The Fall of Berlin 1945 Read Online Free PDF Page A

army chief of staff. 'Mein Führer, don't believe that,' he said to Hitler. 'Those are not real planes. Those are just decoys.' Keitel, in a sycophantic show of resolution, smashed his fist down on the table. 'The Reichsmarschall is right,' he declared.
    The meeting continued as a black farce. Hitler repeated his view that the intelligence figures were 'completely idiotic' and added that the man who compiled them should be locked in a lunatic asylum. Guderian retorted angrily that since he supported them completely, he had better be certified as well. Hitler refused out of hand the requests of General Harpe on the Vistula front and General Reinhardt in East Prussia to withdraw their most exposed troops to more defensible positions. He also insisted that the 200,000 German troops trapped on the Courland peninsula in Latvia should remain there and not be evacuated by sea to defend the Reich's borders. Guderian, disgusted with the 'ostrich strategy' of Führer headquarters, prepared to take his leave.
    'The Eastern Front,' said Hitler, suddenly trying to charm him, 'has never before possessed such a strong reserve as now. That is your doing. I thank you for it.'
    'The Eastern Front,' Guderian retorted, 'is like a house of cards. If the front is broken through at one point all the rest will collapse.' Ironically, Gocbbels had used exactly the same simile in 1941 about the Red Army.
    Guderian returned to Zossen in 'a very grave mood'. He wondered whether Hitler and Jodl's lack of imagination had something to do with the fact that they both came from parts of the Reich - Austria and Bavaria — which were not threatened. Guderian was a Prussian. His homeland was about to be ravaged, and probably lost for ever. Hitler, to reward his great panzer leader for his successes early in the war, had presented him with the expropriated estate of Deipenhof in the Warthegau, the region of western Poland which the Nazis had seized and incorporated into the Reich. But now the imminent offensive across the Vistula threatened that too. His wife was still there. Watched closely by the local Nazi Party chiefs, she would not be able to leave until the very last moment.
    Just over twenty-four hours later, Guderian's staff at Zossen received confirmation that the attack was now hours rather than days away. Red Army sappers were clearing minefields at night and tank corps were being brought forward into the bridgeheads. Hitler ordered that the panzer reserves on the Vistula front should be moved forward, despite warnings that this would bring them within range of Soviet artillery. Some senior officers began to wonder whether Hitler subconsciously wanted to lose the war.
    The Red Army seemed to make a habit of attacking in atrocious weather conditions. German veterans, accustomed to this pattern, used to call it 'weather for Russians'. Soviet troops were convinced that they had a distinct advantage in winter warfare, whether through frost or mud. Their comparatively low rates of frostbite and trench foot were attributed to the traditional Russian army use of rough linen foot bandages instead of socks. Weather forecasts had foretold a 'strange winter'. After the hard cold of January, 'heavy rain and wet snow' were predicted. An order went out: 'Leather boots must be mended.'
    The Red Army had improved in so many ways — its heavy weaponry, the professionalism of its planning, the camouflage and control of oper- ations which had frequently caught the Germans off balance — yet some weaknesses remained. The worst was the chaotic lack of discipline, which seems astonishing in a totalitarian state. Part of the problem came from the terrible attrition among young officers.
    It was a hard school indeed for seventeen- and eighteen-year-old junior lieutenants in the infantry. 'At that time,' wrote the novelist and war correspondent Konstantin Simonov, 'young people were becoming adult in a year, a month or even in the course of one battle.' Many, of course,