From this article:
http://www.thehistorynet.com/WorldWarII/articles/1998/03982_text.htm
I have seen other references for this peculiar German behavior by the end of WWII in Europe, If the Russians were coming why did not the Germans retreat from the western front and just defend Berlin? Leaving the USA and England time to reach Berlin unopposed?
Or was it that that was the last propaganda stunt of Goebells to convince the Germans to continue fighting?
If many Germans did swallow that, why the continued fighting in the western front then?
Remember the battle of Stalingrad?
So did the Soviets. They were looking to take a piece out of Germany’s hide for the various atrocities committed on the Eastern Front.
That’s essentially what DID happen. The Germans had put everything they had into the Bulge counteroffensive, and then into the defense of the Siegfried Line and the Rhineland. A large number of units had even been transferred from the Eastern front to defend the Fatherland itself while the Russians were still in Poland. Germany even went so far as to effectively abandon Norway and Denmark just to transfer those occupation troops to the front.
Once the Allies had broken the German defenses and crossed the Rhine in force, they were able to sweep across Germany with little substantial opposition, and could indeed have gone onto Berlin without excessively stretching their supply lines. This was not done because of the Yalta agreement and preparation for the Cold War.
The Germans had grounds to fear the Russians as occupying forces much more than the “civilized” British, French, or Americans, as I’m sure other posters will discuss in detail. Much of the USSR had suffered greatly under German occupation. The Russian troops had been living in greater physical privation, inducing large-scale pillage and rapine in the areas they occupied. They were more accustomed to being seen as less than fully human by Germans, with whom there was a centuries-long history of conflict. The Germans would seem to have been justified in predicting some severe retribution coming their way.
Another reason the allies did not drive onto Berlin was that they were more concerned about stopping the Russians driving into Scandinavia. The main efforts of the British and Canadian army in the last days of the war was towards Northern Germany. This enabled them to reach the Danish/ German border and put a large number of troops there. This effectively sealed off the route into Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia and so stop the Russians from advacing in that direction.
The official German strategy in 1945 was to resist all of the invading armies to the upmost. Unofficially, most Germans realized the war was going to end soon and preferred American or British occupation to the Soviets. However, anyone who publicly said anything to this affect would have been labeled a defeatist and killed. So any efforts to influence the post-war occupation zones (or to influence which zone you’d reside in) had to be subtle.
As for the Americans taking Berlin, it was never as easy a goal as post-war revisionism claimed. The Red Army was always closer to Berlin than any American (or British) forces and had better logistics in the area. If the Americans had initiated a race to Berlin, they would have lost it.
David Cronan pointed out that the western allies wanted to close off access to Denmark and the North Sea. There was also a justifiable concern that the Germans might fall back into the alpine regions of southern Germany where they could have conceivably held out for another year of fighting. Eisenhower therefore made the occupation of Bavaria a priority to cut off this possibility.
And the political situation at the time appeared different than it would a year later. In the early months of 1945, American military planners could not assume that the atom-bomb would ensure a Japanese surrender. And if Japan had to be invaded, they wanted to be sure that the Soviets participated. So avoiding confrontations with the Soviets in Europe was seen as a valid price to ensure their cooperation in Asia.
It is a frequent understatement to say the Russians suffered greatly under the Germans. The German invasion led directly to the death of one of every four Russians.
While only half of the German prisoners of Russians survived, this was damn near civilized by comparison.