Armageddon - Max Hastings [345]
By sheer weight of fire and numbers, the Red Army ground down the exhausted defenders. German ammunition supplies began to fail. By the evening of 19 April, 1st Belorussian Front had broken through all the German outer defences and was closing on Berlin. Next day, Zhukov’s artillery began to fire on the city. The capture of the Seelow Heights had cost the Germans 12,000 dead, the Russians 30,000. In the north, Rokossovsky’s armies were pressing the German forces on the lower Oder. Konev reached the Spree and overran OKH headquarters at Zossen. His men found the teleprinters still rattling out messages from the surviving fragments of Hitler’s armies. The triumphant Konev begged Moscow to allow him to turn his two tank armies northwards, towards the capital. Stalin acceded.
Zhukov was now seriously alarmed that his rival marshal would defeat him in the race for Berlin. “In the course of three days the infantry have advanced 16 miles,” he signalled one of his armoured commanders, “and all this time the tanks have been dragging along behind them.” His officers were enraged to learn that the advance of some formations was being held up as men turned aside to loot. Some of the worst offenders in support units were transferred on the spot to rifle companies. Late on 20 April, Zhukov urged the commanders of his two Guards Tank Armies to the fulfilment of “a historic task: to break into Berlin first and to raise the banner of victory.” Soviet tank brigades entered the outskirts of Hitler’s capital next evening, the 21st. Zhukov urged them on, using the very goad Stalin had applied to himself and Konev: “Due to the slowness of our advance, the Allies are approaching Berlin and will soon take it.” Yet in built-up areas Soviet tanks found themselves as vulnerable to teenagers with fausts as their counterparts in Eisenhower’s armies. Zhukov pushed forward “fighting reconnaissance groups”—his penal companies, though these had been reduced to strengths of fifteen or twenty men in sacrificial actions at the Oder.
Even when the Russians began to bombard the streets, for many Berliners the need to find food overcame fear. They continued to queue at local shops as shells fell around them. “In Wilmersdorf, the local situation became acute about April 20th, a Friday,” wrote a Berlin housewife. “On the weekend, the firing came nearer and the streets grew very empty, except for women doggedly queueing for food, and occasional German tanks seeking or avoiding Russian outposts. On Monday, the ticket collector from our railway station got killed in a cigarette queue. On Tuesday morning, a shell swept over the bridge just as I was crossing it, and destroyed a baker’s shop with some of the people in it.” Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs signalled its foreign missions: “Owing to the gravity of the situation and especially to administrative difficulties, the greater part of the Ministry has been moved to other quarters.” Missions were asked to confine their future transmissions to matters of urgent importance.
From the evening of 21 April onwards, Zhukov’s tanks were inching forward street by street, paying a price for every intersection. All-arms attack groups composed of tanks, infantry and assault guns worked in tandem, each supported by its own engineer and flamethrower platoons. The guns were responsible for blasting away buildings identified as centres of resistance. Then it was the business of infantry to occupy the debris and mop up. In the streets of Berlin, it was impossible to prevail