Hitler

a hint of near-hysteria assigned a motley variety of remaining units, including naval and Luftwaffe forces untrained in ground warfare and without heavy armour, to Steiner’s command. ‘Every commander withholding forces has forfeited his life within five hours,’ Hitler screamed at Koller. ‘The commanders must know that. You yourself guarantee with your head that the last man is deployed.’ Any retreat to the west was strictly forbidden to Steiner’s forces. Officers unwilling to obey were to be shot immediately. ‘On the success of your assignment depends the fate of the German capital,’ Hitler told Steiner – adding that the commander’s life also hinged on the execution of the order. At the same time, Busse’s 9th Army, to the south of Berlin, was ordered to restabilize and reinforce the defensive line from Königswusterhausen to Cottbus. In addition, aided by a northward push of parts of Schörner’s Army Group Centre, still doggedly fighting in the vicinity of Elsterwerda, around sixty miles south of Berlin, it was to attack and cut off Konev’s tank forces that had broken through to their rear. It was an illusory hope. But Hitler’s false optimism was still being pandered to by some of the generals. His mood visibly brightened after hearing upbeat reports from his most recent field-marshal, Schörner (who had been promoted on 5 April), and from General Wenck about the chances of his newly constructed 12th Army attacking American forces on the Elbe.
    Colonel-General Heinrici, Commander of Army Group Vistula, was not one of the eternal optimists who played to Hitler’s constant need for good news. He warned of encirclement if the 9th Army were not pulled back. He threatened resignation if Hitler persisted in his orders.But Hitler did persist; and Heinrici did not resign. The general had implied to Speer days earlier that Berlin would be taken without serious resistance. This thinking was anathema to Hitler. He told Jodl on the day his orders to Steiner and to the 9th Army went out: ‘I will fight as long as I have a single soldier. When the last soldier deserts me, I will shoot myself.’ Late that night, he still exuded confidence in Steiner’s attack. When Koller told him of the inadequacies of the Luftwaffe troops he had been compelled to supply to Steiner’s forces, Hitler replied: ‘You will see. The Russians will suffer the greatest defeat, the bloodiest defeat in their history before the gates of the city of Berlin.’
    It was bravado. Two hours earlier, Dr Morell had found him drained and dejected in his study. The doctor and his medications, however little efficacious in an objective sense, had been for years an important psychological prop for Hitler. Now, Morell wanted to give him a harmless further dose of glucose. Without any forewarning, Hitler reacted in an uncontrollable outburst, accusing Morell of wanting to drug him with morphine. He knew, he said, that the generals wanted to have him drugged so that they could ship him off to Berchtesgaden. ‘Do you take me for a madman?’ Hitler railed. Threatening to have him shot, he furiously dismissed the quivering doctor.
    The storm had been brewing for days. It burst on the afternoon of 22 April, during the briefing that began at 3.30 p.m. Even as the briefing began, Hitler looked haggard, stony-faced, though extremely agitated, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. He twice left the room to go to his private quarters. Then, as dismaying news came through that Soviet troops had broken the inner defence cordon and were within Berlin’s northern suburbs, Hitler was finally told – after a frantic series of telephone calls had elicited contradictory information – that Steiner’s attack, which he had impatiently awaited all morning, had not taken place after all. At this, he seemed to snap. He ordered everyone out of the briefing room, apart from Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, and Burgdorf. Even for those who had long experience of Hitler’s furious outbursts, the tirade which thundered through the bunker for the next half an hour was a shock. One who witnessed it reported that evening: ‘Something broke inside me today that I still can’t grasp.’ Hitler screamed that he had been betrayed by all those he had trusted. He railed at the long-standing treachery of the army. Now, even the SS was lying to him: after Sepp Dietrich’s failure in Hungary, Steiner had not attacked.The troops would not fight, he ranted, the anti-tank defences