"Operation Berlin"
"A view from the Seelow Ridge lets us look into such a God blessing. The villages closely located anyway move up even closer to the endless side scene and everything merges to a spacious giant town. Between the individual quarters the fruit fields flourish like luxuriant gardens". This view of the things disclosed itself to the poet Theodor Fontane, as he came through the place Seelow during his "Walk In the Mark Brandenburg” in May 1860. Not easy to imagine how things would be 85 years later, when the small town Seelow and the Oderbruch (Oder valley) were turned into the biggest battlefield of the second World War in Europe on German ground.
In the night from April 15 to 16 - as usual - the RAF and their AVRO Lancaster bombers dropped their load of thousands of tons of high explosive - and incendiary bombs over the Reichshauptstadt, the capital of Berlin, actually, nothing unusual for the Berliners. If, as of 03.00 in the morning, the window panes would not have started to rattle in the eastern part of the metropolis. At first it was not clear to the people which new threat it was. But with the ever increasing light tremors it dawned on the optimists under the Berliners: Shell fire! The final battle had started.
The offensive did not come as a surprise for the Germans. It had been expected. Already since January the Red Army had started to arrange the necessary military operations at the perimeter of the Oderbruch to channel the enormous amount of material into the bridgeheads. Already January 31 at 06.00 first units of the 1. Belorussian front crossed the Oder at Kienitz, north of Küstrin. The frozen river made the crossing easier for the troops. South of Küstrin units of Chuikovs 1. Guard tank army managed to cross the river near Neu- Manschnow and Reitwein on February 2. With dashing speed the first pontoon bridge was built and the first seven tanks crossed over. These, however, were summoned back the next day as the tank army was transferred. All these crossing actions took place without any resistance of the Wehrmacht. The Soviets had succeeded in the surprise totally. Luckily for the Germans the Red Army had to fight enormous supply problems because of the enormous fast advance from the Vistula to the Oder. The Red Army lacked fuel, ammunition and food.
Nevertheless, the increased construction of temporary bridges started quite speedily. The only remedy of the Germans to disrupt the building activities were air attacks. The advantage was the proximity of concrete landing strips in the greater Berlin area. With anything available, the Luftwaffe began to attack the construction sites. "Mistel" were used next to conventional fighter-bombers of the type Me 109 or Fw 190. The “mistletoes” were tandem constructions in which the pilot sat in a Me 109 or Fw 190 over a Ju 88 or He 111. The big machine carried no cockpit but a charge carrier of 1.5 t to 3.5 t of high explosives. When the team approached the target, the pilot came loose from the charge carrier and steered it by remote control to the target. First use was carried out against a bridge at Göritz on March 4. A machine missed the target because of manoeuvring inability, two met the target and the fourth one missed the bridge, however, destroyed a couple of anti-aircraft gun positions instead.
On the days prior to April 16 the signs for the large-scale attack multiplied. Consequently, the commander of the ( Heeresgruppe (army group) Weichsel (Vistula), Generaloberst Gotthardt Heinrici, demanded from Hitler the withdrawal of the mass of the troops from the very front line onto the main front (HKL), a precaution in order to avoid the expected artillery blow. This demand was granted in the evening of April 15. In the hours before the attack Marshal Zhukov and K.F. Telgin, a member of the military council, proceeded to the headquarters of 8. Guard Army on top of the Reitwein Spur, at the upper part of Reitwein. Army General Chuikov was already present with his staff. Zhukov wrote in his memoirs: “Never before a clock had never moved so slowly. To kill the final 15 minutes we drank tea. We left the bunker exactly three minutes before the beginning of the artillery preparations and took our seats at the observation stand which the commander of the sapper troops had particularly carefully extended. One could overlook the whole area during the day from here which was covered by the early morning mist. I looked at the watch. It was exactly 05.00 hours ". This was Moscow time, 03.00 hours of German time.
An artillery fire never registered till now rained on top of the German lines. Heinricis measure of the withdrawal which he had carried out against the will of some of his field generals payed off now. A preventive measure of Zhukov was turned against his own forces. To illuminate the battlefield, he had ordered the disposition of 143 anti-aircraft headlights. However, this measure only contributed to confuse the own troops because the cloud from dust and gun smoke reflected the beams of the headlights and dazzled them. The haze was so strong that the observation post was also wrapped up on the Reitweiner Spur.
The artillery effect at the entire eastern front was devastating. Over 450000 shells were fired, 2 000 sorties flown and 450 tanks used alone at the front of the 9.army. But still the German front held. The German artillery kept the majority of its positions secret to the Soviet reconnaissance and put up a more effective resistance than the Russians had expected. The German anti-tank defence weighed heavily on three units that operated out of Gusow, Seelow and Sachsendorf. In the course of the day the ten Tigers and ten Panthers of the 1. Panzerabteilung (tank department) "Müncheberg" under captain Zobel shot up 45 - 50 Russian tanks. Four own losses were caused by friendly fire.
Zhukov was not amused about the progress of the first day in the Oderbruch. In order to accelerate the event three tank corps came into action at 14.30. What followed was a complete chaos as blocked up roads stopped any sensible use of the tanks. They became fair game of the German anti-tank forces. It did not look bad for the German defenders at the end of the first day. With the exception of the evacuation of the key position at Podelzig the front had held. General Busse, commander of the 9th army wrote about this: "In consideration of the dissimilar balance of power April 16th was a great defence success. Nowhere the enemy succeeded in breaking through, in fact he did not even come close to a decisive breakthrough at the ridge. The condition of the troops in the main focus of the frontline was dubious. It was impossible to compensate the losses of people and weapons any more and it was also impossible to relief the strongly run-down units. The Luftwaffe had supported the ground troops effectively but had not been able to achieve air superiority over the Russians".
The same day, Konevs 1. Ukrainian front crossed the river Neisse and formed the first bridgehead at 05.15. Already by 07.00 133 crossings were safeguarded. The air raids on Forst had a terrible effect on the morale of the defenders. Only towards the evening the attack came to a halt when German Panzers were identified near Cotttbus.
April 17 was indicated by dogged fights at all fronts. Zhukov under pressure from Stalin, called for the breakthrough and threw everything into the scale. The losses were so dreadful that reserves had to be mustered from back services to fill up the infantry units. Konev, however, made progress and crossed the river Spree in several places. The race to Berlin had started and Stalin stirred up the rivalry of his two army commanders.
On April 18 Marshall Rokossovski with the 2.Belorussian front started his offensive against the units of 3.Panzer Army under Hasso von Manteuffel . In parallel, the attack went on against the Seelower Ridge. Zhukov established a soft spot in the German front near Wriezen and threw reinforcements in the sector. In the morning of April 19 the Russians overran the positions of the CI army corps and took Wriezen. A 30 km wide gap opened up between Wriezen and Behledorf now. April 20 was to take a tragic end despite or just because of Hitler's birthday. The 9.Army was under enormous pressure and constantly under threat of encirclement. Fürstenwalde was threatened. Konevs troops moved 30 km per day northward towards the capital of the Reich and take Baruth. The Red Army advanced in the north on Werneuchen and Altlandsberg. The total encirclement of Berlin was only a question of time.
Within the next three days the Russian units moved unstoppably to and around Berlin. On April 24, at 06.00 the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front met at the airfield of Schönefeld, not far from Bohnsdorf.. The 9.Army was inevitably encircled. Berlin itself was surrounded the next day at Ketzin between Potsdam and Brandenburg.