The Red Army advances came at a high price in terms of both men and machines. Weidling’s forces had inflicted heavy losses, albeit at high cost to themselves. Whilst the Red Army could sustain high losses, the German garrison could not. What Weidling needed more than anything at this time was reinforcements.
Remarkably, some German reinforcements made it into the beleaguered city. On the evening of 24 April, approximately ninety men, including most of the officers, the best non-commissioned officers and the divisional chaplain Monsignor Count Mayol de Lupe arrived at the Olympic Stadium. The volunteers who had accompanied their commander General Gustav Krukenberg to Berlin were on the whole fierce anti-Communists, arguably none more so than the divisional chaplain. The Monsignor was a larger than life character who was highly decorated, having been awarded the Legion d’ Honneur and the Iron Cross first and second class. Aged seventy two, he had been twice wounded in combat and was not adverse to anointing the dying with one hand, whilst firing his revolver with the other. His staunch anti-Communist credentials were laid out in this statement:
The world must choose; on the one hand Bolshevist savagery, an infernal force; on the other Christian civilisation. We must choose at all costs. We cannot loyally remain neutral any longer! It’s Bolshevist anarchy, or Christian order!
The uncompromising cleric joined his comrades in the defence of Neukolln. Later, the remnants of the volunteer force were pushed back into the central government district which had been designated as Defence Sector Z. Here, the Frenchmen fighting for Hitler’s lost cause acquitted themselves exceedingly well, turning the streets of Berlin into a graveyard for Soviet armour.
Chapter Nine
Banner of Victory
At noon on 25 April 1945, the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front effected their link-up at Ketzin, thus cutting off Berlin from the outside world. A ring of steel formed by four tank armies and a further five infantry armies choked off the vital arterial lifelines leading into the city. To the north, Marshal Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front was on the point of breaking through the eastern flank of General Manteuffel’s 3rd Panzer Army, his aim being to prevent these German forces from moving south to reinforce the Berlin garrison. Meanwhile, to the south, General Busse’s 9th Army was gradually being pushed away to the south-west of Berlin. An attack by German battle-groups on the morning of 26 April achieved some success with the severing of Soviet communications on the Baruth-Zossen road. However, dogged defence by the 395th Rifle division prevented a breakthrough at Baruth. Thereafter, the German forces were once again enveloped, this time in the woods north-east of the town.
As the Soviet stranglehold tightened, Berlin began to die. The grand neo-baroque telegraph office on Oranienburger Strasse ceased operations entirely, following the receipt of a last message from Tokyo which simply said ‘GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL’. The civilian telephone network somehow continued to function as outlying districts of the city were overrun, though links with areas outside Berlin ceased altogether on 26 April. Incredibly, a young Soviet officer named Victor Boev used the civilian network to phone Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, and even more incredibly was put through to the minister himself. Boev, who spoke excellent German held a brief conversation with Goebbels:
Boev: I am a Russian officer, speaking from Siemensstadt. I should like to ask you a few questions.
Goebbels: Please go ahead.
Boev: How long can you hold out in Berlin?
Goebbels: Several (remainder inaudible)
Boev: Weeks?
Goebbels: Oh, no. Months. Why not? Your people defended Sevastopol for nine months. Why shouldn’t we do the same in our capital?
Boev: Another question. When, and in what direction will you escape from Berlin?
Goebbels: That question is far too insulting to deserve an answer.
Boev: You must remember that we will find you, even if we have to comb the ends of the earth. And we have prepared a scaffold for you. Is there anything you would like to ask me.
Goebbels: No (hangs up).
Boev’s somewhat clumsy attempt to pry into the mind of the minister failed to elicit any real information, or insights into Goebbels’ mind. He could have got the same information from reading a four-paged propaganda sheet entitled Der Panzerbar (The Armoured Bear) which appeared following the closure of Berlin’s newspapers. For the citizens of Berlin, few gained much solace from reading hackneyed old lines such as, ‘The Reich is at stake – Berlin will be faithful to itself and to its past’, or warnings about life under Soviet overlords, ‘A Negro slave’s life is no goal for us’. Even fewer chose to believe the assurances that German reinforcements were coming to the rescue of besieged Berlin. Most people looked to their immediate problems, a lack of food following the breakdown of distribution services and a daily quest to find clean water.
It was not only the civilian population of Berlin that was being starved of provisions. General Weidling also desperately needed ammunition and medical supplies for his hard pressed troops. Some attempts at bringing in supplies by air were made, but with limited landing facilities on the improvised runway along the East-West Axis, it was a case of too little, too late. The desperate supply situation was later described by Weidling, following a visit to Major-General Barenfanger, commandant of the eastern sector of the central defence zone:
Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Strasse were under heavy artillery fire. The dust from the rubble hung in the air like a thick fog. Shells burst all around us… Dodging Russian mortars, we made our way to the U-Bahn station by bounds. The roomy U-Bahn station, two storeys deep, was crowded with terrified civilians. It was a shattering sight… From Platform ‘E’ we walked through the tunnel as far as Schillingstrasse station to General Barenfanger’s HQ. Barenfanger reported strong Russian attacks near Frankfurter Strasse… A considerable number of enemy tanks had been destroyed in his sector. He now pressed me for more men and ammunition, but I could promise him neither. Most of Barenfanger’s men were Volkssturm troopers that had been sent into the fighting with captured weapons, French, Italian, etc. No ammunition for these weapons could be found anywhere in Berlin… On my way back, I visited one of the hospitals. It was terribly overcrowded. The doctors simply could not cope with the number of wounded. There was hardly any light or water.
There was to be no respite. Gradually, Weidling’s forces were squeezed into a pocket which by the close of the following day measured some ten miles from east to west and a mere three and a half miles wide. The air-drops on which Weidling now depended for supplies were temporarily disrupted following the blocking of the improvised airstrip by a Ju-52 transport plane which had crashed whilst attempting to take-off with its cargo of wounded troops. Parachute drops were planned, but they could deliver only a fraction of the supplies needed.
By the end of 27 April, Chuikov’s forces were converging on the main prize, the Reichstag. To the east, Berzarin’s forces had advanced as far as the Lustgarten. Whilst to the north, Kuznetzov’s troops had broken into Moabit. Zhukov was clearly winning the race to the Reichstag. However, Konev had not yet given up hope of taking the prize as spearheads from his own forces had advanced as far as the Hohenzollerndamm. He then issued orders for Rybalko’s tank troops and Luchinsky’s 20th Corps to capture the whole south-western sector of Berlin, followed by an advance to the Landwehr Canal by the end of 28 April. With Chuikov’s troops advancing in the same direction, there arose the very real possibility of a collision between the two forces. Therefore, Konev took the decision to turn Rybalko’s forces to the west, away from the main prize. Konev later recalled his conversation with Rybalko: