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 General Walther Wenck with the intention of heading west and surrendering to the Western Allies.

[3] Because of the high speed of the advance of Konev's forces, the Ninth Army was now threatened with envelopment by the two Soviet pincers that were heading for Berlin from the south and east.

Contrary to realities on the ground, Hitler ordered the Ninth Army to hold Cottbus and set up a front facing west, then they were to attack into the Soviet columns advancing north.

This would allow them to form the northern pincer which would meet with the 4th Panzer Army coming from the south and envelop the 1st Ukrainian Front before destroying it.

It is estimated that, at the start of the encirclement, it had fewer than 1,000 guns and mortars, approximately 79 tanks, and probably a total of 150–200 combat-ready armoured fighting vehicles left.

On the afternoon of April 25, the Soviet 3rd, 33rd and 69th Armies, as well as the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps (which was a formation capable of infiltration through difficult terrain such as forests), attacked the pocket from the north-east as ordered by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the commander of the 1st Belorussian Front.

Konev knew that to break out to the west, the Ninth Army would have to cross the Berlin–Dresden Autobahn south of a chain of lakes starting at Teupitz and running north-east.

[7][8] The relief attempt by the Twelfth Army started on April 24 with General Wenck's XX Corps attacking east and northwards.

During the night, the Theodor Körner RAD Division attacked the Soviet 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, under the command of General I. P. Yermakov, near Treuenbrietzen.

The metaphor is quite apt because, as the head led the way, the rear-guard in the tail was going to be engaged in just as heavy fighting trying to disengage from following Soviet forces.

In his book Slaughter at Halbe, Tony Le Tissier accused Busse of failing to exercise effective command and control of the encircled army, thereby contributing to the failure of successive break-out attempts.

[c] Le Tissier writes that Busse's initial movement of his HQ put him into a situation where he lost the ability to control the formations in the pocket.

In his break-out plan, Ninth Army HQ was to be placed immediately behind the spearhead of the breakout, the 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion, which effectively reduced his ability to exercise command to the tactical level.

The spearhead for the Ninth Army break-out plan on April 28 was to be the 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion with remaining elements of the Panzergrenadier Division Kurmark.

[citation needed] On the following day, the battle continued around Baruth, and tank-hunting teams blew up some of the dug-in Soviet tanks.

[13] The German forces found that they could not use their armour as well as they had hoped, because it was vulnerable to destruction on the roads and could not get a good grip on the sandy soil of the pine forests in the region.

The German vanguard managed to reach and cross Reichsstrasse 96, south of Zossen and north of Baruth, where it was spotted by a Luftwaffe plane.

During the night and the next day (April 27), the German forces renewed their attack along two axes south from the village of Halbe towards Baruth, and in the north from Teupitz.

The front lines were not continuous because the dense forest terrain meant that visibility was down to metres, so there was danger of ambush and sudden assault for both sides.

Smoke from burning sections of the forest, set alight by shell fire, helped the Germans and hindered the Soviets because it shielded the Wehrmacht troops from aerial reconnaissance and attack.

The sandy soil precluded the digging of foxholes and there was no time to construct anything more elaborate, so there was little to no protection from wooden splinters created by artillery and tank HE shells, which the Soviet forces deliberately aimed to explode at tree-top height.

During April 28 and 29, the Soviets reinforced the flanks and attacked from the south, pouring in Katyusha rockets and shells, concentrating on the area around the Halbe.

By the time the fighting was over (around the end of April, beginning of May), about 25,000 German soldiers had escaped to join up with the 12th Army on the eastern side of Reichstrasse 2, the road running north-south through Beelitz.

[14] Thousands of Red Army soldiers died trying to stop the breakout, most being buried at the Sowjetische Ehrenfriedhof of Baruth/Mark cemetery (de) next to the Baruth–Zossen road (Bundesstraße 96).