ABSTRACT
On 23 April the 3rd Panzer Army was still desperately holding on to its Oder positions, although hard-pressed to do so. It was obvious to Colonel-General Heinrici that General von Manteuffe’s troops could not hold out much longer, and he was in fact planning their withdrawal to the other side of the Elbe to enable their surrender to the Western Allies. On their southern flank Steiner continued to hold the line of the canals but the outflanking of Oranienburg meant that he had quickly to man the line of the Ruppiner Canal at the expense of the town, whose fall was imminent. Nevertheless, that day, Heinrici received orders from Field Marshal Keitel, on behalf of the Führer, for Steiner to mount an immediate attack southward to relieve the pressure on Berlin and to sever Zhukov’s thrust across the Havel. He was promised reinforcements in the form of the 7th Panzer and 25th Panzergrenadier Divisions, neither of which was yet available, and in any case the latter was coming from the eastern end of his own line, where he had been given permission to abandon the Eberswalde bridgehead. At the same time the XXXXI Panzer Corps of Wenck’s 12th Army was ordered to block the Soviet advance westward.1
