Koller: No, I am in the Werder Game Park.
Hitler: There is great agitation in the city over this long-range artillery fire. They tell me the Russians have brought up heavy guns on railway trucks. They are supposed to have built a railway bridge over the Oder. The Luftwaffe must attack and eliminate these bridges at once.
Koller: The enemy has no railway bridges over the Oder. He may have captured a German heavy battery and turned it around. But he is probably using his own medium guns – he is close enough to hit the city with them.
Despite his conversation with Koller, Hitler still could not concede that the Red Army was within effective striking range of the city. Angrily, he threatened Koller and the Luftwaffe staff with execution. His anger was perhaps a sign of his recognition that he could no longer influence events, but merely react to them. His mood improved somewhat later in the day, perhaps as a result of Dr Morrell’s drugs, perhaps as a result of his self delusion that the so-called ‘Army Detachment Steiner’ could blunt Zhukov’s advance. For ordinary citizens of Berlin, all this would have meant nothing as their thoughts were fixed on survival.
The bombing of Berlin had been carried out by young men from Britain and the Commonwealth Nations, Americans and men whose countries had been occupied. They had delivered their ordnance from the anonymity of the skies, never actually seeing the enemy. The bombing was impersonal, distant and almost abstract. The shelling however was carried out by a vengeful enemy who would soon be rampaging through the capital. Many people knew of the terrible atrocities that had taken place in Russia. Now they feared that the barbarity that had for so long been practised in their name would rebound on them.
On 21 April, Goebbels summoned his aides and associates to a meeting held in the private projection room of his Berlin residence. He arrived late, unshaven and anxious. After issuing the instructions for the day, he launched into a vicious denunciation of the German people:
What can you do with a people whose men don’t even fight when their women are raped! All the plans, all the ideas of National Socialism are too high, too noble for such a people… They deserve the fate that will now descend on them. And you – why have you worked with me? Now you’ll have your little throats cut! But when we step down, let the whole earth tremble.
The following day, Goebbels acting as Reichs Commissar for the defence of Berlin spoke to a group of civil servants, reminding them of their oaths and threatening dire consequences for all those contemplating surrender. He let them know in no uncertain terms that he would end his life in Berlin and that he expected them to do the same by stating that, ‘My family is now at home. We are staying here. And I demand of you, gentlemen, that you too remain at your posts. If necessary, we shall know how to die here’.
Goebbels’ determination to fight to the last in Berlin was echoed in his last published article which also appeared on the same day in the weekly newspaper Das Reich. The article ‘Resistance at any price’ was a rallying cry to the defenders of Berlin:
The war has reached a stage at which only the full efforts of the nation and of each individual can save us. The defence of our freedom no longer depends on the army fighting at the front. Each civilian, each man and woman and boy and girl must fight with unequalled fanaticism. The enemy expects that, once his tanks have broken through, they will find no resistance. He believes that we will be so disconcerted by his material superiority that we will let things take their course, without caring how they turn out. We must prove the enemy’s hopes wrong. No village and no city may give in to the enemy. The enemy is strong, but not strong enough to hold all of the territory of the Reich without our help. If he persuades us to capitulate, he will have an easy time with us. The enemy has laid waste to our cities and provinces through the worst and most terrible bombing terror. As long as we are determined to resist at all costs, we cannot be beaten, and for us not being beaten means to be victorious.
This war of nations demands heavy sacrifice. Still, these sacrifices do not begin to compare with those that we would have to make if we lose… In the midst of a thousand battles, burdens and defeats, our people stand unbroken. Our hearts are proud when we hear from the enemy the wild fanaticism they encounter, how fathers, mothers and even children gather to resist the invaders, how boys and girls throw hand grenades and mines or shoot from cellar windows without regard to danger… The enemy’s attacks are riskier than the methods we use to resist… A nation that defended its freedom with all its resources has never yet been defeated…
Our entire war effort requires revolutionary changes. The old rules of war are outdated, and have no use at all in our present situation… When whole peoples are threatened, whole peoples must defend themselves. The enemy does not wish to take a province from us or push us back to more favourable strategic borders, he wants to cut our very arteries by destroying our mines and factories, destroying our national substance. If he succeeds, Germany will become a cemetery. Our people will starve and perish, aside from the millions who will be deported to Siberia as slave labour…
Each must start with himself, banishing all weakness and lethargy. He must stand firm and give an example to others, he must be on guard when he hears defeatism… No one can leave it to anyone else. We are all in the same boat that is ploughing through the storm… That is how things are… Raising up the white flag means giving up the war and shamefully losing one’s life…
We still live and breathe, and have mountains of resistance left in us that we only need to draw upon… A fourteen-year-old lad crouching with his bazooka behind a ruined wall on a burned out street is worth more to the nation than ten intellectuals who attempt to prove that our chances are nil… Whether things balance or not depends on us alone… Final victory will be ours. It will come through tears and blood, but it will justify all the sacrifices we have made.
The tone of Goebbels’ appeal to the people was simple. He was basically saying fight on, or die horribly at the hands of victors who would demand their pound of flesh. In truth, this last publication was nothing more than a mass invitation to suicide for what remained of the shrinking German Reich.
During the course of 22 April, the Soviet stranglehold threatened to cut off Berlin completely as Zhukov and Konev deployed their combined total of five rifle and four tank armies for the final push. At 10.00hrs, 3rd Shock Army attacked, taking the former Communist area of Weissensee quickly. Meanwhile, 5th Shock Army, supported by 12th guards Rifle Corps and 11th Tank Corps smashed their way into Kaulsdorf, Biesdorf and the eastern defences at Karlshorst. To the south, the command headquarters at Zossen had been captured intact. Konev’s troops quickly moved on with one column of tanks heading for Potsdam, another for the southern defensive zones along the Teltow Canal. While the Soviet juggernaut ground relentlessly on, Hitler waited nervously for news of Steiner’s attack. With each passing hour, Hitler became more irritable as General Krebs was unable to offer him any definite information.
The military situation conference was held in the bunker at 15.00hrs that afternoon. Overriding Krebs’ usual sugar coating of the situation, General Jodl informed Hitler that the Oder Front had all but collapsed, that 9th Army was surrounded and that General Weidling’s 56th Panzer Corps could not be located. He went on to say that the city was almost cut off and that within a week the forces of Zhukov and Konev would meet up thus sealing off the Reich capital completely. Irritated by Jodl’s gloomy prognosis, Hitler demanded to know when Steiner’s forces would come to the relief of the city. Krebs was forced to concede that Steiner had been unable to mobilise enough men and that as a consequence no relief from that source could be expected.