Battle of Halbe
Battle of Halbe | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of Battle of Berlin | |||||||
A destroyed Wehrmacht convoy near Spree Forest, April 1945 | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Germany | Soviet Union | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Theodor Busse Walther Wenck |
Georgy Zhukov Ivan Konev | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
About 80,000 in the Halbe Pocket
| 280,000 | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
30,000 killed 25,000 escaped 10,000 civilians killed[1] | 20,000 killed or missing[1] | ||||||
The Battle of Halbe (German: Kesselschlacht von Halbe, Russian: Хальбский котёл, Halbe pocket) was a battle lasting from April 24 – May 1, 1945[2] in which the German Ninth Army—under the command of General Theodor Busse—was destroyed as a fighting force by the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin.
The
After heavy fighting, about 30,000 German soldiers—just over one third of those originally in the pocket—reached the comparative safety of the Twelfth Army's front lines. The rest were either killed or captured by Soviet forces.[citation needed]
Prelude
On April 16, the
Because of the high speed of the advance of Konev's forces, the Ninth Army was now threatened with envelopment by the two Soviet pincers that were heading for Berlin from the south and east. The southern pincer consisted of the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies which had penetrated the furthest and had already cut through the area behind the Ninth Army's front lines.[3]
Encirclement
German dispositions
The command of the
Contrary to realities on the ground,
At his afternoon situation conference on April 22, Hitler flew into a rage when he realised that his plans of the day before were not going to be implemented. He declared that the war was lost, blamed the generals and announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then kill himself. In an attempt to coax Hitler out of his rage, the Chief of Staff of the
Although in Hitler's mind[citation needed] the Twelfth Army was going to break through to Berlin, and the Ninth Army, once it had broken through to the Twelfth Army, was going to help them, there is no evidence that Generals Heinrici, Busse or Wenck thought that this was at all possible. However, Hitler's agreement to allow the Ninth Army to break through to the Twelfth Army would allow a window through which sizable numbers of German troops could retreat to the west and surrender to the American forces, which is exactly what Wenck and Busse agreed to do. This was made easier when, shortly after midnight on April 25, Busse was given authority "to decide for himself the best direction of attack".[4]
The situation of the German 9th Army
Before being encircled, the Ninth Army had already suffered heavy losses in the Battle of the Seelow Heights. It is estimated that, at the start of the encirclement, it had fewer than 1,000 guns and mortars, approximately 79 tanks, and probably a total of 150–200 combat-ready armoured fighting vehicles left. In all, there were about 80,000 men in the pocket, the majority of whom belonged to the Ninth Army, consisting of the
The pocket into which the Ninth Army had been pushed by troops of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts was a region of lakes and forest in the
Soviet dispositions
Soviet forces ordered to attack the Ninth Army numbered around 280,000 men, 7,400 guns and mortars, 280 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 1,500 aircraft. The force included six Air Corps and the 1st Guards Breakthrough Artillery Division, which was committed on April 25.[6]
In the area to the west of the encirclement, Soviet forces were already positioned in depth, with (from the north)
- the Motzen.
- the Golssen.
- the
- the 3rd Guards Army's 120th Rifle Corps south of Halbe.
- the 21st Rifle Corps along the Berlin to Dresden Autobahn 13 to the west of Lübben.
- the 117th Guards Rifle Division near Luckenwalde.
- the 's main artillery school was located.
In terms of mechanized formations, the
Breakout
The Twelfth Army's attack and the Ninth Army's plan
The relief attempt by the Twelfth Army started on April 24 with General Wenck's XX Corps attacking east and northwards. During the night, the Theodor Körner RAD Division attacked the Soviet 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, under the command of General I. P. Yermakov, near Treuenbrietzen. The next day, the Scharnhorst Division started to engage the Soviet troops in and around Beelitz and caught the 4th Guards Tank Army's 6th Guards Mechanized Corps' open flank, overrunning rear-area units. While the Ulrich von Hutten Division tried to reach Potsdam, with the Scharnhorst Division on its eastern flank, to open a corridor into Berlin, other elements of the Twelfth Army, as Wenck had agreed with Busse, pushed east to meet the Ninth Army.
In the words of Busse to Wenck, the Ninth Army was planning to push west "like a caterpillar". According to General Busse's plan, the Tiger II heavy tanks of the 102nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion should lead this caterpillar. The metaphor is quite apt because, as the head led the way, the rear-guard in the tail was going to be engaged in just as heavy fighting trying to disengage from following Soviet forces.[4]
On the night of April 25/26, a new order was issued to the Ninth and Twelfth Armies by Hitler. It stipulated that:
- The Twelfth Army was to cut off the 4th Guards Tank Army by reaching the line Beelitz to Ferch, and to attack eastwards to unite with the Ninth Army.
- The Ninth Army was to hold on to its eastern front between Spreewald and Fürstenwalde, and to attack westward to link up with the Twelfth Army.
- Once both armies were combined, they were to attack northwards and open a corridor through the Red Army's encirclement of Berlin.[9]
The final army conference of the Ninth Army took place at 1500 hours on April 28. At this point, contact was lost with the V Corps and the V SS Mountain Corps. The conference found that the only possible break-out route had to lead through Halbe. This was not difficult for the Soviet commanders to deduce as well, while, on the other hand, Ninth Army had virtually no information about the Soviet force dispositions between it and the Twelfth Army. From this conference onward, command and control within the Ninth Army collapsed. There was almost no contact between the Ninth Army headquarters and Army Group Vistula, and little contact with formations under Ninth Army command. There were few or no maps to guide planning or combat operations.
In his book Slaughter at Halbe, Tony Le Tissier accused General Busse of failing to exercise effective command and control of the encircled army, thereby contributing to the failure of successive break-out attempts.[c] Le Tissier writes that Busse's initial movement of his HQ put him into a situation where he lost the ability to control the formations in the pocket. In his break-out plan, Ninth Army HQ was to be placed immediately behind the spearhead of the breakout, the 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion, which effectively reduced his ability to exercise command to the tactical level. He also accuses Busse of failing to adequately support the first breakout attempt (see below). The spearhead for the Ninth Army break-out plan on April 28 was to be the 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion with remaining elements of the Panzergrenadier Division Kurmark. These units were split into two wedges. The northern wedge included the 502nd SS Panzer, Ninth Army HQ, XI SS Panzer Corps HQ, and Panzergrenadier Division Kurmark HQ. Remnants of the 21st Panzer Division were to cover in a north-westerly direction, while remnants of the 32nd SS Division 30. Januar was to cover the east and provide the rearguard.[10]
The first breakout attempt
On the evening of April 25, Busse ordered the two battlegroups -
On the following day, the battle continued around Baruth, and tank-hunting teams blew up some of the dug-in Soviet tanks. Some supply canisters were delivered by air, but the strength of the battle group was insufficient to hold off a Soviet counter-attack. Heavy air attacks, a strike by the 4th Bomber Air Corps around noon with 55 aircraft, and repeated strikes by the 1st and 2nd Air Assault Corps with 8–10 aircraft each, a total of ca. 500 missions, caused heavy casualties and chaos. The forces of the two battle groups were destroyed, with Soviet reports claiming 5,000 prisoners taken, 40 tanks and self-propelled guns destroyed, and almost 200 guns and mortars captured.[11] These forces and weapons were sorely missed during later break-out attempts. Pipkorn, the commander of the other battle group, was killed during the battle, and Luck taken prisoner on April 27. Few of the survivors of the battle reached the Elbe.[12]
The second breakout attempt
The next morning, the German vanguard found a weak point between the two armies and many German troops were able to cross the Autobahn before the Soviet forces plugged the gap. The fighting was heavy and included continuous air attacks by the
plane. Hitler was furious when he realised that Busse was attempting to break out west and not to come to his aid in Berlin. His command sent several messages demanding that the army turn towards Berlin, but received no answer.During the night and the next day (April 27), the German forces renewed their attack along two axes south from the village of Halbe towards Baruth, and in the north from Teupitz. This attack failed to produce a mass breakout although, like the day before, some groups were able to slip through the Soviet lines.
The front lines were not continuous because the dense forest terrain meant that visibility was down to metres, so there was danger of ambush and sudden assault for both sides. Smoke from burning sections of the forest, set alight by shell fire, helped the Germans and hindered the Soviets because it shielded the Wehrmacht troops from
The third breakout attempt
On the night of April 28, the German forces tried another mass breakout from around Halbe. They broke through the 50th Guards Rifle Division and created a corridor from Halbe to the west, but paid a very high price. During April 28 and 29, the Soviets reinforced the flanks and attacked from the south, pouring in Katyusha rockets and shells, concentrating on the area around the Halbe.
By this time, the German troops were spread out over a wide area. The rearguard was at Storkow and the vanguard had linked up with the 12th Army at Beelitz. There were large groups around Halbe. The Soviet battle plan was to split the caterpillar into segments and then destroy each segment individually. The German battle plan was to continue moving west as fast as possible, keeping the corridor open.
The situation in Halbe was desperate for the Germans. Orders were still being issued to recognisable formations, but these were by now all mixed up. There was considerable tension between the
During the following days, the fighting became more and more confused. If the Germans came into contact with Soviet forces and overran a Soviet position, the Soviets counter-attacked not only with ground forces, but with artillery and aircraft. Losses on both sides were very high. By the time the fighting was over (around the end of April, beginning of May), about 25,000 German soldiers had escaped to join up with the 12th Army on the eastern side of Reichstrasse 2, the road running north-south through Beelitz.[1]
Although this was the end of the Battle of Halbe, it was not the end of the breakout. Some 9th Army forces were again surrounded west of
Aftermath
The casualties on both sides were high. There are about 24,000 Germans buried in the Halbe Forest Cemetery (German: Waldfriedhof Halbe), making it the largest war cemetery in Germany from World War II. About 10,000 are unidentified soldiers killed during the first half of 1945.[14] The Red Army claimed to have killed 60,000 German soldiers and taken 120,000 as prisoners. The number of prisoners is supported by some sources,[15] while other sources consider it to be exaggerated.[14] Thousands of Red Army soldiers died trying to stop the breakout, most being buried at the Sowjetische Ehrenfriedhof of Baruth/Mark cemetery (de) next to the Baruth–Zossen road (Bundesstraße 96). These are the known dead, but the remains of more who died in the battle are found every year, so the total will never be known. Nobody knows how many civilians died, but it could have been as high as 10,000.[16]
Formations involved in the battle
Soviet Union
Ground Forces[7]
- 1st Belorussian Front – Marshal Georgy Zhukov
- 3rd Army – Colonel General Alexander Gorbatov
- 69th Army – Colonel General Vladimir Kolpakchi
- 33rd Army – Colonel General Vyacheslav Tsvetayev
- Vladimir Kryukov
- Marshal Ivan Konev
- 3rd Guards Army – Colonel General Vasily Gordov
- 13th Army – Colonel General Nikolai Pukhov
- 28th Army – Lieutenant General Alexander Luchinsky
- Pavel Rybalko
- Dmitry Lelyushenko
Air Forces –
- 2nd Air Army – Colonel General Stepan Krasovsky
- 16th Air Army – Colonel General Sergei Rudenko
- 18th Air Army – Air Vice Marshal Alexander Golovanov
Germany
- Ninth Army – General Theodor Busse
- XI SS Panzer Corps – SS-General Matthias Kleinheisterkamp
- V SS Mountain Corps – SS-General Friedrich Jeckeln
- V Army Corps – General Ing. Kurt Wäger
- Army Support Troops
- 21st Panzer Division
- 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsberg"
- Twelfth Army – General Walther Wenck
- XX Corps – General Carl-Erik Koehler
- XXXIX Panzer Corps – Lieutenant General Karl Arndt
- XXXXI Panzer Corps – Lieutenant General Rudolf Holste
- XXXXVIII Panzer Corps – General Maximilian von Edelsheim
References
Explanatory notes
- ^ according to Le Tissier 2005, pp. 145–146 the number of King Tigers in the pocket can not be established with certainty. A strength report from Klein Hammer reports two companies with seven each, but other reports from eyewitnesses indicate a lower number of ten or twelve. What is certain is that 11 King Tigers can be accounted for as lost based on German eyewitness accounts.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 81, map p. 80; Artillery Breakthrough Divisions were specialised formations created to support the breakthrough battle of Soviet fronts. They belonged to the Reserve of the Supreme High Command (Stavka Reserve) and were not normally allocated for any other purpose. Such a division would not only add significantly to the number of guns, but would also bring with it sophisticated fire control and observation units that would enable a more rapid concentration of artillery fire in a sector. In the case of the battle of Halbe, the 1st GBAD contributed to the ability of 3rd Guards Army to continuously harass the encircled German forces with artillery fire, causing significant casualties to them.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 117; The particular failings outlined by Le Tissier (who is a retired British Military Police officer) are of a "tardy" transfer of his HQ into Spreewald indicating "indecisiveness and reluctance to assume responsibility for the breakout". This delay led to an inability to exercise control from the new location due to congestion in the area. Furthermore, a failure to support the first breakout attempt by battle groups 'von Luck' and 'Pipkorn'. Finally, Le Tissier criticises him for placing his HQ into the most secure position of the break-out, and for "abandoning" the rearguard to its fate.
- ^ This increased the amount of splinters caused by the explosions by adding wood splinters from the trees to the metal splinters from the projectiles. Because of the explosions location above the target it was very difficult, if not impossible to find cover protecting from these splinters. Similar casualties had been suffered by the American Army when it was attacked by Germans using artillery in a similar way during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest on the Western Front six months earlier.
Citations
- ^ ISBN 91-85057-01-0.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 206.
- ^ a b Ziemke 1969, pp. 476–477.
- ^ a b Beevor 2002, p. 330.
- ^ Beevor 2002, p. 329.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 81.
- ^ a b Le Tissier 2005, Appendices.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 83, Disposition Map of 25 April.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 89–90.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 117–119.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, pp. 91–92.
- ^ Le Tissier 2005, p. 84–88.
- ^ a b Beevor 2002, p. 334.
- ^ a b Sennerteg 2007, p. 378.
- ^ Brandenburgische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung:Die Kesselschlacht
- ^ Beevor 2002, p. 337.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-670-88695-1.
- Le Tissier, Tony (2005). Slaughter at Halbe. Stroud: Sutton. ISBN 978-0-7509-3689-7.
- Sennerteg, Niclas (2007). Nionde Arméns Undergång: Kampen om Berlin 1945 (in Swedish). Lund: Historiska Media. ISBN 978-91-85507-43-6.
- Ziemke, Earl Frederick (1969). The Battle for Berlin: End of the Third Reich. Ballantine; Macdonald. OCLC 59153427.
See Also
- Faust, Wulfgang (2015). The Last Panther - Slaughter of the Reich - The Halbe Kessel 1945. Bayern Classic Publications. ASIN B00Y1R4X92.