Ebook: Slaughter at Halbe - The Destruction of Hitler's 9th Army

Operation "Berlin", the Soviet offensive launched on April 16, 1945 by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev, isolated the German Ninth Army and tens of thousands of refugees in the Spreewald "pocket", southeast of Berlin. Stalin ordered its encirclement and destruction and his subordinates, eager to win the race to the Reichstag, pushed General Busse’s 9th Army into a tiny area east of the village of Halbe. To escape the Spreewald pocket the remnants of 9th Army had to pass through Halbe, where barricades constructed by both sides formed formidable obstacles and the converging Soviet forces subjected the area to heavy artillery fire. By the time 9th Army eventually escaped the Soviet pincers, it had suffered 40,000 killed and 60,000 taken prisoner. Teenaged refugees recount their experiences alongside Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans attempting to maintain military discipline amid the chaos and carnage of headlong retreat. While army commanders strive to extricate their decimated units, demoralized soldiers change into civilian clothing and take to the woods. Relating the story day by day, Tony Le Tissier shows the impact of total war upon soldier and civilian alike, illuminating the unfolding of great and terrible events with the recollections of participants.


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REVIEW:


Slaughter at Halbe is another one of Tony Le Tissier's numerous volumes on the climactic Battle of Berlin in April 1945, but certainly not the least. This volume focuses on a virtually unnoticed episode in the final moments of the war in Europe - the breakout attempt by the German 9. Armee (AOK 9) to evade the Soviet pincers encircling their capital and reach safety (and captivity) with the American Army on the Elbe River. For years, Western readers have been conditioned by books and films centered upon events within the tiny Fuhrerbunker, while virtually ignoring the death struggle of the Wehrmacht outside the city. Similarly, the Red Army is generally portrayed as quickly establishing a tight ring around Berlin, so that only a handful of German soldiers and civilians were able to escape to the West. In fact, Slaughter at Halbe demonstrates that the encircled AOK 9 made a bold effort between 21 April and 1 May 1945 to bash its way through the German encirclement and reach American lines. Akin to Xenophon's Anabasis, 100,000 German troops tried to fight their way across 60 miles of Soviet-held terrain. Herein lies the two worthwhile revelations of this book: first, that the Soviet armies under Konev inflicted massive slaughter on the packed German AOK 9, killing at least 40,000 soldiers and civilian refugees in a small wooded area around the town of Halbe and second, that about 30,000 Germans succeeded in reaching American lines. Overall, this is one of the best of Tony Le Tissier's books and very interesting at times, although the poor-quality maps make it difficult to follow the route of AOK 9.

The book is divided into fifteen sequential chapters, most of which cover a single day, which is a good format for depicting the saga of an army in retreat. The author does provide 20 maps, but most are very poor quality and I had great difficulty identifying some of the small villages mentioned in the text. The lack of an overall area map is particularly annoying, since most maps only cover very small areas and it was difficult to follow the entire retreat of AOK 9. Tony Le Tissier builds his narrative primarily on German first-hand accounts, which gives it a tactical flavor, although he provides the `big' picture on German and Soviet movements.

In their rush to get to Berlin, Konev and Zhukov bypassed most of the 100,000-men in the AOK 9 and figured that they would simply surrender or remain in place. Instead, the AOK 9 - which was badly depleted and very low on fuel and ammunition - boldly decided to try and break out through Konev's lines to reach the German 12. Armee (AOK 12) under General Wenck on the Elbe and the Americans. The Germans in the pocket massed their remaining armor, including 14 King Tigers, and started pushing west against strong Soviet resistance. The dominant images herein are chaos, confusion and incessant Soviet bombardment and air attacks on the packed refugee columns (too bad there was no Western media there to cry, `Highway of Death'). In particular, the tiny town of Halbe became a dense killing ground, with thousands of German soldiers and civilians being killed due to difficulty in getting around Soviet roadblocks. It is also apparent that German command and control quickly broke down and only those units which retained some semblance of discipline had any chance of escaping. In the end, the last King Tiger is destroyed just as Wenck's army is reached, clearing a path for about 30,000 Germans to reach the American lines. If this is not a dramatic enough subject for a feature film someday, I don't know what is.

Overall, Slaughter at Halbe is a gripping and well-told combat narrative about one of the less well-known aspects of the Second World War. Parts of the book are not as well written as others - the author is an adequate but not brilliant writer - but his material often speaks for itself. It is also useful as a cautionary tale about soldiers and leadership in extremis. Despite the usual depiction of Hitler in the bunker ranting "Where is Wenck?" expecting the AOK 9 and AOK 12 to come to his rescue, the fact is that the leaders of these formations had begun to think for themselves (for the first time in 12 years) and sought to save their own troops and as many civilians as possible, instead of rushing to the Fuhrer's side. This is an important aspect of the Second World War that needs to be more widely known.