The Battle of Halbe (, , Halbe pocket) was a battle lasting from April 24 – May 1, 1945 in which the German Ninth Army—under the command of General Theodor Busse—was destroyed as a fighting force by the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin. 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. To do this, the Ninth Army had to fight its way through three lines of Soviet troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev, while at the same time units of the 1st Belorussian Front, under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, attacked the German rearguard from the northeast. After heavy fighting, about 30,000 German soldiers—just over one third of those originally in the pocket—reached the comparative safety of the Twelfth Army's front lines. The rest were either killed or captured by Soviet forces. Prelude On April 16, the Red Army started the Battle of Berlin with a three Front attack across the Oder-Neisse line. By April 21, it had broken through the German front line in two places and had started to surround Berlin. The German Ninth Army covered the defenses of the Seelow Heights against Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, but its position was unhinged by the successful attack of Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front (against Army Group Centre) on the Neisse. By April 20, the Ninth Army retreated south-east of Berlin, opening the way for the 1st Belorussian Front. 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. The southern pincer consisted of the 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies which had penetrated the furthest and had already cut through the area behind the Ninth Army's front lines. Encirclement German dispositions The command of the V SS Mountain Corps, encircled with the Ninth Army north of Forst, passed from the 4th Panzer Army (part of Army Group Centre) to the Ninth Army (part of Army Group Vistula under the command of General Gotthard