After a third breakout attempt from the Halbe pocket where about 80,000 German troops had been encircled by the Soviet Red Army, some 25,000 remnants of the combined German 9th Army, 12th Army and schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 502 and other German and foreign Waffen-SS formations managed to fight their way westwards through the village of Halbe and the pine forests south of Berlin to the River Elbe. At the Elbe they could surrender to American forces, which had halted their advance on the west bank of the river. Its estimated that some 30,000 German troops were killed during the three major break-out attempts from around Halbe in late April 1945. Nobody knows how many civilians died, but it could have been as high as 10,000 according to British military historian Antony Beevor.
The occupying Soviet troops celebrated, some indulging in the
rape and murder of German citizens. Antony Beevor has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. Female deaths in connection with Soviet rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000 by historians Franz W. Seidler, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Helke Sander and Barbara Johr. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was told how the Red Army soldiers were treating East European and German refugees, he is reported to say:
We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have some initiative. Those Waffen-SS men who were in the combat-ready elements and continued to fight the Soviets did so for three main reasons: They were determined to protect German civilians from Soviet reprisals; and they had little to return to in their homelands. Some hoped to join with the British and Americans in an anti-Soviet war. Also, they knew all too well about the Soviet Red Army's methods if captured. Vladlen Anchishkin, a Soviet battery commander on the 1st Ukrainian Front, sums up the horror, when he tells how he took personal revenge on captured Waffen-SS men:
I can admit it now. I said, Bring them here for an interrogation and I had my special knife, and as they come in I slit their throats. I knifed a lot of them. Four years I waited for you. Four years you hunted me. Dont look at me as if I were a criminal. It was a long time ago. Source: former Head of BBC TV History Programmes Laurence Rees:
Crimes of the Red Army (BBC). Top image: an unidentified SS-Untersturmführer surrenders to soldiers of the U.S. 102nd Infantry Division at the
River Elbe at Tangermünde in early May 1945. Photo by American photojournalist William Vandivert. LIFE photo archive. Fair use. Second image: Waffen-SS survivors of the slaughter at Halbe cross a bridge on the River Elbe to escape the then ongoing Soviet massacres of German prisoners of war and civilian refugees. Third image: British soldier seen beating German survivors of the Halbe on the west side of the river, while American soldiers of the 405th Infantry Regiment of the 102nd Infantry Division is looking on. Prisoners who dared to protest the beating were beaten with extra severity. On May 3 1945, the 102nd shook hands with the Russian 156th Division just outside Berlin. Fourth image: British or Canadian soldier seen hunting war trophies. In other images, he is seen kicking and hitting passing Waffen-SS POWs on their faces and their backs. Bottom image: the same man as in the previous picture who was beating the POWs after they had crossed the bridge, now guarding POWs and civilians below the bridge, wearing his German war souvenirs. All screenshots from the U.S. War Department Film. Public domain.
