by Ian Kershaw
The largest German population east of the Oder–Neiße line was in Silesia, home of more than 4.5 million at the beginning of 1945. In Silesia, not far from the Reich border and from routes into the Sudetenland and Bohemia, not all the territory fell immediately to the Red Army, and, unlike in more easterly regions, there was also some warning of the Soviet advance. Conditions for flight were, therefore, more favourable than in East Prussia and other eastern regions. More than 3 million were able to flee by one means or another into parts of former Czechoslovakia or westwards into the Reich towards Saxony and Thuringia. In the Upper Silesian industrial district to the south, however, which was in Soviet hands by the end of January, only women and children had been permitted to leave. The local Gau leadership, following Speer’s demands, ordered the men to remain behind to keep production going as long as possible. Many nevertheless fled on overcrowded trains and buses, on lorries or on foot. Important industrial installations were sometimes reportedly left intact in the panic. There was no time to detonate them.45 Even so, hundreds of thousands were overrun by the Red Army.
To the north, in Lower Silesia, the evacuation order, pressed for by the military authorities (who had, however, elsewhere at times also played their part in delaying evacuation to prevent blocking supply routes46), had in most instances been given out earlier, and most inhabitants were able to get away – often trekking in wagons or on foot in icy weather since the means of transport by rail and road rapidly proved inadequate. In Breslau, the capital and by far the biggest city in Silesia, the thunder of artillery on 20–21 January brought urgent orders – backed by heavy pressure from the Party – for women, children, the old and the sick to leave the city. There were, however, not enough trains or motor vehicles to cope with the mass evacuation. There were reports of children being trampled to death in the stampede to board the few trains available and station waiting-rooms being turned into morgues.47 Without transport, around 100,000 people, mainly women, were forced to head off into the winter night and brave the extreme cold on foot, hauling prams, sledges and carts along the icy roads, battling through snowdrifts, carrying just a few belongings. Bodies of infants who had perished in the bitter weather had to be left in the roadside ditches. Many women, unable to go on, returned and were among the 200,000 or so civilians in Breslau when the vice closed on the city in mid-February.48
Further north, an enclave of the West Prussian coast, centred on Danzig and Gotenhafen (Gdynia), was also engulfed in the refugee crisis. From mid-January onwards the area became the temporary destination of countless thousands fleeing northwards from the path of Rokossovsky’s armies and pouring westwards from East Prussia as the province was cut off, across the last opening of the Frische Nehrung or arriving by boat from Pillau. By the end of the month, the area was teeming with close to a million refugees to add to its 3 million population. The NSV and German Red Cross were overwhelmed by the numbers. It was impossible to offer anything like sufficient care for the many who were ill, weak or injured from the terrible treks. Barracks and temporary camps had to be used to accommodate the mass influx. Many tried to travel further as soon as they could, but could find no place on the hugely overcrowded trains and ships. Among the vessels carrying away refugees, many of them sick and wounded, was the big former ‘Strength through Joy’ cruise vessel, the Wilhelm Gustloff, that eventually set sail from Gotenhafen, after long delays, on 30 January, crammed with perhaps as many as 8,000 persons on board – four times its peacetime complement. That evening the ship was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine and sank into the icy waters after little more than an hour. Possibly around 7,000 drowned in the worst maritime catastrophe in history, with nearly five times as many lost as in the sinking of the Titanic.49 It was one of many disasters at sea over the following weeks. Nevertheless, between late January and the end of April, some 900,000 escaped over the Baltic and a further quarter of a million by land through Pomerania, before this region, too, was swallowed up by the Soviet advance.50 A final horror still awaited the 200,000 or so, many of them refugees who had earlier managed under the greatest difficulties to flee from East Prussia, as Danzig and the surrounding area were taken in a maelstrom of violence by the Red Army in the last days of March.51
Even when the refugees escaped the worst, they still faced immense difficulties – and were far from assured of a warm welcome at their destination. By the end of January, 40,000 to 50,000 were arriving each day in Berlin, by train for the most part. The overwhelmed authorities, unable to cope with the mass influx and fearful of importing infectious diseases, did their best to move them on or have trains rerouted around the Reich capital.52
In this unending catalogue of misery and suffering, it is hard to conceive of anything worse than the fate of those in the eastern regions of Germany fleeing from the Red Army in the appalling conditions of that dreadful January. Yet the fate of the regime’s racial victims was indeed worse: their horror was far from at an end. Even at this time the murder machinery of the SS showed no respite.
For around 6,500–7,000 Jews, rounded up from subsidiary camps in East Prussia of Stutthof concentration camp (itself located in West Prussia), hastily closed down on 20–21 January as the Red Army approached, scarcely conceivable days of terror began as they were marched off, not in a westwards direction like other inmates, but eastwards. The initial aim seems to have been to march them to a small satellite camp at Königsberg prior to transporting them by sea to the west, presumably from the port of Pillau, in order to retain them in German hands and prevent their liberation by the Red Army. But they never arrived in Pillau.
The prisoners, sent in recent months to Stutthof from the Baltic regions, Poland and elsewhere, were guarded on their forced march by over twenty SS men and up to 150 members of the Organisation Todt (including Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Belgians and Frenchmen). After the lengthy trek, in horrific conditions, to reach Königsberg, they were marched onwards to the small and once attractive Baltic town of Palmnicken, on the picturesque Samland coast. Many Jews were shot even on the way to Königsberg. Still more were killed, their bodies left on the streets of the East Prussian capital, as the death march to Palmnicken began. The remainder were herded off, clothed in little more than rags and wooden clogs. Though hardly able to walk on the snow and ice, any Jews lagging behind or falling down were shot. The guards killed more than 2,000 on the 50-kilometre march from Königsberg to Palmnicken, leaving the bodies by the roadside. Some 200–300 corpses were found on the last stretch of little over a kilometre as the remaining 3,000 or so prisoners straggled into Palmnicken on the night of 26/7 January.
When it became plain that there was no prospect of ferrying the prisoners to the west, the question of what to do with them took an even more lethal turn. Ideas now surfaced about getting rid of them altogether. The head of the state-run amber works in Königsberg and the East Prussian Gau leadership eventually agreed that the guards would drive the Jews into a disused mineshaft and seal up the entrance. The frozen, exhausted and bedraggled Jews nevertheless met a rare expression of sympathy as the estate manager ordered food for the prisoners and said that as long as he lived nobody there would be killed. His mine-director bravely refused to open up the shafts that they were to be driven into.
On 30 January, however, the courageous estate manager was found dead. He had received threats from the SS and was thought to have taken his own life; either that, or, as some thought, he had been murdered. The idea of entombing the Jews in the mine was, nevertheless, abandoned. That same evening, the local mayor, a long-standing and fanatical member of the Nazi Party, summoned a group of armed Hitler Youth members, plied them with alcohol and sent them, along with three SS men, who were to explain the task ahead, down to the disused mine. The boys were left to guard around forty to fifty Jewish women and girls who had earlier tried to escape, until they were taken out, in the dim light of a mine-lamp, to be shot by a group of SS men, two by two. The Soviets were thought by this time to be very clos
e. The SS men were anxious to ‘get rid of the Jews no matter how’. They decided to solve their problem by shooting the rest of their captives.
The following evening, 31 January, the improvised massacre took full shape. Shielded from the village by a small wood, the SS men, their flares lighting up the night sky, drove the Jews onto the ice and into the frozen water using the butts of their rifles and mowed them down on the seashore with machine guns. Corpses were washed up along the Samland coast for days to come. One woman was so shaken at what she saw, she later recalled, ‘that I covered my eyes with my hands…. We then quickly went on walking because we could not stand the sight.’ The SS had not been altogether efficient in their massacre; some Jews survived and managed to clamber back up the beach. The survivors met varied reactions. One German refused to help three of them, saying ‘that he did not intend to feed Jewish women’. Another, however, hid them, gave them food, and protected them till the arrival of the Red Army. Doctors and nurses in the local hospital treated some wounded survivors. Two Polish labourers also gave them help. About 200 out of the original 7,000 survived.53
IV
People in other parts of Germany were not prepared for the dreadful news from the east that soon started to spread like wildfire, or for the tales of horror from those who had managed to escape the mayhem. The success of the Wehrmacht in repelling the Soviet incursion into East Prussia the previous October and reassurances about German defences in the east meant that there was no psychological readiness for the scale of the disaster that gradually became clear in the second half of January.
The first brief mention of the start of the Soviet offensive in the Völkischer Beobachter, reproducing the Wehrmacht report, suggested that the attack had been expected and that German defences had been successful.54 Within a few days, however, newspapers started to adopt a more anxious tone.55 The public swiftly caught the note of alarm that crept in about the speed of the Soviet advance, all the more when reports of the evacuation of the civilian population could not conceal the scale of the danger, and were more than amplified by the tales of their experiences carried by the stricken refugees as they poured west. Propaganda offices throughout Germany reported that ‘the improved mood of the past weeks caused by our western offensive and the Führer’s speech has disappeared in the wake of the Soviet major offensive. People are now looking to the east with the utmost concern and paying little attention to all other fronts and to political events.’ ‘The slump in mood’, the summary report continued, ‘was intensified by the disappointment that no one in any Gau, not even in the east, had reckoned with such speedy and big successes of the Soviets.’ Widespread expectation of the offensive had been accompanied by much apprehension, but also a belief that the German leadership was well prepared and would regain the upper hand in the east. There was astonishment, then, that the Red Army had gained so much territory so quickly, and that German defences, presumed to be solid, has been so easily overrun.
The shock waves rippled through Germany. A severely depressed mood was accompanied by deep worry about the future. Discussion was dominated by the events on the eastern front and there was much criticism of the media, which had given the impression that all preparations had been made to counter the awaited attack. The German leadership were reproached for underestimating Soviet strength and morale, criticism underscored by the massive advances that the Red Army continued to make despite the reported destruction of huge numbers of Soviet tanks. Notable shock was caused by the advance into the Upper Silesian industrial belt, raising fears about sustaining German armaments potential. Worries about the fate of the civilian population in the threatened regions were only mentioned in last place.
Modifying such a downbeat set of reports came the inevitable emphasis on the resilience of the population – a reflection, without doubt, of opinion mainly registered in the more Nazified sectors of the population. Despite the slump in mood, the propaganda offices declared that there was no apathy or slackening of work effort. Instead, it was claimed, there was a determination to do everything possible to fight ‘unconditionally’ in the ‘hour of decision’ and to comb out ‘anyone who can bear weapons’ to send to the front in the hope of repelling ‘the danger of Bolshevism’. Comments that such efforts were too late and pointless were rare. The holding – by and large – of the Reich borders in the west gave grounds for hope that a transformation could at some point be brought about in the east. The purpose of the German western offensive – to prevent a double attack by the enemy, east and west – had, it was said, become clearer. No one was prepared to accept that all the sacrifice, suffering and misery had been in vain. There was complete understanding, therefore, for whatever restrictions were needed in the interest of the war effort and for the ‘toughest resistance’ and defence at any price.56
Though hardly mirroring accurately a cross-section of attitudes, such reported views do indicate the unyielding stance of a still sizeable proportion – how large is impossible to say, though if it was a minority, it was a powerful one – unprepared to admit defeat and ready to do anything to combat the threat from the east. Even as the sense that the war was irredeemably lost became increasingly commonplace, anxiety about what defeat would bring intensified a desperate refusal to give in. ‘The conviction that a victory of the Soviets would mean the extinction of life of the German people and of every individual is the general feeling of all people’ was said to have bolstered the readiness to fight on and radicalized intolerance towards those seen to be shirking their duty.57
The lengthy summary report from the propaganda offices contained no mention of atrocities perpetrated by Red Army soldiers, or the horrors of the treks. But accounts of the refugees flooding westwards soon seeped through to the rest of the population. Immediately after the beginning of the Soviet offensive, propagandists had been warned to counter views that the Bolsheviks were not as bad as they had been painted (arising from known instances of humane treatment of German prisoners of war) by emphasizing atrocities – including reports from Memel refugees of Soviet soldiers on the hunt for German women and of mothers raped in front of their own children.58 Goebbels, though aware of the ‘indescribable’ misery of those enduring the treks, was nevertheless initially hesitant about publishing reports on Bolshevik atrocities because of the panic they would cause.59 There was quite justified panic, nevertheless, and the horror stories of the refugees were told wherever they went. ‘The refugees arriving here from the eastern Gaue’, ran one report from distant regions of Bavaria, ‘are bringing for the most part quite shattering news of the misery of the fleeing population which, partly in panic, has sought refuge from the Bolsheviks within the Reich.’60 Instead of keeping silent on the atrocities, German propaganda turned, therefore, to using them as a weapon to sustain the fight. ‘How the Soviets Rampage in East Germany. Eyewitnesses Report on the Gruesome Extermination Methods of the Bolsheviks’, proclaimed the headline in the Völkischer Beobachter on 9 February and, in variants, repeatedly in subsequent weeks.61
Letters still trickling west from the afflicted areas in the early phase of the Soviet offensive also painted a graphic picture of the appalling conditions in the east and the great anxiety about the future. One letter, from Josef E. from the Glogau district on the Oder, describing the state of refugees fleeing from the Warthegau and the dread of having to leave all that was precious behind, remarked that everything had turned out so different from the hopes of the future once fostered. How long would it be, he asked, before ‘the whole of East Prussia – Posen – Silesia is deluged with the eastern hordes’? Then it was only a short way to Berlin. ‘If the tempo of the Russians can’t be stopped, and that doesn’t look likely, then anyone can work out how long the war can last. I’m hoping for an end with horror rather than horror without end,’ he concluded, repeating a phrase commonly heard at this time.62
People beyond the afflicted zones had their own pressing anxieties, however, and, despite widespread dismay at the Soviet breakthrough, the
loss of the eastern territories and the prospect of a lost war, could often spare little concern for the plight of the refugees. Those with fathers, sons, husbands and friends caught up in the bitter fighting during the Soviet onslaught were understandably beset with worry about the fate of their loved ones at the front. ‘Dear boy, I’ve just heard the Wehrmacht report and learnt that you are again engaged in fighting,’ wrote one mother to her son, cut off in Courland. She had heard nothing from him in over a month and feared the worst. ‘I was upset about what you have to cope with and hope you can still get away…. Dear God has to bring an end to it soon, but who knows how. We just hover between worry and expectation. “Without you, where would be my strength and courage?”,’ she ended, quoting a religious text.63 With many so anxious about their own relations, the suffering of others played a secondary role.
In Upper Bavaria, where in the absence of the promised new weapons people were said to have little hope of the Soviets being repelled from Reich territory, the mood was apparently more dominated by concern about transport and postal difficulties, and the likely food shortages that would result from the loss of territory in the east.64 In Franconia, events in the east were overshadowed by the complete destruction of the lovely old centre of Nuremberg through a severe bombing raid on 2 January, which had killed 1,800 people and demolished 29,500 buildings, leaving much of the city’s population without homes.65 Ursula von Kardorff, a Berlin journalist, admitted that her senses were so deadened that she could scarcely imagine the horrifying scenes reported to her at first hand of what happened at the railway station in Breslau after the order had been given to leave the city – of refugees trampling on each other in their desperation, corpses being thrown out of unheated goods-wagons, trekkers stuck on the roads, delirious mothers unable or unwilling to see that the babies they were carrying in their arms were dead. A few days later, she remarked on the gruesome atrocity reports that reached her desk day after day. ‘Goebbels’ propaganda brain is evidently again working feverishly,’ she commented, before asking: ‘Or is it all true? I don’t believe anything any longer before I have seen it myself.’66