Battle of Halbe

The Battle of Halbe (German: Kesselschlacht von Halbe, Battle of the Halbe Pocket; Russian: Хальбский котёл, Halbe pocket) was a battle lasting from April 24 to May 1, 1945, in which the German Ninth Army under the command of GeneralTheodor Busse was destroyed as a fighting force by the advancing Red Army during the Battle of Berlin.

The Ninth Army, encircled in a large pocket in the Spree Forest region south-east of Berlin, attempted to break out westwards through the village of Halbe and the pine forests south of Berlin to link up with the German Twelfth Army commanded by GeneralWalther Wenck with the intention of heading west and surrendering to the Western Allies. To do this, the Ninth Army had to fight its way through three lines of Soviet troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of MarshalIvan Konev, while at the same time units of the 1st Belorussian Front, under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, attacked the German rearguard from the northeast.

After heavy fighting, about 30,000 German soldiers—just over one third of those originally in the pocket—reached the comparative safety of the Twelfth Army's front lines. The rest were either killed or captured by Soviet forces.