Berlin almost clear of Nazis, Moscow says
Few enemy troops left in capital
LONDON, England (UP) – The Nazi suicide garrison of Berlin has virtually been wiped out, Moscow dispatches said today.
Only relatively small units of fanatical elite guards and Volkssturmers (home guards) remained to fight the last hours of the nearly-ended battle, the dispatches said, after Soviet forces killed or captured 19,500 Nazi troops yesterday.
The German High Command admitted that Soviet troops had slashed to the Brandenburg Gate and Alexander Platz in the heart of Berlin.
Sounds like pep talk
A Nazi communiqué said German troops on the Elbe have turned their backs on the Americans in order to relieve the defenders of Berlin by “attacks from outside.” But it sounded like a pep talk.
The Russian barrier around the capital was now wide, and two U.S. armies were ready to pounce from the rear on any army turning toward Berlin.
At the Brandenburg Gate, the Russians were a block from where the famous Hotel Adlon stood and almost as close to the Reichstag building. Adolf Hitler’s Reichs Chancellery was only a few hundred feet to the southeast.
Reach Elbe
A Moscow dispatch said Soviet Cossack divisions swept nearly 50 miles west of Berlin and reached the Elbe River opposite the U.S. Ninth Army. The Russians were awaiting an imminent junction with the Ninth Army, Moscow said.
South of Berlin, the Russian Army organ Red Star said, two more Soviet divisions had linked up with the Americans following the original junction at Torgau, 60 miles below the capital.
Red Star said only that the two divisions met the Americans elsewhere than Torgau and added: “The linkup of our armies on a broad front became a fact.”
At least nine-tenths of Berlin was already under Russian control following a new junction of the First White Russian and First Ukrainian Armies in the Charlottenburg district just west of the Tiergarten.
Intensifying their assault, the Russians smashed into Schoenberg and Wilmersdorf, the last two districts south of the Tiergarten and Unter den Linden.
Soviet “daredevil units” swept into the Tiergarten itself, Berlin’s heavily-fortified central park, against “unrelaxingly bitter resistance,” Moscow said.
Bypass War Ministry
These shock forces presumably bypassed the German War Ministry on Bendlerstrasse, beneath which neutral sources have reported Adolf Hitler was directing the defense of Berlin from an underground fortress.
Bendlerstrasse is just south of the Tiergarten.
West of Berlin, Marshal Gregory K. Zhukov’s First White Russian Army captured Rathenow, 32 miles beyond the capital, in a drive within 16 miles of the U.S. Ninth Army along the lower Elbe River.
The First Ukrainian Army south of the capital broadened its corridor of junction with the U.S. First Army by capturing Wittenberg, on the Elbe 25 miles northwest of the original linkup point at Torgau.
North of Berlin, Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovsky’s Second White Russian Army captured Hammer, 21 miles southeast across Stettin Bay from the German Navy base of Swinemuende, and Angermuende, 31 miles above the capital and 35 miles southwest of Stettin.