The Combat Diaries of XXX Corps

[KungPao]

Great AAR! Thanks for writing this

[loki100]

thank you ... and now for the final installment

[loki100]

The Battle for Berlin: 19 May – 2 June 1945


(situation at 3am 19 May 1945)

For XXX Corps the focus in this period was preparation for an assault on Berlin. However, the possibility of the end of the war led to a number of wider political arguments among the Allied commanders.

At one level, the argument was about which formations would be involved. US 1 Army's V Corps had cut off Berlin to the north by 25 May and argued that it should take part in the attack. On the other hand, allied commanders were keen to end all German resistance in the north and needed to use its armoured formations to occupy key cities along the Oder. As a result V Corps was ordered east.

Equally, due to the speed of the German collapse, while XXX Corps remained subordinated to 2 British Army, the reality was the bulk of the army was involved in the fighting around Frankfurt and XXX Corps was operating in the area controlled by 3 US Army.


(situation 25 May)

To this, of course, was the growing problem of Soviet unease at the developments. With their army still bogged down well to the east of the Oder it was clear the war would be settled before they reached Berlin. As a result, Allied and Soviet commanders agreed to reinforce the order for unconditional surrender. Even at the local level, German units had to agree to surrender with no preconditions or face a final assault.

Across the wider front, Allied forces made rapid progress. By 31 May, effective German resistance was over in most of Germany and even in Italy [1], the allies were making serious progress.


(Germany 2 June 1945)


[2]


(Italy – as mentioned the AI kept a very strong force here so I made very little progress).

By 25 May, the disputes around the operation had been resolved. Given that XXX Corps had operated with the same core group of divisions since it landed in France, it made sense to use it as the only unit attacking.


(order of battle on the eve of the attack)

A final surrender was offered to the defenders on 26 May and when this was rejected, the Allied bombing commenced. For 2 days the bulk of Bomber Command and elements of 8 US Air Force attacked known strong points. Flying relatively low, allied air crews took substantial losses but badly disrupted the defenders.



The ground attack was scheduled for 30 May and relied on the British armour attacking from the West and Canadian formations from the south. The US 20 Armoured was screening the city to the north and east to prevent any breakout or escapes.

The opening attack led to heavy losses and Allied units pulled back by late afternoon.



A weaker attack on 31 May was also beaten off.



1 June saw preparations for a renewed assault scheduled for 2 June. However, at one in the morning, the city commander offered to surrender. Allied bombing had killed most of the senior government officials in the city and, after speaking to OKW, he had been authorised to offer an unconditional surrender both of the city and all German forces still in the field.




[3]

[1] If the AI has made one 'strategic' mistake in this game it is in Italy. There are something like 6 Pzr/PzrGr divisions there blocking the Appenine passes. This has left the front stalemated but clearly they would have been of far more use in Germany.

[2] One problem of a Pas de Calais invasion is that clearing out the Brittany ports means a substantial diversion of troops. So as this shows I never bothered with the Atlantic ports or a number of those on the Channel. In my logic early capture of Antwerp was a reasonable trade off.

[3] If my attacks had succeeded this would have ended as a draw but one extra turn of penalties pushed it over into a marginal defeat.
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Sort of comment.

For a solitaire game this is a good scenario. The extra Axis forces make it harder to achieve an easy win. It meant that it wasn't until about 8 turns from the end did the Axis front really collapse.

Wouldn't play in PBEM though – makes the Axis far too strong, as mentioned there is a powerful armoured force in Italy that really should have been in Germany.

Not sure why the Soviets were so passive but they really made very limited progress.