mind the Twelfth Army was going to break through to Berlin, and the Ninth Army, once it had broken through to the Twelfth Army, was going to help them, there is no evidence that Generals Heinrici, Busse or Wenck thought that this was at all possible. However, Hitler's agreement to allow the Ninth Army to break through to the Twelfth Army would allow a window through which sizable numbers of German troops could retreat to the west and surrender to the American forces, which is exactly what Wenck and Busse agreed to do. This was made easier when, shortly after midnight on April 25, Busse was given authority "to decide for himself the best direction of attack". 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 Corps, but there was also the Frankfurt Garrison. The number of tanks reported included 36 tanks in the XI SS Panzer Corps, including up to 14 King Tigers of the 102nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion. 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 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