Red Storm on the Reich

At 03:00 hours on the morning of 16 April, the Soviet assault began with a massive artillery barrage that smashed the German forward posts along the Oder River line. The defences on the Seelow Heights held out briefly before being overrun. Steiner was ordered to launch a counterattack with his corps to turn back the Soviet pincer movement, swinging around the north of the capital. The effort was futile and the two divisions were soon retreating. When the Nordland tried to fall back northwards, away from Berlin and to safety, the commander was removed from his post by the High Command in the Führer Bunker.

As the noose tightened around Berlin a week into the offensive, the Nordland Division was trapped in the city along with the Zitadelle garrison. It received last-minute reinforcements in the shape of 350 French Waffen-SS volunteers who had driven through Soviet lines to join the defence of Berlin. Their unit, the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division, had only just been disbanded after a spate of desertions. The hard-core members of the unit had nowhere else to go because the Free French government of Charles de Gaulle regarded them all as traitors. Their commander, Gustav Krukenberg, was sent to take over the Nordland, which occupied the southeastern sector of the Berlin perimeter. The scene when he arrived was apocalyptic. The divisional headquarters had just been bombed by Soviet aircraft. Dead and dying soldiers were littering the area. The surviving Waffen-SS men of the division were utterly exhausted and only 70 men were manning the front. The remainder were wounded or too exhausted to fight.

Foreign volunteers in Berlin

By 28 April, the German defenders were being driven back relentlessly and Soviet troops were fighting on the fringes of the Zitadelle defence sector. The Leibstandarte troops trapped inside put up fanatical resistance, launching counterattack after counterattack against Red Army troops battling through Berlin's city centre. Single Waffen-SS Tiger II tanks emerged from the ruins to take on columns of Josef Stalin II tanks, only to attract a hail of Soviet fire. It was heroic but futile.

The Berlin garrison was being steadily squeezed from all directions. Division affiliations broke down as units were chopped apart by the Soviets. Defenders coalesced around the few senior commanders still organizing resistance or who had communications with the Führer Bunker. The surviving foreign volunteers of the Nordland Division soon retreated into the Zitadelle sector and fell under Mohnke's command. Only some 600-700 men now remained in each of its two regiments, along with surviving French Nazis. The defence of the Zitadelle sector was also joined by a couple of hundred Latvian members of the Waffen-SS.

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