The World at War (79 page)

PRIVATE JOHN SENEY

US paratrooper

We were told there were some soldiers in a farmhouse wanted to surrender and we walked up in a loose group, not a military type of action, we were just going in informal, and several rounds were fired at us. Then we lobbed a bazooka shell into the house and several soldiers ran out. This one person was running away from me and didn't halt when I fired a round. It went down and when I approached I realised I had shot a girl about eighteen or nineteen years old dressed in something like the Women's Land Army uniform. And we ran into those sorts of situations quite often and we had to shoot some of the German children. It's still hard to say it now, but at that time whenever we captured an SS soldier, if he made it back to a POW camp alive he was lucky. In fact I can say that probably ninety per cent of the ones we came in contact with are buried over there some place.

MAJOR GENERAL FRANCIS DE GUINGAND

Field Marshal Montgomery's Chief of Staff

The Twelfth Army Group were going great guns and things moved so quickly then. The Ruhr was surrounded in no time and that was the beginning of the end and the Red Army were attacking strongly and so we had no fears, it was just a question of time, the Germans would have to capitulate – if it hadn't been for Hitler, it would have capitulated far sooner.

GUARDSMAN BROWN

Scots Guards

Casualties were bad enough at any time but particularly, perhaps, in the last two months of the war. There were men there, you'd been with them for five years, they were not just colleagues but close friends, you knew their families, you knew all about them. And you saw them getting knocked off in the last few days of the war, particularly sad at that time.

GUARDSMAN DUFFIN

Scots Guards

It was a very nasty shock indeed to meet any determined resistance because you felt that the end of the war was so close, and you had almost moved into a dreamlike and unreal situation, you know, towns and villages flew past with no resistance at all, normal countryside with no damage at all. Every day you said to yourself that surely this can't go on, and certainly I think the thought of one's own survival after all this gradually became uppermost in everybody's mind – it certainly did in mine, I don't mind confessing. Then when you did run into any sort of determined resistance, then to me it was a matter of hard anger. What are these – how dare these people prolong the agony any more? The other half was jolly nearly blue funk.

PRIVATE SENEY

We overran a German camp which appeared to have a large number of Jews in it and they were stacked probably four feet high for several hundred feet long in rows. There was evidence that they had tried to bury some of them and some had apparently been cremated in a couple of ovens. There was a village near by with German civilians in sight of the camp. Most of us were quite angry at the time so we had the villagers, from the age of six to sixty, anybody who could walk, digging trenches and burying these dead people laying there. The burgomeister was usually the first one you'd meet, he'd have his sash on, his badge of office, and he would inform us that he was not a Nazi and the town council was not, and then he'd proceed to name all the other dignitaries and we would round them all up and ship them out because then we knew we had all the Nazis.

ALBERT SPEER

Hitler's Armaments Minister

It was my duty to tell Hitler that from the point of view of armament the
war was lost and I did it in several memorandums and the harshest one was 19th March 1945, in which I told him very bluntly the war will be finished within four or six weeks, which was the right estimate it turned out later. And that it is now necessary, at the last minute, to do everything to help the German people for this situation which is now upon the Germans. He obviously knew what was in the memorandum. He said then not to think about the future of the German people, those who were brave they are dead, and those who survive are just cowards.

GENERAL HASSO-ECCARD FREIHERR VON MANTEUFFEL

Commander Third Panzer Army

In March it was very difficult to go through Berlin because all cars and electric trams had built up other objects for barriers in the streets. I needed two or three hours for this fifty kilometres and I came in the bunker under the earth and there was full of crowded officers and Party members, SS men and civilians. I was ordered into a small room and Hitler ordered me to defend east Berlin, the autobahn, and to give him more supplies of food and I answered to have no possibility to give him this because we had stood on the front to defend the Oder against the Russians and they were very strong. I could see this when I go by helicopter over my positions, Russia assembled mass of artillery and Hitler [made no argument].
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In the circle of Berlin west of the autobahn, I think fifteen or twenty kilometres, there were troops but not enough equipment. But the west side there is a green park, that was not possible to destroy but they cut all the trees. But the east side, I came from the east side of Berlin, it was all destroyed. I took command of the Third Panzer Army one hundred kilometres east of Berlin and we stood there until 25th or 26th April. But the behaviour of the soldiers at this front line, they're not quite the same as my troops because daily thousands of refugees from East Prussia went over to the border and they were assembled by our troops and it was important they are defended all the way from East Prussia.

GENERAL ALEXEI ANTONOV

Red Army Chief of Staff

The 18th Division of the SS attacked but we managed to hold them down and went further ahead. In the region of Bukov, also a very difficult battle, we took the town. Ever so many nationalities – Italian, French, English, Americans prisoners – were to be found in camps there and we freed them.

PRIVATE SENEY

We had several of our Airborne men return to our outfit from where the Russians had overrun a German camp. They told me they got worse treatment at the hands of the Russians than the Germans. They were subjected to questioning, they were mistreated, they were handled very roughly. Some of them went all through the German camp with their wristwatch but when the Russians freed them they lost them.

ALBERT SPEER

When I came back from the Ruhr valley I gave orders to contradict Hitler's strict general order to destroy everything. I entered Hitler's office and he told me Bormann reported me and 'If you wouldn't be my architect, I would fulfil the consequences which are used in such a case because it is high treason.' This moment I had the feeling that he saved my life and I felt some gratitude to him at this moment and remembered the times in which we both were quite happy about his plans. It was one of his sentimental strokes which Hitler had now and then, even in desperate situations, and I was saved by such. Then the discussion went on and he said, 'I ask you to go on a long vacation, you are obviously overworked and your ministry will be taken over by a deputy.' But I knew that the deputy would do the things I wanted not to have done and I said, 'No, I am quite all right and I don't go on vacation.' Then a strange thing happened, he said you should go, and I said I shall only resign as minister and he told me, 'That's just what I can't afford because for reasons of domestic politics and exterior politics I can't, unless you insist at the moment.' And there I thought the point was one to me. But the discussion continued, now he was giving in a bit. He said, 'Well, if you think the war isn't lost, as you told the gauleiters, then I think you can continue with the work.' But I said, 'No, I can't be convinced,' and he said, 'But do you have some hope that the war isn't lost?' Here was a point where I couldn't say no, if I would have said no I think then he really would have fulfilled what he said to me in the beginning, because it would have meant I am no more his follower, I am against him. So I didn't say anything and he thought that I didn't want to answer this question to avoid difficulties and he gave me an ultimatum, 'In twenty-four hours I expect to have your answer.' Then I turned again to the Reichschancellery twenty-four hours later and really didn't know what to answer him because there was no answer to it. He was standing there – I just got in my mind to see him standing behind you. The situation was won too because his eyes went moist and he shook emphatically my hand and said then everything is all right.

MAJOR GENERAL STRONG

Eisenhower didn't believe that it was worth risking a large number of casualties in order to capture Berlin, which sooner or later he'd have to leave and give back. It would have been very difficult indeed to explain to people why you did this, and then to soldiers why you did this and eventually left the town. If he had been given instructions and orders to take Berlin he would have done it. But those orders had to come from the Combined Chiefs of Staff. At the time when this controversy was going on the British were urging him to go to Berlin, Roosevelt was nearing the end of his life, wasn't really capable of malting any decisions and no others came his way except those and he, Eisenhower, carried them out. Suppose he had gone to Berlin, he'd have got entangled with the Russians. I don't believe that our relationship with the Russians would have been any better than we think. People say if we'd gone to Berlin we'd have none of this post-war trouble with the Russians, but I don't think so; I think it's the exact opposite. We'd have had more trouble I think with the Russians if we'd gone there and at the same time the Americans had got another war to fight in the Far East. They were not anxious to get more entangled in Europe than they needed to be. To go and capture an objective which was not a military objective was completely against Eisenhower's best convictions.

ALBERT SPEER

Goebbels behaved first quite reasonably when I told him that it's no use to fight in the streets of Berlin, what is left of the German armies should have a battle outside Berlin, because I told him if Berlin will be destroyed then your whole reputation as a good gauleiter of Berlin will be extinguished, because you too are now responsible for what is happening to Berlin. He approached Hitler with this idea but Hitler then decided that the battle will be in Berlin and all the bridges will be destroyed and that the Berlin population has no value to him, the fight must be to the bitter end. The bridges were not destroyed because I had a meeting with the general in charge of this Army Group and we took the charges out of the bridges before, so they couldn't be destroyed any more. Also people now were reasonable enough not to fulfil all the orders which were given from Hitler's place.

GENERAL WALTHER WARLIMONT

Wehrmacht Deputy Chief of Operations

You may ask how it was possible for a man like me, being as close to Hitler in my position as Chief of Staff, could go through all these years of war and keeping a conviction? Field Marshal Keitel said in Nuremberg relating to this time of March 1945: 'After all our endeavours to change the situation had no effects, we had to go on only for the reason that we were soldiers and had to follow our obligations.'

ALBERT SPEER

Berlin was, in April 1945, more ruins than a town, one could find almost no building which was still intact. And in the middle of it was the old Philharmonic building, well-represented building before the war, which had quite a history of musical events, and this was destroyed too. It was my wish to help the Philharmonic having a concert, I knew it would be my last concert for a long time, perhaps for ever. I invited friends and as much people as possible to go in; we were sitting there in our coats, because there was no heating, it was cold, it was shivering and in this atmosphere of destruction and misery the concert started. I made the programme and we started. Afterwards there were some other pieces of Beethoven, but when I came back from this concert to the Chancellery, very great news, now everything shall turn to the better. I didn't know what it was, Hitler was almost out of his mind and Goebbels was already there, and Hitler showed us the death of Roosevelt and Goebbels was jumping up and saying, 'That's it, that's it.' I was realistic enough, as I proved with my memoirs, that I thought the situation properly, at least in the last month of the war. But those groups around Hitler was unbelievable: they had that was no more rational thinking and they were just convinced that everything will go in the right way and each one was convincing the other one if they went low in spirit. And Hitler was the same, but also sometimes changing his mind from one second to the other.

GENERAL WARLIMONT

I did not stay in Berlin at the time, I flew down to Munich on an aeroplane so I had no impression of the conditions of Berlin itself. I couldn't have overlooked the destruction but I don't think it made any deeper impression on me because I was so sick at that time, I had a concussion of the brains after the 20th July plot. The strongest impression on the German people at that time was still growing demands of the war on almost everybody, so the oldest men were called to go and the youngest ones at the age of fifteen or sixteen years to the Hitler Youth, so it was clear to everybody that there was nothing to be gained any more. The same with the lack of everything from the daily life and those insane orders of Hitler to destroy the water and electricity on which even the plain life of the people had to be sustained. I had only one desire, that the Western Powers might come in earlier than the Russians, because the behaviour of the Russian troops was beyond any imagination in East Prussia.

GENERAL ANTONOV

On 20th April we reached the outer ring road of Berlin and then we fought in Berlin. 301st Division was there. In the evening we stormed the town of Altlandsberg on the outskirts of Berlin, everyone now knew that the Byelorussian troops, including the Fifth Army had reached Berlin. On 23rd morning, members of the Military Council came to me, gave me the task of taking Karlshorst, and to force the Spree. We prepared the artillery and the tanks, we didn't know that Karlshorst would be an historical place where the declaration for capitulation would be signed, we paid more attention to the forcing of Spree. At 1700 our division forced the reach of the Spree by a race on boats. 24th – a very serious counter-attack on the centre of Berlin, the Germans prepared themselves between the Spree and the Landwehr canal, bombed the bridges. 1 have photos of those bridges, of the Germans in counter-attack, of our people in Treptow Park, how they stormed buildings and barricades across the roads. 27th – we occupied Allianz Square and station and turned towards Gestapo and Ministry of Aviation buildings and the Chancellery; along Wilhelmstrasse and Saarland Strasse there were troops to our left and right. The ring was closing in on the outskirts of Berlin and in the very centre we were getting nearer and nearer to the centre of Hitler's HQ – the Chancellery.