The Fall of Berlin

The Fall of Berlin and the Rise of a MythAuthor(s): Donald E. ShepardsonSource: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 135-154Published by: Society for Military HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/120398 .Accessed: 24/04/2011 22:47

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The Fall of Berlin and the Rise of a Myth

Donald E. Shepardson

ON 30 April 1945 a Russian soldier raised his flag over the Reichstag building in Berlin to signal Stalin's defeat of Hitler after four years

of war.' The fall of Berlin also coincided with the rise of a grand myth of American naivete and British realism in dealing with their German enemy and Soviet ally during the spring of 1945. The British and Amer- icans, it was said, could have taken Berlin before the Red Army, but declined to do so because General Dwight Eisenhower was overly cau- tious and failed to perceive the coming Cold War with the Soviet Union.2

The myth was born amid conflicting American and British differ- ences on wartime priorities and postwar anxieties as well as a feeling among the British that their effort against Hitler was not fully appreci- ated. They had a point. For the better part of two years Britain had fought alone before Hitler's aggression forced the Soviet Union and the United States into war. It was also a myth generated by the stress and personality conflicts endemic to coalition warfare. The controversy has been portrayed as part of a personal feud between General Dwight Eisen- hower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, or as the Americans against the British. To some extent it was, but Eisenhower had his British supporters, and no one favored driving for Berlin more than George Pat- ton.3

1. The author sends a salute of appreciation to Colonel David Glantz for his help in completing this manuscript.

2. David W. Hogan, Jr., "Berlin Revisited: Eisenhower's Decision To Halt At The Elbe Viewed Fifty Years Later: A Selected Bibliography," Headquarters Gazette 6 (Summer, 1995): 5.

3. Carlo D'Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 721.

The Journal of Military History 62 (January 1998), 135-54 0 Society for Military History * 135

DONALD E. SHEPARDSON

Chester Wilmot criticized the decision to halt at the Elbe in his 1952 book, The Struggle For Europe.4 He has been joined by eminent histori- ans such as Alan Bullock and Albert Seaton, with the latter wondering "why Roosevelt and the United States Chiefs of Staff should have left this final stage of the war to the discretion of a single individual who, although a soldier of distinction, may at that time have been lacking in political acumen and an understanding of the aims and methods of the Soviet Union. Military objectives should of necessity have been related to post-war political strategy."5

The myth has continued for fifty years despite the works of Stephen Ambrose, Theodore Draper, David Eisenhower, Forrest Pogue, and others. In his recent book, Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger added his support. "In April of 1945," he wrote, "Churchill pressed Eisenhower ... to seize Berlin ahead of advancing Soviet Armies." The American refusal, Kissinger believes, was a prime example of "military planning unaffected by political considerations." Berlin, Kissinger believes, was a free gift at a time when "there were no significant German armed forces left to destroy."6

Critics of American policy have assumed that in the spring of 1945 everyone should have known that the Cold War was inevitable. Ameri- can leaders, however, still hoped to prevent a break with the Soviets and were more concerned with winning World War II than striking the first blow of World War III. "World War II may be refought," wrote Theodore Draper, "only as an exercise in speculation and hindsight. The way it ... was fought gives no reason to believe that it would have gone entirely right if it had been fought differently. . . . What we can do now is to understand what hard choices had to be made and to put ourselves back into that time and place, as if we had to face those hard choices as they arose."7 More recently, Gerhard Weinberg has reminded us that histori- ans too often judge the past on the basis of what came later rather than on what came before. Those who made their decisions during the harsh years of World War II, he wrote, "had their hopes and their fears, made their guesses and their projections, but in the rush of events had only the barest glimmer of possible future developments."8 When facing those hard choices amid the rush of events in the spring of 1945, it was Eisen-

4. Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (New York: Harper, 1952), 690-706. 5. Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York: Knopf, 1992), 884;

Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War, 1941-45 (New York: Praeger, 1971), 563. 6. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 417. 7. Theodore Draper, "Eisenhower's War," New York Review of Books 33 (25 Sep-

tember 1986): 30. 8. Gerhard L. Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern

German and World HIistory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 287.

136 * THE JOURNAL OF


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The situation in Western Europe between the Yalta Conference (4-9 Feb- ruary 1945) and V-E Day (9 May 1945). Shown are the fronts at the time of the Conference, the border between the Soviet occupation zone and the British and American zones decided upon at the conference, and the final lines reached by the Allied armies. The dark areas weere still occu- pied by German forces on V-E Day.

hower and his superiors who were the more realistic and not their crit- iCS.

Following the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944, the Wehr- macht ceased to mount well-coordinated resistance to the advancing western Allies. Many German soldiers, however, were still willing to fight ably and tenaciously for Fatherland and Fuhrer up to the end of the war.

In the East the Red Army had lain relatively dormant on the Vistula since the summer of 1944. Stalin had told his Western Allies that he would launch an offensive in January of 1945 to coincide with their drive on the Rhine. Neither his allies nor the Germans expected it to come on such a massive scale.

MILITARY HISTORY * 137


Stalin was now looking beyond the Oder to Berlin and perhaps to the Elbe for a final defeat of the Germans. Throughout the autumn the Red Army built up its forces to a five-to-one advantage, stockpiled supplies, and converted needed portions of the Polish rail system to the wider Russian gauge.9

On 12 January, the Red Army struck in force under the leadership of Marshals Georgi Zhukov and Ivan Konev. Their advance accelerated in the flatlands of western Poland, and by the end of the month they had reached the Oder. The Red Army now faced its "February Dilemma." Berlin lay less than fifty miles ahead. Zhukov and the Soviet command in Moscow initially believed they could reach the Elbe by the end of Feb- ruary, and then attack Berlin from several directions.

But German fortifications and troop concentrations still had to be eliminated. In their rapid advance the Russians had also exposed their flanks to German attacks, especially along Zhukov's salient in the center. These factors, in addition to growing supply problems, German rein- forcements, and bad weather, caused concern in Moscow and at the front.

Stalin decided to postpone any assault on Berlin. In three weeks his Red Army had won one of the most spectacular strings of victories of the war. He could now meet his Allies at Yalta on 4 February with all of Poland and most of Hungary in his pocket. His armies were little more than a day's march from Berlin, while those of his allies were still fighting to regain the area lost during the Battle of the Bulge.'0 There was no point in taking any risks. In Europe, as well as Asia, his allies needed him more than he needed them. Given the military situation, Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., later wrote, "it was not a case of what the United States and Great Britain would permit Russia to do, but what the two countries could persuade the Soviet Union to accept."11

In the West, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, expected a tough fight before victory, and he realized more than anyone how dependent his armies were on the Red Army closing from the East. On 15 January he told General

9. Tony Le Tissier, Zhukov at the Oder: The Decisive Battle for Berlin (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), 13; Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 798-802; Earl P. Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military Ilistory, 1968), 419-21.

10. David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. lIouse, When 7itans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 249-50; Seaton, Russo-Gerrnan War, 536-37; Raymond Cartier, Der zweite Weltkrieg (Miunchen: Piper, 1967), 2: 952-53; John Erickson, The Road To Berlin: Continuing the Story of Stalin's War with Germany (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), 472-76.

11. Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1949), 301.



George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, that if the Russian offensive was weak, the Germans could maintain enough strength in the West to stop his own advance.12 With a strong Russian offensive, however, Eisen- hower planned to move on the Rhine along a wide front, while remain- ing flexible enough to cross it at the first opportunity.

After regaining the areas lost to the Germans in the Ardennes, Eisen- hower gathered strength and then launched his assault west of the Rhine. On 20 January his forces began their attempt to clear the area in Upper Alsace known as the Colmar Pocket. With the aid of American units, French forces captured Colmar on the twenty-seventh. From there the Allies moved against other enemy units until by 9 February German forces had been eliminated on the west bank of the Rhine south of Stras- bourg.

Before the Colmar Pocket had been cleared, the Allies launched a series of attacks designed to clear the west bank of the Rhine while destroying as many German forces as possible. Beginning with Operation Veritable in the north and ending with Operation Undertone in the south, the Allies struck like a series of firecrackers along the front. At first the fighting was fierce against special SS units determined to fight until the end, but gradually air and armored superiority took their toll. From the middle of February onward, Allied armies advanced along the entire front. The German defenders were handicapped by shortages of supplies as well as delays caused by roads clogged with refugees and the accumulated junk of retreating forces. In the face of mounting casualties and sagging morale, more and more soldiers looked for the chance to surrender. By the end of the month nearly 250,000 had done so, adding their number to the over 300,000 casualties suffered by the Wehrmacht during the Rhineland campaign.13

As Eisenhower's armies advanced, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta from 4 to 11 Feb- ruary. Each of the leaders knew the European war would soon end. Most of the conference dealt with the fate of Germany and Poland. Agreement on temporary zones of military occupation and Soviet entry into the war against Japan was relatively easy and harmonious. The zones had been initially proposed and discussed at a time when the Western allies were more concerned about meeting the Red Army at the Rhine than about

12. Stephen E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 607; The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years, ed. Alfred D. Chandler (Baltimore: Johns IIopkins University Press, 1970), 4: 2430-31.

13. Ambrose, Supreme Commander, 615; Raymond Cartier, Der zweite Weltkrieg, 2 vols. (Munich: Piper, 1967), 968-71; Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command, a volume in the series United States Army in World War II (Washington: GPO, 1954), 423, 427-29.



challenging it for control of Berlin. The Soviet zone comprised slightly over one third of Germany and extended one hundred miles west of Berlin. Berlin itself was divided into American, British, French, and Soviet zones.14 The zones were agreed upon in part to forestall a last- minute land grab by any of the powers, and the confrontation that might come with it. The political decision had been made.

Eisenhower's armies approached the Rhine while agreement on the zones was completed. The rapid Allied advance placed the Germans in a dilemma. The bridges over the river must be destroyed before the enemy could use them. But blowing them too soon would leave many German troops and their equipment trapped on the other side. The delay and indecision involved in waiting long enough, but not too long, led to one of those "breaks" of military fortune that alters plans, timetables, and sometimes even the course of war itself.

On the afternoon of 7 March, units of the American Ninth Armored Division approached the town of Remagen on the Rhine, some 250 miles from Berlin. To their astonishment they saw the Ludendorff railroad bridge still spanning the river intact. While planning to destroy the bridge the Germans had lacked adequate explosives and had to impro- vise. They were surprised by the American infantry, and the Pershing tanks supporting it. The tanks were able to silence German fire and in the process may have cut wires leading to the explosive charges. The first attempt to blow the bridge failed; the second appeared to be suc- cessful. The bridge shook but then settled back onto its moorings. Amer- ican commanders decided to risk a crossing before another attempt was made to destroy it. With the support of their tanks American infantry became the first hostile troops since Napoleon's army of 1806 to cross the Rhine. By the end of the day one tank company along with three infantry companies had established a bridgehead on the other side.15

Crossing the Rhine accelerated the Allied drive into Germany. It also brought new problems. Americans in the south were able to cross more rapidly than British forces in the north. The American crossing seemed even more important when Eisenhower received an intelligence report on 11 March warning of German plans for a last defense in the mountains of southern Bavaria.

The existence of "the fortress that never was," as Rodney Minott referred to it, could not be ignored.'6 The Germans had large concentra-

14. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Con- ferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington: GPO, 1955), 118-27.

15. Cartier, Der zweite Weltkrieg , 971-72; Charles MacDonald, The Last Offen- sive, a volume in the series United States Army in World War II (Washington: GPO, 1973), 213-17.

16. Rodney G. Minott, The Fortress that Never Was: The Myth of Hitler's Bavar- ian Stronghold (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 35-37.



tions of forces in the south, and it was the logical place for soldiers from the Eastern, Italian, and Western fronts to converge.17 The Italian campaign had shown how well the Germans used mountainous terrain, and it made much more sense for the Nazi government to make its last stand there than in Berlin. Some Nazi leaders had already fled Berlin for Berchtesgaden, and Hitler himself still planned to leave on 20 April.18

The swing to the east would be primarily an American operation to destroy German units while avoiding a collision with the Russians further north. The prospect of a collision was worrisome to Marshall as well as to Eisenhower. On the twenty-seventh Eisenhower considered Mar- shall's advice to push eastward along a broad front. Marshall also raised concern about "unfortunate incidents" involving the "advancing forces." One possible way to minimize the danger, Marshall suggested, was "an agreed line of demarcation."19

There had been no agreement at Yalta on where each army would stop, posing the risk of accidental conflict by soldiers who might shoot first and identify later. In Yugoslavia the previous November, American fighter planes had mistakenly killed several Russian soldiers and angered their government.20 The risk became greater as the two armies came closer.

By April of 1945 Allied and Russian aircraft had fired on each other over Germany with no damage. Eisenhower tried to prevent similar incidents on the ground by arranging identification signals with the Russians as well as by halting at the Elbe. "It didn't seem to be good sense," he recounted after the war, "to try, both of us, to throw our forces toward Berlin and get mixed up-two armies that couldn't talk the same lan- guage, couldn't even communicate with each other. It would have been a terrible mess."'21

The Soviet military expert David Glantz recently described what a mess it could have been as part of the forthcoming book A Different War dealing with the "what ifs" of World War II. In "Allied Drive to Berlin, April 1945," he described what might well have happened had Truman ordered Eisenhower to take Berlin. By shifting forces from the Harz Mountains and the Ruhr he could begin the drive with about twenty divisions while adding another ten within a week. Glantz concluded that

17. MacDonald, Last Offensive, 409. 18. Ambrose, Supreme Commander, 622-23; Tony Le Tissier, The Battle Qf

Berlin (London: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 80. 19. Chandler, ed., Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, 4: 2364-65; Ambrose,

Supreme Commander, 628. 20. MacDonald, Last Offensive, 444. 21. James Nelson, ed., General Eisenhower on the Military Churchill: A Conver-

sation with Alistair Cook (New York: Norton, 1970), 55-56; Theodore Draper, "Eisen- hower's War: The Final Crisis," New York Review of Books 33 (23 October 1986): 61.



both the Allies and the Russians would have fought their way inside Berlin. In doing so there would have been skirmishes with each other. It would also have led to an immediate Cold War with the Russians before the end of the Pacific war.22 Colonel Glantz also elaborated on the theme he and Jonathan House stressed in their When Titans Clashed. The Rus- sians believed, with considerable justification, that they had a "blood right" to take Berlin. The Soviet Union had sacrificed millions in first holding, and then driving back the Germans. Taking Berlin was the cul- mination of its effort as well as the symbol of victory. It would not be denied the prize by perfidious allies. This emotional preoccupation, wrote Glantz and House, "drove the Red Army forward toward Berlin."23

The change in military fortune following the Rhine crossing placed added strain on the Grand Alliance. In Moscow, the Remagen crossing appeared to be a German attempt to facilitate an Anglo-American advance to Berlin. The Soviets hardly had time to digest the news of Remagen before being given indications of another "deal" between Hitler and the West. On 12 March the American Ambassador to Moscow, W. Averell Harriman, told the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, of secret contacts going on in Berne between the Allies and representatives of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the Ger- man Commander in Italy.24

It appeared as though the hopes of Yalta were foundering. Soviet sus- picions of the West were reciprocated by Western anger over heavy- handed Soviet actions in Poland. Deteriorating relations spilled over into the coming conference in San Francisco on the United Nations. On 23 March, Moscow announced that Andrei Gromyko would head the Soviet delegation to San Francisco. The absence of Molotov indicated a decreas- ing Soviet interest in the new organization as well as a general chilling of relations within the Grand Alliance.

After hearing from Marshall, Eisenhower decided he could best destroy the German army by moving north to Kassel in Westphalia, and then drive east toward Dresden to meet the Russians. On 28 March he informed Stalin of his plan to strike toward Leipzig and Dresden. "Could you," he asked, "therefore, tell me your intentions.... I regard it as essential that we coordinate our action and make every effort to perfect the liaison between our advancing forces."25

22. David M. Glantz, "Allied Drive to Berlin, April 1945," A Different War (Chicago, 1996), 118-82.

23. Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed, 256. 24. Rudy Abramson, Spanning The Century: The Life of W Averell Harriman,

1896-1986 (New York: Morrow, 1992), 392. 25. Chandler, ed., Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, 4: 2531; David Eisen-

hower, Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945 (New York: Random House, 1986), 740-46.



Eisenhower's decision along with his message infuriated the British who still believed the final thrust would continue north to Berlin.26 He had communicated directly with Stalin without first consulting with the Combined Chiefs. Without their consent he had changed the primary attack to Dresden while leaving Berlin to the Russians. If that were not enough, he had transferred units from Montgomery's command to Gen- eral Omar Bradley for the drive on Dresden. The British passed their objections to Marshall and argued for a strong drive north which would secure German ports and submarine bases and open the way to Den- mark.27

Marshall and the American Joint Chiefs viewed the British note as just another instance of British carping at Eisenhower, who by now had demonstrated his ability and his judgment. Churchill himself had gone to Eisenhower directly on many occasions without consulting the Com- bined Chiefs. Perhaps Eisenhower might have written to his Soviet coun- terpart, Marshall Aleksei Antonov, rather than to Stalin, but since Stalin was the one who mattered, it saved time to go directly to him.

Marshall agreed that the swing to Dresden was the best way to divide Germany and destroy what remained of the Wehrmacht. With Marshall's support Eisenhower held to his plan on military grounds, but on 30 March Churchill interjected a political argument for taking Berlin. "If the enemy resistance should weaken ... why should we not cross the Elbe and advance as far eastward as possible? This has an important political bearing, as the Russian army in the south seems certain to enter Vienna and overrun Austria. If we deliberately leave Berlin to them ... the double event may strengthen their conviction, already apparent, that they have done everything."28

Eisenhower still believed Dresden should be the primary goal. After that, he agreed to give some American units back to Montgomery for a drive to Lubeck in the north that would isolate German troops in Den- mark and Norway. His decision was not that of a general who was polit- ically naive. He knew his Clausewitz well enough to understand the political and psychological importance of capturing Berlin, just as he understood the importance of liberating Denmark before the Red Army. Eisenhower also understood the American Constitution and his place within the Allied command. His actions were subject to the approval of

26. John Ehrman, Grand Strategy, a volume in the series History of the Second World War (London: HMSO, 1956), 6: 131.

27. Ambrose, Supreme Commander, 633. 28. Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

1953), 463.



the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Marshall, and ultimately the President of the United States.

On 7 April Eisenhower told Marshall that "I am the first to admit that a war is waged in pursuance of political aims, and if the Combined Chiefs of Staff should decide that the Allied effort to take Berlin outweighs purely military considerations in the theater, I would cheerfully readjust my plans and my thinking so as to carry out such an operation. I urgently believe, however, that the capture of Berlin should be left as something that we would do if feasible and practicable as we proceed on a general plan of (a) dividing the German forces by a major thrust in the middle, (b) anchoring our left firmly in the Lubeck [sic] area and (c) attempting to disrupt any German effort to establish a fortress in the southern mountains."29

Eisenhower's primary goal, as well as that of Marshall and Roosevelt, remained that of defeating Germany quickly with minimum casualties before deploying forces to the Pacific. By the spring of 1945 these goals became even more important because of a growing manpower shortage that was aggravated by congressional objections to using eighteen-year- olds in combat.30

The situation in the Pacific was grim. The future looked even worse. The atomic bomb was a theory to be tested; fighting the Japanese was a reality to be dreaded. When the fighting ended on Iwo Jima on 16 March the U.S. Marine Corps had suffered 25,000 casualties with over 6,000 dead.31 The Philippines campaign had been costlier still, and was not yet completed.

Operation Iceberg, the invasion of Okinawa, began on 1 April and encountered fanatical resistance in the south. At sea, Japanese defenders employed Kamikaze attacks in force against American ships, adding to the carnage. When it finally ended in June, 75,000 American soldiers and sailors had been killed or wounded. Losses in material were stagger- ing, with 38 ships sunk, another 368 damaged, and over 700 aircraft lost.32

Following the Yalta conference, the War Department formulated plans for the final assault on Japan. Operation Olympic, the invasion of

29. Ambrose, Supreme Commander, 642; Chandler, ed., Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, 4: 2592.

30. Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, 4 vols. (New York: Viking, 1973), 3: 495-99.

31. George W. Garand and Truman R. Strobridge, History of the U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (Washington: GPO, 1971), 4: 711.

32. Weinberg,A World at Arms, 882; Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle, a volume in the series United States Army in World War II (Washington: GPO, 1948), 473.



Kyushu, was scheduled for December 1945. Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu, would follow in April 1946. Both operations, and especially Coronet, depended on transferring men and material from Europe. Approximately 400,000 Army Air Forces, Army Ground Forces, and Army Security Forces were scheduled for direct transfer from Europe to the Pacific from September 1945 to April 1946, with another 400,000 allowed a delay en route in the United States, with all projections subject to available shipping.33

Conquest of the Home Islands might take until the end of the year, still leaving the Japanese in control of Burma, Formosa (Taiwan), Manchuria, and large parts of China. The Kwantung army in China and Manchuria had lost much of its strength, but still had a million men. For those Americans who survived Okinawa, as well as those who joined them later, "The Golden Gate in '48" might be the best they could hope for.34

Allied leaders also had to contend with public opinion and the fatigue of war. On 3 April, Montgomery complained that public opinion might affect conduct of the war.35 Here he shared a common frustration with the Americans. A month earlier Marshall had informed Eisenhower of his own troubles with Congress and public opinion. "Making war in a democracy," he wrote, "is not a bed of roses."36 Both men were right, but Marshall, more than Montgomery, had learned that generals, presidents, and prime ministers have to live with it.

In the spring of 1945, Britain was weary after six years of fighting. Having sacrificed so much for so long, the British people wished to heal and rebuild, but remained resolved to finish the war against Japan. New armies were now being formed from throughout the Empire for Opera- tion Zipper, the reconquest of Singapore in December, after which they were scheduled to join the United States for Operation Coronet.37

It is doubtful whether Churchill could have challenged the Yalta set- tlement for Germany without destroying his own government. Churchill had formed a coalition government with the Labour Party of Clement

33. Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1943-1945, a volume in the series United States Army in World War II (Washington: GPO, 1968), 585-86; Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, Code Name Downfall: The Secret Plan To Invade Japan-and Why Truman Dropped the Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 145.

34. Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 658.

35. Arthur Bryant, 7Trumph In The West (New York: Garden City, N.Y.: Double- day, 1959), 341; Alistair Home and David Montgomery, Monty: The Lonely Leader, 1944-1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 321.

36. Pogue, Marshall, 3: 552. 37. Ehrman, Grand Strategy, 6: 264-67.



Attlee in May of 1940. The tensions of war and Churchill's autocratic style had strained the coalition, and most expected it to end following the defeat of Hitler. Nevertheless, Attlee had remained a loyal Deputy Prime Minister and had supported Churchill's decisions at Yalta during a heated debate in the House of Commons on 1 March.38 Many within Labour, including the future Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, urged Attlee to move toward a more independent and "socialist" foreign policy.39 Attlee and Labour would never have supported a confrontation with the Soviets over Berlin, and any attempt to force one would have ended the coalition.

Labour had gained in popularity partly because it had developed a program for domestic reform following the war. It had also benefitted from an enhanced image of the Soviet Union. Prior to the war Labour had suffered because of its perceived kinship and sympathy with the communism of the Soviet Union. The wartime alliance, however, had done much to transform Stalin from the Red Tyrant of the 1930s into the national leader of a gallant ally. There was simply too much good will toward the Soviets to permit a sudden confrontation in the spring of 1945, and the residue of this good will helped Attlee to defeat Churchill in the July 1945 elections.

The United States was in its fourth year of war. It had not suffered as its allies had, but the cost was mounting. It was valid to wonder whether either the American or British public would support bloody "cleaning up" operations for years to come on the Asian mainland. The Americans and the British had good reason for avoiding conflict with the Soviet Union at a time when they were counting on a common effort against Japan.40

The American people also had come to admire their Russian ally. The 4 January 1943 lTme featured Stalin as its "Man of the Year" with a picture of the determined leader beneath which the caption read "All that Hitler could give, he took-for a second time." The award reflected American admiration for the sacrifice the Russians had endured, an admiration that continued until the end of the European war. To sud- denly transform a gallant ally into an enemy might have been possible in Big Brother's Oceania in 1984. It could not have happened in King George's Britain or President Truman's America in the spring of 1945, short of an obvious attack on American or British forces.

President Roosevelt's death on 12 April overshadowed conduct of the war and the strains on the Grand Alliance. In Moscow, Molotov came immediately to the American embassy to pay his respects. According to

38. The Times, 2 March 1945, 4, 8. 39. Kenneth Harris, Attlee (New York: Norton, 1982), 246. 40. Weinberg, A World At Arms, 843.



Harriman, he seemed genuinely moved by the news. The following day Stalin displayed similar compassion and sympathy. Stalin obviously was concerned about the impact of new President Harry Truman on Ameri- can policy, but he also seemed saddened personally as well.41 Whether as a gesture to Allied solidarity or to the memory of Roosevelt personally, Stalin agreed when Harriman asked him to send Molotov to San Fran- cisco.42

News of Roosevelt's death was fodder for the faithful in Berlin. In November the advance of the Red Army had forced Hitler to abandon the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia and return to a specially constructed bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in the center of Berlin. Here he and his entourage lived in a twilight world where hope and fantasy combined to obscure the reality above.

In September 1936, the former British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George had agreed with Hitler that Germany had surrendered at "five minutes to twelve" in 1918. If Germany had held on, the British and French would have buckled from exhaustion. In this war Hitler was determined to fight until "five minutes after twelve" and emerge victori- ous.43

Hitler had convinced himself that 1945 was merely year five in another Seven Years' War. Defeat could be delayed until the Allied coalition fell into ruin and new weapons were developed to win an ultimate victory, if German willpower were strong enough. Since the outbreak of the war, Hitler had increasingly identified himself with Frederick the Great. "The miracle of the house of Brandenburg," the death of Tsarina Elizabeth in 1762, had ended the coalition with Austria and France, sav- ing Frederick and leading to the greatness of Prussia. For a brief moment, Hitler believed that Providence again had intervened and that he and Germany would be saved.44

By the end of March, however, Allied armies had crossed the Rhine all along the front. On the left, Montgomery's army swept past the Ruhr toward the Baltic, while to his right American forces passed the Ruhr and then turned left to meet their British Allies. Now the heart of German industry was isolated along with nearly twenty divisions under Field Mar- shal Model. The Germans held out against the Allied siege until 18 April when over 300,000 surrendered.45

41. Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 271.

42. Abramson, Harriman, 394. 43. Donald McCormich, The Mask of Merlin: A Critical Biography of David Lloyd

George (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 274-75. 44. Bullock, Parallel Lives, 885. 45. MacDonald, Last Offensive, 344-72.

MILITARI HISTORY * 147


Eisenhower's final decision to halt at the Elbe came on 14 April, at a time when American units had entered the Soviet zone and were fifty miles from Berlin. Lieutenant General William Simpson's Ninth Army had reached the Elbe on the eleventh after covering 120 miles in ten days. Simpson believed he could reach Berlin before the Red Army and wanted to try. According to John Toland, Simpson's forces would attack "straight down the autobahn to Berlin." There would be little opposition until the Americans reached the outskirts of the city. "Simpson's claim," Toland wrote, "that he could get there in twenty-four hours was not just boasting. Except for isolated German units-and most of them would offer little or no resistance-there was nothing between him and Hitler except Eisenhower."46 Simpson's view also is recounted in Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle.47

S.L.A. Marshall disagreed with Ryan and Toland when he reviewed both their books for the New York 7imes Book Review. "I must," he wrote, "still say with Virgil: 'These things I saw and part of them I was.' On the day the halt came ... I was across the Elbe at Barby. German pressure against that bridgehead was still intense." American forces, Marshall continued, were "spread out .. ., beset on both flanks with a real fire-fight going up front. Its logistical problems were heavy. Time was needed for collection and regrouping.... Those were not 50 soft miles from the Elbe to Berlin; they were long, hard miles, and troops do run out of wind."48 Theodore Draper also was there. "On the front of my own 84th infantry division, which would have been assigned the mission to Berlin, an esti- mated 200 Germans with their backs to the river fought bitterly on 21 April five days after our leading elements had reached the Elbe, and three companies had to be used to deal with them."49 Those who were on the line believed there was plenty between Simpson and Hitler.

Toland's view seems to assume that an Anglo-American drive to Hitler's bunker would have gone nearly uncontested. The 50,000 Ger- man soldiers blocking the Ninth Army were far from the old Wehrmacht, but they were about equal in number to the force Simpson could have thrown against them. Any force driving for Berlin from the west would have to be strengthened by units from the south, would expose its flanks to attack, and have to traverse the marshy ground west of the city.50 Most likely, German soldiers would fight neither as hard or long as their com-

46. John Toland, The Last 100 Days (New York: Random House, 1966), 385-86. 47. Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966),

330-31. 48. S. L. A. Marshall, "Berlin, April, 1945," New York Times Book Review 71 (27

March 1966): 32. 49. Theodore Draper, "Eisenhower's War: The Final Crisis," New York Review of

Books 33 (23 October 1986): 61. 50. Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 727.



rades in the East, but many were still willing to defend Hitler and his cap- ital and to shoot or hang comrades who were not.51 Fighting in the streets of Berlin and its suburbs would be costly as well as long, and any Anglo- American force in Berlin would have been easily surrounded and isolated by the oncoming Red Army.52

When asked to estimate the cost in men of a final drive for Berlin from the Elbe, Bradley had put the figure at one hundred thousand casualties. Eisenhower's concern for casualties was shared by Marshall in Washington. It was primarily humane, but beyond that there lay the hard reality that men and material needed in Asia were not to be squan- dered in Europe. Taking Berlin, Bradley added, was "a pretty stiff price to pay for a prestige objective, especially when we've got to fall back and let the other fellow take over."53

And the other fellow meant to have it. Stalin and the Soviet High Command had been planning for the assault since February, and were ready to move. "So who will take Berlin, us or the Allies?" Stalin asked his generals on 1 April. "We will take Berlin," Konev answered, "and take it before the Allies."54

In February the Red Army had stood at the Oder in a far better position to reach Berlin before the Anglo-Americans. Stalin and the field commanders had decided to pause in order to eliminate pockets of Ger- man forces in the rear and on the flanks before launching any new attack westward. Supply lines also had been stretched to the limit because many of the bridges over the Vistula had been destroyed during the advance.55

Following the defeat in the Ardennes, Hitler had transferred troops to the east to meet the Russians, slowing progress along the front and forcing the diversion of men and equipment away from the Berlin thrust to other areas. In the southeast, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky's Second and Marshal Feodor Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Fronts encountered stronger German resistance than they had expected on their drive to Vienna. By the middle of March, German resistance began to weaken in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as the Red Army drew closer to Vienna. While the Red Army slowly broke the German resistance along an arc

51. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower and Berlin: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (New York: Norton, 1986), 93; Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Fall of Berlin (New York: Norton, 1992), 298.

52. Pogue, Marshall, 3: 575. 53. Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier's Story (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1951),

535. 54. 0. A. Rzheshevsky, "The Race for Berlin," trans. David M. Glantz, Journal of

Slavic Military Studies 8 (September 1995): 569. 55. Georgi Zhukov, The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (New York: Delacorte,

1971), 580.



from Vienna northward, Eisenhower's forces were rapidly driving into Germany.

The speed of the Western advance and the secret peace talks in Berne were sufficient to revive Stalin's distrust of his allies and to make him wonder whether they would deprive him of Berlin. Eisenhower had tried to allay Soviet concern in his message to Stalin on 28 March, and to a point he did. Stalin knew, however, that Eisenhower was subject to pressure from above, and he feared that the British would force Eisen- hower to take Berlin.56 There was always the possibility that Eisen- hower's announced intention to move east was merely a feint to cover the major drive for Berlin. Whatever Stalin's fears and motives, he appar- ently believed the Germans were negotiating with the British to turn over Berlin before it could be captured by the Red Army.57

Before replying to Eisenhower, Stalin summoned Zhukov and Konev to Moscow to develop a plan for launching an offensive on 16 April that would capture Berlin by the end of the month and take the Red Army to the Elbe to secure the occupation zone assigned to the Soviet Union at Yalta.58 In his message to Eisenhower, Stalin agreed that Berlin was no longer important. He promised that the main blow of the Soviet offensive would begin around the middle of May, and that it would head for a Dres- den-Leipzig rendezvous with Eisenhower's forces.59

The Red Army made its swiftest redeployment of the war for the attack. It was an awesome force of 2.5 million men, 20 armies, 150 divisions, 6,000 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, 41,000 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,000 rocket launchers, and nearly 100,000 motor vehicles.60 In contrast to Anglo-American troops on the Elbe, it was well supplied and "gassed up."7

It had an awesome task. Berlin, Zhukov later recounted, had a "total area of almost 350 square miles. Its subway and other widespread under- ground engineering networks provided ample possibilities for troop movements. The city itself and its suburbs had been carefully prepared for defense. Every street, every square, every alley, building, canal and bridge represented an element in the city's defense system."'6'

56. Le Tissier, Zhukov at the Oder, 107. 57. Erickson, Road to Berlin, 528; Zhukov, Memoirs, 580-81. 58. Zhukov, Memoirs, 531-33; Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, 470-71; Read and

Fisher, Fall of Berlin, 280-83. 59. Ziemke, Stalingrad To Berlin, 467. 60. Cartier, Der zweite Weltkrieg, 994; Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed,

261; Ziemke, Stalingrad to Berlin, 470. 61. Georgi K. Zhukov, Marshal Zhukov's Greatest Battles, trans. Theodore

Shabad (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 284. Zhukov's estimate of Berlin's size is accurate. The metropolitan area was approximately 340 square miles. Its population had fallen from approximately 4,500,000 in 1942 to just under 3,000,000 by the end



Zhukov assigned command of the First Byelorussian Front to Gen- eral Vasili Sokolovsky in order to supervise the entire offensive. Sokolovsky was assigned to lead the primary drive with support from Konstantin Rokossovski's Second Byelorussian Front in the north and Konev's First Ukrainian Front in the south.

Hitler issued his last directive on 15 April. With determination, he said, German soldiers could defeat the invader and gain "a turning point in the war."62 But it was too late for turning points. The forty miles between Berlin and the Red Army was defended by thirty-five divisions of varied strength and equipment. The Russians now commanded such overwhelming superiority that blunders could not prevent their victory.

On 16 April, the First Byelorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts attacked before dawn in an attempt to surprise the Germans while blind- ing them with searchlights. The initial assault failed, but the Red Army pressed on in spite of terrible casualties, as it had throughout the war.63 By the nineteenth Russian superiority began to dominate. Sokolovsky's Byelorussian Front advanced, but more slowly than Zhukov had intended. He ordered Rokossovsky to swing southwest instead of north- west to ensure encirclement, in case the main drive on the city failed. Progress in the center and the north was also slower than Stalin wanted. Zhukov ordered Konev to accelerate his drive from the southeast across the Spree River. By the twentieth the battle for Berlin was decided. Russ- ian soldiers entered the city and were fighting their way to the center street by street, while other forces advanced to encircle the city.64

Officials in the bunker advised Hitler to leave immediately to join German forces in the south, but he delayed. That night most of his entourage fled southward. On the twenty-first, Hitler ordered SS General Felix Steiner to attack from the southern suburbs of Berlin with all available troops. "Any commander," Hitler yelled at Luftwaffe General Karl Koller, "who holds back his forces will forfeit his life in five hours."65 In the confusion, Steiner never attacked while the withdrawal of other forces only enabled the Russians to advance further.

of the war (Burkhard Hofmeister, Berlin [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge- sellschaft, 1975], 50); Le Tissier, Battle of Berlin, 15-24.

62. Hitler's Weisungen fuir die Kriegfiihrung, 1939-1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, Herausgegeben von Walther Hubatsch (Frankfurt am Main: Bernard und Graefe Verlag fuir Wehrwessen, 1962), 310-11.

63. Glantz and House, When litans Clash, 263; Le Tissier, Zhukov at the Oder, 159.

64. Cartier, Der zweite Weltkrieg, 993-95; Seaton, Russo-German War, 572-76. 65. Karl Koller, Der letzte Monat: Die Tagebuchaufzeichnungen das ehemaligen

Chefs des Generalstabes der deutschen Luftwaffe vom 14. April bis zum 27. Mai 1945 (Mannheim: N. Wohlgemuth, 1949), 23.



Hitler flew into a rage of self-pity when he learned there had been no attack. He had been betrayed and deserted by those he had trusted. To punish them he would now abandon them to their fate. He would lead no last defense from Berchtesgaden. He would die in Berlin.66 Hitler's decision further confused what remained of German defenses. Hermann Goring's attempt to contact Hitler regarding the succession was seen as treason. Reports of Heinrich Himmler's meeting with Swedish diplomats seemed worse, since Himmler had been one of Hitler's most loyal fol- lowers. By the twenty-ninth, as Russian troops were closing in on the Chancellery, Hitler made final preparations for his death and the dis- posal of his body. The following afternoon he and his new bride, Eva Braun, killed themselves.

For a time Martin Bormann and Goebbels tried to conceal Hitler's death, although they notified the stunned Admiral Karl Donitz that he had been named Hitler's successor. Bormann wanted to join Donitz in the north and take his position in his new government, but he could not as long as the Russians had the city encircled. Early in the morning of 1 May they sent General Hans Krebs to negotiate a cease fire with Marshal Vasili Chuikov, the defender of Stalingrad, who was directing the final assault. Chuikov and Zhukov were in no mood to grant an armistice or to sign a separate surrender and sent Krebs back to the bunker with no terms except unconditional surrender.67 Upon hearing the news, Bor- mann tried unsuccessfully to escape from the city and join Donitz, while Goebbels and his wife chose suicide after killing their children. Krebs decided to shoot himself. At 0600 hours on 2 May Lieutenant General Helmuth Weidling surrendered along with roughly 100,000 men.68

Hitler's death was more instrumental in ending the war than the fall of Berlin. All oaths to continue were invalid and all faith in victory gone. At Flensburg near the Danish border Donitz hoped to gain time for Ger- man civilians and soldiers to flee westward. Eisenhower finally issued an ultimatum: either surrender unconditionally or he would close the border with the Soviet zone. Donitz labeled Eisenhower's ultimatum "extor- tion," but realized that there was no alternative. At 0241, 7 May, General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender.69

Victory in Europe brought somber reflection as well as joy. "Across that large, blood-drenched swath of Europe," remembered Omar

66. Bullock, Parallel Lives, 887. 67. Vasili I. Chuikov, The Fall of Berlin, trans. Ruth Kisch (New York: Holt, Rine-

hart and Winston, 1967), 213ff; Le Tissier, Berlin, 207-8. 68. The Soviets claimed to have taken 130,000 prisoners, a figure which may

have included civilians for labor camps in the Soviet Union; Le Tissier, Battle of Berlin, 224.

69. Pogue, Supreme Command, 485-90; Walter Ludde-Neurath, Regierung Donitz (Gottingen: Musterschmidt, 1964), 68-70.



Bradley, "586,628 soldiers had fallen-135,576 to rise no more. The grim figures haunted me. I could hear the cries of the wounded, smell the stench of death. I could not sleep; I closed my eyes and thanked God for victory."70

On V-E Day Stalin held Berlin. It had cost him nearly 80,000 dead or missing, with another 280,000 wounded, 2,000 artillery pieces destroyed, and over 900 aircraft lost.71 He still had the firepower to keep it. But Stalin also had a war in Asia to fight. The Red Army now had to make a massive shift of men and material for the attack into Manchuria in August. It was no time to challenge his allies in Berlin. In July, Amer- ican, British, and French forces took possession of their zones.

The Red Army had paid a frightful price for Berlin and now they were giving half of it to allies who had paid nothing. Here was a gift. For the next forty-five years, those Western zones embarrassed, irritated, and threatened Stalin and his heirs. During the years that followed Zhukov was criticized for his timidity in February of 1945. In March 1964, Chuikov publicly stated that "Berlin would have been taken in about ten days," had Zhukov shown more courage in dealing with Stalin.72 Zhukov responded by defending his decision, and his supporters continue to do so. Others, however, support Chuikov and wonder how much better things might have been, had Zhukov and Stalin been more realistic in the spring of 1945.73

70. Omar Bradley and Clay Blair, A General's Life: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 436.

71. Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed, 269, 375. 72. Chuikov, The Fall of Berlin, 119. 73. Zhukov, Greatest Battles, 275; Glantz and House, When Titans Clashed,

370 n.32.


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Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 1-256Front Matter [pp. 1-100]The Machete and the Liberation of Cuba [pp. 7-28]"Our Bloody Ships" or "Our Bloody System"? Jutland and the Loss of the Battle Cruisers, 1916 [pp. 29-55]The Ait Ya'qub Incident and the Crisis of French Military Policy in Morocco [pp. 57-73]The Industrial History of Strategy: Reevaluating the Wartime Record of the British Aviation Industry in Comparative Perspective, 1919-1945 [pp. 75-99]The Tactical and Strategic Use of Attach Intelligence: The Spanish Civil War and the U.S. Army's Misguided Quest for a Modern Tank Doctrine [pp. 101-134]The Fall of Berlin and the Rise of a Myth [pp. 135-154]The Sexual Behavior of American GIs during the Early Years of the Occupation of Germany [pp. 155-174]Review EssayReview: In Not So Dubious Battle: The Motivations of American Civil War Soldiers [pp. 175-188]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 189-190]Review: untitled [pp. 190-191]Review: untitled [pp. 191-193]Review: untitled [pp. 193-195]Review: untitled [pp. 195-196]Review: untitled [pp. 196-197]Review: untitled [pp. 197-200]Review: untitled [pp. 200-203]Review: untitled [pp. 203-205]Review: untitled [pp. 205-206]Review: untitled [pp. 206-207]Review: untitled [pp. 207-208]Review: untitled [pp. 209-210]Review: untitled [pp. 210-211]Review: untitled [pp. 211-212]Review: untitled [pp. 212-213]Review: untitled [pp. 213-215]Review: untitled [pp. 215-216]Review: untitled [pp. 217-218]Review: untitled [pp. 218-219]Review: untitled [pp. 220-221]Review: untitled [pp. 221-222]Review: untitled [pp. 222-223]Review: untitled [pp. 224-225]Review: untitled [pp. 225-226]Review: untitled [pp. 226-227]Review: untitled [pp. 227-228]Review: untitled [pp. 228-231]Review: untitled [pp. 231-232]

Books Received [pp. 233-236]Recent Journal Articles [pp. 237-241]Letters to the Editor [pp. 242-246]Back Matter [pp. 247-256]

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