'Road to Berlin' Scenario Preview
Part Three
By Mike Bennighof
July 2006

Panzer Grenadier: Road to Berlin is the series’ most-anticipated game, and here we finish showing you one of the biggest reasons why: its large number of historically-accurate, smooth-playing scenarios (separate game situations).(You can see the previous previews here and here.)

Scenario Fifty-One: Malomsok Bridgehead
27 March 1945

With the Soviets storming across western Hungary, the German high command mobilized its last reserves in a vain attempt to slow them down. Recruit depots were emptied of their teenage boys and more-or-less recovered wounded and formed into “divisions” with grand names that failed to mask their total lack of combat power. On the right bank of the river Marcal one of these pathetic collections tried to bar the road to Vienna.

Conclusion

The 232nd Panzer, a few days earlier known as the “Tatrá Panzer Division” and a few days before that as the “Bohemian Tank Training Command,” lasted only a few hours before disintegrating. The Soviets swept forward and would reach the outskirts of Vienna in less than a week.

Scenario Fifty-Two: A Thousand and One
27 March 1945

Lacking a mobile reserve for counter-attacks, the German CI Corps staff had combined what assorted armored or mechanized units it had into a large battalion under SS Sturmbannführer Blancbois, with several companies of Hetzer tank destroyers and assault guns drawn from both Army and SS units, the “Todt” labor organization’s palace guard (heavily armed and riding in late-model halftracks), some anti-aircraft gunners formerly assigned to the personal protection of Albert Speer and an SS parachute company. The corps staff made the signal error of noting this “1001 Nights Battle Group” on their situation maps; upon spotting a unit bearing an armored infantry symbol, Adolf Hitler ordered it to join the attack on the Oder bridgehead near the town of Genschmar.

Conclusion

Somehow, Blancbois had infused his weird collection with the notion that they were an elite group and they appear to have fought very well and with surprising cohesion. But flinging a battalion against a division was madness at the best of times, especially with no engineers to help with the thick Soviet minefields. The Germans lost two-thirds of their men and half their armored vehicles in the assault.

Scenario Fifty-Three: Favoritenstrasse
6 April 1945

In the open ground south of the Austrian capital, the shattered remnants of the panzer divisions that had launched the “Spring Awakening” offensive toward Budapest just three weeks earlier now faced the rapidly-advancing Soviets. Adolf Hitler sent reinforcements and ordered Army Group South to counterattack immediately. Ignoring the order, the German staff tried to set up a defensive line.

Conclusion

Even the army group command had conceded that Vienna must fall, and when Hitler sent his “fixer,” the SS commando leader Otto Skorzeny, to instill some fighting spirit into the city’s defenders the Army ejected him without apparent fear of retribution. The SS tankers put up brief resistance to the Soviet advance, but only the time and date of the Imperial City’s fall stood in doubt.

Scenario Fifty-Four: Seelow Heights: The Center
16 April 1945

With Berlin in their sights, Soviet troops had only one final barrier to overcome before breaking into the German capital. On the Seelow Heights just east of the city, the last organized troops of Ninth Army dug in to try to hold back the attackers.

Conclusion

Both sides showed fearsome determination in the war’s final field battle, heedless of their own casualties with so much at stake. Slowly, the Red Army ground forward, but at day’s end had not broken through the heights. But the Germans wouldn’t last much longer. The Thousand Year Reich’s lifespan could be measured now in days.

Scenario Fifty-Five: Seelow: The Tank Battle
16 April 1945

The Soviet plan for the battle on the Seelow Heights called for the rifle divisions to break through the German lines, with the tank brigades assembled behind them to enter action later. The Soviet 8th Guards Army sent the tanks in early, getting them entangled with the infantry and the remaining German defenders. But soon they began to grind forward, and found experienced German armor reserves awaiting them.

Conclusion

Capt. Hans Zobel’s small battalion shot up the first Soviet tanks to appear in front of them, and claimed 50 destroyed by the time 11th Guards Tank Brigade pulled back in exchange for four tanks lost. Experienced German units could still fight well and inflict serious losses on the Soviets, but they had yielded up the last good defensive terrain before the enemy reached the outskirts of Berlin.

Scenario Fifty-Six: Life Guards
16 April 1945

With the final assault on Berlin looming, even Adolf Hitler’s palace guard joined the fighting along the Oder River front. The Soviet 129th Rifle Corps had been liberally reinforced with tanks and assault guns, and enjoyed massive air and artillery support. They would need every bit of it to contend with suicidal fanaticism; the village of Alt-Lewin changed hands at least three times as the SS men counterattacked repeatedly.

Conclusion

“Fanatic” is often applied to the SS in the battles of 1945, and in this action the label is fully justified. After heavy fighting, the Soviets pushed the handful of SS survivors out of the village; most of the SS men died in the battle. Tanks began moving up the highway toward Berlin, to be stopped by an anti-tank battalion rushing to fill the gap created there.

Scenario Fifty-Seven: Heroine of the Soviet Union
16 April 1945

For its part of the final offensive, the 3rd Shock Army faced a heavily-fortified sector near the town of Letschin. When the 52nd Guards Rifle Division faltered, the 23rd Guards Rifle moved through its lines to resume the attack. The tough veterans recruited along Russia's Arctic coast stormed through the Nazi lines and ran into a heavily-defended railroad embankment. Maj. Gen. P.M. Safarenko ordered his 63rd Guards Rifle Regiment to breach the line, but the commander of the lead company fell dead and the riflemen halted. "Is this woman's work?" screamed the company's female party organizer, Senior Sgt. L.S. Kravets. Pistol in hand, she started up the slope alone. The Guards followed.

Conclusion

The Guards took heavy casualties, but topped the embankment and the German defense collapsed. "We were going to survive!" recalled German veteran Friedrich Schneck. "Where the order actually came from, no one could say. We got up and left that untenable position." Or to translate the euphemisms, the Germans dropped their weapons and fled in panic to the village of Sietzing, where the company cook rallied them and organized an ad-hoc defense.

Scenario Fifty-Eight: Seelow: The South Flank
16 April 1945

In the farmland south of the Seelow Heights, the Soviets laid on a powerful artillery barrage and sent the infantry forward with immense tank support. Under this weight of metal the recently-organized German division holding the sector began to fall apart. Though liberally supported by 88mm anti-aircraft guns (crewed by teenage boys), they could not halt the flood of Soviet armor. The corps command sent its slender armored reserve to fill the gap.

Conclusion

The Soviet tanks had been slowed by the infantry division's anti-tank barrier, hesitating to challenge the powerful anti-tank guns and standing off out of range. When the Tigers arrived with even longer-range guns, they proceeded to shoot up the enemy vehicles. Forced to attack or retreat, the Soviets now pressed forward against an even stronger defense, but good long-range shooting by the German tankers inflicted heavy losses on them and the attack broke up. The Red Army finally gave up when darkness fell, but would try again the next day.

Scenario Fifty-Nine: Bloody Quagmire
16 April 1945

To the southeast of Berlin, the Soviet 33rd Army had the task of trying to draw German reserves to its non-vital sector of the Oder River line. With much less armor and artillery support than the other armies driving toward the Nazi capital, thanks to the area's swampy ground, the Soviets could not expect to sustain a serious drive. On the other side of the line, the third-rate German forces could not expect to hold their lines. A resistable force was about to meet a moveable object.

Conclusion

The town of Wiesenau changed hands an astonishing 28 times in the course of a single day, as the Red Army and the SS threw each other out of the battered rubble over and over again. One of the worst units on the front, the 88th was formed from various scrapings of SS training schools and had never been declared combat-ready (how any group of armed men could fail to receive that designation at this late date is hard to fathom).

Scenario Sixty: The Ego Unleashed
16 April 1945

While Zhukov’s 1st Byelorussian Front tried to smash its way through the Seelow Heights position and on to Berlin, to the south Marshal Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front launched its own assault along the Neisse River to draw off German reserves. Once Zhukov ran into fierce resistance, Konev pressed his own attacks heedless of casualties, in hopes of racing into Berlin ahead of his hated rival. Once again ego had been proved far more destructive than any weapon made by the hands of man.

Conclusion

The Soviets took enormous casualties, but were grinding down Germany’s last reserves and Konev considered this a more than adequate trade. Every tank and crew lost on the Neisse line was one less to keep Konev from his prize. The Soviet tank armies continued their relentless advance, while from his bunker Adolf Hitler reveled in the situation maps and called on phantom panzer divisions to strike Konev’s flanks, trap 1st Ukrainian Front and reverse the war’s outcome.

Scenario Sixty-One: Rautenkranz Bridge
16-17 April 1945

The German stand at Wiesenau represented one extreme of fanaticism: the SS troops continued to counter-attack the Soviets in the town despite their lack of training and experience, at least as a formed unit. But fanatics are often hazy on details; behind the town, the bridge over the Oder-Spree Canal remained intact. The SS commander had probably hoped to leave a retreat route for his force, but the stand at Wiesenau did not cover all approaches to the bridge. Both sides realized this oversight at about the same time, and raced to grab the span before it was too late.

Conclusion

The two sides reached the bridge at about the same time, and a confused firefight broke out in the darkness. After several hours of fighting the Germans finally pushed the Soviets back far enough to allow their engineers to wire and then blow up the bridge.

Scenario Sixty-Two: Konarmiya
17 April 1945

With Berlin at their backs, the Germans fought for the Oder line with great determination, while the Soviets pressed forward in hopes of ending the war. Seeing the infantry falter, the commander of the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps spurred his troopers forward. Though ordered to wait to exploit the expected breakthrough, the Red horsemen instead seemed bent on repeating the heroics of the Russian Civil War.

Conclusion

The Soviet attack made progress, but not as much as demanded by Front headquarters even with the unauthorized intervention of the cavalry. Experienced German units like 25th Panzer Grenadier were in short supply, but where they held the line they could still make their presence felt. The Soviets responded by pounding them ceaselessly with artillery and rocket fire, knowing every man lost could only be replaced by old men and boys.

Scenario Sixty-Three: Seelow: The Heights Again
17 April 1945

The road through Seelow led up the heights dominated by the town and straight to Berlin, and here Marshal Georgi Zhukov had placed his hopes for a decisive breakthrough. The tank corps held back for exploitation entered the front lines and attempted to surround the town and its ragged defenders. Some German companies were down to a dozen men; the end appeared near.

Conclusion

In bitter fighting, the Soviets finally pushed the Germans out of Seelow and broke the line of the heights, thanks to the flanking attack from the north. The Germans continued to resist as best they could, but Ninth Army was in its final throes.

Scenario Sixty-Four: Seelow: Fort Apache
17 April 1945

While fighting raged on the heights to the northwest, the First Company of the SS 502nd Heavy Tank Battalion had become separated from the rest of the German defense. Clinging to the town of Dolgeln, the Tigers attracted numerous stragglers from the shattered 303rd “Doberitz” Infantry Division and other units, including a startling number of light anti-aircraft guns and crews.

Conclusion

With hot shooting by the Tigers, the motley collection of Germans hung on for the entire day despite repeated massive attacks by the Soviets. When darkness fell the Germans withdrew behind the Kurmark Panzer Grenadier Division’s new line to the west. One of the few clear German successes on this bloody day, it wouldn’t be enough to change the overall outcome.

Scenario Sixty-Five: Ambush
18 April 1945

With their first lines of defense breached, the Germans finally summoned reinforcements to help stem the Soviet assault. Fuel shortages left many troops stranded along the march route and trying to catch up on foot, but the armored elements of the 11th SS “Nordland” Panzer Grenadier Division showed up on the morning of the 18th and sought out ambush positions to await the expected Soviet tank attack. They had arrived just in time.

Conclusion

The Germans separated their armor into combined-arms teams of Tiger platoons supported by assault guns and infantry, and took up positions with wide fields of fire. The Soviets attempted to rush the Germans before they could dig in, and flung between 70 and 100 tanks at the ridge line. The Germans claimed to have destroyed more than 50 of them before the attacking force broke up.

Scenario Sixty-Six: Highway to Hell
18 April 1945

With Seelow in their hands, the Soviets pressed forward through the shattered remnants of the defending units. “There was no doubt where they were going,” recalled tank gunner Hans Hansen, “to Berlin!” In front of them, the Germans tried to form a new line while the Luftwaffe put in one of its few appearances on the front. On the Soviet side of the line, Gen. M.I. Katukov ordered a full tank corps down the highway from Seelow, and brought up fresh cavalry divisions to support it.

Conclusion

Pressed by Marshal Zhukov to make up for what he saw as lost time, the Soviets barreled down the highway toward Berlin with their tanks and other vehicles lined up nose-to-tail. Though battered, the Germans still had potent anti-tank weapons, new vehicle deliveries were still being made, and the huge SS Royal Tiger tanks had survived incredible punishment for days. While the Soviets had trouble organizing their air cover, the Luftwaffe ç its pilots briefly recovering from Adolf Hitler’s demented insistence that they carry out on Japanese-style suicide attacks on the Oder bridges — issued the last of its fuel and put several squadrons in the air. The highway became choked with burning wreckage as intense fire from the ground and the air destroyed dozens of Soviet tanks.

Scenario Sixty-Seven: Canal Line
18 April 1945

Despite the last-second destruction of the Rautenkranz Bridge in the wee hours of April 17th, Soviet troops had spent the rest of the day repairing the bridge, crossing the canal and building up a bridgehead. The German V SS Mountain Corps sent an SS “division” (by this point, a collection of Army officer cadets, sailors without ships, pilots without planes and other misfits, supported by a single battery of light artillery) to throw them back over the canal.

Conclusion

The Germans caught the Soviets by surprise; the Red Army did not expect the Germans to actually attack them and if so, not in this secondary sector. The Germans (their new comrades still clad in their Navy and Air Force uniforms) actually got to within 100 meters of the canal before Soviet fire drove them back. More lives had been wasted by the Dozen-Year Reich.

Scenario Sixty-Eight: Batteries of the Dead
19 April 1945

The German Ninth Army had been irreparably shattered by the Soviet assault, though the Greatest General of All Times refused to acknowledge this reality. Stand-fast orders or not, the handful of intact units were withdrawing from the Oder line in hopes of re-establishing a defense in front of Berlin. The disordered retreat and only slightly more orderly advance led to a number of surprise encounters.

Conclusion

The battalion lost all of its guns, and most of its officers and men, yet claimed the improbable total of over 100 Soviet tanks destroyed (more than the opposing tank brigade had in the field, and far in excess of Soviet admissions). A greater likelihood is that the Germans fought their guns as best they could, and inflicted some losses on the Soviets but not enough to damage the brigade’s combat-worthiness.

Scenario Sixty-Nine: Dutch Treat
19 April 1945

Far too little and far too late, the German high command had called in reinforcements to stem the Soviet march on Berlin. Among these was a “division” of Dutch volunteers, actually little more than a reinforced regiment. Having backed the losing side, the Dutchmen had even less hope of mercy from the Soviets than did German SS men, and when ordered to counter-attack the Soviet advance they fought with all the courage of cornered rats.

Conclusion

The Dutch Nazis caught the Soviets by surprise, and drove them out of Marxdorf. After their initial success, an attempt to expand their perimeter by seizing ground northeast of the town met heavy Soviet fire and the SS fell back with heavy losses. Unable to regain their momentum, the Dutch traitors would have to watch the Soviet advance grind forward again.

Scenario Seventy: Gasoline Alley
20 April 1945

As Germany’s supreme leader celebrated his last birthday, Soviet forces closed in on his lair from several directions. From the south and southeast, Marshal Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front was moving quickly against light opposition. Near the German Army’s general headquarters complex at Zossen, disaster struck Konev’s lead brigade when the tanks began to run out of fuel with no replenishment in sight. Suddenly the roles had shifted.

Conclusion

Roaming bands of Hitler Youth armed with Panzerfausts had been wandering about the countryside south of Berlin but had made no impact on the Soviet advance. If unable to strike a tank racing down the highway toward the capital, they had much better luck against the stalled armored giants. The 52nd Guards Tank Brigade was apparently considered completely destroyed — it disappears from Soviet situation reports after this action, though the German command had no knowledge of why the Soviets had suddenly stopped their advance and the 10 dazed survivors of the guard company could offer no clue. Hitler credited the Wünsdorf tank school instructors and ordered them to spearhead a relief attack on Berlin; an order that came after all the scratch tank crews had been killed and all their machines destroyed in the action with the 52nd.

Scenario Seventy-One: Horst Wessel’s Last Verse
26 April 1945

At the northern end of the front, the 2nd Byelorussian Front attacked the German Third Panzer Army just south of Stettin to prevent it from detaching troops to reinforce Berlin’s defenders. After some fierce fighting along the flooded lower Oder, the Soviets began to make progress. Near the town of Brüssow the Germans attempted to form a new line, though all but the true die-hards knew that their cause was lost.

Conclusion

The Soviets shoved the Germans back several kilometers into the town’s outskirts and secured the Stettin highway. The “panzer divisions from Pomerania” would not be coming to Berlin’s rescue; they could barely defend themselves.

Scenario Seventy-Two: What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?
24 April 1945

In the dying days of the Third Reich, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz proved his loyalty to Adolf Hitler by emptying the Navy’s recruit depots and training schools and turning thousands of sailors over to the Army for ground combat (with the condition that they serve in separate divisions). While often described in popular literature as “untrained” this is not strictly true, as German sailors underwent rifle training and other basic concepts during their initial training period but they certainly had no advanced infantry training and no familiarization with support weapons. Yet when Soviet spearheads pierced the front of Third Panzer Army along the lower Oder River, these were among the few troops that could be thrown into counter-attacks.

Conclusion

The sailors proved very unwilling soldiers, and charges of cowardice and drunkenness came liberally from their Army officers. They did little to blunt the Soviet advance except increase the German casualty count, and by the next day the naval troops would be falling back in precipitate retreat.

Scenario Seventy-Three: She-Wolves of the SS
27 April 1945

In the Spree Forest south-east of Berlin, Gen. Theodor Busse's Ninth Army had been cut off by the rapid advance of the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front. "History and the German people," radioed Adolf Hitler, "will despise every man who in these circumstances does not give his utmost to save the situation and the Führer." Busse, loyal up to this point, instead ordered his troops to break out westward towards the Twelfth Army's lines, after which both groups would head westward to surrender to the Americans. In legalistic terms, perhaps Busse did not disobey his commander in chief: riding on the ten Royal Tiger tanks that lead the attack were SS women guards from the Ravensbruck concentration camp, wearing black skirted uniforms and wielding submachine guns.

Conclusion

Soviet artillery fire wreaked massive casualties on the attackers, who suffered an unknown but surely enormous number of dead (decayed corpses are still found in the Spree Forest). Despite the female fanaticism, the attackers fell back into the forests to try again and again to break free. About half of those trapped in the forest eventually slipped through Soviet lines to give themselves into American captivity.

Scenario Seventy-Four: Czech Mate
6 May 1945

With the war rapidly coming to a close, the Red Army fought to take Europe’s last great capital, Prague, before the Americans could seize it and to cut off German troops trying to make their way west. To keep a corridor open to the west, remnants of several panzer divisions met the advancing Soviets head-on southeast of Prostejov in Moravia.

Conclusion

The Germans kept their corridor open, allowing civilians and shattered remnants of assorted military units to stream to the west. With Hitler dead and the political situation confused, the Wehrmacht ended its days fighting out of habit more than conviction.

Scenario Seventy-Five: Final Panzer Battle
7 May 1945

The Soviet attempts to close off retreat to the west sparked a final effort from the German tank crews. With many battalion commanders issuing orders to stop recovering damaged machines from the battlefield and to blow up their own tanks and make their way to the American lines, not all German armored units went into action with great spirit. The last tank battle of the war played out around Klenovice in Moravia, the eastern province of today’s Czech Republic.

Conclusion

The Germans “won” this battle as they achieved their objective of keeping the corridor open a few more hours, but Germany was only hours from surrender and soon all troops left in Czech lands would become prisoners or worse. The Red Army had achieved its goals: liberating its own country from the Nazis, and destroying their vile regime.

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