Editing Battle of Halbe (section)

=== The situation of the German 9th Army ===
Before being encircled, the Ninth Army had already suffered heavy losses in the Battle of the Seelow Heights. 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. In all, there were about 80,000 men in the pocket, the majority of whom belonged to the Ninth Army, consisting of the [[XI SS Panzer Corps]], [[V SS Mountain Corps]] and the newly acquired [[V Army Corps (Wehrmacht)|V Army Corps]], but there was also the [[Fortress Division Frankfurt/Oder|Frankfurt Garrison]].{{sfn|Beevor|2002|p=329}} The number of tanks reported included 36 tanks in the XI SS Panzer Corps, including up to 14 [[King Tiger|Tiger II tank]]s of the [[102nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion]].{{efn|name=tigers}} Air supply was attempted on April 25 and 26, but could not be carried out because the planes that had taken off could not find the drop point for supply, and no contact with the encircled army could be established.

The pocket into which the Ninth Army had been pushed by troops of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts was a region of lakes and forest in the [[Spree Forest]] south-east of [[Fürstenwalde]]. The Soviet forces, having broken through and surrounded their primary objective of Berlin, then turned to mopping up those forces in the pocket. On the afternoon of April 25, the Soviet [[Soviet Third Army|3rd]], [[33rd Army (Soviet Union)|33rd]] and [[69th Army|69th]] Armies, as well as the [[2nd Guards Cavalry Corps (Soviet Union)|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. On the same day of his attack in the north-east, Zhukov sent the 3rd Guards Army to support the 28th Army, which was ready to close the likely breakout route over the Berlin–Dresden Autobahn.