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Hitlers Last Army

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The Battle of Halbe

This is a story of almost super-human courage, cruelty and suffering during the final death throws of the Third Reich.

The Soviet 'Red Army' had just breached the last natural obstacle in their advance on Berlin. The crossing of the Seelow Heights and fording of the Oder meant no major geographic defensible position was left for the remnants of the German 9th Army to a mount a defence.

Track through The Forest of Halbe taken during the breakout

Shell-shocked and battered by the massive Soviet assault over the Oder River, the remnants 9th Army took refuge in the forests around a small village of Hable. Unable to dig in to the sandy soil, the solders- many of them just young boys, mixed with 000's of civilians already hiding in the forest and awaited their fate

What followed was the senseless slaughter of 000’s German & Soviet soldiers ( + 000's of civilians ) on the whim of two men. Hitler still clinging to the pipe-dream that his army would stop the Allies & Stalin wanting his prize of Berlin to be ready for the annual Mayday parade.

Soviet generals, having taken 70,000 casualties at the preceding Battle of Seelow Heights saw their chance to avenge. Now that they had the 9th Army on the ropes and at their mercy, they were not going to give any quarter.
Their was nothing the solders and civilians could do against Soviet artillery, mortars and aircraft. One particular Soviet tactic was to set their artillery shells to explode at tree top level because:--

""This increased the amount of splinters caused by the explosions by adding wood splinters from the trees to the metal splinters from the projectiles. Because of the explosions location above the target it was very difficult, if not impossible to find cover protecting from these splinters."" **

The fear of what ' Ivan ' would do to any captured solders now drove these men to keep fighting. The only hope they could now see was to try and breakout on foot through the encircling Soviets and try and reach the 12th Army 40 miles to west.

This remarkable film below takes up the story:--->

NOTE:--This film contains scenes which may upset some viewers

Alternate location to watch film ' Hitler's Last Army '

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