Reign of Hell (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

by Sven Hassel

  The car moved on. A few hesitant householders came scuttling out of their doors and were pushed forward into the column. Kaminski’s men now began to search the houses. Sick people were shot in their beds. An old fellow discovered hiding in an attic was tossed out of the window and was dashed to pieces on the pavement below. He landed on a small child, and she, also, was killed. The kid gloves were off, now. The SS were behaving true to form. The crowd began to grow increasingly uneasy. They had to be urged on by kicks and punches, and some even required the added encouragement of a revolver jammed into the small of the back.

  The column wound slowly on its way. The hundreds of feet had turned into thousands. They were marched down the broad slope of the Rue Wola towards the cemetery, which had changed hands twice since we had pulled out and was now once more under German command. At present it was being held by Dirlewanger’s Brigade, who had set up their HQ in the Chapel of St Nicholas. The altar was being used as a card table, and Dirlewanger, as usual, was drunk.

  The leaders of the column had by now reached the Vistula and could go no further. They were brought to a halt and told to remain where they were, contemplating the graves. Kaminski arrived in an amphibious Volkswagen and looked them over with a scornful eye.

  ‘Why are they still alive?’ he said. ‘They should be dead by now.’

  ‘They will be,’ promised Dirlewanger.

  The two men stood facing each other in the riverside cemetery gardens. They were rivals in brutality, each was jealous of his own reputation.

  ‘All this,’ said Kaminski, waving a contemptuous hand, ‘all this is a mere puff of wind compared to Minsk.’

  ‘Minsk?’ said Dirlewanger, as if he had never heard of the place.

  ‘Complete liquidation,’ said Kaminski. ‘I cleaned up the entire area.’

  ‘Only of partisans,’ said Dirlewanger, smoothly. ‘Only of partisans . . . By the time I’ve finished with Warsaw, there won’t be a single house left standing. It will be as if the place had never existed. The Reichsführer has given orders that every man, woman and child is to be exterminated.’

  There was scarcely room to move, now, down by the river. The people were packed shoulder to shoulder, and more were arriving every second. A line of trucks, fitted out with machine-guns, was already in place and awaiting the order to fire.

  ‘A pity,’ murmured Kaminski, ‘that something a little more elaborate could not have been arranged.’

  Dirlewanger hunched a shoulder.

  ‘It will do well enough,’ he said, indifferently. ‘We don’t have time for refinements . . .’

  The last of the column was pushed into place and the exit gates were closed. Dirlewanger picked up a loudhailer, and an expectant silence fell over the crowd. Now perhaps they would be told what was to happen to them. Now perhaps they would be given some of that protection they had been promised.

  ‘Attention, everybody! Attention!’ said Dirlewanger; and he dropped his hand as the signal to open fire.

  The machine-guns started up on one side; and Kaminski’s men on the other. There could be no escape. Those who were not killed by the bullets were trampled underfoot. Invalids’ chairs and children’s prams rolled down the bank and into the river, where their occupants were drowned. A small group of men managed to seize control of one of the trucks, but they were blown up by grenades before they had gone more than a few yards.

  Dirlewanger clapped a friendly hand on Kaminski’s shoulder as they strolled back together to the Chapel of St Nicholas.

  ‘Co-operation, my dear fellow. That’s the way to do it. As you have just seen . . . They co-operate with us, we co-operate with each other, and by Christmas, I promise you, the whole of Poland will have been cleared.’

  When the machine-guns had completed their task, the field of victory was sprayed with petrol and a vast funeral pyre was lit. Many people were still alive and conscious as the flames engulfed them. Every now and again a burning spectre would rise up in a frenzy from a pile of bodies and crawl dementedly in circles until it finally collapsed. The obscene stench of charred flesh hung heavy over the town for many days to come.

  The next morning, two brigades under General Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarewski recaptured the cemetery area and slaughtered an entire German battalion. By way of revenge Kaminski rounded up every Pole he could lay hands on, hung them by the feet and left them to a slow death. The Army lodged an official complaint with the Führer, indignantly protesting such barbaric treatment of civilians, but Hitler ignored them and gave Kaminski another medal to hang round his neck. Another medal for Kaminski, and another snub for the generals of the Wehrmacht. The SS exulted, and sadism reached a new level of horror. Men of the SS went out at nights to rape and murder in much the same way as others went out for a drink or a meal. Those who preferred to play the role of spectator could always go to watch a torture – there was nearly always one taking place. The latest fad was death by slow drowning. It could be made to last all night in the hands of a really skilled operator.

  Tiny went off one morning on what he self-importantly called ‘a special mission’. He returned half an hour later dragging one of Dirlewanger’s Unterscharführer with him.

  ‘I could have shot it on the spot,’ he said, ‘except I thought you’d all like to have a bash at it.’

  ‘Where’d you get it from?’ said Porta.

  Tiny tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘Mind it,’ he said. ‘Where I found it’s my business.’

  ‘So why bring him here?’ said the Old Man. ‘You know perfectly well we can’t shoot him without cause.’

  ‘Without cause?’ echoed Tiny, indignantly. ‘Ain’t it enough he’s SS?’

  ‘Of course it isn’t. Don’t be so ridiculous. Either let him go or give me one valid reason why he deserves to be shot.’

  Tiny stuck out his lower lip as a sign of disapproval.

  ‘He was bleeding looting, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Looting?’

  ‘Yeah. Helping himself out of a jeweller’s shop—’

  The Old Man sighed. He held out a hand.

  ‘Show,’ he said.

  Grumbling, Tiny cleared out his pockets. He was carrying half a hundredweight of rings and watches with him. A jeer went up from those of us who were assembled.

  ‘Well, it’s proof, ain’t it?’ said Tiny.

  Not even the Old Man needed much in the way of proof where a member of Dirlewanger’s murder squad was concerned. Tiny eagerly drew out his knife.

  ‘So what’ll it be?’ he said. ‘Eyes or guts?’

  ‘Castrate the bastard,’ urged Gregor.

  ‘Afterwards,’ said Tiny. ‘Eyes is more fun. I’ll do them first.’

  ‘Not while you’re under my command, you won’t!’

  Two shots rang out and the Unterscharführer fell forward. The Old Man put his revolver back into its holster. He nodded grimly at Tiny.

  ‘You’re in the Army, remember? Not the SS.’

  Out on patrol, investigating a row of deserted houses, we discovered the remains of someone’s dinner still lying on a table. Dry bread and a pan full of haricot beans. The bread was green and the beans were shrivelled and hard, but we sat down and made a meal of them. It was the first food we’d tasted for almost twenty-four hours.

  Porta was regretfully licking up the last of the breadcrumbs when a young captain burst through the door announcing that he was going across the road to recapture the central power station. I felt very tempted to ask him what that could possibly have to do with us, but unfortunately I knew the answer only too well. When he said that he was going across the road, what he actually meant was that we were going across the road . . .

  With the help of a group of Pioneers, we managed to force our way into the ground floor of the building, but before we could make any further progress we came under fierce attack from the Polish Jena Regiment and had to retire in a hurry. The power station remained very firmly in the hands of the guerrillas.

 
For a couple of days there was something like peace in the town, and then the German net began slowly to close. Marshal Rokossovski’s forces were unaccountably immobile at Magnu-szewo, which gave the Germans the opportunity to withdraw much-needed troops from the Russian front to complete the encirclement of Warsaw. Our numbers were swelled by the arrival of seven tank divisions, nine infantry divisions, and a great many specialised units, including Pioneer Corps and Engineers. Two heavy cannons were set up, and at intervals of ten minutes throughout the day and night they sent their shells to pulverise the centre of the town. Slowly but inevitably the city was crumbling towards total destruction.

  Against the full force of the German machine, the Polish Commander-in-Chief, General Taddeus Bor-Komorovski, had pitifully little to offer save a spirit of fanatical determination. His faithful band of partisans would fight to the end, but that end must now be very close. For arms, they were forced to rely upon whatever they could capture from the Germans or manufacture themselves. Their most effective weapons were the petrol bomb, flame-throwers fashioned from lengths of piping, and hand grenades made from old tin cans. For explosive material they plundered the many unexploded German shells which lay scattered about the streets. It was all very ingenious, it was all very deadly, but sooner or later the supply must run out.

  Meanwhile, however, the Polish partisans were still capable of giving us a good run for our money. They recaptured the central telephone exchange in the Rue Zilna, and in order not to waste valuable ammunition they rid themselves of the German troops by throwing them out of top-storey windows. They had been in possession of the building barely twenty minutes when the Pioneers turned up and began hurling explosives from the shelter of armoured cars. The occupying Poles had little with which to oppose the attack, but they held on grimly until the exchange finally blew up in a shower of bricks. Not one of them survived the wreckage.

  With the support of an assault battery we launched an attack on the police headquarters, but the partisans who held it fought like demons out of hell and even went so far as to come streaming after us as we beat a hasty and undignified retreat through the neighbouring streets.

  One Polish unit was enough to put paid to five hundred aged German gendarmes still occupying a wing of the Ministry of the Interior. The Germans had been dragged out of their mothballs, in which they had been buried knee deep ever since 1918, and set down in the midst of a strange type of warfare which made no sense to them. The Poles swarmed all over the building, the fighting was conducted in the corridors, on the stairs, face to face across office desks, and the few surviving sections of gendarmerie fled in panic from the scene, while two SD companies under the command of a Russian colonel of the Kaminski Brigade marched forth to put the upstart Poles in their place. The partisans, gloriously drunk on German blood, caught them neatly in a trap. They let them into the building with virtually no resistance at all, then promptly came out of their hiding-places and surrounded them. And this time, as an added refinement, they set light to them before throwing them out of the windows. They then went roaring into the streets to mop up the last survivors of the five hundred gendarmes with hand grenades parachuted to them by the British.

  The remnants of the five hundred had taken shelter in the Church of the Holy Spirit; not because they placed any importance upon the Poles’ respecting their right of sanctuary, but simply because the church happened to be one of the few buildings in the area still standing.

  Three German infantry regiments marching to their rescue crossed swords with Colonel Karol Ziemski Wachnowski, and his partisans and were anihilated. A group of suicidal Poles then burst into the church with explosives strapped to their backs, and the half dozen gendarmes who survived the holocaust were sprayed with petrol and sent running in flames through the streets.

  SS Obergruppenführer von dem Bach Zalewski commanded a fresh attack. Behind the assault columns marched the sub-humanity of Dirlewanger’s SS, but before they had even reached the great fountain in the Place Royale, the columns were brought to a panic-stricken halt by a bombardment of petrol bombs and hand grenades. The Poles were behaving like madmen, and the confusion was total. Dirlewanger’s gangsters were among the first to turn and run.

  Colonel Ziemski Wachnowski immediately sent his men tearing after them, and the demented Poles raced screaming through the narrow streets in pursuit of the fleeing army, trampling the injured underfoot.

  Meanwhile Dirlewanger and Kaminski between them had succeeded in bringing their troops under some sort of control. Himmler had their death warrants already written out, awaiting his signature should Warsaw not be flattened within twenty-four hours. With such a threat hanging over their heads they turned their men round and sent them straight back again. This time the Army was sent along behind to back them up. Our orders were to shoot on sight anyone not wearing a German uniform. Man, woman or child. Young or old. Himmler had condemned to death the entire Polish race, and we were to be their executioners.

  We emerged into the Place Napoleon, and suddenly, above the tumult of shooting and shelling, we heard the sound of music. Music in such a place, at such a time as that? It was coming from a house over on the north side of the square. A Polish captain was playing the piano, apparently oblivious to the fighting going on all round him. The sound seemed to drive Kaminski berserk. He sent an entire battalion racing across the square to put an end to it, and screamed after them that he would promote the man who brought him the captain’s head on the end of his bayonet.

  The battalion had gone only a few yards when Colonel Wachnovski threw his Janislau Brigade into the attack. The Janislau Brigade was made up mainly of women and girls and young boys, but they were none the less dauntless. They fought like all the partisans, like lunatics intoxicated with the taste of blood . . .

  Behind us, the support troops started hurling smoke grenades, which belched forth great clouds of sickly green fog. Most of the Poles had no gas masks and they fell back in disorder. In fact it was not gas. It was a smoke used for camouflage purposes and was therefore accepted as a perfectly legitimate tool of war. Anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in it for as long as twenty minutes would certainly die an agonising death, but that, apparently, counted as fair game.

  There was a momentary lull, while both sides fell back. Then the Poles, evidently having decided that they might just as well die one way as another, plunged onward through the swirling mists and came howling and screaming at us, with explosives strapped to their chests. Kaminski and Dirlewanger’s SS were virtually anihilated by the first wave.

  Those few who survived the slaughter turned and ran. Corpses lay piled in the gutters, and at every street corner flew the Polish flag with its proud white eagle.

  Far away in Berlin, Himmler had retired to bed with a fever. Even Hitler himself hesitated to trouble him with mere matters of state, for Dr Kirstein had pronounced the Reichsführer’s life to be in grave danger. He had received a severe nervous shock upon hearing the news from Warsaw. The Poles had destroyed eight hundred Tigers and wiped out three divisions. The entire centre of the town was now in their hands. From his bed of agony, Himmler had just sufficient command over his faculties to sign the death warrant of Gauleiter Fischer, the traitor who had originally abandoned Warsaw to the enemy. The Gauleiter was dragged through the streets by a Tiger from Eicke’s Third Tank Division and his head was sent to Himmler in a box. General Rainer Stahel, the commander of Warsaw, was also condemned to death, but was given a reprieve on condition that he recaptured the old quarters of the town. Unfortunately for him, he fell into the hands of the partisans before he could carry out the task.

  At dawn we came under attack from a cavalry corps, who charged through the streets with their sabres like a horde of howling Cossacks. Hooves thundered over the cobblestones, creating showers of sparks as iron met flint. The horses were foam-flecked and the sabres red with dripping blood. Many were the men who were caught up in the stampede and trampled to death. Many were those who had th
eir heads severed from their shoulders as they dived too late for cover.

  I found myself running for my life with Porta by my side. Neck and neck we raced, with the sabres whistling past our ears and the breath of the horses hot and sweet in our nostrils. We reached the Place Pilsudski, heaped high with bodies. Porta tripped and fell, and I was unable to stop myself. I came down on top of him, knowing that this would surely be the end for both of us.

  And then, suddenly, from the far side of the square, the machine-guns opened up. The advancing Poles were confronted by the SS Regiment ‘Der Führer’. Men and horses were cut to ribbons. Those who could, turned and fled, but many more were left behind in the graveyard of the Place Pilsudski. A horse and its rider were brought down directly in front of the spot where Porta and I were crouched among the dead. They missed us only by inches, and we were able to take shelter behind them from the flying bullets.

  The following day the sky above Warsaw was black with bombers. They were Wellingtons, belatedly sent over to aid the Poles in their hour of need. But of all the arms and all the rations they dropped over the town, scarcely one-tenth were picked up by Bor-Komorovski’s beleaguered partisans. The rest were divided equally between the Germans and the Russians.

  Joining forces with the 104th Grenadiers, we launched an attack on the Rue Pivna in an attempt to liberate the northern quarter of the town, which had now been in enemy hands for over a month. It was of strategic importance to the German Army, and we had been supplied with tanks, P64s, to make sure we did the job properly.

  ‘Forward tanks!’ ordered Colonel Hinka, across the radio.

  The vehicles ground their way slowly down the slope of the Rue Pivna.

  ‘Range four hundred yards,’ said the Old Man. ‘Load and prepare to fire.’

  We were back at the old routine. It had been a long time since we had seen the inside of a tank, we had been too often on the receiving end these past few months. Now, at last, we were back where we belonged, on the inside looking out. It was as if we had never been anywhere else.