This country is at war with Germany. We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns.

In the final weeks of the Second World War, as Soviet forces closed in on Berlin,

tens of thousands of German soldiers and civilians found themselves encircled in what would become known as the Halper Pocket.

In a desperate attempt to break out west and surrendered to the Americans rather than the Soviets, brutal fighting erupted in the forest south of Berlin. The result was one of the

bloodiest and most chaotic battles of the war's final days. Joining me to discusses is David

Subner. David is a British-German World War II historian and podcaster

based in Berlin. He's the producer and host of Europe at War, a weekly podcast that explores

lesser-known battles and stories of the Second World War with a particular focus on the Eastern Front.

David, welcome.

Thank you for joining me.

So we're going to be discussing the Halber Pockets.

This is April, I think, 1945.

We probably need to set the scene.

It's really close to the end of the war.

The battle, Berlin, is underway.

Shall we start with the fore-permation of the pocket?

The Russians are pressing forward.

Shall we start with the formation of the pocket. The Russians are pressing forward. Shall we start with the formation of the pocket? So as you said, Operation Berlin, which is the Soviet final assault on Berlin,

is launched on April the 16th. And they launch from their positions along the Ordo River and

the nicer river, which is the modern-day German-Pol and border. First Belarusian front of

Marshal Zukov and the first Ukrainian front of Marshall

...