transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] So good, so good, so good.

Speaker 2:
[00:02] Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Rag and Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints and more of your favorites.

Speaker 1:
[00:12] How did I not know Rack has Adidas?

Speaker 2:
[00:14] Why do we Rack? For the hottest deals. Just so many good brands. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack.

Speaker 1:
[00:30] This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Big news for your kids' lunchbox. Welch's Fruit Snacks are now made without any artificial dyes. A snack parents can feel good about and the same delicious taste kids can't get enough of. All made with no artificial dyes. Try Welch's Fruit Snacks today.

Speaker 3:
[00:50] In today's episode, we pick up the story of the Battle of Berlin in 1945, drilling down on the German side of the wire as Berlin Operation begins.

Speaker 4:
[01:02] Welcome to WW2, Both Sides of The Wire, the podcast where we lift the lid, bust the myths and explore the incredible history of the Second World War from the Allied and Axis perspectives. I'm Jesse Alexander, a public historian specializing in the history of the two world wars.

Speaker 3:
[01:18] And I am Matthias Strohn, German officer, professor of military studies and author. Hi Jesse, another week, another podcast. Here we are again. Berlin, you might say, number two. Last time we looked a little bit at the bigger picture stuff, the political situation that we're facing in the spring of 1945. We looked at the Soviet forces that are now getting ready for this attack onto Berlin. We looked at these, what you might call the shaping operations a bit from the Soviet side, mainly along the river Oder. The last real major natural obstacle that the Soviets are facing before they hit Berlin. That all happens in late January 1945, all the way through to April of 1945. 16th of April is the big date when the Soviets finally attack. Where do we take from here? Where do we start? Where do we pick up the story? There's so much there, isn't it? Where do we start?

Speaker 4:
[02:22] The danger of tangents awaits us, I'm afraid, as it always does. I think in the last episode, we talked a little bit about these preliminary operations or shaping operations. One of them is a part of the Vistula Offensive, which sees the Soviets gain a tiny bridgehead over the Oder River. The Oder River is the main part of the front facing Berlin. And another one was the important fortress of Küstrin, which is on the river a little further south of where that bridgehead was made. But those are not the only shaping operations. I think, Matthias, in your bag of tricks, in your Mary Poppins-like military history bag, there's another shaping operation that you wanted to talk about. Before we get into the German plans, the state of the Wehrmacht and all of that sort of stuff, which we will get to. But one more shaping operation, just for old times' sake.

Speaker 3:
[03:22] One more. Well, in the great scheme of things, you might say, this is what I'm going to be talking about in a minute, is reasonably small, but it is extremely famous if you are interested, if you've ever dealt with these shaping operations, the fighting in the area, which in German is called the Oderbruch, which means the low area of the river Oder. And this is to the south of Küstrin. So if you look at the geography, we've got Berlin, you go about 80 to 100 kilometers to the east. After about 80 kilometers, roughly speaking, you hit the place called Seelow. We'll talk about this in more detail later on, which sits more in the center of this battlefield. Another 10 kilometers or so further to the east, you hit the river Oder, and there's also the fortress of Küstrin. From Seelow, you go about 10 kilometers, up 10, 15 kilometers. That's where you hit this place called Kienitz that we talked about briefly in the last episode. Something like about 20 kilometers to the southeast, you hit another place which is called Klaessen. That already gives you a relatively good idea about the battlefield and the battle space where we will be looking at when we move forward to the 16th of April, and the major attack that is then unleashed by the Soviets. But in this area, Klaessen, you have basically a siege and that in itself is very interesting. What happens there has become very, very famous. There's also an extremely bad film made about this, Klaessen 1945. It's awful. It just winds me up because it's a German film, but the guy who plays the main character supposed to come from the eastern territories speaks with the broadest Westphalian accent from the West German territories. As you can imagine. Dear listeners, don't get me started on this because I think it's a really weird film, but there we are. I'll park this thought there because otherwise this is going to be a mega tangent here. I'll park that thought. But what you find here is that on the 3rd of February, 1945, so maybe four days after you have the first Bridget up in the North, at this place called Tienkienitz, the Soviets also established a Bridget down here in the South. They keep pushing in land and they then hit a natural barrier because the ground suddenly rises up and it looks like a natural anti-tank wall, you might say, it's very difficult to get up there. On the top of that ridge, you have what is a manor house, it's a farm complex in those days, and that is the place called Klaessen. Klaessen becomes so important that in Berlin, when they're looking at this battle unfolding in early March, they say, if Klaessen falls, Berlin will fall. So this is the statement. So you can see that that's an important place to them. Why is it so important? Because of the geographical features that rises up, it's a very strong defensive position. It also means that from this manor house, you have a very good view all the way down to the river Oder, which is about one or two kilometers to the east from the manor house. And in that area, you have a number of these pontoon bridges that the Soviets have built. So the Germans are able to bring indirect fire, artillery support onto these pontoon bridges. Should you lose the heights, should you lose these spotter areas and positions, then you will no longer be able to check the Soviets in this particular area. So the Germans bring forward troops. To secure this entire area. And it's mainly a battalion of from the Fahnenjuncker Grenadier Regiment 1241. That was very German. So it is basically, it's the officer cadet training institution that they bring forward. And these guys are pushed in there. Most of these guys are already experienced fighters. They've been selected to become an officer because of their frontline experience. And it's basically a battalion. They've also got some Volkssturm people. And in total, that gives you, roughly speaking, 400 defenders. So this battalion is not a full battalion. It's a battalion in name. It's more like company strength plus. And they are pushed in. And against these, the Soviets put about 4,000 attackers. So it's a 10 to one ratio, roughly speaking. So that already tells you that it's going to be quite nasty. Cut a very long story short, because I'm not going to go into all the tactical detail. The Soviets managed to encircle the German troops in this manor house. And there is a sea situation. The Germans are trying to hold the perimeters. They're constantly being pushed back. There are a number of counterattacks, all these things going on. There is an anti-tank gun, a Hetzer, which the Germans actually drive into the manor house to fire through the windows of the manor house. So all very, very interesting tactical, tactical stuff. It's also the last time that the Germans are using aerial support in order to drop supplies into a perimeter. So a number of canisters are thrown in. And in the end, so on the 23rd of March, the siege starts on the 7th of March with a fight in the area. And on the 23rd of March, it's over. So quite long when you think about this. So these 400 men are being able to hold out. And on the night of the 22nd to the 23rd, the troops are finally given the green light to break out. They do. And about 40 of these 400 managed to reach the German lines. There are photos of this. And you can see these guys, of course, unshaven, nearly all wounded. You can see in their faces the horrors of the fighting they've just gone through. Very, very strong and impressive, if that's the right word. And telling images that you can see. And why do you have these pictures? Because they're all lined up, they're all given an iron cross, and they're all immediately promoted to officer rank as a reward for the heroic action that they've done. And there's also one other very famous incident. You have a number of German counter and relief attempts, including from a German panther unit. And so there are a number of pictures. And one of the very famous pictures of this, this entire fighting in this area, shows a knocked out German panther tank in front of the ruins of this manor house. It's quite famous. If you've ever looked at the battle of the Seelow Heights and the Oderbruch, there's a picture that constantly comes up. We know the story of that person. There's a chap called Lieutenant Eimer, who is an Austrian. Actually, he's trying to break in, break through, open up this perimeter. He managed to break in. His tank is then knocked out. He joins the infantry fighting within the perimeter. He then also tries to break out in the night of the 23rd, 22nd to 23rd, but he goes missing. His body is identified in 2016, about 250 meters away from the German position. His sister, who is still alive, kept pressing and kept asking. Then in 2016, they found the body, which is actually something that still happens today. Every year, they still find about 100, 150 bodies in this entire area of the Oderbruch, which tells you a lot about the ferocity of the fighting there. I just want to throw this in because it is quite a famous story. This picture is very famous. Should you ever get the ability to and the opportunity to go there, it's really, really an interesting place, a bit eerie. The local population after unification did prepare the entire area there. You now have a walk around the old perimeter. You can still see the layout of the old manor house that's completely destroyed. The only thing that they rebuilt in some of the metal structure was the domain portal, which was still left standing in 1945. A really fascinating place to go to. I just want to throw that in because we talked about the fight at the northern end of the perimeter. Here's a very famous story from the southern bit. There are more of these stories, but I don't think we want to go through every single tactical detail of this particular fight.

Speaker 4:
[11:15] It's amazing to think about how many of those types of dramatic scenes are playing out all across the front, all across the western front as well, still fighting in Italy. So the scale sometimes, it's weird. Sometimes when you drill down and talk about individual actions like that one, it almost helps you try to imagine the scale as a whole. If you kind of flip it on its head and say, well, imagine how many of these were happening. How massive is that? Since it's generally hard for us to picture and imagine how massive the two world wars were compared to anything that's come since. Sometimes I try to play with my imagination a little bit that way. That's what I was doing a little bit as you were telling the story. So that action is one of many that lead us to the situation on April 16th. Just to reorient us here, to kind of bring us back up to a bird's eye view. You have these three Soviet army groups facing Berlin and the surrounding province more or less. And on the German side, because we've talked a bit more about the Soviets and their preparations and organization in the previous episode. But now let's take a look at the Germans. We have this front. It is where it is, mostly along the Oder and Neisse rivers. The Neisse is just south of the Oder. And you have Germany's Army Group Vistula, primarily, that's defending this line. There is a chunk of Army Group Center that is also going to be involved here. The 4th Panzer Army technically belongs to Army Group Center, but it's going to be in the target zone, I guess you could say, of the Berlin operations initial attack. Army Group Vistula was commanded by Himmler for a little while, until everybody realized that he was not capable of such a thing, that it was just for whatever political connections and prestige and this and that, and that he was actually mismanaging the whole thing, which comes as no surprise when you think about Himmler and his real capabilities, as opposed to as a kind of orator and propagandist in any case. He gets replaced by someone who's a lot more competent, who commands Army Group Vistula then during the Berlin operation, and that's a guy called Gotthard Heinrichi. We had a big debate about how to pronounce his name when we first started working on Berlin several years ago. As far as I know, the general consensus is Heinrichi. In any case, he's commanding Army Group Vistula, and Ferdinand Schörner is commanding Army Group Center, a guy known for his dedication to the Nazi party and Nazi ideology. So these two army groups, they are stronger on paper than they are in reality. So we talked a bit about how some Soviet units are kind of exhausted from constant fighting and all the lead up to this. The Germans, of course, given the way the war has gone, are in an even worse situation, frankly. They have about a million men on the front that's relevant to us here. They have about 1,500 tanks. They have about 10,000 artillery pieces. That sounds like a lot. But they're outnumbered 2.5 to 1 in men. They're outnumbered 4 to 1 in artillery pieces. So we're not talking about equal forces here. And not only that, but a million sounds like a lot. But who are those million? I think that's the big question here. The Germans do still have some good units, some good formations that can still fight. They have the 56th Corps under General Weidling, which will become prominent later on. I'm not just randomly picking that corps. They will play a very important role more than many others, more prominent than many others. They have some armored units that are still capable. They have some Waffen-SS units that are still capable. But one sign of the times, before I flip it over to you, Matthias, one sign of the times here for Germany is the prevalence of two types of units in particular. I guess there are more actually, but basically emergency sort of scratch units that are just thrown together. So you could take some policemen. I don't know, you can take like traffic wardens. You can take whoever, chuck them together, give them a number and okay, that's alarm battalion, whatever, as they would call it, or firefighters or whoever, throw them in, right? Or wounded or whatever. Or people from units who, units that had been destroyed and dispersed in earlier fighting, so called versprengte Einheiten, so blown up units, and you just chuck them together. And then you have a new unit under command of whoever's nearby and go, right? So this is not a recipe for combat power. And then you have the Volksturm, which is the so-called people's militia. They started it in September of 44. And it's mostly old guys. And I think I've said this before on an episode, but no offense to anybody out there who's also got a salt and pepper stubble going on like Matthias and I, but it's old guys like Matthias and I and even older, right? Plus a small percentage, even though they're very prominent in pictures and historical memory, plus a very small percentage of young, very young boys, as young as say 13 or so. The majority though are kind of the 45 plus club, let's say. And they are not very well trained or equipped and sometimes not motivated either. There are stories of as the battle progresses, some Volkssturm units just melt away, they just desert because they want to go back to their families because they see that there's no point. So the Volkssturm is not the main element of German defense, but they're there, they're numerous, and it's a sign that the Wehrmacht is not what it was in previous years. To put it kindly, Matthias.

Speaker 3:
[18:08] Well, that's just the way it is, isn't it? Well, it's a completely broken army at that stage. And, yes, on paper, it still might look impressive, but in reality, as you've just explained, there is not much left. So even these experienced and battle-hardened combat troops that you still have, I mean, they know exactly what's going on there. They know that this war is lost and that they can't hold the other Soviets. And then these other contingents that you've mentioned, what is there that you can do? And it is interesting when you read the accounts, I think you get different views and different explanations from people at that time as to why they are fighting. Say, sometimes just fatalism, so what else are we supposed to be doing here? So we just keep on fighting probably till we're dead. That's what you sometimes hear. You get, of course, the indoctrinated, mainly the young ones who still think that the war can be turned around and won at the gates of Berlin. And then you get the other people who say, we're just holding the front line here, and let's say we can let the Americans and the British in, because that was still the idea that they would get there. We talked about this in the previous episode, what the British and the American approaches, but that is also very much the hope here. And that's something that you do not only find in the positions and the trenches amongst the German soldiers, but also amongst senior military personnel at that stage, because they know that the war is lost and they can't really hold them. Hitler still has these great ideas in this bunker where he has his daily meetings that he says, we're going to defeat the Soviets on the gates of Berlin. He's probably thinking back to the gates of Moscow in 1941, where basically the same thing happened. And so he's still sending out the signal and the right sort of messages that now you can still be victorious and then you drive the Soviets back to Moscow. And a quick look at the map shows you that this is really completely illusionary and it's not going to work. You talked about the change in the high command. Yes, Himmler comes out because he's completely, completely pointless. Hein Rietzig comes in, he's an experienced troop commander, he's also actually been more or less sacked in 1944. So he has a period of, let's call it unemployment to then be brought back, to then be sacked again.

Speaker 4:
[20:16] Between jobs.

Speaker 3:
[20:17] Between jobs. I think on the 28th of April, I'm not mistaken, he's then sacked again because he's moving troops in the wrong direction and then another guy takes over, but that's a different story. And you mentioned the troop numbers. I mean, when you look at the numbers along the entire frontline, you're already given it, when you look at where the Soviets are really going to attack and you look at the concentration of forces in this particular area, it's even worse for the Germans there. So when you look at, for example, men at 7 to 1, tanks at 6 to 1, artillery 11 to 1, and planes, it's nearly 11 to 1, 10.6 to 1. This is where they've really concentrated because that's where they know that the Soviets know they're going to attack. And now you're receiving and as the German guy, in some sort of badly prepared defensive position, either not trained at all for the battle, or battle-hardened and disillusioned because you know what's coming your way. This is not a nice situation to be in, not really. And say again, we mentioned this time and again, and I think we discussed it in a number of episodes as well. The question is, why do they keep fighting? That is a really interesting one. Really, really interesting.

Speaker 4:
[21:21] Yeah, it is. I mean, shall we go on a tangent?

Speaker 3:
[21:24] We can do a tangent. Let's do a tangent.

Speaker 4:
[21:26] I think we should. It's tangent time, ladies and gentlemen. All right. So you talked a bit about the German motivations. And of course, there's a bit of a common family story that I feel I've heard a lot from Germans and Austrians that, well, they had to fight or they would have been shot. And that, it doesn't really add up, generally speaking. That's not usually how it worked. There were people, for example, who refused assignments to massacre Jews in the Soviet Union. They weren't shot, et cetera, et cetera. In this period, though, on this front, there's a lot more shooting of Germans by Germans than there had been up until this point in the war. So that fear of the new kind of so-called discipline in the Wehrmacht, and I use the term very loosely, it is a motivating factor to not desert for more people than it had been before. Because you have this kind of unchained violence, and now the regime and people who have power even at lower levels, there's no consequences anymore for anything that they do, right? So you have this uncontrolled sort of element of violence, and some of that's directed against their own men. People get shot all over the place in the last months of the war and during the fighting by random officers, by so-called flying courts marshal, which could just be one guy who's designated a court marshal, and he decides on the spot. They don't have to get permission from the unit commander to execute a soldier in that unit. They just have to shoot them. You have, and this is another development after the assassination attempt against Hitler in July 1944. They introduced new types of military police. The so-called chain dogs are going around as well because they have these little pendants on to identify themselves. So there is a lot more fear of one's own system than there had been earlier in the war. There's also a heck of a lot of fear of the Soviets. And this comes from, in my view, given what I've read, a general understanding that the Germans did a lot of terrible things in the Soviet Union. And the Soviets are coming for them now, right? So they know that the Soviets also are not nice guys when they capture you. And this is a big reason we don't want to surrender to them, unless it's absolutely necessary. Maybe there's a way that we can get to the Americans, and so on and so forth. And there's one, there's one quote. It's in, I found it in Anthony Beaver's book about the Berlin campaign, which has its strengths and weaknesses, let's say. But this one quote I thought was very interesting. There was a German teenager, he's at a train station, and he hears a soldier talking to someone else. And this soldier, according to the, so it's a bit of a second hand story, but still, I thought it was interesting. This soldier supposedly says, we have to win this war. If the others win the war and they do to us only a fraction of what we've done in the occupied territories, there won't be a single German left in a few weeks. And I think that kind of gets at the heart of some of the motivation, but I see you Matthias vigorously stroking your chin, my grey beard. What do you think about all that?

Speaker 3:
[25:16] Absolutely right. Pick up one particular point to begin with. It's the change in the regime, the tightening of the screws after 1944, the attempt on Hitler. I mean, of course you do find that. I mean, these chain dogs, the military police, they'd always be in there, but you then have where they get extra nasty, you might say, perhaps the right word, I'm not quite sure. You also then have political indoctrination, so they introduce into the military something very similar to the political commissar that the Soviets used to have. So they used that, the NS-Huung, off its ears, they would call it. They would then sit down the troops and then just tell them why Nazism is a great idea and Germany needs to win, all that kind of stuff. So basically modeled on the Soviet commissar, who of course they all executed in 1941. So it's quite interesting when you look at these developments. The fear is a factor. Over 30,000 German military personnel get killed by the Germans, the very, very vast majority of them in the last few months of the war, for exactly the reasons that you said. And there are all these images as well. You can see these people up on lampposts or trees, normally with a note around their neck saying, well, I died because I was a coward or something like this. So there is that fear factor, that is very, very clear. It's the fear against the old people. And Schörner, you mentioned him earlier. So this field marshal is very, very Nazi. He was one of these guys who said, my troops need to fear me more than the enemy, because only then will they obey. So I'm not quite sure if that's the right approach, but there we are. So you've got this, you've got the fear against the Soviets. I mean, that is very, very, very true. You also have, Justin, that's something that I always stress when we talk about this, and I might have mentioned this before. I think it's also, it's very easy in 20, what are we in now, 2026 to say, well, that was all wrong and that was awful. Why didn't they just surrender? I mean, this is a completely different time. There's indoctrination going on, but even if you take this indoctrination away, the war is now really changed for the Germans. You're no longer fighting in France, you're not fighting in the Soviet Union, you're fighting for the survival of your own country. People might now say, well, that was all wrong and it's all because they're supporting the Nazi state and it was all evil. Yes, that is true, but that's not necessarily how people saw it in those days and might even see it today if it came to a similar situation. In inverted commas, just because the political system is bad, it does not mean that you surrender your home country. I think that's a very strong motivating factor as well, which we sometimes overlook because our approach to these things today is on the one hand perhaps different. It also is a bit different because we don't live in a similar situation. We're not exposed to these different pulls and pushes, you might call them, so I think it's very easy to take them all on a high road and say, that was all wrong, they should have just surrendered. Probably in 1945, a lot of people said, well, no, we're not doing this. Unless, of course, we're surrendering now, like in the West, because this preserves more of the country and stop the destruction of the country. But that's a completely different approach, isn't it? Some people today wouldn't really necessarily pick up on. So I think there are lots of these different things coming together. Of course, the last thing that you also have in this is just a sheer brutality of the war, which you can now take into either direction, might say, without showing you that you should have surrendered. Or it could show you that, well, of course, you're getting, sounds a bit nasty, but you're getting used to all of this. So this becomes normal. And again, it is quite difficult to understand this. I think particularly for people from an English-speaking background, in the English-speaking world, because the casualties of the Anglo-American and the Commonwealth are comparatively low compared to what you find in other parts of the front. Give you one example. We are now in early 1945. In January 1945, the German Wehrmacht loses more men than Britain during the entire Second World War. That's one month. And they mainly die because you sent these young, these old untrained people to stop the Soviet steamroller, and they just get annihilated. But it just puts it into context again. There's another episode from the period and then also the location, looking in the Zelo area. So there's a veteran, and you can find it online. He talks about this. He was a very young guy and he was brought forward to the front line, and they are now withdrawing from the Soviets in the April of 1945. And they've got these wounded guys there. And they say, we need to get them out. And his platoon commander, he says, well, there's nothing we can do, so we can't get them. So what are we going to do with them? Well, the best thing is to just kill them, because otherwise they fall into the hands of the Soviets. And with that in itself, that's just bizarre, isn't it? So you kill your man so they don't get captured by the Soviets. That tells you quite something. But then they take that even a step further, and you think this is where it gets really perverse. And this platoon commander then says, well, we can't shoot them because we don't have enough ammunition. We're running low on ammunition. We need to preserve this. So what are we going to do? And the other guy said, well, so we need to get them out. No, we can't get them out. So we basically, the best thing for them is to kill them. So you know what? I've got an idea. Take your spade and bash their heads in. I just think this is just so beyond everything that you can think of. And this guy apparently says, he said, I'm not doing this, and apparently just walked off and that was it. So he was given a direct order to do this. He disobeyed. Coming back to what you said earlier about, are you really getting shocked when you disobey an order like this? But he said he could then hear the skulls being cracked by other people who used their spades to crack the skulls of the people. They just worked and lived and fought alongside because they think the Soviets otherwise will take them. I mean, that is just so beyond normal human behavior, you might say, this is really, really quite, quite, what about the right word, stark, worrying, frightening? I don't know what the word is.

Speaker 4:
[31:00] It's even far beyond normal military culture, training, norms, right? Or modern Western norms at least. Yeah. I think I've even seen that interview because that rang a lot of bells. I also, I feel like I also saw maybe a bit of a similar one where they were supposed to bury dead bodies. And the officer said, or one of the soldiers, the one who then survived and was giving this interview, he said, well, we noticed that they told us to put the badly wounded next to the dead on the ground. And then we're supposed to bury the dead. And then the officer told us just bury the badly wounded with them because they're not going to survive anyway. Just chuck them in the hole and fill it up. And in that story anyway, according to that German, someone shot the officer and chucked him in the hole. Whatever, the two or three guys that were supposed to do this, they sort of gave each other a couple of looks. And then one of them went behind the officer, shot him. They all tossed him in the hole as well. And so if that's the way your army's working, you've got a major problem.

Speaker 3:
[32:14] That turns you quite a bit, doesn't it?

Speaker 4:
[32:16] I do think on the topic of motivation, before we maybe move to the Soviet motivation for a moment and then finish up with the German planning, I do think, you know, there's also fear of not only becoming captive of the Soviets, but I've read a lot of German soldiers who are basically saying, well, we're trying to hold this village or this crossroads or this forest so that we can delay so that some civilians can get away. Because we're afraid of what the Soviets are going to do to the civilians, in particular to the women, because of course, there were many crimes of that nature. I guess we have to be a bit careful here on different platforms, what sort of wording we use, but I think everybody knows where I'm going with that. But once you know that the enemy does that, it's like a firebrand, right? That's a super hot topic. It spreads all around. It gets exaggerated beyond even the awfulness that there was. And that also becomes then a motivation. And motivation can be very small scale. Motivation can also be, I'm not going to leave my squad, my zook of eight or 10 guys, because I know them, or he helped me two weeks ago, he saved my life by doing whatever, and I'm not going to leave them. So there are even like kind of micro motivations in a way that are related to the camaraderie aspect, the unit cohesion and discipline, traditional discipline, let's say, that play a role here as well. Because even though it's a broken army, it is still an army and there are still those traditional elements of teamwork and dedication and normal discipline from training that still do play a role here.

Speaker 3:
[34:07] And you might say, generally speaking, every war and every military organization, in situations like this, everything you just said is absolutely right. And so this allegiance that you feel to your section, your platoon, whatever, is far more important than any political indoctrination that you might have received beforehand. It just takes over. That's just happens all the time. And that's just, again, probably normal human behavior. Right.

Speaker 4:
[34:32] I'm sure that you and many others who were fighting in Afghanistan were not always thinking, oh, this next mudwalled compound that we have to go and go into, this is going to be the one that builds the Afghan nation for democracy. That's probably not the very first thought one is having when there's, you know, AK-47 small arms fire coming around or what have you. Right? So that's normal. That's understandable.

Speaker 3:
[34:59] That's exactly what I was thinking of as I was talking, as you were talking. Exactly. So because you...

Speaker 4:
[35:03] Yeah, I figured.

Speaker 3:
[35:04] Exactly. You think about very different things. Yes.

Speaker 4:
[35:08] And of course, there are these variety of motivations on the Soviet side as well. And it kind of sparked an example when you were talking about that some Germans were just thinking of defending their home country regardless of how dedicated they were or were not to the Nazi cause. A lot of Soviets felt a similar way. I mean, it's not like the Soviet regime was super popular in the late 1930s after slaughtering millions of its own citizens with the famines in Ukraine and southern Russia, and then all the gulags, and then the big giant purges of the late 1930s, and the collectivization of land, and all this kind of stuff that most people didn't like. One Soviet soldier, I'm trying to formulate the quote now from what I remember from having read it. He basically said something along the lines of, Kremlin bastards may come and go, but the motherland is forever. And so, not that patriotism is always top of mind either, but that's one kind of thing where you're like, okay, I don't like the Soviets, but when the Germans marched in, they killed 20 million people plus, or 27 million, I guess, in the end. That'll motivate you. And that is a huge motivation is revenge, and a sense of moral righteousness. Obviously not every Soviet soldier is thinking, oh yeah, but we had a non-aggression pact with them, and we also occupied Poland with them in 1939. No, you're thinking they invaded us and they killed everyone. And sometimes they killed everyone I know, right? Or completely burned my village to the ground, or what have you. That is a pretty serious motivation. And the Soviet authorities make use of that, right? So you have these famous propagandists like Ehrenburg is the famous one, right? Saying we have to kill every German and all this kind of stuff. But then you also have even on, I've seen even on lower unit levels like battalions, they would take a survey. Now I don't know how accurate these figures were, or if they got, you know, massaged by the commissars, but they would say in our battalion, you know, X number of hundreds of family members have been killed, X number of people's farms have been burned, X number of, et cetera, et cetera, right? And of course, violence against Soviet women is also a big part of that. It's not as talked about. The Soviet authorities didn't want to emphasize that, but you know, the figures go, the estimates go into the millions. So that's another motivation for revenge. And then of course, there is fear of the NKVD, the so-called blocking units that could fire on their own troops. So you have, I think, a partly similar package of motivations, and then a bit of a partly different. It's revenge and atrocities based, but obviously from a different cause. So yeah.

Speaker 3:
[38:10] I think you're absolutely right. I mean, that runs through probably the history of war, doesn't it? The history of warfare. So these motivational factors tend to be probably the same for most wars and most people fighting. Well, you might also throw in the old days, but now we're out of our period. When you go to the times of mercenaries, it's just money, but that's a different one. But if you take that one out, I think the motivational factor, regardless of the regime you're fighting for, tend to be the same once the bullets are down flying. Absolutely right.

Speaker 4:
[38:41] That's true. And mercenaries, they were never fully gone, but they've definitely made a comeback in the Ukrainian war. You have lots of Latin Americans fighting on the Ukrainian side. And then you have lots and lots of, well, you had the private military companies on the Russian side, but you've also got Africans, Nepalese, all sorts of people there as well. So, let us now, are we good with our, with our motivations tangent?

Speaker 3:
[39:09] Well, I've got another, I've got another tangent in my head, but I think I was going too far on talking about mercenaries. Oh God, okay, well maybe we save it up. We park that thought.

Speaker 4:
[39:16] Maybe we save it up.

Speaker 3:
[39:17] Exactly, otherwise we can never finish this episode.

Speaker 4:
[39:19] Tangent over goes. Okay, so we've talked a bit about the motivations now. We started off talking a bit about the German plans, the state of the German forces. That's what led us to our giant motivation tangent. So let's reel it back in. What is the German plan here, operationally speaking, for this battle? Because you know that you're facing a superior force. You know that your forces are degraded. How are they planning on trying to defend this Oda-Nise front line?

Speaker 3:
[39:55] It is a difficult one, isn't it? Because you look at the numbers, they knew the numbers, they knew the figures, they knew the operational, the strategic situation, and you know you're fighting those costs. But as we now discussed in quite some length, well, there's still something new to do. You've now at least got commanders in place that are experienced. They know what they're doing. So Heinrich as the Army Group Commander, you've got a chap called Busse, who stays the Army Commander of the 9th Army, and below that you mentioned some other names as well. These guys are at least the officers. We talked a bit about the experience of the troops, the officers, the senior ones, they've got a bit of experience under their belt, they know how the Soviets fight, they're taking all this into conservation. And of course, the one thing that they have going for them is the terrain. The terrain that you're looking at in the area of Zelo lends itself for a defensive battle. So what does that mean? Say, when you look at the river Oder, the Oder of course is a river, so that is relatively, relatively low. You've got the Oderbruch as it's called, so this is the old flood plains of the river Oder, which were drained by our great hero, Frederick the Great, which is also the reason.

Speaker 4:
[41:02] Naturally.

Speaker 3:
[41:03] Absolutely. Well, you've got a number of places in this area that are called Friedrichs something, so the most famous one closer to Berlin is Friedrichshagen, a very famous place. So that's where a friend of mine lived, that's where my father learned to swim in the 1950s, if you're really interested, because we used to have family there. So all interesting stuff. One of the largest German breweries used to be there, blah, blah, blah. So that's Friedrichshagen for you. You've got other places that got Friedrichshagen in there, it's all because he cultivated this area in the 18th century. And then after that, you go further to the west, and after about 10 kilometers, roughly speaking, suddenly the terrain starts to rise towards, in the centerpiece, 2 to 0. So there's a ridge that runs more or less in some sort of semi-circle from the order in a semi-circle around, well, through Zelo, down towards the place that we mentioned earlier, Klaessen. And this ridge is, at that stage at Zelo, it's only about 60 to 70 meters high. So it doesn't sound particularly impressive, but at the river Oder, you're looking at 3 to 4 meters of elevation. So this is quite steep and it really goes up. I wouldn't say it's a 90 degree angle because that would be too much, but it is very, very steep. It's steep. So it's so steep that in most areas, for example, tanks can't just drive up that particular ridge. So they are already restricted and they need to use the roads that are available. And the main road, there's basically one main road, and that's the one that runs through Zelo, towards Kustrin and then further on to the east, which by that stage is already under Soviet controls.

Speaker 4:
[42:42] Hey everybody, we just wanted to quickly jump in here and let you know about an awesome project that we have coming up that you can participate in. In September 2026, Matthias and I are going to be giving a battlefield tour in Berlin, looking at the fighting that took place there at the end of the Second World War in 1945. And of course, we're excited, we think it's going to be awesome, and we'd love for you to be a part of it. So Matthias, why don't you give us a little sneak peek? What are we going to do?

Speaker 3:
[43:12] Well, as you said, Jesse, it's going to be absolutely brilliant. It's going to be fascinating, analyzing the battle, the sheer destruction, the fighting in the center of Berlin. We're going to be visiting all the key locations that you need to see, that you need to understand, if you want to understand the fighting in Berlin in 1945, which of course also has implications for European politics then after 1945, all the way up to today. So for example, we're going to be visiting discussing the Soviet attack onto the Reichstag, starting at the Molke Bridge where the Soviets crossed the river Spree and then attacked the Reichstag itself. We're going to see the Fuhrerbunker, where Hitler was sitting and hiding and still dreaming of world domination until he decided to kill himself. We show you exactly the spot where he then was burned and the Soviets found the remains after the battle. We're going to be looking at the Bendler Block, which was part of the German High Command. This is where Stauffenberg had his office. That's where they tried to overthrow the Nazis and Hitler on the 20th of July 1944, where he and other people were then shot that particular night, where you now have a museum dedicated to German resistance. We're going to be looking at the Topography of Terror, which was the headquarters of the Gestapo. The remains, the foundations are still there. There's an exhibition. And we're also going to go to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in the north of Berlin, to explore this particular nasty side of the Nazi regime as well. So it's going to be a full few days. It's super nerdy. It is for the real history enthusiasts like us, and hopefully you, and we'll hope to see you all there.

Speaker 4:
[45:00] And that's just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Once again, the battlefield tour of Berlin is going to be September 9th to 13th, 2026. If you're interested in finding out more, go to battleguide.co.uk and hopefully we'll see you there.

Speaker 3:
[45:25] The Germans are looking at this terrain, and they realize, well, here's something we can do. They know how the Soviets fight, so there's going to be an artillery barrage to soften up the defensive, and then you're going to have a mass attack by infantry and tanks. So the Germans establish a defensive position, which consists of three areas, you might say, that they're using. The first one is the first defensive line, and that is pushed out into the low ground. So between Zelo and the order itself, mainly around an area called Alt-Tuchelband, that's a small place, and there is some fighting there at the particular stage. And the idea here is that you hold this, but actually in the German idea, that's more of a screen. So you just put out a screening force, relatively weak force. The idea being once you know that the artillery fire is going to come in, hopefully you're going to get some information and you can predict the exact time, you're going to more or less surrender this, and withdraw your forces, which means you're not suffering casualties, which also means the majority of the Soviet artillery fire is going to get wasted. The Soviets, just to throw this in there, when they start this offensive, fire nine million rounds of artillery shells onto the German positions. So that's quite some heavy firepower. And look at this. And then you would have the main defensive line, and that is then on the heights of this Zelo ridge. This is where you need to stop the Soviets attacking. Hoping that you are able to do this, because you can channel the attack. Behind that, you then got the third line of defense in the area of Munchenberg, which is about 15 kilometers to the west of Zelo. But everyone knows, if you have broken through Zelo, if you've seized the ridges in that area there, the last was just a bit of a token defense. You're not going to hold them. So you need to stand and fight at the Zelo heights. Terrain works, the weather works. The spring of 1945 is extremely cold, extremely wet. So we have images and pictures of the Oderbruch, so the former floodplains, which are flooded again, which again restricts the movement of the Soviet tanks. And of course, the Germans know this. Germans bring forward everything that they've got now. Say, for example, they're completely stripping Berlin of all air defense. All these, the famous 88-millimeter guns, they're all sent to the Oderfront, mainly in the area of Zelo, which also is one of the reasons why now you've got the number of further air raids on Berlin, which completely destroy the city, because these are completely unopposed, not even a single, well, a couple of them, but not many anti-aircraft guns still firing at them. And so everything is pushed into this particular. This is the idea. This is how you want to fight. You look at the traditional German way of fighting, where you would hold the enemy and then you would launch a major counterattack to drive the enemy back. The Germans have some reserves. For example, the division Müncheberg, which is named after that place, Müncheberg. But they have to commit them relatively early already in the battle. They don't really have an operational reserve. So this is going to be, from the German point of view, very much a pure defensive battle, which goes against German military thinking. Because in German military thinking, the defense always have an offensive element, because you want to regain the initiative and basically force your will onto the enemy, even when you're fighting defensively. They simply don't have the force to do that. So they're staying put. They know all they can do is hoping that it will stop the Soviet offensive, stop them dead, or literally so, in their tracks. And then for the next step, probably fight it again and again and again. That's the idea. There's not really the idea that they're going to have this major counterattack to drive the Soviets back into the Oder or somewhere else. So that is the relatively broad brush, the German plan of the defensive battle at the Zelo Heights.

Speaker 4:
[49:14] I mean, I think they also understand that they can't, not only can they not launch a major counterattack, but they don't have the mobility to contain a breakout. They don't have enough vehicles and fuel. They don't have the mobile units to do it anymore. So if you have a Soviet spearhead going somewhere, it's going somewhere. And that plays into this kind of more static defensive plan. In addition, a little bit away from Zalo, that is the centerpiece, of course, because you have the main road going through it. It's the closest part of the front to the city. But interestingly enough, south and slightly southeast of that, you have an area more or less called the Spreewald. The Spree is a big river that eventually then goes into Berlin. And so this whole area along the front and behind the front is, for lack of a better word, kind of soggy. So it's dotted with forests. It's got all sorts of like marshes and swamps and things. And so hopefully that will also be able to contain, so not only at the main Zalo Heights position, but the hope is, of course, you can also contain the enemy forces elsewhere, which I don't want to give too much away, but that doesn't work out. But that area, there's one village in that area called Halbe, and that village is going to lend its name to a famous part of the battle. So we will deal with that when it comes. But yes, I think the plan here on the German side is kind of connected to their political desperation, where they basically say, okay, we're going to try to hold on in the hopes that we sort of stop the Soviets, and we can have some miraculous separate peace with the Western allies. And one of the events that is kind of seized upon as showing that maybe this miracle will happen is the death of Roosevelt on April 12th, 1945, right? So just days before this operation begins, Roosevelt dies, and you have then German propaganda and discussions. Oh, you know, he's been struck down. This is destiny for us now. The main leader of the enemy coalition is dead, and we're going to be able to whatever, have some kind of deal with the British and Americans, which Stalin does not think that that's impossible. He also worries about that, and it's one of the reasons why he's so keen to reach Berlin as quickly as possible. Not only, as in the last episode, does he potentially fear they will try to seize Berlin, but he wouldn't be surprised, let's say, if they made a separate deal. So you see kind of his ideological blinders also working. All the non-communist powers, of course, equally bad somehow and will get in league and work together against a communist power. When, of course, that was not their intention in any case, they were as good as their word in this example anyway.

Speaker 3:
[52:30] So, and of course, I'm just jumping in there very quickly. I'm very glad that you said all this because this just ticks all the sort of right boxes for me, because first of all, you talked about the forest. So we have got some deep, dark woods out there. I mean, they're not really deep and dark, not kind of typical German, because it's more, what is it, coniferous, it's kind of fir tree, isn't it? Because the sand, the soil is just very, as you said, it's boggy, it's sandy. There is actually a term for this area which was used in German, this Reiches Streusandbüchse, which translates as the Imperial Sand Pit, because the soil is so bad. That was a standard phrase for this area all the way to the 20th century. And of course, we also have another very interesting link to our great hero, Frederick the Great, when you talked about Roosevelt dying, and Goebbels running into the bunker where Hitler sits, where he sits staring at this painting of Frederick the Great, and he puts the note on and says, and here is yet another miracle of the House of Brandenburg. What does that mean? It means that when in the Seven Years' War, Prussia is about to be defeated, completely crushed, overwhelmed by the enemy. The Russian Tsarina dies, and the guy who then, Peter, then comes on the throne. He's an admirer of Frederick the Great. And the first thing, pretty much the first thing he does is where he makes peace with Prussia. And that enables Prussia to survive, and basically, you might say, come out victorious out of the Seven Years' War. Goebbels calls it the miracle of the House of Bruntenberg. That goes back to writing of Frederick the Great. People get that wrong quite often, because this episode where the Tsarina dies is not the miracle of the House of Bruntenberg that Frederick the Great talks about. Frederick the Great talks about the defeat of the Prussian forces by a Russian army, and it's basically completely annihilated and crushed. He thinks if they now march on to Berlin, this is the end of the House of Bruntenberg, but they don't do it and they stay put. He calls that the miracle of the House of Bruntenberg. That's what puts it in the letter. He actually writes this at a place called Reitwein. That is very interesting because Reitwein is on the banks of the Ode. That's basically our territory that we're looking at right now in 1945. And at the Reitwein, you've got the Reitwein Spur. And on that spur, you have the basically the headquarters of Tuikov, the army commander, and Zhukov as the front commander goes there on the 16th of April. So the night of the 15th, morning of the 16th, to basically see what's going on in the battlefield and direct the battle from there. So that's, you can see there's an interesting, again, 18th century to 1945, 1945 link. So if you get the chance to go, they get an interesting place, very nice, very nice. That's the right word. Burnt out church, burned out turn in WW2, left in ruins, are now used for cultural events. And you can still, if you know where to go, it's not particularly well signed posted, meander your way through the forest through Soviet positions, dugouts and what have you on to that dugout where Zhukov and Chuikov were on the 16th of April 1945. And there we have it, Frederick the Great.

Speaker 4:
[55:43] Could not have planned that better if we tried, folks. That was completely spontaneous. Chuikov, by the way, the night before the attack, this is a good, I think, little anecdote to wind up the episode. He's sitting there in that bunker on the right by a spur with Zhukov and he says, time was going by unbelievably slowly, and the only thing I could think to do was just sip my black tea. Because of course, that's stress, anticipating what's going to happen the following day. We hope, folks, that you are also full of anticipation leading up to our next episode, because we're going to talk more about the Berlin campaign. For today, we talked a bit about the German side, what kind of forces do they have, how are they organized, what's their plan. We went on an epic tangent excursion about the motivations, multiple motivations of both armies, and we finished off, of course, with some quality Frederick the Great content. So if you liked what you heard today, you can always support the podcast. We'd be very happy if you did that. You can go to bothsidesofthewire.com and sign up as a supporter. You can even get access to exclusive material that's not for public consumption. You can get a free trial of our War Room where that exclusive material is published by using the code, what else? Deep Dark Woods. So that was it for today's episode, and we'll see you in the next one. You've been listening to WW2 Both Sides of the Wire, a Battle Guide production. To support the creation of future episodes, consider joining our dedicated supporter community, where you can enjoy exclusive benefits and connect with like-minded individuals. For more information, please see the show notes, and if you appreciated this episode, please leave a review on your chosen podcast platform. Thank you for listening. We hope that you also have anticipati- And anticipatation. How about that? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[57:55] So this is about two hours. We haven't even started with the 16th of April yet. So as you say, how did we do it last time? I've got no idea what we were doing, but there we go.

Speaker 4:
[58:03] We must have, I mean, we were moving forward at the speed of a guard's tank army as of April 19th. It must have been that.

Speaker 5:
[58:21] Two kinds of fishing out here, one for fish, one for your data. Hackers try to hook you, but Cisco Duo keeps every user and device protected. Cisco Duo, fishing season is over. Learn more at duo.com.