Battle of Berlin

[chrisp]

Given the Germans preference for the Western Allies vs. the Russians, how much resistance would they have put up had the Americans and British decided to go for the city instead of stopping at the Elbe?

[Pat D]

I think that officially, in orders coming from the fuhrerbunker, the resistance would have been the same but at the field level most of the units would have known that the allies would have treated them much better than the russians so their resolve might not have been as strong. Also the civilians probably would not have had the same fears. (women, watches etc.)

[Rosomak]

And bicycles.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Chrisp,

It has to be asked, whether the defence the Germans put up in Berlin was really as hard as is often assumed.

If one compares German resistance in Berlin to that put up by the Russians in several of their cities, or the Poles in Warsaw in 1944, then the final fall of the Reich capital was not much of an epic.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Bruno]

Sid, What are you comparing? Par example
Stalingrad: attacked by one army strung out at the end of a supply line, out of reach by air attack, constantly resupplied by just enough fresh replacements to hold the city until the Russians could spring the trap.

Berlin: under British and American air bombardment, facing the fresh American and British armees with superior weaponry. Facing the Russian Armees and tank brigades. Germans have worn out decimated, divisions that have been fighting for 5 years,with no replacements other than kids and old men. They lack weapons, tanks, ammo,industries. and now no effective command. Yup not much of an epic!

The question here was would Berlin have capitulated to the Americans sooner. Probably! Since Germany had not been fighting the Americans as long, like they had the Russians. The propaganda and fear built up in the years of fighting the Russians increased the Germans resolve against the Russians. Were there not secret discussions by various Generals to surrender to the western powers in the last months long before the Russians put foot on German soil. Given the opportunity I think the command structured would have come to terms easily with the Americans.

[Sam H.]

I dare say that as long as Hitler was alive the defense of Berlin would have been fearce. After Hitler's death, I can see a large number of the defenders surrendering to the allies rather than continuing the fight.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Bruno,

There are other examples. i.e. Brest Litovsk, Odessa, Leningrad etc.

There is no doubt that the Russians were prepared on several occasions to make much greater sacrifices than the Germans were ever prepared to. The Wehrmacht gave the Germans the more effective killing machine, but it was rarely obliged to make the same level of sacrifice as the Red Army and the Russian people. At the end of the day the Russians proved tougher, either as a people or as a political system, or both.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Wurger]

I think that the Germans would have put up strong resistance to both the Russians and the Western Allies in Berlin.

In the case of Russians it is easy to understand why this would happen. Propaganda about Bolshevik barbarism aside, the Germans knew that Red Army troops were spoiling to avenge those Soviet citizens who had suffered under German occupation. Tales of Soviet brutality had filtered back to Berlin with German refugees fleeing eastern Germany. This was reinforced by film and photographic evidence gathered by German troops in areas that were recaptured from Red Army soldiers. The defenders of Berlin were convinced that the Red Army would eradicate the city and those who dwelt within it - bringing the annihilation that Hitler had promised to visit upon the Soviets back to Germany.

While it is true that the Germans were more amiable toward the western allies, the German leadership continued to choke upon the demand for unconditional surrender - which not only would have left Germany vulnerable to the whims of the British and Americans, but also to those of their vengful Soviet allies. In their minds by fighting fiercely in Berlin, the Germans would have had their final opportunity to try to tire the Allies out and thus renegociate the surrender terms. In the best case scenario, the Germans would have hoped to drag the final battle out long enough to allow for the final collapse of the Allied-Soviet alliance, in which case Germany would join the western powers against the USSR.

While we are speaking hypothetically, I think this scenario would have been plausible given the German mindset.

Regards,

Wurger

[Feldwebel Weber]

to sid guttridge,
i wouldnt say the soviets were any tougher than the germans were. they may of not cared if their men got slaughtered or if one of their states was going through a man-made famine, so what? the fact is the germans were just as tough as the soviets. the soviets were able to enjoy advantage in having a huge population, in which they could supply thier armies with fresh meat. but lets see what would of happened if the germans had had at least a 3-1 advantage during the whole conflict. it wouldn't of lasted very long i think.

[Qvist]

Hi Sid

It has to be asked, whether the defence the Germans put up in Berlin was really as hard as is often assumed.

Well, if the intensiveness of soviet losses in anything to go by, it was one of the Germans' stronger efforts through the war in this respect. The Berlin battle cost the Red Army a daily average of 15,172 casualties, 4th highest among the 50 major operations listed by Krivsoheev, and eclipsed only by three catastrophic defensive battles (from the soviet point of view); The border battles against HG Mitte and HG Süd respectively in '41, and the Voronesh-Voroshilovgrad battle in the summer of '42. The daily average of tank losses is 9th, at 86 (total; 1,997). A different way of looking at it is to see the daily average losses relative to the strength of the forces (which in the Berlin operation was very high, at slightly more than 2 million men). If so, Berlin places more modestly, at 19th among the 50. Both are meaningful expressions of reality in their way, and in sum I think justifies the conclusion that the Berlin battle belongs to the upper spectrum of intensiveness, given that it was also presumably fought at a far greater level of material and human superiority than most battles through the war in the East.

If one compares German resistance in Berlin to that put up by the Russians in several of their cities, or the Poles in Warsaw in 1944, then the final fall of the Reich capital was not much of an epic.

Well, there's a bit of a contrast between fighting Bach-Zelewski's few ten thousands of mostly police and security troops in Warsaw, and opposing two Soviet Fronts with more than two million men in Berlin, wouldn't you say?

There are other examples. i.e. Brest Litovsk, Odessa, Leningrad etc.

There is no doubt that the Russians were prepared on several occasions to make much greater sacrifices than the Germans were ever prepared to. The Wehrmacht gave the Germans the more effective killing machine, but it was rarely obliged to make the same level of sacrifice as the Red Army and the Russian people. At the end of the day the Russians proved tougher, either as a people or as a political system, or both.

I think this goes a bit too far. One can also find many similar examples of German tenacity, if one wants to - The Demjansk pocket, the Kurland Bridgehead, Stalingrad, Breslau. Of course, it can be claimed that Demjansk or Kurland held out for so long because the Soviets did not prioritise them highly enough to deploy sufficient forces to overcome them or lacked sufficient forces to do so, but then exactly the same point can be made for Odessa, Brest-Litovsk and even Leningrad. Which just goes to show that how long a place can be defended depends on many things, of whom the resolve of the defenders is merely one, and in most cases not the most important one. If the measure is rather the willingness of the defenders to fight to the last rather than surrender, then the Soviet part of the story contains as many embarrasing chapters as glorious ones, though I am sure you are aware of this (and yes, I did notice the formulation "on several occasions" :) ).

cheers

[sovietsniper]

to sid guttridge,
i wouldnt say the soviets were any tougher than the germans were

so why didnt german citys hold out under seige like lenningrad

[Kitsune]

@sid and sovietsniper.

That is a rather original opinion you two have there. Actually, until now, the comments I have heard about the German resistance as WWII draw to a close were more goin in the opposite direction: the fanatic German resistance in the face of sure defeat by the largest armed force ever assembled in the history of man was utterly astonishing. Probably showed a serious lapse of reason, something like this.

I would have liked to see what resistance London would have put up. If any. And Leningrad? Well, if the American/British(Canadian/freeFrench/andwhatnot army would have come rolling from the other direction, even the Leningraders would have given up. Because defense would have become senseless.

Considering that:

-the Western Allies had thrown more bombs on Berlin than on every other German city, indeed more than the Luftwaffe had thrown on Poland, Dutchland, France and Britain taken together

-the Soviets used MASSIVE artillery barrages, again and again

-the Red Army conducted the attack against the city itself with 1.2 million soldiers (even the Soviets agree to that)

-the Wehrmacht was largely gutted, wether it were men, material, food or fuel they were lacking of anything

- no help whatsoever was in sight

one can hardly complain. The Soviets lost more soldiers in Berlin than the Germans in Stalingrad. In shorter time. Seems rough enough to me.

If that should be regarded as insufficient performance by the two of you, I would advice the Americans and their assorted Allies should stay at home next time, perhaps sell some fuel to the Germans. Possibly then there are enough Soviet or Russian dead to satisfy both sid and Sovietsniper.

Nonetheless, its interesting what problems some people have.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Feldwebel Weber,

I would suggest that both the Soviet regime and the Soviet man were tougher than their German equivalents. The Soviet regime was prepared to use more extreme measures on much of its own population to get them to fight and the Soviet citizen had already had to bear incredible suffering before war broke out that make German complaints about the burden of Versailles look comparitively trivial.

You are absolutely right that the Red Army had numbers on its side (most of the time), although not quite such overwhelminhg numbers as is sometimes assumed.

However, just as you might like to see how the Soviets would have fared against 3 to 1 odds, might it not also be interesting to see how the Wehrmacht would have fared if the Red Army had some of the Wehrmacht's assets and the Wehrmacht lacked them itself? Just reduce the Wehrmacht's radio strength to Red Army levels and give the Red Army German scales of radio provision and that alone would have very far reaching effects on the 1941 Campaign. The war would probably have been dramatically shortened. As you posted "It wouldn't last very long, I think".

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Kitsune,

I agree. One does tend to hear a lot about German fanaticism at the end of the war, but what one actually finds is that, behind the stolid professional shield of the remains of the German Army, it was more like Nazi fanaticism that Germans should fight to their doom, and widespread German popular determination not to do so.

For example, Nazi Gauleiters organised the Volksturm and advocated that it should fight to the last. However, not only was the Volksturm a negligible military factor, but almost none of the 40+ gauleiters found death in battle themselves.

We hear talk of the conscription of 16 year-old German Youths, but the number actually reported dead by the army was probably lower than the number reported killed by Allied air raids.

And what happened to the Wehrwolf organisation and the supposed National Redoubt in the Alps?

In the Saarland (in which 90% of the electorate had voted for reincorporation into Hitler's Reich in 1934) the civilian population tried to stop the military fighting for their villages and towns for fear that they would be destroyed. Hitler ordered them evacuated en masse. Albert Speer was trying to prevent Hitler's scorched earth orders being put into effect, and even Hausser was colaborating with him by the end.

In the West, which embraced some two-thirds of the country, German resistance effectively collapsed during April 1945. Only in the east was there serious determination to near the end, but even then the likes of Berlin did not reproduce the earlier resistance of Budapest, Konigsberg or Breslau.

You are right, the Wehrmacht was gutted. That is why the Soviet assault on Berlin was so successful so quickly, with the result that Berlin never became a long epic of popular resistance and endurance. It was a brief and overwhelming onslaught against a comparitively small number of fanatical defenders and a large, numbed, impotent and largely non-participatory civilian population.

It might be romantic to some if the final battle for Berlin had been a military epic that befitted the climax of a massive global struggle, but the fact is that it wasn't. Neither the Wehrmacht nor the German people were up to it.

The people who claimed to be most keen on fighting to the last, the senior Nazis, generally ran away, hid, committed suicide or surrendered tamely. The end of the Third Reich was a shoddy betrayal.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Qvist]

Hi Sid

Out of curiosity, what were the respective scales of radio provision?

It seems that some 380,000 field telephones and 40,000 radio sets were received through Lend-Lease alone.

More generally - you make a number of good points, as usual. But I would point out that while fanatical resistance was not exactly universal (to employ an understatement), the Soviet campaign in Germany in 1945 was phenomenally costly compared not just to the cost of conquest in places like Brest, Odessa and Warsaw but compared to, well, anything. Despite the Wehrmacht being gutted, the Soviets took casualties on almost exactly the same average daily rate as they did in 1941. This would appear hard to explain if one assumes simultaneously that the German forces were numerically weak and did not fight with any particularly high determination.

EDIT: Red Army and Navy radio sets as of 0101 each year (from Krivosheev):

41: 37,400
42: 19,300
43: 39,800
44: 71,600
45: 107,000

Glantz (Colossus Reborn) makes the comment that by late 1943, the Red Army had overcome the problem of insuficcient numbers of radios in their forces, something that seems to fit with these numbers. I've no idea what the German levels were however.

cheers