Heinrici ordered the III Corps, reduced to three battalions and a few tanks, to scrape together whatever forces it could find to set up a screening line along the Finow Canal to protect the southern flank of the Third Panzer Army from an attack by the Soviet Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, which had broken through the Seelow Heights' defences and was encircling Berlin.
On 16 April, the battle of Seelow Heights began as the Red Army assaulted the German defensive lines on the Oder.
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The operation started with an assault on the Seelow Heights by 1BF and by Marshal Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front (1UF) to the south.