On April 12, Franklin Roosevelt’s sudden death seemed to Hitler like a long awaited and providential miracle, comparable in every respect to the divine intervention which had eliminated the Tsarina Elizabeth and saved Frederick II, who had been on the point of taking poison at the worst moment of the Seven Years’ War. Hitler thought he would not only defeat the Russians at the gates of Berlin, but that the English, American, and Soviet forces would become inextricably confused in Mecklenburg and Saxony, German guns would fire themselves, and he would remain master of the situation.
The Russians, according to the message sent to Eisenhower by Stalin, were using only "secondary forces” against Berlin in this last battle of the war on the Eastern Front. These "secondary forces” totalled at least three army groups or fronts, consisting of 20 armies, 41,000 mortars and guns, 6,300 tanks, and 8,400 planes in the attack, which started at 0400 hours on April 16. On the 1st Belorussian Front, which broadly speaking was facing the German 9th Army, Marshal Zhukov had ten armies: 3rd and 5th Shock Armies, 8th Guards Army (General V. I. Chuikov), 1st and 2nd Guards Tank Armies (Generals M. E. Katukov and S. I. Bogdanov), the 1st Polish Army (General S. G. Poplavsky), and the 61st, 47th, 8th, and 33rd Armies. He also had eight
Artillery divisions and General S. I. Rudenko’s 16th Air Army. His task was to encircle and take Berlin.
On Zhukov’s left, Marshal I. S. Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front contained seven armies: 3rd and 5th Guards Armies (Generals V. N. Gordov and A. S. Zhadov), 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies (Colonel-General P. S. Ryhalko and General D. D. Lelyushenko) 2nd Polish Army (General K. Swierczewski), and 13th and' 52nd Armies. He also had seven artillery divisions and Colonel-General K. A. Vershinin’s 4th Air Army. After forcing the Neisse, Konev was to exploit his victory along the Bautzen-Dresden axis, hut in case Zhukov’s thrust slowed down, he was to he prepared to converge his mobile troops on Berlin and take part in the encirclement and assault on the city.
To the right of Zhukov, the 2nd Belorussian Front (Marshal K. K. Rokossov-sky) had five armies (2nd Shock, and 19th, 65th, 70th, and 49th) with four tank or mechanised corps, and Colonel-General S. A. Krasovsky’s 2nd Air Army. On April 20, Rokossovsky was to attack on the Schwedt-Neustrelitz axis, drive the 3rd Panzerarmee to the Baltic, and link up with Field-Marshal Montgomery’s forces. Although Telpukhovsky as usual does not state the number of Soviet divisions taking part in this campaign, they may be assessed at 140 divisions or their equivalent. The Germans had 37 weakened divisions to take the first blow, including the 4th Panzerarmee, which faced the 1st Ukrainian Front on the Neisse. Another difficulty was caused by the fact that the defence was extremely short of fuel and munitions, and the German troops were seriously undertrained. Moreover, as Telpukhovsky points out, Soviet planes had complete air supremacy. Busse, for instance, only had 300 fighters, all desperately short of fuel, to oppose Zhukov’s 16th Air Army.
World History
