Battle of Halbe: Encyclopedia II - Battle of Halbe - The Battle

Battle of Halbe - The Battle

Battle of Halbe - Prelude

On April 16 The Soviets started the Battle of Berlin with an attack by two Soviet Fronts across the Oder river. By April 21 they had broken through the German front line in two places and had started to surround Berlin. The German 9. Armee was between the two massive Soviet pincers that were heading for Berlin. The Southern pincer consisted of armies of the 1st Ukrainian Front (1UF) under the command Ivan Konev had penetrated the furthest and had cut through the area behind the German 9. Armee's front lines.

Battle of Halbe - Encirclement

The command of the V Corps trapped with the 9. Armee north of Forst, passed from 4. Panzerarmee (part of Army Group Centre) to the 9. Armee (part of Army Group Weichsel under the command of Generaloberst Gotthard Heinrici). The corps was still holding on to Cottbus. While the bulk of Army Group Centre was being forced south-west along its lines of communication towards Czechoslovakia, the southern flank of 4. Panzerarmee had some local successes counter attacking north against the 1UF, Hitler gave some orders which showed that his grasp of military reality had gone. He ordered 9. Armee to hold Cottbus and set up a front facing west then they were to attack into the Soviet columns advancing North. This would allow them to form the northern pincer which would meet with the 4. Panzerarmee coming from the south and envelop the 1UF before destroying it. They were to anticipate an attack south by the 3. Panzerarmee and to be ready to be the southern arm of a pincer attack which would envelop the 1st Belorussian Front (1BF) which would be destroyed by SS Lieutenant-General Felix Steiner's III SS Corps advancing from North of Berlin. Later in the day when Steiner made it plain that he did not have the divisions to do this. Heinrici made it clear to Hitler's staff that unless the 9. Armee retreated immediately it was about to be enveloped by the Soviets. He stressed it was already too late for it to move North West to Berlin and would have to retreat west. Heinrici went on to say that if Hitler did not allow it to move west he would ask to be relieved of his command.

On April 22 at his afternoon situation conference Hitler fell into a tearful rage when he realised that his plans of the day before were not going to be realised. He declared that the war was lost, he blamed the generals and announced that he would stay on Berlin until the end and then kill himself. In an attempt to coax Hitler out of his rage, Chief of OKW Staff Generaloberst Alfred Jodl speculated that the 12. Armee which was facing the Americans could move to Berlin because the Americans already on the Elbe river were unlikely to move further east. Hitler immediately grasped the idea and within hours the army's commander General Walther Wenck was ordered to disengage from the Americans and move 12. Armee north-east to support Berlin. It was then realised that if the 9. Armee moved west it could link up with the 12. Armee. In the evening Heinrici was given permission to make the link up. Away from the map room in the Berlin Fuhrerbunker with its fantasy attacks of phantom divisions, the Soviets were getting on with winning the war.

Although in Hitler's mind the 12. Armee was going to break through to Berlin and the 9. Armee once it had broken out to the 12. Armee was going to help them, there is no evidence that Generals Heinrici, Busse or Wenck thought that this was at all possible. However Hitler's agreement to allow the 9. Armee to break through to the 12. Armee did enable it to open a window through which sizable numbers of German troops could escape to the west and surrender to the Americans, which is exactly what Wenck and Busse agreed to do. This was made easier when shortly after midnight on April 25 Busse was given authority "to decide for himself the best direction of attack"^[1]

In all there were about 80,000 men in the pocket, the majority were members of the 9. Armee (including the V Corps mentioned above), but there were also XI SS Panzer Corps, V SS Mountain Corps, and the Frankfurt Garrison.^[2]

Battle of Halbe - The Breakout

The breakout started on the April 24 with XX Corps of General Wenck's 12. Armee attacking eastwards. That night the Theodor Körner RAD Division attacked the 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, under the command of General I. P. Yermakov, near Treuenbrietzen. The next day the Scharnhorst Division started to engage the Soviets in and around Beelitz. While the Ulrich von Hutten Division tried to reach Potsdam and open a corridor into Berlin, other elements of the 12. Armee, as Wenck had agreed with Busse, pushed east to meet the 9. Armee in the words of Busse to Wenck planning to push west "like a caterpillar"^[3].

The 9. Armee had thirty one tanks left including fourteen King Tigers of the 502 SS Heavy Panzer Battalion which Busse intended to use in front to lead his breakout. The metaphor is quite apt because as the head lead the way the rear-guard in the tail was going to be engaged in just as heavy fighting trying to disengage from following Soviet forces.

The pocket into which the 9. Armee had been pushed by troops of the 1BF and 1UF and was a region of lakes and forest in the Spree Forest south-east of Fürstenwalde. The Soviets having broken through and surrounded their primary objective of Berlin turned to mopping up those forces pushed into the pocket. On the afternoon of the April 25^th the 3rd Army, the 33rd Army, the 69th Army and the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps (which specialised in forest fighting), following orders issued by General Georgy Zhukov the commander of the 1BF, attacked the pocket from the north east. Konev knew that to break out to the west the 9. Armee would have to cross the Berlin–Dresden autobahn south of a chain of lakes starting at Teupitz and running north-east. On the same day as Zhukov's attack in the north-east, he sent the 3rd Guards Army to support the 28th Army already to close the likely breakout route over the Berlin-Dresden autobahn.

The next morning the German vanguard of the caterpillar found a weak point between the two armies and many Germans were able to cross the autobahn before the Soviets managed to plug the gap. The fighting was very heavy and included incessant air attacks by the 2nd Air Army as well as air-bursting shells which rained wood splinters through the area like hail in a gale. During the whole battle the Soviet air force flew 2,459 attack missions and 1,683 bombing sorties^[4]. The Germans found that they could not use their armour as well as they had hoped, because it was vulnerable to destruction on the roads and could not grip on the sandy soil of the pine forest. The German vanguard managed to reach and cross the Mark-Zossen road (Reichstrasse 96) where it was spotted by a Luftwaffe plane. Hitler was furious when he realised that Busse was attempting to break out west and not aid him in Berlin. His command sent several messages demanding that the army turn towards Berlin, but received no answer.

During the night and the next day (April 27^th) the German renewed their attack along two axes south from the village of Halbe towards Baruth, and in the north from Teupitz. This attack failed at mass breakout although, like the day before, some groups did manage to slip through Soviet lines.

The front lines were not continuous because the forest meant that visibility was down to metres, so the danger of ambush and sudden assault was a problem for both sides. Smoke from burning sections of the forest, set alight by shell fire, helped the German and hindered the Soviets because it shielded the Germans from aerial reconnaissance and attack. This was cold comfort for any wounded German soldier who could not move fast enough to avoid the flames. It also hindered many German groups because without a compass and no sun it was very difficult to judge which direction to move. The sandy soil precluded the digging of foxholes and there was no time to construct anything more elaborate, so there was little or no protection from wooden splinters thrown up by artillery and tank HE shells which the Soviet forces deliberately aimed to explode at tree top height. ^[5]

On the night of April 28^th the Germans tried another mass breakout from around Halbe. They managed to break through the 50th Guards Rifle Division and created a corridor from Halbe to the west but they paid a very high price. During the 28th and 29th the Soviets reinforced the flanks and attacked from the south poring in Katyusha rockets and shells concentrating on the area around the Halbe.

By this time the Germans were spread over a wide area. The rearguard was at Storkow and the vanguard had linked up with the 12. Armee at Beelitz. There were large groups around Halbe. The Soviet battle plan was to split the caterpillar into segments and then destroy each segment individually. The German battle plan was to continue moving west as fast as possible keeping the corridor open.

The situation in Halbe was desperate for the Germans, orders being issued to recognisable formations which were by now all mixed up. There was considerable tension between SS and Wehrmacht soldiers with both accusing the other of helping their own comrades while ignoring the plight of the other. In Halbe itself some of the civilians took pity on very young solders ("Kindersoldaten") and allowed them to change out of their uniforms into civilian clothes. In one documented case an SS man appeared at the door of a cellar intending to shoot a Panzerfaust into a cellar with about 40 civilians and young Wehrmacht soldiers in it, only to be shot dead by one of the soldiers ^[6].

During the following days the fighting became more and more confused. If the Germans came into contact with Soviet forces and overran a Soviet position, the Soviets counter-attacked not only with ground forces but with artillery and aircraft. Losses on both sides were very high. By the time the fighting was over which was around the end of April, about 25,000 German soldiers had managed to escape to join up with the 12. Armee on the eastern side of Strasse 2 the road running north south through Beelitz. Although this was the end of the battle it was not the end of the breakout. The 12. and 9. Armee remnants then fought a fighting retreat westwards towards the Elbe so that they could surrender to the Americans.

Battle of Halbe - Aftermath

During the battle of Halbe casualties on both sides were very high. There are about 30,000 Germans buried in the cemetery at Halbe. About 20,000 Red Army died trying to stop the breakout most are buried at a cemetery next to the Mark-Zossen road. These are the known dead, but the remains of more who died in the battle are found every year so the total of those who died will never be known. Nobody knowns how many civilians died but it could have been as high as 10,000.^[7].

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Battle", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki