After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (24 page)

The T-Force log book then briefly stated: ‘Major Hibbert went to the Naval Academy and took charge there.’

When Major Tony Hibbert’s jeep pulled up at the Kiel Naval Academy his uniform was dishevelled and his leg encased in a heavily stained plaster (the consequence of a car accident after the Rhine crossing). He had only his driver for back-up:

A very smart naval officer stood on the steps, looking at me with considerable disdain. I noticed he was pointing a gun at me. I was unarmed.

Because he was a naval captain and I was only an army major, I saluted him and said ‘Guten Morgen’. I gestured towards his gun and told him in German that he should not shoot me. I then said in English:

‘Sir, I have come to help you end this bloody war and if you would assist me up these damn steps and take me to your office we can get to work.’

The German roared with laughter. He helped Hibbert up the steps and apologised that his office was on the first floor, so they would use a ground-floor one instead. He then phoned Flensburg and asked to be put through to Admiral Dönitz. Dönitz was taken aback that the British had suddenly appeared in Kiel, but seized the opportunity nonetheless. He confirmed the agreement at Lüneburg and now instructed that Kiel – its factories, docks, ships and U-boats – be entirely surrendered to Hibbert’s tiny force. It was a wonderful swashbuckling adventure and it had won Kiel for the British, but further embroiled them with the Dönitz government.

None of this was known to the British press and people. They were simply delighted by Montgomery’s triumph. It was a superbly orchestrated public relations exercise that seemed to bring the war tantalisingly close to an end.

But it was a triumph marred by personal tragedy. On 5 May Montgomery’s ADC, Charles Sweeney, of whom he was enormously fond, was killed in a car crash escorting members of the German surrender delegation. Sweeney had been with Montgomery throughout the war. When the field marshal was visited by Winston Churchill and General Sir Alan Brooke for the Rhine crossing in March 1945 Sweeney remembered the last occasion they had all dined together, at a dinner party in Brighton in June 1940, only a few weeks after Dunkirk:

‘The outlook was terribly black,’ Sweeney recalled. ‘We were almost afraid to look over the sea in case we should find the German invasion fleet darkening the horizon. I remember the Prime Minister saying, in a rasping voice bitter with hatred: “They must never, never be allowed to put one foot upon British soil.” But we only had one fully equipped division and practically nothing else to offer them a fight. Now, five years later, we are crossing the Rhine.’

Sweeney remembered a church service attended by Montgomery, Churchill and Brooke. ‘Winston made an extremely good address afterwards,’ he said, ‘on the dark days when England stood alone against the Nazis. He believed that ever since those days, there was something more than simply our war efforts guiding us – it was the rightness of our cause. Churchill remarked that if anyone had asked him whether we could win in 1940, he would have had to admit he hadn’t the faintest idea, but something would turn up! And something had turned up – Germany had invaded Russia.’

On 5 May, Sweeney left behind a half-finished letter to his wife – one that was full of hope:

For the first time I can say where I am – Lüneburg Heath. It will be an historic spot in years to come, but as far as I am concerned it is just a damn cold windy place at the moment.

Yesterday the surrender was signed at HQ. It is all too wonderful for words. The German Army is completely defeated. The last few days have been terrific – German soldiers everywhere, pouring in countless thousands down the roads. We have contacted the Russians – 6th Airborne did it first, and luckily for me I was liaising with them, so I arrived at the point of contact with the leading brigade. It was a thrilling moment. Yesterday I became involved in a party with 6 Airborne HQ and some Russian generals. A lot of whisky flowed very quickly …

It is a tonic to see the whole German Army completely finished: guns, transport, airfields, planes, ships – everything is in our hands. The Germans are terrified of the Russians and are surrendering to us to get away from them. I have been favourably impressed by what I have seen of the Red Army.

His widow was told: ‘Charles’s grave is on Lüneburg Heath, very close to the spot where the armistice was signed and peace came to stricken Europe.’

6

Prague

5
May
1945

B
Y
5
MAY
the remnants of the Third Reich had reached a crossroads. The Dönitz regime had surrendered territory to Field Marshal Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath, in the hope of being able to negotiate in the west and fight or retreat in the east. The city of Prague was vital to this policy. Held by a Wehrmacht garrison, its possession allowed Field Marshal Schörner to extricate his Army Group Centre from the Red Army and move west to surrender to the Americans.

Prague was the last major European capital to be liberated, and the city lay between advancing American and Russian forces. On 4 May General George Patton’s Third Army had been ordered into Czechoslovakia, although with strict instructions to go no farther east than Pilsen. The Soviet 4th Ukrainian Front was already fighting in south-eastern Czechoslovakia near Olomouc. It was at present holding a static position, tying down the defenders in front of it – though it had the strength to increase this pressure and push farther west. Marshal Ivan Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front was planning to advance into the country from the north, liberate Prague and then pursue the retreating German Army Group Centre. The 2nd Ukrainian Front would do the same from the south, trapping the Wehrmacht between these two Red Army pincers. It would be the last major Soviet effort of the war.

Czechoslovakia had suffered the longest period of German occupation in Europe and had paid a heavy price for it. The Nazis had dismembered the country, seizing the German-speaking Sudetenland, setting up an independent, pro-Fascist republic in Slovakia and renaming the remnant the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Germans had butchered the Czech lands – and, after the assassination of Hitler’s henchman Reinhard Heydrich (an SS general and the region’s brutal Protector) by two Czech resistance fighters in Prague, butchered thousands of Czech people in reprisal.

The assassination had been prepared by the British Special Operations Executive with the approval of the Czech government-in-exile and further support from the fledgling underground resistance movement in Prague. On the morning of 27 May 1942 the chosen group readied themselves on Heydrich’s route from his home to the city’s castle, where he worked. Some acted as lookouts while the two assassins – Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis – placed themselves on a sharp bend which would force his car to slow. It was a sign of the Protector’s absolute self-confidence that he travelled to work in an open-topped Mercedes. At the crucial moment Gabcik’s Sten gun jammed and instead Kubis threw a grenade into the car. Heydrich was only wounded in the attack but he died of those injuries just over a week later, on 4 June.

The Nazis’ revenge was terrible. More than 5,000 people were executed and two Czech villages burnt to the ground. The two assassins – Gabcik and Kubis – and the remainder of their seven-man group were betrayed by an informer within the underground movement. On 18 June their hiding place, the Church of St Cyril and St Methodosius in Prague, was surrounded by the SS. Three of the men died in the main body of the church – the last four made a valiant stand in the crypt, holding off hundreds of SS soldiers for more than fourteen hours. With their ammunition about to run out, they killed themselves.

The assassination was a watershed moment. The British and French governments renounced the Munich treaty of September 1938 that had annexed the Sudetenland to Germany and promised to restore the region to Czechoslovakia at the end of the war. The SS – who regarded Heydrich as a martyr to their cause – accorded their fallen general a torchlit funeral procession in Berlin and never forgave Prague. And the Czechs – despite the savage reprisals – were shaken out of the paralysis of defeat and humiliation. Heydrich had remarked of them: ‘One must break them or humble them constantly.’ The killing of Heydrich roused this oppressed people into standing up to the Nazis and showed them that they were not a nation of slaves. The courage of the assassins, as they fought and died in the Church of St Cyril and St Methodosius in June 1942, became the courage of an entire city in May 1945.

The pride of a people determined to cast off German oppression and the ruthlessness of the SS, determined to eradicate the merest show of resistance, meant that Czechoslovakia could easily become a last bastion of Nazi resistance. A comment made by one British citizen in the aftermath of Hitler’s death cast this warning clearly: ‘I fear the Nazis will continue to fight in Czechoslovakia and make a last stand there – to create the legend that they never gave up. If that is the case, I suspect that it will be down to the Russians to ensure that an unconditional surrender is imposed on these remaining forces.’

There was a huge emotional desire among the Czechs to throw off the German yoke – in the capital and also the rest of the country – rather than wait to be liberated. There was some preparation by the Czech underground movement, but the popular uprising that began early in May 1945 – in the capital and also in other towns and villages in the country – was largely spontaneous.

Shortly after midday on 5 May there was a scuffle for control of the Radio Building in the centre of Prague and at 12.33 an appeal for help was dramatically made: ‘Calling all Czechs! Come to our aid immediately! Calling all Czechs!’

Aware that American troops were now in the country and could pick up Radio Prague on their transmitters, an appeal was also broadcast in English – made by Private William Greig, an escaped Scottish POW from a camp on the Czech border, who had made his way to Prague in early May and now wanted to help.

‘Prague is in great danger,’ Greig warned. ‘We are urgently calling on our allies to assist us. Send immediately tanks and aircraft. Help us defend the city.’

William Greig was one of the unsung heroes of the uprising. Later that afternoon, he and his friend Sergeant Tommy Vokes (another escaped POW) found themselves trapped in an old school building with a small group of resistance fighters. Ammunition was running out – and more than a hundred SS troops were outside. Greig and Vokes resorted to bluster. They dressed in their British uniforms, demanded to speak to the SS commander and told him that they were the vanguard of a British paratrooper unit and three Allied divisions would be arriving the next day. The SS officer was so bewildered that he agreed to a ceasefire. After this astonishing act of bravura Greig returned to the Radio Building and made more English broadcasts on behalf of the rebels. He was later awarded the Czech Military Cross for his efforts.

By the evening of 5 May nearly 30,000 citizens of Prague had joined the uprising and more than a thousand barricades had been thrown up. Prague was indeed in deadly danger. The British had intercepted a message from Field Marshal Schörner, ordering that the German troops in the vicinity suppress the rebellion with ‘exceptional brutality’.

The Americans were in the best position to take Prague quickly, if they wanted to. US lieutenant George Pickett of the 64th Armored Battalion of the Third Army wrote: ‘Prague was the Paris of Czechoslovakia. All roads – political, cultural and historical – led to that city. Capturing it would have been a major success for our side.’

The Third Army’s commander, General George Patton, wrote in his diary on 5 May: ‘General Bradley is going to let me know whether the stop line through Pilsen is mandatory. In view of the radio report about the Patriots having taken Prague, it seems desirable to me to push on and help them. Apparently, the Third Army is doing the last offensive of this war.’

Eisenhower was being cautious. On 4 May he had communicated to General Alexei Antonov, chief of staff of the Red Army, that after the US Third Army occupied Pilsen it might be allowed to move to the western suburbs of Prague. Antonov rejected the plan, urging Eisenhower ‘not to move American forces in Czechoslovakia east of the originally intended line’, to avoid, in his words, ‘a possible confusion of forces’. After consideration, Eisenhower agreed to Antonov’s proposition. Patton was not to move east of Pilsen and Prague was not to be touched.

The capture of Prague had become a political issue. At the end of April 1945 Winston Churchill had raised the possibility of United States troops taking the city. There was no agreement with the Soviet Union that disallowed such a course of action and the British prime minister cabled President Truman directly:

‘There can be little doubt that the liberation of Prague and as much as possible of the territory of western Czechoslovakia by your forces might make the whole difference to the post-war situation in this country,’ Churchill began, fully realising that the Czech government-in-exile was pro-Soviet. ‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘if the western allies play no significant part in the liberation of the Czech lands that country will go the way of Yugoslavia.’

Tito’s communist partisans would form the new government in that country. Churchill was mindful of Yugoslav claims on Trieste and the uneasy stand-off there between the forces of Field Marshal Alexander and Tito. He finished: ‘Of course, such a move by Eisenhower must not interfere with his main operations against the Germans, but I think the highly important political considerations mentioned above should be brought to his attention.’

Churchill was right to raise this issue and here President Truman’s lack of political experience told. Truman deferred to General George Marshall, General Marshall referred to General Eisenhower, and on 1 May Eisenhower stated: