The tank was commanded by an SS-Oberscharführer, a holder of the Knight’s Cross, who told me to make sure our own anti-tank gun didn’t open fire before he did. The King Tiger moved off towards the enemy and positioned itself behind a small hillock. It wasn’t too long before the first Russian tank emerged from the wood near the village. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven tanks came out. We became increasingly uneasy.
Only after the thirteenth enemy tank had appeared did the King Tiger open fire, shooting the last one, it burst into flames, and then our PAK gun joined in shooting the first. One could see the panic break out among the enemy tanks. They turned this way and that trying to avoid the danger, but to no avail. One tank after another was hit. The panic grew as the King Tiger continued to fire. It did them no good. Soon all the Russian tanks were burning without them having fired a single shot.
All the troops who had watched the action were jubilant. The danger of encirclement was still great, however, and we had to pull out of the village later that day. Nevertheless it was a day to remember.
Not far away from the jubilant Edi Janke, Erik Wallin was busy heading west in his trusty SPW half-track when he was stopped by another vehicle from the Schwedenzug carrying a wounded man:
I looked down to see a waving hand rise up from all the blood, oh God it was my fellow countryman and friend SS-Untersturmführer Heino Meyer, the favourite of the Company.
He was almost unrecognisable. A splinter had cut his chin in two and stuck in a neck vertebra and he was few a millimetres from death. He had also been shot in the shoulder and his chest was covered in blood. His legs were pierced by an immense number of shrapnel fragments. But he was alive and even tried to tell me of his misadventure. But his voice was weak and with his damaged chin his speech was slurred … He made it of course, the doctors picked out all the iron scrap except one small piece which remained in his neck as a souvenir, but he never returned to the Company.
The Swedish Waffen-SS officer, Heino Meyer. Hugely popular with his fellow volunteers, twice declared killed in action while serving with the Wiking and Nordland, Meyer survived the war and ended up living firstly in Spain and then South America. (James Macleod)
By the middle of March the Nordland had been pushed back to Altdamm, a river port that straddled the east and west banks of the Oder with a vital bridge connecting the two halves of the town. By now they were joined at the hip with the Flemings of the 27th SS-Freiwilligen Panzergrenadier Division Langemarck, and the Walloons of the 28th SS-Freiwilligen Panzergrenadier Division Wallonien. Grand sounding as this was, both Belgian divisions were no more than a few thousand men strong by this time. Nevertheless, this truly multinational force held back the Soviets on the Oder’s eastern bank for several precious days. The OKW report stated:
In the hard defensive battles in Pomerania that began with an enemy breakthrough to split the Front, the 11th SS-Panzergrenadier Division Nordland has stood as the focal point of resistance since March 3 1945. The Soviet units attacking the division were the 2nd Guards Tank Army, elements of the 61st and 47th Armies and parts of the 3rd Shock Army.
On March 17 after a strong artillery barrage and the deployment of newly-committed forces, the enemy once again tried to push through Altdamm towards Stettin. Ammunition was in short supply and battalions were down to below 100 men each. SS-Brigadeführer Ziegler stayed at his command post repelling sporadic enemy breakthroughs with his staff and repeatedly reorganising the resistance of his exhausted men despite the high casualties in officers. Loss of radios meant artillery fire could not be directed, ammunition was critically low, our panzers were out of action and a large number of heavy infantry weapons were destroyed. Only thanks to his exceptional bravery in this critical situation was the bridgehead held, Ziegler was the spirit of the resistance. In the period from March 3-18 1945 the 11th SS-Panzergrenadier Division Nordland destroyed 194 tanks.
Altdamm became an inferno. Wallin again:
Day and night an annihilating rain of shells of all calibres, from the heaviest howitzers, heavy Stalin Organs, 120mm mortars and infantry guns, down to 37mm anti-tank guns, beat against our positions in that narrow area. … Our casualties were heavy. Pehrsson, our company commander, was wounded and taken back to Stettin … We could stand the hunger, the exhaustion was worse. Our eyes smarted and our faces were stiff. There was no quiet place in that burning and exploding inferno. Everywhere the shells fell with their devastating and lacerating rain of shrapnel.
With six mortars my platoon had taken position in the yard of a house that had been completely riddled with bullets and shells. It lay a short distance outside the actual residential area of Altdamm. Our fire-controller was in a cellar in an advanced position. As long as the field-telephone worked the rounds rose in a continuous stream from our barrels.
No other platoon could have kept up their firing better, at least not under such conditions. But after all they were staunch guys, all of them. Several of them had been in the thick of it ever since the engagements at Narva and Dorpat. Even the newcomers stood up to prove themselves, inspired by their older comrades’ calm and presence of mind.
Not all the Nordland men were quite so sanguine though, as Wallin observed:
In the evening I was ordered by the new company commander to go over myself to relieve our observer. He had had a nervous breakdown. That told me quite a lot about what was waiting for me over there. I left the command post to the calm and reliable Kraus, a promising NCO, then I was off.
One of Wallin’s company officers who he would serve with right until the end was the Danish volunteer SS-Untersturmführer Mogens Schwarz. He had already had an eventful journey just to arrive at the Front:
At the beginning of March I was sent to a company, and was given maps and a soldier who appeared by chance to drive me. Unfortunately when we arrived the position was no longer occupied … we wanted to cross a small bridge but were instantly fired on by Russian infantry. I myself got over the bridge unharmed, my escort thought he had no chance and went back alone. Since it was impossible for me to get back across the bridge unseen, I went on in search of my company.
I only had a 6.35mm pistol and a hand-grenade, suddenly three Russian soldiers came toward me and talked to me. Naturally I understood nothing and patted a Russian amiably on the shoulder. I walked on about 100 metres when they called to me, I jumped over a ditch and found cover behind a single tree. They fired at me but I wasn’t hit, then I saw them deciding what to do next, they were only about 10 metres away so I took my hand-grenade and threw it among them. Then I jumped up quickly and ran away, hiding in a pond until dark. I went on in dripping clothes and fortunately I found our troops and heard Norwegian voices, I called out, ‘Same troop, don’t shoot!’, and when I heard the answer, ‘Understood’, I stepped into our own lines. At the command post they had already started to wonder where I was.
It wasn’t long before the new arrival Schwarz was ‘at home’ among his men and the ever-worsening battlefield situation at Altdamm, as Wallin testified:
The Danish Waffen-SS officer, Mogens Schwarz. Schwarz served in the Nordland’s Recce Battalion alongside the famed Swedish Schwedenzug right until the end in Berlin. (James Macleod)
Moaning wheezes came from two unbelievably mutilated bodies that had been laid on the floor, with a pair of shredded and bloody overcoats as their only protection from the cold floor. Neither of them could live much longer. One of them had no face. Where eyes, nose, mouth and chin used to be was only a hollowed-out, bloody mess. Out of the left corner of the other’s mouth ran a stream of blood … In contrast to this terrible scene there sat SS-Untersturmführer Schwarz, tough and unperturbed, without equal in the Company. He sat on a sugar-box beside a stinking piece of cotton waste, seemingly untouched by everything and everyone around him. He was squeezing lice. Each time Schwarz found a louse, and there were plenty of them as we never got rid of them at the Front, he lifted it with a pleased grin against the weak light, snapped it with h
is nails, the let it fall down in the hot oil in a tin can. He did everything with calm, almost lazy movements. Now and then Schwarz glanced at the two dying men on the floor and shook his head compassionately. He turned to the officer by the radio and said ‘Do you see now that it’s going to be hell for us.’
Our new company commander arrived and Schwarz rose to attention with his trousers round his ankles. The newcomer, a sympathetic SS-Oberstürmführer straight from Berlin, had not yet had time to become acquainted with Schwarz, a somewhat unusual officer, but he received his report with a straight face. It was clear that he was finding it difficult not to laugh. Then he caught sight of the bloody figures on the floor and went and knelt by them. He spoke in a low voice to them but got no answer apart from moaning, he whispered a question to the medical orderly and got a shake of the head as an answer.
The bridgehead continued to hold out. Only on 20 March did the last Flemings, Walloons, Germans and Scandinavians cross over Altdamm’s bridge before blowing it sky high. Berlin was less than an hour’s drive away. Both sides now took a breath and readied for the final act. The Soviets built up their forces for the push to Hitler’s capital, and the remnants of the Wehrmacht tried to upset those preparations and buy valuable time, though to what end now, no one knew.
Amidst the growing chaos, there were reminders of another world that were hugely unsettling in these surroundings – letters from home. Wallin was given one by Pehrsson, now back from hospital even though still bandaged up:
The first letter from home for more than a year, from a girl who still kept thinking about me. It was a little bit strange – I felt ashamed of the lump in my throat. For more than a month the letter had been on its way from peaceful Stockholm with its cleanliness and undisturbed life. There would still be neon signs and friendly shining windows, with no black-out curtains at night. Cinemas would be open and people would be strolling about. It was a letter from another world.
I tore open the envelope with hands that were now shaking more from joyful excitement than from exhaustion and the recent hardships harrowing effects on my nerves. My eyes swept quickly over the lines. Then I read it again, slowly, then one more time, then once again. Perhaps there was not very much in that letter. It was mostly about ordinary things and small events back home. But it strengthened and renewed me to think about life up north. It was all so far away and distant from the life of the frontline soldier. It helped me to indulge in daydreams as I sat down outside the barn door … Just like the others I was utterly worn out. A week of long, uninterrupted combat, without sleep, among collapsing houses, howling shells and human beings torn apart in dirt, smoke, fire and blood, had consumed all our strength … but now I was once again back home with my relatives and friends. I was back in the well-remembered streets of the Old Town and the South Side. My daydreaming went on until tiredness overwhelmed me and I fell asleep right where I was sitting, still dreaming of far-away Stockholm.
Phantom divisions
With the Oder line lost, all the enfeebled Wehrmacht forces could do was to try and delay the inevitable. Stalin was determined to take Berlin and Hitler with it, and his by now massively powerful Red Army would grind all to dust to deliver that goal. Who would the Soviets’ opponents be though? One glance at the Wehrmacht’s strength distribution map would be enough for anybody to realise that Berlin was almost totally undefended. Large German forces were effectively cut off in Courland and the Balkans, and a huge number of those facing the Western Allies were in the process of being surrounded in the Ruhr. The majority of the Reich’s military formations were still deployed in the East, as they had been since 1941, but the biggest concentration by far was in the south on the Hungarian-Austrian border. It made no military sense, and contributed to the Allies’ mistaken belief in the existence of a last chance ‘Alpine Redoubt’, where the diehard SS would hold out indefinitely among the high peaks. In reality nothing like that existed, but the mere threat of it worried Eisenhower immensely and presented Berlin to the Soviet dictator on a platter.
Swedish volunteer Erik Wallin in his SS camouflage fatigues. He was wounded in the Berlin fighting but managed to escape the city along with his friend and commander, Hans-Gösta Pehrsson. (James Macleod)
The OKW situation maps did indeed show a number of German divisional insignia between the Oder and Berlin, the Nordland being one, but just like all the others it was a division in name only. Casualties had continued to pile up and replacements were non-existent. From its establishment in September 1943 to the end of March 1945, the division suffered extraordinary losses – 2,937 men killed, 10,454 wounded and a further 1,278 missing – in effect in 18 months its entire original complement was gone. This is how Wallin described it:
The struggle was furious and our losses heavy. Our division soon had the strength of a regiment. It wasn’t unusual to see an Untersturmführer with a machine-gun across his shoulders, move off with an Unterscharführer and a couple of men carrying ammo boxes – and that was a whole company. What could we hope to achieve with battalions of forty to fifty men, and regiments of two to three hundred? … Our company, which had managed better than most in the division, now numbered no more than 40 men.
Ziegler’s division was burnt-out. But the war wasn’t finished with it yet.
The counter-atack that never was
Wallin and his comrades were granted a few days respite, and the Nordland reorganised as it was put to preparing hasty defences at Schwedt-an-der-Oder to the north-east of Berlin. Their opponents also used the first half of April to prepare for the last battle. The Red Army massed 2,500,000 men (carried in 100,000 trucks) and 6,200 tanks, supported by 41,000 artillery pieces and 7,200 aircraft. Alongside the Nordland, the Germans could only muster 300,000 men, 950 panzers, 1,500 artillery guns and 300 aircraft. However fuel was critically short, leaving many of the planes grounded and the panzers reduced to towing each other to conserve petrol.
At dawn on 16 April the Soviets went into the attack. Their strength may have been overwhelming, but not everything went their way. The Germans furiously defended the crucial Seelow Heights position, costing Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front an incredible 30,000 men killed in just 3 days. With the Russians stalled, Wallin and his comrades were massed for a counter-attack near Strausberg on 19 April. Driving their half-tracks into an abandoned village, where they were due to meet up with some King Tigers, the Nordland’s recce battalion spread out through the houses to snatch a few hours sleep before the assault began. Less than an hour later disaster struck:
A terrible thunder, as if the ground had opened up for a volcanic eruption, woke us with a violent shake and was followed by repeated close-up explosions in our immediate vicinity … The previously peaceful village had been turned in an instant into a hell beyond any attempt at description. Volley after volley from Stalin’s Organs and heavy artillery created a horrible bloodbath … Soldiers jumped terrified out through doors and from windows, others came staggering with their hands on their bleeding heads or pressed against torn open bellies, where their guts came out through their fingers. Others shuffled along with one or both legs cut off. But many were left inside the burning houses, dead or dying … A bloody arm-stump hit the side of my half-track with a splashing sound and the blood spattered my face …
Of the entire force that should have been the battering ram against the Bolsheviks’ bridgehead, nothing but shredded remains were left. The attack had been smashed to pieces before it had even started. Our recce battalion, an élite unit with few peers on the whole Eastern Front had had one of its bloodiest days of the war. Of the mortar platoon’s ten half-tracks there were just four left with reduced crews. All of this had happened in only about 30 minutes.
The Soviets had anticipated the Nordland’s counter-attack and reacted with crushing force. Among the casualties was the Danmark’s commander, Rudolf Klotz, who was killed in a direct hit on his vehicle at Strausberg airfield. His place was taken by the 31-year-old Per Sörensen. Finally the
Danmark Regiment was led by a Dane, even though Danes now numbered less than a hundred in its depleted ranks. In turn, Sörensen handed his 2nd Battalion over to his fellow countryman, SS-Obersturmführer Rasmussen. The Danmark’s other battalion, the 3rd, was still led by the highly decorated and hugely experienced, SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Ternedde, while the Norge’s two battalions were under his fellow German, Richard Spörle.
Following up the massed artillery strike, Soviet tanks charged forward and splintered the division. In the chaos, some parts of the Nordland were isolated, cut-off and destroyed, while others were shoved to the north. One of the latter was Rasmussen’s 2nd Battalion. Unable to rejoin their comrades they were integrated into Felix Steiner’s command and retreated westwards to safety. Eventually the battalion would reach the Elbe River and cross over into American captivity.
For the rest, somehow Ziegler managed to restore some semblance of order; Wallin:
In the midst of this bloody confusion the staff of the Nordland were stunned but chilled. The scattered battalions and companies were gathered and made ready for action. The Front had really come into being and it wasn’t long before we were in contact with the Red Army again.
Those Nordland men Ziegler and his staff could gather were now more or less in the suburbs of greater Berlin, the very heart of Hitler’s ‘Thousand-Year Reich’. Most of them would never leave it.
Berlin: the end
Hitler's Vikings Page 28