ABSTRACT
Adolf Hitler ordered SS General Steiner to counter-attack with every available soldier 'on pain of death' and waited impatiently for the results. When news of Hitler's decision reached Himmler, head of the SS, he literally did not know how to respond. Partly at the goading of one of the brightest of the SS intelligentsia, Walter Schellenberg, he had already made tentative overtures to the Allies through various neutral intermediaries about arranging surrender in advance of a total Russian victory. As a high-ranking officer should have had a trial, but the situation was too urgent for such niceties. There was apparently a hastily convened Court-Martial where Fegelein was degraded from his rank of Lieutenant-General, condemned and instantly executed. The remnants of the German forces, augmented by units of under-age boys and over-age men, were fighting street by street, desperately trying to keep the Russians out of the heart of the city.
