After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (18 page)

Conditions in Courland were harsh: troops had to beat off frequent enemy attacks, the weather was miserable, trenches often filled with icy water and men in front-line positions rarely received any warm food. And yet soldiers retained their morale, hanging placards in their bunkers declaiming: ‘We relieve pressure on East Prussia’ and ‘In Courland too we fight for the Reich’.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was bewildered that the Courland Pocket was still holding out and had not been evacuated. Its resistance seemed to make no sense, and Stalin began to imagine some ulterior purpose. At the end of the Russian civil war the Western powers had briefly intervened in the Baltic states – and he wondered whether history might be going to repeat itself. German intelligence played on this fear – sending him false information that the British navy had been in contact with the Latvian SS defenders. Courland preyed on Stalin’s mind in the same way that the fate of Denmark did on Churchill’s.

German resistance here continued. Schörner was able to weave illusion into fanatical belief – and it was a tribute to his dark skill that the resolve of the Courland defenders did not diminish after he left the pocket. Indeed, in April 1945 soldiers’ letters revealed a remarkable conviction that it was worth defending this isolated redoubt and they might yet see a turning-point in the war.

Sergeant Walter Kaese of the German 126th Infantry Division wrote: ‘Life is very hard at the moment, but we hope to be able to get through this and see the war turn once again in our favour … We must persevere – and victory will still be ours.’

Lieutenant Fritz Willbrand of the 300th Infantry Division echoed these sentiments: ‘Whatever the conditions here, it does not matter as long as we tie down the Russians. For as long as the Red Army is here these men cannot menace our homeland. Hopefully, soon the war will reach a turning-point.’

And Sergeant Joseph Meyer of the 263rd Infantry Division added: ‘The news we hear is anything but encouraging – but we cannot allow ourselves to become despondent, for we can never give up this fight until we have achieved victory: peace with honour and our nation secure in its existence and future.’

Meyer was a soldier and an artist – and in one of his letters home he asked to be sent fresh oil paints, brushes and palette. As Berlin was stormed by the Red Army – and their soldiers joined with the Americans at Torgau, cutting Germany in two – Meyer was photographed next to one of his pictures. In it, a resolute German infantryman stood guard – with grenade at the ready. A fortress lay in the background. It was Ventspils castle, overlooking one of the Courland Pocket’s main ports – where the Kriegsmarine delivered vital supplies to the army group. Ventspils was a medieval stronghold built by the Livonian Order – a branch of the Teutonic Knights – when the crusaders were on the defensive, resisting the threat of the Russian kingdom of Novgorod.

In Meyer’s depiction its stark silhouette seemed to belong to an enchanted fantasy rather than recent history. Hitler believed that the finished picture in contemporary art should be heroic and never show anguish, distress or pain. It should display ‘the true German spirit’. Here, the remnants of that Nazi mythology were fading but still alive.

But propaganda cannot exist in a vacuum. The resolve of the Courland defenders fed off the atrocity stories reaching them about Red Army soldiers’ behaviour towards the civilian populations of East Prussia and Upper Silesia – the looting, shooting and rapes. At the end of January 1945 a Red Army soldier wrote to his family: ‘I once again have sworn before my Motherland and the Party to avenge the death of my brother. Hundreds of Germans will have to atone for his life. Not one who falls into my hands will survive.’ Soviet lieutenant Nikolai Inozemstev, advancing into East Prussia and shocked by the cruelty of his compatriots, had confided to his diary: ‘Lines of carts full of refugees, the gang-rape of women, abandoned villages, these are the “battle scenes” of our army of avengers.’

General Dietrich von Saucken’s Army Group of East Prussia held on to bridgeheads on the Bay of Danzig, the Hela Peninsula and the western end of the Frisches Haff. Its defences extended along the Samland coast, along the coastal plain of the Vistula delta and miles of sand dunes. And yet it showed remarkable ingenuity in clinging to this foothold. Engineers from the Kriegsmarine, supplying the army group by sea, had brought in raw materials to this isolated German force and helped create a network of underground bunkers and tunnels around well-camouflaged concrete towers and pillboxes, linked to anti-aircraft gun positions. Wehrmacht soldiers nicknamed their position ‘the sandbox’. The defenders were holding out against Marshal Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front and their resolve had only grown when they saw the suffering of German civilians.

Many thousands of old men, women and children had died fleeing westwards along the narrow spit of land – with the Baltic on one side and a lagoon on the other – known as the Frisches Haff. Soviet pilot Yuri Khukhrikov said candidly and without a shred of remorse:

‘We really worked that strip. We flew in a group of six planes over the Frisches Haff, west of Königsberg. We turned so many people into mincemeat – only God knows how many. Thousands upon thousands died. Tens of thousands of people were on that road – you just couldn’t miss. Only the start and the end of it had any kind of air defence – a few German flak guns. The rest was entirely in our hands.’

Panzer lieutenant Leopold Rothkirch of the German 4th Army had now joined General von Saucken’s army group: ‘Witnessing these atrocities had a very powerful effect on us,’ he said. ‘We grew extremely angry and resolved to hold out for as long as possible, to help our people evade the Russians.’

As long as the Army Group of East Prussia remained in existence, fleeing civilians could be evacuated from its territory. Von Saucken’s resistance had a purpose – but this only fed the race prejudice of the new German regime. For Dönitz and Schörner were united in their devotion to Hitler’s memory and by an implacable hatred of the Russians. On 3 May they ordered Breslau to maintain its resistance against the Red Army. They saw it as another redoubtable outpost, holding firm against the Bolshevik threat. And yet these civilians were not escaping from Breslau – they were dying by the thousand to maintain its defence, a struggle that after the fall of the German capital on 2 May had no strategic point whatsoever.

The city – 185 miles south-east of Berlin – had been under siege for over three months. It had been designated by Hitler as a fortress – although it possessed no natural fortifications worthy of the name – and it had been transformed into a stronghold at enormous cost to the civilian population. Field Marshal Schörner, welding a defence line against the advancing Red Army, wanted Breslau to be held by a ferocious act of will. ‘Almost four years of an Asiatic war have transformed our front-line troops,’ he exclaimed. ‘They have become hardened and fanaticized by the struggle with the Bolsheviks.’

There was little doubt that Schörner himself had become hardened and fanaticised. Most of Breslau’s inhabitants were forced to evacuate their homes in the freezing cold January of 1945 and march westwards. Many died en route. The city was then garrisoned with SS detachments, regular German troops, the
Volkssturm
people’s militia and Hitler Youth units. A force of some 45,000, and the remaining civilian population – which amounted to another 20,000 – were exhorted to make Breslau a bastion of National Socialism by the equally fanatical
Gauleiter
(local party leader) Karl Hanke.

Hanke’s disciplinary measures – inspired by Schörner’s policy of ‘strength through fear’ – were terrible. He terrorised defenders and civilians alike – there were more than 11,000 executions for desertion during the siege – much to the delight of Hitler and Goebbels, who were inspired by Hanke’s devotion to the Nazi Party. Even ten-year-old children were put to work under Soviet artillery attack to clear an airstrip within the city. Attempts to avoid such work were met with the death sentence.

Fighting was brutal as the Soviets flung tanks and troops into the city – and the conflict descended into savage street fighting, causing untold suffering. Now, at the beginning of May, with Berlin captured, and Hitler and Goebbels dead, its continued resistance made little sense. And yet both Dönitz and Field Marshal Schörner urged it to hold out, regardless.

Troops of the 2nd Polish Army were fighting with the Russians at Breslau. They knew that at the war’s end Breslau would be granted to them, for Stalin – annexing lands in the eastern part of Poland – intended to recompense them with lands seized from Germany in the west. Lieutenant Waldemar Kotowicz wrote:

In our imagination, Breslau was a panorama of church steeples, white buildings and pleasing squares – with the River Oder running through it. In reality, we saw a huge cloud of dust and smoke hanging over the entire city, a swirl of raging chaos that completely obscured the sun. There were no lofty Gothic towers or green parks, only a gigantic sea of flames where houses or churches had once stood. It was a scene whose scale and impression bordered on madness.

German firefighter Walter Lassman recalled: ‘It was hard to believe it was not a dream … I was amazed, bewildered, shaken, as if I had seen a canvas of Hell. Behind me the cathedral towers were in flames, next to them, the archbishop’s palace – all around me, the city burned. Five-storey buildings were on fire, every window lit up …’

Fifteen-year-old Max Besselt, fighting with the Hitler Youth, added: ‘Wherever we looked there were smoking ruins and burned-out houses. It was enough to leave even the most hardened person at a loss for words.’

The pulverised city was entirely surrounded by the Soviet 6th Army and its Polish allies. There was now no prospect of it being relieved – and its continued defence served no useful purpose. It was at the mercy of heavy artillery shelling and frequent aerial bombardment. One of the city’s inhabitants, Thea Seifert, wrote:

About this dark time of horror it is almost impossible to speak and even writing about it is hard. One of the worst things is the terrible shelling we constantly endure. Each bombardment lasts for hours and causes a high number of casualties. One searches in vain for a lost loved one. The corpses are loaded onto lorries and then flung – without coffins – into the mass graves which have been dug close to the churches in the city centre. Here lie soldiers and civilians alike. One cannot recover any of their personal belongings – in most cases no records are kept and if they are, they are soon lost again. It is possible that some of the evacuees from Breslau, who left the city when it was still beautiful, fondly remember their former homes and imagine returning to them after the war is over. But nothing is left here but ruins.

Max Besselt wrote in his diary on 3 May:

No-one knows how things will turn out. There are fourteen of us left – manning two medium 8mm mortars. We used to be classmates at one of Breslau’s schools – now we are a gun team. Our position lies between two partially standing houses amidst a landscape of ruins in southern Breslau. The oldest of our group has just turned sixteen. For the last five weeks none of us have had any rest. We slowly retreat, repelling a constant stream of Russian attacks. We fight in the wreckage of these burning buildings – waiting for an end to it all.

Hugo Hartnung was fighting in one of the
Volkssturm
units, formed of men too old to be conscripted, some with health problems, all with utterly inadequate military training and equipment. These men struggled to see the point of continued resistance – and yet military discipline remained severe.

‘They bring a deserter in,’ Hartnung wrote in his diary. ‘He is a craftsman, father of several children, who committed the “crime” of trying to save his family and get them out of the city, seeing that its defence is now utterly pointless. The man is of good character and bearing.’ The man’s responses in his interrogation were matter-of-fact – there was no special pleading: he knew that his fate was sealed. The cross-examination took a turn for the worse when a young lieutenant appeared, berating the man for his cowardice. ‘He repeatedly insults him,’ Hartnung noted, ‘tells him that he is a disgrace to the Fatherland who does not even deserve to have one bullet wasted upon him. The craftsman is shot nonetheless. His body is flung into a trench latrine and covered in chlorinated lime. Later that evening the lieutenant reappears to check that the court martial judgment against this deserter has been duly enforced.’

On 3 May Dönitz extolled Breslau’s continued resistance. The nearest German troops were at Zobten, over 20 miles to the west, and these lacked the strength to break through the besieging Soviet forces. Field Marshal Schörner telephoned the garrison commander and demanded that the city be held ‘in Hitler’s memory’. He told General Hermann Niehoff: ‘Fight to the last round and to the last man.’ Karl Hanke could brook no thought of surrender either. Hitler had appointed him to oversee the ‘fortress’, and although the Führer was now dead, he told the defenders to carry on resisting anyway. ‘We must do everything in our power to save as many people as possible from Bolshevism,’ he enjoined. A lengthy order was issued to the troops making it clear Breslau must still be defended.

Horst Gleiss wrote in his diary that day:

After a lull, the heavy aerial bombardment of our fortress city resumed today at the end of the heroic struggle for Berlin. The Soviet Air Force can now be committed in all its might against the remaining sectors of the eastern front still holding out – and complete its destructive work here. From about 9.30am, numerous twin-engined bombers appeared in the sky with fighter escorts. As a result of their surprise attack, in the Benderplatz, where I am stationed, there have already been ten killed and many more wounded. Three soldiers were killed as they sat at the roadside by the air pressure from the blasts – one was decapitated. In front of them a woman lay dead. At 16 Benderplatz we found an old man dead, and another person badly injured – we carried them by stretcher to the hospital. There are many wounded amongst the soldiers.