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Battle for the Seelow Heights Part I

© Ralph Zuljan

In April 1945 there was little doubt in the Allied camp about ultimate victory over the Third Reich. For Stalin and the Soviet Union the only real goal now was to capture Berlin before the western Allies got there. Stalin was painfully aware of the limited resistance the Allies were meeting in their advance and he knew how desperately the Germans fought against his forces on the Eastern Front. Eisenhower's assurance that there would be no western drive on Berlin merely made Stalin more suspicious of his allies' intentions.

Marshal Zhukov, Stalin's (almost) trusted second in command, was positioned to become the conqueror of Berlin. After loyal and successful service on all sectors of the Eastern Front, the boisterous Marshal of the Soviet Union now commanded 1st Belorussian Front which was poised a mere fifty kilometers from Berlin, along the Oder River. The sheer quantity of Soviet artillery, tanks, planes and men massed into the 1st Belorussian Front seemed enough to assure a quick and decisive victory over the hastily assembled German forces opposite it. Even so, Stalin is reputed to have hedged a couple of weeks before the offensive. He removed the previously established boundary of operations in the Berlin area between 1st Belorussian Front and its southern neighbor, 1st Ukrainian Front, commanded by Marshal Konev. Some have since interpreted this as a none-too-subtle hint to the marshals that what mattered most was that the battle be completed quickly. However, Konev was at a clear disadvantage in this race to Berlin as he had a much longer distance to cover.

Opposite Marshal Zhukov and his forces stood Army Group Vistula, commanded by Colonel General Heinrici. He had replaced Reichsfuhrer Himmler as commanding officer near the end of March and was assigned the unenviable task of preventing a Soviet drive to Berlin from the east. Heinrici's army group consisted of 3rd Panzer Army under General Manteuffel to the north and 9th Army under General Busse in the south, where Zhukov intended to break through. Neither army had any substantial combat value - their units consisted of already depleted army units, numerous divisions of the Volksturm and a myriad of hastily assembled formations that did not have significant combat training or even enough weapons for the individuals pressed into the ranks. There seemed to be little available to Heinrici to offer any significant resistance to a Soviet thrust anywhere along his front line.

Heinrici, however, was probably the most brilliant defensive tactician to fight in World War II. Over time he had acquired a reputation for being unbreakable in a defensive battle. He commanded 4th Army before Moscow during the Soviet winter offensive of 1941-42 and had managed to hold. For two years he continued to hold against what are now known to have been important Soviet attempts to break through his army. They never did.

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