Altogether the Armed Forces, i.e. the Waffen SS, Volkssturm and Hitler Youth, had a third of their expected strength. There were 50,000 men and an odd assortment of members of the Navy and Air Force, mostly with no fighting experience. With that lack of experience, plus the disproportionately older age of the Volkssturm, an assignment for them, on the front-line, was out of the question. A death-defying battle began with only 200 artillery pieces, 7 tanks and 8 assault guns, in an unequal fight against an appalling opponent. In that situation we had to fight for five extra men, get dug-in without sleep, and always keep changing our positions from one place to another. Meanwhile nearly 240,000 citizens, mostly the elderly, and mothers with children, waited expectantly for better or worse.
Instead of attacking from the east, the Red Army attacked from the south. Supported by Stalin tanks, they managed to advance 2—3 kilometres into the southern villa district of the city. The Hitlerjugend fought by our side on that tough assignment. For some it was their first fight, and many of those very brave young men lost their lives. After three weeks of street fighting, that lovely district, with its villas, parks, gardens and lakes, was reduced to dust and rubble.
The mercilessness of the fighting was recorded by Russian war correspondent W.J. Malinin. On 24 February 1945 he described it as follows: “Every house bears the mark of the bitter fighting. The streets, in which one or two of the larger houses have been deliberately demolished by the ‘Hitlerites’, are barricaded with stones and gun emplacements to obstruct our path. Every barricade is defended with machine-guns and with mortars. Our Soviet soldiers must find new routes for our infantry. Our engineers have to blow holes into the walls of other houses through which our artillery can push their guns in order to advance. Our soldiers have to fight from floor to floor in the remaining houses. Yesterday, Sergeant Ivannikov with his men fought in one house for an hour and a half. In it the ‘Hitlerites’ had destroyed the stairs. His men attacked with anti-tank rifles, through a hole in the first floor. They killed five of the sixteen men above, who were dropping grenades on them. The remainder surrendered. 1st Lieutenant Odinkov managed to clear four blocks of houses inside two days, killing 300 Hitlerites. The 27th birthday of the founding of the Red Army was very well honoured indeed”.
The author (right) with comrades in Festung Breslau
The expectation was that the Russians would attack from the north and east. In the last few days of January, the order had been given to evacuate thousands of the inhabitants who had wandered into empty houses in the southern part of the city. As the danger from the south was recognised, two-thirds of the evacuees were then evacuated once again. For that purpose, trams that were still running were commandeered to go within a few miles of the front. It was a psychological therapy which calmed the population. The theory was that when the trams were still running, then the situation couldn’t be too bad. It was a sign of normal life, even when the enemy lurked on the edge of the city. We were dependent on the radio and official announcements from the NSDAP in the form of the Silesian daily newspaper, the Schlesischen Tageszeitung. It was known as the ‘megaphone’ of the Armed Forces. This front-line newspaper appeared daily with advice, information, colourful propaganda, commentary and appeals for stamina, right up to the last days before the capitulation. After the bombing on the 1st of April, the last tram ground to a halt with the collapse of the overhead cables. Having lost their use in carrying passengers, they were then used as anti-tank obstacles. They were parked in double rows, to block the whole width of the road, in order to stop enemy vehicles. During the fighting, many enemy tanks were destroyed at such barricades by Panzerfäuste and anti-tank guns. Very early on, paving stones had been torn up by willing men, women and youths. They barricaded empty windows, leaving just an embrasure for the weapons of our infantry. The sturdily-built homes housed many a machine-gun nest, and the bitter fight for Breslau became tougher with each day. The population gave us 100% support. The slogan painted on nearly every door, “Every house a fortress”, was no propaganda in Breslau, but a meaningful military measure. From those provisional embrasures we were able to keep the Russians at bay, very successfully, and for long periods of time. A great compensation for the German soldier in Breslau, was the fully furnished quarters in which he found himself, that were left behind by the fleeing inhabitants. Even when the pauses in the firing were short, the luxury of falling into a made-up bed was thankfully appreciated.
I was also able to enjoy the luxury of a ‘white’ bed when our military doctor ordered bed-rest for me. I had a couple of days in the Military Hospital, which had been erected in the evacuated Institute for the Blind. Pus oozed from the wound after the metal splinters had been removed from my leg, and I wallowed in the care of the friendly Red Cross nurses.
From where the Institute for the Blind was situated on West Park it was not far away to where the company supply unit was to be found. Upon being released from hospital after the third day, I limped my way to the Pöpelwitz housing estate to report for duty once more. The 11th Company military clerks were housed in Malapanese Street in a very large house with many floors. Also there was my friend Georg Haas, the company accountant, who was overjoyed at my appearance. There were no doubts as to where my bed was going to be! That was in ‘his’ flat, in ‘his’ house.
When he was going about his duties during the day, I helped him by preparing the Notification of Death letters that were waiting for signature by the company leader. The letters of communication, to the families of the dead, did not tell the truth of the conditions of death. Of course, that was out of consideration for the bereaved. Our unspoken law was always to retrieve the bodies of our comrades for burial. It caused us great sorrow when circumstances did not allow this to be done. Very often, as I have described, it would have meant suicide for us to have attempted this, in situations that we could not alter. We could, however, with these notifications of death sent to parents and family, imply that it did. Every one of my fallen comrades, and I knew them all, were respectfully given ‘a hero’s death’. The parents, mother, or wife, should and would never know of the long hours in no-man’s land that he had spent in pain, and dying alone. Our message of death had to be as painless as we could make it, and so we deceived and veiled the truth, in doing this duty. It was the worst of any that one had to perform in one’s life.
Artillery rounds strike a building in Breslau
Fate can often be followed from a photo-al bum. I had this chance while in quarters with Georg. I was much moved, as I looked through a thick raffia-covered album that I had found. Each photo had been neatly and accurately inscribed, so that I could imagine the scenes behind the photos. I followed the fate of that young family and, although unknown to me, I knew all about them.
There were photos from a happy childhood. There were wedding photos. ‘He’ standing proudly in his Air Force uniform as a Technical Sergeant, in his No. 1s naturally. ‘She’ as the pretty bride dressed in white, wore her hair in a large roll on the back of her neck, in the fashion of that time. Of course, those pictures were followed by those of their children, two sons who had been photographed on the Holtei Hill, perhaps on a day’s outing. There were many, including some of their last holiday, where they were seen in a tree-lined avenue on their bicycles. Fredrick the Great had those trees planted. But the growing conditions, plus the raw east winds of Silesia, were not ideal and all had bent trunks. The very last which had been glued into the album, was a cutting from a news paper, edged in black. The article was decorated with a black cross, which announced ‘Fallen for Germany’.
Where was this lady of the house, this war-widow and her children, who had left her house as if she had gone shopping and would be returning soon? Had she, had they survived? It was spick and span and everything was in its place. It was clean and tidy, so we as guests in her home, tried to keep it that way, knowing full well that it would soon be a sacrifice of the war, as would the album, the record of their lives, that she had had to leave
behind.
Among her possessions in the lounge was a gramophone, which we happily used, listening to modern hits and martial music. To put this machine into gear after a glass of dry red wine, which Georg had procured from somewhere in the city, was sometimes a problem though. We did not always have the opportunity. The occasions were rare and of short duration, for even in the supply unit the alarm had to be audible. There was also a radio, an extremely good set with a long-range receiving capacity. It was made in elegant black Bakelite, at which we sat to hear the news which was always richly descriptive. We could pick up foreign radio stations too, and did, although that was forbidden.
Sometimes our very human curiosity got the better of us, and among other radio stations we would listen to Radio Moscow. It was transmitted in the German language and prophesied doom and gloom with phrases such as, “Fright eats away the soul!” and other well-known Russian sayings. On every hour, and punctually at midnight, a monotone feminine voice would begin to dramatically proclaim the death of a German soldier. The mixture of ‘hot-air’ and poisonous ‘black propaganda’ made no impression at all on us soldiers. But how was it received by the not-so-robust members of the public who also listened in?
Continual movement of the besieging forces demanded constant movement from us within. We had to change our positions time and time again. On our marches to new positions, we were stopped by many of the residents from the quieter areas, who asked about the current situation on the front-line. Everyone was frightened, in particular the women. The two main questions from everyone, were “how long can we hold out?” and “Will you be receiving help from outside?” We did not know, and could only answer with some vague knowledge based upon rumours. The rumours were that the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, General Ferdinand Schörner, with several divisions from the Strehlen and Zobten areas, wanted to try to reach Breslau. That was true, but throughout the period of the siege, there was no sign of them.
Alongside this hope of outside help, the military leadership within the fortress looked at possibilities of escape. A Breslau-born professor was very useful in that way. He produced parchment scrolls from 1767, showing a system of underground tunnels beneath the city. The entrance was to be found below the City Hall, and ran parallel to Schweidnitzer Street, deep under the Church of St. Dorothy, to the city walls. The engineers then went to work and found the tunnel which, as could only be expected after all those years, was in poor condition. To restore even a couple of kilometres would take months. That does not mean that they did not try, they did! The short distance they restored was very useful. They were able to erect an artillery observation post going under the Russian lines, for the direction of firing and observation of enemy movements.
The inhabitants had much to suffer, which they did with patience. Their stoicism would have pleased the old Greek teachers. Their philosophy taught that it is wise to remain indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune, or as in this case, the vicissitudes of fate. The troops faced that every day.
Helplessness, worry, the loss of homes, together with the ultimate fear of being conquered by the Russians, and fear among women especially, brought about many hundreds of suicides. This we knew, and we tried to calm people, telling them that they could count on us. After the war, Paul Piekert, priest of St Mauritius, reported that the extent of the despair of the Breslau inhabitants had resulted in 100 to 120 suicides every day. This was confirmed by Ernest Hornig, the priest of Silesia’s best known church, in his book Breslau 1945. He wrote that in total, a known 3,000 took their own lives in the 84 days that Breslau was besieged, and that many more have never been recorded.
Breslau’s only remaining line of communication was the Gandau aerodrome. Food was in plenty and no soldier or civilian went hungry in all the months of the siege. It was the ammunition that was very low and our ‘hungry weapons’ that had to be fed! Deliveries were made by our reliable and proven Tante Ju—52 transport machines. They took the lightly wounded out on the return journeys. Those men were to be treated outside the encirclement, so that they were fit for combat once more. The badly wounded who could not be healed so quickly, had to stay in the hospital in the city. It was not only ammunition, many tons of it being flown in up to 19 February, but also supplies of medication, first aid supplies, bandages etc, and also our post which came by air. The loss of the trusted planes was very heavy. The fleet of planes under the command of General Ritter von Greim lost 160 of their machines. At night, the soldiers as well as the civilians would follow the flight paths of the providers in the searchlights of the night skies. The droning of their engines and the timpani of Russian anti-aircraft guns added to the awful and, at the same time, breathtaking spectacle taking place in the heavens. Frequently we saw our planes in flames, falling from the skies, with their helpless passengers on board.
General Hermann Niehoff was rather critical of his flight to Breslau on 2 March. He was replacing the Festung commander General Hans von Ahlfen. He found himself in an unusual situation, flying into a city where the only wish of nearly 250,000 men and women was to be flown out. He described his flight, which to say the least was spectacular, in an article for the magazine Der Welt am Samstag. In the edition of15 January 1956 he wrote as follows:
We were flying on a northerly course to Breslau, which was only 46 kilometres away. I knew it could be a fateful one for me and perhaps one which could lead to my grave. The dark night skies gave protection for the moment. Then a sea of flames was to be seen which grew bigger as we approached Breslau! The protection of the darkness was suddenly rudely shattered with the burst of anti-aircraft fire. Then the searching fingers of searchlights lit the sky, just one or two at first. They increased in numbers, bumping into one another, in their haste to find us. They were blinding but not enough that I did not see the fright in the white faces of my chauffeur and my batman who grimly and silently viewed the scene below. There was a hurricane of shells bursting all around us, their noise adding to that of our engines. Like white mice, the flight of the tracers appeared to be directed at me, as I looked out of the window. They were concentrating at penetrating my heart, and this vivid impression accompanied me thereafter. It was an impression that I could not lose, even years after, as a prisoner of war.
Suddenly a very agitated pitot told us that we would have to turn around and return to base. Our engines had been hit and slowly the view disappeared behind and to the right of us. Gradually we left it all behind. The sea of flames disappeared. We landed not long after where we had begun our journey. The pilot wordlessly showed us where we had been hit at the rear of the plane and in the engines. Then he relaxed and his humour returned, for his mission had come to an end. Mine however had not.
A pause from the fighting, Festung Breslau, 1945. A drawing by the author.
A second attempt to fly General Niehoff into Breslau also failed. The second time it was because the controls of the Junkers were completely frozen. The third was successful, and it was through the efforts of a Technical Sergeant and Feldwebel. He had a trick up his sleeve, according to General Niehoff, and “simply oozed self-confidence!” The Feldwebel delivered the General with a daredevil flight, but safe and sound, into the inferno of Breslau. His technique was to spiral the Junkers high into the atmosphere, as high as “the old crate” would allow, and then turn the engine off! The Junkers would then noiselessly spiral to earth unnoticed, to just above the roofs of the houses. Daredevil indeed! However, after that experience, and landing safely at the aerodrome, the General then came under fire. He had to crawl on all fours, guided to safety by an ordnance officer with a torch.
It did not take long for this General to win the trust of troops and in-habitants. He was never to be found in his command post, an old ice-storage cellar that had damp walls, because he was always inspecting the current situation. He firstly made a reconnoitre of Breslau, making an underground house-to-house inspection. He squeezed through holes made in the cellar walls of the houses, providing access from
one to the other. Up top, on the street, he had to run under fire in order to inspect the troops. Every unit in his command came under his critical eye. As the position of the front-line altered, his command post was changed to the building that housed the State and University Library on Sand Island, very close to Sand Church. He could then be found in the deepest cellars, thought to be the safest in Breslau.
In contrast, the rather young Gauleiter Karl Hanke, resided in a bunker of another quality, with many comforts. It was also assessed to be extremely secure. It had a number of offices, including a telephone centre, a communications room, a kitchen, canteen, shower rooms, and other rooms that were sectioned off with dividing curtains. He would sit in his ‘presidium’, a very large office or committee-room, surrounded by oil paintings, carpets and antique furniture, and using an oversized desk. In those surroundings he must have felt very comfortable indeed, and into which I stumbled quite unintentionally one day.
It was, if I remember correctly, in the middle or end of March that we had to change our positions because of very heavy artillery fire. We were seeking a safer place. Underground we could not know where we were, or where the long flight of stone steps which we took, would lead us. While investigating we suddenly found ourselves in a smoke-filled room. It was a fully furnished cellar. There were many people, both civilians and members of the military, and others wearing the brown Party uniforms. They were enjoying a feast at a very large table laden with food and drink, all of the finest quality. We, with our sudden appearance, had caught them unawares and put them in a very embarrassing position that could be clearly seen. Their guilty consciences demanded that we were invited to join them. We were duly showered with compliments on our performance, and helped with exaggerated gestures to the dishes. It was as if we were guests of honour, and not unshaven, unwashed and tattered ‘front-swine’ fresh from the main line of resistance, with ‘potato-mashers’ stuck into our boots!
In the Fire of the Eastern Front Page 20