Berlin--and Beyond

Patient, blunt-featured Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov had waited. Now his northern flank was anchored on the sea, his southern flank secure. The time was at hand to resume the westward march--to Berlin, the north German plains, an eventual linking with Russia's allies.

Red guns thundered out along the Oder. The Marshal's tested team of Army commanders--Colonel Generals Katukov and Bogdanov of the tanks; Belov, the cavalry leader; Chuikov. who led the 62nd Russian Army at Stalingrad; Popov, Kolpakchi, Tsvetayev--moved their men forward.

First objective was Kuestrin, fortress town guarding Berlin's eastern approaches. The Germans said one column had cut south of the town and driven to within 26 miles of Berlin, then had been stopped and hurled back seven miles. A second column stood northwest of Kuestrin within 29 miles of Berlin. Other Russians fought their way into the town in house-to-house combat. For six days the battle raged. Then came Marshal Joseph Stalin's order of the day: Kuestrin had fallen, the German capital's outer gate was unlatched.

To the north a second threat grew. The old port of Stettin, guarding Berlin's flanks, was crumbling under Russian gunfire and bombs from Allied air fleets, operating in support of the Russian armies. Some 25 Red divisions, backed by four tank and one cavalry corps, had drawn a 50-mile arc around the bays and narrows of the Stettiner Haff and Dammscher See, the outer and inner harbors.

For the Germans all hope was gone of a blow from the Pomeranian pocket to disrupt the Russian rear. The pocket was collapsing under the hammer blows of Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovsky's armies. The twelve-way rail junction of Stolp went down. The Russians ringed Danzig, hatchery of World War II and birthplace of Arthur Schopenhauer, No. 1 German pessimist of the last century (when the pessimism field was admittedly less crowded).

Only around the rim of the Bohemian bastion were Wehrmacht divisions on the offensive. Probable German objective: to hold this natural fortress for a last fanatical stand.

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