Eisenhower and the Berlin Capture, 1945

Eisenhower and the Berlin Capture, 1945 

By Lawrence W. Reed

(The author composed this essay in 1975 for a history course at his undergraduate alma mater, Grove City College in Pennsylvania. It was subsequently published in the May 1983 issue of the magazine, Officer Review.)

In the closing days of the Second World War, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, decided to prohibit the Western Allies from seizing Berlin, the Nazi capital. The effect of this decision was to ensure the city’s capture by the Russians, who consequently took it in May 1945. What exactly the decision was, why Eisenhower made it, and observations by certain leading historians of the reasons for the decision, are the topics with which this essay deals.

On September 15, 1944, the Supreme Commander wrote to General Bernard Montgomery, commander of British forces, on the subject of Berlin. He made explicit his intention to take the city:

Clearly, Berlin is the main prize, and the prize in defense of which the enemy is likely to concentrate the bulk of his forces. There is no doubt whatsoever, in my mind, that we should concentrate all our energies and resources on a rapid thrust to Berlin.

Eisenhower qualified his intention by declaring in the same communication that “Our strategy will have to be coordinated with that of the Russians, so we must also consider alternative objectives.” These “alternative objectives” were later to play the key role in his decision not to take Berlin after all. In Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower explained how he came to change his mind:

A natural objective beyond the Ruhr was Berlin. It was politically and psychologically important as the symbol of remaining German power. I decided, however, that it was not the logical or the most desirable objective for the forces of the Western allies.

Historians differ as to the precise timing of the decision. Andrew Tully believes that Eisenhower may have determined as early as mid-February 1945 that he would remove Berlin from the list of German cities the Western allies would take. Rodney Minott narrows the period to between March 7 and March 28. Stephen Ambrose emphatically states that the General made the decision on March 28. Eisenhower himself does not reveal a precise date.

In any case, it is certain that the General disclosed his decision for the first time on March 28 in a secret message to Joseph Stalin, Soviet Premier. In that message, Eisenhower told Stalin of his plan to launch his main attacks north and south of Berlin and thus leave the capital to the Russians. Allied forces, he stated, would not advance further eastward in the direction of Berlin than the Elbe River. Three days later he cabled General Montgomery to inform him of the plan. The last three sentences of the cable read:

You will note that in none of this do I mention Berlin. That place has become, so far as I am concerned, nothing but a geographical location, and I have never been interested in these. My purpose is to destroy the enemy’s forces and his powers to resist.

Berlin had lost its importance in Eisenhower’s mind. No longer was it “the main prize.” He had re-evaluated Berlin’s status and concluded that militarily, the city represented a mere “geographical location.” The basis for this reasoning can be found in his cable to General George Marshall of March 30, 1945:

May I point out that Berlin itself is no longer a particularly important objective. Its usefulness to the German has been largely destroyed and even his government is preparing to move to another area. What is now important is to gather up our forces for a single drive and this will more quickly bring about the fall of Berlin, the relief of Norway, and the acquisition of the shipping and the Swedish ports than will the scattering around of our effort.

When Eisenhower spoke of the German government “preparing to move to another area,” he was referring to the so-called “National Redoubt.” This was a rumored Nazi plan for the withdrawal of troops into the Austrian Alps where weapons, supplies, and even aircraft plants were supposedly cached for a last-ditch holdout. There the enemy would presumably attempt to prolong the war in hopes of extracting a settlement short of unconditional surrender.

After the war, the Redoubt was proven to be a myth but its importance to the Supreme Commander in late winter/early spring 1945 should not be underestimated. General Omar Bradley, a close associate of Eisenhower’s throughout the war, reveals in his book, A Solder’s Story, that the legend of the Redoubt shaped Eisenhower’s tactical thinking during the closing week of the conflict.

The National Redoubt possibility prompted the Supreme Commander to divert a major portion of the Western Allies’ forces to southern Germany to eliminate any chance that such a stronghold might be established. The Redoubt was one of the “alternative objectives” which he wished to deal with in place of capturing Berlin.

Another of Eisenhower’s objectives was to cut off Nazi troop support to occupied Denmark and Norway. This the General planned to accomplish by sending Allied troops north to the Baltic Sea to capture the German port of Lubeck. At the same time, he ordered a large contingent of Allied forces to encircle the Ruhr industrial area of Germany, a third objective. The forces remaining on the Elbe River were to be sufficient only to hold the river until the Russians got there from the east. As for crossing the Elbe and moving on Berlin, Eisenhower wrote later,

If we should plan for a power crossing of the Elbe, with the single purpose of attempting to invest Berlin, two things would happen. The first of these was that in all probability the Russian forces would be around the city long before we could reach there. The second was that to sustain a strong force at such a distance from our major bases along the Rhine would have meant the practical immobilization of units along the remainder of the front. This I felt to be more than unwise; it was stupid. There were several other purposes, beyond the encirclement of the Ruhr, to be accomplished quickly.

The disposition of Russian forces in late March and April 1945 contributed to the Supreme Commander’s ultimate rejection of Berlin as a target for the Western Allies. In an April 7 cable to General Marshall, he stated that he would not readjust his plans unless the Combined Chiefs of Staff decided that “the Allied effort to take Berlin outweighed purely military considerations in the theater.” He went on to note that the capital was only 35 miles from the Russian lines, whereas the Allies were well over 250 miles away from the city. On the very day that Eisenhower disclosed his plans not to take Berlin (March 28), the Allied armies were on the Rhine 300 miles from Berlin and the Russians were positioned on the Oder only 40 miles from the city.

Captain Harry C. Butcher was one of Eisenhower’s closest associates during the war years. In his personal diary, My Three Years With Eisenhower, he writes of pressure on the General from Allied political leaders to capture Berlin. In Butcher’s opinion, Eisenhower thought the taking of Berlin would be a “mere show.” What the General wanted to do, says Butcher, was to end the war as quickly and economically in lives as possible. “Ike sees no military sense in it,” Butcher wrote in reference to the Allies seizing Berlin.

General Omar Bradley contended that Eisenhower’s decision was grounded solely in military considerations. In A Soldier’s Story, Bradley cited the rugged terrain between the Elbe and Berlin and the relative placements of Allied and Russian forces as the two principal factors in Eisenhower’s reasoning. Bradley himself advised the Supreme Commander against seizing the city: “When Eisenhower asked me what I thought it might cost us to break through from the Elbe to Berlin, I estimated 100,000 casualties.”

Leading historians offer support for the thesis that General Eisenhower’s decision on the Berlin question was based on his late-March evaluation of the city as a military objective and the strategic situation in Europe. Andrew Tully contends that “Eisenhower saw this assignment as one designed to end the war as soon as possible, and in this context Berlin had no strategic importance.” Rodney Minott declares that “Eisenhower shifted his forces for military, not political, reasons.”

The renowned diplomatic historian, Hanson W. Baldwin, maintains that despite repeated urgings by Allied politicians that Berlin be taken, the Supreme Commander saw the city as a goal of scant military importance by the end of March 1945. Although Baldwin terms the General’s decision “blindness to post-war political aims and “dominated by the single-minded pursuit of military victory,” he does not dispute the thesis that Eisenhower based his decision on his personal estimation of the military and strategic situation in a fast-moving environment.

Forrest C. Pogue maintains that opposition to Eisenhower’s decision was political, whereas “the Supreme Commander reached his decisions relative to Berlin on military grounds.” Pogue judges the General’s plan from a military point of view and agrees with Eisenhower that it was the quickest way to end the war in Germany with the fewest number of Allied casualties.

Finally, historian John Toland explains the Berlin decision in the same military framework:

Eisenhower reasoned that the Germans could hold Berlin for only a few more weeks. How could he possibly reach the capital first, when Simpson’s spearhead at Dorsten was still 285 air miles from the center of Berlin (Russian Commander Zhukov’s bridgeheads of Russian troops across the Oder River were just forty air miles from the Reich Chancellery) and in between were the Harz Mountains and the Elbe River? Furthermore, if Eisenhower continued the main attack toward Berlin, he was sure this would lead to “the practical immobilization of units along the remainder of the front.”

General Eisenhower once intended the Western Allies to capture Berlin, as his September 15, 1944, letter to General Montgomery made clear. By March 1945 he had changed his mind. He contended that Berlin had lost its value both to the enemy and to the Allies. Furthermore, he reasoned, other objectives commanded a higher priority. Those objectives were the encirclement of the Ruhr, the elimination of a Nazi stronghold in southern Germany, and the severing of Germany’s support for its troops in Denmark and Norway. The General believed that accomplishing these was preferable to launching an attack on Berlin itself, which could very well fall to the Russians before the Allies could get there.

While admitting that the city held political and psychological significance, Eisenhower steadfastly maintained that it had no military importance by early spring 1945, and that the destruction of the remaining German armies was more critical. He attempted to accomplish that by diverting the Allied forces away from a thrust to Berlin and toward the three alternative objectives cited above. Clearly, the Supreme Commander’s decision was grounded in his evaluation of the city as a military objective and the strategic situation in Europe that existed at the time the decision was made.

(Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty at the Foundation for Economic History in Atlanta, Georgia.)

Sources:

Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower

Berlin: Story of a Battle by Andrew Tully

The Fortress That Never Was: The Myth of Hitler’s Bavarian Stronghold by Rodney Minott

Eisenhower: Soldier and President by Stephen E. Ambrose

The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won by Stephen E. Ambrose

Battles Lost and Won: Great Campaigns of World War II by Hanson W. Baldwin

My Three Years With Eisenhower by Harry C. Butcher

A Soldier’s Story by Omar N. Bradley

United States Army in World War II Europe: The Supreme Command by Forrest C. Pogue

The Last 100 Days: The Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe by John Toland