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 Führer 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.
STAMPS—COURTESY OF COLONEL HANS REFIOR
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 then; 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!”
*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.
*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….”
6
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. GIs 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. Hollíngsworth, 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, i
ncluding 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 Schönebeck, 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 earned 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 Schönebeck 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 Schönebeck 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. Ill join onto the rear of the German column that has already swung east into Schönebeck 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 Schönebeck, a German Mark V 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 Panzerfäuste 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 Schönebeck 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.