70 Years Ago: Hitler Told Steiner Counterattack Impossible

DavidRamsay99

On 21 April 1945 the Red Army was in the process of encircling Berlin from both the north and the south, when SS Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner was ordered to launch a counterattack against the northern flank of the salient created by Marshall Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front's breakout. Simultaneously General Theodor Busse's 9th Army was ordered to attack from the south in a pincer movement.
General Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps east of Berlin was also to participate.

Steiner called General Heinrici, commander of Army Group Vistula, informing him that two of the assigned divisions were defensive and could not participate unless relieved and therefore the counter attack could not be implemented with what amounted to scratch forces put together with stragglers and exhausted veterans lacking weapons.

When Hitler was informed at a briefing on the afternoon of April 22 in his bunker beneath Berlin as the city above him shook under an unrelenting Soviet artillery bombardment he screamed and raved for half an hour in the presence of his Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels and his Chief of the Party Chancellery Martin Bormann while berating Field Marshalls, Jodl, Krebs, Keitel and Burgdof. Through angry tears Hitler accused the Wehrmacht of treachery and conceded the war was lost. In a pit of depression and self pity the deranged drug addicted and physically declining tyrant vowed to remain in Berlin to the end and commit suicide.

Aenaes

You have to wonder what was going through the minds of the members of that audience. Some were still convinced of final victory so to hear Hitler declare the war as lost was probably a huge revelation.

DavidRamsay99

Aenaes wrote: »

You have to wonder what was going through the minds of the members of that audience. Some were still convinced of final victory so to hear Hitler declare the war as lost was probably a huge revelation.

Hitler substituted his lack of personality for a fanatical immersion in the idea that he carried the destiny of Germany on his shoulders as an instrument of providence. His followers bought into that belief totally. He was a new Alexander and Caesar and Siegfried all rolled into one. He fed off their loyalty and they fed off his absolute belief in his historical uniqueness. So when the penny finally dropped it dropped hard.

It was easy for otherwise cynical or rational people to buy into the myth of an obscure nobody rising to the heights of power when Hitler did indeed rise from rags to the heights of power and for a while he appeared to deliver.

Like all cults whether at Waco or Jonestown it ended in mass suicide.

They had tasted what it might have been like to have a 1,000 year Reich and they decided to go down in flames literally with their Fuhrer.