For a time it appeared that Konev might earn this distinction. Both his and Zhukov’s forces crossed the Oder on April 16 with a total strength of 2.5 million troops, 6,250 tanks, and 42,000 artillery pieces and mortars. On the next day Konev was already closing in on Zossen, the new headquarters of the OKW, while Zhukov was held up by tough German resistance at the Seelow Heights on the west bank of the Oder. Frustrated, Zhukov threatened to dismiss any of his officers who did not push forward with total resolution. By April 19 he was able to smash through the German defenses and reach the eastern outskirts of Berlin. With additional backing from General Konstantin Rokossovsky’s Second White Russian Front, Zhukov was in a position to give Konev a good run for his money.
The Nazis, for their part, were determined to do their utmost to defend Berlin. On January 16, 1945, Hitler moved back to the city, having decided to direct from there the final phase of what he continued to insist would be a victorious war. However, because Berlin was under constant bombardment, he spent most of his time in an elaborate bunker complex that had recently been built under the Neue Reichskanzlei. Accessible via a spiral staircase leading down from an older and shallower bunker, the new Führerbunker contained eighteen rooms, including a conference room, offices for Goebbels and Martin Bormann (Hess’s replacement as Hitler’s deputy), valet quarters, a small surgery, a vegetarian kitchen, and the Führer’s private accommodations, which consisted of a bedroom, map room, living room, Eva Braun’s bedroom, and a bathroom. In Hitler’s domain the only decoration was Anton Graf’s portrait of Frederick the Great, the Prussian King who had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the Seven Years’ War. Hitler hoped to repeat this accomplishment.
If a German victory were somehow to be achieved, the national capital could not be allowed to fall. “I must force the decision here, or go down fighting,” Hitler told one of his secretaries. On March 9 his government issued a decree setting down the preparations for the defense of “Fortress Berlin.” Three rings of defenses were established around the city. The outer ring was some forty kilometers from the city center, the second encompassed the suburbs, and the last followed the
Perhaps the regime’s most potent weapon in the defense of Berlin was the Berliners’ fear of what would happen to them if the Russians overran their city. Goebbels’s propaganda machine harped on the horrors that would attend a Russian victory, and for once the little doctor was not exaggerating. Nonetheless, morale in Fortress Berlin was hardly of the highest as the Russians approached. Steady bombing had already induced an almost catatonic apathy in many quarters. Ursula von Kardorff likened the population to passengers on a sinking ship, resigned to “a fate that they could not escape.”
Some of the inhabitants, on the other hand, were not too apathetic to exploit the chaos around them for private gain. Packs of thieves roamed the ruins, stealing precious food, fuel, and material goods for sale in the thriving black market, which was the only viable market in town. Deserters from the collapsing eastern front filtered into the city and joined in the looting and thievery. Blessed with a bonanza business, funeral directors sold the same coffins over and over, then tossed the dead into mass graves. When one indignant widow complained about this swindle, another responded: “Since the living have no value, why should the dead?” The doorkeeper at the demolished Scherl Press House was heard to advise another widow: “Be happy that [your husband] is buried in a mass grave; at least he’ll have company.”
