When was the Battle of Halbe?

In the last week of April 1945. The pocket closed on 22 April, the first breakout attempts came from 24 April, and large parts of the army broke out on 29 and 30 April.

In the Dahme-Spreewald district of Brandenburg, about 60 kilometers south of Berlin, in the forests near Märkisch Buchholz.

How many people died at Halbe?

About 40,000, by the count of the Volksbund and Liberation Route Europe, many of them civilian refugees. Brandenburg's civic education center estimates up to 60,000 Wehrmacht dead and tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers.

Did anyone escape the Halbe pocket?

Yes. Some 25,000 soldiers of the Ninth Army broke through to Wenck's Twelfth Army and surrendered to the Americans on the Elbe.

What is the Waldfriedhof Halbe?

The forest cemetery at Halbe, begun in 1951, where about 24,000 victims of the battle are buried along with other victims of the war and of the postwar Ketschendorf camp. It is the largest war cemetery in Brandenburg.

Battle of Halbe, 1945: the breakout of the German Ninth Army

Location map of Halbe, south of Berlin, drawn for this article. Location map: Natural Earth data (public domain).

Quick answer

What was the Battle of Halbe?

The Battle of Halbe was the destruction of the German Ninth Army in a pocket in the Spreewald forests south of Berlin at the end of April 1945. Encircled by two Soviet fronts after the Seelow Heights, the army and thousands of refugees tried to break out west to meet General Wenck's Twelfth Army and reach the Americans on the Elbe. The breakout through the village of Halbe cost about 40,000 lives; some 25,000 soldiers got through.¹

Halbe was a village of about four hundred people in the woods south of Berlin. In the last days of April 1945 it became the eye of the needle through which the German Ninth Army had to pass if its men were to escape Soviet captivity. The breakout through it turned the village and the forest around it into one of the largest killing grounds of the end of the war.²

Caught between two fronts

The Ninth Army under General Theodor Busse had held the Seelow Heights against Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front. When Zhukov broke through on 19 April, the Germans fell back. Some units moved southwest into the area of Halbe and Märkisch Buchholz, between Zhukov's front and Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front, both of which had pushed on to the edge of Berlin. By 22 April they were completely surrounded.³ › Battle of the Seelow Heights, 1945

Inside the pocket, by Liberation Route Europe's estimate, were 150,000 to 200,000 soldiers, with the army headquarters and thousands of refugees, local civilians and soldiers' families. Hitler's earlier insistence that the army's right wing hold the Oder line had left the bulk of it isolated south of Berlin. Busse ordered a breakout. The aim was to reach General Walther Wenck's Twelfth Army, which was to attack toward them, and then to cross with it to the west bank of the river.⁴

Fear of captivity

History UK points to the motive behind the desperate effort. After years of savage war in the East, in which German forces had committed atrocities against Soviet civilians, the soldiers expected little mercy from the Red Army, and Nazi propaganda played on reports of Soviet atrocities in East Prussia. Surrender to the Western Allies on the Elbe seemed the only way out.⁵

The breakout

The first attempt to break out was made at Halbe on 24 April, and several more followed. A veteran's memoir published by the Volksbund describes a planned breakout for 27 April from the western edge of the pocket at Märkisch Buchholz, to cover some 60 kilometers of forest to reach Wenck, and its collapse into chaos: units dissolving, loose horses bolting, shells falling, and soldiers with bleeding feet and no food setting out west on their own.⁶

Bitter fighting raged in and around Halbe. Soviet fire, backed by massive air attacks, was devastating. The same veteran remembered that in the center of Halbe the pavements and streets were completely covered with bodies of soldiers, civilians and Russians alike, and that the living had to pass over them to get west. According to the Volksbund, large parts of the German units broke out westward on 29 and 30 April, helped by the relief attack of the Twelfth Army, and reached the German front near Beelitz.⁷

The dead of Halbe

Some 25,000 soldiers of the Ninth Army got through and surrendered to the Americans on the Elbe. About 40,000 people died in the pocket, by the count of both Liberation Route Europe and the Volksbund, many of them civilians fleeing from the East whose wagons had been caught in the trap. Brandenburg's civic education center gives a higher estimate: up to 60,000 Wehrmacht soldiers, tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers and many civilians.⁸

In the warm spring the dead were buried where they lay, in gardens, shell holes and mass graves along the forest roads, on the orders of the Soviet occupation authorities, who feared epidemics. Only in 1951 did the gathering of the scattered graves into a central cemetery begin, led by the local pastor Ernst Teichmann against the resistance of local officials. The Waldfriedhof Halbe, laid out on seven hectares of forest, holds about 24,000 victims of the battle, German soldiers and civilians, together with others such as Soviet forced laborers and prisoners who died in the NKVD internment camp at Ketschendorf.⁹

It is the largest war cemetery in Brandenburg. From the mid-1990s right-wing extremists tried to use it for marches in honor of the fallen, and local and state alliances have organized against them; since 2015 an open-air exhibition has explained the history of the site. Remains of the battle, human and military, are still found in the forests around Halbe today.¹⁰