The Battle Of Berlin: April 18th 1945 – Zhukov & Konev Advance

“The battle between Frankfurt and the Freienwalder
Senke has reached its culmination…””

Wehrmacht General Gotthard Heinrici
Commander of German Army Group Vistula

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s mistrust of the officer corps of the Germany Army would only increase with his years in power – and after a failed assassination against him in July 1944, he would come to increasingly demand sycophantic and fanatical obedience from his military leaders beyond any sense of professional competence.

Placing SS leader, Heinrich Himmler, in charge of the replacement army in Germany following this assassination attempt would leave the man whose ideological troops had overseen the implementation of Nazi racial policy and the extermination of undesirables now responsible for the training of all new military formations and the control of all forces inside Germany. Yet, despite his dedication to the National Socialist cause, Himmler’s only military experience had been to serve in the Bavarian Army as a member of a reserve battalion in 1918.

As the First World War ended, the future Reichsführer-SS was still in training, and would see no active service – instead pursuing further education as an agricultural scientist.

Hitler himself would serve as Commander In Chief of the German Army (Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres) from 1941 – after dismissing Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch – personally directing the defense of Berlin and the eastern approaches to the city that the Soviet forces on April 18th continued to threaten.

While the German troops of the 9th Army fought on against the combat elements of the 1st Belorussian Front slowly grinding their way beyond the Seelow Heights, further south on the frontline the men assigned to German Army Group Centre were struggling to contain the advance of Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front.

The troops facing Konev’s men to the south east of Berlin in April 1945 were serving under the command of Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner. A dedicated Nazi who had participated in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Schörner was considered by Hitler to be one of his most competent officers. Perhaps in that he was well known as a strict disciplinarian with an ideological obsession with brutality, who would swiftly deal with deserters in flying courts martial and summary executions.