Encirclement of the Ninth Army around Halbe as Berlin is cut off from the outside world. Destruction, Survival and Betrayal in the Last Days of the Third Reich In the final weeks of the Second World War in Europe, as Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich collapsed beneath the crushing advance of the Red Army and the relentless pressure of the Western Allies, one of the war’s most desperate and tragic battles unfolded in the forests and villages south-east of Berlin. Known today as the Battle of the Halbe Pocket, or simply “Halbe”, the struggle was not merely another military engagement in the dying hours of Nazi Germany. It became instead a…