Berlin Price: Myths and Documents
The rays of the searchlights rest against the smoke, nothing is visible, the Zeelovsky heights violently snarling in front are ahead, and the generals fighting for the right to be the first to be driven in Berlin are behind. When the defense was broken through with great blood, a bloody bathhouse on the streets of the city followed Tanks burned one after another from well-aimed shots of “Faustniks”. Such an unsightly image of the last assault has developed in the post-war decades in the mass consciousness. Was it really so?
Like most large historical events, the battle for Berlin was surrounded by many myths and legends. Most of them appeared in Soviet times. As we will see below, not least of all this was caused by the inaccessibility of primary documents, which forced to believe on the word of the direct participants in the events. Even the period preceding the actual Berlin operation was mythologized.
The first legend asserts that the capital of the Third Reich could have been taken already in February 1945. A cursory acquaintance with the events of the last months of the war shows that there seems to be grounds for such an assertion. Indeed, the bridgeheads on the Oder in 70 km from Berlin were captured by the advancing Soviet units as early as the end of January 1945. However, the attack on Berlin followed only in mid-April. The turn of 1 of the Byelorussian Front in February-March of 1945 in Pomerania caused almost more discussions in the post-war period than the turn of Guderian to Kiev in 1941 of. The former troublemaker was the former commander of 8 of the Guards. Army V.I. Chuikov, put forward the theory of "stop order", emanating from Stalin. In a form cleared of ideological whittles, his theory was voiced in a conversation for a narrow circle, held on January 17 on 1966 by A.A. Episheva. Chuikov argued: “February 6 Zhukov instructs to prepare for an attack on Berlin. On this day, Stalin phoned Zhukov. Asks:“ Tell me what are you doing? ”That:“ We are planning an offensive on Berlin. ”Stalin:“ Turn on Pomerania ". Zhukov now refuses this conversation, and he was."
Whether Zhukov talked with Stalin that day and, more importantly, about what, it is almost impossible to establish now. But it is not so significant. We have enough indirect evidence. It's not even the obvious reasons, like the need to tighten the rear after 500-600 km, passed in January from the Vistula to the Oder. The weakest link in Chuikov’s theory is his assessment of the enemy: “The 9 of the German army was smashed to pieces.” However, the 9-I army defeated in Poland and the 9-I army on the Oder front are not the same thing. The Germans were able to restore the integrity of the front by withdrawing from other sectors and the newly formed divisions. "Shattered" 9-I army gave these divisions only the brain, ie, its headquarters. In fact, the defense of the Germans on the Oder, which had to be rammed in April, was formed back in February of the 45. Moreover, in February the Germans even launched a counterattack on the flank of the 1 of the Belarusian Front (Operation Solstice). Accordingly, Zhukov had to put a significant part of his troops on the defense of the flank. Chuykovskoye "shattered" is definitely an exaggeration.
The need to protect the flank inevitably spawned forces. Turning to Pomerania, the troops of the 1 of the Belorussian Front implemented the classic principle of the strategy “Beat the enemy piecemeal”. Having defeated and captured the German grouping in Eastern Pomerania, Zhukov released several armies at once to attack Berlin. If in February 1945, they stood front to the north in defense, in mid-April they took part in the attack on the German capital. In addition, in February there could be no question of the participation in the attack on Berlin of the 1 of the Ukrainian Front by I. S. Konev. He was firmly established in Silesia and also underwent several counterattacks. In short, only an experienced adventurer could launch an attack on Berlin in February. Zhukov, of course, was not.
The second legend is almost more famous than the controversy over the possibility of taking the German capital back in February 45. She claims that the Supreme Commander himself arranged a competition between two commanders, Zhukov and Konev. The prize was the glory of the winner, and the bargaining chip was the soldiers' lives. In particular, the well-known domestic journalist Boris Sokolov writes: "However, Zhukov continued a bloody assault. He was afraid that the troops of the 1 of the Ukrainian Front would reach Berlin earlier than the troops of the 1 of the Belarusian Front would manage to do. The race continued and cost many additional soldiers lives. "
As in the case of the February storming of Berlin, the legend of the competition appeared in Soviet times. Its author was one of the “racers” - Ivan Stepanovich Konev, who then commanded the 1 of the Ukrainian Front. In his memoirs, he wrote about it like this: “The breakage of the demarcation line from Lübben seemed to hint, push on the proactive nature of actions near Berlin. And how could it be otherwise. Going essentially along the southern outskirts of Berlin, knowingly keeping it untouched on the right on the flank, and even in an environment where it is not known in advance how everything will develop in the future, it seemed strange and incomprehensible. The decision to be prepared for such a blow seemed clear, understandable and self-evident. "
Now, when the directives of Stakes to both fronts are available to us, the slyness of this version is visible to the naked eye. If the directive addressed to Zhukov clearly stated “to seize the capital of Germany, the city of Berlin,” Konev was ordered only to “defeat the enemy grouping (...) south of Berlin,” but nothing was said about Berlin itself. The tasks of 1 of the Ukrainian Front were quite clearly formulated to a depth much greater than the boundary of the demarcation line. The directive of the Supreme Command Headquarters No. 11060 clearly states that the 1 of the Ukrainian Front is required to seize "the Beelitz border, Wittenberg and further along the Elbe river to Dresden." Beelitz lies much south of the outskirts of Berlin. Further, the troops of I.S. Konev aims at Leipzig, i.e. generally southwest.
But that soldier is bad, he does not dream of becoming a general, and that commander is bad because he does not dream of entering the enemy’s capital. Having received the directive, Konev, secretly from Headquarters (and Stalin), began to plan a rush to Berlin. To conquer the capital of the enemy should have been 3-I Guards Army V.N. Gordov. In the general order of the 8 front troops from April 1945, the possible participation of the army in the battle for Berlin was supposed to be more than modest: "Prepare one rifle division for operations as part of the special squadron 3. TA from the Trebbin area to Berlin." This directive was read in Moscow, and it had to be flawless. But in the directive directed by Konev personally to the commander of the 3 th guards. army, one division in the form of a special detachment was changed to "the main forces are attacking Berlin from the south." Those. the whole army. Contrary to the explicit instructions of the Stavka, Konev had a plan of attack of the city in the zone of the neighboring front even before the start of the battle.
Thus, the version of Stalin as the initiator of the “competition of fronts” does not find any evidence in the documents. After the start of the operation and the slow development of the offensive of the 1 of the Byelorussian Front, he gave the order to turn the Berlin 1 of the Ukrainian and 2 of the Belarusian Fronts to Berlin. For the last commander, K.K. Rokossovsky Stalinist order was like snow on his head. His troops confidently but slowly made their way through the two channels of the Oder north of Berlin. He had no chance to reach the Reichstag before Zhukov. In short, the initiator of the "competition" and in fact the only participant in it was originally Konev himself. Having received the "good" of Stalin, Konev was able to extract the "homework" and try to implement them.
A continuation of this topic is the question of the form of the operation itself. A seemingly quite logical question is asked: "Why didn’t they simply try to surround Berlin? Why did the armies enter the streets of the city?" Let's try to figure out why Zhukov did not send tank armies to bypass Berlin.
Proponents of the theory of the expediency of the encirclement of Berlin overlook the obvious question of the qualitative and quantitative composition of the city’s garrison. The 9 Army standing on the Oder numbered 200 thousand people. They could not be given the opportunity to go to Berlin. Zhukov already had before his eyes a chain of assaults declared by the Germans as "festungs" (fortresses) of surrounded cities. As in the front line, and the neighbors. Isolated Budapest defended from the end of December 1944 on February 10 1945. The classic solution was to surround the defenders on the outskirts of the city, preventing them from hiding behind its walls. Complicated task short distance from the Oder front to the German capital. In addition, in 1945, the Soviet divisions numbered 4-5 thousand people instead of 10 thousand by staff and their "margin of safety" was small.
Therefore, Zhukov came up with a simple and without exaggeration ingenious plan. If tank armies manage to escape to the operational space, then they must reach the outskirts of Berlin and form a kind of "cocoon" around the German capital. The Cocoon would have prevented the garrison from gaining strength at the expense of the 200-thousandth 9 Army or reserves from the west. To enter the city at this stage was not intended. With the approach of the Soviet combined-arms armies, the “cocoon” was revealed, and Berlin could already be stormed according to all the rules. In many ways, the unexpected turn of Konev's troops to Berlin led to the modernization of the "cocoon" to the classical environment by the adjacent flanks of two neighboring fronts. The main forces of the German army 9 stationed on the Oder were surrounded in the forests to the south-east of Berlin. This was one of the major defeats of the Germans, undeservingly remained in the shadow of the actual assault on the city. As a result, the capital of the “thousand-year-old” Reich was defended by the Volkssturmists, the Hitler Jugend, the police and the remnants of the units defeated on the Oder front. They numbered about 100 thousand people, which for the defense of such a large city was simply not enough. Berlin was divided into nine defense sectors. The number of the garrison of each sector according to the plan was to be 25 thousand people. In reality, there were no more than 10-12 thousand people. There was no question of any occupation of each house, only the key buildings of the neighborhoods defended. The entrance to the city of the 400-thousand grouping of the two fronts did not leave any chance for the defenders. This led to a relatively quick assault on Berlin - about 10 days.
What made Zhukov linger, and so much so that Stalin began to send orders to the neighboring fronts to turn to Berlin? Many will give an answer on the move - "Seelow Heights." However, if you look at the map, the Seelow heights “shade” only the left flank of the Kyustrin bridgehead. If some armies were stuck in the heights, then what prevented the rest from breaking into Berlin? The legend appeared due to the memoirs of V.I. Chuikova and M.E. Katukov. Attacking Berlin outside Seelow Heights AD Berzarin (commander of the 5 shock army) and S.I. Bogdanov (commander of the 2-th Guards Tank Army) did not leave memoirs. The first one died in a car accident right after the war, the second one died in the 1960 year, before the period of active writing of memoirs by our commanders. Bogdanov and Berzarin could tell, at best, how they saw the Seelow Heights with binoculars.
Maybe the problem was the idea of Zhukov to attack in the light of searchlights? Backlit attacks were not his invention. The Germans used the attacks in the dark under the spotlights from 1941 g. So it was, for example, captured a bridgehead on the Dnieper near Kremenchug, from which Kiev was later surrounded. At the end of the war, the German offensive in the Ardennes began with spotlights. This case is closest to the attack in the spotlights from the Küstrin bridgehead. The main objective of this technique was to lengthen the first, most crucial day of the operation. Yes, the rays of searchlights prevented raised dust and smoke from the gaps, to blind the Germans with several searchlights per kilometer was unreal. But the main task was solved, the offensive on April 16 was able to start earlier than the time of year allowed. The positions highlighted by spotlights, by the way, were overcome rather quickly. Problems arose at the end of the first day of the operation, when the searchlights were turned off long ago. The left-flank armies of Chuikov and Katukov rested against the Seelow Heights, the right-flank Berzarin and Bogdanov hardly advanced in the network of irrigation canals on the left bank of the Oder. Near Berlin, the Soviet offensive was awaited. Zhukov was initially harder than breaking through weak German defenses far to the south of the German capital Konev. This hitch made Stalin nervous, especially since Zhukov’s plan was revealed with the introduction of tank armies in the direction of Berlin, and not bypassing it.
But the crisis soon passed. And it happened thanks to the tank armies. One of the mechanized brigades of Bogdanov’s army managed to find the Germans a weak point and break through deep into the German defense. At first, she was involved in the breached mechanized corps, and the corps was followed by the main forces of the two tank armies. The defense on the Oder front collapsed on the third day of the battle. Entering the reserves by the Germans could not turn the tide. Tank armies just walked around on both sides and rushed to Berlin. After that, Zhukov needed only slightly to turn one of the buildings onto the German capital and win the race he had started. Losses at the Seelow Heights are often mixed with losses in the entire Berlin operation. Let me remind you that the irretrievable losses of the Soviet troops in it amounted to 80 thousand people, and the total - 360 thousand people. This is the loss of three fronts advancing in a strip of width 300 km. Narrowing these losses to Piglet Seelow Heights is just silly. It is more foolish to only turn 300 thousand total losses into 300 thousand dead. In reality, the total losses of the 8 th Guards and 69 th armies during the offensive in the area of Seelow Heights amounted to about 20 thousand people. Irrecoverable losses amounted to approximately 5 thousand people.
The breakthrough of the defense of the Germans by the 1 of the Belorussian Front in April 1945 was worthy of studying in textbooks of tactics and operational art. Unfortunately, because of Zhukov’s disgraces, neither the brilliant plan with the "cocoon", nor the daring breakthrough of the tank armies to Berlin "through the eye of the needle" did not get into the textbooks.
Summarizing all the above, we can draw the following conclusions. Zhukov's plan was comprehensively thought out and responded to the situation. The resistance of the Germans was stronger than expected, but was quickly broken. Throwing Konev at Berlin was not necessary, but improved the balance of forces during the storming of the city. Also the turn of the tank armies of Konev accelerated the defeat of the German 9-th army. But if the commander of the 1-th Ukrainian Front simply fulfilled the Bids directive, that Wenk's 12-th army would have been defeated much faster, and the Fuhrer would not even have the technical ability to rush along the bunker with the question "Where is Wenk ?!"
The last question remains: "Was it worth entering into Berlin with tanks?" In my opinion, the commander of the 3 th guards formulated the best arguments for the use of mechanized connections in Berlin. tank army Pavel Semenovich Rybalko: "The use of tank and mechanized units and units against settlements, including cities, despite the undesirability to impede their mobility in these battles, as the great experience of the Patriotic War showed, very often becomes inevitable. Therefore, this species combat is good to teach our tank and mechanized troops. " His army stormed Berlin, and he knew what he was talking about.
The archival documents opened today make it possible to give a definite answer about what the assault on Berlin cost tank armies. Each of the three armies entered into Berlin lost about one hundred combat vehicles on its streets, about half of which were lost from faustpatrons. The exception was 2-I Guards. Panzer Army Bogdanov, who lost by a manual anti-tank weapons 70 tanks and ACS from 104 lost in Berlin However, given that before the start of the operation, Bogdanov had 52 combat vehicles, these losses can not be regarded as "the army was burned on the streets of Berlin." Tank armies provided support to the infantry, becoming its shield and sword. The Soviet troops have already gained enough experience in countering the "faustnik" for the effective use of armored vehicles in the city. Faust-cartridges are still not RPG-34, and their effective range was just 31 meters. Often, our tanks just got up a hundred meters from the building, where the “Faustnik” were seated and shot at point-blank range. As a result, the absolute numbers of casualties were relatively small. A large proportion (% of the total number) of losses from faustpatrons is the result of the Germans losing the traditional means of fighting tanks on the way to retreat to Berlin.
The Berlin operation is the pinnacle of Red Army skill in World War II. It's a shame when its real results are belittled by rumors and gossip, which generated legends that did not correspond to reality. All the participants in the Battle of Berlin have done a lot for us. They gave our country not just a victory in one of the countless battles of Russian history, but a symbol of military success, an unconditional and unfading achievement. Power may change, you can tear down the pedestals of past idols, but the Banner of Victory raised above the ruins of the enemy’s capital will remain an absolute achievement of the people.
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