So that was how I came to be briefed on our Highest Command’s defence concept by SS-Brigadier Meyer. However, in my lowly capacity, I could not use this extensive knowledge, as a platoon commander is only interested in his position and what is to the left and right of him should he have to make contact.
The party was quite jolly, if you can use that word to describe my men’s gallows humour. They got drunk, knowing full well what lay before them. Thanks to my new comrades from the band, I had music in the house, and several played industriously for the last time in their lives.
‘Sippenmeyer’ became drunk and his slurred speech was quite different to his arrogant talking before. This intrigued me more as he whispered into my ear tales of treason by Himmler and Göring. He went on stuttering: ‘There is only the Führer now, only the Führer.’ So they had already baled out, but I said to myself: ‘And what can we dummies do about it? We will share our Führer’s fate.’
But even the best parties come to an end, as did mine. The next day we went into the city centre by tram, so low had the ‘Leibstandarte’ sunk. And then on by foot, one cannot describe it as marching, to Voss-Strasse and across to the Reichs Chancellery.
I gave the female tram driver a few goodies. I had had to leave most of my treasures behind and just hoped that the Russians would choke on them. Of course we had to leave most of our private possessions behind, as in every case of going into action. The fighting soldier has enough to carry as it is, but this was always the way.
So our whole battalion went by tram, for the vast amount of fuel that I had brought from Ferchland on the Elbe had been given to the Hamburg exodus, as a result of which the tanks of the ‘Nordland’[44] when they joined us later had no fuel with which to manoeuvre and had to be employed as static fire points.
As no one seemed interested in us here, I left my platoon on the Reichs Chancellery steps and went to look for accommodation with my section sergeants. The cellars under the Reichs Chancellery, where we looked first, were already occupied, not by combatants ready to take over the defence here, but by officials’ families waiting transport to take them away. This made me furious, for how could one fight here with women and children in the way?
So we went up to the ground floor, where there was an unusual to-ing and fro-ing of important-looking people, but again no real combatants. Here again all the rooms were occupied.
Then I looked into the Führer’s study. This was empty. No one had dared move in here. I thought to myself: ‘Well the Führer will not be working here any more, and my men are not accustomed to living in the open air, and they need accommodation, for the weather is fresh and rainy outside.’
The big windows had been blown out in the last air raid and no one had replaced them, as they would only be damaged again in the nightly raids, but at least one had a roof over one’s head. So I had my men come in, and they managed to fit in with all of their equipment.
Then I searched the big desk and found a box of cigars for visitors, as the Führer smoked as little as I did in those days. There was also a bottle of good Cognac. I sampled it and finished the bottle, not bothering to look for glasses. Then I curled up on the wonderful carpet and slept. A soldier never knows what the next hour will bring. (According to a Soviet general, it later took fifteen men to remove the carpet so as to take it back to Moscow.)
I was rudely woken up during the night. Once I had pushed away the torch shining into my face, (there was no electric light because of the blackout) I saw an SD patrol standing in front of me and talking about shooting me as the senior rank present for desecrating the ‘Almighty’s’ study. The Führer’s study was no doss house, etcetera. I tried to explain to them that I was fully aware of the significance of the room from my previous job in the Reichs Chancellery. We did not want to stay here but would go wherever we were ordered to fight, and that would happen sooner than they, whom one could see wore no decorations and had never been in action, could think.
My men, who had found some more Cognac and were full of bravado, crowded round us and said aggressively that there were only two possible ways of getting us out of here, either to find us better accommodation or to kill us. Neither of the SD ‘heroes’ were in a position to do anything. As they had nothing left to say, I suggested to them that they might like to join us as ammunition carriers, for it would be a shame if the war were to end without them even getting a sniff of powder. I would have a word about this with their chief, Criminal Director Hoegl, I suggested. They were fit enough, I said, having felt their arm muscles. But they did not want to know, and left us muttering threats. But how can one threaten a person already facing certain death?
So we settled down to sleep again. Then early in the morning SS-Lieutenant Puttkamer (a relative of Hitler’s naval adjutant) came in and introduced himself as my company commander. He started giving me a telling off for the way I had treated the SD patrol during the night. I rejected this sharply and said: ‘Unlike myself, you already knew yesterday what your appointment was to be and that you would be responsible for a company. Since you did not show yourself, I had to use my initiative. In case you are unaware of your responsibilities as the commander of a troop, you should know that it is no umbrella that can be left lying about anywhere.’
Thus I made it quite clear between us at the start. As he wore only the Iron Cross Second Class, it was quite obvious to me that he had not been exposed to real fighting before. Perhaps he had been adequately protected by his big-shot relative from having to go to the front, and so had also got a role like this, for there was no such thing as a mortar company in combat. Normally the platoon would be split up in direct support of either the regimental or battalion commander.
He took us down into the cellars, which had meanwhile emptied noticeably, the officials’ families having left during the night. The rooms he showed me were near Mohnke’s command post on Hermann-Göring-Strasse. They filled me with confidence as soon as I saw them, for they were constructed out of reinforced concrete and the partition walls of similar construction supported the ceiling. As an experienced builder, I saw this all with one glance. It would take an enormous shell to break through.
Our company commander occupied a small room down here with his heavily pregnant wife. ‘Good God,’ I thought, ‘is he crazy?’ He had stupidly taken a room with a window next to the outside wall, where the cellar was only one and a half metres below ground. The first shell to explode on the pavement would send splinters straight in. Naturally, I did not tell this superfluous warrior what I thought.
His wife was feeling permanently ill, which was not surprising in her condition, but she had to go on telling everyone about it, while he stood by saying nothing. With her too I had to draw a line, which made me look a unfeeling clot. He even had to sit beside her to comfort her when the shelling started.
After this exchange of words, I moved with my headquarters section into a small room and the rest settled down around. Our predecessors, like ourselves, had left their personal things behind. To my surprise there were a pair of highly polished officer’s jackboots and some passable breeches to go with them. I had not seen such beautiful boots for years, since my father, a master shoemaker, had made me such a pair. In one of them was a holster for a small pistol, a 6.35 Walther, and in the other was a sheath for a stiletto with a needle point and razor-sharp blade. I tried them on and they fitted perfectly. Then I tried walking a few steps in them, which took me out into the cellar passageway. A young woman came toward me with an Alsatian puppy. The puppy leant against one of the shining boots and pissed inside. I kicked him away, which did not please the young woman.
She scolded me and got a sharp response back. Then I noticed that my old company comrade Heinz Jurkewitz, who was now with the Führer bodyguard, was standing behind her, making violent hand signals to me that I could not understand.
I shouted at her: ‘Get your dog out of here and leave us alone!’ Whereupon she put the puppy on the lead and went off with him without a
word.
‘For goodness sake, Willi,’ Heinz said to me, ‘what have you done? Do you know who that was?’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘That was Fräulein Braun!’
‘It could have been Fräulein Schwarz as far as I am concerned,’ I said. ‘What about it?’
Then he had to tell me confidentially who Fräulein Braun was, and that he had been assigned to her as her bodyguard.
With this explanation I should make it clear that even I who had been on duty in the Reichs Chancellery knew nothing of the existence of this woman. It was a taboo subject and no one talked about it. We were trained to be discreet. Nevertheless, she had been here in the Führerbunker at the Reichs Chancellery since 15 April and had come, against the Führer’s will, to share his fate. She usually lived at the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. The puppy came from Blondi, the Führer’s Alsatian, and he had given it to Fräulein Braun so that she had something to remind her of him, since he could not come because of the war. When it was time to die, the pup would die too.
Of course I took this hard and asked Heinz to ask my forgiveness for my ignorance, as I had no access to the Führerbunker myself.
After this fiasco I took off the boots and breeches. Like their owner, I had no need for these special boots.
Then the company commander ordered us to go into the Tiergarten and practise with the mortars. This was certainly rather late, but necessary, for the mortars had lain unused in the barracks and now had to augment the fighting strength of two regiments.
So we moved into the Tiergarten and practised setting up and so on. The company commander stood there saying nothing. Whether he knew more about these things than I did, I cannot say. It is best in such circumstances to let the sergeants get on with it, so I left them to it.
The 1st Platoon was commanded by a senior officer cadet[45] I knew from the barracks. This was the last time either I or the company commander was to see him. He was on duty in the barracks as Duty NCO every other day, and strutted around like a peacock, which was enough to set me off teasing him. He still did not have the necessary front decorations to go to officer school, and must therefore have had a powerful patron, as otherwise this would not have been possible. When such similar ‘experts’ came to the front and were set above me, although just a lowly sergeant major, they did not have it easy.
I had no intention of being sent with my men into an uncertain mission. Even my men, without my having said anything, would simply turn away if he tried to give orders over my head. For them it did not matter how many stars a superior had. They looked at it from the standpoint of what their chances of survival were with that superior, and I would rather go myself than send anyone into a dangerous mission.
So here this gentleman had no protector any more and at last had to show what he was made of.
While we were exercising, some heavy shells burst unexpectedly several hundred yards away, for the first time in the city centre. As I had heard no discharge, it was immediately apparent to me they were from a long range battery firing off a map, and were of no great concern to an experienced soldier.
So, without haste, I had my platoon move by sections into two concrete garages that stood nearby. These would not have stood up to a direct hit, of course, but that would have been highly unlikely. In order to show my men how dangerously I treated the situation I, a non-smoker, lit a cigarette and passed round the packet and started cracking jokes, and soon the first witticisms were being passed around among my men. So everyone remained calm, which was the main thing.
But the senior officer cadet, who was unfamiliar with such shelling, cried out: ‘All is lost, save yourselves!’ The company commander stood as still as a marble statue, not taking it in.
I immediately took over command of this wildly scattering mob and ordered them to lie down. Then I took them into cover by sections. The firing soon stopped and we had no casualties.
These were the kind of commanders that lead men to destruction for no reason at all, and it boded ill for the future.
As I read in Soviet military literature after the war, the shelling had been purely a propaganda gesture in order to be able to report to Stalin that: ‘The lion’s den now lies under heavy destructive fire.’ I even saw pictures of the guns, primitive things with a range of about 18 kilometres mounted on self-propelled tracks.
I did not wait for the company commander’s orders, but took my troops back to the Reichs Chancellery, not without throwing a look of contempt at these two ‘heroes’, who already had their heads together.
SS-Lieutenant August Krönke was waiting for me at the Reichs Chancellery. He was adjutant to the ‘Anhalt’ Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, commanded by SS-Captain Schäfer, to which my platoon belonged, according to my instructions, thus removing me from Puttkamer’s direct command.
First Krönke had to show me the location of the battalion’s positions. The battalion was already deployed and wherever possible I was shown round by the company commander responsible. But as Schäfer never held a company commanders’ conference, which I too would have had to attend, I never got to know them all. The battalion was fully committed, and there were no reserves. I just had to go along the streets behind the buildings in which our companies were deployed. I made a provisional sketch of the front and later was able to copy everything out on graph paper for my forward observers. I myself would remain primarily at the base position and send out my sergeants as observers, as they knew more about the business.
The battalion boundary on the left was the right wing of Belle-Alliance-Platz (Mehringplatz), from where it followed the Landwehr Canal to the Tiergarten, then cut across the Tiergarten to the Spree River. It then followed the Spree through the Diplomatic Quarter as far as the Kronprinzen Bridge. The Reichstag was our boundary with SS-Captain Thomas Mrugalla’s 1st Battalion. The right flank at the Reichstag was under the command of SS-Lieutenant Babick, whose heroic fight at the Reichstag I will report on later.
In the Tiergarten we could only manage a two-man foxhole every fifty metres, but here were also the tanks of the ‘Hermann von Salza’ battalion of the SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nordland’ under SS-Lieutenant Colonel Peter Kausch, a very brave man and holder of the Oak Leaves to the Iron Cross.[46]
There was also the mighty Zoo flak-tower, whose area was defended by Volkssturm and Hitler Youth units. This flak-tower later evolved into a strong bastion in the defence, although the flak-towers had not been designed for this purpose. With its massive concrete walls and its height, it was almost unassailable and could not be taken by the Soviets. Nevertheless, the thousands of civilians in this bunker had a terrible time.
We returned to the battalion command post on the lowest level of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station, where I was introduced to the battalion commander, SS-Captain Schäfer. Schäfer’s command post was in a platform guard’s office, where he remained until the end. Opposite his office were several S-Bahn carriages full of supplies under the control of a quartermaster.
I was invited to eat. The commander’s batman prepared sandwiches all day long for him and his visitors. With this went either tea or ersatz coffee, and the supplies lasted until the end.
Schäfer instructed me to leave my men in reserve at the Reichs Chancellery. He would call us when he needed us.
When I got back, my men were busy unloading trucks that were driving into the inner yard one after the other with ammunition and supplies from the outer districts. The Reichs Chancellery was being transformed into a vast underground supply depot.
My men had to do this out of self-preservation. No one invited them to eat or take them on ration strength. I could not approach my company commander on such a triviality. As my men told me, he just sat there comforting his wife as the shells exploded outside.
I may be over-critical, but a unit commander cannot take his wife to war with him, and here the war was becoming ever more intense, even in the Reichs Chancellery, so I can rightly accus
e him of failing lamentably in his responsibilities.
Consequently, my men had to steal their daily bread by the sweat of their brows. To my shame I must admit in helping them by asking the storekeeper stupid questions while they carried off the stolen items to their quarters. Let the readers think what they like, the full stomachs of my men were more important to me than morals and propriety. Hunger hurts and the food that we had brought with us from the barracks had run out. The storekeeper, who had no hunger, could not understand this. He was a typical quartermaster and such people only respond to written orders for the issue of anything. To find such an order would have only led to unnecessary work and anger, which is why I emphasise this point. Once my men had removed enough, we took time off. No one bothered about the storekeeper’s complaints.
As we did not know what was in the boxes, we opened them with our bayonets and stuffed ourselves full of the choicer items. Without asking me, someone had the idea of taking some food across to the Puttkamer family, and soon we had another drama. I had to take a lecture on morals and propriety, to which I listened without saying a word. No, I would not do it again, I promised.
I did not believe that the Puttkamers with their connections would have to go hungry, but they never thought of giving anything to the soldiers.
Our comrades in the Senior Officer Cadet’s platoon were also hungry, but that was nothing to do with me. I do not know what happened to them later but with the commander they had, it could only have been catastrophic.
Meanwhile a serious incident occurred within our regimental area. Major General Mummert, the commander of the Panzer Division ‘Müncheberg’, with or without the knowledge of our regimental commander SS-Colonel Anhalt, and I never discovered which, as the latter only gave out instructions on rare occasions, ordered our 1st Battalion from its allocated positions into operational reserve at Alexanderplatz. As a result of this a gap opened on our right flank that Schäfer would have been unable to fill with his battalion. That there were no serious consequences is a wonder. I did not understand it.
With Our Backs to Berlin Page 19