Slaughter at Halbe by Tony Le Tissier

Author:Tony Le Tissier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Breaching Koniev’s Lines

29 APRIL 1945

The repeated attacks by the German armour finally succeeded. The Soviet cordon was breached and their positions overrun. The Red Army troops at Halbe were unable to close the gap fast enough, their artillery and tank fire failing to smash the desperate German assault.

Before it was full light on 29 April the German commanders had to get their people flooding through this breach. It was a hectic scramble, but XI SS Panzer Corps and V Corps managed to get through and away. For the rearguard, as will be recounted later, it was not so easy. It seems that the Soviets also managed to block the gap before V SS Mountain Corps could get through, and that this formation then had to bear the brunt of the Soviet artillery fire in its own struggle to break through an area already strewn with the casualties of the earlier fighting.1

SS-Major Hartrampf, commanding 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion, maintained a good grip on his lead tanks and any resistance encountered was soon overcome. Whenever there was a hold-up, Hartrampf would appear in his APC and get his tanks moving again, though he later recalled that XI SS Panzer Corps, more often than he would have liked, sent the radioed question: ‘Where are the leading tanks?’2

SS Lieutenant Bärmann, driving along in an SPG, reported:

As it became light on 29 April, we drove on cautiously and soon came to a barrier with two T-34s behind it. They were immediately engaged by the Tigers driving behind us. I called down below: ‘Two o’clock right – aim!’ Together, we overcame the anti-tank guns and tanks.

Spirits improved. At the autobahn west of Halbe, we came up against another anti-tank barrier that we also overcame. With daylight, the Russian ground-attack aircraft began attacking, but our self-propelled Flak fired flat out so that they were unable to aim their bombs.3

The lead tanks of 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion reached the Cottbus–Berlin autobahn at dawn and came under fire. One or two well concealed Russian tanks engaged the German vehicles as soon as they approached the autobahn, but SS-Major Hartrampf was on the spot and gave orders for an attack by a Tiger and a hastily assembled infantry storm troop, which soon put them out of action. The lead tanks then crossed the autobahn and waited in the woods opposite for the others to catch up. However, although the first group of opposing tanks had been dealt with, others firing from further off along the autobahn opened up as soon as a German vehicle approached. Even so General Busse managed to get across in his command APC and drove on to the rendezvous at the Massow forest warden’s lodge.4

Rudi Lindner’s account of this period continued:

It slowly became light as we slipped along the track under cover of the wood. As this led to the west, it had to lead to the autobahn. Suddenly in front of us was the nose of an armoured vehicle. ‘Take cover! One man forward to reconnoitre!’

After ten minutes came the report that it was an assault gun.

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