Does anyone know or have heard about this? Is there any truth to it?


Red Army friendly fire

excerpt from World War II Magazine:

"On April 23, Konev was crushed when he received Stalin’s order No. 11074, which marked a boundary through the city that would stop the First Ukrainian Front 150 yards short of the Reichstag, the building that symbolized German government. Few Soviets troops observed the boundary line, however.

As elements of General Pavel S. Rybalko’s Third Tank Army, attached to Konev’s First Ukrainian Front, moved cautiously through the city, they came under murderous fire from their countrymen to prevent them from reaching the center of town first and planting the red banner atop the Reichstag.

Meanwhile, Konev’s forces had attacked Zhukov’s First and Eighth Armies, prompting Zhukov to dispatch a coded wireless message to Moscow asking Stalin to order Konev and his forces out of the area and leave the glory solely to the First Belorussian. That same day, April 28, Konev radioed his competitor’s headquarters to demand that Zhukov stop his attacks on the First Ukrainian and to inform him that Konev’s forces had reached the Anhalt railway station in central Berlin.

In 1965, Konev recounted how Zhukov had joined his forward units when they were within 300 meters of the Reichstag and was highly displeased to encounter elements of the Third Tank Army. “What the hell are you doing here?” Zhukov is supposed to have shouted at Rybalko. In his postwar memoirs, Zhukov also admitted to the friction between himself and Konev during the Berlin offensive, but he did not offer details.

On April 29, Konev contacted his counterpart on the field telephone and supposedly demanded: “What are you doing? Can’t you see your tanks and planes are attacking my tanks and planes and killing my men?” Zhukov allegedly replied, “No. I see nothing but sand and smoke in the air.” His answer may have been more straightforward than it sounds. The situation had become so chaotic by then that few could make sense of it all. Soviet aircrews found it impossible to attack with precision, since the constantly changing battle lines were indistinguishable from the air. Bombs often fell as much as a mile off target.

Dragnuski remembered: “A squadron of the First Belorussian Army Group began to bomb us. Then everything was on fire – smoke everywhere. That line [demarcation line between Soviet forces] existed on paper, but when there are hundreds of aircraft in the sky when 43,000 artillery pieces have been deployed by both army groups, when there are ten different armies on the same side, all in the same place, then there is a good possibility we will betray each other.”


Self-inflicted losses would indeed be likely in such a situation, even without the deliberate Soviet-against-Soviet assaults. Perhaps in an attempt to rectify the situation, Stalin ordered all of Konev’s forces not already fighting in the city’s center to veer southwest to Potsdam to meet elements of the First Belorussian that had been advancing from the north and complete the encirclement of Berlin. Rybalko and his men were bitterly stunned by the order but did not dare disobey Stalin. They began to pull back.

Despite this reduction in the number of Soviet soldiers in the city, bedlam persisted. Germans and rival Red Army units continued their three-way war. In the south, the Soviets fought themselves to a standstill, leaving Zhukov’s forces in the north to finish the battle.

On the 28th another tragic development had taken place. Eighth Army commander General Vassily Chuikov, spearheading Zhukov’s offensive effort, directed his artillery to shell Anhalt station. Retired General Vladmir Antonov is among the few Soviets who survived Chuikov’s bombardment, and he describes as a “crime.” Chuikov ordered his troops to attack across the positions occupied by the remaining First Ukrainian soldiers without telling his men who was in front of them. That attack eliminated the final German and Soviet resistance. Berlin was essentially secured by the May 1 deadline, and Stalin could be assured the domination of Eastern Europe."

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman