ISBN 0-7146-4929-5
265 pages

Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; maps; photos; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Soviet OB for "Operation Berlin"; OB for main German forces engaged; Zhukov's orders for artillery support in the Berlin street-fighting phase; Fuehrer Order of 21 January 1945

   The newest book by Tony Le Tissier bears an unfamiliar title but it is in fact a revised edition of his 1988 classic, The Battle of Berlin, 1945. Of this new version he says: "Subsequent historical events opening up access to places, people and information hitherto denied me, and this, together with feedback from the later German editions, have enabled an extensive revision of the original work, which I described as being 'rather like the reconstruction of an ancient vase from an incomplete set of fragments.'" The original was the best English-language book about the Soviet capture of Berlin in 1945, and the new edition is even better.
   The first chapter outlines the overall Soviet plan for taking Berlin and introduces readers to Stalin's underhanded arrangements with his two front commanders in the region, Zhukov and Koniev, arrangements designed to hasten the fall of the Reich's capital by pitting the two competitors in a race against each other—hence the title of the book—while simultaneously ensuring that neither, especially Zhukov, would accumulate sufficient personal prestige to threaten Uncle Joe's hold on power. The massive forces involved, the high stakes, and the clash of personalities make the putative race between Montgomery and Patton for Messina in 1943 look like a flea circus.
   The second chapter moves to the other side of the line. If Stalin lived in a world of hard reality and cold political calculation, Hitler by this time inhabited a constricted dreamscape of imaginary defensive forces and hallucinatory schemes for victory. Le Tissier sketches the main players in the Fuehrer's bunker and explores the defenses of Berlin, ticking off German units, describing the flak towers, and tracing the inner and outer rings of defense.

   Preparations within the Inner Defence Ring were quite elaborate. Barricades in the side streets allowed passage only to pedestrians, and those in the main streets were closed to vehicular traffic at night by means of movable sections. Machine-gun posts were prepared in cellars and upper storeys to cover these barricades, and holes were knocked through the dividing walls to allow covered passage from cellar to cellar. The generally shallow U-Bahn tunnels were also barricaded at intervals to prevent infiltration, and preparations were made for flooding some of them.
   'Zitadelle' [the innermost final defensive sector] was particularly well prepared, and the arrangement at the Brandenburg Gate was said to be a model of its kind. Guns and tanks, including some powerful 'Tigers', were dug in to support the more important positions, and trenches were dug in the Tiergarten.

   Despite the obvious importance of the seat of the German government and the high-priority preparations for the inevitable enemy assault, the nature of the defensive position, Le Tissier reminds us, should not be overrated, especially in light of Hitler's strategy.

   Thus the overall results were scarcely in keeping with the appellation 'Festung'. With adequate troops of the right calibre, General Reymann had a feasible outline plan for the defense of the capital, but the proper military facilities for developing the plan simply did not exist any longer. However, the Nazi leadership had a completely different philosophy; Hitler's contention was that, if the Soviets succeeded in reaching Berlin, they should be forced to waste their strength in the city's ruins, much as von Paulus' 6th Army had done at Stalingrad. If this plan failed and the Soviets prevailed, the Germans would have shown themselves unworthy of their leadership and would deserve extinction, just as in nature only the strong survive.

   The bulk of the remaining German armies in the field seem to have been retreating away from Berlin, for the most part leaving the defense of the city to a motley assortment of formations scraped together from various sources. The author discusses the preparation and participation of Volkssturm units, the Hitlerjugend, the SS—in Berlin the level of hostility between the SS and the regular Army was reaching the point of internecine warfare—and odds and ends like sailors flown into the city as reinforcements. German propaganda added a mythical "Freikorps Adolf Hitler" and "Freikorps Mohnke"—"bring your own weapons."

   One unusual aspect of the political influence on the conduct of the defence was the mixing of members of different organizations within strongpoints in the various sectors, so that SS, Wehrmacht, Volkssturm and Hitlerjugend literally fought side by side. This may have been of some value in bolstering the morale of the weaker elements, but must have made the command function even more difficult.

   While these defensive preparations were underway, the Soviet armies succeeded in smashing their way forward and their advanced spearheads reached the outer belt of the city's defenses on 20 April, Hitler's birthday. To help celebrate, 299 B-17s bombed Berlin for two hours, followed by RAF Mosquitos and then a nighttime Bomber Command raid. Due to the proximity of Soviet troops, these were the last Anglo-American air raids on the German capital. The RAF and 8th Air Force were soon replaced in the sky by the Red Air Force. On 25 and 26 April, for example, over 1300 Soviet aircraft attacked targets in the city in a centrally orchestrated operation.
   As Soviet forces began battling their way into the city, they absorbed as replacements their countrymen who had survived captivity as POWs and also reorganized themselves into small combined-arms assault teams.

   The combat teams generally consisted of a platoon of infantry, one or two tanks, some sappers, some man-pack flame-throwers, a section of anti-tank guns, and two or three field guns, usually 76mm, but sometimes even 150mm guns or 203mm howitzers were used in this role when particularly strong positions had to be attacked. In this direct support role the guns advanced with their teams, firing over open sights at ranges of up to 400 yards down the axis of the streets. The would set themselves up under cover of smokescreens, or would fire at the blank walls of buildings to raise clouds of dust for the same purpose. At these ranges the gunners inevitably took casualties from infantry fire, and it was a particularly trying time for their observers with the leading infantry, who frequently needed relief from the strain and fatigue of their role.

   The nature of the battle required not only improvised assault teams, but also improvised tactics and ruses.

   By this stage of the battle the Soviet armour had developed some ingenious methods of countering the prolific German anti-tank weapons. Their tanks were now festooned with sandbags, bedsprings, sheet metal and other devices to cause the projectiles to explode harmlessly outside the hull, and it was an inspired adaptation of one of these devices that finally enabled them to get their tanks across the Potsdamer Bridge. Sappers had first to remove the mines suspended beneath the structure, all the while working under heavy machine-gun fire. Initial attempts to rush the infantry across the bridge met with costly failure and the Soviet tanks found themselves helpless against the fire of a dug-in 'Tiger' tank covering the crossing from an enfilade position. More artillery fire and smoke were called for, and eventually some infantry managed to get safely across, but the tanks were still being knocked out one by one as they approached. Then someone had the idea of steeping the protective covering of one of the tanks in inflammable oil and adding some smoke cannisters. This tank then led the next armored assault, bursting into flames as if it had been hit as it reached the bridge. Thinking the tank was merely careering forward out of control, the Germans ignored it until it was too late and the Soviets were across the bridge and firing into their flanks at point-blank range.

   Similarly, much of the German defense relied on improvisation and personal ingenuity.

   Rogmann then withdrew some distance back toward Alexanderplatz to redeploy. While looking around his new location, he found a large cellar full of rockets, even larger than 'Stalin-Organs', stored in their wooden cases that also doubled as launchers. They looked so dangerous that he moved his platoon again, but then encountered a lone ordnance officer, who seemed to know all about the rockets and, under pressure, showed Rogmann how to fire them. Rogmann then tried one out—it took eight men to move it—firing it in the direction of the Schlesischer Railway Station. The test proving apparently satisfactory, Rogmann then set up several against a barricade of sandstone blocks that had been built across Holzmarktstrasse, the main road leading from the station past the Jannowitzbrucke S-Bahn Station to Alexanderplatz. At dusk about a dozen Soviet tanks were seen approaching along Holzmarktstrasse, and Rogmann fired his rockets at what he guessed was the right moment. The effect was devastating, with some tanks collapsing as if they had been made of cardboard, others brushed aside as scrap, and one even falling into the river.

   Amidst this chaos Hitler continued to issue contradictory and unrealistic orders to reposition the decimated defenders and launch suicidal counter-strokes. SS General Steiner was ordered to organize an attack, but his superior HQ was not informed and could not even locate Steiner's command post. The level of disorganization and the confusion of conflicting orders reached the point of black humor:

   General Weidling summoned his divisional and regimental commanders to a conference at Corps Headquarters in Kaulsdorf, where he told them that General Busse had threatened to have him shot if he failed to link up with the 9th Army, and that Hitler had threatened him with the same fate if he did not go to the defence of the city.

   On 24 April Steiner finally managed to launch his offensive. It mustered only seven battalions but pushed forward four miles before being driven back. By this time Berlin was encircled, and despite Hitler's frantic order to General Wenck to relieve the city with his 12th Army, little could be done. Wenck was mostly concerned with holding open an escape route to the west for civilians for as long as possible.
   On the Soviet side, Le Tissier emphasizes the rivalry between Zhukov and Koniev and Stalin's scheme to exploit the rivalry by adjusting the boundary between their fronts. Zhukov and Chuikov were consequently surprised to find Koniev's units encroaching on "their" axis of advance. This, however, was not limited to the two fronts blocking each other. When Chuikov's army launched a massive, carefully planned assault toward the north across the Landwehr Canal, it was discovered along much of the front that the Germans were already gone, or leaving, because the 5th Shock Army, advancing from the east, was already behind and to the north of the German defenders, making much of Chuikov's attack unnecessary. "It therefore seems that Chuikov's assault across the canal was going into a very narrow strip that had already been decisively outflanked by his neighbors."
   Despite the hopeless situation, German troops—particularly Hitlerjugend and SS—continued to fight bitterly throughout the city. To strengthen their resolve, the defenders were told that soon they would be relieved by powerful new forces and they must hold just a bit longer for the sake of political negotiations. Fighting flared in daylight and subsided during the nights. Attackers and defenders grappled in streets blocked with rubble, in burning buildings, in sewers, in flooded subways. Inexorably the Red Army continued to grind into the heart of the city. Although it had no real significance, military or political, the Soviet armies continued to converge on the Reichstag building.

   On the afternoon of 28 April, the leading elements of the 79th Rifle Corps advancing down the street known as Alt Moabit first caught sight of the Reichstag building through the swirling clouds of smoke and dust that obscured the central districts of the city. The fixation of the Soviets on the Reichstag as their goal was to highlight this particular part of the battle to heroic proportions. Heroic as it undoubtedly was in its execution, this episode also emphasizes the ruthless exploitation of the troops involved and the fundamental military errors made by the commanders in their haste to meet a politically dictated deadline. The pressure from Stalin downward to get the Red Flag flying from the top of the Reichstag in time for the May Day celebrations was such that no one in the chain of command wanted to be in a position where he could be accused of sabotaging the project. The cost was of no consequence.

   Throughout his book, Le Tissier assumes a certain amount of knowledge on the part of his readers. For example, he doesn't explain the organizational differences between Soviet and German units and he fails to give any explanation for the participation of Polish divisions in the midst of battle. Similarly, although he mentions the arrival of the Soviet Dneiper flotilla and its activities fairly early in the book, it's not until many pages later that he explains how the boats reached Berlin.
   Unlike, for example, David Glantz's meticulous unit by unit and blow by blow account of tactical operations in books like The Battle of Kursk, Le Tissier's narrative emerges as more episodic and kaleidoscopic. (As he stated in the Preface to the first edition, "...the vanquished lost virtually all their records, and the victors...have always been evasive about much of the pertinent detail.") On the other hand, Le Tissier pens smoother, more professional text and does an excellent job of segueing from one topic to another. He writes strong, clear prose to tie together the Soviet advance, the desperate German defense, the diligent celebrations of Hitler's birthday (immediately following its performance there, Hitler's SS band was converted into a mortar platoon), the rush to escape by Party officials, and the mundane facts of life such as pumping water from the city's broken mains. Besides his own carefully researched findings, he quotes soldiers from both sides, civilians, POWs, and other observers of the battle and weaves their perspectives into a coherent whole that successfully captures the mood of this bloody, smoky Gotterdammerung.
   Good maps, interesting photos, excellent OBs for both sides.
   While some of the tactical minutiae might be missing, this is a potent book and the revised edition remains the best account of the fighting in Berlin at the end of the war in Europe. Highly recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Frank Cass or its American distributor, International Specialized Book Services.
   Thanks to Cass and ISSB for providing this review copy.