Next day, 24 April, the situation changed as follows. General Weidling, commander of the LVIth Panzer Corps, which consisted of the 9th Parachute Division, the 18th and 20th Panzergrenadier Divisions, the Panzer Division ‘Müncheberg’ and the SS-Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nordland’, was appointed Battle Commandant of Berlin by Hitler. He replaced General Reymann and came directly under Hitler. General Mummert became commander of the LVIth Panzer Corps.
THE JANNOWITZ BRIDGE
Our going into action happened fully otherwise than had been intended. As only one mortar platoon had been allocated to the Regiment ‘Anhalt’, each of the battalions wanted it for themselves. The other platoon went to Mohnke’s second regiment, which consisted mainly of Berlin-based SS office staff. Strangely enough, Mohnke could not even remember the commander’s name when he returned from captivity, and I did not know it either. These office staff seemed only interested in the defence of their own office buildings, as I was to discover later with the Ministry of the Interior.
During the night of 23/24 April I received the surprise order to go to Alexanderplatz with my platoon and report to SS-Captain Mrugalla there. Fighting was already in progress and my platoon was needed urgently. The commander of the 2nd Battalion, SS-Captain Schäfer, as he later told me, was not informed of this, and went on believing that he still had a platoon in reserve at the Reichs Chancellery that he could call upon at any time. Who was responsible for this sudden decision, I do not know either.
So we marched off to Alexanderplatz, leaving behind our stolen food supplies, and not caring what happened when they were found. For us only the moment was important, and nothing else.
The Police Presidium, a massively powerful building, stood in the middle of the square. Its outer walls were two metres thick and the whole structure was massively built, as I discovered when I went inside to report to the battalion staff. This building was later to be defended like a fortress, and as the Russians could not take it, they went round it.
The adjutant, SS-Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Fey, told me that SS-Captain Mrugalla had gone off with his whole battalion to stop the Russian breakthrough and destroy them. This puzzled me as I still did not know that the battalion had been taken out of its positions. At the time I thought this had been done on Mrugalla’s initiative, which was not the case. Mrugalla was a very brave and obedient soldier. Whenever he received an order, he carried it out without regard for the consequences, as happened here with General Mummert’s order.
But back to me and my platoon. As I did not want to lose my way in the dark, and thought that Mrugalla would be bringing back his battalion, we waited for his return in the Police Presidium. After we had waited some hours, we came under a night bombing attack, which was to prove to be the last by the Western Allies. The Reichs Chancellery was badly hit in this raid, but we in the Police Presidium with its massive structural strength suffered no casualties, even though the windows set about one and a half metres up showered their glass everywhere.
I became bored with this unaccustomed waiting and decided to go ahead with my section leaders and two runners to see for myself, leaving the platoon behind in the Presidium. It was still dark, but a few streets further east at Schillingstrasse I saw something the like of which I had never seen throughout the whole war. SS-Captain Mrugalla was leading his whole battalion as a reconnaissance party. In the middle of the street were two Panther tanks that General Mummert had lent him, for we had none of our own. The men were advancing three paces apart on either side of the street alongside the buildings, which were still not ruins, with the battalion commander and his staff behind the tanks in the middle.
I can still see the scene decades after as if it were yesterday, it was so unusual. They were moving like a funeral procession, going from street to street looking for an enemy that was not there. As I was moving faster than their funereal pace, I soon caught up with the battalion commander and reported to him.
‘Where is your mortar platoon then?’ he asked. ‘It could be needed urgently any minute.’
I replied: ‘You don’t think for a moment that I would have my men take part in this buffoonery, do you? I have never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life! What is going on?’
This naturally came as a shock to him, but I was always one to speak my mind, and what I saw here was beyond comprehension.
He stopped still, as did his whole battalion, including the tanks. Everyone wanted to see what this exchange was about. So I told him that I did not know whether it was his idea or General Mummert’s, but who was going to occupy his section of the defences while he led his battalion into a trap that would destroy them all?
Meanwhile it had become light and as I, like the others, was wearing no camouflage jacket, he could see my decorations. Perhaps he started having doubts about his enterprise, but how could he have known what to do? He was only a senior administration official and, as I later discovered, dean of a school of administration in Arolsen. His men too all came from SS administrative posts. As his company commanders gathered round, I saw that none of them wore a worthwhile decoration, so there was no one that could have advised him in such matters.
He said to me: ‘But I have left a strong standing patrol behind me at the Spree bridges!’
‘You are a useless shit!’ I said to him cheekily, ‘When the Russians come they will overpower them in minutes.’
‘What would you do in my case then?’ he asked.
‘Break off this business immediately and occupy the positions allocated to you by the regimental commander.’
‘But how will I carry out my task of locating the Russians?’
To my mind the Russians did not need locating, but I said: ‘I will take that on with my mortar platoon.’
‘You will do it with only a few men?’ he asked doubtfully.
‘Just march your men back and I will soon let you know how far off the Russians are.’
He agreed that I should take over the role, which was not all that agreeable to me. We each took a Panzerfaust as he gave the order to go back.
Then two Hitler Youth leaders that had overheard the conversation came after us and asked if they could come along with us. We stopped again and I asked these two fourteen year-olds whether they would not prefer to help their mothers with the washing up, which upset them. They told me that they commanded a fifty-strong Hitler Youth unit and were looking for a unit to join on to, and that after our discussion with Mrugalla’s battalion that did not appear to be the right one. However, I still did not want any children coming along with me, and so sent them to await my return at the Police Praesidium.
We went on marching eastward. A few streets further on I came to a barricade manned by two Waffen-SS sentries, both completely drunk. No information could be obtained from them in their state and they would obviously fall easy prey to the Russians for they were incapable of understanding anything.
So we went on further and must have gone quite a distance before we suddenly saw two Stalin tanks standing side by side blocking the street. We crouched down and fired Panzerfausts at them but, as I feared, they failed to penetrate the frontal armour and we could not tackle them from the side, so this only served to wake them up. Then we came under fire from sub-machine guns from two windows, which we soon silenced with Panzerfausts.
We beat a hasty retreat and had just got round the street corner as the tank guns opened up. I made a note of the name of the street so that Mrugalla would not have to look for himself, but in fact we were on the wrong course, as I later discovered.
The main Russian attack was coming from the Schlesischer Station and so went past us. Why the Russians attacked from there I later learnt from Soviet military literature. General Bokov, the political commissar to the 5th Shock Army, whose commander Colonel General Berzarin was appointed City Commandant that day, wrote that the army had captured, together with its ammunition, some heavy German siege artillery of the Thor type in Silesia that had been used in the siege of Sevas
topol. These mortars were mounted on railway wagons adjusted to the Russian gauge and, according to Bokov, a track had been adjusted to this gauge as far as the Schlesischer Station and they started firing their bombs into the centre of Berlin on 25 April.[47]
When we got back to the Police Praesidium and I reported back to Mrugalla, he was already preparing to move out his battalion, having received new orders to defend the Schlesischer Station. He gave me the order to set up my mortar platoon – I would know better where than he – in support of his battalion. He gave me a company of Volkssturm in support as he knew how much mortars could fire, and they could collect mortar bombs from the Reichs Chancellery so that I could provide a proper barrage, as he put it. I accepted gratefully, as we only had one set of ammunition with us.
The Hitler Youth boys were also there, asking to go into action. As I now knew that Mrugalla would not think of establishing a proper screen behind which I could operate, I was in desperate need of infantry cover and so reluctantly took on the Hitler Youths. These boys were well equipped with automatic carbines, goodness knows who had arranged that. In comparison, the Volkssturm only had captured French and Italian rifles with hardly any ammunition for them.
So now I moved along between the raised stretch of S-Bahn track and the Spree with my headquarters section, the Volkssturm commander and the runners, as well as the two Hitler Youth leaders, toward the Schlesischer Station.
At the Jannowitz Bridge S-Bahn Station the track was about ten metres up on an almost vertical structure of hewn sandstone blocks. Just beyond the Jannowitz Bridge I found the place I was looking for. The massive S-Bahn elevation was hollow like a kind of casemate with some concrete steps leading down inside. I wanted to set up here in a dead angle of the casemate, where the artillery could not reach me, only high trajectory fire, for which the Russians had more than enough stuff. Their 120 mm mortars, for instance, against which my 80 mm mortars were nothing.
I summoned my platoon, and the Volkssturm men knew where to find me with the ammunition.
My platoon arrived and started setting up. With one of my section sergeants who was assigned as forward observer, the signallers and the Hitler Youths that had arrived meanwhile, we went along the tracks to the Jannowitz Bridge Station. I looked for a good location for the Hitler Youth to set up a defensive position. I found one but, as I was to discover, not as good as our mortar position.
With the forward observer, the signallers and four Hitler Youths, who wanted to protect the observer, we went some distance toward the Schlesischer Station. I found a tall building from where the observer would have a good overall view. The signallers paid out the telephone cable and I went back to my position.
We soon had communication and the forward observer started calling for fire, although he still did not have a proper target. He reported that the Russians were sticking up a red flag every time they took a tall building, but that most of these flags were promptly being shot down again. Then the Volkssturm came over the bridge behind us and delivered about five hundred mortar bombs. Now we had what we needed and could start.
Then the forward observer called. The enemy were advancing in a dense group supported by tanks. We began peppering them and when one thinks that with practice a mortar can have as many as ten bombs in the air at one time, one can get some idea of the fire-power of these six mortars.
A mortar bomb normally makes a hole about two hands wide upon impact, but on a roadway it makes no hole but breaks up into tiny splinters that riddle human targets like a sieve, and there must have been fearful casualties among that dense mob of advancing Russians.
When the Volkssturm came with a second load and saw our barrage they quickly put their bombs into the casemate and vanished. This was quite right, for it was a hot place to be. Then the forward observer called for us to stop. There was no longer a target. The surviving Russians had fled for cover.
My men now thought that they had earned a rest before the next engagement, and I agreed with them. They had acquitted themselves very well in their first action, and I dug out some tobacco for them. Nevertheless, I told them not to stand around in the open but to take cover in the casemates, thinking that we could expect some retaliation for what we had done. But that it would be so bad, I had no idea.
So I was standing outside alone with one of my NCOs when I heard a noise that I recognised as the discharge of numerous artillery pieces and the dull thump of heavy mortars. I quickly grabbed a mortar and took it under cover. The NCO promptly followed suit as the storm burst over us.
We raced down into the casemates and not a second too soon. Then it hit. Our eardrums were nearly displaced with the din of bursting shells. I had never experienced anything like it. How long the barrage lasted, I cannot say. It could have been seconds or hours. We sat or lay there with the anxious feeling that it would never end, unable to communicate with each other because of the din, each man isolated within himself.
When at last we could go outside again, the sudden silence came like a pain to our ears, and the sky had darkened with the fumes from the exploding shells still hanging in the air.
I first looked at our mortars. Only the two that we had taken inside remained serviceable, the rest being nothing but torn and twisted metal, and that after only our first time in action. Our communications were also lost, the telephone cable having been shot through in several places.
I had the two surviving mortars set up roughly and shot off the remaining ammunition blindly. I did not want to stay here, but to withdraw over the Spree, so sent a runner to recall the forward observer, if he was still alive. I went forward myself to see how the boys were and how they had got on under fire.
When I reached the Hitler Youth position, it was a shattering sight. One could say that there was not a single stone left standing on another. Everything had been churned over several times by the artillery fire and the boys shredded into small pieces. I looked on with the tears running down my face.
I reproached myself for having accepted the boys’ offer, when I should have remained firm and sent them away. But my self-reproach came too late, as they too firmly believed that they could do something for their country. Their mothers would wait in vain for their return. I could not inform them of their sons’ fate, for I did not even know any of their names.
Now the forward observer returned with his four Hitler Youth volunteers. The barrage had passed right over them, leaving them unhurt. They too started crying when they saw what had happened to their comrades, but when I hoped that they had had enough, they said to me, still crying: ‘Sergeant Major, this makes us even harder. We want to stay with you until the last!’ What can one say to a boy like that? They were twelve to fifteen year-olds. Today’s youngsters would never believe what their predecessors had to put up with.
When we went back, my platoon was already across the bridge behind us on the other side of the Spree. The bridge was still intact and there was no sign of Mrugalla’s standing patrol. As I now established, the bridge had not even been prepared for demolition. Here too the leadership had left everything to chance. Colonel Lobeck[48] probably did not want to blow the bridge, for like every bridge it carried essential services such as water, gas and electricity for the civilian population, who would be deprived of these things if the bridge were blown.
My two remaining mortars had been set up behind a vast building. As the bridge was unsecured, I used those of my men now without mortars to form a thin protective screen, to which I also sent the machine gun section and the four remaining Hitler Youths with their good automatic carbines. They would not run away when things got hot, of that I was sure.
I sent the forward observer up on to the roof of the building. I did not have the heart to send him back over the Spree after our last fiasco. He now fired on sight, being able to see over the top of the S-Bahn embankment.
Then I went into the cellars of the building to see whether we could shelter here should it hail down on us again. My hair stood on end when
I saw what was being stored there unguarded. Big rockets were lying in their wooded crates such as I had never seen before. They resembled Stalin Organs but were much bigger. It struck me that the cases must also serve as their launchers, but I had no idea how they worked. I became angry that our leadership should have left these dangerous things lying around unguarded and unused. What if the Russians occupied this area, would they not use them against us? They certainly had no regard for the civilian population. The rockets were not primed of course, but there were some boxes stacked in one corner with what looked like detonators packed in wood shavings. So everything was there except someone who knew how to use them.
When I got back into the daylight, I beckoned my NCOs over and the forward observer down from the roof. I told them briefly what I had found in the cellar and ordered an immediate change of location to get away from this place with its dangerous devices.
Somewhat closer to the Schlesischer Station we found what we were looking for. A stranger came toward us. From his uniform, I took him to be a Wehrmacht official. I stopped him and asked him who he was walking alone through this area. He identified himself as an ammunition technician working for Colonel Lobeck. ‘So,’ I thought, ‘he can explain something.’
I took him down into the vast cellars, watching him closely. He showed no surprise when he saw the cases. I suggested that he must be the storekeeper, but he denied it.
‘Can you show me how these things work?’ I said.
He said: ‘I am an explosives expert and already had a proper training in it during peacetime and have attended courses ever since, so I know all about the latest products. I can of course show you how these work.’
‘Then help me to get them into position and fire them when necessary.’
With Our Backs to Berlin Page 20