Beyond Barbarossa,

Episode 100,

the Centennial Episode,

The Fall of Berlin.

Welcome to Beyond Barbarossa,

the first English language podcast in the world to focus on the full story of the Eastern Front of World War II.

I'm Scott Burry,

podcasting from the Redbeard Studio on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin people,

also called Ottawa,

and I'm joined by my indispensable assistant,

Daisy the Danger Doodle.

We're both very excited because this is episode

100.

That's right.

After nearly four years of following the progress of the war in the Eastern Theater of Europe,

chronologically,

we've reached the brutal,

bloody culmination in the capital of the universally reviled Nazi Reich.

And if you're listening to this episode on the day it's released,

it is the

81st anniversary of the victory.

in Europe,

8th May 1945.

You know that's not a spoiler.

You Beyond Barbarossa listeners are smart.

The other reason I'm extra excited today is that I'm joined by a special co-host,

David Sumner.

His podcast,

Europe at War,

brilliantly describes some of the most important,

yet forgotten battles of the Second World War,

many of which occurred on the Eastern Front.

I have learned a lot from his series on the Battle of Halba,

the Battle of Bautzen,

and

critical to this episode,

the Battle for Berlin in April and May 1945.

Welcome,

David.

Hi,

Scott.

Thank you so much for having me on the show again.

Pleasure to discuss the Battle of Berlin in a little bit more detail,

and especially for your 100th anniversary episode.

It's a great honor from my side as well.

Well,

I'm very happy that you're able to join us all the way from Berlin,

Germany.

What are the conditions like in late April?

A beautiful spring day in Berlin,

I hope.

Exactly.

It's a beautiful spring day,

very different to how it was 81 years ago,

but there's still a buzz in the air.

I'd say this time of year,

when it gets to mid-April,

late April,

and then early May,

the conversations invariably always return to

VE Day and the Battle of Berlin,

which obviously took place here.

So,

yes,

very excited to be here on the ground as your roving reporter.

Well,

before we get into that,

please tell our listeners a little bit more about your podcast,

Europe at War.

Thank you very much.

So yeah,

Europe at War was a kind of personal passion of mine to focus on the largest battles which took place in and around Berlin at the end of the war.

My original thought for the series was that everyone knows about the Battle of Berlin,

but that there were other significant battles and engagements and also just stories which were happening outside of the city,

which not a lot of people really knew about.

So that's why I started my show with the Battle of the Halber Pocket.

And then I covered the Battle of Bautzen.

what was sometimes called the last German victory of the war.

Then Battle of Berlin,

I had to cover because,

of course,

you cannot understand what's going on at that time of the war without focusing on the Berlin Offensive and its heart and its strike on Berlin.

And then I also covered the American assault on Leipzig,

actually,

in my fourth series,

just to give a different flavor of how the Allied forces kind of approached their march into Germany and ultimately,

yes,

the end of the war.

And I found that it...

very informative,

very helpful.

One of the things I think most ear-opening,

I suppose,

is hearing your proper German pronunciation of so many things that I just sort of assumed I knew how to say,

like

Viking, you know,

spelled with a

W in German.

So I knew that,

but I had to remember as I'm doing this,

that in German pronunciation,

the V and the W are transposed.

That's just an example of the so many...

little things that I picked up from the podcast.

Thank you.

Yeah.

But your,

your Russian pronunciation would surely outclass mine.

So,

yeah,

that's,

my German pronunciation is only,

um,

a symptom of,

of,

you know,

having been here for so long,

but yes,

you're right.

The Viking division would be rather called the Viking,

division.

And,

um,

you know,

I,

I did try to keep that in the episodes that I produced to try and keep the pronunciation as close to original as possible.

And that's what we're trying to do on Beyond Barbarossa,

to be as true and as accurate as possible.

This episode,

then,

will be a bit of a departure from our usual format.

Instead of going into deep detail on the fighting,

we're going to concentrate more on the people there,

the citizens of Berlin,

as well as the soldiers and the leaders whose choices were so limited in those final days.

However,

we're not abandoning everything you've come to expect from beyond Barbarossa.

First,

let's recap where we are at the end of

April 1945.

As you heard last episode,

number 99,

the Red Armies have surrounded Berlin.

Georgy Zhukov,

Stalin's favorite marshal,

has driven his first...

Belorussian Front through the Ceylo Heights at great losses and around the eastern and northern sides of the German capital.

Meanwhile,

Zhukov's rival,

Marshal Ivan Konev,

has raced from his first Ukrainian front's breakout southeast of Berlin,

smashed through the weakened German 9th Army,

and is racing for the Reichstag from the south.

Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky's second Belarusian Front has secured the area between Berlin and the Baltic Sea.

tying down and eliminating any German units that may have come to Berlin's aid.

And in southern Germany,

the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts are similarly preventing German units there from coming up to Berlin.

But

Germany was not the only place where fighting was happening.

So now it's time for...

What else is happening in the war?

In the United States,

the four-time president,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

dies suddenly,

but not unexpectedly.

He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage in his bed on the afternoon of

12th April.

His vice president,

Harry Truman,

becomes president of the United States.

On 27 April,

Il Duce Benito Mussolini,

former dictator of Italy,

was captured.

while trying to escape the final destruction of the fascist state,

along with his longtime mistress,

Clara Patacci.

They are shot the next day,

and their bodies hung upside down in Milan.

The Canadian First Army continues advancing through the Netherlands.

The 1st Canadian Corps clears the remaining German troops from the western part of the country,

north of the Maas River,

while the 2nd Canadian Corps clears the northeastern half and the German North Sea coast.

The Allies begin airdropping food to the Dutch people who had been starved by the occupying Germans through the hunger winter of 1944-45.

In the Western Front,

on 29 April,

the U.S.

7th Army liberates the Dachau concentration camp,

one of the Nazis'

first,

northwest of Munich,

Bavaria.

This just shows how the Americans were intent on pushing as far east

in southern Germany as possible,

while the British were held at the Elba River in the north.

To the Indo-Pacific,

the battle for Okinawa in the Ryuku Islands continues.

Starting on 1st April,

when the US GIs and Marines hit the beaches,

Okinawa becomes the largest and bloodiest battle the Americans fight against the Japanese.

Capturing Okinawa will give the US air bases they can use

to hit mainland Japan even more heavily,

preparing the way for a land invasion.

Meanwhile in China,

the Japanese send an

80,000-strong force to seize airfields and railways in West Hunan.

The Chinese 4th Front Army,

10th and

27th Army Groups,

and American-supplied New 6th Corps defeat the Japanese in counterattack,

eventually taking two provinces in southern China.

Starting on

1st May,

the Australian 1st Corps attacks Japanese forces on Borneo.

Now,

let's get to Berlin.

I'm going to do some daily progress,

but instead of going into a lot of detail,

I'm going to ask you to listen to David Sumner's excellent series on the Battle of Berlin.

It's season three of his Europe at War podcast,

where he devotes one episode to each day.

of that final battle.

So go there,

Europe at War season three.

And also when you're done with that.

Listen to all the other seasons on the Battle of the Halber Pocket,

the Battle of Bautzen,

and the Battle of Leipzig.

19 April 1945 was the day the 1st Belorussian Front broke through the German defenses at the Silo Heights,

losing

30,000 soldiers killed.

Meanwhile,

The 1st Ukrainian Front was coming up hard from the south.

That night,

as they had since the

15th of April,

the Royal Air Force's de Havilland Mosquitoes bombed the city again.

The German 9th Army had to withdraw.

Most of it went southward toward the town of Cottbus and the Helvet Forest.

But one of the 9th Army's component parts,

the 56th Panzer Corps,

withdrew more westward straight toward Berlin.

In the chaos,

its commander,

Helmut Weidling,

lost contact with the high command in the capital.

Both his superior officer,

General Bursa of the 9th Army,

and Hitler himself ordered Weidling be shot for retreating against orders to stand firm.

When he heard this,

Weidling did one of the most badass things I've ever heard of.

He went to the Wehrmacht headquarters to explain he hadn't retreated,

but only withdrawn,

whatever that difference is.

He had not deserted,

he had not disobeyed orders.

It was just that he had been out of contact for a few hours.

Hitler was impressed enough by this that he appointed Weidling as the commander of the defense of Berlin itself.

Here's the thing that

I wonder about.

As a professional soldier and as a general,

what did he think of realistically?

What could he have thought his chances were to stop the Soviets?

I think Weidling was the defense commander which Berlin should always have had right from the start.

But given that he only

is appointed to the role on the

23rd of April.

There's nothing he can do by that point.

He does make some much-needed changes already from that day.

As I said,

he spreads out his professional and top-quality forces throughout Berlin to strengthen the line where there are gaps.

He also reorganises the defence sectors in Berlin,

because that had been badly implemented beforehand.

And he immediately reinvigorises the defence,

and he brings a much-needed professionalism.

to the defense of Berlin,

because up until then,

all of the different defense sectors all had their own individual commander.

And they were given free reign to conduct the defense in their particular defense sector as they saw fit.

So some people would fight until the last man,

some commanders would say,

well,

everyone in my district must stay on the front line until the last man or the last bullet,

whereas other defense sector commanders were happy to let their troops under their command fall back

which means you had nothing like a coherent defense until Weidling comes into the picture.

Now,

does he think he has a chance?

No.

And the fact that,

I mean,

for him to even get the appointment in the first place is pretty remarkable,

given that only 24 hours previous,

both Hitler and Theodor Busser from the 9th Army issue execution orders against Weidling under the allegation that Weidling has...

withdrawn his forces and put them on a westerly retreat that wasn't that wasn't true he just fell out of contact with both the 9th army headquarters and the berlin headquarters because of the chaos on the battlefield because he was momentarily out of contact people thought he had fled and

so if so orders were issued for him to be shot and when he was informed of this he does the very very uh ballsy move of going straight to the furor bunker to address these allegations in person

And I think it's...

often written that because he was prepared to face the music in person,

Hitler was impressed by this and then gave him the command of the Berlin defense area.

When I was listening to your podcast and then reading about this,

it just struck me how unprofessional that the Reich's chancellors,

Hitler himself and the

Nazi leaders were,

especially in comparison to the vaunted,

vatimacht professional soldiers.

And

I just kept thinking,

How could such a bunch of people like this end up in charge of such a powerful and important and wealthy nation?

Absolutely.

I mean,

just to just to follow up on that,

I mean,

Weidling throughout the battle tried to get permission for a breakout of the Berlin Garrison forces.

And he

I think he even played up to

Hitler's personality by saying,

you know,

we will have a breakout.

to save you,

where,

you know,

there'll be an armoured column that punches its way out of the Soviet encircled Berlin,

and you will be in the middle of it,

and we will protect you,

and everything.

You know,

he really,

really tried to play to the character of Hitler,

but even then Hitler would not greenlight a breakout attempt.

So this is what I mean when I say Weidling was a realist,

and he knew the chances of winning were...

But the chance of perhaps saving some of his Berlin garrison forces and certainly some civilians,

I think,

were there if he had been given the permission by the high command to actually do a breakout attempt.

That was the idea of getting south to Bavaria to the Alpine fortress,

correct?

Yes.

If they could have got that far,

that definitely would have been the...

the best outcome,

I think,

in a more immediate scenario was that as soon as it was known that Wenck's 12th Army were on the move towards Berlin and that they were in the Potsdam area to the west of

Berlin, then that became the kind of immediate goal of any breakout from

Berlin itself.

So if the garrison forces could somehow escape Berlin and link up with Wenck's army outside,

then perhaps they could all escape together towards the west.

So I'd say that was the more...

immediate realistic goal of any breakout ideas from the berlin military commanders and like weidling but it was weidling's goal then at the breakout and go where go where so i'd say the best route

that um he would have gone for or he would have wanted to have followed would be to have gone kind of northwest out of berlin so the district is just called spandau in northwest Berlin.

And that was...

A district which,

let's say,

had fewer Soviet troops in,

where perhaps the Soviet control of the district was not as total and complete as in the eastern district or the central districts and southern districts of the city.

So that represented the best opportunity of at least perhaps slipping through the lines,

if you want to say it like that.

and of course that would have been the direction you would needed to have gone in order to link up with a Venk army or all of Venk's forces who would have been

to the west of Berlin anyway.

Okay,

but not much further than that,

I guess.

I think he just didn't go any much further than that.

No,

the way it pans out with

Wenck is that,

you know,

he is given this order to,

first off,

link up with what's left of the 9th Army,

and then both of them together would then march on Berlin and save the city.

As we know,

that's pie in the sky thinking.

But the furthest that Wenck was able to advance was to you

a lake south of Potsdam called Schwielosee is the name.

And there's a village called Fech.

Fech is about five kilometers south of Potsdam,

maybe a little bit more.

And Potsdam is itself about 15,

20 kilometers kind of to the southwest of Berlin.

That's as far as Venk got.

And it cost Venk's army a lot of blood to even get there.

For them to then push further,

and he would have to have then pushed through the 3rd and 4th

Guards Tank Army from the 1st Ukrainian Front.

You'd have to have pushed through there to even reach Berlin.

I mean,

it would have been impossible.

And that's when he said,

right,

the Potsdam garrison can break out and reach me,

which they did.

And he did radio Berlin and he sent a message to Weidling in Berlin saying,

whoever is in Berlin and who can break out,

do so.

I'm in the Potsdam area.

But then within 24 hours,

Venk himself has to leave.

He goes and links up with the rest of the 9th Army.

and then the rest is history as they then

start their exodus towards

Tangemunde and they escape over the Elbe River.

Wink's 12th Army wasn't much of an army either.

Hastily cobbled together from remnants of other forces.

Exactly.

And it had lots of training cadets in there as well.

Remarkably,

despite the quality of his army,

I would say that they fought rather well.

I mean,

you want to be very careful about giving a Wehrmacht general Thank you.

Too much praise.

But certainly with Venk,

he does deserve the praise that he gets for the relative military success that he has.

So the fact that he is able to hold off the Soviets to link up with the 9th Army around Beelitz as they complete their Hauber pocket breakout,

and then all escape pretty much all in one piece to Tangamunda and then go over the Elbe River is pretty remarkable.

after the war would give

numbers as high as 300,000 people that were successfully evacuated over the river towards the

American lines.

That's military personnel and many dozens of thousands of civilians.

I would say 300,000 is probably a little bit on the high side,

but it's certainly maybe at least 100,000 and then anywhere up to 300,000.

So that is a pretty substantial success given the circumstances and given the fact that he was chased all of the way by Soviet forces.

Right.

Zink was,

am I right here,

he was the youngest general or youngest

German to reach that rank at this time?

I believe so,

yes.

And one thing to add to kind of Wenck's aura or the high esteem which he was held in is that after the war,

he was offered the post of Inspector General of the Bundeswehr of the West German

Army. I believe he turned it down because he wasn't happy with the role or the conditions of the role.

But for him to be offered that role after the war does,

I think,

give you some indication that he was held in quite high esteem as a man of military skill.

and of professionalism,

and he was not seen as an ideologue.

If you compare him and

Theodor Busser of the

German 9th Army,

you would have to say that

Wenck was not a Hitlerite,

for sure.

Busser,

I think,

starts off as more of a kind of loyal follower of Hitler,

although he also then changes his mind.

By the time he's surrounded in the halberd pocket,

his thoughts also then turn to...

defying orders and breaking out to the West and not saving Berlin.

And I think this is a good place to take a short break.

Be right back.

Hi,

Scott here.

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Thanks.

Welcome back to part two of episode 100 of Beyond Barbarossa.

Scott Brewery here in the Red Beard studio talking with

David Sumner of the Europe at War podcast.

20th April was Hitler's 56th birthday.

That day,

the 1st Belorussian Front arrayed around the north and eastern edges of the city and began heavy shelling.

And when I say heavy,

I mean heavy.

Measured by mass,

then the Western Allies dropped from the air through the whole course of the war.

In the UK's case,

that's five years.

As was their wont,

when the artillery shelling was over,

the ground forces began entering the northern and northeastern parts of the city.

Meanwhile,

Konev's 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies from the 1st Ukrainian Front are coming up from the south.

A note about the topography here.

A quick glance at even an online map will show you how much water there is around Berlin.

Streams,

rivers,

lakes,

ponds,

and of course many canals.

These constrained and directed the first Ukrainian fronts moved northward,

and later in the city itself.

Especially the canals were barriers,

not insurmountable barriers,

but they did slow the Soviets down.

I've read that there are about 45,000 Wehrmacht soldiers in the city on the

20th of April.

Is that accurate?

No,

I would say,

I mean,

45,000.

I think the 45,000 figure comes from the estimates given by the first Berlin defense area commander,

a man called General Reimann.

So when he's put into the position earlier in the year,

he said or he estimated that there are about 45,000 men under arms.

Now,

I have deliberately not used the word soldiers.

Because that 45,000 figure was comprised largely of Volkssturm.

And so these Volkssturm men,

as we know,

were not frontline infantry.

They were not first-rate soldiers.

They were mainly older men and younger boys.

And fighting with foreign rifles,

maybe given a couple of grenades,

maybe a Panzerfaust or two,

but nothing more than that.

And the Volkssturm,

even that were in Berlin in March,

were split into two types.

So you had one...

element of the Volkssturm were actually intended for fighting.

And then the second element were used mainly in kind of a supportive role.

So they may be carrying ammunition or rations,

or they were focused on building barricades in order to stop the expected Soviet advance.

When the Battle of Berlin really gets underway,

the number of defenders

does increase,

and that's mainly due to the arrival in the city of General Weidling's 56th Panzer Corps.

So the 56th Panzer Corps had started out as being an element of the

9th Army fighting along the Zillower Heights,

but due to

Zhukov's breakthrough at the Zillower Heights,

this

Panzer Corps,

the 56th Panzer Corps,

got pushed back into the Berlin area.

They were cut off from the rest of the 9th Army,

who end up in the Halber Pocket,

as we all know.

And once the 56th Panzer Corps arrive into the city,

then it's estimated that the number of defenders grows up to about 85,000.

And that's when you have the 45,000 of the Volkssturm,

as I've outlined,

plus the arrival of actually quite first-line or first-rate troops from this Panzer Corps.

So there is a sizable contingent of defenders left in the city to oppose the advancing Red Army.

least by the

23rd of

April,

24th of April.

So that's when Weidling,

I mean,

the 56th Panzer Corps,

I think they fall back into the Berlin area,

I think on the

21st, 22nd.

And then the

23rd is when Weidling is appointed the new Berlin Defence Area Commander.

And his Panzer Corps are then dispatched kind of throughout the city to fill in the gaps,

provide some much needed muscle to stop the Soviet advance,

which is by then coming from all sides.

One other important point to consider is that we cannot get and really accurate total.

on the numbers which were present due to the presence of all of these ad hoc units.

You had

Luftwaffe ground crews were thrown into the front line.

You've got police units which were thrown into the front line.

You had Kriegsmarine personnel.

You had obviously Hitler Youth boys thrown into uniform and given a gun.

So I would say it's very difficult to get a really accurate sense on the precise numbers which were fighting to defend Berlin.

And I imagine there would be other units that had been either at the Cee Lo Heights or other sectors just retreated into the city itself.

And then

I imagine in the heat of this fighting,

it's really hard to keep track of the casualties,

the men you've lost,

either killed or captured or wounded badly enough that they're or to come by.

Then we come to the

21st of April.

Army Group Vistula's

20th Panzer Division attacked the 2nd Polish Army south of Berlin in what is sometimes called Germany's last battlefield success of the war,

the Battle of Bautzen.

24th April,

the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian fronts linked up southeast of Berlin,

cutting the city off from any other supporters,

as well as the Western Allies.

Last episode ended around the

26th of April,

the day that the final battle

For Berlin itself,

the centre of the city began when the 8th Guards Army,

led by

General Vasily Zhukov of the Battle of Stalingrad fame,

attacked into the Tempelhof airport in the southern part of Berlin.

That's correct,

right?

The Tempelhof,

David?

That's correct,

yeah.

Tempelhof.

Tempelhof.

On 27 April,

five of Zhukov's Red Armies attacked from the northern and southern approaches to Berlin,

all moving for the main prize.

The Reichstag itself.

The first to reach it would raise the red banner over the symbol of Nazism.

In the city,

German enforcers were hunting down deserters and broken men fleeing the fighting,

mercilessly executing them on the spot for desertion and hanging their bodies from lampposts with signs around their necks announcing they were traitors.

The whole idea was to terrify the remaining population into continuing the...

futile resistance against this Red Army.

David,

how many citizens,

non-combatant citizens,

are left in the city at this point?

The best estimates are around two million.

So

Berlin, during the years of the Third Reich,

the population had swelled to around four million.

But during the course of the war,

primarily as a consequence of the large bombing raids,

which hit the city almost,

I'd say,

continuously,

from at least 1943 onwards,

a large number of people had evacuated out of the city.

They were moved to other places like

Leipzig and other places around

Germany.

Partly as a safety measure.

It was never as large scale as the evacuation of perhaps,

you know,

all of the children from London,

which,

you know,

which is a very famous,

was never as complete as that.

But it did take a hit on the official population.

So it had fallen down to about two million.

Also,

people were moved out of the capital city to other parts of the Reich in order to support the war industry.

So,

you know,

there were factories obviously over in the

Ruhrgebiet over in West Germany.

That needed workers in the factory,

so often people were moved out of Berlin to go work in those industries.

So,

two million by March and April 1945.

However,

as the battle comes close and as the Soviets are knocking at the door,

the Gauleiter of Berlin,

which is Goebbels,

Goebbels had many,

many different roles.

He was the Gauleiter of Berlin,

he was still the propaganda chief and was also in charge of the Berlin Volkssturm.

He

forbid any civilians from leaving the city as the battle was coming.

His view was that if more German civilians leave the city,

it will then become a ghost town and the Berlin garrison forces will have no heart to fight and defend the city.

So in a rather cynical way,

and of course we have no thoughts as to the well-being and the safety of the people,

Goebbels put out the order that no more civilians would be allowed to leave.

How rigidly...

This was enforced,

I would say it's hard to say.

So many of the bridges throughout

Berlin were controlled by the Berlin garrison forces and also just by Hitler Youth forces.

So they definitely would have hindered people from moving over the bridges in order to escape the city.

That said,

I've looked at many sources which focused on the advance of Konev's first Ukrainian front towards the south.

And there it's reported that their advance was somewhat.

slowed down by an exodus of refugees from Berlin.

So you have to say,

well,

what's more accurate?

Are no people leaving or are actually large bodies of people leaving?

So I would say it's a bit of both.

But of course,

I think as the battle continues and as the Berlin forces are,

of course,

preoccupied with actually fighting the Soviets,

there's no longer the number of people in place to stop civilians from leaving,

if they can.

If they can.

It wasn't easy,

was it?

How did the

Red Army then treat or regard fleeing civilians at this point?

I think when the battle was still hot or when the fighting was still hot,

I would say they were fairly unconcerned.

Let's say,

I mean,

I think maybe men,

they certainly would have more rigidly controlled and taken prisoner.

But it seems that the frontline units were just obviously focused on fighting the battle.

And certainly,

as you've described in your podcast,

this race to...

Reichstag was the overarching goal of both the Belarusian and

Ukrainian fronts.

Therefore,

they're not really going to slow down and take care of the Syrians.

They just want to keep pushing on,

keep pushing on to get to the Reichstag first.

Certainly within the midway part of the battle for sure.

On 28 April,

three youth divisions,

teenagers,

along with young men from military training schools,

attempted a futile attack into the southwest sectors of Berlin,

but were stopped 20 kilometers from the center.

This was the day that the remnants of the 9th Army,

along with thousands of civilians,

broke out of the halibut pocket.

Some 25,000,

a quarter of the original strength of the army as of 16 April,

linked up with Walter Wink's

12th Army,

and then altogether they began moving west to surrender to the Americans.

across the Yelda.

David,

we were talking about the breakout by the

9th and 12th Armies,

led by,

respectively,

Theodor Busse and Walter Wenck.

We can see that they were working very hard,

fighting very hard to escape from the Soviets,

make it to the West.

When did they decide this was the rational thing to do,

the best course of action?

I think the listeners know or have a very good idea why,

but if you could tell us why they opted for that.

So

Wenck kept a diary,

and in later years he would quote from that and say that when he first received the orders on April

22nd, or in the very early hours of April 23rd,

to come and save Berlin,

that he immediately knew that it was a very silly idea,

that it would not work.

that it would basically be suicide for himself and for his forces,

and it ultimately wouldn't liberate Berlin anyway or break the Soviet encirclement of the city.

So he said afterwards that he realised straight away,

we can maybe take a pinch of salt with that.

Is that really true or not?

Whereas...

Theodor Busser,

I would say,

did follow the party line.

He did follow orders,

at least for the first few days of his predicament,

following the Zillow Heights.

So I think with Wenck,

it apparently happened spontaneously.

He already knew that he should go against orders and not save Berlin,

and instead focus on saving as many civilians and soldiers as possible from the surrounding area outside of Berlin.

But with Busser,

I think it's fair to say that his decision to go against his orders is

and to flee West came as a result of the circumstances in which he was personally in.

So as it became increasingly bleak for him,

then by the,

you know,

April

25th, April 26th,

it's very,

very clear that the halberd pocket is getting reduced in size by the pressure of both the first Belarusian front from the East and the first Ukrainian front from the South and the West.

And that by that point,

he then starts saying,

right,

we can have breakout attempts,

but only

going westwards,

so not towards the capital,

but rather to go and link up with Venk and escape.

Why was it then preferable to surrender to the Americans as compared to the Soviets?

Preferable based on the likelihood of surviving.

I mean,

people knew by then that if you were to surrender to the Soviets and to the Red Army,

then it's like a 50-50 chance.

You're either going to be shot out of hand.

And if you are SS,

then you're very likely going to be shot.

But even at the very least,

you're going to be taken prisoner and you're going to be carted off towards the Soviet Union and you'll spend at least the next few years in a gulag where your chances of survival are going to be very slim anyway.

And I would also add to that that particularly in the Halberd Pocket,

there were many thousands of civilians and there were a lot of women there as well.

And I always add the point that you can understand as a woman,

they would be very,

very fearful of surrendering to the Red Army because everybody knew what was in store for a woman if she was to surrender to a frontline Red Army unit.

And that's not just based on

Nazi propaganda,

which told them that the Red Army were,

you know,

uncivilized and would behave accordingly.

It was actually just people were spreading the story.

I mean,

many women especially had fled from Silesia and from East Prussia.

And were passing through the Berlin and Brandenburg area in April 1945.

So,

of course,

they brought with them the firsthand accounts of what happened to women when the Red Army rolled into town.

So that,

I think,

also became another reason why they,

of course,

are going to rather risk their lives trying to reach the West and trying to surrender to the Americans rather than take their chances surrendering to the Red Army.

How did the German soldiers know about...

about the treatment of prisoners of the Soviets?

How did they know about being sent to a gulag,

potentially as far as Siberia?

It's a good question to say,

how did they know about it?

I think deep down in their hearts,

they knew how they had behaved over the previous four years of the Eastern Front,

and they knew that retribution was going to be coming their way.

Therefore,

I think you wouldn't even need to have...

you know,

the specific knowledge of where you're going to be sent or not,

you can quite likely guess it's not going to end up nicely for you.

But that is pretty much what happened.

I mean,

we know that all the

German prisoners of war who were taken by the Red Army,

most of them did not survive the Gulag system or the prisoner of war camps they went to.

And it wasn't until 1955 that whoever was left was then repatriated back to

West Germany.

That would have been after Stalin's death.

Exactly,

yeah.

I think it was because of a little bit of a detente under Khrushchev after Stalin's death.

But yeah,

I think famously of the many thousands that were taken prisoner at Stalingrad,

for example,

I think only a few thousand of them eventually returned in 1955.

And I think you can say the same story for all German prisoners of war who were taken prisoner by the Red Army right up until the end of the war.

Right.

And as far as retribution goes,

the Soviets were not.

trying to hide that fact that it was part of their propaganda as well and their broadcast to the germans that they were going to take revenge exactly yeah so one of the elements of the battle of berlin and kind of the the offensive on berlin everyone everyone looks at the tanks army you know the tank armies and the and the infantry but the soviet red army air force are also heavily involved but one of their roles

during the battle was to drop propaganda leaflets you

over the German soldiers,

certainly over the Haube pocket.

They were dropping leaflets,

which in German were saying,

all your hopes are destroyed.

Now very much spelling it out to the encircled.

military and civilians there that it's not going to end well,

that they have no hope left and they are going to be destroyed.

So I think when you receive a Red Army leaflet floating down through the sky that promises you destruction,

then of course you're going to try and break out and escape to the West.

I think we need to take one more short break right back.

Did you know that the cappuccino was invented by a Ukrainian?

Or that many first names,

like Philip and Agatha,

were brought to Western Europe by Ukrainian princesses.

Or that a Ukrainian was the first female given the rank of officer in a modern army.

Well,

if you didn't,

and even if you did,

you can learn more about my podcast,

Wandering the Edge,

a podcast about Ukrainian history with a spot of travel.

And all in English.

And if you like Beyond Barbarossa as much as I do,

because while it makes my life a whole lot easier since I don't have to do any episodes deep diving into the Eastern Front of the Second World War,

please take a listen to Wandering the Edge for a deep dive into Ukrainian history,

culture,

and traditions.

Find out more on wanderingtheedge.net.

And now let's get back to Scott exploring and explaining the Eastern Front of the Second World War.

And here we are back with...

part three of episode 100.

And of course,

David Sumner is still here,

all the way from Berlin to talk to us about the final days of the war in the Eastern Front.

In the wee hours of the

29th, the 3rd Shock Army,

another unit from the 1st Belarusian Front,

was coming down from the north side of the city.

It crossed the Moltke Bridge over the Spree River into the very heart of the Nazi administration.

This is the area where the Reichstag,

the Reich's chancellery,

the main government buildings,

and most important,

the Führerbunker are.

At about 4 a.m.

on the

29th, the Führer himself,

Adolf Hitler,

married his longtime mistress,

Eva Braun.

What a wedding day.

Around 8 a.m.,

so it's still the 29th,

so

Hitler's been married for four hours,

Chukov's 8th Guards Army,

the one from Stalingrad.

Enter the Tiergarten,

that large park south of the Reichstag.

At the eastern end is the famous Brandenburg Gate,

and at the western side is the Berlin Zoo.

It's really like a squeeze on the center of the city from all directions,

edging closer slowly,

but inexorably toward the Reichstag.

And,

of course,

that central area,

all those important buildings are kind of together,

right?

The Reich's Chancellery is there,

and,

of course,

right beside it.

More or less underneath it is the Fuhrerbunker.

And then the

Reichstag is just to the west.

Is that right?

Yes.

You accurately describe it,

that the Reichstag is a magnetic pull for all of the Red Army forces coming into Berlin.

Although,

ironically,

it's a disused building.

It's stayed empty since the Reichstag fire.

Actually,

it was the Kroll Opera House,

which was close to the Reichstag,

which held sessions of the Reichstag.

Whenever the Reichstag was called to listen to a Hitler speech.

But nevertheless,

the Soviets said,

look,

the Reichstag is still the propaganda goal that we want to reach.

They didn't know about the existence of the Führerbunker.

So they didn't know about the bunker,

which is actually quite funny because of,

you know,

that becomes the centerpiece to the story about,

you know,

how Hitler lives through the Battle of Berlin and how the bunker itself becomes its own actor,

I would say.

But the Soviet forces didn't know about it.

They're just driving towards the Reichstag.

They are aiming for what is called the Zitadella district,

German for citadel.

And you're right,

it's this kind of island sector of the city right in the middle of Berlin,

which is the governmental district,

which has all the important buildings that you mentioned.

It has the

Landwehr Canal on the southern side,

and that's a canal which

Soviet forces will have to cross.

That's Chuikov's 8th Guards Army.

And then to the north,

it...

It is where the Spree River runs.

And from that northerly direction is where then the 3rd Shock Army will come with their infantry forces to assault the Reichstag from that direction.

But yeah,

this central kind of island kind of district,

if you want to call it that,

is the most heavily defended.

It's got the best quality troops,

the best caliber troops,

including the Leibstandarte division.

That's where by the final days,

your foreign SS forces are still heavily concentrated there holding the line.

And it also has the best defenses in terms of just street barricades.

And it has these natural barriers of the canal and the river and the bridges going over it,

which also aid in its defense.

Those bridges are.

booby-trapped.

They are wired up to explode.

And so,

of course,

the Soviets are very keen to capture those bridges before the Germans can blow them.

But they're also barricaded,

as you described.

And so,

ironically,

when the civilians and the soldiers in that central area,

the citadella,

want to break out,

decide to break out,

then they've got to get past those defences as well.

Exactly.

That was one of the reasons why the military leadership

didn't just blow all of Berlin's bridges on day one,

because they knew that's going to hamper the movement of their own forces around the city.

And it would also make it much harder for any garrison forces to potentially break out of Berlin as well,

if and when the time came.

So that's why when breakout attempts do happen towards the final days of the battle,

they're making use of tunnels,

famously.

That's the U-Bahn and S-Bahn,

so that's the underground train and the city metro train network.

Those tunnels run underground,

and those are used by people to try and escape.

But toward the very end of the war,

those tunnels also become prisons,

almost,

or traps for the escapees.

Yeah,

they are air raid shelters,

I would call them,

for civilians.

The Soviets were actually very wary.

of going into the tunnels.

They could have used the U-Bahn tunnels and S-Bahn tunnels quite easily to penetrate the centre of the city,

but they were very wary about going in there because they knew that if you're fighting in dark and damp conditions,

that favours the defender.

You would not need many German troops to potentially tie down a large body of Soviet infantry in the dark.

There are stories later on in the battle,

of course,

that some of these tunnels are bombed or explosions go off.

And it's unclear exactly who is to blame for those,

whether it's the SS or whether it's just someone else.

But yes,

those tunnels do flood in some places.

And as you can imagine,

that leads to the chaos where civilians down there get trapped and some drown.

And there are wildly different numbers about how many people died in those tunnels when these tunnels flooded.

But as you can understand that,

that's why they were not the primary route taken by the Red Army forces,

given their danger.

30 April.

The Red Army.

is strangling Nazi Germany.

Soviet artillery opens up on the Reichstag building itself at 0600.

But such is the strength of the building and the stubbornness of the SS troops inside it that the Red Army troops cannot get in until evening.

Then the situation devolves to room by room fighting.

There are three more major positions for Berlin's defenders.

Three flak towers,

immense fortified bunkers made of steel reinforced concrete.

The walls were 2.4 meters thick,

or nearly 8 feet,

and the roof was 1.5 meters,

or 5 feet thick.

With five stories above ground and one underground,

they were the height of a normal

13-story building and had room for 15,000 people.

On top were anti-aircraft guns,

and in the zoo tower on the grounds were stored artifacts from various museums,

as well as a hospital.

These flak towers were described as bomb shelters,

but what they really were...

were twentieth-century keeps like medieval castles with nigh impregnable walls from within which defenders could fire upon attackers the zu tower in particular became a huge challenge for the soviets at

this point general weidling military commander of the defence of berlin told hitler that the remaining defenders by this point maybe ten thousand or left probably will run out of ammunition by the end of the day

Hitler gave Weidling permission to attempt a breakout for civilians and soldiers.

That afternoon,

he and his new bride committed suicide.

Admiral Karl Donitz,

chief of the navy,

became president of Germany,

and that most odious of the whole Reich,

Joseph Goebbels,

became the new chancellor.

Thankfully,

he would soon be dead.

That day,

most of the civilian attempts to flee the city failed in capture or death.

One group,

though,

managed to get across the

Charlottenbrücke bridge.

into the area called Spandau.

That's,

I would say,

the most successful breakout.

I would use the word successful with air quotation fingers because it gets the furthest.

Therefore,

I would classify it as the most successful.

But yeah,

that is mainly forces of military personnel and civilians who are leaving from one of the large,

heavily defended flak towers in the west of Berlin.

So the Zoo Flak Tower.

So one of these kind of...

concrete monstrosities.

Units from that flak tower,

aided by some Panzer Division units from the 56th Panzer Corps,

so Panzer Division Mönchengladbach,

18th

Panzer Grenadier Division.

They're all fighting in the area,

and they try to break out on the night of the May 1st with civilians.

And they pick the Spandau route going northwest out of Berlin because they correctly deduce that it's the least defended.

It's the district with the least amount of Soviet troops.

Some of them go above ground,

so the armored vehicles go above ground.

A lot of the civilians take the underground route going through tunnels underneath.

But this mass body of people pop up.

around about the Charlottenbrücke,

the Charlottenburg Bridge,

which leads into Spandau.

Now,

that bridge is still in German hands.

I believe it was Hitler Youth boys who were kind of holding it,

quote unquote.

But as this mass body of people tried to cross the bridge,

Soviet units are nearby.

They see this mass of people crossing the bridge.

They start shelling the bridge.

And then the bridge becomes one of these scenes of chaos and destruction.

And people start trampling each other in the chaos.

Vehicles are running over people.

as they steam across the bridge.

But a large body do make it into Spandau.

They fight their way through Spandau,

actually.

And then they get to the Berlin city limits and they cross over into Brandenburg.

Brandenburg's the federal state outside of Berlin.

Once they reach Brandenburg,

all cohesion amongst that breakout group falls apart.

And then it's every man for himself.

It's smaller and smaller groups.

And the Soviets are able to pick them off,

capture most of them.

And very,

very few of that group make it to their stated goal of reaching Venk's forces and making it to the West.

So that's why I say,

quote unquote,

successful,

because very few of them reached the West.

But you can say a large number did escape

Berlin, technically.

Civilians and soldiers.

Did that include the foreign SS forces that were left behind?

No,

a lot of the

French SS fighters who are...

in Berlin,

famously led by Henri Fennet.

So these are the old remnants of the Charlemagne Division.

There's about 350 Frenchmen who make it.

They are captured or killed.

The

Nordland Division,

which is

Scandinavian, Danish,

also mixed with Germans,

most of them,

again,

are captured.

Krukenberg was the commander of the Nordland Division.

He led a breakout attempt through the Friedrichstrasse route.

kind of through the center of Berlin into North Berlin.

That was a separate breakout attempt,

which also largely failed.

So a lot of those foreign fighters are either captured or killed.

1 May 1945.

General Hans Krebs,

chief of the army general staff,

the man who only escaped capture a few days earlier at Zossen because Red Army tanks coming toward him ran out of fuel,

contacted Soviet General Vasily Chukov about terms of surrender.

Chuukov kept to the Allied insistence on unconditional surrender.

The Germans did not want to accept that,

and the fighting continued.

That night,

1st May,

the new chancellor,

Joseph Goebbels,

and his wife,

Magda,

murdered their six children.

Then the monster Goebbels killed his wife,

and then himself.

Actually,

there are conflicting reports on how that happened.

Some say they both took cyanide.

Others say that the

Goebbels shot Magda and Dan himself,

a coward and a monster.

That day,

while there were still SS troops in the lower levels of the burned out Reichstag,

soldiers from the 1st Belorussian Front raised the Red Standard over the roof.

There's a famous iconic photograph of that,

but that photograph was restaged the next day.

At any rate,

Zhukov.

had won the race.

In the early morning of the next day,

2nd May,

the 8th Guards Army completed their capture of the Reich's Chancellery,

the government centre.

By

6am,

General Wiedling surrendered,

unconditionally.

Berlin had fallen.

When did the actual fighting in Berlin end?

Officially on the afternoon of May

2nd.

There were sporadic gun battles,

I think,

reported as late as 1 or 2 p.m.

By that point,

even the last holdouts in the Reichstag have also been snuffed out.

And by then,

yeah,

all organized German defense has ceased.

But there are still,

as you said,

sporadic fanatics fighting.

And also,

the rest of the war was not over yet.

There was still fighting outside of Berlin to the south.

famously the battle of Prague was yes took place after Berlin official surrender of the war of course VE day is 8th May so that's a week after

Berlin surrenders.

Yes.

In a way,

Germany surrendered twice.

You had the surrender on the 7th of May in Reims in France,

where actually all of the Allied powers were present,

and there was also a Soviet representative there.

But that wouldn't work for the Soviets,

for the Russians.

They wanted to have a German surrender to them on their terms.

And that's why on the 8th of May,

another surrender ceremony is organized in Karlshorst,

which is in southeast Berlin.

And that's when,

in that sense,

the Soviets are staging the event,

and then a British,

an American,

and a French representative are flown in to attend that ceremony,

and then obviously countersign the surrender documents.

That was the first Allied presence,

let's say,

or the Western Allied presence in

Berlin.

American and British and French military personnel en masse don't enter Berlin until

June, July.

So the city,

I mean,

of course,

With regards to the

Yalta Agreement and so forth,

the Western Allies knew they were going to get each a sector of West Berlin.

So they knew that they would get that eventually.

But that didn't happen straight away.

That wasn't on the 9th of May.

That's something British troops turn up.

So there is at least a good one or two months until Western military personnel enter

Berlin. Now,

I think as a consequence of that,

it means the Soviets have got free reign.

over all of Berlin for a good two-month period.

That's why you see the sexual violence and the looting and so forth pretty much go unchecked for at least the first two months.

And I think even as late as August 1945,

Zhukov was still making declarations to his troops that they should start behaving themselves and they should refrain from,

I think he said,

immoral activities,

which is a rather blasé way of putting it.

I think Berlin is in anarchy,

certainly for a while after the battle.

And my last question is,

what is it like as a historian?

You're in Berlin.

There is more information,

particularly about the sexual violence.

How easy or difficult is it now when you're in Berlin,

which is a great place to do the research,

but to get that side of the story,

to get the Soviet information in a way that is honest,

is open?

and not clouded by revisionism.

It's still very difficult to get,

I would say it's still impossible to get access to Soviet archives,

or sorry,

Russian archives,

regarding it.

But I think one important part is that a lot of the story of the Battle of Berlin was not spoken about,

and that was mainly due to the Cold War,

right?

In communist East Germany,

the Red Army were portrayed as liberators.

If you go to the Zielower Heights,

there's a large memorial there.

If you go to Tiergarten in

East Berlin,

there's another big Soviet war memorial there.

And the inscriptions on the memorials always say,

we thank the Red Army for liberating

Germany from fascism.

That's always how they said it.

So the Red Army are portrayed very,

very heroically.

You have huge statues of a very glorious

Soviet soldier,

and with big Soviet tanks outside as well,

of all the

Soviet war memorials.

Certainly the East German propaganda line,

as I've described,

meant that there was not going to be an open discussion about the crimes of the Red Army.

But also even in West Germany,

there was a big reluctance to talk about what happened to the women.

And that would be partly maybe social conservatism that doesn't want to talk about such a horrific thing.

Also a lot of shame that goes hand in hand with the war guilt as well.

And that's why the film.

a woman in Berlin that's based on a memoir.

Well,

it was published anonymously.

And that tells you something that she did not want her name to be known when it was first published.

I think it was in the 50s and the 40s.

And then when it was published in German,

it scandalized West German society.

And they accused the author of besmirching the honor of German woman with her account of what had happened.

So a lot of German men didn't want to hear about it.

And a lot of German men who themselves had maybe served in the Wehrmacht and

were themselves traumatized when they then came back home and found out that their sisters mothers or wives or girlfriends had then been sexually assaulted by the red army soldiers they just couldn't deal with it they couldn't deal with it and they felt like it was one more affront done to them one

more injustice which which they had to had to suffer they didn't at all see it from the woman's perspective that she herself was a victim they saw it mainly in terms of themselves and how they felt.

So all of that played into it.

And that's why...

It's not so much...

what is the access to archives and what is the access to stories,

is that a lot of those stories weren't written down for a long time.

Women in East Germany started to give interviews about what had happened to them,

but only in the

90s and the 2000s.

That's a long time after what happened,

but that's because beforehand no one wanted to listen.

David,

thank you very much.

This was a valuable and insightful conversation.

And I'm sure that the listeners will really get a lot out of it.

Thank you,

Scott,

for having me.

It's been an absolute pleasure to talk through the Battle of Berlin with you.

And also your questions were very insightful.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thanks again,

David.

And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of Beyond Barbarossa,

the 100th episode of Beyond Barbarossa,

the podcast about the Eastern Front of the Second World War.

As always,

I put pictures and maps.

on the website for this episode.

So check it out beyondbarbarossa.ca.

And don't forget to check out

David Semner's podcast,

Europe at War.

You can start with season one on the

Battle of the Hull of the Pocket,

proceed to the Battle of Bautzen,

and then,

of course,

recap the whole season on the final battle for Berlin.

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I'm Scott Burry.

Until next time,

keep your paddles in the water.

Slava Ukrina.

Viva le Canada