His force was made up of some soldiers, Hitler Youth teenagers, emergency Luftwaffe ground personnel, and Kriegsmarine dockworkers.

The Nederland Division was sent south-west of Frankfurt (Oder) and assigned to the V SS Mountain Corps, where it would later be destroyed in the Battle of Halbe.

[3] Heinrici ordered the III SS Panzer Corps, reduced to three battalions and a few tanks, to scrape together whatever forces it could find to set up a screening line along the Finow Canal to protect the southern flank of the Third Panzer Army from an attack by Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, which had broken through the Seelow Heights' defences and was encircling Berlin.

[4][5] The three divisions to the north were to attack south from Eberswalde (on the Finow Canal and 24 km (15 miles) east of Berlin) towards the LVI Panzer Corps, so cutting the 1st Belorussian Front's salient in two.

[4][5] When, on 22 April, at his afternoon conference Hitler learned that Steiner was not going to attack, according to testimony of his secretary, he was "silent for a long time", and then insisted that the women (she and Eva Braun) should leave Berlin immediately (but they refused).