Slaughter at Halbe: The Destruction of Hitler's 9th Army

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Halbe, a small village of about 400 inhabitants in the Spreewald forests south of Berlin, was the eye of the needle through which, in late April 1945, the troops of the already defeated German 9th Army had to pass if they wished to escape Soviet captivity with a break-out to the west.

Some 40,000 people, soldiers and civilians, are said to have been killed in this tragic episode. Their story deserves to be told.

The increasingly vicious and destructive manner in which the war on the Eastern Front had been conducted by both sides left those German soldiers with experience of it in no doubt as to the kind of fate Soviet captivity would bring them, and provided a powerful incentive for engaging in this final desperate struggle to break out and seek captivity with the Western Allies.

Survivors’ accounts give a chaotic picture, suggesting a large-scale loss of command and control in the military system that is not fully borne out by the surprisingly large number that got through to achieve their aim, despite the horrific casualties suffered in the process. Nevertheless, that there were some serious basic defects at command level cannot be denied.

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