most five and a half divisions, about 55,000 men.

Apart from forces already committed to set positions or in actual
combat, the bulk of the new Twelfth Army was made up of eager cadets
and training officers. Neither Wenck nor his Chief of Staff, Colonel
Gunther Reichhelm, had any doubt about the eventual outcome of the
battles ahead. But Wenck refused to give in to disillusionment. Young
and eager himself, he saw what many an older general might have missed:
what the Twelfth lacked in strength it might well make up by the
fierceness and dedication of young officers and cadets.

Wenck thought he saw a way to use his green but enthusiastic forces as
mobile shock troops, rushing them from area to area as needed--at least
until his other forces were regrouped and in position. Wenck believed
in this fashion his energetic youngsters might buy Germany precious
time. Almost his first move as commander was to order his strongest
and best-equipped formations into central positions for use on either
the Elbe or Mulde rivers. Looking at his map, Wenck circled the areas
of probable action--Bitterfeld, Dessau, Belzig, Wittenberge. There was
one other site, he thought, where the Americans would surely try to
cross the Elbe. Lying

within three arms of the river, devastated during the Thirty Years' War
and almost wholly destroyed, the town of Magdeburg had risen again.
Now, the great fortress with its island citadel and 11th-century
cathedral stood like a beacon in the path of the American armies.
Around this area-- particularly south of Magdeburg--Wenck assigned the
best-equipped of his "Scharnhorst," "Potsdam" and "Von Hutten" units to
stand off the U.s. assault as well as they could.

His defenses were planned down to the last detail, his tactics
committed to memory by his officers. Now, at Army Group Vistula
headquarters, approximately 120 miles northeast of Wenck, Gotthard
Heinrici was ready for the battle.

Behind his first Hauptkampflinie--the main line of resistance--Heinrici
had developed a second line. Just before the expected Russian
artillery barrage, Heinrici had told his commanders, he would order the
evacuation of the front line. Immediately all troops would retreat to
the second Hauptkampflinie. It was Heinrici's old Moscow trick of
letting the Russians "hit an empty bag." As quickly as the Russian
bombardment lifted, the troops were to move forward and take up their
front-line positions again. The ruse had worked in the past and
Heinrici was counting on its success again. The trick, as always, was
to determine the exact moment of attack.

There had been several feints already. In Von Manteuffel's Third
Panzer Army sector north of Berlin, General Martin Gareis, commanding
the weak 46th Panzer Corps, was convinced that the attack would take
place on April 8. The heavy forward movement of vehicles and the
deepening concentration of artillery directly in front of Gareis' area
seemed to indicate an imminent assault--and captured Russian soldiers
had even boasted of the date. Heinrici did not believe the reports.
His own intelligence, plus his old habit of trusting his instinct, told
him the date was too early. As it turned

out, he was right. All along the Oder front, April 8 was quiet and
uneventful.

Yet Heinrici's vigilance was now unceasing. Each day he flew over the
Russian lines in a small reconnaissance plane, observing troop and
artillery dispositions. Each night he painstakingly studied late
intelligence reports and prisoner interrogations, searching always for
the clue that might pinpoint the time of attack.

It was during this tense and critical period that Reichsmarschall
Hermann Goering summoned Heinrici to his castle for lunch. Though
Heinrici was desperately weary and loath to be gone from his
headquarters even for a few hours, he could not refuse. Karinhall, the
Reichsmarschall's huge estate, lay only a few miles from the Vistula
headquarters at Birkenhain. The grounds were so vast that Goering even
had his own private zoo. As they approached, Heinrici and his aide,
Captain von Bila, were amazed by the magnificence of Goering's parklike
holdings, with the vistas of lakes, gardens, landscaped terraces and
tree-lined drives. Lining the road from the main gates to the castle
itself were units of sprucely uniformed Luftwaffe
paratroopers--Goering's personal defense force.

The castle, like Goering himself, was both massive and opulent. The
reception hall reminded Heinrici of "a church so large, so huge, that
one's eye automatically traveled up to the roof beams." Goering,
resplendent in a white hunting jacket, greeted Heinrici coolly. His
attitude was a portent of what was to come, for the luncheon was a
disaster.

The Reichsmarschall and the General disliked each other intensely.
Heinrici had always blamed Goering for the loss of Stalingrad where,
despite all his promises, the Luftwaffe had been unable to supply the
cut-off troops of Von Paulus' Sixth Army. But Heinrici would have
disliked the Reichsmarschall in any case for his arrogance and
pomposity. For his part, Goering found Heinrici dangerously
insubordinate. He had never forgiven the General for leaving Smolensk
unscorched, and in the past few days, his distaste for Heinrici had
greatly increased. Heinrici's remarks about the 9th Paratroopers at
the Fuhrer's conference had rankled deeply.

The day following that meeting, Goering had telephoned Vistula
headquarters and had spoken to Colonel Eismann. "It is inconceivable
to me," said the Reichsmarschall angrily, "that Heinrici would talk
about my paratroopers the way he did. It was a personal insult! I
still have the 2nd Parachute Division and you can tell your commander
from me that he's not getting them. No! I'm giving them to Schorner.
There's a real soldier! A true soldier!"

Now, at the luncheon, Goering turned his attack directly on Heinrici.
He began by sharply criticizing the troops he had seen during recent
trips along the Vistula front. Sitting back in a huge thronelike chair
and waving a large silver beaker of beer, Goering accused Heinrici of
poor discipline throughout his command. "I've driven all over your
armies," he said, "and in one sector after another I found men doing
nothing! I saw some in foxholes playing cards! I found men from the
labor organization who didn't even have spades to do their jobs. In
some places, I found men without field kitchens! In other sections
almost nothing has been done to build defenses. Everywhere I found
your people loafing, doing nothing." Taking a great swallow of beer,
Goering said menacingly, "I intend to bring all this to the attention
of the Fuhrer."

Heinrici saw no point in arguing. All he wanted to do was get away.
Keeping his temper in check, Heinrici somehow got through the meal.
But, as Goering saw his two visitors to the door, Heinrici paused,
looking slowly around the magnificent grounds and the impressive castle
with its turrets and wings. "I can only hope," he said, "that my
loafers can save this beautiful place of yours from the battles that
lie ahead." Goering stared icily for a moment, then turned on his heel
and walked back inside.

Goering would not have Karinhall much longer, Heinrici thought as he
drove away. He was beginning to reach a conclusion about the timing of
the Russian attack, based on intelligence reports, aerial observations,
the steadily dropping flood waters of the Oder and that intuition which
had never yet betrayed him. Heinrici believed the attack would begin
within the week--somewhere around the fifteenth or sixteenth of
April.

* * *

Pulling back the covering sheet on the table, Marshal Georgi Zhukov
exposed the huge relief map of Berlin. It was more a model than a map,
with miniature government buildings, bridges and railroad stations
showing in exact replica against the principal streets, canals and
airfields. Expected defensive positions, flak towers and bunkers were
all neatly marked, and small green tags, each with a number, flagged
principal objectives. The Reichstag was labeled 105, the Reichskanzlei
106; 107-8 were the offices of the Ministries of Internal and Foreign
Affairs.

The Marshal turned to his officers. "Look at Objective 105," he said.
"Who is going to be the first to reach the Reichstag? Chuikov and his
8th Guards? Katukov and his tanks? Berzarin and his Fifth Shock Army?
Or maybe Bogdanov with his 2nd Guards? Who will it be?"

Zhukov was deliberately baiting his officers. Each was in a frenzy to
reach the city first and, in particular, to capture the Reichstag. As
General Nikolai Popiel later remembered the scene, Katukov, presumably
already there in his mind's eye, said suddenly, "Just think. If I
reach 107 and 108, I might grab Himmler and Ribbentrop together!"

All day the briefings had been in progress; along the front
preparations for the attacks were nearly complete. Guns and ammunition
were positioned in the forests; tanks were moving up so their guns
could supplement the artillery when the bombardment began. A vast
store of supplies, bridging materials, rubber boats and rafts was ready
in the attack areas, and convoy after convoy jammed the roads bringing
divisions up to the assembly areas. So frantic were demands for troops
that the Russians for the first time were airlifting men from rear
areas. It was obvious to Russian soldiers everywhere that the attack
would come soon, yet no one below headquarters level had been given the
date.

Captain Sergei Ivanovich Golbov, the Red Army correspondent,

drove along Zhukov's front watching the massive preparations. Golbov
had tapped all his sources in an effort to find out the date of the
attack, but without success. Never before had he witnessed activity
such as this prior to an attack and he was convinced that the Germans
must be watching every move. But, he commented long afterward, "No one
seemed to give a damn what the Germans saw."

One aspect of the preparations puzzled Golbov. For days now,
anti-aircraft searchlights of all sizes and shapes had been arriving at
the front. The crews were women. Moreover, these units were being
held well back from the front and carefully hidden beneath camouflage
netting. Golbov had never seen so many searchlights before. He
wondered what they could possibly have to do with the attack. * * *

At the Berlin Reichspostzentralamt, the Postal Services Administration
building in Tempelhof, Reich Postal Minister Wilhelm Ohnesorge leaned
over the brilliantly colored sheets of stamps on his desk. They were
the first run, and Ohnesorge was inordinately pleased by them. The
artist had done a fine job and the Fuhrer was certain to be gratified
by the results. With delight he examined two of the stamps more
closely. One showed an SS soldier with a Schmeisser machine pistol at
his shoulder; the other depicted a uniformed Nazi Party leader, a torch
upraised in his right hand. Ohnesorge thought the special
commemorative issues did justice to the occasion. They would be on
sale on Hitler's birthday, April 20.

A special date was also uppermost in Erich Bayer's mind. The
Wilmersdorf accountant had been worrying for weeks about what he would
do on Tuesday, April 10--tomorrow. The payment had to be made by them;
otherwise all sorts of trouble and red tape could result. Bayer had
the money; that was not his problem. But did it matter now? Would the
army that captured Berlin--American or Russian--insist on payment? And
what if neither got the city? Bayer considered the matter from all
sides. Then he went to his bank and withdrew fourteen hundred marks.
Entering the office nearby, he made the required down payment on his
income tax for 1945. * * *

It happened so fast that everyone was taken by surprise. On the
western front, at his Ninth Army headquarters, General Simpson
immediately passed the word down to his two corps commanders, Major
General Raymond S. McLain of the 19th and the 13th's Major General
Alvan Gillem. Official orders would follow, Simpson said, but the word
was "Go." Phase 2 was on. It was official. The divisions were to
jump off for the Elbe--and beyond. At the 2nd Armored Division
headquarters, General White got the news and promptly sent for Colonel
Paul A. Disney, commanding the 67th Armored Regiment, the 2nd's lead
unit. Upon arrival, Disney remembered, "I barely had time to say
"hello" when White said, "Take off for the east."" For just a moment
Disney was taken aback. The stand-down had lasted a bare twenty-four
hours. Still confused, he asked, "What's the objective?" White
answered with just one word: "Berlin!"

In five great columns, the men of the 2nd Armored Division sped toward
the Elbe and Berlin. They passed lighted German headquarters without
slowing their pace. They swept through towns where aged Home
Guardsmen, guns in their hands, stood helpless in the streets, too
shocked to take action. They raced past German motorized columns
moving out in the same direction. Guns blazed but nobody stopped on
either side. GI'S riding on tanks took potshots at Germans on
motorcycles. Where enemy troops tried to make a stand from dug-in
positions, some U.s. Commanders used their armor-like cavalry. Major
James F. Hollingsworth, coming upon one such situation, lined up
thirty-four tanks and gave a command rarely heard in modern warfare:
"Charge!" Guns roaring, Hollingsworth's tanks raced down toward the
enemy positions, and the Germans broke and ran. Everywhere tanks
chewed through enemy positions and across enemy terrain. By Wednesday
evening, April 11, in an unparalleled armored dash, the Shermans had
covered fifty-seven miles--seventy-three road miles--in just under
twenty-four hours. Shortly after 8 P.m., Colonel Paul Disney flashed
headquarters a laconic message: "We're on the Elbe."

One small group of armored vehicles had reached the outskirts of
Magdeburg even earlier. In the afternoon Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler
Merriam's reconnaissance scout cars, traveling at speeds up to
fifty-five miles per hour, had dashed into a suburban area on the
western bank of the Elbe. There the cars were stopped,

not by German defenses, but by civilian traffic and shoppers. The
platoon let loose a high burst of machine gun fire in order to clear
the streets. The result was chaos. Women fainted. Shoppers huddled
in fearful groups or threw themselves flat on the ground. German
soldiers ran helter-skelter, firing wildly. Merriam's group lacked the
strength to hold the area, but scout cars did manage to disentangle
themselves from the mess and get to the airport which had been their
objective. As they drove along the edge of the field, planes were
landing and taking off. American guns began spraying everything in
sight, including a squadron of fighters ready to take to the air. Then
the defenses rallied and the platoon of scout cars was pinned down
under heavy fire. The vehicles got out with the loss of only one
armored car, but their appearance had alerted Magdeburg's defenders.
Now, as one American unit after another reached the Elbe on either side
of the city, they began to encounter increasingly stiffening
resistance. Merriam's scouts, as they pulled back, had reported one
vital piece of information: the Autobahn bridge to the north of the
city was still standing. This immediately became the division's prime
objective, for it could carry the 2nd to Berlin. But from the gunfire
that met the Americans it was clear that the bridge could not be taken
on the run. Magdeburg's defenders were determined to fight. Meanwhile
there were other bridges to the north and south. If any one of these
could be grabbed before the enemy destroyed it, the 2nd would be on its
way.

Seven miles to the south, at Schonebeck, another bridge crossed the
Elbe. It was the objective of Major Hollingsworth of the 67th Armored
Regiment. All through Wednesday afternoon, Hollingsworth's tanks raced
unimpeded through town after town until they reached a place called
Osterwieck. There, a regiment of Home Guard units forced a halt in the
advance. Hollingsworth was puzzled. Many of the elderly Germans
seemed ready to surrender--some had even tied handkerchiefs to their
rifles and had raised them above their foxholes-- yet there was no
letup in the fighting. A prisoner, taken within the first few minutes,
explained:

eleven SS soldiers in the town were forcing the Home Guardsmen to
fight. Angrily, Hollingsworth swung into action.

Calling for his jeep, and taking along an extra sergeant and a radio
operator as well as the driver, the major circled the area and entered
the town along a cow path. He cut a strange figure. Twin Colt
automatics were strapped low on his hips, Western style; for added
measure, he carried a tommy gun. Hollingsworth was a deadly shot who
had personally killed over 150 Germans. Grabbing a passing civilian,
he demanded to know where the SS troops were quartered. The terrified
man immediately pointed to a large house and barn nearby, surrounded by
a high fence. Noting a doorway in the fence, Hollingsworth and his men
leaped from the car and, from a running start, smashed the door with
their shoulders, ripping it off its hinges. As they crashed into the
yard, an SS man rushed toward them, machine pistol raised;
Hollingsworth riddled the man with his tommy gun. The other three
Americans began throwing grenades into the windows. Looking quickly
about, the major spotted another SS man in the open hayloft doors of
the barn and beat him to the draw with his .45. Inside the buildings
they found the bodies of six grenade victims; the three other SS men
surrendered. Hollingsworth rushed back to his column. He had been
held up for forty-five precious minutes.

Three hours later, Hollingsworth's tanks breasted the high ground
overlooking the towns of Schonebeck and Bad Salzelmen. Beyond,
glittering in the early evening light, lay the Elbe, at this point
almost five hundred feet wide. As he surveyed the area through
binoculars, Hollingsworth saw that the highway bridge was still
standing--and with good reason. German armored vehicles were using it
to flee east across the river. How, Hollingsworth wondered, with enemy
armor all around could he grab the bridge before it was blown?

As he watched, a plan began to form. Calling two of his company
commanders, Captain James W. Starr and Captain Jack A. Knight,
Hollingsworth outlined his idea. "They are moving along

this north-to-south road running into Bad Salzelmen," he said. "Then
they swing east at the road junction, head into Schonebeck and cross
the bridge. Our only hope is to charge into Bad Salzelmen and grab the
junction. Now, here's what we'll do. When we get to the junction,
your company, Starr, will peel off and block the road, holding the
Germans coming up from the south. I'll join onto the rear of the
German column that has already swung east into Schonebeck and follow it
across the bridge. Knight, you come up behind. We've got to get that
bridge and, by God, we're going to do it."

Hollingsworth knew that the plan would work only if they could move
fast enough. The light was fading; with luck, the German tanks would
never know they had company behind them as they crossed the bridge.

Within moments, Hollingsworth's tanks were on their way. Hatches
buttoned up, they charged into Bad Salzelmen; before the Germans were
aware of what was happening, Starr's vehicles had blocked the road from
the south and were engaging the line of panzers. The German tanks
leading the column had already made the turn, heading for the bridge.
Apparently hearing the sound of firing behind, they began to speed up.
At that moment Hollingsworth's tanks filled the gap in their column and
followed along at the same speed.

But then they were spotted. Artillery mounted on flat cars in the
nearby railway yard opened fire on the rear of the U.s. column. As
Hollingsworth's Shermans turned into Schonebeck, a German Mark Very
tank, its turret revolving, drew a bead on the lead American. Staff
Sergeant Cooley, Hollingsworth's gunner, opened fire and blew up the
Mark V. Slewing sideways, the panzer smashed into a wall and began
burning furiously. There was barely room for Hollingsworth's tank to
get by, but weaving ponderously it edged through, followed by the rest
of the column. Firing at the rear of each enemy vehicle and squeezing
by the burning panzers, the American tanks charged through the town. By
the time they reached its center, as Hollingsworth remembered,
"everyone was firing at everyone else. It was the damnedest mess.
Germans were hanging out of windows, either shooting at us with their
Panzerfauste or just dangling in death."

Hollingsworth's tank had not been hit and he was now only three or four
blocks from the bridge. But the last stretch was the worst. As the
remaining tanks pressed on, enemy fire seemed to come from everywhere.
Buildings were blazing and, although by now it was 11 P.m., the scene
was so brightly lit that it might still have been day.

Ahead lay the approach to the bridge. The tanks rushed forward. The
entrance, blocked from Hollingsworth's earlier view from the heights,
was a maze of stone walls jutting out at irregular intervals from
either side of the road; the vehicles had to slow and make sharp left
and right maneuvers before reaching the center span. Jumping from his
tank, Hollingsworth reconnoitered to see if he could both lead the way
and direct his gunner's fire via the telephone hooked to the back of
the tank. At that instant an anti-tank shell exploded fifteen yards
ahead of Hollingsworth. Cobblestone fragments flew through the air and
suddenly the major found his face was a mass of blood.

A .45 in one hand and the tank telephone in the other, he doggedly
moved toward the bridge. His tank collided with a jeep and
Hollingsworth called for infantrymen. Leading them onto the approach,
he began working his way through the roadblocks, exchanging steady fire
with the Germans who were fiercely defending the way. A bullet struck
him in the left knee but he kept the lead, urging the infantry on. At
last, staggering and half-blinded by his own blood, Hollingsworth was
stopped. A rain of fire was coming from the German positions and
Hollingsworth was forced to order a withdrawal. He had come to within
forty feet of the bridge. When Colonel Disney, his commanding officer,
arrived on the scene he found the major "unable to walk and bleeding
all over the place. I ordered him back to the rear." Hollingsworth
had missed taking the bridge by minutes. Had he succeeded, he believed
he could have reached Berlin within eleven hours.

At dawn on April 12, as infantry and engineers tried once again to
seize the Schonebeck bridge, the Germans blew it up in their faces.

High above the Ninth Army front Lieutenant Duane Francies put the
unarmed spotting plane, the Piper Cub Miss Me, into a wide turn. Riding
behind Francies was his artillery observer, Lieutenant William S.
Martin. The two men had scouted for the 5th Armored all the way from
the Rhine, locating strongpoints and radioing the positions to the
oncoming tanks. It was not all routine work; more than once Francies
and Martin had buzzed enemy troops, taking potshots at columns with
their Colt .45's.

Off to the east the clouds had opened and the fliers could see chimney
stacks faint in the distance. "Berlin!" Francies shouted, pointing
ahead. "The factories at Spandau." Each day now, as the 5th advanced
steadily, Francies searched for different city landmarks from his lofty
vantage point. When the Miss Me led the tanks into Berlin, the young
pilot wanted to be able to recognize instantly the main roads and
buildings so as to inform the tankers about them. He intended to give
"the boys" the full tour treatment as they approached Berlin.

Francies was almost ready to head back to a pasture near the lead
columns when he suddenly pushed the stick forward. He had spotted a
motorcyclist with a sidecar speeding out of a road close by some of the
5th's tanks. As he began a dive to check out the vehicle, he glanced
to his right and stiffened in amazement. Flying only a few hundred
feet above the trees and almost indistinguishable was a Fieseler
Storch, a German artillery-spotting plane. As the Miss Me drew closer,
the white crosses on fuselage and wings showed prominently against the
Storch's gray-black body. Like the Cub, this was a fabric-covered,
high-wing monoplane, but it was larger than Miss Me and, as Francies
knew, at least a good thirty miles an hour faster. The American,
however,

had the advantage of altitude. Even as Francies yelled, "Let's get
him!" he heard Martin urging the same thing.

By radio Martin reported that they had spotted a German plane and
announced calmly "we are about to give combat." On the ground,
astounded 5th Armored tankers, hearing Martin's call, craned their
necks skyward searching out the impending dogfight.

Martin got the side doors open as Francies dived. Swinging the Cub
into a tight circle over the German plane, both men blasted away with
their .45's. Francies hoped the fire would force the German over the
waiting tanks where machine gunners could easily bring it down. But
the pilot of the enemy plane, though obviously confused by the
unexpected attack, was not that obliging. Violently sideslipping, the
Storch began circling wildly. Above it, Francies and Martin, like
frontier stagecoach guards, were leaning out of their own plane
emptying their automatics as fast as they could pull the triggers. To
Francies' amazement, there was no answering fire from the German. Even
as the Americans reloaded, the Storch pilot, instead of putting
distance between them, kept on circling. Later, Francies could only
surmise that the pilot was still trying to figure out what was
happening to him.

Now, dropping to within twenty feet of the enemy plane, the two
Americans put bullet after bullet into the German's windshield. They
were so close that Francies saw the pilot "staring at us, his eyeballs
as big as eggs." Then suddenly the German maneuvered wildly and spun
in. Martin, who had been giving a rapid running account of the fight
on the radio, yelled, "We got him! We got him!" His voice was so
blurred with excitement that Lieutenant Colonel Israel Washburn,
sitting in his half-track, thought Martin said "We got hit!"

The Storch spiraled down, its right wing hit the ground, snapped off,
and the plane cartwheeled and came to rest in the middle of a pasture.
Francies set the Miss Me down in the next field and ran across to the
downed plane. The German pilot and his observer were already out, but
the observer had been hit in

the foot and fell to the ground. The pilot dived behind a huge pile of
sugar beets until a warning shot from Martin brought him out, hands in
the air. As Martin covered the pilot with his gun, Francies examined
the wounded observer. When he removed the German's boot, a .45 slug
fell out. As he bandaged the superficial wound, the German kept
repeating, "Danke. Danke. Danke."

Later that day, Francies and Martin posed happily beside their captured
prize. They had fought what was probably the last World War II
dogfight in the European theater and they were undoubtedly the only
airmen in this war to bring down a German plane with a pistol. For
Francies "it was a day of pure joy." The only thing that could top
this experience would be guiding the 5th Armored into Berlin. Francies
believed he would have only a day or two to wait before the order came.
* * Francies' extraordinary feat, unequaled in World War II, has never
been acknowledged by the U.s. Defense Department. He was recommended
for a Distinguished Flying Cross, but never received it. Curiously
Martin, though not a flyer, was awarded the Air Medal for his part in
the action.

As the platoon of tanks led by Lieutenant Robert E. Nicodemus
approached Tangermunde at noon, they were met by an ominous silence.
The objective of this unit of the 5th Armored Division was the bridge
in the picturesque little city, which was some forty miles northeast of
Magdeburg. Now that the bridge at Schonebeck was gone, the Tangermunde
bridge was the most important one in the war, to the Ninth Army at
least.

Nicodemus' tank rolled down the main street of Tangermunde and into the
square. The streets here, as elsewhere in the city, were deserted.
Then, as the tanks pulled up in the square, air raid sirens began to
wail and, Nicodemus said later, "everything happened at once. All hell
broke loose."

From windows, doorways and rooftops that had seemed empty moments
earlier, Germans opened fire with bazooka-like anti-tank guns. The
Americans answered back. At one moment Sergeant

Charles Householder stood in the turret of his tank, blasting away with
his tommy gun fire until the tank was hit and he had to jump out.
Sergeant Leonard Haymaker's tank, just behind Householder's, was also
hit; it burst into flames. Haymaker leaped to safety, but his crewmen
were pinned inside by enemy fire. Crouching low and revolving in a
slow circle, Haymaker fired short bursts from his tommy gun, covering
his men as they escaped.

At the height of the battle, an American soldier jumped on the back of
Nicodemus' tank and, shouting above the din, identified himself as an
escaped prisoner of war. About five hundred prisoners were being held
in the town, he said, in two separate compounds. Nicodemus found
himself in a dilemma. He had been about to call for artillery support,
but he could hardly shell a town full of American prisoners. He
decided to try breaking into the nearest compound to get the prisoners
out of the line of fire.

Led by the POW, Nicodemus made his way through buildings and backyards
and over fences to an enclosure down by the river. The instant the
American prisoners in the compound saw the approaching officer they
jumped their guards. The skirmish was brief. As soon as the guards
had been disarmed, Nicodemus led the prisoners out. As the group
approached the last enemy-held street and saw American tanks beyond,
one GI turned to Nicodemus and exulted: "I'm a free man now. They
can't kill me." He walked into the middle of the street and a German
sniper shot him through the head.

While Nicodemus had been freeing the prisoners, desperate
house-to-house fighting had been taking place throughout the city. At
last, when the bridge was almost in sight, representatives of the
German garrison met the U.s. advance guard and announced their wish to
surrender. As the negotiations got under way, there was a tremendous
explosion. A huge cloud of dust billowed up and rubble stormed down on
the city. German engineers had blown the bridge. The Victory
Division, closest American unit to the capital, had been stopped a
tantalizing fifty-three miles from Berlin.

Anxiety began to spread through the Ninth Army Command. Up to
mid-afternoon of April 12 there had been every reason for confidence.
The 5th Armored had traveled a phenomenal 200 miles in just thirteen
days; the 2nd had advanced the same distance in just one day more.
Altogether, Simpson's army had raced nearly 226 miles since leaving the
Rhine. Ninth Army divisions were charging up to the Elbe all along the
front.

But no bridges had yet been seized, no bridgeheads established on the
river's eastern bank. Many men had hoped for a repetition of the
famous capture of the Rhine bridge at Remagen, which in early March had
changed Anglo-American strategy overnight. But there had been no such
luck. Now, at and Armored headquarters a decision was reached: the
river must be forced. Troops would make an amphibious assault on the
Elbe's eastern bank to secure a bridgehead. Then a pontoon bridge
would be built across the river.

At his headquarters, Brigadier General Sidney R. Hinds, commander of
the 2nd's Combat Command B, laid his plans. The operation would take
place south of Magdeburg, at a small town called Westerhusen. At best,
the plan was a gamble. Enemy artillery fire might destroy the bridge
before its completion or, worse, prevent bridging operations
altogether. But the longer Hinds waited, the more concentrated the
enemy's defenses might become. And with each hour of delay, the chance
of beating the Russians into Berlin grew slimmer.

At 8 P.m. on April 12, two battalions of armored infantry were quietly
ferried across to the eastern bank in the amphibious vehicles known as
DUKW'S. The crossing was unopposed. By midnight the two battalions
were over and by first light a third had joined them. On the eastern
bank, troops quickly deployed, digging defensive positions in a tight
semicircle about the selected

pontoon site. Jubilantly, General White put in a telephone call to the
Ninth Army commander, General Simpson: "We're across!" * * *

The Germans learned of the crossing almost as soon as Simpson. At
Magdeburg, the combat commander, a veteran of Normandy, immediately got
word to General Wenck at Twelfth Army headquarters.

The Magdeburg officer, an expert artilleryman, had long ago learned not
to underestimate the enemy. Early on the morning of June 6, 1944, he
had looked out from his forward artillery post and had seen the Allied
invasion fleet. Then, as now, he had promptly informed his superiors
of the situation. "It's the invasion," he had said. "There must be
ten thousand ships out there." His incredible message was not
believed. "What way are these ships headed?" he was asked. His reply
was stark and simple: "Right for me."

Now Major Werner Pluskat, the man who had directed the German fire from
the center of Omaha Beach, prepared to make a stand on the Elbe. His
gunners along the river, north and south of Magdeburg, would hold back
the Americans as long as they could. But Pluskat had been around too
long to have any doubts about the outcome.

However, the young cadets on whom General Wenck was depending had no
pessimistic thoughts. Eager and fresh, they were looking forward to
the battles ahead. Now mobile combat units of the Potsdam, Scharnhorst
and Von Hutten divisions were rushing into position, preparing to erase
the American bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Elbe. * * *

On the west bank of the Elbe, engineers worked frantically.
Searchlights, hurriedly positioned, were pointed straight up to reflect
off the clouds, and in this artificial moonlight the first pontoons
were secured and pushed into the river. One after another, the
floating units were locked in place.

Standing close by, Colonel Paul A. Disney, the 67th Armored Regiment
commander, watched the bridging operation with growing impatience.
Suddenly shells screamed in. As they exploded about the first few
pontoons, fountains of water shot up in the air. The fire pattern was
unusual: the shells did not land in salvos; they came in singly,
apparently from several widely positioned guns. Disney, certain that
the fire was being directed by an artillery observer hidden nearby,
ordered an immediate search of the rundown four-story apartment houses
overlooking the river. The search yielded nothing; the fire continued,
accurate and deadly.

Ripped pontoons sank, and the shrapnel lashing the water repeatedly
forced the bridge-builders to take cover. Wounded men were dragged to
the safety of the river bank; others took their places. All through
the night the firing went on, nullifying the grim persistence of the
American engineers. The one thing Hinds had feared most had happened.
Grimly he ordered an infantry unit on a forced march south. Its
instructions: find another site.

The following morning the rest of the bridge was destroyed by German
gunfire. When the last shells screamed in and demolished the twisted
and battered span, the bridge was only seventy-five yards from the
eastern shore. Hinds, set-faced and weary, ordered the site abandoned.
As the men assembled with their wounded, a message arrived: infantry on
the eastern bank had found a suitable bridging area farther down the
river.

By the afternoon of Friday the thirteenth, DUKW'S were towing a heavy
cable across the river to the newest bridgehead. The cable was
intended as a stopgap. Once in place it would haul a string of
pontoons back and forth across the river, bearing vehicles, tanks and
guns. Although this system was desperately slow it would have to serve
until bridging materials could be brought up.

The matter of greatest concern to Hinds now was the fate of the three
battalions on the east bank of the river. With their backs to the
Elbe, the troops were manning a rough semicircle in the

area of the twin villages of Elbenau and Grunewalde. It was a small
beachhead, and they had no armor support or artillery except for the
batteries on the western banks. If the three battalions were hit by
any attack in strength, the situation could become perilous. Hinds now
ordered Colonel Disney across the Elbe in a DUKW to take command of the
infantry.

Disney found the first of the three battalion command posts, headed by
Captain John Finnell, in a patch of woods. Finnell was worried. German
pressure was building up. "If we don't get tanks over here real
quick," he said, "there's going to be bad trouble."

After briefing Hinds on the situation by radio, Disney set out to find
the second battalion. As he moved down near the river, shells began to
land all around him. Disney dived into a ditch, but the shells came
closer, so he climbed out and started for another one. This time luck
was against him. He felt a rain of shrapnel, then another. A third
burst knocked him down. Disney lay there, barely conscious and
severely wounded. His left upper arm was gouged and riddled and a
large piece of shrapnel had torn away the upper part of his right
thigh.

Within thirty-six hours, Hollingsworth and Disney, two of the men most
fiercely dedicated to leading American forces to Berlin, had been put
out of action.

At 1:15 P.m. on April 12, at about the time lead tanks of the 5th
Armored Division were rolling into Tangermunde, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt died at his desk in Warm Springs.

An artist was working on a portrait of him when suddenly the President
put a hand to his head and complained of a headache. A short while
later he was dead. On his desk lay a copy of the Atlanta Constitution.
The headline read: 9THIS--57 MILES FROM BERLIN.

It was nearly twenty-four hours later before news of the President's
death began filtering down to the front-line troops. Major Alcee
Peters of the 84th Division heard the news from a German.

At a railroad crossing near Wahrenholz an aging flagman came up to
offer him sympathy because "the news is so terrible." Peters felt
shock and disbelief but before he fully absorbed what he had heard, his
column moved out again, heading for the Elbe, and he had other matters
to think about. Lieutenant Colonel Norman Carnes, commanding a
battalion of the 333rd Infantry Regiment, was traveling through a
bombed-out oil field north of Brunswick when he learned of FDR'S death.
He felt regret, but his mind, too, was on his work. "It was just
another crisis," he later said. "My next objective was Wittingen and I
was busy thinking about that. Roosevelt, dead or alive, couldn't help
me now." Chaplain Ben Rose wrote to his wife Anne: "All of us were
sorry ... but we've seen so many men die that most of us know that even
Roosevelt is not indispensable. ... I was surprised how calmly we
heard the news and talked about it." * * *

Joseph Goebbels could scarcely contain himself. The moment he heard
the news he telephoned Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker. "My Fuhrer, I
congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead!" he exulted. "It is written in
the stars. The last half of April will be the turning point for us.
This is Friday, April 13. It is the turning point!"

Sometime earlier Goebbels had passed along two astrological predictions
to Count Schwerin von Krosigk, Reichsminister of Finance. One had been
prepared for Hitler the day he took power, January 30, 1933. The
other, dated November 9, 1918, had dealt with the future of the Weimar
Republic. Krosigk noted in his diary: "An amazing fact had become
evident. Both horoscopes predicted the outbreak of war in 1939, the
victories until 1941, and the subsequent series of reversals--with the
hardest blows during the first months of 1945, especially in the first
half of April. Then, there was to be an overwhelming victory in the
second half of April, stagnation until August, and peace the same
month. For the following three years Germany would have a difficult
time, but starting in 1948 she would rise again."

Goebbels also had been reading Thomas Carlyle's History of Friedrich II
of Prussia, and it had given him further cause for delight. One
chapter told of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) when Prussia had stood
alone against a coalition of forces that included France, Austria and
Russia. In the sixth year of this struggle, Frederick had told his
advisors that if by February 15 there was no change in his fortunes, he
would commit suicide. Then on January 5, 1762, Czarina Elizabeth died
and Russia withdrew from the conflict. "The miracle of the House of
Brandenburg," wrote Carlyle, "had come to pass." The whole character
of the war had changed for the better. Now, in the sixth year of World
War II, Roosevelt was dead. The parallel was inescapable.

The Propaganda Minister was in ecstasy. At the Ministry of Propaganda
he ordered champagne for everyone. * * *

"Get across! Get across! And keep moving!" Colonel Edwin "Buckshot"
Crabill of the 83rd Division stalked up and down the river bank,
pushing men into assault boats and, here and there, helping slow
starters with the toe of his boot.

"Don't waste this opportunity," he yelled at another boatload. "You're
on your way to Berlin!" As other men began to move across in DUKW'S,
the short, peppery Crabill admonished them, "Don't wait to organize!
Don't wait for someone to tell you what to do! Get over there in any
shape you can! If you move now, you can make it without a shot being
fired!"

Crabill was right. At the town of Barby, fifteen miles southeast of
Magdeburg and just below the spot where their arch rivals, the 2nd
Armored, were desperately trying to make use of their cable ferry, the
men of the 83rd were crossing the river in droves, unopposed. They had
entered the town to find that the bridge had been blown but, without
waiting for orders from the 83rd's commanding officer, Crabill had
ordered an immediate crossing. Assault boats had been rushed up and in
a matter of hours a full

battalion had been put across. Now another was en route.
Simultaneously, artillery was being floated over on pontoons and
engineers were building a treadway bridge that should be finished by
nightfall. Even Crabill was impressed by the frenetic activity his
orders had set off. As he dashed from group to group urging more
speed, he kept repeating triumphantly to the other officers, "They'll
never believe this back at Fort Benning!"

Watching the feverish scene in silence was an audience of Germans,
standing on a balcony below the clock tower of the town hall. For
hours, as Lieutenant Colonel Granville Sharpe, commanding an infantry
battalion, cleaned up what little resistance there was in the town, he
had been aware of the audience, and he had grown increasingly annoyed.
"My men were being shot at, but there stood the Germans watching the
fighting and the river assault with intense interest," he recalled. Now
Sharpe had had enough. Going up to a tank, he told the gunner. "Put
one round through the clock face at, say, about five o'clock." The
tanker obliged, scoring a clean bull's-eye on the number five. The
gallery suddenly dispersed.

In any case, the show was over. The 83rd was across. The first solid
bridgehead had been established on the east bank of the Elbe.

By the evening of the thirteenth, engineers had finished their task
and, thorough to the end, had put up a sign on the approach to the
bridge. In honor of the new President and, with the division's
customary high morale and keen appreciation for the value of
advertising, it read: Truman Bridge. Gateway to Berlin. Courtesy of
the 83rd Infantry Division.

The news was flashed back to General Simpson and from there to General
Bradley. He immediately telephoned Eisenhower. Suddenly the 83rd's
bridgehead was uppermost in everybody's

thoughts. The Supreme Commander listened carefully to the news. Then,
at the end of the report, he put a question to Bradley. As Bradley
later reconstructed the conversation, Eisenhower asked: "Brad, what do
you think it might cost us to break through from the Elbe and take
Berlin?"

Bradley had been considering that same question for days. Like
Eisenhower, he did not now see Berlin as a military objective, but if
it could be taken easily he was for its capture. Still, Bradley, like
his chief, was concerned about too deep a penetration into the future
Soviet zone and about the casualties that would occur as U.s. troops
moved forward into areas from which, eventually, they would have to
withdraw. He did not believe losses on the way to Berlin would be too
high, but it might be a different story in the city itself. Taking
Berlin might be costly.

Now he answered the Supreme Commander, "I estimate that it might cost
us 100,000 men."

There was a pause. Then Bradley added, "It would be a pretty stiff
price to pay for a prestige objective, especially when we know that
we've got to pull back and let the other fellow take over." * *
Bradley's estimate has given rise to much confusion, both as to when he
gave it to Eisenhower and as to how he arrived at the figure. The
incident was first revealed by Bradley himself in his memoir, A
Soldier's Story. No date was given. Thus, as Bradley has told the
author, he is partly responsible for the uncertainty that resulted. One
version that has seen print depicts Bradley as telling Eisenhower at
SHAEF as early as January, 1945, that the Berlin casualty figure would
reach 100,000. Bradley himself says: "I gave the estimate to Ike on
the phone immediately after we got the Elbe bridgehead. Certainly I
did not expect to suffer 100,000 casualties driving from there to
Berlin. But I was convinced that the Germans would fight hard for
their capital. It was in Berlin, as I saw it, that we would have
suffered the greatest losses."

There the conversation ended. The Supreme Commander did not reveal his
intentions. But Bradley had made his own opinion unmistakably clear:
U.s. lives were more important than mere prestige or the temporary
occupation of meaningless real estate.

At headquarters of the 19th Corps, General McLain stood before his map
studying the situation. In his opinion the enemy line on the eastern
bank of the Elbe was a hard crust, nothing more. Once his divisions
got across and broke through it, nothing would stop them from rolling
into Berlin. Colonel George B. Sloan, McLain's Operations Officer,
believed the Americans would hit the same sort of opposition they had
encountered en route from the Rhine--pockets of last-ditch resistance
that could be bypassed by fast-moving forces. He had every confidence
that within forty-eight hours of resuming the attack, leading elements
of U.s. Armored units would enter Berlin.

McLain made a few quick decisions. The surprising accomplishment of
the Rag-Tag Circus in grabbing a bridgehead, rushing troops across and
then straddling the Elbe with a bridge, all within a few hours, had
changed the whole river picture. The men of the 83rd were not merely
expanding the beachhead on the eastern bank; they were advancing out of
it. McLain was sure that the 83rd's bridgehead was permanent. He was
not so sure that the 2nd Armored's puny cable ferry operation would
survive the shelling. Still, the 2nd had three battalions across and
they were holding. Arrangements had been made for part of the 2nd
Armored to begin crossing the 83rd's "Truman Bridge." McLain,
therefore, saw no reason for the 30th Division, now moving into
position, to attack Magdeburg and go for the Autobahn bridge. At the
rate the troops were moving now, the 83rd's bridgehead could be quickly
expanded to link with the cut-off battalions opposite the 2nd's cable
ferry site. From this vastly enlarged bridgehead, the drive could
continue. McLain decided to bypass Magdeburg entirely. The Truman
Bridge, as the 83rd had anticipated, would be the gateway to Berlin.

At dawn, Saturday, April 14, at the 2nd Armored's cable ferry, General
Hinds waited for the three pontoons to be strapped together. They
would form the ferry platform which the cable would pull back and forth
pending construction of a bridge. Shells were still falling about both
banks of the bridgehead and troops on the eastern side were involved in
heavy fighting. They could hold out for some time against opposing
infantry, but Hinds's great fear was of a panzer attack. The Americans
on the east bank were still without supporting artillery or armor.

The first vehicle to roll onto the pontoon ferry was a bulldozer; the
eastern bank of the river had to be scraped and graded before tanks and
heavy weapons could climb it. A DUKW would tow the platform, speeding
the ferry by helping the cable move faster. Hinds watched anxiously.
Two cables had been damaged and washed downstream. He had only one
left; and his last outsized pontoons had gone to make the ferry.

The cumbersome operation began. As men watched, the ferry moved slowly
out into the middle of the Elbe. Then, as it neared the eastern shore,
the unbelievable happened. A single shell screamed in and, in a
million-to-one shot, severed the cable. Hinds stood frozen in shock as
cable, ferry and bulldozer disappeared down the river. Bitterly he
said, "There it goes to hell!"

As though the incredible bull's-eye had been a signal for total
disaster, word now came that the troops on the eastern bank were being
attacked by armored vehicles.

On the eastern side of the Elbe, through the wisps of morning haze and
the smoke from artillery fire, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Anderson
watched the German armor smashing through his infantry defense lines.
There were seven or eight armored vehicles, among them a couple of
tanks. Through his glasses Anderson saw the group, well out of range
of his own anti-tank bazookas, firing methodically into the American
foxholes. Even as he watched, one of his companies holding positions
on the far right of his command post was overrun. Troops dashed from
their foxholes, making for the safety of the woods. Now the Germans
were working over the positions of Anderson's other two companies,
blasting the foxholes one by one. Frantically Anderson radioed the
batteries on the Elbe's western bank for help. But the attack had
taken place so fast that even as the 2nd Armored's shells came
screaming in, Anderson knew they were too late.

Farther along the bridgehead, Lieutenant Bill Parkins, commanding I
Company, suddenly heard his machine guns open up and then the answering
fire of German burp guns. A platoon runner dashed up. Three German
vehicles with infantry, he reported, were coming down along the line,
"cleaning out everything as they go." Parkins sent back word to the
troops to remain in position and to keep firing. Then he dashed out of
his command post to find out for himself what was happening. "I saw
three Mark V tanks about a hundred yards away, approaching from the
east," he later reported, "and each one appeared to have a platoon of
infantry with it. They had American prisoners marching in front. Their
guns were firing right through them." Some of Parkins' men returned
the fire with their bazookas, but the range was too great; those
projectiles that hit merely ricocheted off the tanks. His men were
being chewed up. Parkins ordered them to pull back, before they were
all captured or killed.

From north, east and south of the bridgehead German vehicles came in
fast. Staff Sergeant Wilfred Kramer, in charge of an infantry platoon,
saw a German tank about 220 yards away. Infantry was fanned out about
it and coming up behind. Kramer ordered his men to wait. Then, when
the Germans were about forty yards away, he yelled to open fire. "We
were doing all right and holding our own," he later explained. "But
then the tank opened up. The first round landed about ten yards from
our machine gun. Then Jerry went right down the line. He could see
where every one of our holes was. It was point-blank fire." Kramer
held out for as long as he dared; then he, too, ordered his men back.

The fighting was so fierce around Grunewalde that Lieutenant Colonel
Carlton E. Stewart, commanding a battalion, got a call

for artillery from one of his companies and was told to "throw it right
on our positions as our men are in the cellars of the houses." Everyone
was asking for air strikes to knock out the tanks, but only a few
planes showed up during the entire dawn-to-noon battle. In the dash to
the Elbe, fighter strips had been left so far behind that the planes
had to carry extra gasoline wing tanks to keep up with the ground
advance and that meant they couldn't carry bombs.

By noon General Hinds had ordered all infantry on the east bank to
withdraw back across the Elbe. Although casualties were at first
thought to be high, men kept trickling in for days. Total east bank
casualties were ultimately set at 304; one battalion lost 7 officers
and 146 enlisted men killed, wounded or missing. The fight ended the
last hope of getting a 2nd Armored bridge or bridgehead across the
Elbe. Now General White, the 2nd's commander, had no choice but to use
the 83rd's bridge at Barby. The Germans had halted successfully, and
with lightning speed, the great momentum that the 2nd Armored had built
up.

The erasing of the bridgehead had been so sudden and the fighting so
fierce that American commanders did not even know what units had
attacked them. In fact, they were scarcely units at all. As General
Wenck had foreseen, his fledgling cadets and training officers had
served him well. Ambitious and eager for glory, they had pushed
themselves and their meager equipment to the limit, buying the time
Wenck needed. In throwing back the 2nd Armored Division these mobile
shock troops had accomplished something no other German unit had
managed in thirty months of combat. Had the division been able to
secure either a bridge or a bridgehead across the Elbe, the 2nd might
have roared right on to Berlin without ever waiting for orders.

The Supreme Commander's plan of attack on Germany had unfolded
brilliantly; indeed, the speed of the great Anglo-American advance had
clearly surprised even him. In the north Mont-

gomery's Twenty-first Army Group was moving steadily. The Canadians,
closing on Arnhem, were ready to begin clearing out the big enemy
pocket that remained in northeast Holland. The British Second Army had
crossed the river Leine, captured the town of Celle and were on the
outskirts of Bremen. In the center of the Reich the surrounded Ruhr
was almost reduced and, most important, Simpson's Ninth Army, along
with the U.s. First and Third armies, had almost cut Germany in two.
The First was advancing on Leipzig. Patton's Third was nearing the
Czech border.

But these whirlwind gains had taken a toll: they had stretched
Eisenhower's supply lines almost to the limit. Apart from truck
convoys, there was virtually no land transport available to Bradley's
forces; only one railroad bridge was still in operation over the Rhine.
The fighting forces remained well supplied, but SHAEF staff officers
were disturbed by the total picture. To serve the farflung armies,
hundreds of Troop Carrier Command planes had been ordered to fly around
the clock, bringing up supplies. On April 5 alone, a flying train of
C-47's had carried more than 3,500 tons of ammunition and supplies and
almost 750,000 gallons of gasoline to the front.

In addition, as the Allies pushed deeper and deeper into Germany, they
had to supply increasing thousands of noncombatants. Hundreds of
thousands of German prisoners of war had to be fed. Forced laborers
from a score of countries and liberated British and American POW'S had
to be given shelter, food and medical services. Hospitals, ambulance
convoys and medical supplies were only now moving up. And although
these medical facilities were vast, an unforeseen demand was suddenly
thrust upon them.

In recent days, what would prove to be the greatest hidden horror of
the Third Reich had begun to be uncovered. All along the front in this
tremendous week of advance, men had recoiled in shock and revulsion as
they encountered Hitler's concentration camps, their hundreds of
thousands of inmates, and the evidence of their millions of dead.

Battle-hardened soldiers could scarcely believe what they were seeing
as scores of camps and prisons fell into their hands. Twenty years
later men would remember those scenes with grim anger: the emaciated
walking skeletons who tottered toward them, their will to survive the
only possession they had saved from the Nazi regime; the mass graves,
pits and trenches; the lines of crematoriums filled with charred bones,
mute and awful testimony to the systematic mass extermination of
"political prisoners"-- who had been put to death, as one Buchenwald
guard explained, because "they were only Jews."

Troops found gas chambers, set up like shower rooms except that cyanide
gas instead of water sprayed from the nozzles. In the Buchenwald
commandant's home there were lampshades made from human skin. The
commandant's wife, Ilse Koch, had book covers and gloves made from the
flesh of inmates; two human heads, shrunken and stuffed, were displayed
on small wooden stands. There were warehouses full of shoes, clothing,
artificial limbs, dentures and eyeglasses --sorted and numbered with
detached and methodical efficiency. Gold had been removed from the
dentures and forwarded to the Reich finance ministry.

How many had been exterminated? In the first shock of discovery no one
could even estimate. But it was clear as reports came in from all
along the front that the total would be astronomical. As to who the
victims were, that was only too obvious. They were, by the Third
Reich's definition, the "non-Aryans," the "culture-tainting inferiors,"
peoples of a dozen nations and of a dozen faiths, but predominantly
Jews. Among them were Poles, Frenchmen, Czechs, Dutchmen, Norwegians,
Russians, Germans. In history's most diabolical mass murder, they had
been slain in a variety of unnatural ways. Some were used as guinea
pigs in laboratory experiments. Thousands were shot, poisoned, hanged
or gassed; others were simply allowed to starve to death.

In the camp at Ohrdruf, overrun by the U.s. Third Army on April 12,
General George S. Patton, one of the U.s. Army's most hard-bitten
officers, walked through the death houses, then turned away, his face
wet with tears, and was uncontrollably ill. The next

day Patton ordered the population of a nearby village, whose
inhabitants claimed ignorance of the situation within the camp, to view
it for themselves; those who hung back were escorted at rifle point.
The following morning the mayor of the village and his wife hanged
themselves.

Along the British route of advance, the discoveries were equally
terrible. Brigadier Hugh Glyn Hughes, the British Second Army's Senior
Medical Officer, had been worrying for days about the possibility of
infectious diseases in a camp he had been warned about at a place
called Belsen. Upon arrival there, Hughes discovered that typhus and
typhoid were the least of his worries. "No photograph, no description
could bring home the horrors I saw," he said, years later. "There were
56,000 people still alive in the camp. They were living in 45 huts.
There were anywhere from 600 to 1,000 people living in accommodations
which could take barely 100. The huts overflowed with inmates in every
state of emaciation and disease. They were suffering from starvation,
gastroenteritis, typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis. There were dead
everywhere, some in the same bunks as the living. Lying in the
compounds, in uncovered mass graves, in trenches, in the gutters, by
the side of the barbed wire surrounding the camp and by the huts, were
some 10,000 more. In my thirty years as a doctor, I had never seen
anything like it."

To save those still living, armies all along the front had to get
immediate medical help. In some instances military needs had to take
second place. "I do not believe," Hughes later said, "that anyone
realized what we were going to be faced with or the demands that would
be made on the medical services." Doctors, nurses, hospital beds and
thousands of tons of medical stores and equipment were urgently needed.
Brigadier Hughes alone required a 14,000-bed hospital--even though he
knew that, no matter what steps were taken, at least 500 inmates would
die each day until the situation could be brought under control.

General Eisenhower made a personal tour of a camp near Gotha.
Ashen-faced, his teeth clenched, he walked through every part of the
camp. "Up to that moment," he later recalled, "I had known about it
only generally or through secondary sources. ... I have never at any
other time experienced an equal sense of shock."

The psychological effect of the camps on officers and men was beyond
assessment. On the Ninth Army front in a village near Magdeburg, Major
Julius Rock, a medical officer with the 30th Infantry, came up to
inspect a freight train which the 30th had stopped. It was loaded with
concentration camp inmates. Rock, horrified, immediately unloaded the
train. Over the local burgomaster's vehement protests, Rock billeted
the inmates in German homes--but not until his battalion commander had
given a crisp command to the complaining burgomaster. "If you refuse,"
he said simply, "I'll take hostages and shoot them."

A cold determination to win and win quickly was replacing every other
emotion in the men who had seen concentration camps. The Supreme
Commander felt much the same way. On his return to SHAEF from Gotha he
wired Washington and London urging that editors and legislators be sent
immediately to Germany to see the horror camps at first hand so that
the evidence could be "placed before the American and British publics
in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt."

But before Eisenhower could press on to end the war, he had to
consolidate his farflung forces. On the night of the fourteenth, from
his office in Reims, Eisenhower cabled Washington of his future
plans.

Having successfully completed his thrust in the center, Eisenhower
said, he was confronted by two main tasks: "the further subdivision of
the enemy's remaining forces; and the capture of those areas where he
might form a last stand effectively." Those latter places, Eisenhower
thought, would be Norway and the National Redoubt of Bavaria. In the
north, he planned to throw Montgomery's forces forward across the Elbe,
to secure Hamburg and drive for Lubeck and Kiel. In the south, he
planned to send General Devers' Sixth Army Group toward the Salzburg
area.

"Operations in the winter," Eisenhower stated, "would be extremely
difficult in the National Redoubt. ... The National Redoubt could
remain in being even after we join the Russians ... so we must move
rapidly before the Germans have the opportunity to thoroughly prepare
its defenses with men and material."

As for the German capital, Eisenhower thought it would also be "most
desirable to make a thrust to Berlin as the enemy may group forces
around his capital and, in any event, its fall would greatly affect the
morale of the enemy and that of our own peoples." But, said the
Supreme Commander, that operation "must take a low priority in point of
time unless operations to clear our flanks proceed with unexpected
rapidity."

In brief, then, his plan was: (1) "to hold a firm front in the central
area on the Elbe"; (2) to begin operations toward Lubeck and Denmark;
and (3) to initiate a powerful thrust" to meet Soviet troops in the
Danube valley and break up the National Redoubt. "Since the thrust on
Berlin must await the outcome of the first three above," Eisenhower
said, "I do not include it as a part of my plan."

On the Elbe, all through the night of the fourteenth, men of the
Rag-Tag Circus and the 2nd Armored moved across the 83rd's bridges at
Barby. Although a second bridge had been built near the first, the
movement across remained slow. General White's armored column,
however, planned to begin the Berlin drive again the moment it
reassembled on the western bank. Among the troops of the 83rd the
story was going the rounds that Colonel Crabill had offered to lend the
2nd Armored a large, newly confiscated red bus, capable of holding
fifty soldiers, which he had liberated in Barby. The 83rd had every
reason to feel triumphant. Already its patrols were north of the town
of Zerbst, less than forty-eight miles from Berlin.

Early Sunday morning, April 15, the Ninth Army commander, General
Simpson, got a call from General Bradley. Simpson was to fly
immediately to the Twelfth Army Group headquarters at Wiesbaden. "I've
something very important to tell you," Bradley said, "and I don't want
to say it on the phone."

Bradley was waiting for his commander at the airfield. "We shook
hands," Simpson recalled, "and there and then he told me the news. Brad
said, "You must stop on the Elbe. You are not to advance any farther
in the direction of Berlin. I'm sorry, Simp, but there it is.""

"Where in the hell did you get this?" Simpson demanded.

"From Ike," Bradley said.

Simpson was so stunned he could not "even remember half of the things
Brad said from then on. All I remember is that I was heartbroken and I
got back on the plane in a kind of a daze. All I could think of was,
How am I going to tell my staff, my corps commanders and my troops?
Above all, how am I going to tell my troops?"

From his headquarters Simpson passed the word along to his corps
commanders; then he left immediately for the Elbe. General Hinds
encountered Simpson at the 2nd's headquarters and seeing him became
worried. "I thought," Hinds recalled, "that maybe the old man didn't
like the way we were crossing the river. He asked how I was getting
along." Hinds answered, "I guess we're all right now, General. We had
two good withdrawals. There was no excitement and no panic and our
Barby crossings are going good."

"Fine," said Simpson. "Keep some of your men on the east bank if you
want to. But they're not to go any farther." He looked at Hinds.
"Sid," he said, "this is as far as we're going." Hinds was shocked
into insubordination. "No, sir," he said promptly. "That's not right.
We're going to Berlin." Simpson seemed to struggle to control his
emotions. There was a moment of uneasy silence. Then

Simpson said in a flat, dead voice, "We're not going to Berlin, Sid.
This is the end of the war for us."

Between Barleben and Magdeburg where elements of the 30th Division
troops were still advancing toward the river, the news spread quickly.
Men gathered in groups, gesturing and talking both angrily and
excitedly. P.f.c. Alexander Korolevich of the 120th Regiment, Company
D, took no part in the conversation. He wasn't sure if he was sad or
happy, but he simply sat down and cried. * * *

Heinrici recognized all the signs. At one part of the front the
Russians had laid down a short artillery barrage; in another section
they had launched a small attack. These were feints and Heinrici knew
it. He had learned all the Russian ruses years before. These small
actions were the prelude to the main attack. Now, his main concern was
how soon he should order his men back to the second line of defense.

While he was pondering the question, Reichsminister Albert Speer, the
Armament and Production Chief, arrived. This was one day Heinrici did
not want visitors--especially someone as nervous and obviously harassed
as Speer. In the confines of Heinrici's office, Speer explained the
nature of his visit. He wanted the General's support. Heinrici must
not follow Hitler's "scorched-earth" orders to destroy German industry,
power plants, bridges and the like. "Why," Speer asked, "should
everything be destroyed with Germany even now defeated? The German
people must survive."

Heinrici heard him out. He agreed that the Hitler order was "vicious,"
he told Speer, and he would do everything in his power to help. "But,"
cautioned Heinrici, "all I can do right now is to try and fight this
battle as well as I can."

Suddenly Speer pulled a pistol out of his pocket. "The only way to
stop Hitler," he said suddenly, "is with something like this."

Heinrici looked at the gun, his eyebrows raised.

"Well," he said coldly, "I must tell you that I was not born to
murder."

Speer paced the office. He seemed not even to have heard Heinrici. "It
is absolutely impossible to make it clear to Hitler that he should give
up," he said. "I have tried three times, in October, 1944, in January
and in March of this year. Hitler's reply to me on the last occasion
was this: "If a soldier had talked to me this way I would consider he
had lost his nerve and I would order him shot." Then he said, "In this
serious crisis leaders must not lose their nerves. If they do they
should be done away with." It is impossible to persuade him that
everything is lost. Impossible."

Speer put the pistol back in his pocket. "It would be impossible to
kill him anyway," he said in a calmer voice. He did not tell Heinrici
that for months he had been thinking of assassinating Hitler and his
entire court. He had even thought up a scheme to introduce gas into
the ventilating system of the Fuhrerbunker, but it had proved
impossible: a twelve-foot-high chimney had been built around the air
intake pipe. Now Speer said: "I could kill him if I thought I could
help the German people, but I can't." He looked at Heinrici. "Hitler
has always believed in me," he said. Then he added, "Anyway it would
somehow be indecent."

Heinrici did not like the tone of the conversation. He was also
worried about Speer's manner and inconsistencies. If it ever became
known that Speer had talked to him this way, everyone at his
headquarters would probably be shot. Heinrici deftly brought the
conversation back to the original subject, the protection of Germany
from the scorched-earth policy. "All I can do," the Vistula commander
reiterated, "is to perform my duty as a soldier as well as I can. The
rest lies in the hands of God. I will assure you of this. Berlin will
not become a Stalingrad. I will not let that happen."

The fighting in Stalingrad had been street by street, block by block.
Heinrici had no intention of letting his troops fall back to

Berlin under Russian pressure and there fight a similar kind of battle.
As for Hitler's instructions to destroy vital installations, throughout
his army group area Heinrici had already privately countermanded that
order. He told Speer that he expected the Berlin Commandant, General
Reymann, momentarily. He had invited Reymann, Heinrici said, to
discuss these very matters and to explain personally why it was
impossible to take the Berlin garrison under the Vistula command. A
few moments later Reymann arrived. With him was Heinrici's Chief of
Operations, Colonel Eismann. Speer remained throughout the military
conference.

Heinrici told Reymann, as Eismann was later to note, "not to depend on
the Vistula Army Group for support." Reymann looked as though his last
hope was gone. "I do not know, then," he said, "how I can defend
Berlin." Heinrici expressed the hope that his forces could bypass
Berlin. "Of course," he added, "I may be ordered to send units into
Berlin, but you should not depend on it."

Reymann told Heinrici that he had received orders from Hitler to
destroy bridges and certain buildings in the city. Heinrici replied
angrily, "Any demolition of bridges or anything else in Berlin will
merely paralyze the city. If by any chance I am ordered to include
Berlin in my command I will forbid such demolitions."

Speer added his weight to the discussion, begging Reymann not to carry
out the orders. In such a case, he said, most of the city would be cut
off from water and electric supplies. As Eismann recalled Speer's
words, he said, "If you destroy these supply lines, the city will be
paralyzed for at least a year. It will lead to epidemic and hunger for
millions. It's your duty to prevent this catastrophe! It's your
responsibility not to carry out these orders!"

The atmosphere, as Eismann remembered, was charged with tension. "A
hard struggle was going on within Reymann," he said. "Finally he
answered in a hoarse voice that he had done his duty as an officer in
an honorable manner; his son had fallen at the front; his home and
possessions were gone; all he had left was his honor. He reminded us
of what had happened to the officer who failed to blow up the Remagen
bridge: he had been executed like

a common criminal. The same, Reymann thought, would happen to him if
he did not carry out his orders."

Both Heinrici and Speer tried to dissuade him, but they could not
change his mind. At last Reymann took his leave. Shortly thereafter
Speer drove away, too. Finally Heinrici was alone--to concentrate on
the one thing uppermost in his mind: the timing of the Russian
attack.

The latest batch of intelligence reports had arrived at the
headquarters and they seemed to point to an immediate assault. General
Reinhard Gehlen, OKH Chief of Intelligence, had even included the most
recent prisoner interrogations. One report told of a Red Army soldier
from the 49th Rifle Division who "stated that the major offensive
operation will begin in about five to ten days." There was talk, the
prisoner had said, "among Soviet soldiers that Russia will not allow
the U.s. and England to claim the conquest of Berlin." A second report
was similar and contained even more speculation. A prisoner of the
79th Corps taken earlier in the day near Kustrin said that when the
attack began, its main purpose would be "to get to Berlin ahead of the
Americans." According to the soldier, "brushes were expected with the
Americans" who would be "covered "by mistake" with artillery fire so
that they will feel the force of Russian artillery." * * *

In Moscow on this same day, Sunday, April 15, Ambassador Averell
Harriman met with Stalin to discuss the war in the Far East. Prior to
the meeting, General Deane of the U.s. Military Mission had drawn
Harriman's attention to German radio reports which stated that the
Russians were expected to attack Berlin at any moment. Harriman, as
the conference with Stalin ended, casually brought up the matter. Was
it true, he asked, that the Red Army was about to renew its offensive
on Berlin? The Marshal's answer, as General Deane was to cable
Washington that evening, was: Stalin said there was indeed going to be
an offensive and that he did not know if it would be successful.
However the main blow of this attack would be aimed toward Dresden, not
Berlin, as he had already told Eisenhower." * * *

All through the remainder of the afternoon, Heinrici went over
intelligence reports and talked with his staff and army officers on the
telephone. Then, a little after 8 P.m., he made a decision. He had
analyzed all the reports from the field; he had assessed and evaluated
every nuance of his old enemy's moves. Now, as he walked the length of
his office, hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed in
concentration, he paused; to an intently watching aide "it was as
though he had suddenly sniffed the very air." He turned to his staff.
"I believe," he said quietly, "the attack will take place in the early
hours, tomorrow." Beckoning to his Chief of Staff, he issued a
one-line order to General Busse, commanding the German Ninth Army. It
read: "Move back and take up positions on the second line of defense."
The time was now 8:45 P.m. In exactly seven hours and fifteen minutes,
on Monday, April 16, the Giftzwerg would begin to fight Germany's last
battle.

Part Five THE BATTLE

Along the first Belorussian Front, in the deep darkness of the forests,
there was complete silence. Beneath the pines and camouflage netting
the guns were lined up for mile after mile and stepped back caliber by
caliber. The mortars were in front. Behind them were tanks, their
long rifles elevated. Next came self-propelled guns and, following
these, batteries of light and heavy artillery. Along the rear were
four hundred Katushkas--multi-barreled rocket launchers capable of
firing sixteen projectiles simultaneously. And massed in the Kustrin
bridgehead on the Oder's western bank were the searchlights. Everywhere
now in these last few minutes before the attack the men of Marshal
Georgi Zhukov's armies waited for zero hour--4 A.m.

Captain Sergei Golbov's mouth was dry. With each passing moment it
seemed to him that the stillness was becoming more intense. He was
with troops north of Kustrin on the eastern bank of the Oder, at a
point where the flooded river was almost five hundred yards wide.
Around him, he would later relate, were "swarms of assault troops,
lines of tanks, platoons of engineers with sections of pontoon bridges
and rubber boats. Everywhere the bank of the river was jammed with men
and equipment and yet there was complete silence." Golbov could sense
"the soldiers almost trembling with excitement--like horses trembling
before the hunt." He kept telling himself that "somehow I had to
survive this day, for

there was so much I had to write." Over and over he kept repeating,
"This is no time to die."

In the center, troops were jammed into the bridgehead on the river's
western bank. This key lodgment--it was now thirty miles long and ten
miles deep--which the Russians had wrested from General Busse in late
March, was to be the springboard for Zhukov's drive on Berlin. From
here the men of the crack Eighth Guards Army would launch the assault.
Once they seized the critical Seelow Heights directly ahead and
slightly to the west, the armor would follow. Guards Lieutenant
Vladimir Rozanov, 21-year-old leader of an artillery reconnaissance
section, stood on the west bank near the Red Army girls who would
operate the searchlights. Rozanov was sure that the lights would drive
the Germans mad; he could hardly wait for the girls to switch them
on.

In one respect, however, Rozanov was unusually concerned about the
forthcoming attack. His father was with Marshal Koniev's forces to the
south. The young officer was angry with his father; the older man had
not written the family in two years. Nevertheless, he had high hopes
that they might meet in Berlin--and perhaps go home together after the
battle. Although he was fed up with the war, Rozanov was glad to be on
hand for the last great assault. But the waiting was almost
unbearable.

Farther along the bridgehead, Gun Crew Chief Sergeant Nikolai Svishchev
stood by his battery. A veteran of many artillery barrages, he knew
what to expect. At the moment the firing began, he had warned his
crew, "roar at the top of your voices to equalize the pressure, for the
noise will be terrific." Now, gun lanyard in hand, Svishchev awaited
the signal to open fire.

South of Kustrin, in the bridgehead around Frankfurt, Sergeant Nikolai
Novikov of a rifle regiment was reading the slogans scrawled on the
sides of nearby tanks. "Moscow to Berlin," read one. Another said:
"50 kilometers to the lair of the Fascist Beast." Novikov was in a
frenzy of excitement. His enthusiasm had been whetted by a
morale-building speech given by one of the regiment's political
officers. The impassioned and optimistic pep talk

had so stirred Novikov that he had promptly signed an application to
join the Communist Party. * * Many soldiers joined the Party on the
Oder, for reasons which were not always political. Unlike American or
British forces, the Red Army had no system of registration of
identification discs or "dog tags"; families of Red Army men killed or
wounded in action were rarely officially informed. But if a Communist
soldier became a casualty, the Party notified his family or next of
kin.

In a bunker built into a hill overlooking the Kustrin bridgehead,
Marshal Zhukov stood gazing impassively into the darkness. With him
was Colonel General Chuikov, the defender of Stalingrad and commander
of the spearhead Eighth Guards Army. Ever since Stalingrad, Chuikov
had suffered from eczema. The rash had particularly affected his
hands; to protect them, he wore black gloves. Now, as he waited
impatiently for the offensive to begin, he nervously rubbed one gloved
hand against the other. "Vasili Ivanovich," Zhukov suddenly asked,
"are all your battalions in position?" Chuikov's answer was quick and
assured. "For the last forty-eight hours, Comrade Marshal," he said.
"Everything you have ordered, I have done."

Zhukov looked at his watch. Settling himself at the bunker's aperture,
he tilted back his cap, rested both elbows on the concrete ledge and
carefully adjusted his field glasses. Chuikov turned up the collar of
his greatcoat and, pulling the flaps of his fur cap over his ears to
muffle the sound of the bombardment, took up a position beside Zhukov
and sighted his own binoculars. Staff officers clustered behind them
or left the bunker to watch from the hill outside. Now everyone gazed
silently into the darkness. Zhukov glanced once more at his watch and
again looked through the glasses. The seconds ticked away. Then
Zhukov said quietly, "Now, Comrades. Now." It was 4 A.m.

Three red flares soared up suddenly into the night sky. For one
interminable moment the lights hung in midair, bathing the Oder in a
garish crimson. Then, in the Kustrin bridgehead Zhukov's phalanx of
searchlights flashed on. With blinding intensity the 140 huge
anti-aircraft lights, supplemented by the lights of tanks, trucks and
other vehicles, focused directly ahead on the German

positions. The dazzling glare reminded war correspondent Lieutenant
Colonel Pavel Troyanoskii of "a thousand suns joined together." Colonel
General Mikhail Katukov, Commander of the First Guards Tank Army, was
taken completely by surprise. "Where the hell did we get all the
searchlights?" he asked Lieutenant General N. N. Popiel of Zhukov's
staff. "The devil only knows," Popiel replied, "but I think they
stripped the entire Moscow anti-aircraft defense zone." For just a
moment there was silence as the searchlights illuminated the area ahead
of Kustrin. Then three green flares soared into the heavens and
Zhukov's guns spoke.

With an earsplitting, earthshaking roar the front erupted in flame. In
a bombardment that had never been equaled on the eastern front, more
than twenty thousand guns of all calibers poured a storm of fire onto
the German positions. Pinned in the merciless glare of the
searchlights, the German countryside beyond the western Kustrin
bridgehead seemed to disappear before a rolling wall of bursting
shells. Whole villages disintegrated. Earth, concrete, steel, parts
of trees spewed into the air and in the distance forests began to
blaze. To the north and south of Kustrin thousands of gun flashes
stabbed the darkness. Pinpoints of light, like deadly firecrackers,
winked in rapid succession as tons of shells slammed into targets. The
hurricane of explosives was so intense that an atmospheric disturbance
was created. Years later German survivors would vividly recall the
strange hot wind that suddenly sprang up and howled through the
forests, bending saplings and whipping dust and debris into the air.
And men on both sides of the line would never forget the violent
thunder of the guns. They created a concussion so tremendous that
troops and equipment alike shook uncontrollably from the shock.

The storm of sound was stupefying. At Sergeant Svishchev's battery the
gunners yelled at the tops of their voices but the concussion of their
guns was so great that blood ran from their ears. The most fearsome
sound of all came from the Katushkas or "Stalin Organs," as the troops
called them. The rocket projectiles

whooshed off the launchers in fiery batches and screeched through the
night, leaving long white trails behind them. The terrifying noise
they made reminded Captain Golbov of huge blocks of steel grinding
together. Despite the terrible racket, Golbov found the bombardment
exhilarating. All around him he saw "troops cheering as though they
were fighting the Germans hand-to-hand and everywhere men were firing
whatever weapon they had even though they could see no target." As he
watched the guns belching flames, he remembered some words his
grandmother had once uttered about the end of the world, "when the
earth would burn and the bad ones would be devoured by fire."

Amid the tumult of the bombardment Zhukov's troops began to move out.
Chuikov's well-disciplined Eighth Guards led the way from the Kustrin
bridgehead on the Oder's western banks. As they surged forward, the
artillery barrage remained always in front of them, carpeting the area
ahead. North and south of Kustrin, where assault crossings had to be
made across the flooded river, engineers were in the water laying
pontoons and fitting together prefabricated sections of wooden bridges.
All around them waves of shock troops were crossing the Oder without
waiting for the bridges, tossing and bobbing in a variety of assault
boats.

In the ranks were troops who had stood at Leningrad, Smolensk,
Stalingrad and before Moscow, men who had fought their way across half
a continent to reach the Oder. There were soldiers who had seen their
villages and towns obliterated by German guns, their crops burned,
their families slain by German soldiers. For all these the assault had
special meaning. They had lived for this moment of revenge. The
Germans had left them nothing at home to return to; they had nowhere to
go but forward. Now they attacked savagely. Equally avid were the
thousands of recently released prisoners of war: reinforcements had
been so urgently needed by the Red Army that the newly freed
prisoners--tattered, emaciated, many still showing the effects of
brutal treatment--had been given arms. Now they, too, rushed forward,
seeking a terrible vengeance.

Cheering and yelling like wild tribesmen, the Russian troops advanced
on the Oder's eastern banks. Caught up in a kind of frenzy, they found
it impossible to wait for boats or bridges. Golbov watched in
amazement as soldiers dived in, fully equipped, and began swimming the
river. Others floated across clutching empty gasoline cans, planks,
blocks of wood, tree trunks-- anything that would float. It was a
fantastic spectacle. It reminded Golbov of "a huge army of ants,
floating across the water on leaves and twigs. The Oder was swarming
with boatloads of men, rafts full of supplies, log floats supporting
guns. Everywhere were the bobbing heads of men as they floated or swam
across." At one point Golbov saw his friend, the regimental doctor, "a
huge man named Nicolaieff, running down the river bank dragging behind
him a ridiculously small boat." Golbov knew that Nicolaieff was
"supposed to stay behind the lines at the field hospital, but there he
was in this tiny boat, rowing like hell." It seemed to Golbov that no
power on earth could stop this onslaught.

Abruptly the bombardment ended, leaving a stunning silence. The
cannonade had lasted a full thirty-five minutes. In Zhukov's command
bunker, staff officers suddenly became aware that the phones were
ringing. How long the sound had been going on, no one could say; all
were suffering from some degree of deafness. Officers began taking the
calls. Chuikov's commanders were making their first reports. "So far
everything is going as planned," Chuikov told Zhukov. A few moments
later he had even better news. "The first objectives have been taken,"
he announced proudly. Zhukov, a tense figure since the opening of the
attack, became suddenly expansive. As General Popiel recalled, Zhukov
"seized Chuikov by the hand and said, "Excellent! Excellent! Very
good indeed!"" But pleased as he was, Zhukov had too much experience to
underestimate his enemy. The stocky Marshal would feel better when the
vital Seelow Heights near Kustrin was seized. Then, he felt, success
would be assured. Still, that should not take long. Apart from
everything else, Russian bombers were now airborne and beginning to
pound the areas ahead. More than 6,500 planes were

scheduled to support his and Koniev's attacks. But Zhukov believed
that the artillery bombardment alone must certainly have demoralized
the enemy. * * *

In the operations room of his advance command post in the Schonewalde
forest north of Berlin, Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici paced the
floor, hands behind his back. Around him telephones shrilled and staff
officers took reports, carefully transcribing the information onto the
war map lying on a table in the center of the room. Every now and then
Heinrici paused in his pacing to glance at the map or to read a message
handed him by Colonel Eismann. He was not surprised by the way the
Russian offensive was being carried out, although most of his officers
were awestruck by the massiveness of the bombardment. General Busse of
the Ninth Army described it as "the worst ever," and Colonel Eismann,
basing his opinion on early reports, believed the "annihilating fire
had practically destroyed our front-line fortifications."

Under darkness on the night of the fifteenth, the majority of the
Vistula troops had swung back to the second line of positions as
Heinrici had ordered. But there had been difficulties. Some officers
had bitterly resented giving up their front-line positions. It looked
to them as though they were retreating. Several commanders had
complained to Heinrici. "Has it ever occurred to you," he inquired
icily of one protesting general, "that nothing will be left of your
nice front-line fortifications or of your men after the Russians open
fire? If you're in a steel mill you don't put your head under a trip
hammer, do you? You pull it back in time. That is precisely what
we're doing."

The difficult stratagem had taken most of the night. From all reports,
in the areas where troops had been withdrawn the maneuver had proved
successful. Now in the second line the men waited for the advancing
Russians. On one part of the front Heinrici had

the advantage: west of Kustrin was the sandy, horseshoe-shaped plateau
of the Seelow Heights. It ranged in height from one hundred to two
hundred feet and it overlooked a spongy valley known, for the streams
veining through it, as the Oder Bruch. The Russians would have to
cross this valley in their advance from the Oder, and all along the
crescent-shaped plateau Heinrici's guns were trained on the lines of
approach.

Here, on these critical heights, lay Heinrici's only chance to blunt
Zhukov's attack, and Heinrici knew Zhukov would undoubtedly have given
this fact great consideration in his planning. The Russian would need
to seize the plateau quickly, before Heinrici's guns could shell the
Red Army's Oder bridges and create havoc among the troops advancing
across the low-lying, marshy terrain. Obviously Zhukov had hoped to
knock out almost all resistance with his massive bombardment, making
the capture of the Heights that much easier. But because of the German
withdrawal from the front lines, the majority of Heinrici's army and
artillery were intact and in position. The defensive plan had gone
well. There was only one thing wrong: Heinrici did not have enough of
either men or guns. Without Luftwaffe help in the air and without
reserves in men, guns, panzers, ammunition or fuel, Heinrici could only
delay Zhukov's offensive. Eventually his enemy must break through.

Along the entire front Heinrici's two armies had fewer than 700
operable tanks and self-propelled guns. These had been dispersed among
the various units of the Ninth and Third armies. The heaviest
division, the 25th Panzer, had seventy-nine such vehicles; the smallest
unit had two. In contrast to Zhukov's artillery strength--20,000 guns
of all calibers * --Heinrici had 744 guns, plus 600 anti-aircraft guns
being used as artillery. Ammunition and fuel supplies * Zhukov told
General Eisenhower and the press in June, 1945, that he opened the
attack with 22,000 guns of all calibers. His original plan called for
11,000 cannon, but whether he had acquired that many by the time of the
attack is not known. While Russian accounts give a variety of figures,
ranging from twenty to forty thousand guns, most military experts
believe that Zhukov had at least seven to eight thousand field pieces
and probably the same again in guns of lesser caliber. were equally
critical. Apart from shells stored at battery sites, the Ninth Army
had reserves sufficient for only two and a half days.

Heinrici could not hold the Russians for any appreciable length of
time--nor could he counterattack, because he had dispersed what little
armor and artillery there was to give each unit a fighting chance. He
could do only what he had known was possible all along: he could buy a
little time. As Heinrici looked at the map and the thick red arrows
marking the Russian advances, he thought bitterly of the panzers that
had been transferred to Field Marshal Schorner's southern army group to
stem the Russian attack which Hitler and Schorner had insisted was
heading for Prague. Those armored units would have given Heinrici
seven panzer divisions in all. "If I had them," he told Eismann
sourly, "the Russians wouldn't be having much fun now."

Bad as matters were, the crisis still lay ahead. Zhukov's attack was
only the beginning. There were Rokossovskii's forces in the north to
reckon with. How soon would they attack Von Manteuffel's Third Army?
And when would Koniev launch his offensive in the south?

Heinrici did not have to wait long to learn of Koniev's intentions. The
Russians' second blow came along the extreme southern edge of the line
held by Busse's army, and into Field Marshal Ferdinand Schorner's
sector. At exactly 6 A.m. the troops of Koniev's First Ukrainian Front
attacked across the river Neisse. * * *

In tight V-formations, the Red fighter planes banked and headed for the
river through bursts of bright pink flak and streams of red, yellow and
white tracer bullets. Then with dense clouds of white smoke pouring
out behind them they screamed up the valley, less than fifty feet above
the metallic-gray river Neisse. Again and again the fighters bored
through the anti-aircraft barrage, laying a thick, fluffy blanket of
smoke that obscured not only the river but the eastern and western
banks as well. Marshal Ivan

Koniev, watching from an observation post on a high point directly
above the river, was well pleased. Turning to General N. P. Pukhov,
whose Thirteenth Army would soon join in the assault, Koniev said, "Our
neighbors use searchlights, for they want more light. I tell you,
Nikolai Pavlovich, we need more darkness."

Although Koniev was attacking on a front of about fifty miles, he had
ordered the smoke screen laid over a distance almost four times as long
to confuse the Germans. Now watching through artillery glasses mounted
on a tripod, Koniev noted that the smoke was holding. The wind
velocity had been figured at only half a meter a second--no more than a
mile an hour. With satisfaction he announced that the screen was "the
right thickness and density, and exactly the correct height." Then, as
the planes continued to lay smoke, Koniev's massed artillery opened up
with a tremendous roar.

His bombardment was as merciless as Zhukov's had been, but Koniev was
using his artillery strength more selectively. Prior to the attack
Koniev's artillery commanders, knowing their observers would be blinded
by the smoke screen, had pinpointed every known defense line and enemy
strongpoint on topographical maps and had then zeroed in their guns.
Besides hitting these pre-selected targets, the First Ukrainian guns
were deliberately blasting out avenues running west from the Neisse for
the assault troops and tanks that would follow. Rolling barrages, like
fiery scythes, methodically chopped paths several hundred yards wide
through the German positions. As they did, forests began blazing as
they had in Zhukov's area, and seas of flame stretched away from the
river for miles ahead.

Koniev was leaving nothing to chance. He was driven not only by his
ambition to reach Berlin before Zhukov but by another even more
important reason: the unexpected speed of the Western Allies, who were
now only forty miles from the city. Koniev thought one or both of two
things might happen: Eisenhower's forces might try to reach the capital
before the Red Army--and the Germans probably would attempt to make a
separate peace with the Western Allies. As Koniev was later to put it:
"We did not want to

believe that our Allies would enter into any sort of separate agreement
with the Germans. However in the atmosphere ... which abounded in both
fact and rumor, we as military men had no right to exclude the
possibility. ... This gave the Berlin operation special urgency. We
had to consider the possibility that the Fascist leaders would prefer
to surrender Berlin to the Americans and British rather than to us. The
Germans would open the way for them, but with us they would fight
fiercely and to the last soldier." * In his planning Koniev had
"soberly considered the prospect." In order to beat either Marshal
Zhukov or the Western Allies to Berlin, Koniev knew that he had to
overwhelm the enemy within the first few hours of his attack. Unlike
Zhukov, Koniev had no infantry-filled bridgehead on the Neisse's
western bank. He had to hurdle the river in force, and it was a
formidable obstacle. * Koniev was echoing Stalin's own suspicions. In
early April Stalin had cabled Roosevelt that an agreement had been
reached at Berne with the Germans whereby they would "open the front to
the Anglo-American troops and let them move east, while the British and
Americans have promised, in exchange, to ease the armistice terms for
the Germans. ... The Germans on the Western Front have in fact ceased
the war ... [while] ... they continue the war against Russia, the Ally
of Britain and the U.s.a. ..." Roosevelt answered that he was
astonished at the allegation "that I have entered into an agreement
with the enemy without first obtaining your full agreement. ...
Frankly I cannot avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your
informers, whoever they are, for such vile misrepresentations of my
actions or those of my trusted subordinates." Stalin and his marshals
remained unconvinced. Even today, the latest U.s.s.r. Ministry of
Defense history, The Great Fatherland War of the Soviet Union 1941-45,
says that "to avoid permitting the Red Army from seizing Berlin ... the
Hitlerites ... were prepared to surrender the capital to the Americans
or to the English. Our allies also counted on seizing ... [it] ... in
spite of existing agreements ... consigning Berlin to the operational
zone of the Soviet Army. ..." The fact is, of course, that no such
agreement ever existed.

The Neisse was an icy, swift-flowing river. In places it was 150 yards
wide, and although the eastern banks were relatively flat, the western
shore sloped up steeply. The Germans had taken full advantage of these
natural defenses; they were now entrenched in a number of heavily
fortified concrete bunkers overlooking the river and its eastern
approaches. Koniev had to overwhelm the enemy quickly if he was to
avoid being pinned down by fire from these bunkers. His plan called
for armored divisions to be thrown into the attack the moment footholds
were secured on the western banks. But that meant building bridges
across the river even before the protective smoke screen dissipated
and, if the bombardment had not knocked out the enemy, it might have to
be done under heavy fire. He intended to make his main crossing in the
area of Buchholz and Triebel. But there would also be others. Koniev,
convinced that he must achieve the complete and rapid smothering of the
enemy, had ordered an enormous river assault, with crossings at more
than 150 places. At each site, his engineers had vowed to have bridges
or ferries available in one to three hours.

At 6:55 A.m. the second stage of Koniev's plan unfolded. All along the
eastern bank first-wave troops emerged from the forests under cover of
the continuing artillery fire and, in a miscellaneous collection of
boats, headed across the Neisse. Immediately behind them came a second
wave of men and behind them a third. In the Buchholz-Triebel area,
shock troops of Pukhov's Thirteenth Army swarmed across the choppy
waters, dragging sections of pontoon bridges. Leading the way was the
6th Guards Rifle Division, commanded by Major General Georgi Ivanov, a
tough 44-year-old Cossack. Ivanov had put everything that would float
into the water. Besides pontoons, he used empty aviation fuel tanks
and large German fertilizer bins which he had ordered welded to make
them airtight; these were manhandled into position as bridging
supports. In the water were hundreds of engineers; as fast as
prefabricated wooden bridge sections were pushed off the eastern bank
the engineers bolted them together. Scores of men stood neck-deep in
the icy Neisse holding heavy bridging beams above their heads, while
others drove wooden supports into the river bed. Special teams of
engineers hauled cables across the Neisse in boats equipped with
hand-operated winches. On the western bank they set up ferry heads and
then manually wound in the cables, pulling floats with guns and tanks
across the river. At some places engineers got guns across without the
ferry-floats: they simply dragged them along the river bed on the end
of the cables. The operations were moving steadily forward despite
enemy fire nearly everywhere along the line. To protect the crossings
Ivanov used shore batteries which fired directly above the heads of his
troops and into the German defenses on the western bank. He

supported these batteries with a hail of fire from no less than two
hundred machine guns, "just to keep their heads down."

At 7:15 A.m. Koniev got good news: the first bridgehead had been seized
on the western bank. One hour later he learned that tanks and
self-propelled guns had been ferried across and were already engaging
the enemy. By 8:35, A.m., at the end of a two hour and thirty-five
minute bombardment, Koniev knew with absolute certainty that his troops
were well established west of the Neisse. They had so far secured 133
of the 150 crossings. Units of Pukhov's Thirteenth Army, together with
forces of the Third Guards Tank Army, had already punched through the
center in the assault area at Triebel, and by all accounts the enemy in
front of them seemed to have cracked. The armor of the Fourth Guards
Tank Army was now moving across in the same sector, and to the south
men of the Fifth Guards Army were over the river. It looked to Koniev
as if his tanks might achieve a breakthrough at any moment.

Once that was accomplished, Koniev planned to dash for the cities of
Spremberg and Cottbus. Past Cottbus he would head out on the roadnet
for Lubben. That area held special interest for Koniev. It was the
terminal point of the boundary line laid down by Stalin, separating
Zhukov's First Belorussian Front and his own First Ukrainian Front. If
Koniev got there fast enough, he planned to ask Stalin immediately for
permission to swing north and head for Berlin. Confident of the
go-ahead, Koniev had already sent written orders to Colonel General
Pavel Semenovich Rybalko of the Third Guards Tank Army "to be prepared
to break into Berlin from the south with a tank corps reinforced with a
rifle division from the Third Guards Army." It looked to Koniev as
though he might just beat Zhukov to the city. He was so engrossed in
the progress of his attack that he did not realize how lucky he was to
be alive. In the first moments of the assault a sniper's bullet had
drilled a neat hole through the tripod of his artillery glasses, inches
away from Koniev's head. * * Koniev did not learn about the incident
until twenty years later when he read of it in General Pukhov's
memoirs.

* * *

On the eastern fringes of Berlin the hammering of the guns, less than
thirty-five miles away, was like the sullen thunder of a far-off storm.
In small villages and towns nearer the Oder there were some strange
concussion effects. In the police station at Mahlsdorf books fell off
their shelves and telephones rang for no reason. Lights dimmed and
flickered in many areas. In Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten an air raid siren
suddenly went berserk and no one could switch it off. Pictures fell
from walls, windows and mirrors shattered. A cross hurtled down from
the steeple of a church in Muncheberg, and everywhere dogs began to
howl.

In the eastern districts of Berlin the muffled sound echoed and
re-echoed in the skeletal, fire-blackened ruins. The fragrant smell of
burning pines wafted across the fringes of Kopenick. Along the edges
of Weissensee and Lichtenberg a sudden wind caused curtains to whip and
flap with ghostly abandon, and in Erkner some inhabitants of air raid
shelters were jolted out of sleep, not by noise but by a sickening
vibration of the earth.

Many Berliners knew the sound for what it was. In the Mohrings' Pankow
apartment where the Weltlingers were hiding, Siegmund, who had been a
World War I artilleryman, instantly recognized the far-off sound as
that of a massive artillery bombardment; he woke his wife Margarete to
tell her about it. At least one Berliner claimed to have actually seen
Zhukov's rolling barrage. Shortly after 4 A.m. 16-year-old Horst
Romling climbed a seven-story tower on the western edge of Weissensee
and stared eastward through field glasses. Horst quickly informed the
neighbors he had seen the "flash and glare of Russian guns," but few
believed him--he was considered a wild, fanciful boy at best.

The sound did not penetrate the central districts, although here and
there some Berliners claimed they heard something unusual. Most
thought it was probably anti-aircraft fire, or the detonation of
unexploded bombs dropped during the night's two hour and

twenty-five minute air raid, or perhaps the sudden collapse of a
bomb-blasted building.

One small group of civilians learned almost immediately that the
Russian offensive had started. They were the operators in the main
post office telephone building on Winterfeldtstrasse in Schoneberg.
Within minutes of the opening barrage, long-distance and trunk-line
sections of the exchange were jammed with calls. Nervous Nazi Party
officials in areas near the Oder and Neisse called administrative heads
in Berlin. Fire brigade chiefs asked whether they should try to put
out the forest fires or move their equipment out of the areas. Police
chiefs phoned their superiors and everybody tried to get through to
relatives. As operators were to recall years later, nearly all those
completing calls began their conversations with two words: "It's
begun!" Switchboard supervisor Elisabeth Milbrand, a devout Catholic,
took out her beads and silently said the Rosary.

By 8 A.m. on April 16, most of Berlin had heard on the radio that
"heavy Russian attacks continue on the Oder front." The news
announcements were guarded, but the average Berliner needed no
elaboration. By word of mouth or from relatives outside the city,
people learned that the moment they had dreaded had finally arrived.
Curiously, at this time the man in the street knew more than Hitler. In
the Fuhrerbunker the leader was still sleeping. He had retired a
little before 3 A.m. and General Burgdorf, his adjutant, had given
strict instructions that the Fuhrer was not to be awakened.

The strange subterranean world of the bunker had an almost cheerful
look this morning: there were vases of bright tulips in the little
anteroom, the corridor lounge and the small conference room. Earlier
one of the Reichskanzlei gardeners had cut them from the few flowerbeds
that still remained in the bomb-pitted gardens. It had seemed a good
idea to Burgdorf because Eva Braun loved tulips. The Reich's unwed
first lady had arrived the night before. With her she had brought some
presents for the Fuhrer from old friends in Munich. One was a book
sent by Baroness Baldur von

Schirach, wife of the former Reich Youth Leader. The novel's hero bore
every misfortune without losing hope. "Optimism," he was made to say
"is a mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going
badly." The Baroness had thought the book a most appropriate choice.
It was Voltaire's Candide. * * *

At first Zhukov did not believe the news. Standing in the Kustrin
command post surrounded by his staff, he stared incredulously at
Chuikov and then spluttered in rage. "What the hell do you mean--your
troops are pinned down?" he yelled at the Eighth Guards Army
commander, and this time there was no friendly use of the General's
given names. Chuikov had seen Zhukov angry before and he remained
perfectly calm. "Comrade Marshal," he said, "whether we are pinned
down temporarily or not, the offensive will most certainly succeed. But
resistance has stiffened for the moment and is holding us up."

Heavy artillery fire from the Seelow Heights had hit the troops and
supporting tank units as they advanced, Chuikov explained. Also the
terrain through which they were moving was proving extremely difficult
for armor. In the marshes and irrigation canals of the Oder Bruch
self-propelled guns and tanks were thrashing and churning helplessly. A
number of mired tanks had been hit, one after another, and had gone up
in flames. Up to now, said Chuikov, his Eighth Guards had advanced
only fifteen hundred yards. Zhukov, according to General Popiel, gave
vent to his fury with "a stream of extremely forceful expressions."

What had happened to the supposedly irresistible offensive? There were
a variety of opinions, as General Popiel quickly discovered when he
checked Zhukov's senior officers. General Mikhail Shalin, a corps
commander of the First Guards Army, told Popiel he was certain "the
Germans had been pulled out of the front lines before the attack and
placed in a second defensive line along the Seelow Heights. Therefore,"
said Shalin, "the majority were

of our shells fell in open country." General Vasili Kuznetsov,
commander of the Third Shock Army, was bitterly critical of the First
Belorussian plan. "As usual," he told Popiel, "we stuck to the book
and by now the Germans know our methods. They pulled back their troops
a good eight kilometers. Our artillery fire hit everything but the
enemy." General Andreya Getman, a ranking tank expert and corps
commander in Katukov's First Guards Tank Army was both critical and
angry, particularly about the searchlights. "They didn't blind the
main forces of the enemy," he said. "But I'll tell you what they did
do--they absolutely spotlighted our tanks and infantry for the German
gunners."

Zhukov had never expected the attack to be easy, but although he had
anticipated heavy casualties he had deemed it virtually impossible for
the Germans to halt his advance. As he later put it, he had counted on
"a rapid reduction of the enemy's defenses"; instead, he added in a
massive understatement, "the blow by the front's first echelon had
proved to be inadequate." He had no doubt that by sheer weight of
armies alone he could overwhelm the enemy, but he was bothered by "the
danger which now arose that the offensive might be slowed." Zhukov
decided to change his tactics. Quickly he rapped out a series of
orders. His bomber fleets were to concentrate on the enemy gun
positions; at the same time, artillery was to begin pounding the
Heights. Then Zhukov took one more step. Although originally his tank
armies were not to be committed until after the Seelow Heights had been
seized, Zhukov now decided to throw them in immediately. General
Katukov, Commander of the First Guards Tank Army, who happened to be in
the bunker, got his orders direct. Zhukov left no doubt as to what he
wanted: the Heights was to be captured, whatever the cost. Zhukov was
going to bludgeon the enemy into submission and, if necessary, bulldoze
his way to Berlin. Then, followed by his staff, the stocky Marshal
left the command post, his anger over the delay still evident. Zhukov
had no intention of being slowed up by a few well-placed enemy
guns--nor did he intend to be beaten into Berlin by Koniev. On his way
out of the bunker, as offi-

cers stood aside respectfully to let him pass, he suddenly turned to
Katukov and snapped, "Well! Get moving!" * * *

The Fuhrer's Order of the Day reached General Theodor Busse's Ninth
Army headquarters a little after midday. It was dated April 15 but
apparently had been held until Hitler's staff was certain that the main
Russian offensive had begun. Commanders were ordered to disseminate
the paper at once, down to company level, but on no account was it to
be published in the public newspapers.

"Soldiers of the German Eastern Front," it read. "For the last time
the deadly Jewish Bolshevist enemy is going over to the attack with his
hordes. He is trying to smash Germany and exterminate our people. You
soldiers in the East already know the fate which threatens ... German
women, girls and children. The old men and children will be murdered;
women and girls will be reduced to army camp whores. The remainder
will go to Siberia.

"We have expected this attack, and since January everything has been
done to build up a strong front. The enemy is confronted by a
tremendous amount of artillery. Losses in our infantry have been
filled in with countless new units. Alarm units, newly organized units
and the Volkssturm are reinforcing our front. This time the Bolshevist
will experience the old fate of Asia: he must and shall fall before the
capital city of the German Reich.

"Whoever does not do his duty at this moment is a traitor to our
people. Any regiment or division which leaves its position acts so
disgracefully that it must be ashamed before the women and children who
are withstanding the bomb terror in our cities. Take heed especially
of the few traitorous officers and soldiers who, in order to save their
miserable lives, will fight against us for Russian pay, perhaps even
wearing German uniforms. Anyone ordering you to retreat, unless you
know him well, is to be taken prisoner at once and if necessary killed
on the spot, no matter what his rank may be. If every soldier at the
Eastern Front does his duty

in the coming days and weeks, the last onrush of Asia will be broken,
exactly as in the end the penetration of our enemy in the West will
fail in spite of everything.

"Berlin will remain German, Vienna * will be German once more and
Europe will never be Russian. * Vienna was captured by the Red Army on
April 13.

"Swear a solemn oath to defend, not the empty concept of a Fatherland
but your homes, your wives, your children and thus, our future.

"In these hours the whole German people look to you, my warriors in the
East, and only hope that thanks to your constancy, your fanaticism,
your weapons, and your leadership the Bolshevist onrush will be
smothered in its own blood. At the moment when fate has removed the
greatest war criminal * [Hitler was obviously referring to President
Roosevelt.] of all time from the earth, the turning point of this war
will be decided."

Busse did not need an Order of the Day to tell him that the Russians
had to be stopped. Months ago he had told Hitler that if the Russians
broke through the Oder line Berlin and the remainder of Germany would
fall. But he was angry to read the talk of a strong front; of an enemy
confronted by "a tremendous amount of artillery" and "countless new
units." Bold words would not stop the Russians. Hitler's Order of the
Day was, for the most part, fiction. On one point, however, it was
crystal clear: Hitler intended German soldiers to fight to the
death--against both West and East.

Busse had harbored a secret hope, so guarded that he had never voiced
it aloud to anyone except Heinrici and certain of his closest
commanders. He had wanted to stand fast on the Oder long enough for
the Americans to arrive. As he put it to Heinrici, "If we can hold
until the Americans get here we will have fulfilled our mission before
our people, our country and history." Heinrici had responded tartly.
"Don't you know about Eclipse?" he asked. Busse had never heard of
it. Heinrici told him of the captured plan showing the Allied lines of
demarcation and projected zones of occupation. "I doubt," said
Heinrici, "that the Americans will even cross the Elbe." Despite all,
Busse had continued for a time to cling to the idea. Now he finally
abandoned it. Even if Eisenhower's forces were to cross the Elbe and
drive for Berlin, it was probably too late. Among other things, Hitler
was obviously prepared to contest bitterly every mile of an American
advance; he was making no distinction between the democracies and the
Communists. Germany's position was hopeless; so, Busse believed, was
the Ninth Army's, but as long as Hitler continued the war and refused
to capitulate Busse could only try to hold the Russians, as he was
doing, up to the very last moment.

The Ninth had taken the full brunt of the Russian attacks; it could not
take much more. Yet Busse's forces were still holding nearly
everywhere. At Frankfurt, they had actually thrown the Russians back.
The guns and troops on the Seelow Heights, though mercilessly bombed
and shelled, had doggedly persisted, and had pinned the enemy down. But
although Busse's men were stopping the Russians nearly everywhere, it
was at terrible cost. In some areas officers reported that they were
outnumbered at least ten to one. "They come at us in hordes, in wave
after wave, without regard to loss of life," one division commander had
telephoned. "We fire our machine guns, often at point-blank range,
until they turn red hot. My men are fighting until they run out of
ammunition. Then they are simply wiped out or completely overrun. How
long this can continue I don't know." Nearly every message was alike.
There were frantic calls for reinforcements: guns, tanks and, above
all, ammunition and gasoline were needed. One item was irreplaceable:
troops. Busse's few reserves were either already committed or were
moving up. Most of them were being hurriedly thrown into battle in the
crucial Seelow region.

Holding this central area of the Ninth Army was the 56th Panzer Corps.
It bore a famous name, but that was about all. The 56th had been
shattered and reconstituted many times. Now, once more, it was
undergoing a rebuilding process. About all that remained of the
original corps was a group of key staff members.

But despite all, the corps had one definite asset--a highly
experienced, much decorated commander, Lieutenant General Karl
Weidling, a rough-spoken officer known to his friends as "Smasher
Karl."

Busse had placed the miscellaneous units in the vital Seelow region
under Weidling's command. At the moment Weidling had three divisions:
Goering's skittish and unreliable 9th Parachute, the badly mauled 20th
Panzer Grenadiers and the understrength Muncheberg Division. Supported
by a corps on either side--the 101/ on the left, the 11th SS on the
right--Weidling's 56th Corps was opposing the Russians' main thrust on
Berlin. Although Weidling had arrived only a few days before and was
fighting in unfamiliar terrain with weak and often inexperienced
forces, the 60-year-old veteran had so far repulsed all attacks.

But he badly needed the remainder of his units and as yet, on this
April 16 morning, they had not arrived. Weidling's problems were only
beginning. Before the week was out he would be facing crises far
greater than any he had ever encountered on a battlefield. Smasher
Karl was shortly destined to be condemned to death both by Busse and
Hitler--and then, in a strange quirk of fate, in Germany's last hours
he would become the defender of Berlin.

On the western front General Walther Wenck, commander of the Twelfth
Army, was both pleased and puzzled. The success of his young and
inexperienced units in throwing back the enemy and wiping out their
bridgehead south of Magdeburg was a greater achievement than Wenck had
dared hope for. The bridgehead at Barby, however, was a different
story. Wenck's men had tried everything they could think of to destroy
the Barby bridges, from floating mines down the river to using frogmen.
Some of the last remaining Luftwaffe planes in the area had also made a
bombing attack; that, too, had failed. The bridgehead was well
established

by now and American troops and armor had been pouring across the river
for more than forty-eight hours. What puzzled Wenck was that, although
the Americans were strengthening and consolidating their hold on the
Elbe's eastern bank, they were making no effort whatever to drive
toward Berlin. Wenck could not understand it.

The furious assault by the Americans between April 12 and 15 had given
Wenck every reason to believe he would be forced to fight a bloody
defensive battle in the west. Yet now the Americans gave every
appearance of having come to a halt. "Frankly, I'm astonished," Wenck
told Colonel Reichhelm, his Chief of Staff. "Maybe they've outrun
their supplies and need to reorganize." Whatever the reason, Wenck was
glad of the respite. His forces were widely scattered and in many
places were still being organized. He needed all the time he could get
to whip his army into shape and to reinforce his troops with whatever
armor he could lay his hands on. Some tanks and self-propelled guns
had arrived, but Wenck had little hope of getting more. Nor did he
have any illusions that he would receive the full complement of
divisions he had been promised. Wenck suspected that there was simply
nothing left to send him. One thing was certain: the Twelfth Army,
spread thinly along the Elbe before Berlin, could not hold any sort of
onslaught for long. "If the Americans launch a major attack they'll
crack our positions with ease," he told Reichhelm. "After that, what's
to stop them? There's nothing between here and Berlin." * * *

The news was like a blow to Carl Wiberg. He stared incredulously at
his boss, Hennings Jessen-Schmidt, the head of the OSS Berlin unit.
"Are you sure?" Wiberg asked. "Are you quite sure?"

Jessen-Schmidt nodded. "That's the information I've received," he
said, "and I've no reason to doubt it." The two men looked at each
other in silence. For months they had been sustained by the conviction
that Eisenhower's forces would capture Berlin. But the

news that had brought Jessen-Schmidt across town to Wiberg's apartment
had dashed all their hopes. A network courier had just arrived from
Sweden with a message of prime importance from London. It warned them
not to expect the Anglo-Americans.

In all the long months that he had led his double life in Berlin,
Wiberg had considered almost every possibility but this. Even now he
could not quite believe it. The change in plan would not affect their
jobs, at least for the time being: they were to continue sending out
information, and Wiberg, in his role as "storekeeper," would still
distribute supplies to operatives when and if the order came. But as
far as Wiberg knew, few, if any, of the trained specialists and
saboteurs who were supposed to use the equipment had arrived in the
city. Jessen-Schmidt had been waiting for weeks for just one man--a
radio technician who was to assemble the transmitter and receiver that
still lay hidden beneath a pile of coal in Wiberg's cellar. With
sinking heart Wiberg wondered if anybody would come now or if the
equipment could ever be put to use. That cache of supplies was
dangerous. The Germans might yet find it. Worse, the Russians might.
Wiberg hoped London had told the Eastern allies about the little group
of spies in Berlin. If not, the large store of military material was
going to be difficult to explain.

Wiberg also had a personal reason to be anxious. After his long years
as a widower he had recently met a young woman named Inge Muller. They
planned to marry when the war ended. Now Wiberg wondered how safe Inge
would be if the Russians arrived. It seemed to him that the little
group of conspirators was doomed in the fiery cauldron that Berlin
would soon become. He tried to put aside his fears but he had never
felt such dejection. They had been abandoned. * * *

The commander of the First Guards Tank Army, Colonel General Mikhail
Katukov, slammed down the field phone and, whirling around, violently
kicked the door of his headquarters. He had

just received a report from the officer leading the 65th Guards Tank
Brigade on the Seelow Heights front. The Russians were getting
nowhere. "We are standing on the heels of the infantry," General Ivan
Yushchuk had told Katukov. "We are stuck on our noses!"

His anger somewhat appeased, Katukov turned from the door to face his
staff. Hands on his hips, he shook his head in disbelief. "Those
Hitlerite devils!" he said. "I have never seen such resistance in the
whole course of the war." Then Katukov announced that he was going to
find out for himself "what the hell is holding things up." No matter
what, he must take the Heights by morning, so Zhukov's breakout could
begin.

To the south, Marshal Koniev's forces had smashed through the German
defenses on an eighteen-mile front west of the Neisse. His troops were
pouring across the river. They now had in operation twenty
tank-carrying bridges (some capable of supporting sixty tons),
twenty-one ferry and troop-crossing sites and seventeen light assault
bridges. With "Stormovik" dive bombers blasting a path, Koniev's
tankers had driven more than ten miles through the enemy defenses in
less than eight hours of battle. Now Koniev was just twenty-one miles
from Lubben, the point at which Stalin had terminated the boundary
between his forces and Zhukov's. There, Koniev's tankers would veer
northwest and head for the main road leading through Zossen and into
Berlin. On the maps this route was labeled Reichsstrasse 96--the
highway that Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt had called "Der Weg zur
Ewigkeit"--the road to eternity. * * *

It almost seemed as if the authorities were not prepared to face the
fact that Berlin was endangered. Although the Red Army was now barely
thirty-two miles away, no alarm had been given and no official
announcement had been made. Berliners knew very well

that the Russians had attacked. The muffled thunder of artillery had
been the first clue; now from refugees, by telephone, by word of mouth,
the news had spread. But it was still fragmentary and contradictory,
and in the absence of any real information there was wild speculation
and rumor. Some people said the Russians were fewer than ten miles
away, others heard that they were already in the eastern suburbs. No
one knew precisely what the situation was, but most Berliners now
believed that the city's days were numbered, that its death throes had
begun.

And yet, astonishingly, people still went about their business. They
were nervous, and it was increasingly difficult to preserve the outward
appearance of normality, but everyone tried.

At every stop, milkman Richard Poganowska was besieged with questions.
His customers seemed to expect him to know more than anyone else. The
usually cheerful Poganowska could not provide any answers. He was as
fearful as those he served. On the Kreuznacherstrasse the portrait of
Adolf Hitler still hung in the living room of the Nazi postal official,
but even that no longer seemed reassuring to Poganowska.

He was happy to see his young friend, 13-year-old Dodo Marquardt,
waiting patiently for him on a corner in Friedenau. She often rode
with him for a block or two, and she helped immeasurably to keep up his
morale. Now, sitting next to his dog Poldi, Dodo chattered happily.
But Poganowska found it difficult to listen to her this morning. Some
newly painted slogans had appeared on the half-demolished walls in the
area, and he eyed them without enthusiasm. "Berlin will remain
German," one announced. Others read: "Victory or Slavery," "Vienna
Will Be German Again," and "Who Believes in Hitler Believes in
Victory." At Dodo's usual stop, Poganowska lifted her down from the
wagon. With a little smile she said, "Until tomorrow, Mr. Milkman."
Poganowska replied, "Until tomorrow, Dodo." As he climbed back on the
wagon Richard Poganowska wondered just how many tomrrows there were
left.

Pastor Arthur Leckscheidt, presiding over a burial service in the

cemetery near his wrecked church, did not think the suffering that lay
ahead could be any worse than it was right now. It seemed an eternity
since his beautiful Melanchthon Church had been destroyed. During the
past few weeks so many had been killed in the raids that his parish
clerk no longer registered the deaths. Leckscheidt stood at the edge
of a mass grave in which lay the bodies of forty victims killed during
the night's air raids. Only a few persons were present as he said the
funeral service. As he finished, most of them moved away but one young
girl remained behind. She told Leckscheidt that her brother was one of
the dead. Then tearfully she said: "He belonged to the SS. He was not
a member of the church." She hesitated. "Will you pray for him?" she
asked. Leckscheidt nodded. Much as he disagreed with the Nazis and
the SS, in death, he told her, he "could deny no man the words of God."
Bowing his head he said, "Lord, do not hide your face from me ... my
days have gone like a shadow ... my life is like nothing before you ...
my time lies in your hands. ... On a wall nearby, during the night
somebody had scrawled the words "Germany is Victorious."

Mother Superior Cunegundes longed for the end of it all. Even though
Haus Dahlem, the convent and maternity home run by the Mission Sisters
of the Sacred Heart in Wilmersdorf, was almost a little island in its
religious seclusion, the short, round, energetic Mother Superior was
not without outside sources of information. The Dahlem Press Club, in
the villa of Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop directly across
from the convent, had closed down the night before. From newspaper
friends who had come to say good-bye she had heard that the end was
near and that the battle for the city would take place within a few
days. The resolute Mother Superior hoped the fighting would not be
prolonged. What with an allied plane crashing in her orchard and the
roof of her convent being blown off a few days before, the danger was
coming much too close. It was long past time for this foolish and
terrible war to end. In the meantime, she had more than two hundred
people to care for: 107 newborn babies

(of whom 91 were illegitimate), 32 mothers, and 60 nuns and lay
sisters.

As though the Sisters did not have enough to do, Mother Superior had
piled even more work upon them. With the janitor's help, some of the
nuns had painted huge white circles surmounted by bright red crosses on
the sides of the building and on the new tar paper roof which covered
the entire second floor (the third floor had disappeared with the
roof). Realist that she was, Mother Superior had set her student
nurses to converting the dining hall and recreation rooms into
first-aid stations. The nurses' dining hall had become the chapel,
illuminated by candles night and day; the basement was now partitioned
into nurseries and a series of smaller rooms for confinement cases.
Mother Superior had even seen to it that all windows in this area were
cemented, bricked up and sandbagged from the outside. She was as ready
for what might come as she would ever be. But there was one thing she
simply did not know how to prepare for: she shared the anxiety of their
confessor and mentor, Father Bernhard Happich, that the women might be
molested by the occupying forces. Father Happich had arranged to speak
to the Sisters about this matter on April 23. Now, in the light of the
news her journalist friends had brought, Mother Superior Cunegundes
hoped they hadn't waited too long. It looked to her as if the Russians
might arrive at any time.

As people waited for news, they hid their anxiety in grim humor. A new
greeting swept the city. Total strangers shook hands and urged each
other "Blieb ubrig"--Survive. Many Berliners were burlesquing
Goebbels' broadcast of ten days before. Insisting that Germany's
fortune would undergo a sudden change, he had said: "The Fuhrer knows
the exact hour of its arrival. Destiny has sent us this man so that
we, in this time of great external and internal stress, shall testify
to the miracle." Now those words were being repeated everywhere,
usually in a derisive imitation of the Propaganda Minister's
spellbinding style. One other saying was going the rounds. "We've got
nothing at all to worry about," people solemnly assured one another.
"Grofaz will save us." Grofaz had long been the Berliner's nickname
for Hitler. It was the abbreviation of "Grosster Feldherr aller
Zeiten"--the greatest general of all time.

Even with the city almost under the Russian guns, the vast majority of
Berlin's industrial concerns were still producing. Shells and
ammunition were being rushed to the front as fast as factories in
Spandau could make them. Electrical equipment was being turned out at
the Siemens plant in Siemensstadt; vast quantities of ballbearings and
machine tools were being made in factories at Marienfelde, Weissensee
and Erkner; gun barrels and mounts rolled out of the Rheinmetall-Borsig
factory at Tegel; tanks, lorries and self-propelled guns rumbled off
the assembly lines at Alkett in Ruhleben; and as fast as tanks were
repaired at the Krupp und Druckenmuller plant in Tempelhof, workers
delivered them directly to the armies. So great was the urgency that
the management had even asked foreign workers to volunteer as emergency
drivers. French forced laborer Jacques Delaunay was one who flatly
refused. "You were very wise," a tank driver who returned to the plant
that afternoon told Delaunay. "Do you know where we took those tanks?
Right up to the front lines."

Not only industrial plants but services and utilities continued to
function. At the main meteorological station in Potsdam, weathermen
noted routinely that the noontime temperature was 65 degrees with an
expected drop to about 40 by nightfall. The sky was clear with
occasional scattered clouds and there was a mild southwest wind which
would swing southeast by evening. A change was predicted for the
seventeenth --overcast skies with the possibility of thundershowers.

Partly because of the fine weather, streets were crowded. Housewives,
not knowing what the future might hold, shopped for unrationed
commodities wherever they could. Every shop seemed to have its own
long queue. In Kopenick, Robert and Hanna Schultze spent three hours
in a line for bread. Who knew when they would be able to buy more?
Like thousands of other

Berliners, the Schultzes had tried to find some way to forget their
worries. On this day, braving the now capricious transportation
system, they changed buses and trams six times to get to their
Charlottenburg destination--a movie theater. It was their third such
venture in a week. In various districts they had seen pictures called
Ein Mann wie Maximilian (a Man Like Maximilian); Engel mit dem
Saitenspiel (angel with a Lyre) and Die Grosse Nummer (the Big Number).
Die Grosse Nummer was a circus picture, and Robert thought it the best
of the week's film fare by far.

French POW Raymond Legathiere saw that there was so much confusion at
the military headquarters on Bendlerstrasse that his presence would not
be missed and he calmly took the afternoon off. These days, the guards
did not seem to care anyway. Legathiere had managed to wrangle a
ticket for a movie theater near the Potsdamer Platz that was reserved
for German soldiers. Now he relaxed in the darkness as the picture,
specially reissued by Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, came on. It was a
historical full-color epic called Kolberg, and it dealt with Graf von
Gneisenau's heroic defense of the Pomeranian city during the Napoleonic
Wars. During the movie Legathiere was as fascinated by the behavior of
the soldiers around him as he was by the picture. They were
enthralled. Cheering, clapping, exclaiming to one another, they were
almost transported by this saga of one of Germany's legendary military
figures. It occured to Legathere that before too long some of these
soldiers might get a chance to become heroes themselves.

The signal came without warning. In his office in the Philharmonie,
the complex of buildings that housed the concert halls and practice
studios of the Berlin Philharmonic, Dr. Gerhart von Westermann, the
orchestra's manager, received a message from

Reichsminister Albert Speer: the Philharmonic would play its last
concert that evening.

Von Westermann had always known that the news would come like
this--suddenly and within just a few hours of a concert. Speer's
instructions were that all the musicians who would leave were to do so
immediately after the performance. They were to end their journey in
the Kulmbach-Bayreuth region, about 240 miles southwest of Berlin--the
same area to which Speer had earlier sent most of the Philharmonic's
prized instruments. According to the Reichsminister, the Americans
would overrun the Bayreuth area in a matter of hours.

There was just one trouble. Speer's original design had been to spirit
away the entire Philharmonic; this plan had collapsed. To begin with,
fearing that the plan might reach Goebbels' ear, Von Westermann had
sounded out only certain trusted members of the orchestra. To his
amazement the great majority, because of family, sentimental or other
ties with the city, were reluctant to leave. When the plan was put to
a vote it was turned down. Gerhard Taschner, the young violin virtuoso
and concertmaster, was asked to inform Speer. The Reichsminister had
taken the news philosophically, but the offer was left open: Speer's
own car and driver would be waiting on the final night to take those
who wanted to go. Taschner, his wife and two children, along with the
daughter of fellow musician Georg Diburtz, were definitely leaving. But
they were the only ones. Even Von Westermann, in view of the vote,
felt that he must stay.

But if there were any wavering Philharmonic members, they would have to
be told that this was their last chance. There was still a possibility
that those who were in on the secret might change their minds and
decide to leave. So, with the evening's performance barely three hours
away, Von Westermann revised the program. It was too late even to
schedule a rehearsal, and the musicians who knew nothing of the
evacuation plan would be startled by the change. But for the knowing
and unknowing alike, the music Speer had picked as the signal marking
the last concert

would have a dark and moving significance. The scores that Von
Westermann now ordered placed on the musicians' stands bore the label,
Die Gotterdammerung--Wagner's climactic and tragic music of the death
of the gods.

By now it was fast becoming clear to all Berliners that "Fortress
Berlin" was a myth; even the least knowledgeable could see how
ill-prepared the city was to withstand an attack. The main roads and
highways were still open. There were few guns or armored vehicles in
evidence, and apart from aged Home Guardsmen, some in uniform, others
with only armbands sewn on the sleeves of their jackets, there were
virtually no troops to be seen.

To be sure, there were roadblocks and crude defense barriers
everywhere. In side streets, courtyards, around government buildings
and in parks, large stockpiles of fortification materials had been
collected. There were occasional rolls of barbed wire, masses of steel
anti-tank obstacles and old trucks and disused tram cars filled with
stones. These were to be used to block main thoroughfares when the
city came under attack. But would barricades such as these stop the
Russians? "It will take the Reds at least two hours and fifteen
minutes to break through," a current joke went: "Two hours laughing
their heads off and fifteen minutes smashing the barricades." Defense
lines--trenches, anti-tank ditches, barricades and gun positions--were
apparent only on the outskirts, and even these, as Berliners could
plainly see, were far from completion.

One man, driving out of the city this day, found the defense
preparations "utterly futile, ridiculous!" He was an expert on
fortifications. General Max Pemsel had been the Chief of Staff of the
Seventh Army defending Normandy on D-Day. Because his forces had
failed to stop the invasion, Pemsel, along with others, had been in
disgrace with Hitler ever since. He had been put in command of an
obscure division fighting in the north and had resigned himself to this
"dead command."

Then on April 2 a surprised Pemsel had received instructions from
General Jodl to fly to Berlin. Bad weather had delayed his planes
everywhere and he had not reached the capital until April 12. Jodl had
admonished him for his tardiness. "You know, Pemsel," he said, "you
were supposed to be appointed commander of Berlin, but you've arrived
too late." As he heard these words, Pemsel said later, "a large stone
fell off my heart."

Now, instead of taking over the Berlin command, Pemsel was en route to
the Italian front: Jodl had appointed him Chief of Staff to Marshal
Rodolfo Graziani's Italian Army. Pemsel found the situation almost
dreamlike. He considered it doubtful that Graziani's force still
existed; nevertheless, Jodl had briefed him on his duties as thoroughly
as though the war were proving a brilliant success and were destined to
go on for years. "Your job," he cautioned Pemsel, "will be very
difficult because it demands not only great military knowledge but
diplomatic skills." Unrealistic as Jodl's outlook was, Pemsel was
pleased to be going to Italy. On the way he would pass through
Bavaria, and for the first time in two years he would see his wife and
family. By the time he reached Italy, perhaps the war would be over.

As Pemsel left Berlin, he felt that fate and the weather had been
exceptionally kind to him. It was clear that the city could not be
defended. Passing a hodgepodge of tree trunks, steel spikes and
cone-shaped concrete blocks that would be used as anti-tank obstacles,
he shook his head in disbelief. Still farther along, the car sped by
elderly Home Guardsmen slowly digging trenches. As he left the city
behind, Pemsel later recounted, "I thanked God for allowing this bitter
chalice to pass from me."

At his headquarters on the Hohenzollerndamm, the city's Commandant,
General Reymann, stood before a huge wall map of Berlin looking at the
defense lines marked on it and wondering, as he afterward put it, "what
in God's name I was supposed to do." Reymann had hardly slept for the
past three days and he

was bone-weary. Since morning he had taken countless telephone calls,
attended several meetings, visited sections of the perimeter defense
lines and issued a batch of orders-- most of which, he privately
believed, stood little chance of being completed before the Russians
reached the city.

Earlier in the day, Goebbels, Berlin's Gauleiter and self-appointed
defender, had held his usual weekly "war council." To Reymann, these
meetings seemed almost farcical now. In the afternoon he described
this latest one to his Chief of Staff, Colonel Refior. "He told me the
same old thing. He said, "If the battle for Berlin was on right now
you would have at your disposal all sorts of tanks and field pieces of
different calibers, several thousand light and heavy machine guns, and
several hundred mortars, in addition to large quantities of
corresponding ammunition."" Reymann paused. "According to Goebbels,"
he told Refior, "we'll get everything we want --if Berlin is
encircled."

Then Goebbels had suddenly switched the conversation. "Once the battle
for Berlin begins, where do you intend to set up your headquarters?" he
had asked. Goebbels himself planned to go to the Zoo Bunker. He
suggested that Reymann operate from there also. Reymann thought he saw
immediately what the Gauleiter had in mind; Goebbels intended to keep
Reymann and the defense of Berlin completely under his own thumb. As
tactfully as he could, Reymann had sidestepped the offer. "I would
like to refrain from that," he said, "since both the military and
political could be eliminated at the same time by a freakish hit."
Goebbels had dropped the subject but Reymann noticed an immediate
coolness in the Gauleiter's manner. Goebbels was well aware that it
would be almost impossible for the massive Zoo Bunker to be destroyed
by even a score of large bombs.

Reymann knew the Reichsminister would not forget that his invitation
had been turned down. But at the moment, while he was faced with the
almost hopeless task of trying to prepare a defense for the city, the
last person Reymann wanted in close proximity was Goebbels. He placed
no stock in either the Gauleiter's pronouncements or in his promises.
Only a few days earlier, again discussing supplies, Goebbels had said
that the Berlin defense would be bolstered with "at least one hundred
tanks." Reymann had asked for a written list of the promised supplies.
When he finally got the information, the hundred tanks turned out to
be "twenty-five tanks completed, seventy-five now being built." No
matter how many there were, Reymann knew he would see no part of any of
them. The Oder front would have priority on all such vital weapons.

In Reymann's view, only one Cabinet member really understood what lay
ahead for Berlin. That was Reichsminister Albert Speer, and even he
had his blind spot. Immediately after the Gauleiter's war council,
Reymann had been ordered to present himself before Speer. At the
former French Embassy on the Pariser Platz where Hitler's wartime
production chief now had his offices, the usually urbane Speer was
furious. Pointing to the great highway running across a map of the
city, Speer demanded to know what Reymann "was up to on the East-West
Axis." Reymann looked at him in amazement. "I'm building a landing
strip between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column," he
answered. "Why?"

"Why?" exploded Speer. "Why? You are chopping down my lamp
posts--that's why! And you cannot do it!"

Reymann had thought Speer knew all about the plan. In the battles for
Breslau and Konigsberg, the Russians had grabbed the airports on the
outskirts of both cities almost immediately. To circumvent a similar
situation in Berlin should one occur, it had been decided to build a
landing strip almost in the very center of the government district,
along the East-West Axis where it passed through the Tiergarten. "For
this reason," Reymann said later, "in agreement with the Luftwaffe, the
strip between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column was chosen.
It meant that the ornamental bronze lamp posts would have to be
removed, and the trees, for a depth of 30 meters [about 100 feet] on
either side, would have to come down. When I mentioned this plan to

Hitler, he said that the lamp posts could go but the trees had to
remain. I did my utmost to persuade him to change his mind, but Hitler
would not hear of the trees being cut. Even though I explained that if
the trees were not taken out only small planes would be able to take
off and land, he still would not change his mind. What his reasons
were I do not know, but the removal of a few trees would hardly have
ruined the city's beauty at this late date." And now Speer was
objecting to the removal of the lamp posts.

Reymann explained the situation to Speer, pointing out in conclusion
that he had the Fuhrer's permission to remove the posts. But that made
no impression on the Reichsminister. "You cannot take down those lamp
posts," he insisted. "I object to that." Then Speer added, "You do
not seem to realize that I am responsible for the reconstruction of
Berlin."

In vain Reymann tried to persuade Speer to change his mind. "It is
vital that we keep an airstrip open, especially in this location," he
argued. The Reichsminister would hear no more. As Reymann remembered
it, "the conversation ended with Speer expressing his intention of
taking up the whole matter with the Fuhrer. Meanwhile his lamp posts
remained, and the work on the strip was to stop--even though the
Russians were advancing steadily toward us."

Just before the meeting ended, Speer brought up the matter of Berlin's
bridges. Again he argued with Reymann, as he had at Heinrici's
headquarters the day before, that to destroy the bridges was futile,
that water, power and gas mains were carried over many of them and that
the "severing of these lifelines would paralyze large parts of the city
and make my task of reconstruction that much more difficult." Reymann
knew that Speer's influence with Hitler was great: he had already
received a direct order from the Reichskanzlei to strike off his list
several of those bridges slated for destruction. Now, Speer was
insisting that they all be saved. Reymann turned as stubborn as Speer.
Unless counter orders were received from Hitler, Reymann intended to
carry out his instructions and blow up the remaining bridges. He did

not like the idea any more than Speer, but he had no intention of
risking his own life and career to save them.

From Speer's office Reymann made a quick visit to one of the defense
sectors on Berlin's outskirts. Each of these inspections only served
to deepen Reymann's conviction that Berlin's defenses were an illusion.
In the strutting, triumphant years, the Nazis had never considered the
possibility that one day a last stand would be made in the capital.
They had built fortifications everywhere else--the Gustav Line in
Italy, the Atlantic Wall along the European coast, the Siegfried Line
at Germany's western borders--but not even a trench had been built
around Berlin. Not even when the Russians drove with titanic force
across eastern Europe and invaded the Fatherland did Hitler and his
military advisors act to fortify the city.

It was only when the Red Army reached the Oder early in 1945 that the
Germans began to strengthen Berlin's defenses. Slowly a few trenches
and anti-tank obstacles appeared on the eastern outskirts of the city.
Then, incredibly, when the Red Army pulled up before the frozen river
to wait for the spring thaws, the preparations for the capital's
protection stopped, too. Not until March was the defense of Berlin
given any serious consideration--and by then it was too late. There
were no longer the forces, the supplies, or the equipment to set up the
necessary fortifications.

In two grueling months of frenetic activity, a makeshift series of
defense lines had been thrown together. Sometime in late February, an
"obstacle belt" had been hurriedly established in a broken ring twenty
to thirty miles outside the capital. This line ran through wooded
areas and marshes and along lakes, rivers and canals, mostly north,
south and east of the city. Before Reymann took command, orders had
been issued declaring the obstacle areas "fortified places." In
keeping with Hitler's fortress mania, local Home Guard contingents were
told that they would be expected to stand fast at these locations and
fight to the last man. To turn such localities into a solid zone of
resistance, staggering quantities of men, guns and materials would have
been

needed, for the obstacle belt girdled nearly 150 miles of territory
around Greater Berlin.

As Reymann soon discovered, except where the obstacle zone came under
direct army supervision, the so-called fortified places were often
nothing more than a few trenches covering main roads, some scattered
gun positions, or a few concrete-reinforced structures hurriedly
converted into blockhouses with bricked-up windows and slits for
machine guns. These feeble positions, most of them not even manned,
were marked on Reichskanzlei defense maps as major strongpoints.

The main line of resistance lay in the city itself. Three concentric
rings made up the inner defense pattern. The first, sixty miles in
circumference, ran around the outskirts. In the absence of proper
fortifications, everything and anything had been used to create
barriers: ancient railroad cars and wagons, ruined buildings, massive
concrete-block walls, converted air raid bunkers and, nature's
contribution, Berlin's lakes and rivers. Now, gangs of men were
working night and day to tie these natural and man-made devices into a
continuous defense line and anti-tank barrier. The work was being done
by hand. There was no power equipment. Most heavy earth-moving
machines had long since been sent east to work on the Oder front
fortifications. The use of the few remaining machines was restricted
because of the shortage of fuel--every available gallon had gone to the
panzer divisions.

There were supposed to be 100,000 laborers working on the fortification
rings. In fact there were never more than 30,000. There was even a
shortage of hand tools; appeals through the newspapers for picks and
shovels had brought little results. As Colonel Refior put it, "Berlin
gardeners apparently consider the digging of their potato plots more
important than the digging of tank traps." To Reymann, it was all
futile anyhow. The perimeter ring would never be finished in time. It
was a hopeless job, hopelessly far from completion.

The second or middle ring could be a formidable obstacle, if manned by
veteran troops amply supplied with weapons. It had

a circumference of about twenty-five miles and its barriers had long
been in place. The Berlin railway system had been converted into a
deadly trap. In some places there were deep track cuttings and
sidings, some of them one hundred to two hundred yards wide, which made
perfect anti-tank ditches. From fortified houses overlooking the
tracks, gunners could pick off tanks caught in the gullies. Along
other stretches the line followed the elevated railway (S-Bahn), giving
defenders the advantage of high rampart-like embankments.

If even these defenses gave way, there still remained the third or
inner ring, in the city's center. Called the Citadel, this last-ditch
area lay within the arms of the Landwehr Canal and the Spree River, in
the Mitte district. Nearly all the major buildings of the government
crowded this last island of defense. In great structures linked
together by barricades and concrete block walls, the last defenders
would hold out--in Goering's immense Air Ministry
(reichsluftfahrtministerium), in the huge Bendler Block military
headquarters, and in the empty, echoing hulks of the Reichskanzlei and
the Reichstag.

Radiating out from the Citadel through all three of the defense rings
were eight pie-shaped sectors, each with its own commander. Beginning
with the Weissensee district on the east, the sectors were labeled
clockwise from A through H. The inner ring itself was Z. Supporting the
rings, six formidable bombproof flak towers were spotted about the
city-- at Humboldthain, Friedrichshain, and in the grounds of the
Berlin Zoo.

But many vital links were missing in Festung Berlin. The most crucial
one was manpower. Even under ideal conditions, Reymann believed,
200,000 fully trained and combat-seasoned soldiers would have been
needed to defend the city. Instead, what he had to hold Berlin's 321
square miles, an area almost equal to that of New York City, was a
miscellaneous collection of troops ranging from 15-year-old Hitler
Youths to men in their seventies. He had policemen, engineering units
and flak battery crews, but his only infantry consisted of 60,000
untrained Home Guardsmen.

These tired old men of the Volkssturm now digging trenches or moving
slowly into positions along the approaches to Berlin, would have to
assume the largest burden of the city's defense. The Volkssturm
occupied a kind of nether world among the military. Although they were
expected to fight alongside the Wehrmacht in times of emergency, they
were not considered part of the army. They, like the Hitler Youth,
were the responsibility of the local party officials; Reymann would not
even assume command of their forces until after the battle began. Even
the Volkssturm equipment was the responsibility of the party. The Home
Guardsmen had no vehicles, field kitchens or communications of their
own.

In all, one third of Reymann's men were unarmed. The remainder might
as well have been. "Their weapons," he was to relate, "came from every
country that Germany had fought with or against. Besides our own
issues, there were Italian, Russian, French, Czechoslovakian, Belgian,
Dutch, Norwegian and English guns." There were no less than fifteen
different types of rifles and ten kinds of machine guns. Finding
ammunition for this hodgepodge of arms was almost hopeless. Battalions
equipped with Italian rifles were luckier than most: there was a
maximum of twenty bullets apiece for them. Belgian guns, it was
discovered, would accept a certain type of Czech bullet, but Belgian
ammunition was useless in Czech rifles. There were few Greek arms, but
for some reason there were vast quantities of Greek munitions. So
desperate was the shortage that a way was found to re-machine Greek
bullets so that they could be fired in Italian rifles. But such
frantic improvisations hardly alleviated the overall problem. On this
opening day of the Russian attack, the average ammunition supply of
each Home Guardsman was about five rounds per rifle.

Now, as Reymann toured positions along the eastern outskirts, he felt
certain that the Russians would simply roll over the German positions.
Too many defense necessities were missing. There were almost no mines
available, so the belts of minefields that were

essential to a defensive position hardly existed. One of the most
ancient and effective of all defense items, barbed wire, had become
almost impossible to obtain. Reymann's artillery consisted of some
mobile flak guns, a few tanks dug in up to the turrets so that their
guns covered avenues of an approach, and the massive flak tower guns.
Powerful as they were, these high-angled batteries had limited
usefulness. Because of their fixed positions they could not be
deflected toward the ground to stave off close-range infantry and tank
attacks.

Reymann knew his own situation was hopeless. He was almost equally
pessimistic about the outlook elsewhere. He did not believe that the
Oder front would hold, nor did he expect help from troops falling back
on the city. Colonel Refior had discussed the possibility of obtaining
aid with officers at General Busse's headquarters. He got a blunt
answer: "Don't expect us," said Busse's Chief of Staff, Colonel Artur
Holz. "The Ninth Army stays and will stay on the Oder. If necessary
we will fall there, but we will not retreat."

Reymann kept thinking of an exchange he'd had with a Volkssturm
official in one sector. "What would you do right now," Reymann had
asked, "if you suddenly saw Russian tanks in the far distance? How do
you let us know? Let's assume that tanks are heading this way. Show
me what you would do."

To his amazement the man turned abruptly and ran back to the village
just behind the positions. A few minutes later he returned, breathless
and dejected. "I couldn't get to the telephone," he explained
sheepishly. "I forgot. The post office is closed between one and
two."

As he headed back into the city, Reymann stared unseeing out the car
window. He felt that an awful doom was gathering and that in its
blackness Berlin might disappear forever.

The line was cracking slowly but surely under the massive enemy
pressure. Heinrici had been at the front all day, going

from headquarters to headquarters, visiting field positions, talking to
commanders. He marveled that Busse's soldiers had done so well against
such terrible odds. First the Ninth Army had stood off three days of
heavy preliminary attacks; now, for more than twenty-four hours, they
had been taking the full force of the main Russian offensive. Busse's
troops had fought back ferociously. In the Seelow area alone, they had
knocked out more than 150 tanks and had shot down 132 planes. But they
were weakening.

As he drove in darkness back to his headquarters, Heinrici found
himself slowed by crowds of refugees. He had seen them everywhere this
day--some carrying bundles, some pulling hand carts filled with their
last possessions, some in farm wagons drawn by horses or oxen. In many
places their numbers were posing almost as great a problem to
Heinrici's troops as the Russians.

At his command post, anxious staff officers gathered to hear the
General's firsthand impression of the situation. Gravely Heinrici
summed up what he had seen. "They cannot last much longer," he said.
"The men are so exhausted that their tongues are hanging out. Still,"
he continued, "we are holding. It is something Schorner couldn't do.
That great soldier has not been able to hold Koniev even for one
day."

A short time later, the OKH Chief, General Hans Krebs, rang up. "Well,
we all have good reason to feel satisfied," he told Heinrici smoothly.
Heinrici conceded the point. "Considering the size of the attack we
have not lost much ground," he said. Krebs would have preferred a more
optimistic response, and he said as much, but Heinrici did not make it.
"I have learned," he told Krebs dryly, "never to praise the day until
the twilight comes."

In the darkness, Private Willy Feldheim grasped his bulky Panzerfaust
more firmly. He did not know for certain where he was, but he had
heard that this line of foxholes covering the

three roads in the Klosterdorf area was about eighteen miles from the
front.

A little while ago, waiting for the Russian tanks to come up the road,
Willy had felt a sense of great adventure. He had thought about what
it would be like when he saw the first tank and could finally fire the
anti-tank gun for the first time. The three companies holding the
crossroads had been told to let the tanks get as close as possible
before firing. Willy's instructor had said that a sixty-yard range was
about right. He wondered how soon they would come.

Crouched in the damp foxhole, Willy thought about the days when he was
a bugler. He remembered in particular one brilliant, sunshiny day in
1943 when Hitler spoke in Olympic Stadium and Willy had been among the
massed buglers who had sounded the fanfare at the Fuhrer's entrance. He
would never forget the leader's words to the assembled Hitler Youth:
"You are the guarantee of the future. ..." And the crowds had yelled
"Fuhrer Befiehl! Fuhrer Befiehl!" It had been the most memorable day
of Willy's life. On that afternoon he had known beyond doubt that the
Reich had the best army, the best weapons, the best generals and, above
all, the greatest leader in the world.

The dream was gone in the sudden flash that illuminated the night sky.
Willy peered out toward the front and now he heard again the low
rumbling of the guns he had momentarily forgotten, and he felt the
cold. His stomach began to ache and he wanted to cry. Fifteen-year-old
Willy Feldheim was badly scared, and all the noble aims and the
stirring words could not help him now.

The drum beat was almost imperceptible. Softly the tubas answered. The
muffled drum roll came again. Low and ominously the tubas replied.
Then the massed basses came alive and the awesome grandeur of Die
Gotterdammerung rolled out from the Berlin Philharmonic. The mood in
the darkness of Beethoven Hall seemed as tragic as the music. The only
illumination came from

the lights on the orchestra's music stands. It was cold in the hall
and people were wearing overcoats. Dr. Von Westermann sat in a box
with his wife and brother. Nearby was the sister of the conductor
Robert Heger, with three friends. And in his usual seat in the
orchestra section was Reichsminister Albert Speer.

Immediately after playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Taschner, his
family and the daughter of Georg Diburtz had left the hall. They were
now on their way to safety--but they were the only ones. Speer had
kept his promise. His car was waiting. He had even sent his adjutant
to escort the little group safely to their destination. Now the
architect of Hitler's monstrous war-making industrial machine listened
to the tempest of music as it told of the evildoing of the gods, of
Siegfried on his funeral bed of fire, of Brunnhilde on horseback
ascending the pyre to join him in death. Then, with cymbals crashing
and drums rolling, the orchestra thundered to its climax: the terrible
holocaust that destroyed Valhalla. And as the mournful majestic music
filled the auditorium, those who listened felt a sorrow too deep for
tears. * * There are probably as many accounts of the last concert as
there are survivors of the orchestra. Some tell one story, others
another. There are differences of opinion about the date, the program
and even the performers. Those who knew nothing of Speer's plan refuse
to believe that any such scheme existed. The version which appears
here is based on Dr. Von Westermann's account and records, with
subsidiary information from Gerhard Taschner.

Almost nothing of the once mighty Third Reich remained. Crushed from
both sides, on the map it resembled an hourglass: the North Sea and the
Baltic formed the top, and Bavaria, parts of Czechoslovakia, Austria
and northern Italy--which Germany now occupied--made up the lower half.
Across the narrow neck between these areas, only about ninety miles
separated the Americans and the Russians. Fighting was still heavy in
the north and, to a lesser degree, in the south. In the center General
William Simpson's U.s. Ninth Army was simply holding its positions
along the Elbe, mopping up pockets of resistance bypassed during the
dash for the river and repulsing occasional sharp counterattacks
against its bridgeheads. There was one sore spot for the Ninth:
Magdeburg. Again and again its commander had refused to surrender.
Now Simpson had had enough: he called in bombers and leveled more than
one third of the city. Then he sent in his troops.

On the afternoon of the seventeenth, as units of the 30th Infantry and
2nd Armored divisions began the attack, General Bradley joined Simpson
at his headquarters. The phone rang. Simpson picked it up, listened
for a moment and then, putting his hand over the receiver, said to
Bradley, "It looks as if we may get the bridge in Magdeburg after all.
What'll we do then, Brad?"

Bradley knew only too well what Simpson wanted him to say: that the
Autobahn bridge was the most direct and fastest route to Berlin. But
he shook his head. "Hell's bells," he replied. "We don't want any
more bridgeheads on the Elbe. If you get it you'll have to throw a
battalion across it, I guess. But let's hope the other fellows blow it
up before you're stuck with it."

Bradley's instructions from SHAEF were clear; he could offer Simpson no
hope of moving forward. The orders read: "Take the necessary action to
avoid offensive action in force, including the formation of new
bridgeheads east of the Elbe-Mulde line. ..." Simpson's forces were
to remain as a threat to Berlin, but that was all.

Minutes later a second call settled the issue. As he put down the
phone, Simpson told Bradley: "No need to worry any longer. The Krauts
just blew it up."

The blowing of the bridge brought to an end the dream of "Big Simp"
Simpson, who had wanted to take his mighty Ninth Army into Berlin, the
city which the Supreme Commander had once described as "clearly the
main prize."

* * *

In the hamlets north of Boizenburg on the Elbe, the householders were
startled by a distant wailing. The strange sound grew louder, and soon
an astonishing apparition came in sight. Down the road tramped two
Scottish bagpipers, their pipes skirling. Behind them came Warrant
Officer "Dixie" Deans's POW'S, twelve thousand strong, marching in
columns under a light German guard. The prisoners' uniforms were in
tatters. Their few belongings were bundled and slung on their backs.
They were emaciated, cold and hungry, but their heads were high. The
determined Deans had seen to that. "When you pass through the
villages," he told the men, "spruce up even if it hurts, and show these
bloody supermen exactly who won this war."

Dixie's own transport was an ancient bicycle that threatened to fall
apart at any moment. A patch covered a large swelling on the front
tire. But, bumpy as the ride was, Dixie was thankful for the mobility.
He rode continuously from column to column, watching over his men and
observing the German guards that marched on either side of each column.
Every road was filled with POW'S. There were nearly two thousand to a
column, and although Deans tried resolutely to cover the entire area,
it was an exhausting job. After almost ten days of seemingly aimless
marching, Deans's men were in bad shape. There were a few German
supply trucks in the procession, but for the most part the men were
living off the countryside. The German Commandant, Colonel Ostmann,
appeared almost embarrassed by the meandering march and the shortage of
food, but he told Deans, "There is just nothing I can do." Dixie
believed him. "I don't think he has a clue from one day to the next
where the devil we're going," Deans told fellow R.a.f. Warrant Officer
Ronald Mogg.

The POW'S had wandered like nomads since leaving Fallingbostel. Now
they were heading for the town of Gresse, where trucks with Red Cross
food parcels were said to await them. Deans hoped that they would halt
there and go no farther. He told

Ostmann that the march was useless, for the British would soon overrun
them. Deans hoped he was right. From what the men were able to pick
up on the precious secret radios they had carried out of the camp, the
Allied news was good. Mogg, a shorthand expert, took down the BBC news
twice a day. Whenever they could plug into an outlet, the radio in the
gramophone was used; during the march they relied on the
battery-operated receiver. One of the German guards, Ostmann's
interpreter, Corporal "Charlie" Gumbach, thought Sergeant John Bristow
was foolish to carry the heavy, old-fashioned gramophone on his back.
"Why don't you drop it somewhere?" the German suggested. "I've grown
attached to it, Charlie," said Bristow seriously. "And anyway, the
chaps would never forgive me if we didn't have music in the evenings."
Bristow looked at the German suspiciously. "Don't you like to dance,
Charlie?" he asked. Gumbach shrugged helplessly; all these British
were madmen.

As Deans's column swung down the road toward a new village the pipers
hoisted their instruments into position, and the tired men in the ranks
squared their shoulders and got into step. "At least," said Ron Mogg,
stepping out smartly alongside Deans on the bicycle, "we're impressing
the natives to no end." * * *

On the eastern front, Chuikov's Guards and Katukov's tankers had
finally gained a foothold on the Seelow Heights by sheer weight of
numbers. A little before midnight on the sixteenth, General Popiel
afterward remembered, "the first three houses in the northern suburbs
of the town of Seelow had been captured. ... It was a bitter
operation." All through the night of the sixteenth, Red Army attacks
were smashed again and again by point-blank fire from anti-aircraft
guns. "The Germans didn't even have to aim," Popiel said. "They just
fired over open sights." Chuikov himself reached Seelow about noon on
the seventeenth. He found the resistance so fierce that he
pessimistically estimated it would take

"one day to pierce each line of resistance between the Oder and
Berlin." Not until the night of the seventeenth were the Heights
taken. It had indeed taken more than forty-eight hours to break
through the first two lines. The Russians believed that there were at
least three more such lines lying before Berlin.

Popiel, trying to make his way to Katukov's headquarters some distance
from Seelow, saw that the fight had caused great confusion. Troops and
tanks were everywhere, crammed into every corner, alley, street and
garden. German artillery was still firing. In their effort to take
the Heights, Zhukov's troops had become disorganized; now they had to
be reassembled before moving again. Zhukov, furious, and well aware of
the pace Koniev was setting, demanded an all-out effort.

During the fighting, Soviet tankers had come up with an ingenious
solution to the bulky anti-tank rockets fired from Panzerfauste. To
his amazement, General Yushchuk saw that his tankers had taken every
bedspring they could find from German homes. These coiled-wire
contraptions were now hitched to the front of tanks to break the impact
of the blunt-nosed rockets. Preceded by bedsprings, the Soviet cannon
now prepared to lead the assault on the city.

Near Cottbus, in a medieval castle overlooking the Spree, Marshal
Koniev waited for his call to go through to Moscow. Somewhere a lone
enemy battery was still firing. It was typical German artillery fire,
Koniev thought as he listened to the carefully timed, methodical
bursting of the shells. He wondered what they were firing at --perhaps
the castle or the antenna of his headquarters radio station. Whatever
the target, the fire was not hindering his tanks, which had been
crossing the Spree since noon. By now they were miles away, smashing
through a disintegrating enemy and rumbling toward Lubben, near the
point where the boundary between his army and Zhukov's ended. For
Koniev, the time had

come to call Stalin and ask permission to swing his tanks north toward
Berlin.

Koniev had every reason to be in high spirits. His tankers had moved
with unforeseen speed, although the fighting had been brutally hard in
some areas and casualties had been heavy. Earlier on this morning of
the seventeenth, driving toward the front to watch the crossing of the
Spree, Koniev had realized for the first time just how terrible the
battle had been. His car had passed through smoldering forests and
along fields cratered by artillery fire. There were, he recalled,
"huge quantities of decommissioned and burned-out tanks, equipment
mired in streams and swamps, heaps of twisted metal, and there were
dead everywhere--all that remained of the forces that had met and
battled and passed through this land."

Koniev had expected great difficulty crossing the Spree, which was 180
feet wide in places. By the time he reached the headquarters of
General Rybalko's Third Guards Tank Army, a few tanks had actually been
ferried across, but ferrying was much too slow. The Spree line had to
be forced fast. Koniev and Rybalko hurried to an area where
reconnaissance patrols had reported evidence that some sort of ford
existed. Although the river at this site was close to 150 feet wide,
Koniev, after inspecting the terrain, decided to risk sending a tank on
a trial crossing. Rybalko selected the best tank crew in his lead
detachment and explained what they were to attempt. The tank plunged
in. Under fire from the west bank, it began slowly to move across. The
water rose up over its treads--but it got no deeper. At this one
point, the river was only three and a half feet deep. One behind
another, Rybalko's tanks lumbered through the water. The German line
on the Spree was cracked. Koniev's forces moved across the river in
strength and charged ahead at full speed.

Now, in the Cottbus castle, the Marshal's call to Moscow came through.
An aide handed Koniev the radio-telephone. As he spoke he reverted to
the military formality that Stalin always demanded. "This is the
Commander of the First Ukrainian Front," he said. Stalin replied,
"Comrade Stalin. Go ahead."

"This is my tactical situation," Koniev reported. "My armored forces
are now twenty-three kilometers [about fourteen miles] northwest of
Finsterwalde, and my infantry are on the banks of the Spree." He
paused. "I suggest that my armored formations move immediately in a
northerly direction." He carefully avoided mentioning Berlin.

"Zhukov," Stalin said, "is having a difficult time. He is still
breaking through the defenses on the Seelow Heights. Enemy resistance
there appears stiff and unyielding." There was a brief pause. Then
Stalin said, "Why not pass Zhukov's armor through the gap created on
your front and let him go for Berlin from there? Is that possible?"

"Comrade Stalin," Koniev said quickly, "it would take much time and
cause great confusion. There is no necessity for transferring armor
from the First Belorussian Front. Operations in my section are going
favorably." He took the plunge. "I have adequate forces and we are in
a perfect position to turn our tank armies toward Berlin."

Koniev explained that he could send his forces toward the city by way
of Zossen, twenty-five miles south of Berlin. "What scale map are you
using?" Stalin asked suddenly. "One to two hundred thousands," Koniev
answered. There was a pause while Stalin referred to his own map. Then
he said, "Are you aware that Zossen is the headquarters of the German
General Staff?" Koniev said he was. There was another pause. Finally
Stalin said, "Very well. I agree. Turn your tank armies toward
Berlin." The Generalissimo added that he would issue new army boundary
lines, and then, abruptly, he hung up. Koniev put down his own phone,
immensely satisfied.

Zhukov learned of Koniev's drive on Berlin from Stalin himself--and for
the General it apparently was not a pleasant conversation. What was
said no one knew, but the headquarters staff could see its effect on
the commander. As Lieutenant Colonel Pavel

Troyanoskii, senior correspondent for the military paper Red Star, was
later to recall the incident: "The attack had stalled and Stalin
reprimanded Zhukov. It was a serious situation and a reprimand from
Stalin was often couched in not very mild language." Troyanoskii could
plainly see that "Zhukov, a man with all the marks of an iron will
about his face and a man who did not like to share his glory with
anyone, was extremely worked up." General Popiel described Zhukov's
state of mind more succinctly. "We have a lion on our hands," he told
his fellow staff members. The lion was not long in showing his claws.
That evening the word went out from a grim Zhukov to the entire First
Belorussian army group: "Now take Berlin!" * * *

By now confusion was beginning to sweep the German lines. Shortages
were apparent everywhere and in everything. A critical lack of
transport, an almost total absence of fuel, and roads thronged with
refugees made large-scale troop movements almost impossible. This
immobility was producing dire consequences: as units shifted position,
their equipment, including precious artillery, had to be abandoned.
Communication networks, too, were faltering and in some places no
longer existed. As a result, orders were often obsolete when they
reached their destinations--or even when they were issued. The chaos
was compounded as officers arriving at the front to take over units
discovered nothing to take over, because their commands had already
been captured or annihilated. In some areas, inexperienced men, left
leaderless, did not know exactly where they were or who was fighting on
their flanks. Even in veteran outfits, headquarters were forced to
move with such frequency that often the troops did not know where their
command post was or how to contact it.

Units were trapped and captured or simply overrun and slaughtered.
Others, demoralized, broke and ran. In only two places did the Vistula
front remain intact. The northern area held by General

Hasso von Manteuffel's Third Panzer Army had not been hit by Zhukov's
massive assault--but Von Manteuffel was expecting an attack at any
moment by Marshal Konstantin Rokossovskii's Second Belorussians.
Farther south, part of Busse's Ninth Army was still holding. But it
was beginning to be affected by the general disintegration: its left
flank had already started to crumble before Zhukov's avalanche of
tanks; the right was halfway encircled by Koniev's sledgehammer drive
south of Berlin. In truth, the Army Group Vistula was breaking up
piece by piece, in chaos, confusion and death--exactly as Heinrici had
known it would.

Von Manteuffel, like Heinrici, had never underestimated the Russians;
he, too, had fought them many times before. Now, in his Storch
reconnaissance plane over the Oder, he studied the enemy.
Rokossovskii's men were making no effort to hide their assault
preparations. Artillery and infantry units were being openly moved up
into position. Von Manteuffel marveled at the Russians' cockiness. For
days now, as he flew back and forth over their lines, they had not even
bothered to look up.

Von Manteuffel knew that when the drive came he would not be able to
hold for very long. He was a panzer general without panzers. To halt
Zhukov's drive in the Ninth Army sector, Heinrici had denuded Von
Manteuffel's army of the few panzer divisions it had left. They had
come from the 3rd SS Corps, holding the southern edge of his sector in
the forests of Eberswalde. SS General Felix Steiner, who was regarded
by Wehrmacht officers as one of the best of the SS generals, reported
that though he had lost the tanks he had been given other
reinforcements. Solemnly he reported to Von Manteuffel: "I have just
received five thousand Luftwaffe pilots, each with his little Iron
Cross hanging around his neck. Tell me, what do I do with them?"

"I have no doubt," Von Manteuffel told his staff, "that on Hitler's
maps there is a little flag saying 7th PANZER DIV., even though it got
here without a single tank, truck, piece of artillery or even a machine
gun. We have an army of ghosts."

Now, looking down on the Russians' preparations from his

plane, Von Manteuffel figured that he could expect their main assault
sometime around the twentieth. He knew exactly what he was going to do
then. He would hold as long as possible and then he intended to
retreat "step by step, with my soldiers arm to arm, shoulder to
shoulder, all the way to the west." Von Manteuffel had no intention of
allowing even one of them to fall into Russian hands.

The situation of the Ninth Army was now bordering on the catastrophic,
yet its commander was not considering pulling back. To General Theodor
Busse, retreat, except under orders, was comparable to treason--and
Hitler's orders were to stand fast. Zhukov's tanks, storming on after
their breakthrough on Seelow Heights, had ripped a gash in the army's
northern flank, and now the First Belorussians were charging at
breakneck speed toward Berlin. The near-absence of communications made
it impossible for Busse to assess the extent of the breakthrough. He
did not even know if counterattacks could close the tear in his lines.
His best information was that Zhukov's tanks were already within
twenty-five miles of Berlin's outskirts. Even more alarming was
Koniev's blistering drive along the Ninth's southern flank. The First
Ukrainians, now beyond Lubben, were arching back behind the Ninth and
racing northward for the city. Would the Ninth be cut off, Busse
wondered, just as Model's army group had been in the Ruhr? Model had
been lucky in one respect: he had been encircled by the Americans. * *
The Ruhr pocket was completely erased by April 18. Three days later
Model committed suicide.

The situation was particularly galling for General Karl Weidling, whose
56th Panzer Corps had absorbed the full brunt of Zhukov's breakthrough
on the Seelow Heights. His corps had held off Zhukov for forty-eight
hours, inflicting staggering casualties. But the promised reserve
divisions that Weidling so anxiously awaited--the SS Nordland Division
and the powerful, fully operational 18th Panzer Grenadier Division--had
not arrived in time for the counterattacks that might have stopped
Zhukov's tanks.

One man from the Nordland Division did show up--the commander, SS Major
General Jurgen Ziegler. Arriving by car at Weidling's headquarters
north of Muncheberg, Ziegler announced calmly that his division was
miles away; it had run out of fuel. Weidling was livid. Every panzer
division carried reserves for just such emergencies. But Ziegler, who
disliked fighting under Wehrmacht officers, apparently did not consider
his division's arrival urgent. Now, twenty precious hours had been
lost in refueling and Ziegler was still not in position. The 18th
Panzer Grenadier Division, which should have reached Weidling the day
before, on the seventeenth, had just arrived. The counterattacks that
had been planned for this force would not take place: the division had
arrived just in time to retreat.

Weidling seemed dogged by bad luck. When Zhukov's massive columns of
tanks surged out from the plateau, among the German units hit hardest
had been the one force that Heinrici had worried about most: Goering's
9th Parachute Division. Already demoralized by their initial exposure
to the battle on the Heights, Goering's paratroopers panicked and broke
as the Russian tanks, guns blazing, smashed into their lines. Colonel
Hans Oscar Wohlermann, Weidling's new artillery commander, who had
arrived on the opening day of the Russian offensive across the Oder,
witnessed the rout that followed. Everywhere, he said, were soldiers
"running away like madmen." Even when he drew his pistol, the frantic
paratroopers did not halt. Wohlermann found the division's commander
"utterly alone and completely disheartened by the flight of his men,
trying to hold back whatever there was left to hold back." Eventually
the headlong flight was stopped, but Goering's much-vaunted
paratroopers "remained"--in Wohlermann's words--"a threat to the course
of the whole battle." As for Heinrici, when he heard the news he rang
Goering at Karinhall. "I have something to tell you," he said acidly.
"Those Cassino troops of yours, those famous paratroopers--well, they
have run away."

Although Weidling tried desperately to stem the Russian armored
assaults, the 56th Corps front could not hold. Weidling's

Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Theodor von Dufving, saw that the
Russians were "beginning to force us back by applying terrific pressure
in a kind of horseshoe-like maneuver--hitting us from both sides and
encircling us again and again." The Corps was also subjected to
merciless air attack: Von Dufving had to take cover thirty times within
four hours. The Soviet pincer tactics had forced Weidling to evacuate
two headquarters since noon. As a result, he had lost communications
with Busse's headquarters.

At nightfall Weidling found himself in a candlelit cellar at
Waldsieversdorf, northwest of Muncheberg. There he received a visitor:
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, looking shaky and
apprehensive. "He kept looking at us expectantly," Wohlermann was to
remember, "with anxious, sad eyes." When he heard the truth about the
56th Corps situation, "it seemed to have a crushing effect upon him."
Hesitantly, the Foreign Minister asked a few questions in a hoarse,
quiet voice, and shortly thereafter he took his leave. Wohlermann and
other members of the headquarters staff had half expected Von
Ribbentrop "to tell us that negotiations had begun from our side with
the English and the Americans. It would have given us hope at this
last hour." He left no such word.

On the heels of the Foreign Minister arrived the one-armed 32-year-old
leader of the Hitler Youth, Artur Axmann. He brought news he was sure
would please Weidling. The youngsters of the Hitler Youth, Axmann
announced, were ready to fight and were even now manning the roads in
the 56th Corps rear. Weidling's reaction to the news was not what
Axmann had expected. As Wohlermann remembers, Weidling was so enraged
that for a moment he was almost inarticulate. Then, "using extremely
coarse language," he denounced Axmann's plan. "You cannot sacrifice
these children for a cause that is already lost," he angrily told the
Youth Leader. "I will not use them and I demand that the order sending
these children into battle be rescinded." The pudgy Axmann hurriedly
gave Weidling his word that the order would be countermanded.

If such a directive was issued, it never reached hundreds of Hitler
Youth boys lying under arms on the approaches to the city. They
remained in position. In the next forty-eight hours they were
steamrollered by Russian attacks. Willy Feldheim and the 130 boys in
his company were swamped; they fell back helter-skelter and finally
stopped and tried to hold a line in the protection of some ditches and
a bunker. At last Willy, exhausted by fear, stretched out on a bench
during a lull in the fighting and fell asleep.

Hours later he woke up with a strange sense that something was wrong. A
voice said, "I wonder what's up? It's so silent."

The boys rushed out of the bunker--and were confronted by a "fantastic,
incredible scene, like an old painting of the Napoleonic Wars." The
sun was shining and there were bodies everywhere. Nothing was
standing. Houses were in ruins. There were cars wrecked and
abandoned, some of them still burning. The worst shock was the dead.
They were heaped in piles, in "a weird tableau, with their rifles and
Panzerfauste lying beside them. It was lunatic. And then we realized
that we were all alone."

They had slept through the entire attack.

In Berlin the tension was building hour by hour. General Reymann's
scanty forces, manning the outer perimeter rings, had been warned that
the signal "Clausewitz," code name for the attack on the city, might
come at any time. Various emergency measures had gone into effect,
making clear to all Berliners that the moment of truth was at hand.
Among other things, along the main roads and thoroughfares the closing
of the barricades had begun.

Not even Goebbels could ignore the threat any longer. A torrent of
hysterical news and slogans poured out of the Propaganda Ministry. The
official Nazi Party newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, announced the
Soviet drive across the Oder, and said: "A new and heavy trial, perhaps
the heaviest of all, is before us." The newspaper continued, "Each
square meter of territory which the enemy has to battle for, each
Soviet tank which a Grenadier, a Volkssturm man, or a Hitler lad
destroys bears more weight today than at any other time in this war.
The word for the day is: Clench your teeth! Fight like the devil!
Don't give up one foot of soil easily! The hour of decision demands
the last, the greatest, effort!" Berliners were warned that the
Russians had already decided the fate of the city's inhabitants. Those
who were not killed at the barricades, Goebbels warned, would be
liquidated "by deportation as slave labor."

On the afternoon of the eighteenth, General Reymann received an order
from the Reichskanzlei, later confirmed by a personal call from
Goebbels, that "all forces available, including Volkssturm, have been
requested by the Ninth Army to hold second-line positions." In other
words, the city was to be stripped to man the outer defenses. Reymann
was astounded. Hurriedly ten Volkssturm battalions were rounded up,
along with a regiment of anti-aircraft defense units of the "Great
Germany" Guard regiment. After hours of search and requisition, a
miscellaneous collection of vehicles was assembled and the force headed
east. As he watched them go, Reymann turned to Goebbels' deputy. "Tell
Goebbels," he said angrily, "that it is no longer possible to defend
the Reich capital. The inhabitants are defenseless." * * *

Carl Wiberg's face betrayed no emotion but he noticed that his hands
were trembling. After the long months of his quest, he could hardly
believe his ears. Standing among other customers near the main counter
of the black market food store, he leaned down and patted his little
dachshunds; the action also enabled him to hear a little better,
although the two well-dressed women standing next to him had made no
attempt at secrecy.

Most Berliners knew nothing about this well-stocked shop. It sold only
to selected customers, including those well up in Nazi echelons. Wiberg
had been patronizing the place for a long time, and he had picked up
many choice and accurate items of information just by listening to such
customers as these two well-fed ladies. Their information ought to be
accurate, he thought; their husbands were both important Nazis.

Wiberg decided he had heard enough. He collected his purchases, doffed
his Homburg to the proprietor and strolled out of the store. In the
street his pace quickened as he hurried to find Jessen-Schmidt.

Several hours later, after a lengthy discussion, both men agreed that
Wiberg's news had to be true. By the afternoon of Wednesday, April 18,
a message was en route to London. Though all their other hopes had
been dashed, Wiberg fervently hoped the Allies would act on this
report. According to what he had overheard in the food shop, Hitler
was definitely in the Berlin area--at a headquarters in Bernau, only
about fourteen miles northeast of the city. What better present could
they give him for his fifty-sixth birthday, April 20, than a massive
air raid? * * *

General Alfred Jodl, Hitler's Chief of Operations, returned home at 3
A.m. on April 20. His face was lined with worry and exhaustion. The
crisis had been reached, he told his wife Luise. "You'd better start
packing and get ready to leave," he said. Luise argued; she wanted to
continue with her Red Cross work. But Jodl was insistent. "With your
name, the Russians would not wait a single day before shipping you off
to Lubianka," he said. Where were they going? she asked. Jodl
shrugged. "To the north or south--nobody knows," he said. "But I hope
we can face the end together." They talked most of the night. A
little before 10 A.m. the sirens sounded. "I'll bet Berlin gets an
extra ration of bombs today," Jodl said. "It always happens on
Hitler's birthday."

Jodl hurried upstairs to shave before going back to the Fuhrerbunker.
This birthday was to be no different from the Fuhrer's others: there
would be the usual parade of government officials and Cabinet members
arriving to congratulate Hitler, and Jodl was expected to be present.
As he came down the stairs, Luise handed him his cap and belt. He
picked up his map case and kissed her good-bye. "I must hurry for the
congratulations," he said. Luise wondered, as she did every day now,
whether they would ever see each other again. "Bless you," she called
after her husband as he got into his car.

Another of Hitler's court was also ready to leave for the ceremonies.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering intended to show up just to prove he
was still loyal, but from there he was heading south. Goering had
decided that the moment had come for him to bid farewell to his huge
castle and estate at Karinhall, about fifty miles northwest of Berlin.
He had reached the decision shortly after the Soviet bombardment began
at 5:30 A.m. Goering had promptly called Heinrici's headquarters in
nearby Prenzlau. The attack in the north had begun, he was told:
Rokossovskii's Second Belorussians had finally launched their offensive
against Von Manteuffel's Third Panzer Army. Goering was well aware
that Von Manteuffel's strength was inadequate. The Reichsmarschall had
toured that front several times in the previous weeks, loudly telling
one general after another that because of "all the loafing around
nothing is prepared. The Russians will just laugh their way through
your lines."

Goering himself had prepared well for this moment. Lined up on the
main road outside the gates of his estate were twenty-four Luftwaffe
trucks loaded with the contents of Karinhall--his antiques, paintings,
silver and furniture. This convoy was to head south immediately. Most
of the Luftwaffe headquarters people in Berlin, along with their
equipment, were to leave in other convoys later in the day. * *
Goering may have had even more than twenty-four trucks. Heinrici
believes he had "four columns." This, however, may have included the
additional Luftwaffe convoys that left Berlin later in the day. The
fantastic fact is that at this moment

with planes grounded and vehicles unable to move because of fuel,
Goering had at his disposal not only trucks but ample supplies of
gasoline.

Now, standing by the main gates, Goering spoke a few final words to the
commander of the truck column. Surrounded by motorcylists, it moved
off. Goering stood looking at the huge castle with its magnificent
wings and buttresses. A Luftwaffe engineering officer came up;
everything, he said, was ready. As a few of his men and some of the
local villagers watched, Goering walked across the road, bent over a
detonator and pushed down the plunger. With a tremendous roar
Karinhall blew up.

Without waiting for the dust to settle, Goering walked back to his car.
Turning to one of his engineering officers he said calmly, "Well,
that's what you have to do sometimes when you're a crown prince."
Slamming the car door he set out for Berlin and the Fuhrer's birthday
celebration.

Hitler rose at 11 A.m. and from noon on he received the tributes of his
inner clique-- among them Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Joachim von
Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, and his military leaders Karl Doenitz,
Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs and Heinrich Himmler. After
them came Berlin area Gauleiters, staff members and secretaries. Then,
as the guns rumbled in the distance, Hitler, followed by his entourage,
emerged from the bunker. There in the bombed wilderness of the
Reichskanzlei gardens he inspected men from two units--the SS
"Frundsberg" Division, a recently arrived unit from the Courland Army,
* and a proud little group from Axmann's Hitler Youth. "Everyone,"
Axmann said long afterward, "was shocked at the Fuhrer's appearance. He
walked with a stoop. His hands trembled. But it was surprising how
much will power and determination still radiated from this man." Hitler
shook hands with the boys and decorated * Completely surrounded in the
Baltic States, the remnants of the Courland Army were finally evacuated
by boat and arrived at Swinemunde at the beginning of April. Of the
eighteen divisions only a few boatloads of men, minus equipment,
reached Germany.

some whom Axmann introduced as having "recently distinguished
themselves at the front."

Then Hitler walked down the line of SS men. He shook hands with each
one, and confidently predicted that the enemy would be defeated before
the approaches to Berlin. Looking on was Heinrich Himmler, the head of
the SS. Since April 6 he had been meeting secretly from time to time
with Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. In a vague
way, Himmler had sounded out Bernadotte about the possibility of
negotiating peace terms with the Allies, but now he stepped forward and
reaffirmed his loyalty and that of the SS to Hitler. In a few hours he
was scheduled to meet once more with Bernadotte.

Immediately after the inspection ceremonies, Hitler's military
conference began. By this time Goering had arrived. General Krebs
conducted the briefing, although everyone was familiar with the
situation. Berlin would be encircled within a matter of days, if not
hours. Even before that happened, Busse's Ninth Army would be
surrounded and trapped, unless orders for its withdrawal were given. To
Hitler's military advisors one point was clear: the Fuhrer and vital
government ministries and departments still in Berlin must leave the
capital for the south. Keitel and Jodl particularly urged the move,
but Hitler refused to acknowledge that things were that serious.
According to Colonel Nicolaus von Below, the Fuhrer's Luftwaffe
adjutant, "Hitler stated that the battle for Berlin presented the only
chance to prevent total defeat." He did make one concession: in the
event that the Americans and Russians linked up on the Elbe, the Reich
would be commanded in the north by Admiral Doenitz and in the south
possibly by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. Meanwhile, various
government agencies were given authorization to leave immediately.

Hitler did not reveal his own plans. But at least three people in the
bunker were convinced he would never leave Berlin. Fraulein Johanna
Wolf, one of Hitler's secretaries, had heard him remark only a few days
earlier that "he would take his own life, if

he felt the situation was beyond saving." Von Below, too, believed
that "Hitler had made up his mind to stay in Berlin and die there."
Jodl, when he returned home, told his wife that Hitler, in a private
talk, had said, "Jodl, I shall fight as long as the faithful fight next
to me and then I shall shoot myself." * * Hitler's remark to Jodl was
written down by Luise Jodl in her detailed diary. The entry is
followed by this note: "My husband remarked that "save for one other
occasion, after the death of my first wife, this is the only personal
remark Hitler has ever made to me.""

Most of the government had already left Berlin, but the remaining Reich
administrative agencies almost seemed to have been preparing for this
moment for days, like runners awaiting a starter's pistol. The real
exodus now began; it was to continue until the city was finally
surrounded. The Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff, General Karl Koller, noted
in his diary that Goering had departed. "Naturally," Koller wrote, "he
leaves me here to let all Hitler's anger pass over me." Bureaucrats
big and small made their get-away. Philippe Hambert, a young French
forced laborer who worked as a draftsman in the offices of Dr. Karl
Dustmann, one of the Todt Labor Organization architects, was
dumbfounded when his boss suddenly gave him a present of a thousand
marks (about $250) and then left town. Margarete Schwarz, in the
garden of her apartment house in Charlottenburg, glanced down the
street and saw a large chauffeur-driven blue car pull up outside a
nearby house. Her neighbor, Otto Solimann, joined her, and together
they watched as "an orderly in a neat white jacket along with a naval
officer with lots of gold on his uniform" left the house. Quickly the
car was packed with baggage. Then the men jumped in "and drove off at
top speed." Solimann said to Margarete: "The rats are leaving the
sinking ship. That was Admiral Raeder."

In all, the Berlin Commandant's office issued over two thousand permits
to leave the capital. "There was something almost comic about the
reasons with which state and party functionaries backed up their
requests to leave the city," the Chief of Staff, Colonel Hans Refior,
later recalled. "Even though Goebbels had ordered that "No man capable
of carrying arms is to leave Berlin," we put no difficulties in the way
of these "home fighters" who wanted passes. Why should we hold up these
contemptible characters? They all believed that flight would save
their precious lives. The majority of the population remained behind.
Flight for them was beyond their means anyway because of the transport
shortage."

In the dental offices at 213 Kurfurstendamm, blond Kathe Heusermann got
a phone call from her employer. The Nazis' top dentist, Professor Hugo
J. Blaschke, was leaving immediately. A few days earlier, Blaschke had
instructed Kathe to pack all dental records, X-rays, molds and other
equipment in boxes so they could be collected and sent south. Blaschke
said that he expected "the Chancellery group to leave any day and we
are going with them." Kathe had told him she was staying in Berlin.
Blaschke was furious. "Do you realize what it's going to be like when
the Russians get here?" he asked. "First you'll be raped. Then
you'll be strung up. Have you any idea what the Russians are like?"
But Kathe just "could not believe it was going to be that bad." Later
she was to recall, "I didn't understand the seriousness of the
situation. Maybe it was foolishness, but I was so busy that I didn't
realize how desperate everything had become." Now Blaschke was
insistent. "Pack up and get out," he urged. "The Chancellery group
and their families are leaving." But Kathe was adamant. She intended
to stay in the city. "Well," Blaschke said, "remember what I told
you." Then he hung up.

Suddenly Kathe remembered something Blaschke had asked her to do some
days before. If he left the city and she remained, she was to warn a
certain friend of his--using a code sentence because, said Blaschke,
"the phones might be tapped"--that the top Nazis were fleeing. If the
entire entourage had gone she was to say, "The bridge was removed last
night." If only some had departed the sentence was to be, "Only a
tooth was extracted last night." She had no idea who Blaschke's friend
was except that "his name was Professor Gallwitz or Grawitz and I think
he mentioned that he was a senior dentist for the SS." Blaschke had
given her only a telephone number. Now, under the impression that the
entire "Chancellery group" had left, she called the number. When a man
spoke, Kathe said, "The bridge was removed last night."

A few hours later that evening, Professor Ernst Grawitz, head of the
German Red Cross and friend of Heinrich Himmler, sat down to dinner
with his family. When everyone was seated Grawitz reached down, pulled
the pins on two hand grenades, and blew himself and his family to
oblivion. * * Testimony at the Nuremberg trials disclosed that Grawitz
in his additional capacity as Himmler's Chief Surgeon had authorized
medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

The great exodus would always be remembered by the Berliners as "the
flight of the Golden Pheasants." But most people that day were more
aware of advancing Russians than of fleeing Nazis. Helena Boese, wife
of film director Karl Boese, recalled that the only concern now "was to
somehow stay alive." Soviet troops were already at Muncheberg and
Strausberg, about fifteen miles to the east; and now the news was
filtering through the city that another Russian drive was heading
toward the capital from the south, toward Zossen. Georg Schroter, a
screenwriter living in Tempelhof, learned of this Russian advance
firsthand. Worried about a girl friend of his, a cabaret artist named
Trude Berliner who lived in one of the outlying districts south of
Berlin, Schroter phoned her home. She answered and then said, "Wait a
minute." There was a pause. "I have someone here who would like to
speak to you," she said. Schroter found himself conversing with a
Soviet colonel who spoke perfect German. "You can count on us," he
told the astonished Schroter, "to be there in two or three days."

Everywhere--north, south and east--the fronts were shrinking. And now
almost all the machinery of the shattered, ruined metropolis was either
slowing down or coming to a halt. Factories were

closing; streetcars had ceased to run; the subway had stopped except
for the transport of essential workers. Ilse Konig, a laboratory
technician in the city health department, remembers the Roter Ausweis
(red pass) she received in order to continue riding to her job. Garbage
was no longer being collected; mail could not be delivered. Gertrud
Evers, working in the main post office on Oranienburgerstrasse,
remembered the "terrific stench of spoiled, undelivered food packages
that hung over the building." Because most of the police were now
either in fighting units or the Volkssturm, the streets were no longer
patrolled.

For many people on this twentieth of April the seriousness of the
situation was really brought home by a single occurrence: the zoo
closed its gates. Electricity there stopped at exactly 10:50 A.m.,
making it impossible to pump in water. The current would come on again
four days later, but for only nineteen minutes. Thereafter it would
remain off until the battle was over. But from this day onward the
keepers knew that many of the animals must surely die--particularly the
hippos in the pools and the inhabitants of the aquarium that had been
saved earlier. Heinrich Schwarz, the bird keeper, already worried
about the condition of the rare Abu Markub stork, which was slowly but
surely starving to death in the Schwarz bedroom, now wondered how the
bird could possibly survive without water. He would carry pails of
water until he collapsed, the 63-year-old Schwarz decided--and not only
for Abu, but for Rosa, the big hippo, and her two-year-old baby,
Knautschke.

Zoo director Lutz Heck was in a quandary. He knew that eventually the
dangerous animals must be destroyed, in particular the zoo's prize
baboon, but he kept putting off the moment. Distraught and in need of
a moment's peace, Heck did something he had never before done in his
life: he went fishing in the Landwehr Canal along with one of the
keepers. There, while "thinking things out," the men caught two
pike.

That day Fritz Kraft, the municipal subway director, met with Berlin's
Mayor, Julius Lippert. The Mayor gave Kraft and the

assembled subway managers some realistic instructions. "If the Western
Allies get here first," Lippert told the group, "hand over the subway
installations intact. If the Russians get here before them ..." He
paused, shrugged, and said, "Destroy as much as possible." Small
automatic telephone exchanges got similar instructions. Mechanics at
the Buckow exchange were told to destroy the installations rather than
let the Russians capture them. But maintenance man Herbert Magder
suddenly realized that nobody had been given any instructions about how
to do it. To the best of Magder's knowledge not a single exchange was
destroyed. Nearly all of them continued to work throughout the
battle.

Factories also were ordered leveled, in keeping with Hitler's
scorched-earth policy. Professor Georg Henneberg, head of the Schering
chemical department in Charlottenburg, remembers the plant director
calling in all the chemists and reading an order he had just received.
As the enemy got closer, the edict said, water, gas, electrical and
boiler installations were to be destroyed. Henneberg's boss finished
reading the order, paused a moment, then said, "Now, gentlemen, you
know what you are not supposed to do." He bid them all good-bye and
closed down the plant, intact. As Henneberg remembers, "We all bid
farewell to one another until life after death."

For years, Berliners would remember that April 20 for still another
reason. Whether in celebration of the Fuhrer's birthday or in
anticipation of the climax to come no one knew, but that day the
government gave the hungry populace extra allocations of food called
"crisis rations." As Jurgen-Erich Klotz, a 25-year-old one-armed
veteran, remembered the extra food allocation, it consisted of one
pound of bacon or sausage, one half pound of rice or oatmeal, 250 dried
lentils, peas or beans, one can of vegetables, two pounds of sugar,
about one ounce of coffee, a small package of a coffee substitute and
some fats. Although there were almost five hours of air raids on
Berlin this day, housewives braved the bombs to pick up the extra
rations. They were to last eight days, and, as Anne-Lise Bayer said to
her husband, "With these rations we shall

now ascend into heaven." The same thought apparently occurred to
Berliners everywhere; the extra food came to be known as
Himmelfahrtsrationen --Ascension Day rations. * * *

At Gresse, north of the Elbe, the Red Cross packages had arrived for
Warrant Officer Dixie Deans's twelve thousand POW'S. Deans had made
all the arrangements. He had even persuaded the Commandant, Colonel
Ostmann, to let R.a.f. men go to the International Red Cross center in
Lubeck and drive trucks back, to get delivery faster. Now, columns of
men covered the roads all around the town where the distribution of
parcels was taking place. "Two parcels to a man," Deans had announced.
"The effect on the morale of the men," Flight Sergeant Calton Younger
remembered, "was electric. The arrival of the parcels was a plain
miracle and we promptly invested Deans with the qualities of a
saint."

Deans cycled from column to column on his frail bicycle with the
distorted tire, seeing that every man got his quota, and warning the
half-starved POW'S, who had been subsisting for the most part on raw
vegetables, not to eat too much but to "save as much as you can because
we don't know what Jerry still has up his sleeve for us." Nevertheless,
most men, Deans saw, "were eating as though it was their last meal."
Flight Sergeant Geoffrey Wilson wolfed his way through the parcel:
corned beef, biscuits, chocolate--and, above all, 120 cigarettes. He
was "eating like mad, and smoking like mad because I intended to die
full and not hungry."

The British planes found them as they sat there eating: nine R.a.f.
Typhoon fighters. They circled overhead, and then, in what Wilson was
to remember as a "kind of a dreamlike, fascinating way," they peeled
off and dived. Someone said, "My God! They're coming for us!" Men
scattered wildly in all directions. Some tried to put out colored
identifying cloth strips which they were carrying for just such an
emergency. Others threw themselves into

ditches, lay behind walls, ran for cover in barns or took shelter in
the town itself. But many were too late. One after another, the
Typhoons swooped in, firing rockets and dropping anti-personnel bombs
among the columns. Men yelled: "We're your mates! We're your mates!"
Eight planes made individual attacks; the ninth, perhaps realizing the
mistake, pulled up. It was all over in minutes. Sixty POW'S were
dead. A score of others were injured, and some would die of their
wounds in German hospitals.

Deans was sick with despair as he walked along the roads and saw the
carnage. He immediately ordered identification of the dead. Some
bodies were riddled almost beyond recognition--"just bits and pieces
that had to be shoveled into the graves," Deans was later to recall.

After the dead had been buried and the wounded moved into German
hospitals, a cold and determined Deans cycled over to Colonel Ostmann
at his temporary headquarters. There was no military courtesy this
time from Deans. "Ostmann," he said, "I want you to write me out a
pass that will carry me through to the British lines. This sort of
thing must never happen again."

Ostmann looked at Deans in amazement. "Mr. Deans," he said, "I
couldn't do that."

Deans stared back at him. "We don't know who is going to overrun our
group," he warned. "It could be the British--or it could be the
Russians. We don't give a damn who liberates us. But which do you
want to surrender to?" Deans looked squarely at the German. "Somehow
I don't think you'll have much of a future with the Russians." He
paused to let his last statement sink in. Then he said quietly,
"Colonel, write out the pass."

Ostmann sat down at a table and on Wehrmacht paper wrote out a note
which would carry Deans through enemy territory. "I don't know how
you'll get through the front lines," he told Deans, "but at least this
will get you up to them." Deans said: "I would like to take the guard
Charlie Gumbach with me." Ostmann thought about that for a moment and
said, "Agreed." He wrote out a pass for Gumbach. "And I could do with
a bicycle that isn't

falling apart," said Dixie. Ostmann looked at him and then, shrugging,
said that he would arrange that, too. As he left the office, Deans had
one final remark. "I will be back with Charlie to bring my men out, I
promise you that." Then with a crisp salute, Deans said, "Thank you,
Colonel." The Colonel saluted too. "Thank you, Mr. Deans," he
said.

That night, accompanied by German Corporal Charlie Gumbach, the
indomitable Dixie Deans set out for the long ride to the British lines.
* * *

By nightfall Koniev, watching the map anxiously as Zhukov's tanks
streaked toward Berlin, was urging his men on to even greater speed.
"Don't worry about your flanks, Pavel Semenovich," he told General
Rybalko, Commander of the Third Guards Tank Army. "Don't worry about
being detached from the infantry. Keep going." Years afterward,
Koniev remarked, "At that moment I knew what my tank commanders must be
thinking: "Here you are throwing us into this manhole, forcing us to
move without strength on our flanks--won't the Germans cut our
communications, hit us from the rear?"'" The tall Koniev, clapping his
Marshal's epaulettes with his hands, told the tank commanders, "I will
be present. You need not worry. My observation post will be traveling
with you in the very middle of the drive." Rybalko and General D. D.
Lelyushenko, Commander of the Fourth Guards Tank Army, responded
brilliantly. In a dash resembling that of the U.s. 2nd and 5th Armored
divisions to the Elbe, the Soviet tankers sliced through the
enemy--even though, as Rybalko noted, "German divisions that had not
been wiped out still remained behind us." In twenty-four hours,
fighting all the way, Rybalko made a blazing run of thirty-eight miles.
Lelyushenko's tanks drove twenty-eight miles. Now Rybalko exultantly
phoned Koniev. "Comrade Marshal," he said, "we are fighting on the
outskirts of Zossen." Elements of the First Ukrainians were now only
twenty-five miles from Berlin.

At Zossen the alarm had been sounded. It now seemed likely that the
Soviets would reach the High Command headquarters within twenty-four
hours, and the order had been given to move. Key officers had left
already for a new command post near Potsdam. The remainder of the
headquarters personnel, along with the office typewriters, decoding
machines, safes and crates of documents, were loaded into buses and
trucks. As the packing and loading went on, people walked about
anxiously, eager to get going. At that moment, said General Erich
Dethleffsen, who had taken over Krebs's old job as Assistant Chief of
Staff, "we offered the enemy air force a rewarding target." Shortly
before dark the convoys moved out, heading for Bavaria. Dethleffsen,
driving toward Berlin to attend the Fuhrer's night conference, was
happy to see a flight of Luftwaffe planes heading over him going south.
Later at the briefing he heard a Luftwaffe officer tell Hitler about a
"successful attack upon Soviet tanks pushing toward Zossen, to defend
the area from attack." The bombers of the Luftwaffe had been more than
successful: the "Soviet tanks" had been the buses and trucks of the OKH
command column heading south. The Germans had shot up their own
convoy.

At midnight on April 20 Heinrici grimly surveyed his maps and tried to
analyze the situation. A few hours earlier, one of his fears had been
realized: he now commanded not only the Army Group Vistula but Berlin
as well. Almost immediately upon receiving the order he had called
Reymann and told him that no bridges were to be destroyed in the city.
Reymann had complained that the city was defenseless anyway, now that
the best part of his Volkssturm had been pulled out to man defense
lines. Heinrici knew all about it; in fact, he now told Reymann to
send along the remainder of the Home Guard. "Reymann," said Heinrici
wearily, "don't you understand what I'm trying to do? I'm trying to
make sure that fighting takes place outside the city, and not in it."

Under the present circumstances, Heinrici knew, Berlin could not be
defended. He had no intention of allowing his armies to fall back into
the city. Tanks would not be able to maneuver there. Because of the
buildings, artillery could not be used: they would have no field of
fire. Furthermore, if any attempt was made to fight in the city there
would be an enormous loss of civilian life. At all costs Heinrici
hoped to avoid the horror of block-to-block, street-to-street
fighting.

His main concern at the moment was Busse's army; he was sure that if it
was not pulled back quickly it would be encircled. Before leaving for
the front early in the morning, he had given a message to his Chief of
Staff for Krebs: "I cannot accept responsibility or direct this
situation if Busse's army is not withdrawn immediately--and have him
tell that to the Fuhrer."

Then he had driven all over the front. Signs of disintegration were
everywhere. He saw "roads covered with the vehicles of refugees, often
with military transport among them." For the first time, he ran into
troops who were obviously retreating. On the way to Eberswalde, he
noted, "I didn't find one soldier who didn't claim to have orders to
get munitions, fuel or something else from the rear." He was appalled,
and swung into action. North of Eberswalde he "found men marching
toward the northwest, saying that their division was to be reformed
near Joachimsthal"; he stopped them and reorganized them near
Eberswalde. At canal crossing-points in the same area he found "parts
of the 4th SS Police Division being unloaded. They were young, newly
organized, but only partially armed. They had been told they would get
weapons in Eberswalde." South of there he found the road jammed with a
mass of civilians and soldiers. Heinrici got out of his car and
ordered the noncommissioned officers to turn their men around. "Go
back to the front," he said.

In the town of Schonholz he saw "younger officers inactive and just
looking around. They had to be energetically ordered to build

a line to catch scattered troops." The forests between there and
Trampe were "filled with groups of soldiers either resting or
retreating. No one claimed to have any orders or assignments." In
another area he discovered "a tank reconnaissance section resting next
to its parked vehicles." He ordered the unit to "move on Biesenthal at
once and recapture this very important crossroads." There was so much
confusion around Eberswalde, Heinrici later recalled, that "no one
could tell me if a front existed at all." But by midnight he had
restored order in the region and had issued fresh commands.

It was clear that his forces were undermanned, underarmed and often
without competent leadership, and Heinrici knew that the front could
not hold for long. Von Manteuffel's Third Panzer Army in the north had
achieved some defensive success against Rokossovskii, but it was only a
question of time before Von Manteuffel would be forced to retreat
also.

At 12:30 A.m. he called Krebs. He told him that the situation was
becoming almost impossible to control. In particular he talked about
the 56th Panzer Corps which, "in spite of all counterattacks against
the Soviets, is being pushed farther and farther back." The situation
there, he said, was "tense to the point of bursting." Twice during the
day he had talked personally to Krebs about the Ninth Army's rapidly
worsening situation; each time Krebs had again given him the Fuhrer's
decision: "Busse is to hold on the Oder." Now Heinrici fought for
Busse again.

"Consistently," Heinrici told Krebs now, "I have been denied freedom of
movement for the Ninth Army. Now I demand it--before it's too late. I
must point out that I am not resisting the Fuhrer's orders because of
stubbornness or unjustified pessimism. From my record in Russia you
know that I do not give up easily. But it is essential to act now in
order to save the Ninth from destruction.

"I have received the order," he said, "that the Army Group must hold
the front line in its present positions and that all available forces
must be pulled out to close the gap between the Ninth and Schorner on
the southern flank. I regret what I'm going to say with all my heart,
but the order cannot be carried out. The move simply has no chance of
success. I demand the approval of my request to withdraw the Ninth
Army. It is in the interest of the Fuhrer himself that I make this
request.

"Actually," said Heinrici, "what I should do is go to the Fuhrer and
say, "My Fuhrer, since this order endangers your well-being, has no
chance of success and cannot be carried out, I request you to relieve
me of command and give it to somebody else. Then I could do my duty as
a Volkssturm man and fight the enemy."" Heinrici was putting his cards
squarely on the table: he was stating to his superior officer that he
would rather fight in the lowest ranks than carry out an order that
could result only in the useless sacrifice of lives.

"Do you really want me to pass this on to the Fuhrer?" asked Krebs.
Heinrici's answer was short. "I demand it," he said. "My Chief of
Staff and my operations officers are my witnesses."

A short while later Krebs rang back. The Ninth was to hold its
position. At the same time, all forces that could be made available
were to try to close the gap with Schorner on the southern flank, "so
as to set up a continuous front once more." Heinrici knew then that
the Ninth was as good as lost.

In the Fuhrerbunker Hitler's nightly military conference broke up at 3
A.m. During the meeting Hitler had blamed the Fourth Army--the army
that had been crushed by Koniev's attack in the opening day of his
offensive--for all the problems that had since arisen. He accused the
army of treason. "My Fuhrer," asked General Dethleffsen, shocked, "do
you really believe that the command committed treason?" Hitler looked
at Dethleffsen "with pitying eyes, as if only a fool could ask such a
stupid question." Then he said: "All our failures in the east can be
traced to treachery--nothing else but treachery."

As Dethleffsen was about to leave the room, Ambassador Walter Hewel,
Von Ribbentrop's representative from the Foreign Ministry, entered, his
expression deeply concerned. "My Fuhrer," he said, "do you have any
orders for me?" There was a pause, and then Hewel said: "If we still
want to achieve anything on a diplomatic level, now is the time."
According to Dethleffsen, Hitler, "in a voice soft and completely
changed," said: "Politics. I have nothing to do with politics any
more. That just disgusts me." He walked toward the door--"slowly,"
recalls Dethleffsen, "tired and with flagging gait." Then he turned
and said to Hewel, "When I am dead you will have to busy yourself
plenty with politics." Hewel pressed. "I think we should do something
now," he said. As Hitler got to the door Hewel added most earnestly:
"My Fuhrer, it is five seconds before twelve." Hitler seemed not to
hear.

The sound was unlike anything Berliners had heard before, unlike the
whistle of falling bombs, or the crack and thud of anti-aircraft fire.
Puzzled, the shoppers who were queued up outside Karstadt's department
store on Hermannplatz listened: it was a low keening coming from
somewhere off in the distance, but now it rose rapidly to a terrible
piercing scream. For an instant the shoppers seemed mesmerized. Then
suddenly the lines of people broke and scattered. But it was too late.
Artillery shells, the first to reach the city, burst all over the
square. Bits of bodies splashed against the boarded-up store front.
Men and women lay in the street screaming and writhing in agony. It
was exactly 11:30 A.m., Saturday, April 21. Berlin had become the
front line.

Shells now began to strike everywhere. Tongues of flame leaped from
rooftops all over the center of the city. Bomb-weakened buildings
collapsed. Automobiles were up-ended and set afire. The Brandenburg
Gate was hit and one cornice crashed down into the street. Shells
plowed the Unter den Linden from one end to the other; the Royal
Palace, already wrecked, burst into flames again. So did the
Reichstag; the girders that had once supported the building's cupola
collapsed and hunks of metal showered down. People ran wildly along
the Kurfurstendamn, dropping briefcases and packages, bobbing
frantically from doorway to doorway. At the Tiergarten end of the
street, a stable of riding horses received a direct hit. The screams
of the animals mingled with the cries and shouts of men and women; an
instant later the horses stampeded out of the inferno and dashed down
the Kurfurstendamm, their manes and tails blazing.

Barrage after barrage pounded the city, systematically and
methodically. Correspondent Max Schnetzer of the Swiss paper Der Bund,
standing by the Brandenburg Gate, noted that in the center of the
government section of the Wilhelmstrasse at least one shell was landing
every five seconds. Then there would be a pause of half a minute or a
minute and once again the shells would start to fall. From where he
stood the newspaperman could see fires shooting up toward the skies
from the direction of the Friedrichstrasse Station. "Because the smoke
and haze diffuses the light," he later wrote, "it looks as if the very
clouds are on fire."

The shelling was just as intense in other parts of the city. In
Wilmersdorf, Ilse Antz, her mother and sister felt their building
shudder. The two girls threw themselves to the floor. Their mother
clung to the doorpost, screaming, "My God! My God! My God!" In
Neukolln, Dora Janssen watched her husband, a Wehrmacht major, walk
down the driveway to his limousine. The major's batman opened the car
door and suddenly was "torn completely to pieces" by a shell. When the
dust cleared she saw her husband still standing by the car, his head
high but his face distorted with pain. As Frau Janssen ran toward the
major, she saw that "one leg

of his trousers was soaked in blood which was running over his boot and
onto the sidewalk." Later, as she watched him being carried away on a
stretcher, she found a curious emotion competing with her concern for
her husband's safety. She could not help thinking, "How upright he
stood in spite of his injury. A real officer!"

Not far away was another officer who had never believed that the
Russians could come this close. The fanatical Luftwaffe accountant,
Captain Gotthard Carl, who still greeted his family with the Hitler
salute, was growing desperate. As the Russians had come closer, Carl's
sartorial splendor had gleamed undiminished; indeed, it had become even
more evident. Though she would never dare tell him so, his wife Gerda
thought Carl looked ridiculous in his gala dress uniform, complete with
gold cufflinks and those rows of meaningless ribbons. These days, too,
he was never without his signet ring, on which a swastika was outlined
in diamonds.

But Gotthard Carl was fully aware of the turn events were taking.
Returning home at noon from his Tempelhof office, he threw up his hand
in his usual "Heil Hitler" greeting and then gave his wife some
instructions. "Now that the bombardment has begun," he told her, "you
are to go to the cellar and remain there permanently. I want you to
sit right opposite the cellar entrance." Gerda looked at him in
amazement; it seemed the least safe place to be. But Gotthard was
insistent. "I have heard that in other cities the Russians enter the
cellars with flame throwers and most people are burned alive. I want
you to sit directly before the cellar door so that you will be killed
first. You won't have to sit and wait your turn." Then, without
another word he clasped his wife's hands, gave the Nazi salute and
walked out of the apartment.

Numbly, Gerda did as she was told. Sitting well ahead of the other
occupants and just inside the entrance to the shelter, she prayed
steadily as the bombardment raged overhead. For the first time since
their marriage she did not include Gotthard in her prayers. In the
afternoon, at the time her husband usually arrived

home, Gerda, defying his orders, ventured upstairs. Trembling and
frightened, she waited awhile, but Gotthard did not return. She never
saw him again.

The artillery shelling had begun just as the aerial bombing ended. The
last Western air raid on Berlin, the 363rd of the war, was delivered at
9:25 A.m. by elements of the U.s. Eighth Air Force. For forty-four
months the Americans and British had pounded "Big B," as the U.s.
fliers called it. Berliners had shaken their fists at the bombers, and
they had mourned the deaths of friends and relatives and the
destruction of their homes. Yet their anger, like the bombs
themselves, had been impersonal, directed at men they would never see.
The shelling was different. It came from an enemy who stood outside
their doors, who would soon be facing them.

There was another difference, too. Berliners had learned to live with
the bombing and to anticipate the almost clocklike regularity of the
raids. Most people could tell by the very whistle of a falling bomb
approximately where it would land; many had grown so accustomed to the
raids that often they did not even bother to seek shelter. Artillery
fire was somehow more dangerous. Shells landed suddenly and
unexpectedly. The razor-sharp, scythelike shrapnel ripped and cut in
every direction, often striking yards away from the initial
explosion.

Journalist Hans Wulle-Wahlberg, making his way across Potsdamer Platz
as it was raked by shell bursts, saw dead and dying everywhere. It
seemed to him that some people had been killed by the blast of air
pressure "which had torn out their lungs." As he dodged the bursts the
thought struck him that Berliners, formerly bound together against
their common enemy, the bombers, "now had no time to bother about the
dead and the wounded. Everyone was too busy trying to save his own
skin."

The merciless shelling had no pattern. It was aimless and incessant.
Each day it seemed to increase in intensity. Mortars and the grinding
howl of rocket-firing Katushkas soon added to the din. Most people now
spent much of their time in cellars, air raid

shelters, flak tower bunkers and subway stations. They lost all sense
of time. The days blurred amid the fear, confusion and death that was
all about them. Berliners who had kept meticulous diaries up to April
21 suddenly got their dates mixed. Many wrote that the Russians were
in the center of the city on April 21 or 22, when the Red Army was
still fighting in the suburbs. Their terror of the Russians was often
intensified by a certain guilty knowledge. Some Germans, at least,
knew all about the way German troops had behaved on Soviet soil, and
about the terrible and secret atrocities committed by the Third Reich
in concentration camps. Over Berlin, as the Russians drew closer, hung
a nightmarish fear unlike that experienced by any city since the razing
of Carthage.

Elfriede Wassermann and her husband Erich had taken shelter in the huge
bunker next to the Anhalter railway station. Erich had lost his left
leg on the Russian front in 1943, and could walk only with the aid of
crutches. He had quickly recognized the sound of the artillery fire
for what it was, and had rushed his wife off to the bunker. Elfriede
had packed their belongings in two suitcases and two other large bags.
Over her own clothes she put on a pair of Erich's old military pants
and, on top of everything, both her woolen and fur coats. Since her
husband needed both hands for his crutches, she had strapped one bag on
his back, the other across his chest. One of the parcels contained
food: some hard-crusted bread, and a few tins of meat and vegetables.
In one of her suitcases Elfriede had a large pot of butter.

By the time they reached the Anhalter Station, its bunker was already
jammed. Elfriede finally found them a place on one of the stairway
landings. A single weak light hung above their heads. In its glow,
people could be seen crowding every foot of floor space and every
stairway of the building. Conditions in the bunker were unbelievable.
The floor above was reserved for wounded, and their screams could be
heard night and day. Toilets could not be used because there was no
water; excrement was everywhere. The stench was nauseating at first,
but after a time Elfriede and

Erich no longer noticed it. They passed the hours in a state of
complete apathy, hardly talking, unaware of what was happening
outside.

Only one thing intruded on their private thoughts: the continuous
screaming of children. Many parents had run out of supplies of food
and milk. Elfriede saw "three small babies being carried down from the
floor above, all of them dead from lack of food." Next to Elfriede sat
a young woman with a 3-month-old infant. At some point during their
stay in the bunker, Elfriede noticed that the baby was no longer in the
mother's arms. It was lying on the concrete floor next to Elfriede,
dead. The mother seemed dazed. So was Elfriede; she remembers "that I
simply saw that the child was dead without being upset in any way."

On Potsdamerstrasse, the House of Tourist Affairs was being shelled. In
the 44-room underground shelter there were more than two thousand
people, and Margarete Promeist, who was in charge of the shelter, had
her hands full. Besides civilians, two battalions of Volkssturm had
recently been moved in because, Margarete was told, "the Russians are
getting closer." Harried and near exhaustion, Margarete had been more
than grateful for the telephone call she had received a short time
before. A close friend had volunteered to bring her some food. Now,
as she moved about the shelter, forty-four wounded civilians were
brought down from the street. Margarete hurried over to assist with
the casualties. One of them was beyond help--and as she sat quietly
beside the dead body of the woman who had come to bring her food,
Margarete "envied her quiet and peaceful smile. She, at least, has
been spared our via dolorosa."

While most people were going underground for the duration of the
battle, druggist Hans Miede patrolled his beat as air raid warden for
the public shelter at Bismarckstrasse 61 in Charlottenburg. As shells
exploded all about him, he looked balefully at a poster on the wall of
the building opposite the shelter. The text, printed in gigantic
letters, read, THE HOUR BEFORE SUNRISE IS THE DARKEST.

For Dr. Rudolf Huckel the sunrise was far away. For weeks now the
eminent pathologist had been a source of deep worry to his wife
Annemaria. She believed he was headed for a nervous breakdown. Some
time earlier he had shown her a cyanide capsule whose deadly potency he
had improved upon by the addition of acetic acid. He had told her then
that if Berlin's situation worsened, they would commit suicide. Since
then Frau Huckel had seen how "the intensity of the war, its
senselessness, and my husband's rage against Hitler had all gotten the
best of him." Now the limit of Dr. Huckel's endurance had been
reached. After hours of listening to the screaming of shells, the
doctor suddenly got up, ran to the open window and yelled out at the
top of his voice, "Der Kerl muss umgebracht werden!"--That fellow
[Hitler] must be bumped off!

Hitler's finger stabbed the map. "Steiner! Steiner! Steiner!" he
shouted. The Fuhrer had found the answer. SS General Felix Steiner
and his troops, he cried, were to attack immediately from their
positions in the Eberswalde on the flank of Von Manteuffel's Third
Panzer Army; then they were to head south, cutting off the Russians'
drive on Berlin. Steiner's attack would close the gap that had opened
when the northern flank of Busse's Ninth Army crumpled. On Hitler's
map it appeared a brilliant move. Zhukov's drive now looked like an
arrowhead, its base on the Oder, its tip pointing directly at Berlin.
Along Zhukov's northern flank was the little flag that said, "Group
Steiner." Hitler was confident once more. Steiner's attack would
re-establish contact between the Third and Ninth armies.

There was only one thing wrong with the Fuhrer's scheme. Steiner had
virtually no men. Earlier, Heinrici had decided to place under Steiner
the Ninth Army troops that had been shoved to the north by the Russian
drive. Unfortunately, the widespread confusion at the front and the
lack of time had made it impossible

to gather sufficient forces to make the Group Steiner operational. In
effect, there was no Group Steiner. But the name had stuck, and so had
the little flag on Hitler's map.

Now Hitler phoned Steiner. "As I remember the call," Steiner said, "it
reached me between 8:30 and 9 P.m. Hitler's exact words were: "Steiner,
are you aware that the Reichsmarschall [Goering] has a private army at
Karinhall? This is to be disbanded at once and sent into battle."
While I was trying to figure out what that was supposed to mean, he
continued, "Every available man between Berlin and the Baltic Sea up to
Stettin and Hamburg is to be drawn into this attack I have ordered."
When I protested, saying that the troops at my disposal were
inexperienced, and when I asked precisely where the attack was to take
place, the Fuhrer gave me no answer. He simply hung up. I had no idea
where or when or with what I was to attack."

Steiner called Krebs, explained his situation and told the Chief of OKH
that he did not have troops. "Then I recall Hitler cutting in on the
conversation. At that moment I was explaining to Krebs that my troops
were totally inexperienced and that we had no heavy weapons. Hitler
gave me a long lecture and closed with these words, "You will see,
Steiner. You will see. The Russians will suffer their greatest defeat
before the gates of Berlin." I told him that I thought the Berlin
situation was hopeless. I was completely ignored."

Shortly thereafter Steiner received the official order to attack. The
last paragraphs read:

It is expressly forbidden to fall back to the west. Officers who do
not comply unconditionally with this order are to be arrested and shot
right away.

You, Steiner, are liable with your head for the execution of this
order. The fate of the Reich Capital depends on the success of your
mission. Adolf Hitler.

After his conversation with Steiner, Hitler called the Luftwaffe's
Chief of Staff, General Koller. "All Air Force personnel in the
northern zone who can be made available are to be placed at the
disposal of Steiner and brought to him," Hitler said, his voice rising.
"Any commanding officer who keeps back personnel will forfeit his life
within five hours. They must be told of this." Then he screamed:
"You, yourself, will guarantee with your own head that absolutely every
man is employed."

Koller was dumbfounded. It was the first he had heard of Group
Steiner. He called General Dethleffsen at OKH and asked, "Where is
Steiner? Where should our troops be sent?" Dethleffsen did not know,
but promised to find out as quickly as possible.

Throughout this frantic period, one man, Heinrici, knew nothing at all
about the scheme. When he finally heard, he called Krebs. "Steiner
does not have the strength to make such an attack," Heinrici said
angrily. "I reject the order. I insist on the withdrawal of the Ninth
Army. Otherwise, Krebs, the only troop units still in position to
defend Hitler and Berlin will be lost. Now, I tell you if this final
request is not approved, then I must demand to be released from my
post." Could he, Heinrici suggested, have an appointment with Hitler
to discuss the situation? Krebs flatly vetoed the idea. "It's just
not possible," he said. "The Fuhrer is overworked."

For the record, Heinrici noted the outcome of the conversation in his
personal war diary: "My appeal to the highest officials to bear in mind
the responsibilities they bore to the troops was rejected with the
words, "That responsibility is borne by the Fuhrer.""

The life of Army Group Vistula was drawing to a close. Heinrici knew
that it could last only a few days longer. His career, too, seemed to
be running out. The General was well aware that his unbending
obstinacy over how to fight his losing battle was considered the worst
kind of defeatism by Krebs. Now, without warning, during the night of
April 21, Heinrici received word that General Eberhard Kinzel,
Vistula's Chief of Staff, was to be replaced. The man who was to take
over his job was Major General

Thilo von Trotha, one of Hitler's most ardent disciples. Heinrici
believed that Krebs had deliberately put Von Trotha in the post to try
to influence his decisions. If so, it was a senseless move. "I know
this Von Trotha," Heinrici told Colonel Eismann. "Maybe he's
intelligent, but he embellishes the facts; he has a kind of flashy
optimism. His feet," the General observed tartly, "are in the air."
When Von Trotha arrived, Heinrici decided, he would isolate him
completely and deal only with Eismann. It was a dangerous procedure to
adopt with a Hitler favorite, but Heinrici could not concern himself
with that now.

Before dawn of the twenty-second, a second announcement reached
Heinrici. The Berlin Commandant, General Reymann, telephoned. "I am
being replaced," he told Heinrici. The events that followed Reymann's
removal had some of the qualities of slapstick. His successor was
another high-ranking Nazi Party official, a certain Colonel Kaether, a
man so obscure that his first name is lost to history. Kaether was
immediately promoted to major general, jumping the interim rank of
brigadier general. He spent the rest of that day delightedly phoning
his friends the news. By nightfall Kaether was a colonel again, having
been removed from the post: Hitler himself had decided to take command
temporarily.

Meanwhile, the man whose future was to be most closely bound to the
city's last days was getting himself into serious trouble. General
Karl Weidling was completely out of communication with any
headquarters, including that of his immediate superior, General Busse.
Weidling's 56th Panzer Corps had been so battered and so often
encircled by General Katukov's First Guards Tank Army that he had lost
all contact with his colleagues. Rumors were flying that Weidling had
deliberately retreated, and Weidling was not on hand to refute them.
Hitler had heard these stories. So had Busse. After waiting almost
twenty-four hours for news, both men issued orders for Weidling's
immediate arrest and execution. * * *

When the smoke cleared on the outskirts of Bernau, Captain Sergei
Golbov saw the first prisoners coming out of their defenses. The
fighting here had been murderous. It had taken Chuikov's troops almost
half a day to advance five miles in this sector, fourteen miles
northeast of Berlin. Now parts of the town were in flames, but tanks
were pushing through, heading southwest for the Berlin districts of
Pankow and Weissensee. Golbov sat on his newly confiscated motorcycle
watching the prisoners. They were a sorry-looking lot, he thought--
"gray-faced, dusty, bodies sagging with fatigue." Golbov looked about
him and was struck by the disparity between the works of man and those
of nature. Fruit trees were beginning to bloom. "The blossoms looked
like white snowballs, and in the suburbs every little garden had
flowers, but then the huge black war machines, the tanks, crawling
through the gardens--what a contrast!"

Golbov took out of his tunic pocket a folded copy of the newspaper Red
Star, carefully tore off a small strip of the paper, shook some tobacco
onto it and rolled a cigarette. Everyone used Red Star paper; it was
thinner and seemed to burn better than Pravda or Izvestia. It was as
he lit the cigarette that he saw the German major staggering up the
road toward him.

"Leave my wife alone!" the man was shouting in Polish. "Leave my wife
alone!" Golbov watched, puzzled, as the wild-eyed officer staggered
toward him. When the German got closer, Golbov got off his cycle and
went toward him. Blood was pouring down the major's hands.

The German lifted his blood-streaked arms and Golbov saw that he had
slashed his wrists. "I'm dying," the man gasped. "I've committed
suicide. Look!" He thrust his bleeding hands toward Golbov. "Now!
Will you leave my wife alone?"

Golbov stared at him. "You stupid fool," he said. "I've got other
things to do than bother your wife." He called out for the medics,
then held the man's wrists to stanch the flow of blood until the
first-aid men arrived. It was probably too late anyway, Golbov
thought, as the medics led the major away. "Leave my wife alone! Leave
her alone!" the German kept yelling. Golbov leaned back

against the motorcycle and relit his cigarette. Goebbels has done his
work well, he thought; what do they think we are, monsters? * * *

Bruno Zarzycki, tears staining his face, stood in the street as the
liberators he had waited so long to see passed by. The Communist
leader in the Neuenhagen-Hoppegarten area, twelve miles east of Berlin,
was delighted because now everyone could see what he had known all
along: that Goebbels' propaganda about the Soviets was fabricated of
the most vicious lies. Red Army troops, trim and efficient, had
entered Neuenhagen and had quickly passed through, heading west for the
Berlin districts of Weissensee and Lichtenberg. There had been
practically no fighting in the town. Most of the local Nazis had left
on April 15. At that time Bruno had told Mayor Otto Schneider, "When I
see the first Russians I'm going out to meet them with a white flag.
Fighting would be useless." The Mayor agreed. Only one man had put up
a fight: the fanatical Hermann Schuster, head of the party's social
welfare unit. He had barricaded his house and opened fire on the first
reconnaissance units. It was a one-sided battle. The Russians had
efficiently wiped out Schuster and his house with hand grenades. Bruno
and the other members of his Communist cell burned their Volkssturm arm
bands and met the Russian troops with a white flag. Bruno was happier
than he ever remembered being. He shared all his information with the
Soviet troopers and told them that he and his friends were
"anti-fascists and always had been." For Bruno the arrival of Zhukov's
soldiers brought on the miracle cure he had anticipated weeks before:
his ulcers disappeared. For the first time, he could eat without
nausea or pain.

The cure was to be short-lived. Bruno's detailed plan for the future
socialistic administration of the town, which he confidently offered to
the conquerors a few weeks later, was turned down. A Russian official
heard him out and then had responded with one word: "Nyet." On that
day--three months after Bruno Zarzycki had watched with pride and
wonder the arrival of his idols--the ulcers which he had always called
"fascist-inspired" returned, worse than ever.

In the Lehrterstrasse Prison, condemned Corporal Herbert Kosney did not
know how much longer his luck would hold. The confirmation of the
death sentence pronounced on him by civil authorities was still pending
action by a military court. Herbert was living on borrowed time. On
the twentieth he had been informed that the military tribunal would
hear his case the following day. He knew what its verdict would be,
and that he probably would be executed immediately. But the next
morning, when he arrived under guard at the courthouse at Plotzensee,
the building was empty: everybody had fled to the shelters.

Although the surprise Russian bombardment had saved him, the reprieve
was only temporary. Kosney had now been told that his trial would take
place Monday, the twenty-third. The Russians were Herbert's last hope.
If they did not reach the prison before that date, he would surely
die.

Because of the shelling, the prisoners had been moved down into the
cellars. Herbert noticed that the guards had suddenly become friendly.
There were rumors that some prisoners had already been released and
that others might be allowed to leave within the next few hours.
Herbert was certain he would be held, but he hoped that his brother
Kurt might get out.

Kurt, too, was aware of the rumors, but he knew what Herbert did
not--that they were at least partly true. The names of some Jehovah's
Witnesses--convicted conscientious objectors who performed various
menial chores in the prison --had been called out, and the men had been
given release slips which would permit them to leave the prison. One
Witness did not seem to be in much of a hurry to depart, Kurt noticed.
The man was sitting at a table in the cellar, carefully cleaning the
last morsel of food from his tin plate. "Why aren't you leaving with
the others?" Kurt asked. The man's explanation was simple. "My home
is in the Rhineland, be-

hind the Western Allies' lines," he said. "There's no possibility of
getting there. I'm just going to sit tight and stay here until the
whole thing is over."

Kurt looked at the man's release slip. If the Witness was not going to
use it, he knew someone who could. As the prisoner continued eating,
Kurt kept him in conversation, moving closer to the yellow paper that
signified freedom. After a few more moments of amiable chatting, Kurt
managed to slip the paper into his pocket; undetected, he walked off.

Quickly he found Herbert and offered him the precious release order. To
his astonishment, Herbert refused it. Because he was condemned to
death, the Gestapo would capture him no matter what, Herbert said. Kurt
had been imprisoned only as a suspected Communist; he had not been
charged with anything. "You'll have a better chance," Herbert told his
brother. "You go." Then he added with false enthusiasm, "We'll all
probably get out today, in any case. So you might as well go first."

A short time later, his bedroll over his shoulder, Kurt Kosney walked
into the guard room on the main floor and joined a line of Jehovah's
Witnesses being processed out. One of the guards, an SS sergeant named
Bathe who knew Kurt, looked right at him. For one awful moment Kurt
expected to be grabbed and hauled back to the cellar. But Bathe turned
away. The man behind the desk said, "Next." Kurt presented his slip.
Five minutes later, his official stamped release in hand, Kurt Kosney
stood in the street outside the prison. He was a free man. The street
was being swept with gunfire and "the air was thick with shrapnel," but
Kurt Kosney hardly noticed. He felt "deliriously happy--as though I
had drunk about twenty brandies." * * *

The Russians were in Zossen. General Rybalko's Third Guards tankers
had captured the High Command headquarters intact, along with a handful
of engineers, soldiers and technicians. Everyone else had gone.

Rybalko's tired, begrimed tankers blinked in amazement at the brilliant
lighting in the vast underground rooms. As they wandered through
galleries, living quarters and offices, evidences of a speedy exodus
were apparent everywhere. Major Boris Polevoi, a political commissar
attached to Koniev's headquarters, saw that the floors were littered
with maps and papers. In one room a dressing gown lay on a desk;
nearby was a leather case filled with family photographs.

Exchange 500, the huge telephone complex, had been seized undamaged.
Men stood on the threshold and gaped at the flickering lights on the
consoles, all now unmanned. Large signs, attached to the telephone
boards, warned in schoolbook Russian: "Soldiers! Do not damage this
apparatus. It will be valuable to the Red Army." Polevoi and the
other officers speculated that fleeing German workers "had put up the
signs in order to save their own necks."

Among the men captured in the command center had been Hans Beltow, the
chief engineer of the complex electrical systems, and now he showed the
Russians around Exchange 500. One operator, Beltow explained through
Russian women interpreters, had stayed until just before the
headquarters was overrun. As wire recorders played out his last
conversations, the Russians stood listening in the great immaculate
room. During Zossen's final minutes in German hands, calls had
continued to come in from all over the swiftly contracting Reich, and
they were all there on the recorders.

"I have an urgent message for Oslo," a voice said in German.

"Sorry," said the Zossen operator, "but we're not transmitting. I'm
the last man here."

"My God, what's happening ...?"

Another voice: "Attention, attention. I have an urgent message ..."

"We aren't accepting any messages."

"Is there any contact with Prague? How are they feeling in Berlin?"

"Ivan is almost at the door. I'm closing down now."

Zossen had fallen. Except for this brief inspection, Koniev's armies
had hardly paused there. One tentacle of tanks was heading for
Potsdam; another had already crossed the Nuthe Canal and reached
Lichtenrade, south of the Berlin district of Tempelhof. Other tankers
pushed on to Teltow and were now crashing through the defenses south of
the Teltow Canal. Beyond lay the districts of Zehlendorf and
Steglitz.

By nightfall of April 22, Koniev's armies had cracked Berlin's southern
defenses and had beaten Zhukov into Berlin by more than a full day. *
* *

In the Fuhrerbunker the customary military conference began at 3 P.m.
In the twelve-year history of the Third Reich, there had never been a
day like this. The usual outpourings of optimism were missing. The
Oder front had all but crumpled. The Ninth Army was virtually
encircled. Its strongest unit, the 56th Panzer Corps, was lost for the
moment and could not be found. * Steiner had been unable to attack.
Berlin was almost encircled. Commanders were being replaced almost
hourly. The Reich was in its death agonies, and the man who had
brought it all about now gave up. * In Heinrici's war diary, in which
all telephone conversations were taken down verbatim in shorthand, an
astonishing entry appears: "12:30 April 21: Busse to Heinrici: "Just
got word that 56th Corps last night moved into Olympic Village from
Hoppegarten without specific orders. Request arrest ..."" No one knows
where Busse got his information, but it was wrong: the Olympic Village
was at Doberitz on the western side of Berlin. Weidling was fighting
on the eastern outskirts of the city.

Hitler's announcement climaxed a wild, uncontrolled torrent of abuse in
which he denounced his generals, his advisors, his armies and the
people of Germany whom he had led to disaster. The end had come,
Hitler sputtered; everything was falling apart; he was no longer able
to continue; he had decided to remain in Berlin; he intended to take
over the defense of the city personally--and at the last moment he
meant to shoot himself. General Krebs and the Luftwaffe
representative, General Eckhardt Christian, were horror-stricken. To
both, Hitler seemed to have suffered a complete

breakdown. Jodl alone remained calm, for Hitler had told the
Operations chief all of this forty-eight hours before.

Everyone present tried to persuade the almost deranged Fuhrer that all
was not lost. He must remain in charge of the Reich, they said, and he
must leave Berlin, for it was impossible to control matters from the
capital any longer. The man who had held their world together now
brutally rejected them. He was remaining in Berlin, Hitler said. The
others could go where they pleased. Everyone was thunderstruck. To
emphasize that he meant what he said, Hitler stated that he intended to
make a public announcement of his presence in Berlin. There and then
he dictated a statement to be broadcast immediately. The others
managed to persuade him not to release it right away. The announcement
would not be made until the next day. Meanwhile, the officers and
aides in the bunker called on their colleagues outside the city to
bring additional pressure on the Fuhrer. Himmler, Doenitz and even
Goering telephoned, pleading, like their comrades, for a change of
mind. Hitler would not be dissuaded.

Jodl was called away to the phone. While he was gone Keitel, trying to
reason with Hitler, asked to speak to him privately. The conference
room was cleared. According to Keitel's account, he told Hitler that
he saw two courses of action still open: to "make an offer of
capitulation before Berlin became a battlefield," or to arrange "for
Hitler to fly to Berchtesgaden and from there instantly begin
negotiations." Hitler, according to Keitel, "did not let me get beyond
these words. He interrupted and said, "I have made this decision
already. I shall not leave Berlin. I shall defend the city to the
end. Either I win this battle for the Reich's capital or I shall fall
as a symbol of the Reich.""

Keitel thought this decision was madness. "I must insist," he told
Hitler, "that you leave for Berchtesgaden this very night." Hitler
refused to hear any more. He called back Jodl and, in a private
conference with the two officers, "gave us his order that we were to
fly to Berchtesgaden and from there take over the reins together with
Goering, who was Hitler's deputy."

"In seven years," Keitel protested, "I have never refused to

carry out an order from you, but this one I shall not carry out. You
can't leave the Wehrmacht in the lurch." Hitler replied, "I am staying
here. That is certain." Then Jodl suggested that Wenck's army could
drive toward Berlin from its positions on the Elbe. * Keitel declared
that he would immediately travel to the western front, see General
Wenck, "relieve him of all previous commands and order him to march
toward Berlin and link up with the Ninth Army." * The Eclipse
documents he had studied so thoroughly had convinced Jodl that Wenck's
drive east would not be hindered by the Americans who, he was sure,
were permanently halted on the Elbe.

At last Hitler had heard a suggestion he could approve. It seemed to
Keitel that the proposal brought a "certain relief to Hitler in this
absolutely dreadful situation." Soon after, Keitel left for Wenck's
headquarters.

Some officers who were not at the conference, such as the Luftwaffe's
Chief of Staff, General Karl Koller, were so astonished by the news of
the Fuhrer's collapse that they refused to believe the reports of their
own representatives on the scene. Koller rushed to Jodl's latest
headquarters at Krampnitz, five miles northeast of Potsdam, and got a
verbatim report. "What you've heard is correct," Jodl told Koller. He
also told the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff that Hitler had given up and
intended to commit suicide at the last minute. "Hitler said that he
could not take part in the fighting for physical reasons and that he
would not do so because of the danger of falling into the enemy's
hands, perhaps when he was only wounded. We all tried to dissuade him.
Hitler," Jodl went on, "said he was no longer able to continue and that
now it was up to the Reichsmarschall. In answer to a remark that
troops would not fight for Goering, the Fuhrer said: "What do you mean,
fight? There's not much fighting to be done and when it comes to
negotiating, the Reichsmarschall can do that better than I."" Jodl
added that "Hitler said the troops are no longer fighting, the tank
barricades in Berlin are open and are no longer being defended."

In the Fuhrerbunker it was clear by now that Hitler had meant every
word he had said. He spent hours selecting documents and papers which
were then taken out into the courtyard and burned. Then he sent for
Goebbels, Frau Goebbels and their children. They were to stay with him
in the bunker until the end. Dr. Werner Naumann, Goebbels' assistant,
had known for some time that "Goebbels felt that the only decent course
of conduct in the event of collapse was to fall in battle or commit
suicide." Magda Goebbels, the Reichsminister's wife, felt the same
way. When he heard of the Goebbels' impending move to the Chancellery,
Naumann knew that "they would all die there together."

Goebbels' contempt for the "traitorous and unworthy" was almost equal
to Hitler's. The day before the Fuhrer's outburst, he called his
propaganda staff together and said, "The German people have failed. In
the east they are running away, in the west they are receiving the
enemy with white flags. The German people themselves chose their
destiny. I forced no one to be my co-worker. Why did you work with
me? Now your little throats are going to be cut! But believe me, when
we take our leave, earth will tremble."

By Hitler's standards it almost seemed that the only loyal Germans were
those who now planned suicide and buried themselves in their own tombs.
On this very evening, gangs of SS men were searching houses looking for
deserters. Punishment was swift. On nearby Alexanderplatz,
16-year-old Eva Knoblauch, a refugee recently arrived in Berlin, saw
the body of a young Wehrmacht private hanging from a lamp post. There
was a large white card tied to the dead man's legs. It read: "Traitor.
I deserted my people."

All through this decisive day Heinrici had waited for the news that he
felt must come, that Hitler had given permission for the

Ninth Army to withdraw. Busse's force, almost encircled, cut off from
the armies on its flanks, was close to annihilation. Yet Krebs had
continued to insist that it hold its positions. He had gone even
further: he had suggested that some of the Ninth's forces attempt to
fight their way south and link up with Field Marshal Schorner. Busse
himself was complicating matters. Heinrici had tried to get him to
pull back without orders; Busse refused even to consider withdrawal
unless a specific command arrived from the Fuhrer.

At 11 A.m. on April 22, Heinrici warned Krebs that the Ninth would be
split into several parts by nightfall. Krebs confidently predicted
that Field Marshal Schorner would right the situation by driving north
to link up with Busse. Heinrici knew better. "It will take Schorner
several days to mount an attack," he told Krebs. "By then the Ninth
will no longer exist."

Hour by hour the situation grew more desperate, and Heinrici repeatedly
urged Krebs to do something. "You nail my forces down," he stormed,
"while you tell me that I must do all I can to avoid the shame of the
Fuhrer being encircled in Berlin. Against my will, in spite of my
request to be relieved of my duties, I am being prevented from pulling
out the only forces that can be used for the protection of the Fuhrer
and Berlin." The Fuhrer's headquarters was not only making
difficulties over Busse; now it was demanding that Von Manteuffel's
Third Army throw Rokossovskii's forces back across the Oder-- an order
so impossible to carry out that Heinrici could only gasp when he
received it.

At 12:10 P.m. Heinrici warned Krebs: "It is my conviction that this is
the last moment to withdraw the Ninth Army." Two hours later he called
again but Krebs had already left for the Fuhrer's conference. To
General Dethleffsen, Heinrici said, "We must have a decision." At 2:50
Krebs called Heinrici. The Fuhrer had agreed that some of the Ninth
Army's forces could be moved back along the outer northern wing, giving
up Frankfurt. Heinrici snorted. It was a half-measure that would do
little to improve the situation. He did not point out to Krebs that
the city had been

held steadily by Colonel Bieler, the man Hitler had decided was "no
Gneisenau." Now Bieler would find it difficult to disengage. In any
event, the approval had come too late. The Ninth was encircled.

Nearly two hours later, Krebs again came on the phone. This time he
informed Heinrici that at the Fuhrer's conference it had been decided
to turn General Wenck's Twelfth Army away from its positions on the
western front. Wenck would launch an attack toward the east and
Berlin, relieving the pressure. It was a surprising announcement;
Heinrici commented dryly: "They will be most welcome." But still no
order of complete withdrawal had come for the Ninth. Although they
were encircled, Heinrici believed Busse's troops were still strong
enough to begin moving toward the west. Now Krebs's news of Wenck
--whom Heinrici had never even heard of before this moment--offered a
new possibility. "The news gave rise to the hope," Heinrici said
later, "that the Ninth could still be rescued from its precarious
situation after all." Heinrici called Busse. "Krebs just told me that
the Army Wenck is to turn about and march in your direction," he said.
He instructed Busse to pull out his strongest division, break through
the Russians, and head west to meet Wenck. Busse protested that this
would lose him the bulk of his strength. Heinrici had had enough.
"This is the order for the Ninth Army," he interrupted in a steely
voice. "Pull out one division and get it under way to join with
Wenck." He was finished arguing.

All around the rim of the city a red glow tinged the night sky. Fires
pockmarked nearly every district, and the shelling was ceaseless. But
in the cellar of the Lehrterstrasse Prison a feeling of jubilance and
excitement had been mounting steadily. During the afternoon twenty-one
men had been freed. Later, some of the remaining prisoners' valuables
had been returned. According to the guards, the action had been
authorized to speed up the processing of releases. At any moment now
the prisoners expected

to be freed. Some thought they might be home before morning. Even
Herbert Kosney now felt that he had beaten the executioner.

A guard came into the cellar. From a list in his hand, he quickly
began to read off names. The men listened tensely as each name was
called. There was a Communist, a Russian POW and several men whom
Kosney recognized as suspects in the Hitler plot of 1944. The guard
reeled off the names: "... Haushofer ... Schleicher ... Munzinger ...
Sosinow ... Kosney ... Moll. ..." Suddenly Herbert realized with a
surge of hope that his name had been called.

Altogether some sixteen prisoners had been singled out. When they had
been counted, the guard led them to the security office. There they
waited outside the door as, one after another, each man was called in.
When Kosney's turn came, he saw that there were six SS men in the room,
all quite drunk. One of them looked up his name and gave him the
personal belongings taken from him at the time of his arrest. They
were pitifully few: his army paybook, a pencil and a cigarette lighter.
Herbert signed a receipt for his effects and then a form stating that
he had been released. One of the SS men told him, "Well, you'll see
your wife pretty soon."

Back in the cellar the men were told to pack their belongings. Kosney
could hardly believe his luck. He packed quickly, carefully folding
the good suit his wife had given him on their fourth wedding
anniversary. When he had finished, he began to help his fellow
prisoner, Haushofer. Among Haushofer's belongings was some food,
including a bottle of wine and a loaf of pumpernickel. Haushofer could
not get the bread into his rucksack, so he gave it to Kosney. There
was a long wait. Then, after almost an hour and a half, the sixteen
men were lined up in a double row and led up the cellar steps, through
a door and into a dark hall. Suddenly a door slammed shut behind them
and they were left standing in total darkness. Almost immediately a
flashlight was switched on. As Herbert's eyes grew accustomed to the
dimness, he saw that the light was hanging from an SS officer's belt.
The man, a lieutenant colonel, was wearing a helmet and he carried a
gun. "You are being transferred," he told the men. "If there are any
attempts at escape you will be shot down. Load your things onto the
truck outside. We'll march to the Potsdam railroad station."

Kosney's hopes were dashed. For a moment he thought of darting into
one of the nearby cells. He was now certain that the Russians would be
in the area within a few hours. But even as he considered hiding, he
realized that other SS men, carrying machine pistols, were standing all
about the room.

The prisoners were herded out into the Lehrterstrasse and marched off
in the direction of Invalidenstrasse. It was raining; Herbert turned
up his jacket collar and tied a towel he was using as a scarf tighter
around his throat. Halfway down the street the men were stopped and
searched, and their personal effects, which had been returned to them
only a short while earlier, were taken again. The column set off once
more, each prisoner flanked by an SS man with a machine pistol on his
back and a gun in his hand. As they reached Invalidenstrasse an SS
sergeant suggested taking a shortcut through the bombed-out Ulap
exhibition hall. They marched through the rubble and entered the ruins
of the massive building with its skeletal concrete pillars. Suddenly
each prisoner was grabbed by the collar by his SS guard. One group of
prisoners went to the left, the other to the right. They were marched
right up to the wall of the building and positioned about six to seven
feet apart. And then they all knew what was going to happen.

Some prisoners began to plead for their lives. The man next to Kosney
began to scream, "Let me live! I haven't done anything." At that
moment Herbert felt the cold barrel of a pistol touching the back of
his neck. Just as the sergeant shouted "Fire," Herbert turned his
head. There was a ragged volley as each SS man fired. Kosney felt a
sudden sharp blow. Then he was on the ground. He lay motionless.

Now the lieutenant colonel walked along the line of fallen men, firing
an additional shot into the head of each prisoner. When he got to
Herbert, he said: "This pig has had enough."

Then he said: "Come on, men. We must hurry. We have more work to do
tonight."

Kosney never knew how long he lay there. After a time, very
cautiously, he put his hand up to his neck and cheek. He was bleeding
profusely. But his life had been saved in that split second when he
turned his head. He found that he could not use his right arm or leg.
Crawling, he slowly made his way through the ruins until he reached
Invalidenstrasse. Then he got up, found he could walk, tied the towel
even more tightly about his wounded throat and slowly, painfully
started in the direction of the Charite Hospital. He collapsed several
times. Once he was stopped by a group of Hitler Youths; they first
demanded his identity papers, but then, seeing that he was badly hurt,
they allowed him to pass.

At some point in his journey he took his shoes off because "they felt
too heavy." At another time he encountered heavy artillery fire. How
long the walk took he could never remember --he was never more than
half conscious--but finally he reached his home off Franseckystrasse.
Then, with his last ounce of strength, Herbert Kosney, the only living
witness to the Lehrterstrasse Prison massacre, banged again and again
on the door. His wife Hedwig opened the door. The man who stood there
was unrecognizable. His face was a mass of blood, as was the front of
his coat. Horrified, she said, "Who are you?" Just before he
collapsed, Kosney managed to say, "I'm Herbert." * * The other fifteen
bodies were found three weeks later. Still clutched in the hand of
Albrecht Haushofer were some of the sonnets he had written in jail. One
line read: "There are times which are guided by madness; And then they
are the best heads that one hangs."

At 1 A.m. on April 23, the phone rang in the Wiesenburg forest
headquarters of General Walther Wenck, commander of the Twelfth Army.
The Wehrmacht's youngest general was still in

uniform, dozing in an armchair. His command post, Alte Holle--Old
Hell--about thirty-five miles east of Magdeburg was the former home of
a gamekeeper.

Wenck picked up the phone himself. One of his commanders reported that
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel had just passed through the lines, en
route to the headquarters. Wenck called his Chief of Staff, Colonel
Gunther Reichhelm. "We have a visitor coming," he said. "Keitel."
Wenck had always heartily disliked Hitler's Chief of Staff. Keitel was
the last man in the world he wanted to talk to now.

In the last few weeks Wenck had seen more sorrow, hardship and
suffering than he had ever witnessed in battle. As Germany's
boundaries shrank, his area had become a vast refugee encampment.
Homeless Germans were everywhere--along the roads, in the fields,
villages and forests, sleeping in wagons, tents, broken-down trucks,
railway carriages, and in the open. Wenck had turned every habitable
building in the area--homes, churches, even village dance halls--into
shelters for the refugees. "I felt," he said later, "like a visiting
priest. Every day I went around trying to do what I could for the
refugees, in particular the children and the sick. And all the time we
wondered how soon the Americans would attack from their bridgeheads
across the Elbe."

His army was now feeding more than half a million people a day. Trains
from all over the Reich had reached this narrow area between the Elbe
and Berlin and had been unable to proceed farther. The freight they
carried was both a boon and a burden to the Twelfth Army. Every
conceivable kind of cargo, from aircraft parts to carloads of butter,
had been found on the trains. A few miles away, on the eastern front,
Von Manteuffel's panzers were halted for lack of fuel; Wenck, on the
other hand, was almost awash in gasoline. He had reported these
surpluses to Berlin, but as yet no arrangements had been made to
collect them. Nobody had even acknowledged his reports.

Now as he waited for Keitel, Wenck reflected with some concern that if
the OKW Chief of Staff learned of his social work among the refugees he
would hardly approve. Under Keitel's code of soldierly ethics, such
actions were simply inconceivable. Wenck heard a car drive up and one
of his staff said, "Now watch Keitel play the hero."

In the full trappings of a field marshal, even to baton, Keitel entered
the little house followed by his adjutant and aide. "The arrogance and
pomp of Keitel and his group, strutting as though they had just taken
Paris," seemed disgraceful to Wenck, "when every road told its tale of
misery and Germany lay defeated."

Formally Keitel saluted, touching his cap with his field marshal's
baton. Wenck saw immediately that for all his punctilious behavior his
visitor was anxious and excited. Keitel's adjutant produced maps and
spread them out; without preamble, Keitel leaned over, tapped Berlin,
and said: "We must save the Fuhrer."

Then, as though he felt he had been too abrupt, Keitel dropped that
subject and asked for a briefing on the Twelfth Army's situation. Wenck
did not mention the refugees or the army's part in caring for them.
Instead, he spoke in general terms of the Elbe area. Even when coffee
and sandwiches were served, Keitel did not relax. Wenck did little to
put his visitor at ease. "The truth was," he later explained, "that we
felt terribly superior. What could Keitel tell us that we did not
already know? That the end had come?"

Keitel suddenly stood up and began pacing the room. "Hitler," he said
gravely, "has broken down completely. Worse, he has given up. Because
of this situation, you must turn your troops around and drive toward
Berlin, together with the Ninth Army of Busse." Wenck listened quietly
as Keitel described the situation. "The battle for Berlin has begun,"
he said. "No less than the fate of Germany and Hitler are at stake."
He looked solemnly at Wenck. "It is your duty to attack and save the
Fuhrer." Irrelevantly, Wenck suddenly thought that this was probably
the closest Keitel had ever been to the front lines in his life.

Long ago in his dealings with Keitel, Wenck had learned that "if you
gave an argument, one of two things happened: you

got two hours of blistering talk or you lost your command." Now he
replied automatically, "Of course, Field Marshal, we will do what you
order."

Keitel nodded. "You will attack Berlin from the sector
Belzig-Treuenbrietzen," he said, pointing to two small towns about
twelve miles northeast of the Twelfth's front lines. Wenck knew that
this was impossible. Keitel was talking about a plan which was based
on forces--men, tanks and divisions--that had long since been
destroyed, or had simply never existed. With virtually no tanks or
self-propelled guns and with few men, Wenck could not simultaneously
hold the line against the Americans at the Elbe and attack toward
Berlin to save the Fuhrer. In any case, it would be immensely
difficult to attack northeast into Berlin. There were too many lakes
and rivers in his path. With the limited forces at his disposal, he
could only get into Berlin from the north. He suggested to Keitel that
the Twelfth drive on Berlin "north of the lakes, via Nauen and Spandau.
I think," Wenck added, "that I can mount the attack in about two days."
Keitel stood for a moment in silence. Then he told Wenck stonily, "We
can't wait two days."

Again, Wenck did not argue. He could not waste the time. Quickly he
agreed to Keitel's plan. As the Field Marshal left the headquarters,
he turned to Wenck and said, "I wish you complete success."

When Keitel's car had driven away, Wenck called together his staff.
"Now," he said, "here's how we will actually do it. We will drive as
close to Berlin as we can, but we will not give up our positions on the
Elbe. With our flanks on the river we keep open a channel of escape to
the west. It would be nonsense to drive toward Berlin only to be
encircled by the Russians. We will try for a link-up with the Ninth
Army, and then let's get out every soldier and civilian who can make it
to the west."

As for Hitler, Wenck said only that "the fate of one person does not
matter any more." While he was giving orders for the attack, it
occurred to Wenck that in all the long night's discussion Keitel had
never once mentioned the people of Berlin.

* * *

As dawn came up at Magdeburg, three Germans slipped across the Elbe and
surrendered to the U.s. 30th Infantry Division. One of them was
57-year-old Lieutenant General Kurt Dittmar, a Wehrmacht officer who
had daily broadcast the latest communiques from the front, and who was
known throughout the Reich as the "voice of the German High Command."
With him were his 16-year-old son Eberhard and Major Werner Pluskat,
the D-Day veteran whose Magdeburg guns had played an important part in
preventing General Simpson's U.s. Ninth Army from crossing the Elbe.

Dittmar, who was considered the most accurate of all German military
broadcasters, had a large following, not only in Germany but among the
Allied monitoring staffs. He was immediately taken to the 30th's
headquarters for questioning. He surprised intelligence officers with
one piece of information: Hitler, he said firmly, was in Berlin. It
was enlightening news to the Allied officers. Up to now no one had
been certain of the Fuhrer's whereabouts. * Most rumors had placed him
in the National Redoubt. But Dittmar could not be shaken from his
story. The Fuhrer was not only in Berlin, he told his interrogators,
but he believed that "Hitler will either be killed there or commit
suicide." * Apparently there had not been time to circulate Wiberg's
report after its receipt in London.

"Tell us about the National Redoubt," somebody urged. Dittmar looked
puzzled. The only thing he knew about a national redoubt, he said, was
something he had read in a Swiss newspaper the previous January. He
agreed that there were pockets of resistance in the north, "including
Norway and Denmark, and one in the south in the Italian Alps. But," he
added, "that is less by intention than by force of circumstance." As
his interrogators pressed him about the redoubt, Dittmar shook his
head. "The National Redoubt? It's a romantic dream. It's a myth."

And that is all it was--a chimera. As General Omar Bradley, the
Twelfth Army Group commander, was later to write, "the Redoubt existed
largely in the imagination of a few fanatical Nazis. It grew into so
exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished we could have believed it as
innocently as we did. But while it persisted, this legend ... shaped
our tactical thinking." * * *

Amid clouds of dust, columns of German tanks hammered through the
cobbled streets of Karlshorst, on the outskirts of Berlin's eastern
district of Lichtenberg. Eleanore Kruger, whose Jewish fiance Joachim
Lipschitz was hiding in the cellar of her home, watched in amazement.
Where had the tanks come from? Where were they going? Instead of
heading into the city, they were dashing south toward Schoneweide, as
though fleeing Berlin. were the Russians right behind? If they were,
it would mean freedom at last for Joachim. But why were German troops
leaving the city? were they abandoning it? Retreating?

Eleanore did not know it, but she was watching the lost and battered
remnant of General Weidling's 56th Panzer Corps in the process of
restoring contact with the main force. After being pushed back to the
very outskirts of the city, Weidling's men had re-established
communications with Busse's now-encircled Ninth Army in a most
roundabout way: the moment they hit the edge of the city they had used
the public telephone to call High Command headquarters in Berlin, and
they had thereupon been connected by radio with the Ninth. The 56th
had immediately received orders to head south of the capital, cut their
way through the surrounding ring of Russians, and link up with the
Ninth again about fifteen miles from the city in the area of
Konigswusterhausen and Klein Kienitz. From there they would join the
effort to cut off Koniev's forces.

But first Weidling had some unfinished business to attend to. He had
now heard that officers from both Busse's and Hitler's headquarters had
been sent to bring him in on charges that he had deliberately fled the
battlefield, leaving his corps leaderless.

Angrily, he ordered his men to push on without him while he headed into
the city to confront Krebs.

Some hours later Weidling, having crossed Berlin to the Reichskanzlei,
made his way through the basement to the so-called aide-de-camp bunker
where Krebs and Burgdorf had their office. They greeted him coolly.
"What's going on?" demanded Weidling. "Tell me why I'm supposed to be
shot." His headquarters, said Weidling sharply, had been located
almost on the front line from the moment the battle began: how could
anyone say he had fled? Someone mentioned the Olympic Village at
Doberitz. The 56th had been nowhere near Doberitz, growled Weidling;
to have gone there "would have been the greatest stupidity." Slowly
Krebs and Burgdorf thawed; soon they were promising to clear up matters
with the Fuhrer "without delay."

Weidling then gave the two men a briefing on his situation. He told
them that his corps was about to attack south of Berlin--and then, "in
passing, I casually added that before leaving I had received a report
that Russian tank spearheads had been seen near Rudow." Rudow lay just
beyond the edge of the southeastern district of Neukolln. Krebs
immediately saw danger. In that case, he said, the Ninth's order for
the 56th Corps had to be changed: Weidling's corps would have to stay
in Berlin. Then both Krebs and Burgdorf hurried off to see Hitler.

Shortly thereafter Weidling was told that Hitler wanted to see him. The
walk to the Fuhrerbunker was a long one, through what Weidling later
called an "underground city." From Krebs's office he proceeded first
along a subterranean tunnel, then through a kitchen and dining room,
and finally down a staircase and into the Fuhrer's personal quarters.

Krebs and Burgdorf introduced him. "Behind a table loaded with maps,"
Weidling wrote, "sat the Fuhrer of the Reich. When I entered, he
turned his head. I saw a puffy face with feverish eyes. When he tried
to stand up, I noticed to my horror that his hands and legs were
constantly trembling. He succeeded with great effort in getting up.
With a distorted smile he shook hands with me and asked in a hardly
audible voice whether we hadn't

met before." Once before, said Weidling; the Fuhrer had given him a
decoration a year earlier. Hitler said: "I do remember the name, but
cannot remember the face." When Hitler sat down, Weidling noticed that
even in a sitting position "his left leg kept moving, the knee swinging
like a pendulum, only faster."

Weidling told Hitler what the 56th's situation was. Then Hitler
confirmed Krebs's instructions that the Corps was to stay in Berlin.
The Fuhrer thereupon launched into his plan for the defense of Berlin.
He proposed to pull in the armies of Wenck from the west, Busse from
the southeast and Group Steiner from the north, and thus, somehow, cut
off the Russians. "It was," wrote Weidling, "with ever-growing
astonishment that I listened to the big talk of the Fuhrer." Only one
thing was clear to Weidling: "Short of a miracle, the days until final
defeat were numbered."

That evening the 56th Corps, suffering heavy losses, managed to
disengage from the Russians in the south, then pivot and enter Berlin.
Twenty-four hours later, to Weidling's horror, he was named Commandant
of the city. * * *

The order from Stalin was numbered 11074. It was addressed to both
Zhukov and Koniev; and it divided up the city between them. As of this
day, April 23, the order said, the boundary line between the First
Belorussian Front and First Ukrainian Front would be "Lubben, thence to
Teupitz, Mittenwalde, Mariendorf, Anhalter Station of Berlin."

Although he could not complain publicly, Koniev was crushed. Zhukov
had been given the prize. The boundary line, which ran straight
through Berlin, placed Koniev's forces roughly 150 yards west of the
Reichstag--which the Russians had always considered the city's prize
plum, the place where the Soviet flag was to be planted. * * *

Now the city began to die. In most places, water and gas services had
stopped. Newspapers began to close down; the last was the Nazis' own
Volkischer Beobachter, which shut up on the twenty-sixth (it was
replaced by a Goebbels-inspired four-page paper called Der Panzerbar
[The Armored Bear], described as the "Combat Paper for the Defenders of
Greater Berlin," which lasted six days). All transportation within the
city was grinding to a halt as streets became impassable, gasoline
scarce, and vehicles crippled. Distribution services broke down; there
were almost no deliveries of any kind. Refrigeration plants no longer
functioned. On April 22, the city's 100-year-old telegraph office
closed down for the first time in its history. The last message it
received was from Tokyo; it read: "GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL." On the same
day, the last plane left Tempelhof Airport, bound for Stockholm with
nine passengers aboard, and Berlin's 1,400 fire companies were ordered
to the west. * * Two operations continued without a break: the
meteorological records, kept at the station in Potsdam, did not miss a
day throughout 1945, and eleven of the city's seventeen
breweries--engaged, by government decree, in "essential" production--
continued making beer.

And now, with all the police serving in either the army or the Home
Guard, the city slowly started to go out of control. People began to
plunder. Freight trains stalled in the marshaling yards were broken
into in broad daylight. Margarete Promeist, who made an extremely
dangerous journey to the rail yards under heavy shelling, came away
with a single piece of bacon; "looking back on it," she said afterward,
"I thought this was sheer madness." Elena Majewski and Vera Ungnad
rushed all the way to the railway freight yards in Moabit. They saw
people grabbing cases of canned apricots, plums and peaches. There
were also sacks of a strange kind of beans, but the girls passed these
by. They did not recognize green coffee beans. They got a case of
canned goods labeled "Apricots" and when they got home discovered it
was applesauce. Both girls had always hated it. Robert Schultze fared
even worse: he spent five hours as part of a mob trying to get at some
potatoes in a large food store--but by the time his turn came they were
all gone.

Storekeepers who would not give supplies away were often forced to do
so. Hitler Youth Klaus Kuster walked into a store with his aunt and
asked for some supplies. When the owner insisted that he had only some
cereals left, Kuster pulled a gun and demanded food. The shopowner
quickly produced an assortment of foodstuffs, literally from under the
counter. Kuster gathered up as much as he could carry, and he and his
scandalized aunt left the store. "You are a godless youth," his aunt
cried when they were outside, "using American gangster methods!" Klaus
replied: "Aw, shut up! It's now a matter of life and death."

Elfriede Maigatter heard a rumor that the giant Karstadt department
store on the Hermannplatz was being looted. She hurried to the store
and found it jammed with people. "Everyone was pushing and kicking to
get through the doors," she later reported. "There were no queues any
more. There was no sales staff, and nobody seemed to be in charge."
People were just grabbing everything in sight. If it turned out to be
something useless they simply dropped it on the floor. In the food
department there was a carpet of several inches of sticky mud on the
floor, made up of condensed milk, marmalade, noodles, flour,
honey--anything that had been overturned or dropped by the mob."

A few supervisors seemed to be left, for now and then a man would
shout, "Get out! Get out! The store is going to be blown up!" Nobody
paid any attention to him; it was too obvious a trick. Women were
grabbing coats, dresses and shoes in the clothing department. Bedding,
linens and blankets were being dragged from shelves by others. In the
candy section Elfriede saw a man grab a box of chocolates from a little
boy. The child began to cry. Then he yelled, "I'm going to get
another one." And he did.

But at the exit door came the denouement: two supervisors were stopping
everyone as they tried to get out with their booty. They were letting
people take food, but nothing else. Soon a great pile of merchandise
began to grow near the door. People plowed through it, pushing and
shoving, trying to force their way past the supervisors. When Elfriede
tried to get through with the coat

she had taken, one of the store officials grabbed it away from her.
"Please let me have it," she begged. "I'm cold." He shrugged, took it
back off the pile and gave it to her. "Beat it," he said. And all the
time, as the mob pushed and shoved and grabbed everything in sight,
someone kept yelling: "Get out! Get out! The store is going to be
blown up!"

One witness to the looting at Karstadt's was Pastor Leckscheidt. His
presence on the scene had come about in a surprising way. One of his
parishioners had given birth to a stillborn baby and the infant had
been cremated. The mother, deeply distressed, wanted the urn
containing the ashes properly buried and Leckscheidt had agreed to be
present--even though it meant walking several miles, under constant
shelling, to the cemetery in Neukolln where the woman wanted her child
buried. As they tramped along, the woman carrying the little urn in
her shopping bag, they passed by Karstadt's and saw the mobs looting.
His parishioner stared. Suddenly she said, "Wait!" Leckscheidt stood
in amazement as "she left my side and disappeared into the store, urn,
market bag and all." Moments later she returned, triumphantly swinging
a pair of sturdy boots. Turning to Leckscheidt, she said: "Shall we
go?"

On the way back, Leckscheidt was careful to keep her away from
Karstadt's. It was just as well. The SS, which reportedly had stored
29 million marks' worth of supplies in the basement, had blown up the
emporium to deny the Russians the treasure. A number of women and
children were killed in the blast.

In the face of the plunderers many store owners simply gave up. Rather
than let their shops get smashed by unruly mobs, they emptied their
shelves and gave supplies away without accepting either ration stamps
or money. There was another reason: shopkeepers had heard that if the
Russians found hoarded food, they burned the shop down. In Neukolln a
week before, film projectionist Gunther Rosetz, had tried to buy some
marmalade at Tengelmann's grocery store and had been refused. Now
Rosetz saw that Tengelmann's was selling tubs of marmalade, oats, sugar
and

flour--all at ten marks a pound. In panic the store was giving goods
away just to move everything out of the shop. In the Caspary wine shop
on the corner of Hindenburgstrasse, Alexander Kelm could hardly believe
his eyes: bottles of wine were given away to all comers. The Hitler
Youth, Klaus Kuster, making another foray through his neighborhood, got
two hundred free cigarettes at one place, two bottles of brandy at
another. The owner of the liquor shop in his area said: "Here, you
might as well drink it up. Hard times are coming."

Even for looters there was virtually no meat to be had. At first a few
butchers had supplies which they doled out to special customers, but
soon that, too, was gone. Now, all over Berlin, people started carving
up horses, which lay dead in the streets from the shelling. Charlotte
Richter and her sister saw people armed with knives cutting up a
gray-white horse that had been killed on Breitenbachplatz. "The
horse," Charlotte saw, "had not fallen over on its side, but sort of
sat on its haunches, its head still high, eyes wide open. And there
were women with carving knives cleaving at its shanks."

Ruby Borgmann found that she enjoyed brushing her teeth with champagne;
it made the toothpaste very foamy. In the luxurious cellar beneath
Heinrich Schelle's fashionable Gruban-Souchay restaurant, Ruby and her
husband Eberhard were living an almost exotic existence. Schelle had
kept his promise; when the shelling began, he invited the Borgmanns to
join him in his resplendent underground quarters. The restaurant's
reserves of silver, crystal and fine china were stored there and
Schelle had provided creature comforts as well. The floor was carpeted
with Oriental rugs. On either side of the entrance, sleeping
accommodations were screened by heavy gray-green draperies. Luxurious
overstuffed chairs, a sofa and small tables--each covered with beige
and rust-colored linen cloths from the restaurant--were placed about
the room. There had been no water for days but

there was champagne aplenty. "We drank champagne morning, noon and
night," Ruby remembered. "It flowed like water--the water we didn't
have."

Food was the real problem. The Borgmanns' good friend, Pia van Hoeven,
who sometimes shared the cellar's comforts with them, was occasionally
able to produce some bread and even a little meat on her visits.
Mostly, however, the occupants lived on tuna fish and potatoes. Ruby
wondered just how many ways there were to fix these staples. The
restaurant's temperamental French chef, Mopti, had yet to repeat
himself, but he could not go on forever. Still, now that there seemed
no hope that the Americans would come, the little group had decided to
live it up. At any hour they might be dead.

"Papa" Saenger was gone.

Through four years of bombing and through the shelling of the last few
days, the 78-year-old World War I veteran had refused to be
intimidated. In fact, it had taken all of Erna Saenger's powers of
persuasion to prevent her husband Konrad from going out for his
customary meeting with his World War I comrades-in-arms. She had put
Papa to work digging a shallow hole in the garden to hide her
preserves. Konrad also thought it might be a good idea to hide his old
army sword along with the jams and jellies, so the Russians would find
no weapons in the house.

But once the work was done, Papa had gone out into the streets despite
the pleadings of the entire family. They had found his
shrapnel-riddled body in the bushes outside the burning wreckage of
Pastor Martin Niemoller's house, only a short way from home. While
shells blanketed the district, the family brought Papa home in a
wheelbarrow. As she walked alongside the cart, Erna remembered that
during their last conversation she had a slight difference of opinion
with Konrad as to which Biblical quotation was more appropriate for the
times. Papa maintained that "one can only live by the 90th Psalm,
especially the fourth

verse: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is past, and as a watch in the night."" Erna had disagreed.
"Personally," she told him, "I think that psalm is much too
pessimistic. I prefer the 46th: "God is our refuge and strength, a
very present help in trouble.""

There was not a coffin to be found, and a trip to the cemetery was too
dangerous to attempt in any case. Still, they could not keep the body
in the warm house. They left it on the porch. Erna found two small
pieces of wood and nailed them together for a cross. Gently, she
placed the crucifix between her husband's hands. As she looked down at
Papa, she wished she could tell him that he had been right, for the
90th Psalm continued: "We are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath
are we troubled."

Father Bernhard Happich looked down at the notes for his sermon. The
chapel of Haus Dahlem was softly lit by candles, but outside the sky to
the east of Wilmersdorf was almost blood red, and the shelling which
had awakened the Sisters at three that morning was still going on
nearly twelve hours later. Somewhere nearby, glass shattered and a
tremendous concussion shook the building. Father Happich heard loud
shouts from the street and then the heavy thudding sound of the Czech
anti-aircraft gun just across the road from the maternity home and
orphanage.

The nuns sitting before him did not stir. As he gazed out at them, he
saw that, in keeping with an order from Mother Superior Cunegundes, the
women had removed the heavy silver crosses they normally wore. Instead,
small, inconspicuous metal crucifixes--so-called Death Crosses--were
attached to their habits. The silver ones had been hidden, along with
all rings and watches.

Father Happich had made some preparations of his own. In the Dahlem
villa where the priest lived, a large box had been packed. In it
Father Happich had placed some medical instruments, the contents of the
medicine chests, plus drugs, bandages and white sheets contributed by
neighbors. Before becoming a priest Father Happich had received a
medical degree, and now he was working again at both vocations; each
day now he cared for casualties of the shellings, attended to accident
victims and treated hysteria and shock. His white medical coat was
beginning to see as much wear as his clerical robes.

He looked once more at his little flock of nuns, nurses and lay
sisters, said a silent prayer that God would give him the right words,
and began.

"Within the near future we expect Soviet occupation," he said. "Very
bad rumors have been spread about the Russians. In part they have
proven to be true. But one should not generalize.

"If one of you present here should experience something bad, remember
the story of little St. Agnes. She was twelve when she was ordered to
worship false gods. She raised her hands to Christ and made the Sign
of the Cross and for this her clothes were ripped off and she was
tortured before a pagan crowd. Yet this did not daunt her, though the
heathens were moved to tears. Her public exposure brought flattery
from some and even offers of marriage. But she answered, "Christ is my
Spouse." So the sentence of death was passed. For a moment she stood
in prayer and then she was beheaded and the angels bore her swiftly to
Paradise."

Father Happich paused. "You must remember," he said. "Like St. Agnes,
if your body is touched and you do not want it, then your eternal
reward in Heaven will be doubled, for you will have worn the crown of
the martyour. Therefore, do not feel guilty." He stopped and then
said emphatically: "You are not guilty."

As he walked back down the aisle, the voices of his congregation sang a
recessional. "I need Thy presence every passing hour ... what but Thy
grace can foil the tempter's power?" They were the words of the
ancient hymn, "Abide with Me."

At the main switchboard in the long-distance exchange on
Winterfeldtstrasse in Schoneberg, the lights were going out one by one
as outlying communities were cut off by the Russian attack. Yet, in
the exchange itself people were as busy as ever. Rather than go down
to the basement shelter, supervisor Elisabeth Milbrand and operator
Charlotte Burmester had brought steamer chairs with mattresses and
pillows into their office; the two women intended to stick it out on
the fifth floor, where the main exchange was located, as long as they
could.

Suddenly the loudspeakers in the building blared. In the shelter
hospital, Operator Helena Schroeder was overjoyed by what she heard. On
the fifth floor, operators Milbrand and Burmester were taking down the
news so they could phone it to all areas still connected to the
exchange. "Attention! Attention!" said the announcer. "Don't get
restless. General Wenck's army has joined with the Americans. They
are attacking toward Berlin. Hold up your courage! Berlin is not
lost!" * * *

They cracked the outer ring of the city's defenses and gouged their way
into the second ring. They crouched behind the T-34 tanks and
self-propelled guns and fought up the streets, the roads, the avenues
and through the parklands. Leading the way were the battle-toughened
assault troops of Koniev's and Zhukov's Guards, and with them the
leather-capped soldiers of four great tank armies. Behind came line
upon line of infantry.

They were a strange soldiery. They came from every republic of the
Soviet Union and, apart from the crisp Guards regiments, they varied as
much in physical appearance as in battle dress. There were so many
different languages and dialects among them that officers often could
not communicate with elements of their own troops. * In the ranks were
Russians and Belorussians, Ukrain- * In Normandy, in 1944, the author
remembers being present when two captured soldiers in German uniform
posed a strange problem to intelligence interrogaters of the U.s. First
Army: nobody could understand their language. Both men were sent to
England where it was discovered they were Tibetan shepherds,
press-ganged into the Red Army, captured on the eastern front and
press-ganged once again into the German Army.

ians and Karelians, Georgians and Kazakhs, Armenians and Azerbaijanis,
Bashkirs, Mordvinians, Tartars, Irkutsks, Uzbeks, Mongols and Cossacks.
Some men wore dark brown uniforms, some wore khaki or gray-green.
Others were dressed in dark pants with high-necked blouses; the blouses
ranged in color from black to beige. Their headwear was equally
varied--leather hoods with bobbing earflaps, fur hats, battered,
sweat-stained khaki caps. All of them seemed to carry automatic
weapons. They came on horseback, on foot, on motorcycles, in
horse-drawn carts and captured vehicles of every sort, and they threw
themselves on Berlin. * * *

In the Schoneberg telephone exchange, the voice coming over the
loudspeaker commanded: "Everyone pay attention. Discard your party
badges, your party books and please take off your uniforms. Throw the
stuff into the big sandpile in the yard or go to the engine room where
it will be burned."

Milkman Richard Poganowska stopped his milk cart and gaped as five
Russian tanks, surrounded by infantry, rumbled up the street.
Poganowska turned his wagon around and drove back to the Domane Dahlem
dairy. There he joined his family in the cellar.

For a time they waited. Suddenly the shelter door was kicked open and
Red Army soldiers entered. They looked around silently. Then they
left. A short while later some soldiers returned, and Poganowska and
the other employees of the dairy were ordered to the administration
building. As he waited, he noticed that all the horses were gone but
the cows were still there. A Soviet officer, speaking perfect German,
ordered the men back to work. They were to care for the animals and
milk the cows, he said. Poganowska could hardly believe it. He had
expected a great deal worse.

It was the same in all the outer districts where people were seeing
their first Russian troops. The forward elements of the Soviet Army,
hard-bitten but scrupulously correct in behavior, were not at all what
the terrified citizens had expected.

At 7 P.m. Pia van Hoeven was sitting in the cellarway of her apartment
house in Schoneberg, peeling a few potatoes. Nearby, several other
women from the house chatted together, their backs to the open shelter
door. Suddenly Pia looked up and stared open-mouthed into the muzzles
of submachine guns held by two Russian soldiers. "Quietly I raised my
arms, knife in one hand, potato in the other," she remembers. The
other women looked at her, turned, and put their hands up, too. To
Pia's surprise, one of the soldiers asked in German, "Soldiers here?
Volkssturm? Any guns?" The women shook their heads. "Good Germans,"
said the soldier approvingly. They walked in and took the women's
watches, and then they disappeared.

As the night wore on, Pia saw more and more Russians. "They were
fighting troops and many spoke German," she remembered. "But they
seemed to be interested only in moving up and getting on with the
battle." Pia and the women in her apartment house decided that all
Goebbels' talk about the rapacious Red Army was just another pack of
lies. "If all the Russians behave like this," Pia told her friends,
"then we have nothing to worry about."

Marianne Bombach felt the same way. She came out of her Wilmersdorf
cellar one morning and saw a Russian field kitchen set up just outside
her back door. The soldiers, fighting units bivouacked in Schwarze
Grund Park, were sharing food and candy with the neighborhood children.
Their manners particularly impressed Marianne. They had upended some
square garbage cans and were using them as tables. Each was covered
with a doily, apparently taken from villas nearby. There they sat in
the middle of the field on somebody's straight-backed chairs eating off
the garbage cans. Except for their fraternization with the children,
the Russians seemed to be ignoring the civilians. They remained for
just a few hours and then moved on.

Dora Janssen and the widow of her husband's batman were shocked and
frightened. After the fatal shelling of the aide and the wounding of
Major Janssen, Dora had invited the widow to stay with her. The two
defenseless women, their nerves raw from grief and fear, were in the
cellar of the Janssens' building when Dora saw "a huge shadow appear on
the wall." In the shadow's hands was a gun. To Dora the apparition
"appeared like a cannon being held in the paws of a gorilla and the
soldier's head seemed huge and deformed." She was unable to breathe.
The Russian came into view, followed by another, and ordered them out
of the cellar. "Now," Dora thought, "it is going to take place." The
two women were led outdoors, where the Russians handed them brooms and
pointed to the debris and broken glass that littered the walk. The
women were dumbfounded. Their surprise and relief was so obvious that
the Russians broke into laughter.

Other people had more harrowing encounters with the newly arrived
front-line troops. Elisabeth Eberhard was almost shot. A social
worker employed by Catholic Bishop Konrad von Preysing, Elisabeth had
been hiding Jews for years. She was visiting a friend when she met her
first two Russians--a young blond officer accompanied by a woman
interpreter. Both entered the house heavily armed; the woman carried a
submachine gun. The phone rang just as the Russians came in. As
Elisabeth's friend picked it up, the elegant officer grabbed it from
her. "You are both traitors," the interpreter told them, "you have
contact with the enemy." The women were rushed out of the house and
into the garden and were backed against the wall. The officer
announced that he intended to shoot them. Elisabeth, knees shaking,
shouted at him, "We have been waiting for you! We have always been
against Hitler! My husband has been in prison as a political offender
for twelve years!"

The Red Army woman interpreted. Slowly the officer lowered his gun. He
seemed greatly embarrassed. Then he came toward Elisabeth, took her
right hand and kissed it. Elisabeth was equal to the Russian's poise.
In as casual a voice as she could muster, she politely inquired, "Will
you both join us in a glass of wine?"

The discipline and orderliness of the first troops amazed almost
everyone. Druggist Hans Miede noticed that Soviet soldiers "seemed to
avoid firing into houses unless they were sure German defenders were
hiding there." Helena Boese, who had lived in dread of the Russians'
arrival, came face to face with a Red Army trooper on her cellar steps.
He was "young, handsome and wearing an immaculately clean uniform." He
just looked at her when she came out of the cellar and then, gesturing
to indicate good will, gave her a stick with a white handkerchief tied
to it as a sign of capitulation. In the same Wilmersdorf area, Ilse
Antz, who had always believed that the Berliners were going to be
"thrown like fodder to the Russians," was asleep in the basement of her
apartment house when the first Russian entered. She awakened and stared
at him in terror, but the young, dark-haired trooper just smiled at her
and said in broken German: "Why afraid? Everything all right now. Go
to sleep."

For one group of Berliners the arrival of the Soviet troops produced no
terror at all. The Jews had long ago come to terms with fear. Leo
Sternfeld, the former Tempelhof businessman forced to work as a garbage
collector for the Gestapo, had sweated out every mile of the Russian
advance. A half-Jew, he had lived all through the war in anguished
suspense, never knowing when he and his family would be sent to a
concentration camp. For most of the war, his name had made Sternfeld
and his family unwelcome in air raid shelters. But when the shelling
began, Leo noticed a remarkable change in his neighbors. "The
residents of the house," he recalled, "almost dragged us into the
shelter."

Sternfeld was overjoyed when he saw the first troops in the Tempelhof
district. They were orderly and peaceful, and to Leo they were
liberators. The Russian battalion commander asked if they might have a
room in Leo's house to hold a celebration. "You can have anything I've
got," Leo told him. He had already lost half his house when the nearby
post office had blown up some days before, but there were three rooms
left. "You can have the one with the ceiling," Leo assured the
Russian. In return, he, his family and some friends were invited to
the party. The Russians arrived,

bringing baskets of food and drink. "It seemed to me at one time," Leo
said, "as if the entire Russian Army joined the party." The Russians
drank enormous quantities of vodka. Then, to the accompaniment of an
accordion, the battalion commander, an opera star in private life,
began to sing. Leo sat enthralled. For the first time in years, he
felt free.

Joachim Lipschitz came out of hiding in the Krugers' cellar in
Karlshorst to meet the Red Army troopers. Speaking in the slow,
halting Russian he had taught himself in his months underground, he
tried to explain who he was and to express his gratitude for
liberation. To his amazement the Russians howled with laughter.
Slapping him boisterously on the back, they said that they, too, were
happy, but they added, choking again with laughter, that he spoke
terrible Russian. Joachim didn't mind. For him and for Eleanore
Kruger the long wait was over. They would be the first couple married
when the battle ended. As soon as they received their marriage
certificate, it would represent, as Eleanore was to put it, "our own
personal victory over the Nazis. We had won and nothing could hurt us
any more." * * Joachim Lipschitz was eventually to become one of West
Berlin's most famous officials. As Senator of Internal Affairs in
1955, he was in charge of the city's police force. He remained an
unrelenting foe of the East German Communist regime until his death in
1961.

Everywhere, as areas were overrun, the Jews came out of hiding. Some,
however, were still so fearful that they remained in their secret
places long after the danger from the Nazis was past. Twenty-year-old
Hans Rosenthal was to stay in his six- by five-foot cubicle in
Lichtenberg until May--a total of twenty-eight months in hiding. In
some areas, Jews were freed and then faced with the prospect of having
to go underground again when the Russians were thrown back in temporary
but violent and widely scattered counterattacks.

The Weltlingers in Pankow had one of the strangest experiences of all.
They were liberated early. The Russian officer who entered their
hiding place in the Mohrings' apartment would always be remembered by
Siegmund as "the personification of Michael the archangel." When he
saw them, the officer called out in poor German, "Russki no barbarian.
We good to you." At one time he had been a student in Berlin.

Then suddenly there was a tense moment. The officer and his men
searched the entire apartment house --and found six revolvers. To the
assembled occupants, the Russian announced that he had found them
hidden with discarded uniforms. Everyone was ordered out of the house
and lined up against a wall. Siegmund stepped forward and said, "I'm a
Jew." The young officer smiled, shook his head, made a motion as
though cutting his throat and said, "No more Jews alive." Over and
over Siegmund repeated that he was a Jew. He looked at the others
lined up against the wall. A few weeks earlier, many of these people
would have turned him in had they known his whereabouts. Yet Siegmund
now said in a clear, loud voice: "These are good people. All of them
have sheltered us in this house. I ask you not to harm them. These
weapons were thrown away by the Volkssturm."

His statement saved the lives of all the tenants. Germans and Russians
began hugging each other. "We were drunk," Siegmund said, "with
happiness and joy." The Soviet officer immediately brought food and
drink for the Weltlingers and stood anxiously watching them, and urging
them to eat. Both Weltlingers nearly became ill from the food because
they were not used to anything so rich. "Immediately," Siegmund said,
"people became very kind to us. We were given an empty flat, food and
clothing, and for the first time we were able to stand in the fresh air
and walk a street."

But then the Russians were thrown out of the area by an SS attack--and
the same residents Weltlinger had saved the day before suddenly became
hostile again. "It was," said Weltlinger, "unbelievable." The next
day the Russians retook the area and once more they were liberated, but
by a different Soviet unit--and this time the Russians would not
believe that Weltlinger was a Jew. All the men in his building were
loaded onto a truck and driven away for questioning. As Siegmund said
good-bye to his wife he wondered if all this deprivation, all this
hiding was now going to have a senseless end. They were taken to the
northeastern suburbs and one by one were questioned in a cellar.
Weltlinger was brought

into the room and placed beneath a bright light. Sitting in the
darkness were some officers at a long table. Once again Weltlinger
insisted that he was a Jew who had been in hiding for more than two
years. Then a woman's voice came out of the darkness: "Prove to me you
are a Jew." "How?" She asked him to recite the Hebrew profession of
faith.

In the silence of the room Siegmund looked at the shadowy faces sitting
in the darkness before him. Then, covering his head with his right
hand, his voice filled with emotion, he said one of the most ancient of
all prayers, the Sh'mah Yisroel. In Hebrew he slowly intoned:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, The Lord is One.

Then the woman spoke again. "Go," she said. "You are a Jew and a good
man." She, too, was Jewish, she said. The next day Siegmund was
reunited with his wife. "No words," he said, "can describe how we felt
when we met again." Hand in hand, they walked in the sunshine, "free
and as happy as children."

If Mother Superior Cunegundes felt any fear it did not show on her
round, peaceful face. The battle was raging all about Haus Dahlem. The
building shook every time the tanks fired, and even in the sandbagged
cellar the concussion could be felt. But Mother Superior Cunegundes no
longer paid any attention to the rattle of the machine guns and the
scream of the shells. She was praying in the little dining room now
turned into a chapel when the firing lifted; for a moment the noise of
battle seemed to fade. Still Mother Superior Cunegundes remained on
her knees. One of the Sisters came into the chapel and whispered to
the Mother Superior: "The Russians. They are here."

Mother Superior Cunegundes calmly blessed herself, genuflected, and
quickly followed the Sister out of the chapel. The Soviet troops had
first approached the home from the rear, through the gardens. They had
appeared at the kitchen windows, grinning

and pointing their guns at the nuns and lay sisters. Now, ten troopers
led by a young lieutenant waited on the Mother Superior. Lena, the
cook, a Ukrainian, was hurriedly sent for to act as interpreter. The
officer, noted the Mother Superior, "looked very smart, and his
behavior was excellent."

He asked about Haus Dahlem. Mother Superior Cunegundes explained that
it was a maternity home, hospital and orphanage. Lena added that there
were only "nuns and babies" there. The lieutenant seemed to
understand. "Are there any soldiers or weapons here?" he asked.
Mother Superior Cunegundes said: "No. Of course not. There is nothing
like that in this building." Some of the soldiers now began to demand
watches and jewelry. The lieutenant spoke sharply, and the men pulled
back, abashed.

The Mother Superior then told the young officer that Haus Dahlem needed
some guarantee of protection because of the children, the expectant
mothers and the Sisters. The lieutenant shrugged: he was a fighting
man, and all he was interested in was clearing out the enemy and moving
up.

As the Russians left the building, some of the soldiers stopped to look
at the great statue of St. Michael, "God's fighting knight against all
evil." They walked around the statue, touching the sculptured folds of
the gown and looking up into the face. The lieutenant said good-bye to
the Mother Superior. Something seemed to be troubling him. For just a
moment he gazed at his men looking at the statue. Then he said to
Mother Superior Cunegundes:

"These are good, disciplined and decent soldiers. But I must tell you.
The men who are following us, the ones coming up behind, are pigs."

There was no stopping the tide of the Russian advance. Desperate
orders flashed out from the deranged man in the Fuhrerbunker as the
remains of both the Reich and its capital were dissected by the
invaders. Commands were superseded by counter-commands. Then
counter-commands were canceled and new orders issued. Weidling's Chief
of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel von Dufving, summed it up: "Confusion led
to chaos; order led to counterorder; and finally everything led to
disorder."

The German command system had all but collapsed. As the Western Allies
and the Russians drew closer together, the OKW, charged with handling
the western front, became hopelessly entangled with the OKH, which
controlled the eastern front. General Erich Dethleffsen, OKH Assistant
Chief of Staff, got a desperate call from the commander of Dresden as
Koniev's tanks, heading west to link up with the Americans, approached
the city. He was told to put everything he had on the east bank of the
Elbe, which runs through the city. Ten minutes later the OKW ordered
the Dresden commander to put his forces on the west bank.

It was the same all over. Communications hardly existed any more. The
OKW headquarters, now established in Rheinsberg, about fifty miles
northeast of Berlin, was dependent for its communications on a single
transmitting antenna attached to a barrage balloon. In Berlin, those
of Hitler's orders that could not be telephoned were radioed via the
communications complex in the smaller of the two Zoo flak towers.
Luftwaffe Lieutenant Gerda Niedieck, sitting at her teleprinter and
deciphering machines in the vast telecommunications room in L Tower,
noted that most of Hitler's messages at this time had one theme:
frantic queries for information--usually about armies that no longer
existed. Over and over, the radio teletype machines clacked out his
messages. "What is Wenck's position?" "Where is Steiner?" "Where is
Wenck?" Sometimes it was just too much for 24-year-old Gerda.
Sometimes she just wept silently at her teleprinter as she sent out
Hitler's messages and his threats, and his orders that the dying nation
was to fight to the last German.

At last, after six years of war, the headquarters of the OKH and the
OKW--WHOSE armies had once been separated by three thousand miles--
were pulled together in a unified command. The officials of the
combined OKH-OKW were promptly addressed by Field Marshal Wilhelm
Keitel. "Our troops," he said with great assurance, "are not only
willing to fight, they are completely able to fight." He paced the
floor of the new headquarters, under the watchful eyes of General
Alfred Jodl, OKW Operations Chief, and General Erich Dethleffsen, OKH
Assistant Chief of Staff. Keitel had painted the same bright picture
for Hitler on the twenty-fourth, just before the Fuhrer had ordered his
top officers to leave the capital so they could conduct operations for
the relief of Berlin from outside the city. That had been
Dethleffsen's last visit to the underground world of the Fuhrerbunker.
When he arrived he had found utter confusion. There was no guard at
the entrance. To his amazement he had found some twenty workers
sheltering behind the bunker door: they had been ordered, because of
the artillery fire, to "dig a trench from the parking area to the
entrance," but they could not work because of the shelling. As he went
down the stairs he found that there were no guards in the anteroom
either. No one searched his briefcase or "checked to see if he was
carrying weapons." His impression was one of "complete
disintegration."

In the little hall outside Hitler's small briefing room "stood empty
glasses and half-full bottles." It seemed to him that "the soldierly
principle of remaining calm, and thus preventing a panic situation from
developing, had been completely disregarded." Everyone was nervous and
irritable--except the women. "The secretaries, the female personnel
... Eva Braun and Frau Goebbels and her children ... were amiable and
friendly and shamed many of the men by their example."

Keitel's report to Hitler had been short. "In rosy words," Dethleffsen
remembered, "he reported on the mood of Wenck's Twelfth Army and the
prospects for the relief of Berlin." Dethleffsen had found it hard to
judge "how much Keitel believed his own words:

perhaps his optimism was grounded only in the wish not to burden the
Fuhrer."

But now, before the OKH-OKW leaders, away from Hitler, Keitel was
talking in the same vein. As he paced the floor he said: "Our defeats
are really due to a lack of courage, a lack of will in the upper and
intermediate commands." It could have been Hitler speaking.
Dethleffsen thought that Keitel was a "true student of his master." And
from his glowing report of how Berlin would be relieved, it was "clear
that he had not the slightest understanding of the plight of the
troops." Keitel kept talking: everything would be all right; the
rapidly closing Russian ring about Berlin would be cracked; the Fuhrer
would be saved. ...

In Bavaria, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering found himself in a
preposterous situation: he was under house arrest by SS guards.

His Chief of Staff, General Koller, had flown to Bavaria to see Goering
after Hitler's fateful conference of April 22. On receiving Koller's
report that "Hitler has broken down" and that the Fuhrer had said,
"When it comes to negotiating the Reichmarschall can do better than I,"
Goering had acted. He had sent the Fuhrer a very carefully worded
message. "My Fuhrer," he wired, "in view of your decision to remain in
the fortress of Berlin do you agree that I take over at once the total
leadership of the Reich with full freedom of action at home and abroad
as your deputy, in accordance with your decree of June 29, 1941? If no
reply is received by ten o'clock tonight I shall take it for granted
that you have lost your freedom of action, and shall act for the best
interests of our country and people. ..."

Goering received a fast reply--one undoubtedly inspired by his arch
rival, the ambitious Martin Bormann. Hitler fired off a message
accusing Goering of treason and announced that he would be executed
unless he immediately resigned. On the evening of April

25, Berlin radio solemnly reported that "Reichsmarschall Goering's
heart condition has now reached an acute state. Therefore he has
requested that he be released from command of the Air Force and all the
duties connected with it. ... The Fuhrer has granted this request.
..." Goering told his wife, Emmy, that he thought the whole business
was ridiculous; that in the end he would have to do the negotiating
anyway. She later told Baroness von Schirach that Goering was
wondering "what uniform he should wear when he first met Eisenhower." *
* *

While Berlin burned and the Reich died, the one man Hitler never
suspected of treachery had already surpassed Goering's grab for
power.

In Washington on the afternoon of April 25, General John Edwin Hull,
the U.s. Army's Acting Chief of Staff for Operations, was called into
the Pentagon office of General George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff.
Marshall told him that President Truman was en route from the White
House to the Pentagon to talk with Winston Churchill on the scrambler
telephone. A German offer to negotiate had been received via Count
Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. The peace feeler came
from no less a person than the man Hitler called Der treue
Heinrich--Heinrich Himmler.

Himmler's secret proposals were supposed to be en route in a coded
message from the American Ambassador in Sweden. Marshall told Hull to
get the phone room set up and to find out right away from the State
Department if the text of the message had arrived. "I phoned Dean
Acheson at State," Hull said, "who told me that he knew nothing about
any cable containing Himmler's proposals. Actually, the message was
then coming in to the State Department, but nobody had yet seen it."

Then President Truman arrived, and at 3:10 P.m. American time he spoke
to the Prime Minister from the Pentagon phone room.

"When he got on the phone," recalls Hull, "the President did not even
know what the German proposal was." Churchill, according to Hull,
"started off by saying, "What do you think of the message?"' The
President replied, "It is just coming in now.""

Churchill then read the version which he had received from the British
Ambassador to Sweden, Sir Victor Mallet. Himmler, he told Truman,
wished to meet with General Eisenhower and capitulate. The SS chief
reported that Hitler was desperately ill, that he might even be dead
already, and in any case would be within a few days. It was clear that
Himmler wished to capitulate--but only to the Western Allies, not to
the Russians. "What happens," Bernadotte had asked Himmler, "if the
Western Allies refuse your offer?" Himmler replied: "Then I shall take
command on the eastern front and die in battle." Hull, listening on
another phone, then heard Churchill say, "Well, what do you think?"

The new American President, only thirteen days in office, answered
without hesitation. "We cannot accept it," he said. "It would be
dishonorable, because we have an agreement with the Russians not to
accept a separate peace."

Churchill promptly agreed. As he was later to put it, "I told him
[Truman] that we were convinced the surrender should be unconditional
and simultaneous to the three major powers." When both Churchill and
Truman informed Stalin of the Himmler proposal and their response to
it, the Generalissimo thanked them both, and in similar replies
promised that the Red Army would "maintain its pressure on Berlin in
the interests of our common cause."

Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue of the U.s. 69th Division, sitting in his
jeep, saw the farm from far away and he thought it was much too quiet.
He got out and moved up ahead of his 26-man patrol so he could approach
the house alone.

This whole countryside near the Elbe had been strangely silent.
Villages had white flags of surrender flying, but there was no

movement; the villagers were staying behind doors. Kotzebue had talked
to several burgomasters and it was always the same story: the Russians
were coming, and they were sure to be killed and their women raped.

Warily Kotzebue went to the front of the house. The door was half
open. He stood to one side and pushed it wide with his rifle. It
swung back with a creaking noise, and Kotzebue stared. Sitting around
the dining table were the farmer, his wife and their three children. It
was a peaceful, homelike scene--except that they were all dead. They
must have been terribly afraid, for they had all taken poison.

The rest of the patrol came up, and the Lieutenant jumped back into his
jeep. They sped on toward the Elbe, and then, just before they reached
the river, Albert Kotzebue made history. In the village of Leckwitz he
saw a strange-looking man in an unusual uniform astride a pony. The
man swung around in the saddle and looked at Kotzebue. The Lieutenant
looked back. Kotzebue and the man on the horse had fought across half
a world for this moment. It seemed to Kotzebue that he had met the
first Russian.

Someone who spoke Russian questioned the horseman. Yes, he was a
Russian, he said. "Where's his unit?" asked Kotzebue. The man
answered curtly, "On the Elbe." The patrol set out again for the
river. The man watched them go. At the river Kotzebue and a few
others found a rowboat and crossed to the other bank, using their
rifles as oars. As they stepped out of the boat, Kotzebue saw that the
shore for hundreds of yards was covered with dead civilians --men,
women and children. There were overturned wagons and carts; baggage
and clothing were strewn everywhere. There was nothing to indicate how
or why the slaughter had occurred. A few moments later the Americans
met the first group of Russians. Kotzebue saluted. So did the Soviet
soldiers. There was no joyful meeting, no back-slapping or hugging.
They just stood there looking at each other. The time was 1:30 P.m. on
April 25. The Western and Eastern allies had joined at the little town
of Strehla.

At 4:40 P.m. at Torgau on the Elbe, about twenty miles to the

north, Lieutenant William D. Robinson, also of the 69th Division,
encountered some other Russians. He brought four Soviet soldiers back
with him to his headquarters. His meeting would go into history books
as the official link-up. In any case, whether at 1:30 or 4:40,
Hitler's Reich had been cut in half by the men of General Hodges' U.s.
First Army and Marshal Koniev's First Ukrainians. And on this same
day--no one seems sure of the exact time-- Berlin was encircled.

The entire northern flank of the Ninth Army had collapsed. Totally
encircled, the Ninth was being hammered night and day by Russian
bombers. The supply situation was critical. The Luftwaffe tried an
air drop, but everything went wrong. There were not enough planes for
the job and not enough gasoline for the planes--and such drops as were
made landed in the wrong places. Yet, despite everything, the Ninth
was doggedly battling toward Wenck's Twelfth Army.

But now Heinrici knew the truth about Wenck: contrary to what Krebs had
said, the Twelfth Army had almost no strength. Bitterly he had phoned
Krebs and accused him of deliberately giving false information. "It's
a phantom army," Heinrici raged. "It simply does not have the strength
to drive toward the Ninth, join with it and head north to relieve
Berlin. There'll be little left of either army by the time they
meet--and you know it!"

Von Manteuffel's Third Panzer Army was, in effect, all that was left of
the Army Group Vistula. Von Manteuffel was holding tenaciously, but
the center of his line bulged in ominously. Worse, Zhukov's tanks,
driving along the southern flank, were now in position to swing north
and encircle Von Manteuffel. The only force that stood in their way
was the rag-tag group of SS General Felix Steiner.

Hitler's plan for the relief of Berlin called for Steiner to attack
southward across the path of the Russians from one side of the city,
while the Ninth and Twelfth together drove northward from

the other side. Theoretically it was a workable plan. Actually it
stood no chance of success. Steiner was one of the drawbacks. "He
kept finding all sorts of excuses not to attack," Heinrici said.
"Gradually I got the impression that something was wrong."

The Vistula commander knew that Steiner did not have sufficient forces
to reach Spandau, as Hitler was demanding, but Heinrici wanted the
attack to take place just the same. Steiner was at least strong enough
to blunt Zhukov's drive. If he could manage that, he might prevent the
Russians from encircling Von Manteuffel's army. That would give
Heinrici the time he needed to withdraw Von Manteuffel's forces step by
step to the Elbe. There was nothing left to do now but try to save his
men; the complete collapse of the Reich was clearly inevitable within
days. Heinrici kept a map on which he had drawn five north-to-south
retreat lines, running from the Oder back to the west. The first was
called "Wotan," the next, "Uecker"; the remainder were numbered. The
lines were fifteen to twenty miles apart. Von Manteuffel was now on
the Wotan line. The question was how long he could last there.

On the morning of the twenty-fifth, Heinrici visited Von Manteuffel.
They walked in the little garden behind Von Manteuffel's headquarters,
and the Third Panzer commander said quietly, "I cannot hold any
longer." His face was set. "Without panzers, without anti-tank guns
and with inexperienced troops already out on their feet, how can
anybody expect me to hold any longer?"

"How long can you hold?"

Von Manteuffel shook his head.

"Maybe another day."

Through the smoke of the fires and shell bursts, the leaflets came
fluttering down from the plane that flew back and forth over the
ravaged city. In Wilmersdorf Charlotte Richter picked one of them up.
It read: "Persevere! General Wenck and General Steiner are coming to
the aid of Berlin."

Now it was essential to find out what Steiner was up to. Heinrici
found him at the headquarters of the 25th Panzer Grenadier Division at
Nassenheide. With Steiner was Jodl. They had already discussed how
Steiner's attack should be made. Now everyone went over it once again.
Then Steiner began to talk about the condition of his troops. "Have
any of you seen them?" he asked.

Jodl said: "They're in first-rate condition. Their morale is very
good."

Steiner looked at Jodl in amazement.

Heinrici asked quietly, "Steiner, why aren't you attacking? Why are
you postponing again?"

"It's very simple," said Steiner. "I just don't have the troops. I
don't have the slightest chance of succeeding."

"What do you have?" asked Heinrici patiently.

Steiner explained that his total forces consisted of six battalions,
including some from an SS police division, plus the 5th Panzer Division
and the 3rd Navy Division. "The Navy men I can forget about," said
Steiner. "I bet they're great on ships, but they've never been trained
for this kind of fighting. I have hardly any artillery, very few
panzers and only a few anti-aircraft guns." He paused. "I'll tell you
what I have: a completely mixed-up heap that will never reach Spandau
from Germendorf."

"Well, Steiner," said Heinrici coldly, "you have to attack for your
Fuhrer." Steiner glared at him. "He's your Fuhrer, too!" he
yelled.

It was clear to Heinrici, as he and Jodl left, that Steiner had no
intention whatever of attacking.

A few hours later the phone rang at the Vistula headquarters in
Birkenhain. Heinrici picked it up. It was Von Manteuffel, and he

sounded desperate. "I must have your permission to withdraw from
Stettin and Schwedt. I cannot hold any longer. If we don't pull out
now we'll be encircled."

For just a moment, Heinrici remembered the order issued by Hitler in
January to his senior generals. They were "personally responsible to
Hitler" and could not withdraw troops or give up positions without
notifying Hitler in advance so that he could make the decision. Now
Heinrici said: "Retreat. Did you hear me? I said, Retreat. And
listen, Manteuffel. Give up the Stettin fortress at the same time."

In his sheepskin coat and his World War I leggings, he stood by his
desk thinking over what he had done. He had been in the army exactly
forty years and he knew now that even if he was not shot his career was
over. Then he called Colonel Eismann and his Chief of Staff. "Inform
the OKW," he said, "that I have ordered the Third Army to retreat." He
thought for a moment. Then he said, "By the time they get the message
it will be too late for them to countermand it."

He looked at Von Trotha, the earnest Hitlerite, and at his old friend
Eismann, and explained exactly what his policy was going to be from now
on: never again would he leave troops exposed unnecessarily; he would
sooner retreat than throw men's lives away needlessly. "What's your
opinion?" he asked them. Eismann promptly suggested that the order
should be given "to retreat behind the Uecker line, remain at the
Mecklenburg lakes and wait for capitulation." Von Trotha jumped at the
word. "It is against the honor of a soldier to even think of
capitulation, to even use the word capitulation," Von Trotha
spluttered. "It's not up to us; it's up to the OKW to give the
orders."

Heinrici said quietly: "I refuse to carry out these suicidal orders any
longer. It is my responsibility on behalf of my troops to refuse these
orders, and I intend to do so. It is also my responsibility to account
for my actions to the German people." Then he added, "And above all,
Trotha, to God.

"Good night, gentlemen."

It took Keitel just forty-eight hours to learn that Heinrici had
ordered Von Manteuffel to retreat. He saw the withdrawal for himself.
Driving through the Third Panzer's area he was amazed to see troops
pulling back everywhere. Furious, he ordered both Heinrici and Von
Manteuffel to meet him for a conference at a crossroads near
Furstenberg.

When Von Manteuffel's Chief of Staff, General Burkhart
Muller-Hillebrand, learned of the arrangement he looked startled, then
concerned. Why at a crossroads? Why out in the open? He hurried out
to find his staff officers.

At the crossroads, when Heinrici and Von Manteuffel got out of their
cars they saw that Keitel had already arrived with his entourage.
Hitler's Chief of Staff was a picture of barely contained fury, his
face grim, his marshal's baton pounding again and again into the palm
of his gloved hand. Von Manteuffel greeted him. Heinrici saluted.
Keitel immediately began to yell. "Why did you give the order to move
back? You were told to stay on the Oder! Hitler ordered you to hold!
He ordered you not to move!" He pointed at Heinrici. "Yet you! You
ordered the retreat!"

Heinrici said nothing. When the outburst had ended, according to Von
Manteuffel, "Heinrici very quietly explained the situation and his
arguments were completely logical." Heinrici said: "I tell you,
Marshal Keitel, that I cannot hold the Oder with the troops I have. I
do not intend to sacrifice their lives. What's more, we'll have to
retreat even farther back."

Von Manteuffel then broke in. He tried to explain the tactical
situation that had led to the withdrawal. "I regret to tell you," he
concluded, "that General Heinrici is right. I will have to withdraw
even farther unless I get reinforcements. I'm here to find out whether
I get them or not."

Keitel exploded. "There are no reserves left!" he shouted. "This is
the Fuhrer's order!" He hit his gloved palm with his baton. "You will
hold your positions where they are!" He hit his palm again. "You will
turn your army around here and now!"

"Marshal Keitel," said Heinrici, "as long as I am in command I will not
issue that order to Von Manteuffel."

Von Manteuffel said: "Marshal Keitel, the Third Panzer Army listens to
General Hasso von Manteuffel."

At this point Keitel lost control completely. "He went into such a
tantrum," recalls Von Manteuffel, "that neither Heinrici nor myself
could understand what he was saying." Finally he yelled, "You will
have to take the responsibility of this action before history!"

Von Manteuffel suddenly lost his temper. "The Von Manteuffels have
worked for Prussia for two hundred years and have always taken the
responsibility for their actions. I, Hasso von Manteuffel, gladly
accept this responsibility."

Keitel wheeled on Heinrici. "You are the one!" he said. "You!"

Heinrici turned and, pointing to the road where Von Manteuffel's troops
were retreating, replied: "I can only say, Marshal Keitel, that if you
want these men sent back to be shot and killed, why don't you do it?"

Keitel, it appeared to Von Manteuffel, "seemed to take a threatening
step toward Heinrici." Then he rapped out: "Colonel General Heinrici,
as of this moment you are relieved as commander of the Army Group
Vistula. You will return to your headquarters and await your
successor."

With that, Keitel stalked away, climbed into his car and drove off.

At that moment General Muller-Hillebrand and his staff came out of the
woods. Each man had a machine pistol. "We thought there was going to
be a little trouble," he explained.

Von Manteuffel still thought there might be. He offered to guard
Heinrici "until the end," but Heinrici declined. He saluted the
officers and got into his car. After forty years in the army, in the
very last hours of the war he had been dismissed in disgrace. He
turned up the collar of his old sheepskin coat and told the driver to
return to headquarters.

The Russians swarmed in everywhere. District after district fell as
the city's slender defense forces were beaten back. In some places,
meagerly armed Home Guardsmen simply turned and ran. Hitler Youths,
Home Guards, police and fire units fought side by side, but under
different commanders. They fought to hold the same objective, but
their orders were often contradictory. Many men, in fact, had no idea
who their officers were. The new Berlin Commandant, General Weidling,
had spread the few remaining veterans of his battered 56th Panzers
through the defense areas to bolster the Volkssturm and Hitler Youths,
but it was of little use.

Zehlendorf fell almost instantly. Hitler Youths and Home Guardsmen
trying to make a stand before the town hall were annihilated; the mayor
hung out a white flag and then committed suicide. In Weissensee, which
had been a predominately Communist district before the rise of Hitler,
many neighborhoods capitulated immediately, and red flags
appeared--many showing tattle-tale areas where black swastikas had been
hastily removed. Pankow held out for two days, Wedding for three.
Small pockets of Germans fought tenaciously to the end, but there was
no consistent defense anywhere.

Street barricades were smashed like matchwood. Russian tanks, moving
fast, blew up buildings rather than send soldiers in after snipers. The
Red Army was wasting no time. Some obstacles, like tramcars and
rock-filled wagons, were demolished by guns firing at point-blank
range. Where more sturdy defenses were encountered, the Russians went
around them. In Wilmersdorf and Schoneberg, Soviet troops encountering
resistance entered houses on either side of the blocked streets and
blasted their way from cellar to cellar with bazookas. Then they
emerged behind the Germans and wiped them out.

Phalanxes of artillery razed the central districts yard by yard.

As fast as areas were captured, the Russians rushed in the great
formations of guns and Stalin Organs used on the Oder and the Neisse.
On the Tempelhof and Gatow airports, guns were lined up barrel to
barrel. It was the same in the Grunewald, in the Tegel forest, in the
parks and open spaces--even in apartment house gardens. Lines of
Stalin Organs crowded main thoroughfares, pouring out a continuous
stream of phosphorous shells that set whole areas ablaze. "There were
so many fires that there was no night," Home Guardsman Edmund Heckscher
remembers. "You could have read a newspaper if you had one." Dr.
Wilhelm Nolte, a chemist pressed into the Fire Protection Service, *
saw Soviet artillery-spotting planes directing barrages onto his
workers as they tried to put out the fires. Hermann Hellriegel,
recently drawn into the Volkssturm, was lifted off his feet by a shell
blast and thrown into a nearby crater. To Hellriegel's horror, he
landed on top of three dead soldiers. The 58-year-old Home Guardsman,
a former traveling salesman, scrambled out of the hole and sprinted for
his home. * Some of the fire engines that had left on the
twenty-second returned to the city on the order of Major General Walter
Golbach, head of the Fire Department. According to post-war reports,
the fire engines were ordered out of Berlin by Goebbels to keep them
from falling into Russian hands. Golbach, on hearing that he was to be
arrested for rescinding Goebbels' order, tried to commit suicide and
failed. Bleeding from a face wound, he was taken out by SS men and
executed.

As the Russians drove deeper into the city, uniforms and arm bands lay
discarded in the streets as Home Guardsmen began to disappear. Some
units were deliberately disbanded by their commanders. In the
Reichssportfeld's Olympic Stadium, Volkssturm battalion leader Karl
Ritter von Halt called together the survivors of a bitter fight and
told them to go home. Half the men were useless anyway; they had been
issued Italian ammunition for their German rifles. "Letting them
return home was about all there was left to do," Von Halt said. "It
was either that, or throw stones at the Russians."

Soldiers all over the city began to desert. Sergeant Helmut Volk saw
no reason to give his life for the Fuhrer. An accountant

for the Abwehr, the German intelligence service, Volk had suddenly been
given a rifle and put on guard duty in the Grunewald. When he heard
that his unit had been ordered to the Reichskanzlei area, Volk set off
instead for his home on the Uhlandstrasse. His family was not too
happy to see him; his uniform endangered them all. Volk quickly took
it off, changed into civilian clothes and hid the uniform in the
cellar. He was just in time; the Russians overran the area within the
hour.

In the command post near the Frey Bridge, Private Willi Thamm had heard
something that made him decide to stay with his unit to the end. A
lieutenant came in to report to Thamm's captain and, over a cup of
coffee and a glass of schnapps, remarked: "Just think! The infantrymen
everywhere want to desert. Today three went absent without leave on
me." Thamm's captain looked at him. "What did you do?" he asked. The
lieutenant sipped his coffee and said, "I shot them."

Marauding gangs of SS men, roving the city in search of deserters, were
taking justice into their own hands. They were halting nearly everyone
in uniform and checking identities and units. Any man suspected of
bolting his company was summarily shot, or was hanged from a tree or
lamp post as an example to others. Sixteen-year-old Aribert Schulz, a
member of the Hitler Youth, reporting to his headquarters in a disused
cinema at Spittelmarkt, saw a lanky red-haired SS trooper with a rifle
marching a man into the street. Schulz asked what was happening and
was told that the man was a Wehrmacht sergeant who had been found
wearing civilian clothes. With Schulz following along behind, the SS
man marched the sergeant down Leipzigerstrasse. Suddenly he gave the
Wehrmacht soldier a violent shove. As the sergeant struggled to keep
his balance the SS man shot him in the back.

That night Schulz saw the red-haired SS man again. Along with other
boys in his unit, Schulz was standing watch by a barricade when he saw
a Soviet T-34 tank coming along Kurstrasse. The tank was slowly
turning its turret when it got a direct hit and blew up. The only
survivor was immediately captured. In the Russian's pockets the boys
found photographs of key Berlin landmarks. At headquarters the Red
Army tanker was interrogated and then turned over to a man with a
rifle. It was the same SS man. Again he walked his prisoner outside,
but this time he patted the Russian fraternally and motioned for him to
go. The Russian grinned and started to leave, and the SS man shot him,
too, in the back. It dawned on young Schulz that the lanky marksman
was the headquarters' official executioner.

Everywhere now, Berlin's defenders were being forced into the ruins of
the central districts. To slow down the Russians, 120 of the city's
248 bridges were blown. So little dynamite was left throughout General
Weidling's command that aviation bombs had to be used instead. Fanatics
destroyed additional installations, often without checking into the
consequences. SS men blew up a four-mile tunnel running under an arm
of the river Spree and the Landwehr Canal. The tunnel happened to be a
railway link, and thousands of civilians were sheltering there. As
water began to flood into the area, there was a mad scramble along the
tracks toward higher ground. The tunnel was not only jammed with
standees; four hospital trains of wounded were also there. As Elfriede
Wassermann and her husband Erich, who had come down from the Anhalter
bunker, tried to push through, Elfriede heard the wounded in the trains
screaming, "Get us out! Get us out! We'll drown!" Nobody stopped.
The water was almost up to Elfriede's waist. Erich, hobbling along on
his crutches, was even worse off. Fighting and yelling, people pushed
and trampled one another as they tried to get to safety. Elfriede was
almost in despair, but Erich kept yelling, "Keep going! Keep going!
We're almost there. We'll make it." They did. How many others made
it Elfriede never knew.

By April 28 the Russians had closed in on the center of the city. The
ring grew tighter and tighter. Desperate battles were being fought
along the edges of Charlottenburg, Mitte and Friedrichshain. There was
a narrow route still open toward Spandau. Weidling's few experienced
troops were trying to hold that lane

open for a last-minute breakout. Casualties were enormous. The
streets were littered with dead. Because of the shelling people were
unable to get out of the shelters to help friends and relatives who lay
wounded nearby; many had been caught when they went to stand in line
for water at Berlin's old-fashioned street pumps. Soldiers were not
much better off. Walking wounded who could make it to dressing
stations were lucky. Those unable to walk often lay where they fell
and bled to death.

Home Guardsman Kurt Bohg, who had lost most of one heel, crawled and
hobbled for miles. At last he could go no farther. He lay in a street
yelling for help. But the few people who dared risk the shelling to
leave their shelters were too busy trying to save their own lives.

Bohg, lying in a gutter, saw a Lutheran nun running from doorway to
doorway. "Sister, Sister," he called. "Can you help me?" The nun
stopped. "Can you crawl as far as the congregation house next to the
church?" she asked. "It's just five minutes from here. I'll help you
when I get there." Somehow he made it. All the doors were open. He
crawled into the hallway, then into an anteroom and finally collapsed.
When he came to he was lying almost in a spreading pool of blood.
Slowly he raised his eyes to see where it was coming from. He looked
across the room which led out onto a garden. The door was open; wedged
in it, crumpled and looking at him with soft eyes, was a black and
white Holstein cow. The animal was bleeding copiously from the mouth.
Man and beast stared at each other in dumb compassion.

As the Russians isolated the city's center, Weidling's forces were
compressed more and more. Supplies ran out. In response to his
desperate appeals for air drops, he received six tons of supplies and
exactly sixteen panzer rocket-shells.

Incredibly, amid the inferno of the battle, a plane suddenly swept in
and landed on the East-West Axis--the broad highway running from the
river Havel on the west to the Unter den Linden on the east. It was a
small Fieseler Storch, and in it were General Ritter von Greim and a
well-known aviatrix named Hanna Reitsch. The plane had been blasted by
anti-aircraft fire, and gasoline was

pouring from its wing tanks. Von Greim, who was at the controls, had
been wounded in the foot just before touching down. Hanna had grabbed
the stick and throttle and made a perfect landing. The two fliers had
been summoned to the Reichskanzlei by Hitler; when they arrived he
promptly made Von Greim a field marshal, replacing the "traitorous"
Goering as head of the now nonexistent Luftwaffe.

The Fuhrerbunker was already being shelled, but it was comparatively
safe for the time being. One other island of security remained in the
center of the city. Rising up from the zoological gardens were the
twin flak towers. The 132-foot-high G Tower was jammed with people:
nobody knew exactly how many. Dr. Walter Hagedorn, the Luftwaffe
physician, estimated that there were as many as thirty thousand--plus
troops. There were people sitting or standing on the stairways,
landings, on every floor. There was no room to move. Red Cross
workers like 19-year-old Ursula Stalla did all they could to alleviate
the sufferings of the civilians. She would never forget the sickening
combination of odors --"perspiration, smelly clothes, babies' diapers,
all mixed with the smell of disinfectants from the hospital." After
days in the bunker many people were approaching insanity. Some had
committed suicide. Two old ladies sitting side by side on the
first-floor landing had taken poison at some time, but no one could
tell when: because of the jam of people around them they had sat bolt
upright in death, apparently for days, before they were noticed.

Dr. Hagedorn had been operating on casualties in his small hospital
almost incessantly for five days. His problem was to bury the dead.
Men simply could not get out because of the shelling. "In between
lulls," he later recalled, "we tried to take out the bodies and the
amputated limbs for burial, but it was almost impossible." At this
moment, with shells smashing the bunker's impenetrable walls from all
sides and shrapnel spraying the steel shutters over the windows,
Hagedorn had five hundred dead and fifteen hundred wounded, plus an
unknown number of half-demented people. There were also suicides
everywhere, but because of the crush they could not even be counted.
Still, the doctor remembered, there were people in the bunker saying,
"We can stick it out until either Wenck or the Americans get here."

Below the tower lay the vast wasteland of the zoo. The slaughter among
the animals had been horrible. Birds flew in all directions every time
a shell landed. The lions had been shot. Rosa the hippo had been
killed in her pool by a shell. Schwarz the bird-keeper was in despair;
somehow the Abu Markub, the rare stork which had been in his bathroom,
had escaped. And now Director Lutz Heck had been ordered by the flak
tower commander to destroy the baboon; the animal's cage had been
damaged and there was some danger that the beast might escape.

Heck, rifle in hand, made his way to the monkey cages. The baboon, an
old friend, was sitting hunched by the bars of the cage. Heck raised
the rifle and put the muzzle close to the animal's head. The baboon
gently pushed it aside. Heck, appalled, again raised the rifle. Again
the baboon pushed the muzzle to one side. Heck, sickened and shaken,
tried once more. The baboon looked at him dumbly. Then Heck pulled
the trigger.

While the battle continued, another savage onslaught was going on. It
was grim and personal. The hordes of Russian troops coming up behind
the disciplined front-line veterans now demanded the rights due the
conquerors: the women of the conquered.

Ursula Koster was sleeping in a Zehlendorf cellar with her parents, her
6-year-old twin daughters, Ingrid and Gisela, and her 7-month-old boy
Bernd, when four Russian soldiers beat in the door with their rifle
butts. They searched the shelter; finding an empty suitcase, they
dumped jars of canned fruits, fountain pens, pencils, watches and
Ursula's wallet into it. One Russian found a bottle of French perfume.
He opened it, sniffed, and poured the contents of the bottle on his
clothes. A second Russian shoved Ursula's parents and the children at
gunpoint into a smaller room of the cellar. Then, one after another,
all four assaulted her.

Around six the following morning the battered Ursula was nursing her
baby when two other soldiers came into the cellar. With the baby in
her arms, she tried to dodge past and out the doorway. She was too
weak. One of the soldiers took the baby from her and put him in his
carriage. The second man looked at her and grinned. Both were filthy;
their clothes were gritty, and they carried knives in their boots and
wore fur caps. One man's shirttail was hanging out of his pants. Each
of them raped her. When they had gone, Ursula grabbed all the blankets
she could find, picked up her baby, collected her little girls, and ran
into a garden housing complex across the street. There she found a
bathtub which had been thrown or blasted out of one of the houses.
Turning it upside down, Ursula crawled in with her children.

In Hermsdorf, 18-year-old Juliane Bochnik dived under the sofa at the
back of the cellar when she heard the Russians approaching. She heard
her father, a linguist who spoke Russian, protesting at the intrusion.
The soldiers were demanding to know where Juliane was, and her father
was shouting, "I'll report you to the Commissar!" At gunpoint her
father was taken out into the street. Juliane lay very still, hoping
the Russians would go away. She had blackened her face and blond hair
in order to make herself look older; still, she was not taking any
chances. She stayed under the sofa.

In the adjoining cellar were two old people. Suddenly Juliane heard
one of them shouting in a terrified voice. "She's there! There! Under
the sofa." Juliane, dragged from her hiding place, stood quaking with
fear. There was some talk among the Russians, then all but one left.
"He was a young officer," she later related, "and, as far as I could
tell in the light of his flashlight, rather neat-looking and
clean-cut." He made motions whose meaning was unmistakable. She
shrank back; he advanced. Smiling, he "gently but forcefully" began to
remove Juliane's clothes. She struggled. "It was not easy for him,"
Juliane remembers. "He had a flashlight in one hand and, with typical
Russian mistrust, he was keeping an eye to the rear to guard against a
surprise attack."

Gradually, in spite of her efforts, he disrobed Juliane. She tried to
plead, but she couldn't speak Russian. At last she began crying

and fell to her knees, begging to be left alone. The young Russian
just looked at her. Juliane stopped crying, got hold of herself and
tried another tack; she began talking firmly and politely. "I told him
that this was all wrong," she recalls. "I said people don't act this
way." The Russian began to look annoyed. Then, with nearly all her
clothes removed, the girl broke down again. "I simply don't love you!"
she cried. "There's no point to this! I simply don't love you!"
Suddenly the Russian said, "Ahhh," in a disgusted voice and dashed out
of the cellar.

The next morning Juliane and another girl fled to a convent run by the
Dominican nuns; they were hidden there under the eaves of the roof for
the next four weeks. Juliane later learned that her friend Rosie
Hoffman and Rosie's mother, who had sworn to kill themselves if the
Russians came, had both been raped. They had taken poison. * * They
both lived. Prompt action by a doctor saved their lives.

Gerd Buchwald, a teacher, saw that Soviet troops were running wild in
his district of Reinickendorf. His apartment was completely ransacked
by women soldiers of the Red Army who seemed "to be drawn like a magnet
by my wife's clothes. They took what they wanted and left." He burned
what remained, and took his pistol apart and hid it in the garden. That
evening a group of Russian men appeared. They were all drunk. "Frau!
Frau!" they shouted at Buchwald. He greeted them with a friendly
smile. "I had a two-day growth of beard and unkempt hair, so maybe my
story worked because I looked older. I drew myself up, spread my hands
and said, "Frau kaput."" Apparently they understood: his wife was dead.
While Buchwald stretched on his sofa they looked around, took a pair
of his suspenders and then disappeared. After they had left Buchwald
bolted the door. Moving the sofa, he helped his wife Elsa from the
three- by three-foot hole he had dug in the concrete floor. She spent
every night there for the next few weeks.

Dr. Gerhard Jacobi, pastor of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, hid his wife
successfully too. Although in his cellar many women were taken out and
raped, he succeeded in hiding his wife by the adroit

use of a blanket. He slept on the outside of a narrow chaise longue,
his wife lying sideways on the inside. Her feet were at his head.
Covered completely by a heavy blanket she was almost invisible.

In Wilmersdorf, Ilse Antz, her younger sister Anneliese, and her
mother, who had initially formed favorable impressions of the Red Army,
were not bothered for some time. Then one night just before dawn
Anneliese was dragged out of the bed she shared with her mother. She
was carried screaming upstairs to an apartment, and there she was
brutally assaulted by a Soviet officer. When the Russian was finished
he stroked her hair and said, "Good German." He asked her not to tell
anyone that a Russian officer had raped her. The next day a soldier
appeared with a parcel of food addressed to her.

Shortly thereafter another trooper forced his attentions on Ilse. He
entered with a pistol in each hand. "I sat up in bed wondering which
one he was going to kill me with, the left or right," she remembers. In
the cold of the cellar, Ilse was wearing several sweaters and ski
pants. He pounced on her and began ripping her sweaters off. Then he
suddenly said, puzzled, "Are you a German soldier?" Ilse says, "I was
not surprised. I was so thin from hunger I hardly looked like a
woman." But the Russian quickly discovered his error. She was raped.
As the Red Army man left, he said: "That's what the Germans did in
Russia." After a time he returned and, to her amazement, stayed by the
side of her bed and protected her for the remainder of the night
against other lusting Red soldiers.

After that, the Antz family experienced repeated savagery. At one
point they were taken out and placed against a wall to be shot. At
another, Ilse was raped again. They began to think about suicide. "Had
we had poison, I for one would certainly have taken my life," Ilse
recalls.

As the Russians raped and plundered, suicides took place everywhere. In
the Pankow district alone, 215 suicides were recorded within three
weeks, most of them women. Fathers Josef Michalke and Alfons Matzker,
Jesuits in Charlottenburg's St. Canisius Church, realized just how far
women had been driven by the Russian ferocity when they saw a mother
and two children taken from the Havel River. The woman had tied two
shopping bags filled full of bricks to her arms and, grasping a baby
under each arm, had jumped in.

One of Father Michalke's parishioners, Hannelore von Cmuda, a
17-year-old girl, was repeatedly raped by a mob of drunken Red Army
men; when they were finished they shot the girl three times. Critically
injured, but not dead, she was brought around to the parish house in a
baby carriage, the only available transportation. Father Michalke was
not there at that moment, and the girl had disappeared when he
returned. For the next twenty-four hours he searched for Hannelore;
finally he found her in St. Hildegard's Hospital. He administered the
last sacraments and sat by her bedside during all the next night,
telling her not to worry. Hannelore survived. (a year later, she and
her mother were killed by a truck.)

Margarete Promeist was in charge of an air raid shelter. "For two days
and two nights," she recalls, "wave after wave of Russians came into my
shelter plundering and raping. Women were killed if they refused. Some
were shot and killed anyway. In one room alone I found the bodies of
six or seven women, all lying in the position in which they were raped,
their heads battered in." Margarete herself was assaulted, despite her
protestations to the young man that "I am much too old for you." She
saw three Russians grab a nurse and hold her while a fourth raped
her.

Hitler Youth Klaus Kuster, now in civilian clothes, was engaged in
conversation by two Soviet officers sitting in a jeep. One of them
spoke German, and he was so talkative that Kuster screwed up his
courage and asked an undiplomatic question. "Is it true," asked
Kuster, "that Russian soldiers rape and plunder as the newspapers say?"
The officer expansively offered him a pack of cigarettes and said, "I
give you my word of honor as an officer that the Soviet soldier will
not lay a hand on anyone. All that was written in those papers are
lies."

The next day Kuster saw three Russians grab a woman on
General-Barby-Strasse and drag her into a hallway. One soldier
gestured Kuster back with a machine pistol, a second held the screaming
woman and the third raped her. Then Kuster saw the rapist coming out
of the doorway. He was very drunk and tears were streaming down his
face. He shouted, "Ja bolshoi swinja." Kuster asked one of the
Russians what the phrase meant. The man laughed and said in German:
"It means, "I am a big pig.""

In a shelter in Kreuzberg where Margareta Probst was staying, a
fanatical Nazi named Moller had holed up in a locked room. The
Russians learned where he was and tried to break down the door. Moller
called out: "Give me a moment. I'll shoot myself." Again the Russians
tried to force the door. Moller called out: "Wait! The gun has
jammed." Then there was a shot.

During the next few hours the shelter was overrun with Russians looking
for girls. Margareta, like many another woman, had tried to make
herself as unattractive as possible. She had hidden her long blond
hair under a cap, donned dark glasses, smeared her face with iodine and
put a large adhesive plaster on her cheek. She was not molested. But
plenty of others were. "The girls were simply rounded up and taken to
the apartments upstairs," she recalls. "We could hear their screams
all night--the sound even penetrated down to the cellars." Later an
80-year-old woman told Margareta that two soldiers had stuffed butter
into her mouth to muffle her screams while a number of others assaulted
her in turn.

Dora Janssen and the widow of her husband's batman, who earlier had
thought they had got off easy, did not do so well now. In their
shelter the widow, Inge, was brutally assaulted by a soldier who
claimed that his mother had been taken to Berlin by force after German
troops attacked Russia, and had never been seen since. Dora was
spared; she said she had tuberculosis, and found that the Russians
seemed thoroughly afraid of that. But Inge was raped a second time,
and injured so badly that she was unable to walk. Dora ran out to the
street, found a man who looked like an officer and told him what had
happened. He looked at Dora coolly and said, "The Germans were worse
than this in Russia. This is simply revenge."

Elena Majewski, 17, and Vera Ungnad, 19, also saw both the

good and the bad sides of the Russians. When the looting and raping
began in the Tiergarten area, a young Russian soldier actually slept
outside their cellar door to make sure that his fellow countrymen did
not come in. The day after he left, seven or eight Red Army men
entered the girls' house and demanded that they attend a party the
Russians were giving next door. The girls had no alternative but to
accept; in any case, they saw no real reason to be afraid at first. The
place where the party was being held turned out to be a bedroom and
there were about thirty soldiers in the room, but everything seemed
innocuous enough. Beds had been shoved against the wall to make room
for a long table on which silver candelabra, linens and glassware had
been placed. A young blond officer was playing English records on a
phonograph. He smiled at the girls and said, "Eat and drink your
fill." Elena sat down at the table, but Vera suddenly wanted to leave.
It was somehow clear that this was not the innocent party it had
appeared to be.

She tried to walk out. One soldier after another prevented her,
grinning. Then one Russian told her, "With thirty soldiers you kaput;
with me you not kaput." Now there was no doubt in Vera's mind about
the reason for the party. But she agreed to go with the single
soldier: one man was better than thirty, if only because it was easier
to escape from one. She knew every cranny of the neighborhood; if she
could get away they would never find her. But the soldier was taking
no chances. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her, twisting,
screaming and clawing, toward an empty room. Somewhere along the way
she tore loose and managed to trip him. Then, kicking off her
high-heeled shoes for greater speed, she ran barefoot through the
backyards over splintered glass and rubble until she came to a ruin in
the Putlitzstrasse. There she frantically dug a hole in the dirt,
pulled a discarded water pail over her head and resolved to stay there
until she died.

Elena was still at the party. She was uneasy, but she was also hungry.
On the table were mounds of caviar, loaves of white bread, chocolate
and chunks of beef which the Russians were eating raw. They were also
downing water glasses filled with vodka, and getting progressively
drunker. Finally Elena saw her chance. She quietly rose from the
table and walked out; to her delight no one followed her. But in the
next room a fierce-looking soldier with a handlebar moustache grabbed
her and dragged her into a small anteroom. He threw her down and ripped
open her one-piece coveralls. She fainted. Much later, she came to
her senses, pushed the drunk and sleeping man off her and painfully
crawled out of the house. Like Vera, Elena hid. In a nearby house she
found refuge behind a large cook stove.

Young Rudolf Reschke, the boy who had beheaded the Hitler doll, was on
hand to save his mother from molestation. A Russian who tried to drag
Frau Reschke off found himself involved in a tug-of-war with Rudolf and
his sister Christa. The more the soldier pulled at their mother's arm,
the harder Rudolf and Christa hung onto her skirts, screaming, and
crying, "Mummy! Mummy!" The Russian gave up.

Some women saved themselves from rape simply by fighting back so
fiercely that the Soviet soldiers stopped trying and looked elsewhere.
Jolenta Koch was tricked into entering an empty house by a Russian who
led her to believe someone in it was wounded. Inside was another Red
Army man who grabbed her and tried to throw her onto a bed. She put up
such resistance that both men were glad to see her go.

One of her neighbors, a woman named Schulz, was not so lucky. Mrs.
Schulz was raped at gunpoint before the eyes of her helpless husband
and 15-year-old son; as soon as the Russians had left, the half-crazed
husband shot his wife, his son and himself to death.

At Haus Dahlem, Mother Superior Cunegundes heard that one mother of
three small children had been dragged from her family and raped through
an entire night. In the morning the woman was released; she rushed
back to her youngsters--only to find that her own mother and brother
had hanged all three children and then themselves. The woman thereupon
slashed her wrists and died.

The nuns at Haus Dahlem were now working steadily around

the clock. They had been overwhelmed by refugees, and by Russian
bestiality. One Russian, attempting to rape the home's Ukrainian cook,
Lena, was so infuriated when Mother Superior Cunegundes intervened that
he pulled out his pistol and fired at her. Fortunately, he was too
drunk to shoot straight. Other soldiers entered the maternity wards
and, despite all the nuns could do, repeatedly raped pregnant women and
those who had recently given birth. "Their screaming," related one
nun, "went on day and night." In the neighborhood, Mother Superior
Cunegundes said, rape victims included women of seventy and little
girls of ten and twelve.

She was helpless to prevent the attacks. But she called together the
nuns and the other women in the building and reiterated Father
Happich's words to them. "There is also something else," she
continued, "and that is the help of Our Blessed Lord. Despite
everything, He keeps St. Michael here. Do not be afraid." There was
no other solace she could give them.

In Wilmersdorf, Allied spy Carl Wiberg and his chief, Hennings
Jessen-Schmidt, who had successfully identified themselves to the
Russians, were actually talking to a Russian colonel outside Wiberg's
house when another Red Army officer tried to rape Wiberg's fiancee Inge
in the basement. Hearing her screaming, Wiberg rushed inside;
neighbors shouted that the man had taken the girl into another room and
locked the door. Wiberg and the Russian colonel smashed the door open.
Inge's clothes were torn; the officer's were undone. The colonel
grabbed the other officer and, yelling, "Amerikanski! Amerikanski!"
marched him outside, pistol-whipping him unmercifully. Then he stood
the officer against a wall to shoot him. Wiberg rushed between the two
men and begged the colonel to save the man's life. "You just can't
shoot a man like this," he said. The colonel finally relented, and the
officer was led off under arrest.

Certainly the most ironic sexual assault of this entire period of rape
and plunder occurred in the village of Prieros, just beyond the
southern outskirts of the city. The village had been bypassed by
Koniev's advancing troops, and for some time it was not occupied.
Finally the soldiers arrived. Among the Germans they found were two
women living in a wooden packing case. Else Kloptsch and her friend
Hildegard Radusch, "the man of the house," had almost starved to death
waiting for this moment. Hildegard had dedicated her whole life to
furthering Marxism: the arrival of the Russians meant the realization
of a dream. When the Soviet troops entered the village one of their
first acts was the brutal rape of Communist Hildegard Radusch. * * The
Russians do not deny the rapes that occurred during the fall of Berlin,
although they tend to be very defensive about them. Soviet historians
admit that the troops got out of control, but many of them attribute
the worst of the atrocities to vengeance-minded ex-prisoners of war who
were released during the Soviet advance to the Oder. In regard to the
rapes, the author was told by editor Pavel Troyanoskii of the army
newspaper Red Star: "We were naturally not one hundred per cent
gentlemen; we had seen too much." Another Red Star editor said: "War
is war, and what we did was nothing in comparison with what the Germans
did in Russia." Milovan Djilas, who was head of the Yugoslav Military
Mission to Moscow during the war, says in his book Conversations with
Stalin that he complained to the Soviet dictator about atrocities
committed by Red Army troops in Yugoslavia. Stalin replied: "Can't you
understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers
through blood and fire has fun with a woman or takes a trifle?"

The Russians had gone wild. In the International Red Cross warehouses
in Babelsberg near Potsdam, where British prisoners of war worked,
drunken and trigger-happy Red Army soldiers destroyed thousands of
parcels containing drugs, medical supplies and various dietary foods
for sick soldiers. "They came in," recalls Corporal John Aherne, "went
into one of the cellars, saw the huge pile of parcels and just
tommy-gunned the lot. Liquids of all sorts poured out of the shattered
parcels. It was unbelievable."

Next to the warehouses were the big UFA film studios. Alexander Korab,
a foreign student in Berlin, watched as hundreds of intoxicated
soldiers who had broken into the costume department appeared in the
streets wearing "all sorts of fantastic costumes,

from Spanish doublets with white ruff collars to Napoleonic uniforms
and hats, to crinoline skirts. They began to dance in the streets to
the accompaniment of accordions, and they fired their guns in the
air--all while the battle was still raging."

Thousands of Red Army troops appeared never to have been in a big city
before. They unscrewed light bulbs, and carefully packed them to take
home, under the impression that they contained light and could be made
to work anywhere. Water faucets were yanked out of walls for the same
reason. Bathroom plumbing was a mystery to many; they sometimes used
toilets to wash and peel potatoes, but they could find no use at all
for bathtubs. Thousands of them were simply thrown out of windows.
Since the soldiers didn't know what bathrooms were for, and couldn't
find outhouses, they left excrement and urine everywhere. Some
Russians made an effort: Gerd Buchwald discovered that "about a dozen
of my wife's canning jars were filled with urine, the glass covers
neatly screwed back into place."

In the Schering chemical plant in Charlottenburg, Dr. Georg Henneberg
was horror-stricken to find that the Russians had broken into his test
laboratories and were playing catch with laboratory eggs that had been
infected with typhus bacteria. The frantic Henneberg finally found a
Russian colonel who ordered the soldiers out of the building and locked
it up.

Amidst all the senseless plundering and brutality the battle still
raged. At the center of the fighting, almost forgotten by the
hard-pressed defenders and the harassed people, were the Fuhrerbunker
and its occupants.

Life in the bunker had taken on an aimless, dreamlike quality. "Those
who remained," Gertrud Junge, Hitler's secretary, later related,
"continually expected some sort of decision, but nothing happened. Maps
were spread out on tables, all doors were open, nobody could sleep any
more, nobody knew the date or time. Hitler could not bear to be alone;
he kept walking up and down through the small rooms and talking with
everybody who remained. He spoke of his imminent death and of the end
which was coming.

"In the meantime, the Goebbels family had moved into the bunker, and
the Goebbels children were playing and singing songs for "Uncle
Adolf.""

No one seemed to have any doubt now that Hitler intended to commit
suicide; he talked about it often. Everyone also appeared fully aware
that Magda and Joseph Goebbels planned to take their lives--and those
of their six children, Helga, Holde, Hilde, Heide, Hedda and Helmuth.
The only ones who did not seem to know were the children themselves.
They told Erwin Jakubek, a waiter in the bunker, that they were going
on a long flight out of Berlin. Helga, the eldest, said: "We are going
to get an injection to prevent air sickness."

Frau Goebbels, who had an inflamed tooth, sent for Dr. Helmut Kunz, a
dentist working in the big hospital bunker under the Chancellery. He
extracted the molar, and afterward she said: "The children must not
fall into the hands of the Russians alive. If worse comes to worst and
we cannot get out, you will have to help me."

Eva Braun, hearing of the job Kunz had done on Magda's teeth, suggested
that maybe he could help her with some tooth problems, too. Then,
suddenly remembering, she said to him: "Oh, but I've forgotten. What's
the sense? In a few hours it will be all over!"

Eva intended to use poison. She displayed a cyanide capsule and said,
"It's so simple-- you just bite into this and it's all over." Dr.
Ludwig Stumpfegger, one of Hitler's doctors who happened to be present,
said, "But how do you know it will work? How do you know there is
poison in it?" That startled everybody, and one of the capsules was
immediately tried out on Hitler's dog Blondi. Stumpfegger, said Kunz,
broke a capsule in the dog's mouth with a pair of tongs; the animal
died instantly.

The final blow for Hitler was unwittingly delivered on the afternoon of
April 29 by a man sitting at a typewriter some eight thousand miles
away, in the city of San Francisco. The man was Paul Scott Rankine, a
Reuters correspondent who was in the city to cover the founding
conference of the United Nations organization. That day he heard from
the head of the British Information Services, Jack Winocour--who, in
turn, had it straight from British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden--
that Himmler had made an offer of surrender to the Western Allies.
Rankine sent out the story, and within minutes it was being broadcast
all over the world.

It was this story that gave Hitler his first inkling of Himmler's
perfidy. The news reached him during the early evening, while he was
holding a conference with Weidling, Krebs, Burgdorf, Goebbels and the
latter's assistant Werner Naumann. According to Weidling's account,
"Naumann was called to the phone and a few moments later returned. He
told us that in a broadcast from Radio Stockholm, it had been reported
that Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler had begun negotiations with the
Anglo-American High Command."

Hitler tottered to his feet, his face ashen. He "looked at Dr.
Goebbels for a long time," said Weidling, "then he mumbled something in
a low voice which no one could understand." He seemed stupefied. "I
saw Hitler later," Gertrud Junge said. "He was pale, hollow-eyed and
looked as if he had lost everything." He had. "We will certainly have
to shed tears this evening," Eva Braun told Gertrud and another of
Hitler's secretaries.

Himmler's liaison officer at the Fuhrerbunker, SS Gruppenfurer Hermann
Fegelein, who was married to Eva Braun's sister, was immediately
suspected of complicity in Himmler's treason. Fegelein had disappeared
from the bunker a few days before; a search had been made, and he had
been found at home wearing civilian clothes and preparing to leave
Berlin. He had been returned to the bunker and kept under arrest. Now
Hitler concluded that Fegelein's planned departure from Berlin was tied
in with Himmler's defection. According to SS Colonel Otto Gunsche,
"Fegelein was court-martialed and shot during the night of the
twenty-eighth-twenty-ninth. His sister-in-law refused to intercede on
his behalf."

It apparently was clear to Hitler that the end was near. By dawn he
had dictated his personal and political testament, leaving the reins of
government in the hands of Admiral Karl Doenitz as President and Joseph
Goebbels as Reichschancellor. He also married Eva Braun. "After the
ceremony," recalls Gertrud Junge, Hitler and his new bride sat for an
hour with the Goebbels, Generals Krebs and Burgdorf, Dr. Naumann and
Luftwaffe Colonel Nicolaus von Below." Gertrud Junge stayed with the
group for only fifteen minutes, just long enough to "express her best
wishes to the newlyweds." She says that "Hitler talked about the end
of National Socialism, which he now thought could not be resurrected
easily, and said, "Death for me only means freedom from worries and a
very difficult life. I have been deceived by my best friends and I
have experienced treason.""

That same day Hitler got more bad news: Mussolini and his mistress had
been captured by partisans, executed and hung up by the heels. That
night Hitler bade farewell to everyone in the bunker. The following
day, with Russian tanks barely half a mile away, he decided that the
moment had come. He lunched with his two secretaries and his
vegetarian cook; waiter Erwin Jakubek remembered that the last meal was
"spaghetti with a light sauce." Hitler made more farewells after
lunch; to Gertrud Junge he said: "Now it has gone so far, it is
finished. Good-bye." Eva Braun embraced the secretary and said: "Give
my greetings to Munich and take my fur coat as a memory --I always
liked well-dressed people." Then they disappeared into their
quarters.

Colonel Otto Gunsche took up his stand outside the door of the anteroom
leading to Hitler's suite. "It was the most difficult thing I have
ever had to do," he later recalled. "It was about three-thirty or
three-forty. I tried to do away with my feelings. I knew that he had
to commit suicide. There was no other way out."

As he waited, there was a brief anticlimax. A distraught Magda
Goebbels suddenly came rushing up to him demanding to see the Fuhrer.
Gunsche, unable to dissuade her, knocked on Hitler's door. "The Fuhrer
was standing in the study. Eva was not in the room, but there was a
tap running in the bathroom so I assume

she was there. He was very annoyed at me for intruding. I asked him
if he wanted to see Frau Goebbels. "I don't want to speak to her any
more," he said. I left.

"Five minutes later I heard a shot.

"Bormann went in first. Then I followed the valet Linge. Hitler was
sitting in a chair, Eva was lying on the couch. She had taken off her
shoes and placed them neatly together at one end of the couch. Hitler's
face was covered with blood. There were two guns. One was a Walther
PPK. It was Hitler's. The other was a smaller pistol he always
carried in his pocket. Eva wore a blue dress with white collar and
cuffs. Her eyes were wide open. There was a strong stench of cyanide.
The smell was so strong that I thought my clothes would smell for days
--but this may have been my imagination.

"Bormann didn't say anything, but I immediately went into the
conference room where Goebbels, Burgdorf and others that I cannot now
remember were sitting. I said, "The Fuhrer is dead.""

A short while later, both bodies were wrapped in blankets and placed in
a shallow depression outside the bunker entrance, near an abandoned
cement mixer. Gasoline was poured over them and set ablaze. Erich
Kempka, Hitler's chauffeur, found that even after the bodies had been
set on fire "we were imprisoned by the very presence of Hitler again."
The bunker's air intakes picked up the smell of the burning bodies and
sucked it into the rooms. "We could not get away from it," recalled
Kempka. "It smelled like burning bacon."

By nightfall the new Chancellor, Joseph Goebbels, had made his first
major decision since assuming office: he had decided to try to
negotiate the capitulation of the city--on his own terms. A radio
message was sent out on the Soviet frequency, asking for a meeting.
Soon afterward the Russians responded; they agreed to

accept emissaries, and specified a place where German officers might
pass through their lines.

Shortly before midnight, Lieutenant General Hans Krebs and Weidling's
Chief of Staff, Theodor von Dufving (who had just been made a full
colonel), crossed through the ruins, accompanied by an interpreter and
two soldiers, and entered the Soviet lines. They were met by soldiers
who asked to see their credentials and tried to remove their pistols.
Krebs, who spoke excellent Russian, said stiffly: "A courageous
opponent is allowed to keep his weapons during negotiations." The
Russians, abashed, permitted them to retain their sidearms.

They were taken by car to an apartment house in Tempelhof, and were
shown into a small dining room. Its furnishings still showed traces of
civilian occupancy--a long table, a large wardrobe against one wall,
some chairs, and on another wall a lithograph of Leonardo da Vinci's
"The Last Supper." There were also several field telephones in the
room. To Krebs and Von Dufving the place seemed filled with senior
officers. There were no greetings and the Russians did not introduce
themselves. Krebs had no way of knowing, therefore, that the man
sitting opposite him was the renowned Colonel General Vasili Ivanovich
Chuikov, defender of Stalingrad and commander of the Eighth Guards
Army. Nor could he know that the other Russian "officers" consisted of
two war correspondents, Chuikov's aide (who was also his
brother-in-law) and two interpreters. * The fact was that Chuikov had
been caught by surprise by the sudden request for talks and had not
been able to assemble his full staff. * With the two correspondents
when Chuikov summoned them to the meeting was a visiting Soviet
composer, Matvei Isaakovich Blanter, sent by Stalin to write a symphony
commemorating the Berlin victory. The correspondents asked the General
what to do with the composer, and Chuikov said, "Bring him along." But
when Blanter arrived he was wearing civilian clothes, and it was clear
that he could not be passed off as a Red Army officer. He was hastily
shoved into a clothes closet adjoining the meeting room. He stayed
there for most of the ensuing conference. Just before the visitors
left he fainted from lack of air and fell into the room, to the utter
astonishment of the Germans.

Krebs first asked for a private meeting with the "chief Soviet
negotiator." Chuikov, taking a long Russian cigarette from the box

in front of him and lighting it, airily waved at the men sitting around
him and said, "This is my staff --this is my war council."

Krebs continued to object, but he finally gave in. "It is my mission,"
he said, "to deliver a message which is extraordinarily important and
of a confidential nature. I want you to know that you are the first
foreigner to learn that on April 30 Hitler committed suicide."

That was indeed news to Chuikov, but without batting an eye, he said,
"We know that."

Krebs was astounded. "How could you know?" he asked. "Hitler only
committed suicide a few hours ago." Hitler had married Eva Braun on
the twenty-ninth; she too had committed suicide and their bodies had
been burned and buried. It had happened, he explained, in the
Fuhrerbunker. Once again, Chuikov hid his surprise. Neither he nor
anyone else in the Soviet command had had any knowledge of such a
place, nor had they ever heard of Eva Braun.

They then got down to hard negotiating. Krebs told Chuikov that Hitler
had left a will behind in which he named his successors, and he passed
a copy of the will across to the Russian. The problem, he said, was
that there could not be a complete surrender because Doenitz, the new
President, was not in Berlin. The first step, Krebs suggested, would
be a cease-fire or a partial surrender-- after which perhaps the
Doenitz government might negotiate directly with the Russians. This
attempt to split the Allies was flatly rejected by Chuikov after a
hasty phone call to Zhukov. (the decision was later confirmed by
Moscow.)

The negotiations went on all night. By dawn all that Krebs had gained
from the Russians was a single demand: an immediate unconditional
surrender of the city, plus the personal surrender of all the occupants
of the bunker.

While Krebs remained to argue with Chuikov, Von Dufving made a
hazardous journey back through the lines, during which he was shot at
by SS troops and pulled to safety by a Russian lieutenant colonel. He
finally reached the Fuhrerbunker and there he told

Goebbels that the Russians were insisting on an unconditional
capitulation. Goebbels became agitated. "To that I shall never, never
agree," he cried.

With both sides adamant, the talks were broken off. In the bunker
there was panic. It seemed now that every Soviet gun in the district
had zeroed in on the Reichskanzlei; Von Dufving later speculated that
this was the direct result of Krebs's disclosure of the bunker's
location. For those in the besieged Fuhrerbunker there were now only
two alternatives: suicide or a breakout. Immediately everyone began to
make plans. They would leave in small groups through the complex of
tunnels and bunkers that lay beneath the Reichskanzlei building and
grounds. From there they would follow the subway system to the
Friedrichstrasse Station, where they hoped to join up with a battle
group that would lead them to the north. "Once we broke through the
Russian cordon on the north side of the Spree," Werner Naumann,
Goebbels' assistant, later recalled, "we were sure we could turn safely
in any direction."

Some chose the other alternative.

For the Goebbels family the choice was suicide. Werner Naumann had
tried for weeks to dissuade Magda Goebbels, but she remained firm. Now
the time had come. At about eight-thirty on May 1, Naumann was talking
with Goebbels and his wife when suddenly Magda "got up and went into
the children's rooms. After a short while she returned, white and
shaken." Almost immediately, Goebbels began making his good-byes. "He
said a few personal words to me--nothing political or about the future,
just good-bye," Naumann later said. As Goebbels left the bunker he
asked his adjutant, Guenther Schwagermann, to burn his and his family's
bodies after death. Then, as Naumann watched, Joseph and Magda
Goebbels went slowly up the stairs and into the garden. Goebbels was
wearing his cap and gloves. Magda was "shaking so badly she could
hardly walk up the stairs." No one ever saw them alive again.

The children were dead, too, and at the hand of a most improbable
killer. "Only one person," said Naumann, "went into the children's
rooms in the last moments before Joseph and Magda took their own
lives--and that was Magda herself."

Some of those who broke out did not fare much better. A number were
killed. Others fell into the hands of the Russians within hours;
Hitler's bodyguard Otto Gunsche was to spend twelve years as a Soviet
prisoner. Some quickly became casualties--like pilot Hans Baur who,
carrying a small painting of Frederick the Great given to him by
Hitler, lost a leg from a shell burst and woke up in a Russian hospital
without the painting. Others such as Martin Bormann mysteriously
disappeared. A few actually got away--or, what was almost as good,
fell into the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

Three stayed in the bunker and committed suicide: Hitler's adjutant,
General Burgdorf; the OKH'S Chief of Staff, General Hans Krebs, and
Captain Franz Schedle of the bunker guards.

And now, with all other authority gone, the full responsibility for the
safety of the city, its defenders and its people fell on one
man--General Karl Weidling. By now Berlin was a flaming holocaust. Its
troops had been pushed back into the very heart of the city. There
were tanks along the Unter den Linden and the Wilheimstrasse. There
was fighting all through the Tiergarten area and in the zoo. Russian
artillery was bombarding the city from the East-West Axis. Troops were
in the subway stations at Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstrasse, and a
fierce battle was taking place within the Reichstag. Weidling could
see nothing to do but surrender. Still, he felt that he should put it
up to his men. He called a meeting of his commanders and explained the
situation. "I informed them," Weidling said, "of the events of the
last twenty-four hours and my plans. At the end I left it to every one
of them to choose another way out, but they had no other solution.
However, those who wanted to try breaking out could do so if they
desired."

A little before one o'clock on the morning of May 2 the Red Army's 79th
Guards Rifle Division picked up a radio message. "Hello, hello," said
the voice. "This is the 56th Panzer Corps. We

ask for a cease-fire. At twelve-fifty hours Berlin time we are sending
truce negotiators to the Potsdam Bridge. Recognition sign--a white
flag. Awaiting reply."

The Russians replied: "Understand you. Understand you. Am
transmitting your request to Chief of Staff."

On receipt of the message, General Chuikov immediately ordered a
cease-fire. At twelve-fifty on May 2, Colonel von Dufving, Weidling's
Chief of Staff, and two other officers arrived at the Potsdam Bridge
under the white flag. They were taken to Chuikov's headquarters. Soon
afterward Weidling followed. Later that day powerful loudspeakers all
over the city announced the end of hostilities. "Each hour of the
conflict," General Weidling's order read, "increases the frightful
sufferings of the civilian population of Berlin and of our wounded. ...
I command the immediate cessation of fighting." Although sporadic
firing would continue for days, the battle for Berlin was officially
over. People who ventured into the Platz der Republik that afternoon
saw the red flag fluttering over the Reichstag. It had been raised
even as the fighting was going on at exactly 1:45 P.m. on the thirtieth
of April.

Although the Russians knew that the Fuhrerbunker lay beneath the
Reichskanzlei, it took them several hours to find it. People were
grabbed off the streets and asked to direct the searchers to the place.
Gerhard Menzel, a photographer, was one who was asked. He had never
heard of the bunker. Still, he went with one group of soldiers to the
wrecked Reichskanzlei. In the labyrinth of cellars and passageways
Russian engineers led the way with mine detectors. As soon as a room
or corridor was cleared, other soldiers collected papers, files and
maps. Menzel was suddenly given a pair of binoculars the Russians had
found and told to leave. They had arrived at the Fuhrerbunker
itself.

The first bodies they found were those of Generals Burgdorf and Krebs.
The two officers were in the corridor lounge, sitting before

a long table littered with glasses and bottles. Both men had shot
themselves, but they were identified by papers found in their
uniforms.

Major Boris Polevoi, in one of the first search teams to enter, made a
quick inspection of the entire bunker. In a small room with
Pullman-type beds fastened to the walls, he found the Goebbels family.
The bodies of Joseph and Magda were lying on the floor. "Both bodies
had been burned," Polevoi said, "and only Joseph Goebbels' face was
recognizable." The Russians later had trouble figuring out how the
parents' bodies came to be there. Presumably someone had brought them
back into the bunker after their partial cremation, but the Russians
never learned who. The children were also there. "To see the children
was horrid," Major Polevoi said. "The only one who seemed disturbed
was the eldest, Helga. She was bruised. All were dead, but the rest
were lying there peacefully."

Soviet doctors immediately examined the youngsters. There were burn
marks around their mouths, leading the doctors to believe that the
children had been given a sleeping potion and had then been poisoned
while they slept by cyanide tablets which had been crushed between
their teeth. From Helga's bruises, the doctors speculated that she had
awakened during the poisoning, had struggled, and had had to be held
down. As the bodies were carried up to the Reichskanzlei Court of
Honor to be photographed and tagged for identification purposes,
Polevoi took a last look around the death room. Lying on the floor
were the children's toothbrushes and a squashed tube of toothpaste.

A special team of experts found Hitler's body almost immediately,
buried under a thin layer of earth. A Russian historian, General B. S.
Telpuchovskii, felt sure that it was the Fuhrer. "The body was badly
charred," he said, "but the head was intact, though the back was
shattered by a bullet. The teeth had been dislodged and were lying
alongside the head."

Then some doubts began to arise. Other bodies were found in the same
area and some of them, too, had been burned. "We

found the body of a man in uniform whose features resembled Hitler's,"
said Telpuchovskii, "but his socks were darned. We decided that this
could not be Hitler because we hardly thought that the Fuhrer of the
Reich would wear darned socks. There was also the body of a man who
was freshly killed but not burned."

The matter of the two doubles was further confused when the first body
was placed alongside the second, and guards and other German personnel
were asked to identify them. They either could not or would not. A
few days later Colonel General Vasili Sokolovskii ordered a dental
check to be made of each body. Fritz Echtmann and Kathe Heusermann,
the dental technicians who had worked in the offices of Hitler's
dentist, Blaschke, were turned up. Echtmann was taken to Finow, near
Eberswalde, about twenty-five miles northeast of Berlin. He was asked
to draw a sketch of Hitler's teeth. When he had finished, his
interrogators disappeared into another room with the sketch. A short
while later they were back. "It fits," Echtmann was told. Then the
Russians showed the technician Hitler's entire lower jaw and dental
bridges.

Kathe Heusermann was picked up on May 7; she immediately identified the
jaw and bridges. The work she and Blaschke had performed some months
ago was easily recognizable. Kathe was given a bag of food and driven
back to Berlin. Two days later she was picked up again and this time
taken to the town of Erkner. In a clearing was a row of open graves,
the bodies visible in them. "Identify them," the Russian with her
said. Kathe immediately recognized the bodies of Joseph Goebbels and
his children. "The girls were all still wearing flannel nightgowns of
a printed material with a design of small red roses and blue flowers
intertwined," she said. There was no sign of Magda Goebbels.

Apparently as a consequence of her identification of Hitler's teeth,
Kathe Heusermann spent the next eleven years in a Soviet prison, most
of the time in solitary confinement.

What happened to the remains of Hitler's body? The Russians claim to
have cremated it just outside Berlin, but they will not say where. They
say that they never found Eva Braun's body, that

it must have been consumed completely by fire, and that any normally
identifiable portions must have been destroyed or scattered in the
furious bombardment of the government buildings. * * It is the
author's belief that the Russians were not interested in Eva Braun and
made no real effort to identify her body. The first confirmation by
the Soviets that Hitler was dead was made to the author and to
Professor John Erickson by Marshal Vasili Sokolovskii on April 17,
1963, almost eighteen years after the event.

On the morning of April 30, as Gotthard Heinrici walked down the
corridor of his headquarters before departing for good, a young captain
had stepped up to him. "General," he said, "you don't know me. I have
been working in the Operations Department. Like everyone else, I know
that you have been relieved and ordered to report to Plon."

Heinrici said nothing.

"I beg of you," said the young captain, "do not hurry getting there."

"What are you talking about?" asked Heinrici.

"Years ago," said the captain, "I used to walk behind the regimental
band in Schwabisch Gmund on Sundays during church parade. You were a
major then, sir. I later became well acquainted with the man who was
then your adjutant."

Heinrici said, "Yes--Rommel."

"Well, sir," the captain continued, "I hope you will forgive me for
saying that I would not like the same fate to overtake you that befell
Field Marshal Rommel."

"What do you mean?" Heinrici asked, looking at him sharply. "Rommel
was killed in action."

The captain replied: "No sir, he was not. He was forced to commit
suicide." Heinrici stared at him. "How do you happen to know this?"
he snapped.

"I was Rommel's aide," the officer told him. "My name is Hellmuth
Lang. I beg of you, drive as slowly as you can to Plon. That way the
war will probably be over by the time you get there."

Heinrici hesitated. Then he shook Lang's hand. "Thank you," he said
stiffly. "Thank you very much."

Heinrici walked on down the corridor and out of the building. Drawn up
there were the members of his small staff. Someone gave an order and
every man came to the salute. Heinrici walked over to each of them. "I
want to thank you all," he said. Captain Heinrich von Bila, the
General's aide, opened the car door. Heinrici got in. Von Bila
climbed in beside the driver. "Plon," he said.

Heinrici leaned over and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. "We're
in no great hurry," he said.

Late the next night Heinrici reached the barracks at Plon. As he
entered his room a radio was playing. There was a sudden interruption.
After a low roll of drums it was announced that the Fuhrer was dead.
The time was 10 P.m., May 1. * * *

Warrant Officer Dixie Deans sat beside his German guard, Charlie
Gumbach, listening to the news. It was the best news

Dixie had heard for a long time. "... in the battle against
Bolshevism, the Fuhrer fought to the last breath before his death," the
announcer solemnly stated. Deans looked around him. He and Gumbach
were somewhere east of Lauenburg, sheltering in the cellar of a house
just back of the German lines. The whole family was present and the
wife was in tears at the news. Deans restrained his own delight.
Though the Fuhrer might be dead, the war was not yet over. The German
lines were just ahead and Dixie had to get through them. It would not
be easy; the firing was heavy.

Everyone settled down in the uncomfortable quarters for the night.
Sleep came easily to Deans. He had been cycling for days, trying to
get through to the British lines. Now with a bit of luck he might just
make it--if he could persuade the next lot of Jerries to let him by. It
was the last thing Deans remembered before he fell asleep.

Hours later he awoke with a jolt. There was a tommy gun sticking in
his ribs. A voice said, "Okay, chum; on your feet." Dixie looked up
into the face of a tough-looking British 6th Airborne paratrooper. The
area had been taken during the night, while they slept. Deans leaped
up, overjoyed, and explained who he was. He and Charlie were marched
back to company headquarters, then passed along first to division
headquarters and then to corps. Finally they were seen by Lieutenant
General Evelyn H. Barker, 8th Corps commander.

Deans quickly explained the situation. "There are 12,000 R.a.f. POW'S
marching toward the lines," he said urgently. "Our planes are shooting
them up!" He showed General Barker where he had left the men. The
General looked startled; hastily he reached for the phone--and canceled
another air strike scheduled for the same area. "Everything will be
all right now," said General Barker, looking relieved. "We should
overrun the area within the next forty-eight hours; you'd better get
some rest."

"No, sir," Deans said. "I promised Colonel Ostmann that I would
return."

Barker looked at him in amazement. "Isn't that a bit silly?" he
asked. "After all, we will be there in a matter of hours."

But Deans was insistent. "Well," said the General, "I'll give you a
car with a Red Cross flag that may get you through. And tell those
Jerries that you meet that they might just as well pack it in now."

Deans saluted. As he passed through the Chief of Staff's office he
looked about him. "Where's my German guard, Charlie Gumbach?" he
asked. Somebody said, "He's on his way to the POW camp." Deans was
annoyed. "I'm not leaving here without him," he growled. "I gave my
word of honor." Charlie was quickly returned, and they set off in a
captured Mercedes with a Red Cross flag across the hood.

Two days later Dixie Deans marched his men into the British lines, his
bagpipers leading the way. Men stood watching as the thin, tired
R.a.f. men, heads high, tramped into the British area. Colonel Ostmann
and his guards were now taken into custody. Deans and some of his men
marched with them to the British POW compound. The two groups faced
each other and came to attention. Ostmann stepped forward, and he and
Deans saluted. "Good-bye, Colonel Ostmann," said Deans. "Good-bye,
Mr. Deans," said Ostmann. "I hope we meet again." Then Deans
repeated "Ten-shun!" and Ostmann and his guards marched into the
British POW compound. As he passed, Charlie Gumbach waved. * * *

The firing was murderous. It came from every side. Busse was
everywhere, yelling at his men. "On your feet! Keep moving! Only a
few more miles to go! Wenck is waiting!" Busse was so tired that he
did not know what hour or even what day it was. The Ninth had been
fighting toward Wenck for what seemed like weeks. There was almost no
ammunition left, and there was virtually no artillery, only some
mortars. There were few machine guns and

almost nothing to fire in them. Everywhere Busse looked he saw men
collapsing, unable to move. It took all his strength and that of his
officers to keep them going. Complicating matters were the thousands
of refugees who had joined the columns. Food was short. There was not
even enough for his own men.

Wenck could not be more than a few miles away, but Russian resistance
was still stiff. Busse called up his last remaining tank. He had been
holding it for this moment. He told Lieutenant General Wolf Hagemann
to lead the way out. Hagemann leaped in and told the driver to gun the
motor. The tank thrashed forward. They rumbled across a ditch and
some rough ground. Suddenly Hagemann saw the Russian troops breaking
in front of them. He looked around for something to fire. There was
no ammunition for the machine guns, but he grabbed up a shotgun and
began pumping shells at the fleeing Russians.

Then he heard fire coming from the other direction --from in back of
the Russians. It was Wenck's men. The link-up came so suddenly that
nobody really remembered afterward how it ended. Exhausted men just
fell into each other's arms. Wenck and Busse had joined.

"The men of the Ninth were so tired, so worn out, in such terrible
shape, that it was unbelievable," Wenck remembered. As he stood
watching, one man in the midst of the columns broke away and came
toward him. Wenck saw a haggard, begrimed, unshaven soldier. Not
until the man was almost up to him did Wenck recognize General Theodor
Busse. Wordlessly they shook hands, and then Wenck said, "Thank God
you're here."

On May 7 the two armies were back on the Elbe and more than 100,000
crossed to the west to be taken by the Americans. Of Busse's original
200,000 men, only 40,000 survived.

The last message from Trans-Ocean, the semi-official German news
agency, was in French. It said, "Sauve qui peut"-- Let those who are
able save themselves. Berliners took the suggestion. There were
tanks, troops, baby carriages, automobiles, horse-drawn wagons,
personnel carriers, self-propelled guns, men on horseback and thousands
of people afoot funneling out of Berlin across the bridges leading to
Spandau. The vast exodus had been going on for hours. The surrender
might have been signed but shooting was still going on, and all the
refugees wanted to do was escape. Occasionally the columns of fleeing
Germans were shelled: apparently Russian artillery to the north and
south had not yet received the cease-fire.

Young Brigitte Weber set out from Berlin in her father-in-law's
chauffeur-driven car; she was wrapped in her fur coat and she had a
basket of heirloom silver at her feet. Then the car got jammed in the
Spandau columns, and it took ten and a half hours to travel just a few
miles. She finally had to abandon the car and, like thousands of
others, trudge west on foot.

The 16-year-old Aribert Schulz was astonished to find himself once
again in the presence of the official SS executioner. Schulz was lying
next to the red-haired man in a first-aid shelter: the lanky SS gunman
had taken a full burst of fire across the stomach; he screamed for
sixteen hours before he died.

Again and again, as the great throngs of people filled the roads
leading toward the bridges, shells landed among them. Hildegard
Panzer, traveling with Captain Kurt Ache, who was helping her with her
two children--Wolfgang, nine, and Helga, five --lost the little boy and
girl in the crush. She never saw them again. In all, an estimated
twenty thousand people were killed and wounded in the mad exodus.

And then at last the shells stopped falling, and the refugees left the
sound of gunfire behind. They walked a little farther, to be sure,
then they dropped to the ground. Men, women and children slept where
they fell--in fields, in ditches, in empty houses, in abandoned
vehicles, on the shoulders of the roads, in the roads themselves. They
were safe now. The last battle had ended.

"Abu! Abu!" Heinrich Schwarz walked through the terrible devastation
of the zoo. There was nothing left now, he thought. The zoo would
never be the same again. Dead animals and rubble were everywhere. He
walked toward the pool. "Abu! Abu!" he called.

There was a fluttering. At the edge of the empty pool was the rare Abu
Markub stork, standing on one leg and looking at Schwarz. He walked
through the pool and picked up the bird. "It's all over, Abu," said
Schwarz. "It's all over." He carried the bird away in his arms.

On May 4, Ilse Antz slowly stepped from her Wilmersdorf cellar for the
first time in daylight since April 24. The streets were strangely
quiet. "At first, unaccustomed to the brightness, I saw nothing but
black circles before my eyes. But then I looked around. The sun was
shining, and spring had come. The trees were blooming; the air was
soft. Even in this tortured and dying town nature was bringing back
life. Up to now nothing had touched me; all emotions were dead. But
as I looked over at the park, where spring had come, I could not
control myself any longer. For the first time since it had all
started, I cried."

A NOTE ON CASUALTIES

Even twenty years later no one knows with any certainty what the
civilian losses were during the battle of Berlin. Even yet, bodies are
being unearthed from ruins, in gardens, in parks where they were
hurriedly interred during the battle, and from mass graves. However,
based on statistical studies, probably close to 100,000 civilians died
as a result of the battle. At least 20,000 succumbed to heart attacks,
some 6,000 committed suicide, the remainder were either killed outright
from shelling or street fighting or died later from wounds. The number
of people who fled Berlin in the last days and died elsewhere in
Germany has also never been accurately estimated. If at least 52,000
were killed from bombing alone, and if the estimates above are
accepted, the figure rises to more than 150,000. This does not include
wounded.

How many were raped? Again no one knows. I have had estimates from
doctors running from 20,000 to 100,000. Abortions were unofficially
permitted, but for obvious reasons no one is willing to even guess at
the number.

As for German military casualties, like those of the civilians, no one
really knows. Complicating the problem is the fact that they are
included in Germany's total war casualty figure; thus it is impossible
to say how many fell in Berlin alone. The Russians are quite definite
about their losses. Soviet Defense authorities say that they had "in
excess of 100,000 killed" in the battle from the Oder to the final
capture of Berlin. To me that figure seems high, but it may have been
deliberately inflated to dramatize the victory. On the other hand
Marshal Koniev told me that his forces alone suffered "in the entire
battle from the Oder to Berlin and with my southern flank going toward
the Elbe ... 150,000 killed." Thus it would seem that Zhukov's and
Koniev's combined forces lost at least 100,000 killed in the taking of
Berlin. Curiously, General Omar N. Bradley, commander of the U.s. 12th
Army Group, had warned Eisenhower that if he tried to take the capital
he might suffer 100,000 casualties, but Bradley was talking about a
total of killed, wounded and missing.

THE SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS OF "THE LAST BATTLE"

What They Do Today

The following is a list of all those who were involved in "The Last
Battle" and who contributed information to this book. First, the men
of the Allied Armies; then the German military who opposed them, and
finally the Berliners who lived in the city or its environs during
March and April, 1945. At the request of the Bonn government, the
addresses of German military personnel and civilians have been omitted.
Occupations may have changed since this book went to press, and where
an asterisk follows a name it indicates that the contributor has died
since these lists were compiled. All ranks given are as of 1945.

AMERICAN Eisenhower, Dwight David, Gen.,

Supreme Comdr., [SHAEF]

Gen. of the Army,

Comdr.-in-Chief; President of the United States (1952-1960),
Gettysburg, Pa. Bradley, Omar Nelson, Gen. [12th

Army Group] Gen. of the Army;

Chairman, Bulova Watch Co., New

York, N.y.

Abbes, Henry Charles, Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Project architect,

Queens Village, N.y. Adams, Charles M., Col. [69th Inf.

Div.] Col. (retired), U.s.

Army, La Mesa, Calif. Adryan, Chester P., 1/ Lt. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Special agent, The

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance

Co., Bellefontaine, Ohio Allmand, James R., 1/ Lt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Occupation unknown,

Hermosillo, Son., Mexico Anderson, Gerald J., Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Motor vehicle examiner,

State of New Jersey, Glen Rock,

N.j. Anderson, Glen H., Col. [5th Armored

Div.] Motel owner, Daytona Beach,

Fla. Anderson, Peter, Sgt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Superintendent, Executive

Mansion, Albany, N.y. Angeleri, Carl J., Tstbled [30th Inf.

Div.] Real estate broker, Forest

Hills, N.y. Aralle, William, T/sgt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Revenue officer, Internal

Revenue Service, West Orange,

N.j.

Ayers, Kenneth Lee, 1/ Lt. [84th

Inf. Div.] Maj. (retired),

U.s. Army, Tallahassee, Fla. Baker, Clyde, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Postal employee, Piedmont,

Ala. Bargy, James H., S/sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] M/sgt. N.y. Guard;

Truck driver, Rensselaer, N.y. Barnard, Robert Howard, 1/ Lt.

[Ninth Air Force]

Businessman, Tucumcari, N.m. Barrett, Charles Joseph, Brig. Gen.

[84th Inf. Div.] Col., U.s.

Military Academy, West Point,

N.y. Batchelder, Clifton Brooks, Lt.

Col. [2nd Armored Div.]

Executive, United States Check

Book Co., Omaha, Neb. Berry, John Thomas, Maj. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Col., 101/

Airborne Div., Fort Campbell,

Ky. Berryman, Flur Woodrow, Tstbled [5th

Armored Div.] Carpenter, Town

Creek, Ala. Bestebreurtje, Arie D., Capt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Minister,

Louisville, Ky. Bethke, Clarence E., Capt. [84th Inf.

Div.] Occupation unknown, Tucson,

Ariz. Biddle, William Shepard, Col. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army; Comdt.,

Pennsylvania Military College,

Chester, Pa. Billingsley, Charles, Col. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Maj. Gen.,

U.s. Army; Deputy Commanding General,

Combat Development Command, Fort Belvoir,

Va. Blair, William M., Jr., 1/ Lt.

[84th Inf. Div.] Asst. treasurer,

Colonial Bank and Trust Co.,

Waterbury, Conn. Blake, Peter, 2nd Lt. [5th Armored

Div.] Architect and author, New

York, N.y. Bloser, Donald Paul, Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Doctor of medicine,

Enola, Pa. Bolling, Alexander R., Maj. Gen. [84th

Inf. Div.] * Bommer, Jack L., Tst5 [82nd

Airborne Div.] Occupation unknown,

Columbus, Ohio Bond, Ridgely B., Jr., Lt. Col.

[84th Inf. Div.] Brig.

Gen., U.s. Army,

Catonsville, Md. Booth, J. Edwin, Sgt. [POW,

Luckenwalde Camp] Postal clerk,

Fremont, Neb. Bovee, Elmer William, Pfc. [30th

Inf. Div.] Owner, Bovee's

Delivery Service, Addison, N.y. Boyd, Elmo Hubbard, Capt. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Manufacturer's

representative, Charlotte, S.c. Brockley, Harold R., Tstbled [82nd

Airborne Div.] Post office clerk,

Connersville, Ind. Brooks, Dwight Marion, 1/ Lt.

[69th Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s. Army, Fort Belvoir, Va. Brunow, Marcel, F. J., Lt. Col.

[2nd Armored Div.] Col.

(retired), U.s. Army, Belfast,

Me. Bunch, Doyle R., Capt. [83rd Inf.

Div.] School principal, Amarillo

Public Schools, Amarillo, Tex. Burnette, Eugene Gale, T/sgt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Sfc.

USAIG, Furman University,

Greenville, S.c. Burns, Stanley E., Capt. [84th

Inf. Div.] District manager,

Hemingway Transport Co.,

Philadelphia, Pa. Burton, Edward J., Pfc. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Trucker,

Carmichael, Calif. Byrn, Delmont K., Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Professor of Education,

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,

Mich. Carbin, John Patrick, Jr., Maj.

[30th Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s. Army, Trenton, N.j. Carnes, Norman D., Lt. Col. [84th

Inf. Div.] Col. (retired),

U.s. Army, Denver, Colo. Caroscio, William J., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Policeman,

Elmira, N.y. Carrall, Charles B., Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Priest,

Hawthorne, N.y. Cason, Claude Edwin, Capt. [5th

Armored Div.] Lt. Col.

(retired), U.s. Army, Huntsville,

Ala. Clark, Curtis Mason, Maj. [2nd

Armored Div.] Counsel, Norton

Co., Worcester, Mass.

Cleary, Francis J., S/sgt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Production

manager, W. S. Rockwell Co.,

Fairfield, Conn. Closs, Maldwyn M., S/sgt. [5th

Armored Div.] Postal clerk,

Wymore, Neb. Coates, Edwin Morton, Lt. Col.

[5th Armored Div.] Test planner,

U.s.a.f., Lancaster, Calif. Collier, John Howell, Brig. Gen.

[2nd Armored Div.] Lt. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, San

Antonio, Tex. Conran, Richard John, Lt. Col. [69th

Inf. Div.] Col., ARADCOM,

Oklahoma City, Okla. Conte, Angelo James, Maj. [84th

Inf. Div.] Lt. Col. (retired),

U.s.a.r., Levittown, N.j. Cook, Julian Aaron, Lt. Col.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Col.,

CINCLANT, Norfolk, Va. Cook, Tim O., Lt. Col. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Banking executive,

Lamesa, Tex. Copp, Franklin Harold, 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Lt. Col

U.s.a.r., Falls Church, Va. Cosgrove, Warner G., Jr., Maj.

[XIII Corps] Partner, Shields and

Co., New York, N.y. Costello, James Patrick, Capt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Sgt.,

N.y.C. Police, Bayside,

N.y. Cota, Norman D., Maj. Gen. [28th

Inf. Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Bryn Mawr, Pa. Crabill, Edwin B., Col. [83rd Inf.

Div.] Col. (retired),

U.s. Army, Riviera Beach,

Fla. Craig, Bertie Edward, Lt. Col.

[84th Inf. Div.] Col.

(retired), U.s. Army, Tacoma,

Wash. Crosby, Thomas Dillard, S/sgt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Sgt.,

USATC, APO, New York, N.y. Cseak, Daniel T., Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Bakery manager, Canton,

Ohio Cullom, Henry Martin, Jr., Capt.

[84th Inf. Div.] Executive,

Valley Tire and Supply Co., South

Pittsburg, Tenn. Currey, Francis S., T/sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Office worker, Veterans'

Administration Hospital, Albany,

N.y. Daniels, Donald C., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Occupation unknown,

Kansas City, Mo. Darrigo, Joseph Robert, 1/ Lt.

[84th Inf. Div.] Laborer,

Darien, Conn. Davis, William Holt, Capt. [84th

Inf. Div.] Lt. Col., Georgia

Military Academy, East Point, Ga. Deane, John R., Maj. Gen. [Chief,

Military Mission, Moscow] Maj.

Gen. (retired), U.s. Army, San

Francisco, Calif. Deere, Benny, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Occupation unknown,

Gloversville, Ala. DeVault, Charles Cooper, Lt. Col.

[5th Armored Div.] Realtor,

Marion, Va. Devenney, John J., Capt. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Civilian executive

officer, Dept. of the Army, Springfield,

Pa. DiBattista, Dominic, Pfc. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Contractor,

Garwood, N.j. Dickenson, Glenn Gilmer, Lt. Col.

[5th Armored Div.] Col.

(retired), U.s. Army; Lawyer,

Augusta, Ga. Dilione, Charles, Pvt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Truck driver, Sea

Bright, N.j. Dingley, Nelson III, Col. [U.s.

Group Control Council] Brig. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, Vero Beach,

Fla. Disney, Paul A., Col. [2nd Armored

Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Arlington, Va. Doughtie, George Roberts, Capt. [84th

Inf. Div.] Executive, Atlantic

Sheet Metal Corp., Atlanta,

Ga. Ellis, Otto, Col. [30th Inf.

Div.] Retired, Bradenton, Fla. Faris, John L., Capt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Asst. manager, department store,

Rock Hill, S.c.

Farrand, Edward Gilbert, Col. [5th

Armored Div.] Maj. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army; President,

St. John's Military Academy,

Delafield, Wis. Fellman, Malcolm Aaron, 1/

Lt. [30th Inf. Div.] Commodity

department, Bache and Co., New York,

N.y. Ficarra, Louis James, Cpl. [30th

Inf. Div.] Calender operator--

leadman, Garfield, N.j. Fleischmann, Lawrence, Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown,

Buffalo, N.y. Flowers, Melvin Lamar, 1/ Lt. [Ninth

Air Force] Maj. (retired),

U.s.a.f., Huntsville, Ala. Fonderico, Vincent, Cpl. [30th Inf.

Div.] Inspector, City Water

Dept., Rosedale, N.y. Francies, Merritt Duane, 1/ Lt.

[5th Armored Div.] Company pilot,

Keokuk, Iowa Franco, Robert, Capt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Surgeon,

Richland, Wash. Frankland, Walter L., Lt. Col.

[30th Inf. Div.] Owner,

automotive parts store,

Jackson, Tenn. Fransosi, Arthur Arnold, Tstbled [82nd

Airborne Div.] Postal clerk,

Cranston, R.i. Galvin, Wayne W., Pvt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Painter, Las

Vegas, Nev. Gavin, Charles G., Capt. [30th Inf.

Div.] County extension agent, La

Grande, Ore. Gavin, James M., Maj. Gen. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Lt. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, Board

Chairman, Arthur D. Little Co.,

Boston, Mass. Gazdayka, Mike, Sgt. [5th Armored

Div.] Employee, San Francisco

Examiner Dealer, Camarillo, Calif. Geppert, Leo Joseph, Maj. [84th

Inf. Div.] Col., M.c.,

Brooke General Hospital, Fort Sam

Houston, Tex. Gillem, Alvan Cullom, Jr., Maj.

Gen. [XIII Corps] Lt. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, Atlanta,

Ga. Gomes, Lloyd H., Lt. Col. [84th

Inf. Div.] Col., U.s. Army,

Washington, D.c. Grose, Thomas Warren, Capt. [5th

Armored Div.] Superintendent, The

Chesapeake and Ohio Railway,

Saginaw, Mich. Hadley, Arthur T., 1/ Lt. [2nd

Armored Div.] Author, New York,

N.y. Hall, Stewart L., Lt. Col. [30th

Inf. Div.] Asst. vice president,

Occidental Life, Los Angeles,

Calif. Halladay, Daniel Whitney, Capt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Dean of

Students, University of Alabama,

Fayetteville, Ala. Handberg, William Francis, Pfc.

[30th Inf. Div.] Commercial artist,

Minneapolis, Minn. Handy, Thomas' T., Maj. Gen.

Retired, U.s. Assistant Chief of

Staff, Operations Division,

Washington, D.c. Hardin, William B., M/sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] M/sgt., U.s.

Army, Akron, Ohio Hasslinger, Harry Ekas, Lt. Col.

[XIII Corps] Col., U.s.

Army, Veterans' Administration,

College Park, Md. Heilbrunn, Martin M., Cpl. [30th

Inf. Div.] Alteration manager,

Stern's, New York, N.y. Hennessy, Francis Xavier, Cpl. [30th

Inf. Div.] Lawyer, Bronx,

N.y. Hess, Neal A., Maj. [Ninth Air

Force] Lt. Col., U.s.a.f.,

Carswell Air Force Base, Tex. Higgins, Daniel E., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Public relations

executive, American Cyanamid Co.,

Linden, N.j. Higgins, Gerald J., Brig. Gen.

[101/ Airborne Div.] Maj.

Gen. (retired), U.s. Army; Manager,

Foreign Operations, Research Analysis

Corp., Washington, D.c. Hill, Edward Mitchell, Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Lt. Col., U.s.

Army, Arlington, Va. Hill, John G., Col. [Very Corps]

Brig. Gen. (retired), U.s. Army,

Arlington, Va.

Hillenmeyer, Walter W., Maj. [Very

Corps] Partner, Hillenmeyer

Nurseries, Lexington, Ky. Himes, Donald S., Lt. Col. [84th

Inf. Div.] Col., U.s. Army,

New York, N.y. Himmelstein, Harold, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Office worker, Internal

Revenue Service, New York,

N.y. Hinds, Charles F., Tstbled [2nd Armored

Div.] State archivist, Commonwealth of

Kentucky, Frankfort, Ky. Hinds, Sidney R., Brig. Gen. [2nd

Armored Div.] Brig. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army; Inspector,

Defense Supply Agency,

Falls Church, Va. Hobbs, Leland S., Maj. Gen. [30th

Inf. Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Washington, D.c. Hoffman, Morton D., Sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] President, Eastern

States Electrical Contractors, New

York, N.y. Hollingsworth, James F., Maj. [2nd

Armored Div.] Col., U.s. Army;

Acting Deputy Asst. Secretary of

Defense, Washington, D.c. Holt, Harold Norman, Col. [Ninth

Air Force] Col., U.s.a.f.,

Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. Hopermann, Richard K., 1/ Lt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Research chemist,

Oakland, N.j. Howley, Frank Leo, Col. [U.s.

Military Govt.] Vice president,

New York University, New York,

N.y. Hoy, Charles E., Col. [84th Inf.

Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Winter Park, Fla. Hubbard, Allen, Jr., Capt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Lawyer, Hughes,

Hubbard, Blair and Reed, New York,

N.y. Hubbard, Harry J., Lt. Col. [84th

Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown, Marfa,

Tex. Huebner, Clarence Ralph, Maj. Gen.

[Very Corps] Lt. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Washington, D.c. Huebschen, Herbert E., S/sgt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Agent, Internal

Revenue Service, Beloit, Wis. Hughes, Shelly G., Lt. Col. [83rd

Inf. Div.] President, Differential

Steel Car Co., Findlay, Ohio Hull, John Edwin, Gen. [C/S

Operations--Pentagon] Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Washington, D.c. Hundley, Daniel H., Col. [Ninth

Army] Col. (retired), U.s.

Army, Associate professor,

Washington University, St. Louis,

Mo. Hunt, Emerson Snow, 1/ Lt.

[102nd Inf. Div.]

Maj. (retired), U.s.a.r.,

Wilton, Conn. Husing, Christian O., S/sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Owner, service station,

Rockport, Mo. Ingraham, Gordon D., Lt. Col.

[69th Inf. Div.] Col.

(retired), U.s. Army, Oakland,

Calif. Irby, Willie B., Capt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Dairy farmer and soil

conservationist, U.s.d.a. Blackstone,

Va. Jacobs, Marvin Leroy, Lt. Col.

[20th Inf. Div.] Professor,

Memphis State University, Memphis,

Tenn. James, Robert Foote, Maj. [5th

Armored Div.] Auto dealer,

Lebanon, Pa. James, Rowland, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Manager, Product control,

Pepsi-Cola Co., Bay Shore,

N.y. Johnson, Briard Poland, Lt.

Col. [2nd Armored Div.] Maj.

Gen., U.s. Army, Fort Monroe,

Va. Johnson, Clarence J., Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Maj., U.s.a.r.;

Public school teacher, Phoenix, Ariz. Johnson, Donald R., 1/ Lt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Sales

supervisor, service station, Mauston,

Wis.

Jones, James Elmo, S/sgt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] President,

Industrial Plastics, Inc.

Greensboro, N.c. Jones, Richard Harris, Lt. Col. [5th

Armored Div.] Asst. superintendent,

Houston schools, Houston, Tex. Jordan, Wilhelm Oscar, Sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Laborer, L and M

Co., Horsham, Pa. Kaczowka, Henry Rudolph, Maj. [30th

Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown,

Wynnewood, Pa. Kaiser, Maurice Evans, Lt.

Col. [XIII Corps] Col.,

U.s. Army, Pentagon, Washington,

D.c. Kehm, Harold David, Col. [Ninth

Army] Col. (retired), U.s.

Army, Bethesda, Md. Kelly, Thomas J., Cpl. [7th Armored

Div.] Congressional Medal of Honor

winner; Attorney, U.s. Civil

Service Commission, Brooklyn, N.y. Kinnard, Harold, W.o., Col. [101/

Airborne Div.] Maj. Gen.,

U.s. Army, 11th Air Assault

Div., Fort Benning, Ga. Klebba, Joe H., T/sgt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Rancher, Sheridan, Wyo. Kohler, Haley Eustis, Maj. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Lt. Col., (retired),

U.s. Army, Owner, dry cleaning business,

Lake Charles, La. Kolb, Roland L., Lt. Col. [84th

Inf. Div.] Col., U.s. Army,

Pentagon, Washington, D.c. Komosa, Adam Anthony, Capt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Lt.

Col. (retired), U.s. Army,

Bloomington, Ind. Korf, Arthur F., Capt. [84th Inf.

Div.] President, Korf's Sixth

Ave., Inc., Kenosha, Wis. Korolevich, Alexander, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Employee, Ford Motor Co.,

Waldwick, N.j. Kotary, William Edward, 1/ Lt.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Agency

dept., insurance company, Wayne, Pa. Kotzebue, Albert, 1/ Lt. [69th

Inf. Div.] Lt. Col., U.s.

Army, Madison, Wis. Kremer, Herbert H., Sgt. [5th Armored

Div.] Civilian employee, U.s.

Coast Guard, Jefferson City, Mo. Kuhlman, Martin Luther, Lt. Col.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Office

manager, Signode Steel Strapping

Co., Chicago, Ill. Lacey, Richard Hamilton, Pfc. [30th

Inf. Div.] Pasteurizer, Wendt

Dairy, Niagara Falls,

N.y. Ladin, Samuel S., W.o. [30th Inf.

Div.] Employee, Guardian

Maintenance, Long Island City, N.y. Landis, John Ross, Pfc. [30th
Inf.

Div.] Carpenter, Woodbury,

N.j. Lawrence, Dale C., Capt. [84th Inf.

Div.] Representative, Mosaic

Tile Co., Spokane, Wash. Leary, Edward J., Lt. Col. [69th

Inf. Div.] Col. (retired),

U.s.a.r. Trenton, N.j. Leet, George Arnold, Capt. [26th

Inf. Div.] Attorney, National

Labor Relations Board, Washington,

D.c. Levy, Harold Joseph, Sgt. [2nd

Armored Div.] Mail carrier,

Mamaroneck, N.y. Lord, William T., Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Production manager, T. N.

Palmer and Co., Inc., New York,

N.y. Loveland, Glenn E., S/sgt. [82nd

Airborne Div.]

Employee, Board of Education, Shelby,

Ohio Ludlow, Lee Eugene, Tst5 [5th

Armored Div.] Occupation unknown, La

Porte, Ind. Macaluso, Joseph Anthony, Capt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Building

contractor, New Orleans, La. MacFarlane, Paul William, 1/ Lt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Executive,

Dreamland Mfg. Co., St.

Petersburg, Fla.

MacKinnin, Elwyn L., Pfc. [5th

Armored Div.] Treasurer, contracting

company, Orange, Mass. Macon, Robert Chauncey, Maj. Gen.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Maj. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, California,

Md. MacVean, James Linden, Sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] M/sgt. (retired),

U.s. Army, LeRoy, N.y. Maggio, Vincent, Cpl. [30th

Inf. Div.] Mail carrier,

Huntington, N.y. Manni, Serge A., Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Vice president, Duro Test

International, River Edge, N.j. Martin, William S., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Metal shop owner,

Golden, Colo. McAuliffe, Anthony, Maj. Gen.

[101/ Airborne Div.] Lt.

Gen. (retired), U.s. Army,

Washington, D.c. McCloud, June Raymond, S/sgt.

[5th Armored Div.] Patrolman,

city police, Marlinton, W.va. McConnell, Frederick McSwain, 1/ Lt.

[84th Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s. Army, Instructor Group,

Clemson, S.c. McCown, Hal D., Lt. Col. [30th

Inf. Div.] Col., U.s. Army,

Washington, D.c. McKenna, Richard W., Maj. [5th

Armored Div.] Executive,

Ferry-Morse Seed Co., Mountain

View, Calif. Mcationees, Norman Edwin, 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Salesman, George

M. Bell and Son, El Centro,

Calif. Mcationeil, Grady, 1/ Sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Mailer, N.y.

Journal-American, New York,

N.y. Mennow, Robert E., S/sgt. [5th

Armored Div.] Stationery engraver,

Pittsburgh, Pa. Merriam, Wheeler G., Lt. Col. [2nd

Armored Div.] Brig. Gen., U.s.

Army, Washington, D.c. Millener, George Alvin, Col. [Ninth

Army] Col. (retired), U.s.

Army, Knoxville, Tenn. Miller, William Scott, Jr., 1/

Lt. [84th Inf. Div.] Lawyer,

Little Rock, Ark. Millett, John E., Jr., 1/ Lt.

[5th Armored Div.] Occupation

unknown, Minneola, Kan. Mirra, Adolph Raymond, Pfc.

[30th Inf. Div.] Asst.

cashier, National Bank of Westchester,

White Plains, N.y. Mittleman, Herbert H., Tst5 [30th

Inf. Div.] Prefabrication dealer,

Scholz Homes, Inc., Yonkers,

N.y. Moore, James E., Maj. Gen. [Ninth

Army] Gen. (retired), U.s. Army,

Washington, D.c. Morava, John Hall, Lt. Col.

[84th Inf. Div.] President,

U.s. Steel Supply, Chicago,

Ill. Mundt, Herman A., Jr., Capt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s.a.r.; Executive, Humble

Oil and Refining Co., Durango,

Colo. Naples, Joseph, Tst5 [30th Inf.

Div.] Plant manager, Plastic

Molding Powders, Kearny, N.j. Neblett, Lloyd George, Lt. Col.

[Ninth Air Force] Occupation unknown,

Tulsa, Okla. Neilson, Henry, Col. [83rd

Inf. Div.] Col., U.s. Army,

Fort Sam Houston, Tex. Nelson, Clarence A., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Paint store owners,

Fremont, Neb. Nicodemus, Robert E., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Lt. Col., U.s.

Army, Falls Church, Va. Norton, John, Col. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Maj. Gen.,

U.s. Army, Asst. Comdt., Infantry

School, Fort Benning, Ga. Norton, Thomas Edward, Capt. [84th

Inf. Div.] Accountant, Boise,

Idaho

Nugent, Richard Emmel, Brig. Gen.

[XXIX Tactical Air Command]

Dept. of Defense, Merritt Island,

Fla. Oliver, Lunsford, Maj. Gen. [5th

Armored Div.] Retired,

Williamsburg, Mass. Ordway, Godwin, Col. [12th

Army Group] Col.

(retired), U.s. Army, Chevy Chase,

Md. Ornstein, Richard Paul, Tst5 [30th

Inf. Div.] Employee, Savoy

Knitting Mills Corp., New York,

N.y. Parker, Braxton Creig, 1/ Lt.

[84th Inf. Div.] Capt.

(retired), U.s. Army; Civil

Servant, Colorado Springs, Colo. Parks, Floyd L., Maj. Gen.

[SHAEF] * Pattullo, Alexander Ross, T/sgt.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Manager

of stockholder records, The Standard Oil

Co., Cleveland, Ohio Pearcy, Marvin E., Capt. [2nd

Armored Div.] Maintenance planner,

Rayonier, Inc., Hoquiam, Wash. Petcoff, George, 1/ Sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Supervisor, International

Paper Co., New York, N.y. Peters, Abraham, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Vice president-treasurer,

Allied Office Supplies,

Inc., Jersey City, N.j. Peters, Alcee Lafayette, Jr., Maj.

[84th Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s. Army, Washington, D.c. Peters, Earl William, Maj. [Ninth

Air Force] Lt. Col.,

U.s.a.f., McClellan Air Force

Base, Calif. Philipsborn, Martin Maximilian, Jr.,

Maj. [5th Armored Div.] Vice

president, Harrison Wholesale Co.,

Chicago, Ill. Plantin, Tore Elias, Pfc. [30th

Inf. Div.] Cost estimator,

Bethpage, N.y. Pockler, Morris, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Occupation unknown, Brooklyn,

N.y. Poindexter, Clifford T., Cpl. [5th

Armored Div.] Occupation unknown,

Fayetteville, Ark. Polowsky, Joseph, Pvt. [69th Inf.

Div.] Insurance salesman, Chicago,

Ill. Pratt, Bernard S., Pvt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown,

Lake Luzerne, N.y. Prendergast, R. O., 1/ Lt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Maj., 42nd

Div. National Guard, New York,

N.y. Presnell, William G., 1/ Sgt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Superintendent,

garment production, Asheboro, N.c. Puetzer, Warren James, 1/ Lt.
[84th

Inf. Div.] Co-owner, tire service

company, Corvallis, Ore. Pugliese, Michael R., S/sgt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Self-employed,

Stamford, Conn. Ramsey, Curtis Lee, 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Superintendent,

textile mill, Laurinburg, N.c. Ransom, Paul Lewis, Brig. Gen.

[Fifth Army] Maj. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, Hampton,

Va. Rattray, Bruce C., Pfc. [30th

Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown, Long

Island City, N.y. Reilly, Edward P., Sgt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Sales engineer,

Borg Warner Corp., Houston, Tex. Reinhardt, Emil F., Maj. Gen.
[69th

Inf. Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s Army, San Antonio, Tex. Rennolds, William Gregory, Jr.,

Maj. [83rd Inf. Div.]

Director of personnel, Southern

States Cooperative, Richmond, Va. Ressegieu, Fred E., [5th Armored

Div.] Executive, Bechtel Corp.,

San Francisco, Calif. Ridgway, Matthew B., Maj. Gen.

[XVIII Corps] Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Pittsburgh, Pa. Robinson, Frank Edward, 1/ Sgt.

[30th Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown,

Ooltewah, Tenn.

Robinson, Howard Vernon, Jr., Tst5

[2nd Armored Div.]

Self-employed, Deland, Fla. Rock, Julius, Maj. [30th

Inf. Div.] Doctor of

medicine, Rochester, N.y. Rose, Ben Lacy, Capt. [83rd Inf.

Div.] Professor, Union

Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va. Ross, Winfred A., Lt. Col.
[84th

Inf. Div.] Col. (retired),

U.s. Army, Sun Prairie, Wis. Rubenstein, Charles, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Realtor, New York,

N.y. Sadallah, Elias A., Capt. [2nd

Armored Div.] Vice president,

Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co.,

Brooklyn, N.y. St. Cyour, Stede-Strephon, Sgt.

[POW, Stalag 7-B]

Photographer, Toledo, Ohio Schmidmeister, John, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Employee, S. Blickman

Co., Inc., West New York,

N.j. Schommer, Francis Christian, Capt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Wholesale toy

dealer, Sheboygan, Wis. Schultz, Arthur B., Pvt.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Private

investigator, San Diego, Calif. Scott, Richard H., 1/ Lt. [102nd

Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown,

Anchorage, Alaska Serilla, William Dan, Sgt. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Sky diver,

Royal Oak, Mich. Sharpe, Granville Attaway, Lt. Col.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Col., U.s.

Army, Institute of Advanced Studies,

Carlisle Barracks, Pa. Shiverski, Stanley A., S/sgt. [5th

Armored Div.] Set-up, A.m.c.,

Racine, Wis. Shonak, James Dmitrius, Capt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Insurance

executive, John Hancock Mutual

Life Insurance Co., Boston, Mass. Simpson, William H., Lt. Gen.

[Ninth Army] Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, San Antonio, Tex. Sloan, George B., Col. [XIX

Corps] Col. (retired),

U.s. Army; Senior analyst,

production planning, MacDonald

Aircraft Co., St. Louis, Mo. Smith, Davis Maitland, Capt. [84th

Inf. Div.] Maj., U.s. Army,

Bowling Green, Va. Smith, Walter Bedell, Lt. Gen.

[SHAEF] * Smurthwaite, Richard J., Pfc. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Manager of

product evaluation, Missile Space

Div., General Electric Co.,

Philadelphia, Pa. Solomon, Harold, 1/ Lt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Sheet metal worker, Howard

Beach, N.y. Solow, Saul, 1/ Lt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Lt. Col., U.s.a.r.;

General manager, Famous Coat Front

Pad Co., Inc., New York,

N.y. Sowers, Kenneth, Lt. Col. [84th Inf.

Div.] Col., Chaplain, U.s.

Army, Washington, D.c. Stanford, Leslie E., Capt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s. Army, APO San Francisco,

Calif. Starling, Jack W., Capt. [30th Inf.

Div.] Advertising executive, The

McCarty Co., Seattle, Wash. Staub, Paul, Pfc. [69th Inf.

Div.] Salesman, Bond's,

Levittown, N.y. Stephens, Richard W., Col. [30th Inf.

Div.] Maj. Gen. (retired),

U.s. Army, Sun City, Fla. Stephens, Thomas LeRoy, Tst5 [30th

Inf. Div.] Service station

proprietor, Franklin, N.j. Stevens, Earle M., Lt. Col. [30th

Inf. Div.] General plant

supervisor, Convent Station, N.j. Stewart, Carlton E., Lt. Col.
[30th

Inf. Div.] Carpenter and builder,

West Newton, Mass. Stewart, Carroll Richard, Pfc. [30th

Inf. Div.] Public school

custodian, Canastota, N.y.

Stewart, Terrell Eugene, Cpl.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Linotype

operator, Columbus, Ga. Stockwell, Richard C., 2nd Lt.

[2nd Armored Div.] City planning

director, Concord, Calif. Stollak, Jack, Tstbled [30th Inf.

Div.] Postal clerk, Bayside,

N.y. Sutherland, John M., Jr., Tst5 [76th

Inf. Div.] Insurance salesman,

Worcester, Mass. Talarico, George F., Pvt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Production supervisor,

Givaudan Corp., Nutley, N.j. Tell, Bernard L., Cpl. [30th Inf.

Div.] Doctor of medicine, Pompton

Plains, N.j. Toole, John B., Tst5 [30th Inf.

Div.] Cost accountant, General

Electric Co., Hudson Falls,

N.y. Torino, Albert M., Tst5 [30th Inf.

Div.] Foreman, Presidential

Construction Co., New Haven, Conn. Truman, Louis Watson, Col.

[84th Inf. Div.] Lt. Gen.,

U.s. Army, Fort Monroe, Va. Tucker, R. H., Col. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Maj. Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army; Comdt. of

Cadets, The Citadel, Charleston, S.

C. Tullbane, John E., 1/ Lt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Field director, The

American National Red Cross, APO

New York, N.y. Valsangiacomo, Oreste V., Capt.

[84th Inf. Div.] Occupation unknown,

Barre, Vt. Vinson, David B., 1/ Lt.

[U.s.a.f.] Director, Texas

Academy for the Advancement of Life

Sciences, Houston, Tex. Vukcevic, Michael N., Pfc. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Machine

repairman, Perry, Ohio Walson, Thomas Betts, 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Manager, Merrill,

Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith,

Nashville, Tenn. Washburn, Israel Brent, Lt. Col.

[5th Armored Div.] Col.

(retired), U.s. Army, McLean,

Va. Weber, Stanley Roger, S/sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] Carpenter, New York,

N.y. Weinstein, Alvin, Pfc. [30th Inf.

Div.] Employee, A.i.c.

Construction Corp., Fort Tilden,

N.y. Wellems, Edward N., Lt. Col.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Col.,

U.s. Army, Springfield, Va. West, Gustavus Wilcox, Col. [2nd

Armored Div.] Retired,

Georgetown, Colo. Whitaker, R. B., 1/ Lt. [5th

Armored Div.] Retailer, office

equipment and supplies, Leavenworth,

Kan. White, Isaac Davis, Maj. Gen.

[2nd Armored Div.] Gen.

(retired), U.s. Army, Honolulu,

Hawaii White, Myron A., Cpl. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Farmer, Grinnell,

Iowa Wienecke, Robert H., Col. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Maj. Gen.,

U.s. Army, Washington, D.c. Williams, Walter E., Jr., 2nd Lt.

[5th Armored Div.] Postal

employee, Brownsville, Tex. Williams, Warren R., Jr., Lt. Col.

[82nd Airborne Div.] Hdqrs.

to staff, USSTRICOM, MacDill AFB,

Fla. Williamson, Ellis W., Lt. Col.

[30th Inf. Div.] Maj. Gen.,

U.s. Army, Washington, D.c. Wiselogle, Candler R., 1/ Lt.

[83rd Inf. Div.] Lt. Col.,

U.s.a.r., APO San Francisco,

Calif. Wolski, Edwin Stephen, S/sgt. [30th

Inf. Div.] SM/SGT.,

U.s.a.f., Homestead, Fla. Woltz, William Edward, Tstbled

[30th Inf. Div.]

M/sgt., U.s.a.r.; Retired

shipping checker, Palisades Park,

N.j. Wood, George B., Maj. [82nd

Airborne Div.] Rector, Trinity

Episcopal Church, Fort Wayne,

Ind.

Wright, Nathaniel A., Tstbled [84th Inf.

Div.] M/sgt., U.s. Army,

Georgia Military Academy, East

Point, Ga. Zimmerman, Hugo, 1/ Lt. [Ninth Air

Force] Col., U.s.a.f.,

U.s.a.f. Academy, Colo.

BRITISH Montgomery, Bernard Law, Field Marshal

[21/ Army Group] Viscount

Montgomery of Alamein, K.g.

(retired), Hampshire

Aherne, John, Cpl., King's Own Yorks

(light Infantry) [Stalag 3A,

Luckenwalde] Occupation

unknown, Birmingham Back, Philip, F. O. [R.a.f.]

Managing director, plastics company,

Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire Barber, Colin Muir, Maj. Gen. [12th

Corps, 15th Scottish] Lt. Gen.

Sir Colin Muir Barber, C.b.

(1945), D.s.o. (1940); Ripon,

Yorkshire Barker, Evelyn Hugh, Lt. Gen. [8th

Corps] Gen. Sir Evelyn Hugh

Barker, K.c.b. (1950), K.b.e.

(1945), D.s.o. (1918), M.c.

(retired), Bromham, Bedfordshire Barnes, Frank, Lt. [7th Armored

Div.] Owner, petrol station and garage,

London Belchem, Ronald F. K., Brig.

[Chief, Operations, 21/ Army Group]

Maj. Gen. C.b. (1946),

C.b.e. (1944), D.s.o.

(1943); London manager, B.s.a.

Co., London Bennett, Harold Edmonde

Isherwood, W.o., R.a.f.

[Stalag 357, Fallingbostel]

Fl/lt., R.a.f., Duxford,

Cambridgeshire Binning, John Sydney, Capt. [6th

Airborne Div.] Doctor of

medicine, Senior medical officer,

British Railways, Eastern Region,

London Bols, Hon. Eric Louis, Maj. Gen.

[6th Airborne Div.] Gen.

Bols, C.b. (1945), D.s.o.

(1944), and bar (1945); Executive,

British engineering firm, Brighton,

Sussex Bowden, William Kenneth Hope,

Fl/sgt., R.a.f. [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Advertising executive,

Upton Grey, nr. Basingstoke,

Hampshire Broom, Ivor Gordon, Wing Comdr.

[R.a.f.] Group Captain,

R.a.f., Bruggen, Germany Chandler, Charles Frederick, Sapper [6th

Airborne Div.] District foreman,

gas board, Hays End,

Middlesex Chapman, Edward, Fl/lt., R.a.f.

[Stalag 3A, Luckenwalde]

Employee, wine shippers, London Chown, Clement Murray, Sgt. Pilot,

R.a.f. [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Commercial airline

pilot, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad Cole, Eric V., Sgt. Maj. [7th

Armored Div.] Engineer,

Newcastle-on-Tyne Collins, John Brenton, Padre,

Capt., 67 Medium Regt. Royal

Artillery [Stalag 3A,

Luckenwalde] Vicar, Church of

England, Edenbridge, Kent Counsell, John, Col. [SHAEF]

Director, Windsor Theatre, Windsor Cox, W. Frederick, Guardsman,
Irish

Guards [Stalag 3A, Luckenwalde]

Poultryman, North Reading, Berkshire Craig, Gordon D., Sqdn. Leader,

R.a.f. [Stalag 3A,

Luckenwalde] Solicitor,

Corbridge, Northumberland Davey, Robert, Lt. [7th Armored

Div.] Innkeeper, Torquay,

Devonshire Davies, Graham, Pvt. [6th

Airborne Div.] Steelworker, Port

Talbot, Glamorganshire, South

Wales Davison, Wilfred, Capt. [6th

Airborne Div.] Timber company

director, Peterfield, Hampshire

Day, Harry Melville Arbuthnot, Group

Capt., R.a.f. [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel, later Sachsenhausen]

Retired, London Deans, James Alexander Graham, W.o.,

R.a.f. [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Administrative officer,

London School of Economics and

Political Science, Ashtead, Surrey Dempsey, Sir Miles Christopher,
Gen.

[Second Army] Gen. Sir Miles

Dempsey, G.b.e. (1956),

K.c.b. (1944), D.s.o.

(1940), M.c. (1918);

Company chairman, Yattendon, Berkshire Finnie, John, C.q.m.s. [5th
Inf.

Div.] Postal official, London Foster, Joseph, Fl/sgt.

[R.a.f.] Building foreman,

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire Friston, Leslie West, Pvt. [30th

Corps] Lorry driver, Chesham,

Buckinghamshire Galbraith, Alexander Reynell, Fl/lt.

[R.a.f.] Personnel manager,

Crawley, Sussex Gallienne, William Albert George,

Sqdn. Leader [R.a.f.]

Publican, Chigwell, Essex Guingand, Sir Francis W. de, Maj.

Gen. [21/ Army Group] Maj.

Gen. Sir Francis de Guingand,

K.b.e. (1944), C.b. (1943),

D.s.o. (1942); Company chairman,

Johannesburg, South Africa Haley, A., Pvt. [5th Inf. Div.]

Packer, shoe warehouse,

Ryton-on-Tyne, Durham Heape, John Stewart Hardman,

W.o., R.a.f. [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Sales manager,

petrol pump manufacturer, Cholsey,

Buckinghamshire Hennell, Charles, Sgt. Maj. [7th

Armored Div.] Police inspector,

Cheshire County Police, Wilmslow,

Cheshire Hensman, Michael Graham, Lt. [6th

Airborne Div.] Sales manager,

I.c.i., Bowdon, Cheshire Horrocks, Sir Brian, Lt. Gen.

[Comdr., 30th Brit. Corps],

Gen. Sir Brian Horrocks,

K.c.b., K.b.e., D.s.o.

(retired), London Hughes, Hugh L. Glyn, Brig.

[Second Army] Brig. Hughes,

C.b.e. (1945), D.s.o.

(1916), M.c., M.r.c.s.;

Doctor of medicine, Director,

South-east London General Practitioner

Center, London Hughes, Thomas Rhys, Pvt. [6th

Airborne Div.]

Journalist, Haywards Heath, Sussex Jinks, William James, Fl/lt.

[R.a.f.] Company executive,

weighing machine manufacturers, Sutton

Coldfield, Warwickshire Jones, Gilbert Peter, Sgt.

[R.a.f.] Prison officer,

Newport, Isle of Wight Kee, Robert, Fl/lt., R.a.f.

[Stalag 3A, Luckenwalde]

Author, television producer, London Kimber, Peter C., Fl/sgt.,

R.a.f. [Stalag 3A,

Luckenwalde] Chief clerk, Bushey,

Hertfordshire Lyne, Louis Owen, Maj. Gen. [7th

Armored Div.] Gen. Lyne, C.b.

(1945), D.s.o. (1943); Company

chairman, Kersey, Suffolk Mack, Kenneth Charles, W.o.

[R.a.f.] Clerk, British

Railways, Norfolk Mainwaring, John Cecil, Pvt. [5th

Inf. Div.] Hospital

porter, Hillsboro, Sheffield Mann, Alfred Ernest, Cpl., Royal

West Kent Regt. [Stalag 20A,

Thorn] Clerk, General Post Office,

nr. Dartford, Kent McCowen, J. L., Lt. Col. [Econ.

Div., Control Commission] Southern

sales manager, Guinness,

Richmansworth, Hertfordshire McWhinnie, Hugh, Sgt. [6th Airborne

Div.] Chargehand, paper mill,

Canterbury, Kent Mitford, Edward Cecil, Brig. [8th

Corps] Brig. Mitford (retired),

Hdqrs. Eastern Command, London Mogg, Ronald, W.o., R.a.f.

[Stalag 357, Fallingbostel] Press

officer, Shell Mex and B.p. Ltd.,

London Moore, Walter, Pvt. [6th Airborne

Div.] Textile fitter, Keighley,

Yorkshire Morgan, Sir Frederick E., Lt. Gen.

[SHAEF] Gen. Sir Frederick

Morgan, retired, Northwood,

Middlesex Mower, Edwin Arthur, Cpl., Royal

Berkshire Regt. (now part of Wessex

Brigade) [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Clerk, Colchester,

Essex

Murray, Robert, Pvt. [7th Armored

Div.] Chargehand, wholesale chemist,

Nelson, Lancashire Murtagh, Patrick Francis, Trooper,

3rd Royal Tank Regt. [Stalag

3A, Luckenwalde] Watch and clock

repairer, nr. Salisbury, Wiltshire Newman, John, Trooper, Royal Tank

Corps [Stalag 344, Lamsdorff]

Cab hirer, Edinburgh Park, Thomas M., Capt., Royal Army

Medical Corps [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Doctor of medicine,

Carnwath, Lanark Perrin, Roy Doublas, F.o.

[R.a.f.] Insurance mechanisation

unit controller, South Croydon,

Surrey Rabone, Joseph Patrick, Lt.

[6th Airborne Div.] Driver,

M.c.d., Kingstanding, Birmingham Roberts, Kenneth, Pvt. [5th Inf.

Div.] Assistant inspector, General

Post Office, London Rodley, Ernest Edward, Wing Comdr.

[R.a.f.] Commercial pilot,

BOAC, London Rogers, Philip George, Maj. [6th

Airborne Div.] Foreign Office,

Orpington, Kent Rosdol, Sandy, Capt. [12th Corps,

15th Scottish Div.] Foreign

Office, South Ascot, Berkshire Ross, Donald G., Fl/lt.

[R.a.f.] Tobacco manufacturer,

Yverdon, Switzerland Rycroft, Robert Arthur, Cpl. [6th

Airborne Div.] Advertising

controller, Thos. Cook and Son, Ltd.,

Meadvale, Redhill Rymer, James, Pvt. [7th Armored

Div.] Motor mechanic, Pickering,

Yorkshire Shearer, John L., Capt. [6th

Airborne Div.] Manager, National

Assistance Board, Hamilton, Lanark Spurling, John Michael Kane, Brig.

[7th Armored Div.] Maj. Gen.

Spurling, C.b. (1957), C.b.e.

(1953), D.s.o. (1944);

Lecturer, Military History and

Tactics, London and Southampton

Universities, Fifehead Neville,

Dorsetshire Strong, Kenneth William Dobson, Maj.

Gen. [SHAEF] Maj. Gen. Sir

Kenneth Strong, C.b. (1945),

O.b.e. (1942); Director-General

of Intelligence, Ministry of Defense,

London Suster, Ilya, Sgt. [7th Armored

Div.] Director, import company,

London Sweeney, Michael Francis, Sgt.

Maj., Irish Guards [Stalag 3A,

Luckenwalde] Salesman, nr.

Oundle, Northamptonshire Thwaite, Alan, Sapper [7th

Armored Div.] Cinema

projectionist, Morecambe, Lancashire Towell, Albert Cyril, Lance/cpl.

[7th Armored Div.] Packer,

electronics factory,

Highcliffe-on-Sea, Hampshire Urquhart, John, Lance/cpl. [6th

Airborne Div.] Industrial machine

operator, Baillieston, Glasgow Ward, Leonard M., Lance/bombardier,

Driver [12th Corps] Hospital

administrative assistant, Hornsey Ward, Tom, P.o. [R.a.f.]

Structural engineer, Lancaster Whiteley, John Francis Martin, Maj.

Gen. [SHAEF] Gen. Sir John

Whiteley, G.b.e. (1956),

K.c.b. (1950), M.c. retired,

nr. Salisbury, Wiltshire Williams, Edgar T., Brig. [Chief,

Intelligence, 21/ Army Group]

C.b. (1946), C.b.e. (1944),

D.s.o. (1943); Fellow of

Balloil, Oxford, Warden of Rhodes

House, Oxford Wilson, Geoffrey Kenneth,

Fl/sgt., R.a.f. [Stalag 357,

Fallingbostel] Psychology Lecturer,

Teachers' Training College,

Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

RUSSIAN Koniev, Ivan Stepanovich, Marshal of the

Soviet Union [Comdr., 1/

Ukrainian Front] Marshal,

Inspector Gen., Soviet Armed Forces

Rokossovskii, Konstantin K., Marshal

of the Soviet Union [Comdr., 2nd

Belorussian Front] Marshal,

Inspector Gen., Soviet Armed Forces;

Member, Supreme Soviet

Anikhovskii, Josef Josefevich,

Capt. [Operations Staff, 6th Guards

Rifle Div.] Boltin, E. A., Maj. Gen.

[Editor-in-Chief, Official Soviet

War History] Major General Chuikov, Vasili Ivanovich,

Col. Gen. [Comdr., 8th

Guards Army] Marshal of the Soviet

Union; Member, Supreme Soviet;

Member, Supreme Military Council;

Supreme Comdr., Soviet Land Forces Dolmatovskii, Eugene, Lt. Col.

[War correspondent, Pravda]

Writer, poet and lyricist Golbov, Sergei Ivanovich, Capt.

[War correspondent, 47th Army]

[Interviewed outside the U.s.s.r.] Ignatov, Aleksei Andrianovich,
Maj.

[61/ Army] Ivanov, Georgi Vasilievich, Maj.

Gen. [Comdr., 6th Guards Rifle

Div.] Major General (retired) Kharina, Irina Mikhailova, Guerilla

agent [POW, Auschwitz] Housewife Kilchevskii, Georgi Vladimirovich,

1/ Lt. [Engineer, 6th Guards Rifle

Div.] Engineer Kjung, Nikolai, Pvt. [POW,

Buchenwald] Kurkov, Mikhail Ivanovich, Radio

operator [Anti-tank Regt.] Lazaris, Aronovich, Maj. [6th

Guards Rifle Div.] Writer Levchenko, Irena Nikolayevna, 1/ Lt.

[8th Mechanized Corps] Lt.

Col. of Armored Forces (retired),

Housewife Litvinko, Andrei Fedosovich, Maj. [4th

Guards Tank Army] Malinovskii, Mikhail, Lt.

[Regimental Political Commissar, 16th

Air Force] [Interviewed outside the

U.s.s.r.] Mikayoff, Igor, Lt. [Regimental

Intelligence Officer, 5th Shock Army] Novikov, Nikolai Georgievich,
Sgt.

[Reconnaissance, 6th Guards Rifle

Div.] Olshanskii, Alexander, Pvt. [58th

Rifle Div.] Major Ostrovskii, Vysoka, Col. [War

correspondent, Red Star] Author and

journalist Parotikin, I. V., Col. [Soviet

Dept. of Defense] Historian Pavlenkov, N. G., Maj. Gen.

[Soviet Dept. of Defense]

Historian Platonov, S. P., Lt. Gen.

[Soviet Dept. of Defense]

Historian and Chief of Archives Polevoi, Boris, Col. [War

correspondent, Pravda, and Regimental

Political Commissar] Novelist,

magazine editor Rogovtsev, Vasilii Petrovish, Sgt.

[Rifle Co., 1/ Belorussian

Front] Rozanov, Vladimir Pavlovich, 1/

Lt. [Reconnaissance, 3rd Shock

Army, 4th Artillery Corps] Samchuk, John Amkeevich, Col.

[Chief of Staff, 32nd Corps] Samsonov, Konstantin Yakovlevich, Lt.

[Battalion Comdr., 171/ Rifle

Div.] Colonel Samusev, Ivan Semonovich, Sgt.

[Artillery, 3rd Shock Army] Slobyndenyuk, Grigorii Afanasyevich,

Sgt. Maj., Hero of the Soviet Union

[1/ Ukrainian Front] Sokolovskii, V. D., Gen.

[Chief, Operations Staff, 1/

Ukrainian Front to 14 April, 1945;

Deputy Comdr., 1/ Belorussian

Front from 15 April, 1945]

Marshal of the Soviet Union;

Inspector Gen., Soviet Armed Forces Svishchev, Nikolai Alexandrovich,
Sgt.

[Gun crew comdr., 1/ Belorussian

Front] Telpuchovskii, Boris S., Maj. Gen.

[Official historian, Zhukov's

Hdqrs.] Tilevich, Mark, Sgt. [POW,

Sachsenhausen] Troyanoskii, Pavel, Lt. Col. [War

correspondent, Red Star] Author and

journalist Yushchuk, Ivan Ivanovich, Maj. Gen.

[Comdr., 11th Tank Corps]

General of Tank Troops (retired)

GERMAN Heinrici, Gotthard, Col. Gen. [Army

Group Vistula] Colonel

General (retired)

Ache, Kurt, Capt. [Berlin Defense

Unit--Zoo Flak Tower] Private

means Annuschek, Karl Heinz, Capt. [1/

Flak Div.] Company director Arnold, Hans-Werner, 1/ Lt.

[Luftwaffe, 9th Parachute Div.]

Civil servant Bensch, Willy, M/sgt. [SS Div.

Nordland] Factory worker Bila, Heinrich von, Capt. [Army

Group Vistula] Seed company sales

manager Bombach, Walter, M/sgt. [Berlin

Defense Unit] Caretaker Bonath, Herbert, Pvt. [Hitler Youth]

Clerical officer, West German Army Bottcher, Friedrich, Lt. Col.
[18th

Panzer Grenadier Div.] Ministry of

defense Bruschke, Waldemar, Co. Comdr.

[Volkssturm] Salesman Burghart, Roman, Cpl. [SS Div.

Nordland] Office worker Busse, Theodor, Gen. [Ninth Army]

Civil defense director Clauss, Paul, Cpl. [SS Div.

Nordland] Businessman Cords, Helmuth, Capt., Wehrmacht

[Lehrterstrasse Prison] Research

director, Calif. Dethleffsen, Erich, Gen. [OKH]

Economics consultant Draeger, Willi, District Lt. [Berlin

Fire Dept.] Retired Drost, Gunter, Lt. [Berlin Defense

Unit] Pharmacist Ducke, Josef, Lt. [18th Panzer

Grenadier Div.] Bank clerk Dufving, Theodor von, Col. [56th

Panzer Corps] West German Defense

Dept. Eismann, Hans Georg, Col. [Army

Group Vistula] Retired Feldheim, Willy [Hitler Youth]

Importer Fritz, Albert, Lt. [Panzer Div.

Muncheberg] Accountant Gareis, Martin, Gen. [3rd

Panzer Army] Retired Gold, Walter, Sgt. [Berlin Defense

Unit] Retired Groll, Artur, Cpl. [Volkssturm]

Shoemaker (retired) Gross, Ernst, Sgt. [SS Div.

Nordland] Electrician Gunsche, Otto, SS Col.

[Fuhrer's Adjutant] Company

director Haaf, Oskar, Co. Comdr.

[Volkssturm] Radio program

director Haas, Fritz, Cpl. [SS Div.

Nordland] Wine salesman Hagedorn, Walter, Capt. [Luftwaffe--

Zoo Flak Tower] Doctor of

medicine Hagemann, Wolf, Lt. Gen. [Ninth

Army] Retired Halt, Karl Ritter von, Battalion

Comdr. [Volkssturm] * Hartmann, Rudolf, Pvt.

[Volkssturm] Company manager Heckscher, Edmund, Sgt.

[Volkssturm] * Hein, Heinrich, SS Col. [Asst.

to Bormann] Retired Hellriegel, Hermann, Pvt.

[Volkssturm] Traveling salesman Henseler, Hans, SS 2nd Lt. [SS

Div. Nordland] Independent wholesaler Hirsch, Alfred, Lt. [9th
Parachute

Div.] Railway station luncheonette

manager Hock, Manfred, Sgt. [Berlin Defense

Unit] Retired Hohne, Heinz, Fire Capt. [Berlin

Fire Dept.] Official, Fire

dept. Illum, Gunnar, SS 2nd Lt. [SS

Div. Nordland] Taxi owner Jansen, Hans, Lt. [9th Parachute

Div.] Shoe store manager Jung, Albert, Pvt. [SS Div.

Nordland] Clerk Kempka, Erich, SS Col. [Fuhrer's

chauffeur] Mechanic Kirchner, Heinz, Lt. [1/

Flak Div.] Church

councillor Koder, Hans, Pvt. [SS Div.

Nordland] Office worker Kratschmar, Heinz, Cadet [German

Navy] Engineer Kruger, Heinz, Comdr. [Berlin Defense

Unit] Retired Kruger, Ulrich, Hitler Youth [Berlin

Defense Unit] Teacher Krukenberg, Gustav, SS Maj. Gen.

[SS Div. Charlemagne and SS Div.

Nordland] Retired

Kuhn, Alfred, Pvt. [Berlin Defense

Unit] Retired Kunz, Helmut, SS Col. [SS

Medical Office, Berlin] Dentist Lambracht, Erich, Lt. [Berlin
Defense

Unit] Retired clerk Lampe, Albrecht, 1/ Lt. [Berlin

Commandant HQ] Doctor of

philosophy, Director of the Berlin

Municipal Archives Lang, Hellmuth, Capt. [Army Group

Vistula] Store owner Lohmann, Hanns-Heinrich, SS Lt.

Col. [SS Div. Nederland] Insurance

company executive Manteuffel, Hasso von, Gen. [3rd

Panzer Army] Retired Meissner, Max, Capt. [Ninth Army]

Salesman Muller-Hillebrand, Burkhart, Maj.

Gen. [3rd Panzer Army] Lt.

Gen. NATO, Paris Niedieck, Gerda Castrup [Women's Army

--Zoo Flak Tower] Radio

programming coordinator Nolte, Wilhelm, Fire Col. [Berlin

Fire Dept.] Industry official Oppeln-Bronikowski, Hermann von,

Maj. Gen. [20th Panzer Div.]

General (retired); estate manager Patzer, Heinz, Sgt. [Berlin
Defense

Unit] Photo engraver Pemsel, Max, Lt. Gen. [6th Mountain

Div.] General (retired) Pfoser, Alfons, 1/ Lt. [SS,

Battle Group Todte] * Pienkny, Gunther [Hitler

Youth] Brewery employee Pluskat, Werner, Maj. [Artillery

Comdr., Magdeburg] Engineer Refior, Hans, Col. [Berlin Commandant

HQ] Director, industrial combine Reichhelm, Gunther, Col. [Twelfth

Army] Company director Rein, Hans, Lt. [9th Parachute

Div.] Judge, Administrative

Court Reitsch, Hanna, Fl/capt.

[Luftwaffe] Aviation consultant Reuss, Franz, Maj. Gen.

[Luftwaffe] Business executive Reymann, Hellmuth, Maj. Gen. [Berlin

Commandant] Retired Romling, Horst, Hitler Youth [Berlin

Defense Unit] Secondhand dealer Rose, Heinz, Maj. [Volkssturm]

Retired Schack, Friedrich August, Gen. [32nd

Army Corps] Retired Scherka, Erich, Cpl. [1/ Flak

Div.] House painter Schirmer, Bruno, Police Lt.

[Berlin Police Dept.] Police

official Scholles, Hans-Peter, Sgt. [SS

Div. Nordland] Wine merchant Schuhmacher, Manuel, Lt. [Ninth Army]

Art photographer Schulz, Aribert [Hitler Youth]

Typesetter Schumann, Werner, Capt. [Zoo Flak

Tower] Doctor of medicine Sixt, Friedrich, Lt. Gen. [101/

Corps] Retired Speidel, Hans, Maj. Gen. [Potsdam

Military Prison] Lt. Gen., NATO Steiner, Felix Martin, SS Gen.
[Group

Steiner] Retired Strauss, Erwin, District Lt. [Berlin

Fire Dept.] Retired Strenka, Gustav, Police Supt. [Berlin

Police Dept.] Retired Thamm, Willi, Pvt. [Berlin Defense

Unit] Master house painter Timm, Walter, SS Lt. [SS Div.

Nordland] Market researcher Ulisch, Walter, Lt. [Berlin

Defense Unit] Executive, health

insurance office Usberg, Otto, Sgt. [26th Panzers,

1/ Army Corps] Businessman Verleih, Max, Regt. Supply Officer

[Berlin Defense Unit] Minister

(retired) Volk, Helmut, Sgt. [OKH]

Employee, Berlin Senate Voss, Peter, 1/ Lt. [3rd Army

Corps] Bank clerk Wedell, Gunter, 1/ Lt. [Berlin

Defense Unit] Doctor of medicine Wenck, Walther, Gen. [Twelfth Army]

Company director Werner, Franz, Paymaster [Berlin

Defense Unit] Retired clerk Wetzki, Hans Joachim [Hitler Youth]

Senatorial assistant Winge, Hans-Joachim, Pvt. [SS

Div. Nordland] Purchasing director Wohlermann, Hans Oscar, Col.
[56th

Panzer Corps] Retired

Wrede, Fritz, Cpl.

[Wehrmacht] Retired Wurach, Kurt, Maj. [Ninth Army]

Veterinarian Zabeltitz, Leonhardt von, Capt.

[1/ Flak Div.] Estate owner

BERLINERS Antz, Ilse [Wilmersdorf]

Director, children's home Apitzsch, Bertha [Schoneberg] Nurse

(retired) Batty, Marie [Pankow] Housewife,

London Baumgart, Johanna [Zehlendorf]

Housewife Bayer, Anne-Lise [Wilmersdorf]

Housewife Bethge, Eberhard [Lehrterstrasse

Prison] Minister Blank, Georg [Kopenick] Retired Bochnik, Juliane
[Reinickendorf]

Actress Boese, Helena [Wilmersdorf] Teacher Bohg, Kurt [Lichtenberg]

Assistant director, trade

school Bollensen, Lydia [Wilmersdorf]

Dress designer Bombach, Marianne Lorenz

[Wilmersdorf] Housewife Borgmann, Ruby [Charlottenburg]

Housewife Buchwald, Gerd [Reinickendorf]

Director, Board of Education Burrmester, Charlotte [Schoneberg]

Telephone supervisor Sister Caspario [Wilmersdorf] Mission

Sisters of the Holy Sacred Heart Cords, Jutta Sorge [Lehrterstrasse

Prison] Housewife, Calif. Curth, Franz [Lichtenberg] Window

washer Dehn, Madeline von [Mitte]

Professor of zoology Diekermann, Ruth Piepho

[Wilmersdorf] Actress Dietrich, Willi [Mitte] Baker Dohndorf, Emmy
[Tempelhof]

Retired Durand-Wever, Anne-Marie

[Schoneberg] Doctor of medicine Eberhard, Elisabeth [Zehlendorf]

Housewife Echtmann, Fritz [Charlottenburg]

Dentist Fenzel, Klaus [Tempelhof]

Archaeology student Florie, Manfred [Reinickendorf]

Typesetter Friedrichs, Paul [Potsdam]

Catholic priest Frolich, Hans [Charlottenburg]

Police commissioner Geisler, Erika Wendt [Friedrichshain]

Housewife, Conn. Goertz, Eugen [Charlottenburg]

Director, insurance company Golz, Kurt [Tempelhof] Baker Haller,
Annemarie Huckel

[Tiergarten] Graphologist Happich, Bernhard [Zehlendorf]

Priest Harndt, Ewald [Fangschleuse]

Dentist Heck, Lutz [Tiergarten]

Zoologist Heim, Wilhelm [Tiergarten] Doctor

of medicine Heinrich, Erich [Treptow] Hospital

administrator (retired) Heinroth, Katherina [Tiergarten]

Zoologist Hellberg, Irmgard [Steglitz]

Housewife Henneberg, Amalia [Charlottenburg]

Doctor of medicine Henneberg, Georg [Charlottenburg]

Vice president, West German Health

Office Hennig, Margarethe [Charlottenburg]

Housewife Hensel, Alex [Friedrichshain]

Municipal employee Hentschel, Frieda [Steglitz]

Housewife Heusermann, Kathe Reiss

[Charlottenburg] Dental technician Heydekampf, Hildegard von

[Wilmersdorf] Housewife Hofmann, Margarete [Spandau]

Housewife Hohenau, Ilona [Tempelhof]

Musician Hohn, Karl [Neukolln] Baker Holz, Hans [Kreuzberg] Retired
Horltiz, Albert [Charlottenburg]

Mayor (retired) Hunsdorfer, B. [Wedding] Doctor of

medicine Jacobi, Gerhard [Charlottenburg]

Bishop of Oldenburg Jakubek, Erwin [Mitte] Restaurant

owner Janssen, Dora Grabo [Neukolln]

Housewife Jentgen, Lotte [Zehlendorf] Chemist Jodl, Luise
[Zehlendorf]

Housewife Johst, Elisabeth Schwarz [Tiergarten]

Zoologist Kay, Rose von Winkel [Spandau]

Housewife, Yorkshire, England Kelm, Alexander [Wilmersdorf] Engineer

(retired) Ketzler, Gertrud

[Charlottenbur] Editorial secretary Klotz, Jurgen-Erich [Tempelhof]

Book dealer Klunge, Helga Ruske [Kreuzberg]

Housewife Koch, Jolenta [Tempelhof] Housewife Kockler, Maria
[Charlottenburg]

Political society chairman Kolb, Ingeborg [Spandau] Researcher Konig,
Ilse [Schoneberg] Medical

laboratory technician Korab, Alexander [Babelsberg]

Newspaper correspondent Kosney, Herbert [Lehrterstrasse

Prison] Mechanic Kosney, Kurt [Lehrterstrasse

Prison] Mechanic Koster, Ursula [Zehlendorf]

Housewife Kraemer, Franz [Wilmersdorf]

Jeweler Kraft, Fritz [Wedding] Retired city

councillor Kruger, Albert [Steglitz] Police

officer Kuster, Klaus [Reinickendorf]

Musician Lamprecht, Gunther [Wilmersdorf]

Doctor of medicine Langen, Paula [Mitte] Retired Leckscheidt, Arthur
[Kreuzberg]

Minister Levy, Hanni Weissenberg

[Schoneberg] Housewife Lietzmann, Sabina [Wilmersdorf]

Journalist Lilge, Irmgard Rosin [Wedding]

Stenographer Lipschitz, Eleanore Kruger

[Lichtenberg] Doctor of political

economy Mahlke, Walter [Wilmersdorf]

Retired printer Maigatter, Elfriede Eisenbach

[Kreuzberg] Housewife Majewski, Elena Wysocki [Tiergarten]

Housewife Matzker, Alfons [Charlottenburg]

Catholic priest Menzel, Gerhard

[Charlottenburg] Photographer Meyer, Herbert [Neukolln]

Telephone supervisor Michalke, Josef [Charlottenburg]

Catholic priest Miede, Hans [Charlottenburg] Chemist Milbrand,
Elisabeth [Schoneberg]

Telephone supervisor Muller, Werner [Reinickendorf]

Policeman Naumann, Werner [Mitte] Company

director Nestriepke, Siegfried [Wilmersdorf]

Retired Neumann, Edith [Kreuzberg]

Housewife Neumann, Kurt [Wedding] Police

commissioner Panzer, Hildegard [Wilmersdorf]

Radio network employee Penns, Wilhelm [Kopenick] Section

manager Perseke, Erich [Neukolln] Retired Pfeuti, Emma Muller
[Zehlendorf]

Housewife

Piotrowski, Walter [Wedding] Butcher Poganowska, Richard [Zehlendorf]

Dairy farm worker Probst, Margareta [Kreuzberg]

Homeopathic therapist Promeist, Margarete [Tiergarten]

Housewife Radusch, Hildegard [Prieros] Civil

servant (retired) Rau, Dorothea [Tiergarten] Housewife Ravene,
Liese-Lotte [Tempelhof]

Municipal employee Reineke, Ella [Tiergarten]

Administrative assistant Reisner, Kathe [Zehlendorf]

Housewife Reschke, Rudolf [Zehlendorf]

Advertising copywriter Richter, Charlotte [Wilmersdorf]

Retired Richter, Helene [Neukolln] Retired Riedel, Gustav [Tiergarten]
Zoologist

(retired) Rocholl, Edit [Zehlendorf]

Foreign Office employee Romling, Horst [Prenzlauer Berg]

Secondhand dealer Rosensaft, Josef [Belsen Concentration

Camp] Realtor, New York Rosenthal, Hans [Lichtenberg] Radio

and television entertainer Rosetz, Gunther [Neukolln]

Retired Ruhmann, Heinz [Zehlendorf]

Actor Ryneck, Erich [Pankow] Retired Saenger, Erna [Zehlendorf]

Housewife Saenger, Ingeborg [Zehlendorf]

Social worker Sauerbruch, Margot [Mitte] Doctor

of medicine Schadrack, Else [Pankow]

Administration employee Schewe, Ida [Kreuzberg] Retired Schirach,
Henriette Hoffmann von

[Munich] Housewife Schmidt, Paul [Schoneberg] Minister Schneidenbach,
Hilde

[Schoneberg] Secretary Schoele, Gertrud Radeke

[Neukolln] Administration employee Schroeder, Helena [Schoneberg]

Telephone supervisor Schroter, Georg [Tempelhof] Writer Schultze, Erna
[Friedrichshain]

Secretary Schultze, Robert [Kopenick]

Economist Schulz, Wilhelm [Steglitz] Deputy

police commissioner Schwarz, Heinrich [Tiergarten] Retired Schwarz,
Margarete [Charlottenburg]

Certified accountant Schwerdtfeger, Albert [Lehrterstrasse

Prison] Retired Schwinski, Werner [Pankow] Textile

representative Sobek, Johannes "Hanne" [Mitte]

Sports store owner Stalla, Ursula Mohrke [Tiergarten]

Clerical worker Stammer, Gertrud

[Charlottenburg] Office

worker (retired) Sternfeld, Leo [Tempelhof] Cinema

owner Thiemann, Camilla [Schoneherg]

Housewife, London Tietze, Albrecht [Wedding] Doctor

of medicine Ulrich, Gertrud [Steglitz]

Housewife Ungnad, Vera Wysocki [Tiergarten]

Technical designer Van Hoeven, Pia [Schoneberg]

Actress Vogel, Erich [Zehlendorf] Bottling

plant foreman Vollert, Else [Wilmersdorf]

Retired Wagner, Herta Alwes [Schoneberg]

Housewife Walbrecht, Gerda Carl [Tiergarten]

Housewife Wassermann, Elfriede Haubenreisser

[Kreuzberg] Housewife Weber, Brigitte [Charlottenburg]

Housewife Wehmeyer, Dorothea [Charlottenburg]

Stenographer

Weigand-Schott, Inge [Charlottenburg]

Actress Weinsziehr, Stefanie [Wilmersdorf]

Manager, yard goods company Wellmann, Ruth [Charlottenburg]

Housewife Weltlinger, Margarete [Pankow]

Housewife Weltlinger, Siegmund [Pankow]

Stockbroker Wendt, Walter [Tiergarten] Retired Winckler, Charlotte
[Wilmersdorf]

Housewife Wohlgemuth, Albert [Wedding] Police

commissioner Youngday, Brigid Jungmittag

[Prenzlauer Berg] Housewife,

London Zacharias, Fritz [Charlottenburg]

Police commissioner Zarzycki, Bruno

[Neuenhagen-Hoppegarten]

Businessman

FRENCH Bourdeau, Andre [POW, Marienfelde

camp] Railway worker, Lisieux Boutin, Jean [Forced laborer, Spandau]

Machinist, Paris Delaunay, Jacques [Forced laborer,

Tempelhof] Architect, Evreaux Demoulin, Clovis [POW, Klinker

camp] Teacher, Boulogne-sur-Mer De Puniet de Parry, Sophie [Forced

laborer, Treptow] Writer, French

West Indies Douin, Jean [Forced laborer, Pankow]

Engineer, Paris Gasquet, Marc [Forced laborer,

Marienfelde camp] Draftsman,

Paris Gouge, Robert-Albert [Forced laborer,

Pankow] Salesman, Paris Hambert, Philippe [Forced laborer,

Zehlendorf] Architect, Paris Legathiere, Raymond [POW,

Duppel camp] Perfume

shop manager, Paris Savary, Jacques [Forced laborer,

Spandau] Engineer, Vincennes

DANISH Jeppesen, Axel B. [Embassy

Chaplain, Zehlendorf] Minister,

Viborg

DUTCH Stoffels, E. Jan [Dutch

correspondent, Mitte] Journalist,

Amsterdam

SWEDISH Myrgren, Erik [Swedish church official,

Wilmersdorf] Minister, Stockholm Sandeberg, Edward [Swedish
correspondent,

Zehlendorf] Journalist, Stockholm Westlen, Erik [Swedish church
official,

Wilmersdorf] Retired, Stockholm Wiberg, Carl Johann [Allied agent,

Wilmersdorf] Manufacturer

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 541-552

The information for this book came principally from the participants
themselves--the men of the Allied armies, the German troops they
fought, and the Berliners who survived the battle. In all, over two
thousand people contributed to the book. Over a three-year period
beginning in 1962, some seven hundred men and women provided written
accounts as well as interviews. They gave me memorabilia ranging from
diaries to maps, and from personal accounts to cherished scrapbooks.
The names of these people appear in the list of Soldiers and
Civilians.

Their information was fitted into a military skeleton developed from
American, British, Russian and German sources. Unit after-action
reports, war diaries, division histories, intelligence summaries and
interrogation reports were obtained, along with personal interviews
from key military and governmental figures of the period, many of whom
turned over to me their own files, documents and notes. The total
accumulation of research filled ten filing cabinets and contained such
disparate information as the amount of fuel in Berlin gasometers before
the battle and the fact that Marshal Rokossovskii wore a wrist watch
with a built-in compass.

An enormous number of people helped on the project. It could not have
begun at all without Lila and DeWitt Wallace of the Reader's Digest,
who placed at my disposal the vast research resources of their
organization and who underwrote many of the costs. I would like to pay
tribute to my friend Hobart Lewis, President and Executive Editor of
the Digest, who was unstinting in his efforts to make the book
possible. I also want to thank those men and women in the Digest's
bureaus in the United States and Europe who collected research and
interviewed scores of participants. It would be unfair to single out
any particular individuals. I would like instead to name them in
alphabetical order by bureau. Berlin: John Flint, Helgard Kramer,
Suzanne Linden, Ruth Wellman; London: Heather Chapman, Joan Isaacs; New
York: Gertrude Arundel, Nina Georges-Picot; Paris: Ursula Naccache,
John D. Panitza (chief European Correspondent); Stuttgart: Arno Alexi;
Washington: Bruce Lee, Julia Morgan.

Thanks must be given to the U.s. Department of Defense for permission
to research in the historical archives. In particular, I want to
acknowledge the help of Brigadier General Hal C. Pattison, head of the
Office of the Chief of Military History and his associates: Magda
Bauer, Detmar Fincke, Charles von Luttichau, Israel Wice, Hannah
Zeidlik and Dr. Earl Ziemke--all of whom gave time and assistance to
me and my associates. My thanks also to the director of the World War
II Records Division, Sherrod East, who permitted a day-by-day record
investigation for months. Others in the Records Division were equally
kind: Wilbur J. Nigh, Chief of the Reference Branch,

and his associates, Lois Aldridge, Morton Apperson, Joseph Avery,
Richard Bauer, Nora Hinshaw, Thomas Hohmann, Hildred Livingston, V.
Caroline Moore, Frances Rubright and Hazel Ward. Working closely with
this group was Dr. Julius Wildstosser who had the painstaking job of
examining miles of microfilm and translating thousands of German
documents for me and my Reader's Digest associates.

I owe special debts of gratitude to former President Dwight D.
Eisenhower; Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount Montgomery
of Alamein; General Omar N. Bradley; Lieutenant General Sir Frederick
Morgan; General Walter Bedell Smith; General William H. Simpson;
Lieutenant General James M. Gavin; Lord Ismay; Lieutenant General Sir
Brian Horrocks; Lord Strang; Ambassador W. Averell Harriman; Ambassador
Foy D. Kohler; Ambassador David Bruce; Ambassador Charles Bohlen; Earl
Attlee; Mrs. Anna Rosenberg Hoffman; Major General Sir Francis de
Guingand; Sir Miles Dempsey; Lieutenant General Evelyn Barker; Major
General Louis Lyne; Major General R. F. Belchem and Professor Philip E.
Mosely. These individuals and many other American and British officers
and diplomats helped me to understand the military and political
background of the period and to unravel the reasons why the
Anglo-American forces did not continue their advance on Berlin.

I am grateful to the Russian government for their courtesy in allowing
me to see hitherto unrevealed documents, orders, interrogation reports
and other papers from their defense files. We did not see eye to eye
on many matters and my methods were not always as diplomatic as they
might have been. I found, however, that a blunt and candid approach to
the Soviet military was returned by them. On the matter of the rapes
in Berlin, for example, it was suggested to me by certain members of
the U.s. State Department and the British Foreign Office that it might
be undiplomatic to raise the question. President John F. Kennedy
disagreed with that view. His words to me before I left for the Soviet
Union were to the effect that the Russians probably would not mind in
the least, because at heart they were horse traders. He felt I should
speak bluntly and "lay it on the table." I did, and the Soviet
authorities responded in kind. There were some awkward moments,
however. Although I had been invited by the Khrushchev government to
conduct my research, the border police at Moscow airport tried to take
from me the very papers that the Soviet Defense Department had given
me! The Red Army officers, Marshals Koniev, Rokossovskii, Sokolovskii
and Chuikov, were kindness personified, generous with their time and
their information, as were the other Soviet military men I interviewed.
That this liaison could be established was in large part due to my
associate on that trip, Professor John Erickson of the University of
Manchester, whose linguistic abilities and expert knowledge of Russian
affairs proved invaluable.

In Germany, Dr. Graf Schweintz of the Press and Information Department
of the Bonn government opened many a door. General A. Heusinger of the
NATO command in Washington wrote scores of letters of introduction.
Colonel Theodor von Dufving, the former Chief of Staff of the last
Berlin Commandant, General Karl Weidling, spent days going over the
last battle with me. General Walther Wenck, General Theodor Busse,
General Martin Gareis, General Erich Dethleffsen, Lieutenant General
Hellmuth Reymann,

General Hasso von Manteuffel, General Max Pemsel, Lieutenant General
Friedrich Sixt, SS General Felix Steiner, General Burkhart
Muller-Hillebrand, SS Major General Gustav Krukenberg, Colonel Hans
Refior, Colonel Hans Oscar Wohlermann and Frau Luise Jodl--all helped
in every way possible to reconstruct the battle and those last days in
Berlin.

There were many others who aided in one way or another: Leon J. Barat,
Deputy Advisor for the Institute for the Study of the U.s.s.r. in
Munich; Rolf Menzel, then Editor-in-Chief, Radio Berlin; Lieutenant
Colonel Meyer-Welcker of the German military archives institute; Frank
E. W. Drexler, editor of the Berlin paper Der Abend; Robert Lochner,
head of RIAS in Berlin; Raymond Cartier of Paris Match; Dr. Jurgen
Rohwer of the Library of Modern History in Munich; Dr. Albrecht Lampe
of the Berlin Municipal Archives; Karl Roder of WAST, the German
veterans organization; Carl Johann Wiberg; Marcel Simonneau of the
Amicale Nationale des Anciens P.g. des Stalags; Dr. Dieter Strauss of
Siegbert Mohn Verlag, the publishers. To these and many others, my
most sincere thanks.

I have saved to the last my thanks to Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici
for the German side of the story. Over a period of three months we
shared countless interviews and conversations. He fought each phase of
the battle again. He allowed me to use his personal notes, documents
and war diaries. Even though he was plagued by illness, he always gave
generously of his time. Without him, I do not think this book could
have been written. In some twenty years as a writer, I have rarely
encountered a man of such dignity and honor--nor one with such memory
for detail.

How do I thank those who stood by me during the writing? My darling
wife who collated, indexed, edited, rewrote --and at the same time
looked after our family during the long years of researching and
writing; my good friend and severest critic Jerry Korn, whose sharp
editing pencil moves so brilliantly across paper (he will not get a
chance at this page); my invaluable secretaries, "Horty" Vantresca and
Barbara Sawyer, who typed and retyped, filed, answered phones and
backstopped all the rest of us; Suzanne and Charlie Gleaves, who were
just there when I needed them; Peter Schwed and Michael Korda of Simon
and Schuster, who, together with Helen Barrow (production manager),
Frank Metz (art director), Eve Metz (designer), and Sophie Sorkin (copy
chief), had to put up with my impossible demands; Raphael Palacios,
whose meticulous maps and sense of humor are more than any author can
hope to have; Dave Parsons of Pan American Airways, who moved
trunkloads of research all over Europe without losing a single item; my
friends Billy Collins and Robert Laffont --my publishers in England and
France--who waited so long for this book that they almost called it
"Watch on the Ryan"; my lawyer, Paul Gitlin, whose help, guidance and
temperature-taking were extraordinary; my representatives Marie
Schebeko (in France) and Elaine Greene (in England), who have helped by
work, courage, support and belief-- to them all, my deepest thanks.
--C.r.

INDEX

A A-Day, 9, 122 Abu Markub stork, 169, 171, 408, 484, 512 Ache, Captain
Kurt, 511 Acheson, Dean, 469 Adolf-Hitler-Platz, 166 Aherne, Corporal
John, 493 Air Ministry building, 382 Air raids, 24, 65, 262-63, 370,

extent of destruction in Berlin, 13-16, 18, 257-58

last Western, 420

by Russians, 165-68

on zoo, 14, 169

on Zossen, 79 Airborne assault on Berlin planned, 120-25, 147, 179,
249, 281-82 Airstrip on East-West Axis, 378-79,

Alexanderplatz, 437, 502 Alexandrov (russian propaganda chief), 28n
Alkett plant, 50-51, 372 Alpenfestung, see National Redoubt Alte Krug
restaurant, 166 American Army, see United States Army Ammunition
shortage in Berlin, 383 Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur,

Anglo-American forces

airborne assault on Berlin planned, 120-25, 147, 179, 249,

armored tactics of, 134-35, 305

Berlin drive by, 135-36, 139-40, 165, 194, 198-202, 206-7, 217, 234,
237-42, 252-53, 278-80, 283-94, 304-26, 330

Berlin drive forbidden, 331-32, 365-66,

Berliners' hope for capture by, 35-37,

breakout in West by, 126-36, 207, 209, 277-78, 280-82

cross Rhine, 17, 86-87, 116, 207

First Allied Airborne Army, 121, 122, 282

Hitler's policy toward, 84-85

"Land Forces Commander" proposed for, 204,

meeting of Russian army and, 187-88, 208-9, 215-16, 293, 471-72

"National Redoubt" and, 209-14, 216, 237, 238, 279, 329-30,

rumor that they have joined Germans, 457

supply problems of, 326 Anhalter Station, 421-22, 449 Anti-aircraft
defense of Berlin, 166-68 Antonov, General A. A., 248 Antwerp, 202
Antz, Anneliese, 487 Antz, Ilse, 418, 461, 487, 512 Archer, Rear
Admiral Ernest R., 231, 239, 243 Ardennes offensive, 84-85, 120, 193

Eclipse map captured in, 97

Montgomery and, 204-5 Arie, see Bestebreurtje, Arie D. Armistice and
Post-war Committee (attlee Committee), 143, 144, 154n Armored tactics,
134-35, 305 Arneburg, 288 Artillery

German, 223, 352-53, 384, 390,

Russian, 254, 255, 335, 348-52, 354, 357-59, 417-22, 479
Artillery-spotting planes, 126-27, 190, 310-12, 479 Asch, 148
Astrology, 318 Atrocities, 30

Russian attitude to German, 246,

by SS, 28, 34, 440-42

See also Sexual attack Attlee, Clement, 143, 144, 154n Attlee Plan, 153
Augsberg, 203 Austria, 242 Axmann, Artur, 398, 403 But Bad Blankenburg,
296 Bad Salzelmen, 307-8 Balzen (batman), 70, 95 Barbarossa (frederick
I), 212 Barby, 319-20, 325, 331, 365-66 Barker, Lieutenant General
Evelyn H.,

Barnes, Lieutenant Frank, 135 Batchelder, Lieutenant Colonel Clifton
Brooks, 134 Bathe, SS sergeant, 432 Batov, General Pavel, 245 Baur,
Hans, 337, 502 Bautzen, 70 Bavaria, 229-30, 274-76, 376

See also National Redoubt Bayer, Anne-Lise, 409

Bayer, Erich, 304 Bayreuth, 374 BBC broadcasts, 20-21, 35, 209
Beethoven Hall, see Philharmonic Orchestra Belgium, 146, 156 Below,
Colonel Nicolaus von, 404, 405, 497 Belsen concentration camp, 45, 328
Beltow, Hans, 433 Belzig, 298, 445 Bendler Block headquarters
(bendlerstrasse), 46, 48, 373,

Berchtesgaden, 125, 212, 275, 435 Beria, Lavrenti, P., 248 Berlin

administration breaks down, 407-8, 450-53

air raids on, 13-16, 18, 24, 65, 165-68, 257-58, 262-63, 370, 409,
420

Anglo-American drive for, 135-36, 139-40, 165, 194, 198-202, 206-7,
217, 234, 237-42, 252-53, 278-80, 283-94, 304-26, 330

Anglo-American forces forbidden to drive to, 331-32, 365-66, 388

anti-aircraft defense of, 166-68

children in, 219, 422

commandants of, 65-66, 428, 449

defense plans for, 65-66, 217-20, 229-30, 375-84, 413-14

demolition in, 334-35, 378-80, 409, 481

encircled, 472

evacuation of, 217-20, 404-7, 510-11

factories in, 16, 372, 409, 494

first artillery fire heard in, 358, 369

first artillery shelling of, 417-22

first Russians enter, 457-65

foreign workers in, 48-51

Goebbels as Gauleiter of, 217-20, 377-78, 399-400, 405, 479n

hopes for capture by British and Americans, 35-37, 39

its attitude to Nazis, 52, 371-72

Jews in, 40-44, 262-63, 461-64

joint occupation planned, 143, 144, 148, 154, 159

last plane into, 482-83

planned airborne assault on, 120-25, 147, 179, 249, 281-82

population estimates for, 26-27

proposed corridors to, 152, 158-59

Roosevelt's desire for capture of, 140, 145-48, 163

Russian fear of Anglo-American seizure of, 243, 249, 354-55

Russian plans for assault on, 21-22, 193-94, 243, 247-52, 254-56,
302-3

sexual attacks in, 484-93

surrendered, 109, 502-3

tunnel flooded, 481

Wenck and Steiner ordered to relieve, 422, 426-27, 441-45, 449, 466,

See also specific persons, places, and topics Berliner, Trude, 407
Bernadotte, Count Folke, 404, 469-70 Bernau, 401 Bernburg, 96 Berzarin,
General N. E., Fifth Shock Army of, 302 Bessarabia, 142 Bestebreurtje,
Arie D. (captain Harry), 119-21, 123-24 Bieler, Colonel, 268, 276-77,
439 Biesenthal, 415 Bila, Captain Heinrich von, 70, 72-73, 80-81,
90-92, 96, 300,

Birkenhain, 83, 91, 300, 474 Bismarck, Otto von, 257 Bismarckstrasse,
422 Bitterfeld, 298 Blanter, Matvei Isaakovich, 499n Blaschke, SS
Brigadefuhrer Hugo J., 54-56, 64, 405-7, 505 Blondi (hitler's dog), 495
Bochnik, Juliane, 31-32, 59,

Boese, Helena, 407, 461 Boese, Karl, 407 Bogdanov, General, Second
Guards Army of, 302 Bohg, Kurt, 482 Boldt, Captain Gerhard, 80, 227n
Bolling, Major General Alexander R., 180, 292

84th Infantry Division of, 128, 134, 289, 292, 317 Bombach, Marianne,
459 Bonn, 129 Bonninghardt, 136 Borgmann, Eberhard, 36, 453 Borgmann,
Ruby, 36, 453-54 Bormann, Martin, 260, 261, 338, 403, 468, 498, 502
Bourdeau, Andre, 50 Boutin, Jean, 51 Bradley, General Omar N., 129,
132, 178, 202, 213, 216-17, 241,

on cost of taking Berlin, 321

Montgomery and, 205

on National Redoubt, 446-47

orders Simpson not to advance on Berlin, 331, 388

Twelfth Army Group of, 129-32, 204, 207, 212-13, 232, 233,

Brandenburg Gate, 14, 114, 217, 378, 418 Braun, Eva, 56, 337, 467,
496

arrives at Fuhrerbunker, 359

body of, 341, 505, 506n

marriage of, 497

suicide of, 495, 497-98, 500 Breitenbachplatz, 453 Bremen, 145, 155,
161, 326 Bremerhaven, 161 Brereton, Lieutenant General Lewis H., First
Allied Airborne Army of, 121, 122, 282 Breslau, 268, 378

Breweries, 450n Bridges

in Berlin, 334, 379-80, 413, 481

on Elbe, 306-10, 312, 313, 315-17, 319-20, 322-25,

on Neisse, 355-57, 368

on Oder, 223, 352

Remagen, 17, 86-87, 130, 207, 314, 334-35 Bristow, Sergeant John, 390
British Army, see Anglo-American forces British Army units

ARMY GROUP, Twenty-first, 103, 116, 129, 135-36, 139-40, 200, 216-17,
232-33, 282, 325-26

ARMY, Second, 44, 126, 129, 135, 326

CORPS 1/ Airborne, 121 8th, 508

DIVISIONS 6th Airborne, 281, 508 7th Armored, 128, 134, 135,

51/ Highland, 128

REGIMENT, Devonshire, 135

BATTALION, 13th Parachute, 281 British Information Services, 496
British occupation zone, 100

Roosevelt's objections to plans for, 141, 145-50, 154-61 Bromberg, 33
Brooke, Field Marshal Sir Alan, 126, 142, 178, 201, 204, 207, 238

protests Eisenhower's message to Stalin, 233, 234 Brunswick, 202
Brussels, 119 Buchenwald concentration camp, 327 Buchholz, 356
Buchwald, Elsa, 486 Buchwald, Gerd, 486, 494 Buckeburg, 291 Buhle,
General Walter, 261, 271 Bulganin, Marshal Nikolai A., 248 Bulge, see
Ardennes offensive Burgdorf, General Wilhelm, 65, 226, 227, 260, 261,
273, 275-76, 359, 448, 496, 497, 498

suicide of, 502, 503 Burmester, Charlotte, 457 Busch, Field Marshal
Ernst, 297 Busse, General Theodor, 93-94, 110, 225-26, 229, 351,
362-65, 396, 428, 434n

links up with Wenck, 509-10

Ninth Army of, 88-89, 93-94, 222, 224-25, 265, 342, 351-53, 364-65,
385, 395, 396-98, 400, 404, 414-16, 423, 434, 436, 438-39, 444, 447,
449, 472-73, 509-10

refuses to pull back, 438 Can Cairo Conference, 141, 150 Canadian army
units

ARMY, First, 129, 135, 326

DIVISION, 2nd, 128 Canisius, St., Church, 487 Capitulation, see
Surrender Carl, Gerda, 53, 419-20 Carl, Captain Gotthard, 53, 419-20
Carlyle, Thomas, 319 Carnes, Lieutenant Colonel Norman D., 134, 318
Casablanca Conference, 101 Case C., see operation Eclipse Caspary wine
shop, 453 Catholic Sisters, 25-26, 59, 370-71, 455-56, 464-65, 486,
491-92 Celle, 326 Chancellery, see Reichskanzlei Charite Hospital, 31,
53, 442 Charlottenburg, 33, 35, 36, 50, 373, 405, 409, 422, 481, 494
Charlottenburger Chausee, 15 Chequers, 232 Chevalier, Maurice, 50-51
Chiang Kai-shek, 150 Children

of Berlin, 219, 422

in German fighting forces, 113, 289; see also Hitler Youth Christian,
Major General Eckhardt, 434 Chuikov, Colonel General Vasili Ivanovich,
185, 193, 248n, 347, 350, 360

Eighth Guards Army of, 302, 346-50, 360, 390, 429

in surrender negotiations, 109, 499-500,

Churchill, Winston, 101, 143n, 149, 156, 182

Anglo-American drive on Berlin and, 139-40, 165, 207, 236, 239-40, 242,
252-53, 278-80

and Eisenhower's message to Stalin, 232, 234-36, 253

Himmler's peace feelers and, 469-70

Montgomery and, 205n

occupation zones and, 150, 154n, 159-61

on Stalin's violation of Yalta agreements,

visits Rhine, 140 Citadel, 382

Russians enter, 481-82 Civil Affairs Division of War Department,
151-52, 156-57, 158-59 Clark-Kerr, Sir Archibald, 231 "Clausewitz"
signal, 399 Clovis I, King of the Franks, 197 Cmuda, Hannelore von, 488
Cole, Sergeant Major Eric V., 281 Combined Chiefs of Staff, 146, 150,
151, 160, 199, 206, 232, 233, 239-41, 278-79

Malta meeting of, 139, 207 Communists, German, 15, 37-39, 47, 60,
430-32, 478, 493 Concentration camps, 28, 41, 44-45,

Cooley, Staff Sergeant Clyde W., 289, 308 Cords, Captain Helmuth,
45-46, 61 Corridors to Berlin proposed, 152,

COSSAC, 142; see also Morgan Cottbus, 357, 391-92 Courland army, 85,
227, 403 Crabill, Colonel Edwin "Buckshot," 319-20 Crerar, Lieutenant
General Henry D., 129, 179 Cunegundes, Mother Superior, 25, 59, 370-71,
455, 464-65, 491-92 Cyanide capsules, 32, 423, 495, 498, 504 Do Dahlem,
17-18, 166, 277, 458-59 Dahlem, Haus, 25-26, 59, 370-71, 455-56,
464-65, 491-92 Dahlem Press Club, 370 Dahlwitz, 358 Davey, Lieutenant
Robert, 135 Davison, Captain Wilfred, 281 Deane, Major General John R.,
79n, 231, 233, 239, 240, 243,

Deans, Warrant officer James "Dixie," 190, 294-96, 389-90, 410-12,

De Gaulle, Brigadier General Charles, Roosevelt and, 145-46 Delaunay,
Jacques, 262, 372 Dempsey, Lieutenant General Sir Miles, 179

Second Army of, 44, 126, 129, 135, 326 Denmark, 234, 330, 446 "Desert
Rats" (7th Armored Division), 128, 134, 135, 280-81 Dessau, 297, 298 De
Tassigny, General Jean de Lattre,

Dethleffsen, General Erich, 413, 416-17, 427, 438, 466, 467, 468
Detmold, 290 Deutsche Union Bank, 138 Deutschlandsender, 168 Devenney,
Captain John J., 288 Devers, Lieutenant General Jacob, 180,

Sixth Army Group of, 130, 237, 283, 329 Diburtz, Georg, 374, 387
Diekermann, Ruth, 262 Dieppe, 128 Disney, Colonel Paul A., 180, 181,
304, 305, 309, 316-17 Dittmar, Eberhard, 446 Dittmar, Lieutenant
General Kurt, 446 Djilas, Milovan, 246, 493n Doberitz, 434, 448
Doenitz, Grand Admiral Karl, 27n, 339, 403, 435

as commander in north, 404

at Fuhrerbunker conference with Heinrici, 260, 261, 265, 268, 271,

named President of Germany, 496-97, 500 Domane Dahlem dairy, 17-18,
57,

Dominican nuns, 486 Dorn (driver), 296 Dresden, 65, 336, 466

Eisenhower's plans to advance on, 202, 203, 215, 217, 232, 237, 249,
283 Dufving, Lieutenant Colonel Theodor von, 109, 398, 466, 499-501,

Duke of York, H.m.s., 143n DUKW'S, 314, 316, 317, 319, 323 Dunkirk, 128
Durand-Wever, Dr. Anne-Marie, 30-31 Dusseldorf, 147 Dustmann, Dr.
Karl, 405 Dutch Intelligence Service, 119 Dutch volunteers in German
Army, 222 Every EAC (european Advisory Commission), 144, 149-54, 157-59
Eagle's Nest, 125, 210 East-West Axis, 15, 502

landing strip on, 378-79, 482-83 Eberhard, Elisabeth, 460 Eberhard,
Robert, 170 Eberswalde, 395, 414-15, 423, 505 Echtmann, Fritz, 505, 506
Eclipse, see Operation Eclipse Eden, Anthony, 142, 143, 150, 496
Ehrenburg, Ilya, hate manifesto of, 27 Eisenach, 116, 144 Eisenhower,
General of the Army Dwight D., 126, 135, 139, 140, 160, 165, 177,
235n

arrives in London, 153

Berlin drive and, 198-202, 206-9, 217, 236, 238, 278-80, 292, 321, 330,
331

broad-front strategy of,

as chain-smoker, 198

at concentration camp, 328-29

criticisms of, 204

decides to strike across central Germany,

Marshall and, 199, 214-15, 216

message to Stalin by, 215-16, 231-36, 240, 243

as nonpolitical soldier, 199-200

opposed by Montgomery, 202-6, 232, 233-34, 240-41

Reims headquarters of, 197-98

Stalin's reply to, 251-52, 253 Eismann, Colonel Hans Georg, 92-93,
221-25, 228, 229, 258-61, 264-65, 267, 268, 274, 277, 301, 334, 351,
428, 475 Elbe

American attempt to seize bridges of, 306-9, 312-13

American bridging of, 314-17, 319-20

Americans and Russians meet on, 187-88, 470-72

Americans forbidden to drive east of, 331-32, 365-66, 388

Anglo-American drive for, 135-36, 140, 165, 199, 217, 242, 280-94,
304-5, 329-30

Twelfth German Army on, 277, 297-98, 323-25

as zonal boundary, 116 Elbenau, 317 Elections (1932), 52 Elizabeth,
Czarina of Russia, 319 Erfurt, 215, 217 Erickson, Professor John, 248n,
506n Erkner, 372, 505 Espionage, see Intelligence agents Estonia, 142
Eumenes II, King, 167 Evacuation of Berlin, 217-20, 404-7 Evers,
Gertrud, 408 Exchange 500, 79, 433 From Factories, 16, 372, 494

foreign workers in, 48-51

ordered destroyed, 409 Falingbostel, 294, 295, 389 Farrand, Colonel,
Edward Gilbert,

Faupel, Lieutenant General Wilhelm,

Fegelein, SS Gruppenfuhrer Hermann,

Feiler, Hertha, 32 Feis, Herbert, 159n Feldheim, Private Willy, 112,
385-86, 399 Fesler (guard), 50 Finland, 142 Finnell, Captain John, 317
Finow, 505 Finsterwald, 393 Fire companies, 450, 479-80 Food, 38,
409-10, 450-53 Foreign Affairs Ministry building, 302 Foreign laborers,
48-51 Foreign Ministers Conference (moscow), 143 Fortifications of
Berlin, 65-66, 375, 376, 380-84, 478-79

ring system described, 380-82

Russians enter Citadel, 481-82

Russians enter second ring, 457 Francies, Lieutenant Merritt Duane,
126-27, 190, 310-12 Frankfurt-on-Main, 116, 139, 238 Frankfurt-on-Oder,
87, 89, 265-69, 276-77, 364, 438 Franklin, William F., 159n
Franseckystrasse, 442 Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, 212n Frederick
II, King of Prussia, 319 Free French Forces, 145 French Embassy
building (berlin), 378 French First Army, 130 French occupation zone,
162 Frey Bridge, 480 Friedenau, 19, 369 Friedrichshain, 167, 382, 481
Friedrichstrasse Station, 418, 501, 502 Fuhrer, see Hitler
Fuhrerbunker, 341, 483

described, 259-60, 424-25, 448

disintegration in, 467, 494

escape from, 500-2

Eva Braun arrives at, 359

Goebbels moves to, 437

Russians enter, 503-4

Speer's plan to gas, 333

SS guards at, 258, 259

suicides in, 497-98, 501-2 Funerals, 24, 452 Furstenberg, 476 Go G
Tower, see Zoo Bunker (zoo towers) Gareis, General Martin, 299 Gatow
Airfield, 121, 125, 479 Gavin, Major General James M., 119-24, 179, 281
Gehlen, Major General Reinhard, 85, 104, 107, 227, 335
General-Barby-Strasse, 488 German air force, see Luftwaffe German armed
forces

armored units transferred south, 257, 260, 270, 272-73, 353

desertions in, 437, 480

divisional strength in, 131

Hitler's errors as commander of, 84-85, 89, 130-31, 256-57,

1939 clash in Poland with Russian Army,

push Americans back across Elbe,

smashed on Western Front, 130-31,

See also Oder front; OKH; OKW German Armed Forces High Command, see OKW
German armed-forces units

ARMY GROUPS B (model), 131, 282, 396 Center (schorner), 87, 257, 270,
353, 385, 416, 438 Vistula, 70, 76, 82-84, 87-94, 220-24, 265-74,
299-300, 335, 342, 351-53, 385, 394-99, 413-16, 427-28, 437-39, 472-73,
476-77

ARMIES First Panzer, 70, 76 Third Panzer, 87, 222, 265-66, 299, 352,
353, 394-96, 402, 415, 423, 438, 472-73, 476-77 Fourth, 73-74, 75, 416
Sixth, 300 Seventh, 375

Ninth, 88-89, 93-94, 222, 224-26, 265-66, 342, 351-53, 362-65, 384,
395, 396-98, 400, 404, 414-16, 423, 434, 436, 438-39, 444, 447, 449,
472-73,

Eleventh, 277 Twelfth, 275-76, 277, 296-99, 323-25, 365-66, 436, 439,
443-45, 449, 466, 467, 472, 510

GROUP, Steiner, 395, 423, 426-27, 449, 466, 472-74

CORPS 3rd SS, 395 11th SS, 365 46th Panzer, 299 56th Panzer (weidling),
364-65, 396-98, 415, 428, 434, 447-49, 478, 481, 482, 502 101/, 365
Great Germany, 400

DIVISIONS 2nd Parachute, 301 3rd Navy, 474 4th SS Police, 414 5th
Panzer, 474 7th Panzer, 395 9th Parachute, 267, 269, 300, 365, 397 18th
Panzer Grenadier, 396-97 20th Panzer Grenadier, 94, 365 25th Panzer
Grenadier, 93-94, 352, 474 Clausewitz, 298 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, 298
Frundsberg, 403 Muncheberg Panzer, 365 Nederland, 222 Nordland, 222,
396-97 Potsdam, 298, 299, 315 Scharnhorst, 298, 299, 315 Theodor
Korner, 298 Ulrich von Hutten, 298, 299, 315 German Army High Command,
see OKH German Navy, 53-54, 223, 271, 272, 474 German prisoners of
war

of Russians, 429-30

in West, 291, 326 German women in armed forces, 289-90 Germendorf, 474
Gerow, Lieutenant General Leonard, 129 Gestapo, 32, 38, 39, 41, 43
Getman, General Andreya Levrentevich, 194, 361 Gillem, Major General
Alvan C., Jr., 304 Gneisenau, Field Marshal Graf von, 66, 269, 373
Gobelin tapestries, 168 Goebbels, Dr. Joseph, 28n, 64, 171, 174, 210,
230, 338, 403, 479n, 496, 498

appointed Reichschancellor, 497

attempts to surrender Berlin, 498-500

in defense of Berlin, 377-78, 399-400, 405

moves to Chancellery, 437

propaganda of, 29-30, 371, 373, 430, 459

refuses to order evacuation of Berlin,

Roosevelt's death and, 319

suicide of, 495, 501, 503-4, 505 Goebbels, Magda, 339, 437, 467, 497,
515

children of, 339, 495, 501, 504, 505

suicide of, 495, 501, 503-4 Goering, Emmy, 469 Goering, Reichsmarschall
Hermann, 75, 103n, 170, 214, 338, 404,

arrested by SS, 468-69

evacuates Karinhall, 401-3

at Fuhrerbunker conference with Heinrici,

Heinrici and, 269, 300-1, 397

as Hitler's deputy, 435, 436,

Golbach, Major General Walter, 479n Golbov, Captain Sergei Ivanovich,
33-34, 302-3, 345-46, 349, 350, 429-30 Gotha, 328-29 Gotterdammerung,
Die, 175, 212, 375, 386-87 Grawitz, Professor Ernst, 406-7 Graziani,
Marshal Rudolfo, 376 Great Fatherland War of the Soviet Union 1941-45,
The, 355n Greim, Field Marshal Robert Ritter von, 482-83 Gresse, 389,
410 Groza, Petru, 162 Gruban-Souchay restaurant, 36, 453-54 Grunewald
(berlin), 479, 480 Grunewalde, 317, 324 Guderian, Colonel General
Heinz, 76-78, 94, 107, 222, 275

discusses battle plans with Heinrici,

goes to Bavaria, 229-30

relieved as Chief of OKH, 225-29 Guingand, Major General Sir Francis
de, 103, 203, 206 Gumbach, Corporal "Charlie," 390, 411-12, 507-9
Gunsche, SS Colonel Otto, 259, 496-98, 502 Gusev, Fedor T., 149, 153,
154n, 158, 159, 183 Have Hadley, Lieutenant Arthur T., 134 Hagedorn,
Captain Walter, 483, 514 Hagemann, Lieutenant General Wolf, 111, 510
Haller, Annemarie, see Huckel Halt, Karl Ritter von, 479 Hambert,
Philippe, 405 Hamburg, 145, 155, 202, 329, 426 Hamelin, 291-92 Handy,
Major General Thomas T., 149,

Hanover, 202, 283

captured, 292, 295 Happich, Father Bernhard, 25-26, 371, 455-56, 492
Harriman, W. Averell, 164, 183, 231, 335 Harz Mountains, 100, 277, 296,
297

Haus Dahlem, 25-26, 59, 370-71, 455-56, 464-65, 491-92 Haushofer,
Albrecht, 440, 442n Haymaker, Sergeant Leonard, 313 Heck, Lutz, 62,
170, 408, 484 Heckscher, Sergeant Edmund, 479 Heger, Robert, 171, 387
Heinrici, Colonel General Gotthard,

attempts to build up Oder front,

background of, 71-76

called to Fuhrerbunker, 257-61,

called to Zossen, 70-71, 76-90

command of Berlin and, 220-21, 230,

dismissed, 476-77, 506-7

Eclipse maps and, 104, 363-64

Goering and, 269, 300-1, 397

insists on Bieler's reinstatement, 276-77

orders retreat, 475-76

Russian offensive and, 299-300, 335, 342, 351-53, 384-85, 413-16,
437-39, 472-76

Speer's visit to, 332-35

Steiner attack and, 423, 427, 473,

takes over from Himmler, 91-95

withdrawal tactic of, 73-74, 299, 342, 351, 360-61 Heinroth, Dr.
Katherina, 63, 170 "Hell on Wheels" (2nd Armored Division), 128,
132-34, 284-85, 288, 289, 291-93, 304-9, 314-17, 319, 322-25, 330, 388
Hellriegel, Private Hermann, 479 Henneberg, Professor Georg, 409,

Hennell, Sergeant Major Charles, 281 Hermannplatz, 417, 451 Heusermann,
Kathe Reiss, 54-56, 64, 405-7, 505-6 Hewel, Walter, 417 Higgins,
Brigadier General Gerald J., 124, 125 Hildesheim, 283-84, 292 Hildring,
Major General John H., 159n Himmler, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich, 32, 214,
338, 403, 407, 435

as army group commander, 82-84

at Fuhrerbunker conference with Heinrici, 260, 265, 268, 271

Heinrici takes over from, 91-95

peace negotiations of, 94, 404, 469-70, 496 Hindenburg, Paul von, 52
Hindenburgstrasse, 453 Hinds, Brigadier General Sidney R., 314, 316-17,
322-23, 325,

Hitler, Adolf, 78, 97, 103n, 125, 214, 230, 337, 386, 428

appoints Himmler army group commander, 82

appoints Von Greim head of Luftwaffe,

attempted assassination of (1944), 45-47, 259, 264

Berlin's attitude to, 52, 372

birthday of, 303, 401-2, 403-4, 409

body of, 341, 498, 504-5

decides to stay in Berlin, 404-5,

dental work on, 55-56, 505-6

on evacuation of Berlin, 218-19

on future of National Socialism, 497

Heinrici and, 74-76, 82, 264-74,

his whereabouts a secret, 23, 56, 136, 400-1, 435, 446

illness of, 264, 403, 470

last hours and suicide of, 494-98, 500

last messages of, 466

military errors of, 84-85, 89, 130-31, 256-57, 273

Order of the Day (april 15), 362-63

orders Goering's arrest, 468-69

permits landing strip on East-West Axis,

policy on retreating, 475

portraits of, 19, 22-23, 263, 369

relieves Guderian, 225-29

scorched-earth policy of, 172-73, 332-35, 408

Steiner attack and, 423, 426-27

Speer and, 172-73, 176, 332-33

on treachery, 416, 497 Hitler Youth, 52, 112, 382, 383, 386, 398-99,
442, 451, 453, 478

decorated by Hitler, 403-4 Hodges, Lieutenant General Courtney H.,
178

First Army of, 129-30, 131, 204, 207, 282, 326, 472 Hoffman, Rosie, 32,
486 Hohenzollerndamm, 65, 220, 376 Holland, 135, 234, 326
Hollingsworth, Major James F., 181, 289-90, 305, 306-9, 317 Holz,
Colonel Arthur, 384 Home Guard (volkssturm), 113, 131, 218, 265, 277,
305, 306-7, 375, 376, 380, 384, 400, 413, 422, 478

number and organization of, 382-83

return home, 479

weapons for, 106, 383 Hopkins, Harry, 147 Hoppegarten, 358, 430, 434
Horsemeat, 453 House of Tourist Affairs, 422 Householder, Sergeant
Charles, 312-13 Huckel, Annemarie, 36, 423 Huckel, Dr. Rudolf, 32, 423
Hughes, Brigadier Hugh L. Glyn, 44-45, 191, 328 Hull, Cordell, 153n
Hull, Lieutenant General John Edwin,

Humboldthain, 167, 382 Hungarian units, 70, 76, 265 Hungary, 70, 76, 85
I Intelligence agents

Communist, 37

in Switzerland, 212

Wiberg, 23, 59, 136-38, 366-67, 400-1, 492 Internal Affairs Ministry
building, 302 International Red Cross warehouses, 493 Invalidenstrasse,
441, 442 Invasion, see Operation Overlord Iowa, U.s.s., 140, 141,
145-49 Ismay, General Sir Hastings, 139, 161, 232 Italian Army, 376
Italy, 156, 235, 446 Ivanov, Major General Georgi Vasilievich, 356 "Ivy
Division" (4th Infantry Division),

Izvestia (newspaper), 429 Just Jacobi, Dr. Gerhard, 486-87 Jakubek,
Erwin, 495, 497 Janssen, Dora, 418-19, 460, 489 Jehovah's Witnesses,
431-2 Jessen-Schmidt, Hennings, 137-38, 366-67, 401, 492 Jesuits, 25,
487 Jewish Community Bureau, 41 Jews, 28, 327

remaining in Berlin, 40-44, 262-63,

Jodl, Colonel General Alfred, 78, 83, 116, 173, 226-27, 261, 268, 339,
376, 401-4, 435-36, 467, 474

Eclipse maps and, 96-104, 436n

Hitler's remark on suicide to, 405

marriage of, 107 Jodl, Luise, 97-101, 103n, 107, 401-2, 405n Johnson,
Lieutenant Colonel Briard P., 284 Johnson, Colonel Walter M., 292
Junge, Gertrud, 494-97 Jungmittag, Biddy, 36 Knowledge Kaether,
Colonel, 428 Kaganovich, Lazar M., 248 Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church,
14, 165, 486 Karinhall, 300-1, 397, 426

evacuated, 401-3 Karlsbad, 76 Karlshorst, 42, 447 Karstadt's department
store, 417, 450-52 Katukov, Colonel General Mikhail Yefimovich, 193-94,
302, 348, 361-62, 367-68

First Guards Tank Army of, 302, 361, 367-68, 390-91, 428 Katushkas,
345, 348-49, 420, 479,

"KCB" pill, 32 Keitel, Field Marshal Wilhelm, 78, 226-28, 260, 261,
403

attempts to persuade Hitler to leave Berlin, 435-36

determination of, 467-68

dismisses Heinrici, 476-77

visits Wenck, 436, 443-45 Kelm, Alexander, 453 Kempka, SS Colonel,
Erich, 337,

Kennan, George F., 157, 183 Kesselring, Field Marshal Albert, 277, 297,
404 Ketzler, Gertrud, 33, 166 Khudyakov, Marshal Sergei V., 79n Kiel,
124, 329 King, Captain Charles, 134 King, Admiral Ernest J., 140, 147
Kinnard, Colonel Harold, 125 Kinzel, General Eberhard, 92-93, 221-22,
225, 229-30, 427 Kloptsch, Else "Eddy," 37-38, 60,

Klosterdorf, 386 Klotz, Jurgen-Erich, 409 Kluge, Field Marshal Gunther
von, 66, 75 Knight, Captain Jack A., 307-8 Knoblauch, Eva, 437 Koch,
Ilse, 327 Koch, Jolenta, 491 Kockler, Maria, 35 Koenig, Lieutenant
General Joseph,

Kohler, Major Haley E., 285 Kolb, Ingeborg, 20-21, 58 Kolb, Robert,
20-21, 58 Kolb, Lieutenant Colonel Roland L.,

Kolberg, 66, 269 Kolberg (film), 373 Koller, General Karl, 261, 405,
426-27, 436, 468 Koniev, Marshal Ivan Stepanovich, 21, 38, 184, 194,
248n, 449,

background of, 245-46

called to Moscow, 243-51

drives for Berlin, 391-93, 396, 412, 434

fears unilateral surrender, 354-55

Neisse offensive of, 353-57, 368,

plans attack on Berlin, 250-51, 254 Konig, Ilse, 408 Konigin-Luise
Strasse, 18, 166 Konigsberg, 378 Kopenick, 166, 358, 372 Korab,
Alexander, 493 Korolevich, Pfc Alexander, 332 Kosney, Corporal Herbert,
46-48, 61, 262, 431-32, 440-42 Kosney, Kurt, 47-48, 61, 262,

Koster, Ursula, 484-85 Kothenerstrasse, 171 Kotzebue, Lieutenant
Albert, 470-71 Kraft, Fritz, 408 Kramer, Staff Sergeant Wilfred, 324
Krampnitz, 436 Krebs, Lieutenant General Hans, 80, 225, 276-77, 385,
403, 404, 413-15, 426-28, 434, 438-39, 448, 472, 496, 497, 515

appointed Chief of OKH, 228,

at Fuhrerbunker conference with Heinrici, 260-61, 264-68, 273

suicide of, 502, 503

in surrender negotiations, 498-500 Kremlin described, 243-44 Kreuzberg,
24, 29, 59, 489 Kreuznacherstrasse, 369 Kruger, Eleanore, 43, 447, 462
Kruger, Otto, 42 Krupp and Druckenmuller plant, 262,

Kulmbach, 174, 374 Kunz, SS Colonel Helmut, 495 Kurfurstendamm, 14, 54,
165, 406,

Kuster, Klaus, 52, 451, 453,

Kustrin, 87-89, 93-94, 224-26, 254, 256, 265, 335, 345-50,

Kutuzov, General Mikhail, 247 Kuznetsov, General Vasili, 361

Like L Tower, 167; see also Zoo Bunker (zoo towers) Lammerding, General
Heinz, 92 Lamprecht, Dr. Gunther, 31 "Land Forces Commander," 204, 205
Landwehr Canal, 382, 408, 481 Lang, Captain Hellmuth, 111, 506-7
Latvia, 142 Leahy, Fleet Admiral William D.,

Leckscheidt, Dr. Arthur, 24-25, 59, 369-70, 452 Legathiere, Raymond,
48, 373 Le Havre, 202 Lehrterstrasse Prison, 45-48, 61, 262, 431-32,
439-42 Leibl, Wilhelm, 168 Leibman, Lieutenant Gerald P., 135 Leipzig,
148, 156, 283, 297

Eisenhower's plans to advance on, 202, 203, 215, 217, 232, 237, 238,
249, 326 Leipzigerstrasse, 480 Lelyushenko, General D. D., 412
Leningrad, siege of, 34 Lichtenberg, 13, 42, 358, 430, 447,

Lichtenrade, 434 Linge, SS Sturmbannfuhrer Heinz, 498 Linz, 216
Lippert, Julius, 408-9 Lipschitz, Joachim, 42-43, 447, 462 Lithuania,
142 Looting by Germans, 450-53 Loringhoven, Major Freytag von, 80-81,
227 Louis XVI, King of France, 197 Lubben, 256, 357, 368, 391, 396,

Lubeck, 116, 144, 329, 410 Luftwaffe, 131, 167, 223, 365, 378, 426

bombs OKH command column, 413

Fieseler Storch brought down by Piper Cub, 190, 310-12

Goering's personal guards from, 300, 402, 426

ground combat forces of, 269-70, 271, 272, 395

last commander of, 482-83 Luxembourg, 146 Lyne, Major General Louis,
280

7th Armored Division of, 128, 134, 135, 280-81 More McCloy, John J.,
153 McLain, Major General Raymond S., 180, 293, 304, 322 McWhinnie,
Sergeant Hugh, 281 Macon, Major General Robert C., 128, 180, 285, 288,
290

83rd Infantry Division of, 128-29, 134, 285, 288, 290-91, 319-20, 322,
325, 330 Magdeburg, 284, 443, 446

Americans arrive at, 305-6

German defense of, 298, 315, 322, 365, 388 Magder, Herbert, 409
Mahlsdorf, 358 Maigatter, Elfriede, 451-52 Mainz, 129, 147 Majewski,
Elena, 450, 489-91 Malenkov, Georgi M., 248 Malta meeting of Combined
Chiefs of Staff, 139, 207 Manstein, Field Marshal Erich von, 66
Manteuffel, General Hasso von, 87, 110, 395-96, 473, 474-77

Third Panzer Army of, 87, 222, 265-66, 299, 352, 353, 394-96, 402, 415,
423, 438, 472-73, 475 Maps of occupation zones

German capture of, 90, 96-104, 116, 278, 363-64, 436n

Roosevelt's map, 147-49, 156,

Maps used by U.s. Army, 134 Mariendorf, 449 Marienfelde, 49, 372
Marquardt, Dodo, 369 Marshall, General of the Army George C., 126, 147,
148n, 149, 153n,

on capture of Berlin, 278-79

messages to Eisenhower, 199, 214-15, 216, 234, 236-39 Martin,
Lieutenant William S., 310-12 Matzker, Father Alfons, 487-88 Maybach I,
77-79 Maybach II, 77-79 Mecklenburg lakes, 475 Melanchthon Church, 24,
59, 370 Menzel, Gerhard, 503

Merriam, Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler G., 132-33, 289, 305-6
Meteorological station (potsdam), 372, 450n Meunier, Christa, 31-32
Michael, King of Rumania, 162 Michalke, Father Joseph, 487-88 Miede,
Hans, 422, 461 Mikoyan, Anastas I., 248 Milbrand, Elisabeth, 359, 457
Milk, 17-19, 57, 369, 458-59 Minden, 291 Mission Sisters of the Sacred
Heart, 25-26, 59, 370-71, 455-56, 464-65,

Mittenwalde, 449 Moabit, 450 Model, Field Marshal Walter, 131, 282, 396
Mogg, Warrant Officer Ronald, 389-90 Mohring family, 40-41, 262, 358,

Moller (nazi), 489 Molotov, Vyacheslav M., 248 Monte Cassino, 272, 397
Montgomery, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law, 103, 116, 177-79, 185

Eisenhower holds up drive to Berlin by, 216-17, 232-42, 279-80

opposes Eisenhower, 202-6, 232, 233-34, 241

plans drive for Berlin, 135-36, 139-40, 165, 199-202, 206-7

Twenty-first Army Group of, 116, 129, 135-36, 139-40, 200, 216-17,
232-33, 282, 325-26 Mopti, 454 Morell, Professor Theodor, 264n Morgan,
Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E., 182, 201, 241

plans Rankin C, 141-42, 144-45, 150 Morgenthau plan, 161n Moscow, 143

Heinrici's stand at, 73-74

Kremlin described, 243-44 Moscow Conference (1943), 143 Moselle River,
130 Mosely, Philip E., 152, 156, 157, 158, 159n, 183
Mourmelon-le-Grand, 124 Movie theaters, 373 Mulde, 297, 298 Muller, SS
Gruppenfuhrer Heinrich, 46, 47 Muller, Inge, 367, 492
Muller-Hillebrand, Major General Burkhart, 476, 477 Muncheberg, 358,
397, 398, 407 Munich, 202, 216, 230, 497 Murphy, Robert 159n, 177
Museum treasures stored, 167-68 Mussolini, Benito, 497 Not Napoleon I,
Emperor of the French, 194,

Nassenheide, 474 National Redoubt (Alpenfestung)

Eisenhower's plans against, 216, 237, 238, 279, 329-30

intelligence reports on, 209-14

map of, 211

proven a chimera, 446-47 Nauen, 445 Naumann, Dr. Werner, 29, 437, 496,
497, 501, 502 Nazis, 19, 24, 28, 32, 51-56

Berliners' attitude to, 52, 371-72

flight of, 69, 405-7

suicide of, 34, 407 Nebe, General Artur, 47 Neisse River, 86, 87

Russian offensive over, 255, 353-57,

Nelson, Lieutenant Clarence A., 133 Nestorstrasse, 23 Neuenhagen, 39,
430 Neukolln, 418, 448, 452 Neumann, Edith, 29 Neumann, Hugo, 29
Nicodemus, Lieutenant Robert E., 312-13 Nicolaieff, Dr., 350 Niedieck,
Lieutenant Gerda, 466, 514 Niemoller house, 454 Nijmegen, 120, 129
Nikolassee, 36 Nolte, Fire Colonel Wilhelm, 479 Norway, 238, 329, 446
Norwegian volunteers in German Army,

Notte Canal, 434 Novikov, Sergeant Nikolai Georgievich, 346-47
Nuremberg, 202, 203 Nuremberg trials, 104n, 407n O Obersalzberg, 125,
210 Occupation of Germany

airborne assault on Berlin planned, 120-25, 147, 179, 249,

British planning for, 141-42, 144-45,

conflict between State and War departments, 151-52, 156-57

corridors to Berlin proposed, 152, 158-59

French zone accepted, 162

German capture of maps for, 90, 96-104, 116, 278, 363-64, 436n

joint occupation of Berlin planned, 143, 144, 148, 154, 159

Roosevelt's objections to plans for, 141, 145-50, 154-61

Russians accept Rankin C plan for,

zones formally approved, 162 Oder Bruch, 352, 360

Oder front

condition of German troops on, 222-24, 265-66, 269, 272-73

German reinforcements to, 271-72, 414, 335, 342

Kustrin attack, 93-94, 224-26

plans for Russian offensive on, 21-22, 250-51, 254, 299, 301-3

Russian offensive on, 345-53, 360-65, 367-68, 384-86, 390-99, 434,
437-39, 472-76

Russians' original positions on, 87-90, 193, 208-9, 265 Ohnesorge,
Wilhelm, 303 Ohrdruf concentration camp, 327-28 OKH (army High
Command), 77-79, 229-30, 466

evacuates Zossen, 413

Guderian relieved as Chief of, 225-29

Krebs appointed Chief of, 228

united with OKW, 466, 467 OKW (armed Forces High Command), 77-79, 96,
230, 466

united with OKH, 466, 467

"voice" of, 446 Olbertz, Dr. Albert, 47 Olympic Stadium, 479 Omaha
Beach, 315 Operation Anvil, 238 Operation Eclipse (rankin C)

accepted by Russians, 153-54

German capture of maps of, 90, 96-104, 116, 278, 363-64, 436n

Morgan's planning of, 141-42, 144-45, 150

planned airborne assault on Berlin under, 120-25, 147, 179, 249,

Roosevelt's objections to, 145-50,

Operation Effective, 125 Operation Eruption, 124 Operation Jubilant,
125, 282 Operation Overlord (invasion), 122, 141, 315, 375

Roosevelt's objections to, 146-47 Operation Rankin, see Operation
Eclipse Operation Talisman, 122 Oppenheim, 116 Oranienburgstrasse, 408
OSS (office of Strategic Services),

on National Redoubt, 210, 212 Osterwieck, 306 Ostmann, Colonel Hermann,
294-26, 389-90, 409-12, 508-9 People Pankow, 13, 40, 262, 358, 429,
462-64, 478, 487 Panzer, Hildegard, 511 Panzerbar, Der, 450
Panzerfauste, 52, 385-86, 391,

Pariser Platz, 378 Parkins, Lieutenant Bill, 324 Patch, Lieutenant
General Alexander, Seventh Army of, 125, 130, 213 Patton, Lieutenant
General George S., 135, 178

Montgomery and, 205

at Ohrdruf concentration camp, 327-28

Third Army of, 116, 130, 131, 207, 282, 283n, 297, 326,

Pemsel, Lieutenant General Max, 106,

Pergamon sculptures, 167 Petcoff, First Sergeant George, 293 Peters,
Major Alcee L., Jr.,

Philharmonic Orchestra, 16, 171-72

evacuation plan for, 173-75, 373-75,

Plassenburg, 174 Plon, 506-7 Plotzensee, 431 Pluskat, Major Werner,
315, 446 Poganowska, Lisbeth, 18 Poganowska, Richard, 17-20, 57, 369,

Poland, 161, 193

1939 Russo-German clash in, 209

Russian claims to, 142-43

Stalin's violation of Yalta agreement on, 162, 164 Polevoi, Colonel
Boris, 433, 504 Police, Berlin, 16, 450 Popiel, Lieutenant General
Nikolai N., 249n, 302, 348, 350, 360-61, 390-91, 394 Population of
Berlin, 26-27 Posen, 268 Post office, 408 Postage stamps, 303 Potsdam,
372, 413, 436, 450n Potsdam Bridge, 503 Potsdamer Platz, 49, 165, 373,
420 Potsdamerstrasse, 422 Prague, 257, 273, 353 Pravda (newspaper), 429
Prenzlau, 104, 402 Presnell, First Sergeant William G.,

Preysing, Bishop Count Konrad von, 460 Prieros, 37-39, 493
Prisoner-of-war (Pow) camps

captured by Americans, 313

evacuation of Stalag 357, 190, 294-96, 389-90, 410-12,

planned airborne drops on, 125, 282 Prisoners of war, German

of Russians, 429-30

in West, 291, 326 Prisoners of war, Russian, 335, 349,

Probst, Margareta, 489 Promeist, Margarete, 422, 450, 488 Pukhov,
General Nikolai Pavlovich, 354, 356

Thirteenth Army of, 354, 356, 357 Putlitzstrasse, 490 Quite Quebec
Conference, 146, 160-61 Rather Radusch, Hildegard, 37-39, 60, 493
Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich, 405 R.a.f., 56

attacks POW column, 410-11

See also Air raids on Berlin "Rag-Tag Circus" (83rd Infantry Division),
128-29, 134, 285, 288, 290-91, 319-20, 322, 325, 330 "Railsplitters"
(84th Infantry Division), 128, 134, 289, 292,

Rankin, see Operation Eclipse Rankine, Paul Scott, 496 Rape, see Sexual
attack Rastenburg, 55

attempted assassination of Hitler at,

Ration allowance, 38, 409-10 Ravene, Liese-Lotte, 35 Red Army, see
Russian Army "Red Ball Highway," 197 Red Star (newspaper), 28n, 429,
493n Redoubt, see National Redoubt Refior, Colonel Hans, 66, 106,
218-20, 229-30, 377, 381, 384, 405 Refugees, 44, 385, 394, 443-44

atrocity stories of, 27-30

from Berlin, 510-11 Regensburg, 203, 216 Reich, Das (magazine), 66
Reichhelm, Colonel Gunther, 111, 298, 366, 443 Reichskanzlei, 56, 302,
340, 341,

described, 14, 258-59

See also Fuhrerbunker Reichsstrasse 96, 69-70, 368 Reichstag building,
15, 115, 302, 382, 418, 502

planting of Soviet flag on, 186, 449, 503 Reims, SHAEF in, 197-98
Reinickendorf, 41, 486 Reitsch, Flight Captain Hanna, 482-83 Remagen
bridgehead, 17, 86-87, 130, 207, 314, 334-35 Reschke, Christa, 263, 491
Reschke, Rudolf, 166, 263, 491 Reymann, Major General Hellmuth, 106,
376-84

assumes command of Berlin, 65-66

demolition plans of, 334-35, 378-80

Goebbels and, 217-20, 377-78, 400

replaced as commander of Berlin, 428

Vistula Army Group and, 229, 334, 384, 400, 413 Rheinmetall-Borsig
factory, 372 Rheinsberg, 466 Rhine, Anglo-American crossing of, 17,
86-87, 116, 126, 129-30, 140,

Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 370, 398, 403, 417 Richter, Charlotte, 453,
473 Ridgway, Major General Matthew B.,

Riedel, Gustav, 63, 170 Ring defenses, see Fortifications of Berlin
Robinson, Lieutenant William D.,

Rock, Major Julius, 329 Rokossovskii, Marshal Konstantin, 21, 185, 194,
245, 248n

Second Belorussian Front of, 247, 255, 353, 395, 402, 415,

Romling, Horst, 358 Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin, 66, 111, 128, 141

suicide of, 507 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 164n Roosevelt, Franklin D., 101,
154n, 158n, 182, 280

capture of Berlin and, 140, 145-48,

death of, 317-19

de Gaulle and, 145-46

his attitude toward Russia and Stalin, 143n, 162, 164, 355n

illness of, 160-61, 231, 235

objects to occupation plans, 141, 145-50, 154-57 Rose, Captain Ben L.,
133, 291, 293, 318 Rosenberg, Mrs. Anna, 164 Rosenthal, Hans, 42, 462
Rosetz, Gunther, 452 Rosse, Harry, 23 Rosslau, 297 Roter Ausweis, 408
Royal Palace, 418 Rozanov, Lieutenant Vladimir Pavlovich, 346 Rudow,
448 Ruhleben, 50, 372 Ruhling, Inge, 33 Ruhmann, Heinz, 32 Ruhr Valley,
129, 131-32, 215, 217, 249, 282, 326 Rumania, 142, 162 Rundstedt, Field
Marshal Gerd von, 66, 70, 368 Russian Air Force, 165-68, 350-51,
353-54, 368 Russian Army, 17, 60

January offensive of, 82-85

backwardness of troops of, 493-94

Communist Party membership and, 347n

described, 457-58

divisional strength in, 251

first troops in Berlin, 457-65

meeting of Anglo-American forces and, 187-88, 208-9, 215-16, 293,

plans attack on Berlin, 21-22, 193-94, 243, 247-52, 254-56,

requests bombing of Zossen, 79n

See also Oder front; Sexual attack

Russian Army units

FRONTS (Army GROUPS) First Belorussian (zhukov), 21, 247, 250, 254,
345-51, 360-62, 367-68, 393-94, 396, 449 First Ukrainian (koniev), 247,
255-56, 353-57, 368, 391-93, 396, 412, 434, 449, 472 Second Belorussian
(rokossovskii), 247, 255, 395, 402, 438

ARMIES First Guards Tank, 193, 360, 361, 367-68, 390-91, 428 Second
Guards, 302 Third Guards Tank, 357, 392, 412, 432-33 Third Shock, 361
Fourth Guards Tank, 357, 412 Fifth Guards, 357 Fifth Shock, 302 Eighth
Guards, 193, 302, 346-50, 360, 390, 429 Thirteenth, 354, 356, 357
Twenty-eighth, 255 Thirty-first, 255 Sixty-fifth, 245

CORPS, 79th, 335

DIVISIONS 6th Guards Rifle, 356 44th Rifle, 245 49th Rifle, 335 79th
Guards Rifle, 502 171/ Rifle, 186

BRIGADE, 65th Guards Tank, 368 Russian Army women, 303, 346 Russian
occupation zone, 100, 116, 144, 297n

accepted by Russia, 153-54

Roosevelt's proposal for, 148 size of, 154 Russian prisoners of war,
335, 349,

Russian State Defense Committee,

Russian volunteers in German Army, 222, 265 Russian workers in Berlin,
48-50 Rybalko, Colonel General Pavel Semenovich, 412

Third Guards Tank Army of, 357, 392, 412, 432-33 So S-Bahn, 382
Sabotage by foreign workers, 51 Saenger, Erna, 29, 59, 166, 454-55
Saenger, Konrad, 166, 454-55 St. Agnes, 456 St. Hildegard's
Hospital,

Salzburg, 329 Samsonov, Lieutenant Konstantin Yakovlevich, 186 San
Francisco, 495 Sandau, 288 Sauerbruch, Dr. Ferdinand, 31, 53
Sauerbruch, Dr. Margot, 31 Schedle, Captain Franz, 502 Scheffler, Dr.
Wolfgang, 40n Schelle, Heinrich, 36, 453 Schering chemical plant, 50,
409, 494 Schirach, Baroness Baldur von, 359-60,

Schliemann, Heinrich, 167 Schneidemuhl, 268 Schneider, Otto, 430
Schnetzer, Max, 418 Schommer, Captain Francis C., 134,

Schonebeck, 306-10 Schoneberg, 18, 30, 359, 457-59,

Schonewalde, 351 Schoneweide, 447 Schonholz, 414 Schorner, Field
Marshal Ferdinand, 76

army group of, 87, 257, 270, 353, 385, 416, 438 Schroeder, Helena, 457
Schroter, Georg, 407 Schultz, Private Arthur "Dutch," 282 Schultze,
Erna, 53-54 Schultze, Hanna, 166, 372-73 Schultze, Robert, 166, 372-73,
450 Schulz, Mrs., 491 Schulz, Aribert, 480-81, 511 Schuster, Hermann,
430 Schwabisch Gmund, 507 Schwagermann, Gunther, 501 Schwartz, Anna,
169 Schwartz, Heinrich, 168-69, 171, 408, 484, 512 Schwarz, Margarete,
35, 405 Schwarze Grund Park, 459 Schwedt, 265, 475 Schwerin von
Krosigk, Count, 318 Scorched-earth policy, 172-73, 332-35,

Searchlights, Zhukov's, 254, 303, 345-48, 354, 361 Seelow Heights,
208n, 247, 346, 350, 360-61, 364, 368, 390-91, 393, 396

described, 352 Seven Years' War, 319 Sexual attack, 484-93

fear of, 26-31, 371, 406, 456,

fear proven false at first, 459-60,

official Russian attitude to, 493n SHAEF (supreme Headquarters), 122,

in Reims, 197-98

See also Anglo-American forces; Eisenhower Shalin, General Mikhail, 360
Sharpe, Lieutenant Colonel Granville A., 320 Shearer, Captain John L.,
281 Shell House, 54 Shtemenko, General S. M., 248-50 Sieges Allee, 262
Siemens plant, 372 Simpson, Lieutenant General William H., 178, 283-84,
292, 304, 315, 320, 388

Ninth Army of, 126, 129, 131, 132, 135, 139-40, 204, 216-17, 232, 233,
238, 241-42, 282-94, 304-17, 319-25, 326, 329, 330-32, 388

ordered not to go to Berlin, 331-32 Skagerrak Square, 262 Slave
laborers, 48-51 Sloan, Colonel George B., 322 Slogans on walls, 369,
370, 422 Smith, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell, 199, 200, 206, 214,

Smolensk, 75, 300 Sokolovskii, Colonel General Vasili, 177, 186, 248n,
505, 506n Solimann, Otto, 405 Sorge, Jutta, 46, 61 Soviet War News, 28n
Spandau, 20, 58, 372, 445, 473-74, 481, 511

Zhukov's plans for, 22 Speer, Albert, 339, 403

opposes demolition in Berlin, 378-79

opposes Hitler's scorched-earth policy, 172-73, 332-35

plans assassination of Hitler, 176, 333

plans evacuation of Philharmonic, 173-75, 373-75, 387

visits Heinrici, 332-35 Spittelmarkt, 480 Spree, 382, 391-93, 481, 501
Spremberg, 357 SS (schutzstaffel), 32, 39, 290, 404, 452, 479n

arrests Goering, 468-69

atrocities by, 28, 34, 440-42,

blows up tunnel under Spree, 481

fanaticism of, 53

as guardians of Fuhrerbunker, 258,

last-ditch resistance by, 289-91, 307,

offered by Himmler for Oder front, 271

punishes deserters, 437, 480 Staaken, 20 Stadthagen, 291 Stahl,
Heinrich, 41 Stalags, see Prisoner-of-war (Pow) camps Stalin, Josef,
21, 27, 28n, 80, 102, 149, 150, 182, 194

attack on Berlin and, 243, 249-52, 254-56, 278, 335-36, 391-94,

described, 248

Eisenhower's message to, 215-16, 231-36, 240, 243

fears unilateral surrender, 355n

informed of Himmler's peace feelers, 470

1941 territorial demands of, 142-43

on Red Army atrocities, 493n

replies to Eisenhower, 251-52, 253

Roosevelt's attitude to, 162

violates Yalta agreements, 162, 164, 235 "Stalin Organs" (Katushkas),
345, 348-49, 479 Stalingrad, 132, 141, 193, 300,

Starr, Captain James W.,

State, Department of, and plans for occupation of Germany, 149, 151-52,
155 Staub, Private First Class Paul, 188 Stauffenberg, Colonel Claus
Graf von,

Stavka, 249 Steglitz, 434 Steiner, SS General, 108, 395

does not plan to attack, 474

Hitler orders attack by, 422, 426-27, 449, 466, 473-74 Stella, Ursula,
483 Sternfeld, Agnes, 43 Sternfeld, Annemarie, 43 Sternfeld, Leo,
43-44, 461-62 Stettin, 87, 146, 148, 223, 426,

Stewart, Lieutenant Colonel Carleton E., 324 Stewart, Private First
Class Carroll R., 294 Strang, Sir William, 149, 153, 154, 158
Strausberg, 407 Strehla, 471 Stresemann, Gustav, 46 Strong, Major
General Kenneth W. D.,

Stumpfegger, Dr. Ludwig, 495 Subway, 408-9 Suicide, 429-30, 471, 483,
487-88, 491

attempted, 479n, 486

of the Goebbels family, 495, 501

of the Hitlers, 497-98, 500

by other Nazis, 34, 407, 489, 502,

plans for, 31-33, 423 Supreme Headquarters, see SHAEF Surrender, 398

of Berlin, 109, 502-3

Goebbels' negotiations for, 498-500

Himmler's negotiations for, 94, 404, 469-70, 496

Hitler's refusal to negotiate, 417

Russian fears of unilateral, 235,

unconditional, 103-4 Suvorov, Field Marshal Aleksandr, 247 Svishchev,
Sergeant Nikolai Alexandrovich, 346, 348 Sweden, 137, 234, 238, 367
Swedish Red Cross, 404, 469 Switzerland, 212 Symphony, see Philharmonic
Orchestra That Tallett, Private Joe, 282 Tangermunde, 288, 312-13, 317
Taschner, Gerhard, 171, 173-74, 374,

Taylor, Major General Maxwell D., 124, 125, 282 Tedder, Air Chief
Marshal Sir Arthur, 215, 232 Tegel, 372, 479

Teheran Conference, 141, 149, 150, 182 Telegraph office, 450
Telephones

Exchange 500, 79, 433

Schoneberg exchange, 359, 409, 458 Telpuchovskii, Major General Boris
S., 504-5 Teltow, 434 Tempelhof, 35, 44, 262, 303, 372, 407, 434,
461-62, 499 Tempelhof Airport, 121, 125, 450,

Tengelmann's grocery store, 452-53 Teupitz, 449 Teutoberger Wald, 289
Thamm, Private Willi, 480 Thorwald, Juergen, 227n Tiergarten, 14-15,
115, 378, 418 Todt Labor Organization, 405 Tokyo, 450 Torgau, 471
Trampe, 415 Trans-Ocean, 510 Treuenbrietzen, 445 Triebel, 356, 357
Trotha, Major General Thilo von, 106, 427-28, 475 Troy, treasures of,
167 Troyanoskii, Lieutenant Colonel Pavel, 348, 393-94, 493n Truman,
Harry S, on Himmler's peace feelers, 469-70 Truman Bridge, 320, 322
Tundern, 291 Us UFA film studios, 493-94 Uhland, Johann Ludwig, 259
Uhlandstrasse, 480 Ulap exhibition hall, 441 Unconditional surrender,
103-4 Underground groups

Communist, 37, 39, 47, 430-32

Wiberg, 23, 136-38, 366-67, 400-1, 492 Ungnad, Vera, 450, 489-91 United
States Army, 17

artillery-spotting planes of, 126-27, 190, 310-12

See also Anglo-American forces; Eisenhower; War Department United
States Army Air Force, 134

in advance to Elbe, 325

last raid on Berlin, 420

Troop Carrier Command, 326

bombs Zossen, 79n United States Army units

ARMY GROUPS Sixth, 130 237, 283, 329 Twelfth, 129-32, 204, 207, 212-13,
232, 233, 282-83

ARMIES First, 129-30, 131, 204, 207, 282, 326, 472 Third, 116, 130,
131, 207, 282, 283n, 297, 326, 327 Seventh, 125, 130, 213 Ninth, 126,
129, 131, 132, 135, 139-40, 204, 216-17, 232, 233, 238, 241-42, 282-94,
304-17, 319-25, 326, 329, 330-32, 388 Fifteenth, 129, 282

CORPS 13th, 304 18th Airborne, 122 19th, 293, 304, 322

DIVISIONS 1/ Infantry, 128 2nd Armored, 128, 132-34, 284-85, 288, 289,
291-93, 304-9, 314-17, 319, 322-25, 330, 388 4th Infantry, 128 5th
Armored, 127, 128, 133, 135, 288, 310-14, 317 17th Airborne, 129 29th
Infantry, 128 30th Infantry, 133, 285, 289-91, 322, 329, 332, 388, 446
69th Infantry, 128, 470, 472 82nd Airborne, 119-24, 281,

83rd Infantry, 128-29, 134, 285, 288, 290-91, 319-20, 322, 325, 330
84th Infantry, 128, 134, 289, 292, 317 101/ Airborne, 121, 124-25 102nd
Infantry, 289

REGIMENTS 67th Armored, 134, 304, 306,

117th Infantry, 292 120th Infantry, 332 333rd Infantry, 318 505th
Parachute, 282

BATTALIONS 82nd Reconnaissance, 132-33, 134, 289, 305-6 92nd Field
Artillery, 133

OTHER UNITS 113th Mechanized Cavalry Group, 133, 291 United States
occupation zone, 100,

Roosevelt's objection to plans for, 141, 145-50, 155-61 Unter den
Linden, 13, 15, 418, 502 Very Van Hoeven, Pia 36, 59, 454, 459 Victory
Column, 15, 378 "Victory Division" (5th Armored Division), 127, 128,
133, 135, 288, 310-14, 317 Vienna, 242, 363

siege of (1683), 66 Vlasov, Lieutenant General Andrei A., 222, 265
Volk, Sergeant Helmut, 479-80

Volkischer Beobachter, 38,

last issue of, 450 Volkssturm, see Home Guard units Voltaire's Candide,
360 Von, names with, see last element of name Vosges, 130 Vote for
Hitler (1932), 52 Voznesenskii, Nikolai A., 248 Will Wahrenholz, 318
Walbeck, 44 Waldsieversdorf, 398 War Department Civil Affairs Division,
151-52, 156-57, 158-59 Warm Springs, Georgia, 231, 317 Washburn,
Lieutenant Colonel Israel B., 311 Wassermann, Elfriede, 421-22, 481
Wassermann, Erich, 421, 481 Weber, Brigitte, 36, 511 Wedding, 478
Weichs, Field Marshal Maximilian Freiherr von, 83 Weidling, General
Karl, 109, 365, 396-98, 478, 496

execution ordered, 428, 447-48

56th Panzer Corps of, 364-65, 396, 415, 428, 434, 447-49, 478, 481,
483, 502

named Commandant of Berlin, 449

surrenders Berlin, 502-3 Weimar, 296-97 Weissensee, 13, 358, 372, 382,
429, 430, 478 Weltlinger, Margarete, 40-42, 263, 358, 462-64
Weltlinger, Siegmund, 40-42, 262-63, 358, 462-64 Wenck, Irmgard, 275
Wenck, Sigried, 275 Wenck, General Walther, 108, 274-76, 296-99, 315,
325, 365-66

links up with Busse, 510

ordered to attack eastwards, 441-45

Twelfth Army of, 275-76, 277, 296-99, 323-25, 365-66, 436, 439, 443-45,
449, 466, 467, 472, 510 Wendt, Walter, 62, 170 Werben, 288 Werewolves,
210 Weser River, 288 Westerhusen, 314 Westermann, Dr. Gerhart von,
173-76, 373-75, 387 White, Major General Isaac D., 132, 133, 180, 181,
284, 292, 304, 315

2nd Armored Division of, 128, 132-33, 134, 284-85, 288, 289, 291,
292-93, 304-9, 314-17, 319, 322-25, 330,

Whiteley, Major General John F. M., 239n, 241 Wiberg, Carl Johann,
22-23, 59, 136-38, 366-67, 400-1, 492 Wienecke, Colonel Robert H., 119
Wilhelmstrasse, 502

artillery fire on, 418

bomb damage in, 14, 258 Williamson, Lieutenant Colonel Ellis W., 133
Wilmersdorf, 22, 31, 136, 165, 304, 418, 455, 459, 461, 473, 478, 487,
492

bomb damage in, 18 Wilson, Flight Sergeant Geoffrey K.,

Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland, 234, 237 Winant, John G.,
149-53, 157-59,

Winckler, Barbara, 166 Winckler, Charlotte, 165 Winckler, Ekkehart, 165
Winocour, Jack, 496 Winterfeldtstrasse, 359, 457 Wittenberge, 116, 297,
298 Wittingen, 318 Wohlermann, Colonel Hans Oscar, 110, 397, 398 Wolf,
Johanna, 56, 404 Working Security Committee, 151, 156 Wriezen, 265
Wulle-Wahlberg, Hans, 420 You Yalta Conference, 101-3, 161-62

agreements violated by Stalin, 162, 164, 235 Younger, Flight Sergeant
Calton, 410 Yushchuk, Major General Ivan, 186, 368, 391 As Zarzycki,
Bruno, 39, 60, 430-32 Zehlendorf, 17, 18, 434, 478,

Zerbst, 330 Zhukov, Marshal Georgi K., 38, 177, 185, 194, 248n, 345,
449, 500

background of, 244-45

called to Moscow, 243-51

criticism of, 360-61

in Oder offensive, 347, 350-51, 360-62, 391, 393-94, 412,

plans attack on Berlin, 21-22, 250-51, 254, 302-3, 352

reprimanded by Stalin, 393-94 Ziegler, SS Major General Jurgen,

Zones of occupation, see occupation of Germany Zoo, 62-63, 511-12

air raids on, 14, 169

closes, 408

described, 168-71

shelled, 484 Zoo Bunker (zoo towers), 167-68, 377, 382, 466, 483-84,
514 Zossen, 70, 368

bombing of, 79n

described, 77-79

Heinrici at, 77-90

Russian capture of, 432-34

Russian drive on, 393, 407,