In the Fire of the Eastern Front: The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941-45

CHAPTER 16 Festung Breslau

After weeks of varied fighting to the north-west of Breslau, our SS Regiment Besslein was moved back to the outskirts of the city. There we were to learn that the 6th Soviet Army had completed their encirclement on 15 February 1945, and with that my private fears became reality.

Seven well-equipped divisions then stood on a front that surrounded Breslau, with another six as reserves. In total 150,000 Russian soldiers waited to besiege the Silesian capital. They were experienced ‘Red’ fighters who had not been defeated in many a battle on their way to the west. On top of that, they had support from numerous aircraft.

Altogether the Armed Forces, i.e. the Waffen SS, Volkssturm and Hitler Youth, had a third of their expected strength. There were 50,000 men and an odd assortment of members of the Navy and Air Force, mostly with no fighting experience. With that lack of experience, plus the disproportionately older age of the Volkssturm, an assignment for them, on the front-line, was out of the question. A death-defying battle began with only 200 artillery pieces, 7 tanks and 8 assault guns, in an unequal fight against an appalling opponent. In that situation we had to fight for five extra men, get dug-in without sleep, and always keep changing our positions from one place to another. Meanwhile nearly 240,000 citizens, mostly the elderly, and mothers with children, waited expectantly for better or worse.

Instead of attacking from the east, the Red Army attacked from the south. Supported by Stalin tanks, they managed to advance 2—3 kilometres into the southern villa district of the city. The Hitlerjugend fought by our side on that tough assignment. For some it was their first fight, and many of those very brave young men lost their lives. After three weeks of street fighting, that lovely district, with its villas, parks, gardens and lakes, was reduced to dust and rubble.

The mercilessness of the fighting was recorded by Russian war correspondent W.J. Malinin. On 24 February 1945 he described it as follows: “Every house bears the mark of the bitter fighting. The streets, in which one or two of the larger houses have been deliberately demolished by the ‘Hitlerites’, are barricaded with stones and gun emplacements to obstruct our path. Every barricade is defended with machine-guns and with mortars. Our Soviet soldiers must find new routes for our infantry. Our engineers have to blow holes into the walls of other houses through which our artillery can push their guns in order to advance. Our soldiers have to fight from floor to floor in the remaining houses. Yesterday, Sergeant Ivannikov with his men fought in one house for an hour and a half. In it the ‘Hitlerites’ had destroyed the stairs. His men attacked with anti-tank rifles, through a hole in the first floor. They killed five of the sixteen men above, who were dropping grenades on them. The remainder surrendered. 1st Lieutenant Odinkov managed to clear four blocks of houses inside two days, killing 300 Hitlerites. The 27th birthday of the founding of the Red Army was very well honoured indeed”.

The expectation was that the Russians would attack from the north and east. In the last few days of January, the order had been given to evacuate thousands of the inhabitants who had wandered into empty houses in the southern part of the city. As the danger from the south was recognised, two-thirds of the evacuees were then evacuated once again. For that purpose, trams that were still running were commandeered to go within a few miles of the front. It was a psychological therapy which calmed the population. The theory was that when the trams were still running, then the situation couldn’t be too bad. It was a sign of normal life, even when the enemy lurked on the edge of the city. We were dependent on the radio and official announcements from the NSDAP in the form of the Silesian daily newspaper, the Schlesischen Tageszeitung. It was known as the ‘megaphone’ of the Armed Forces. This front-line newspaper appeared daily with advice, information, colourful propaganda, commentary and appeals for stamina, right up to the last days before the capitulation. After the bombing on the 1st of April, the last tram ground to a halt with the collapse of the overhead cables. Having lost their use in carrying passengers, they were then used as anti-tank obstacles. They were parked in double rows, to block the whole width of the road, in order to stop enemy vehicles. During the fighting, many enemy tanks were destroyed at such barricades by Panzerfäuste and anti-tank guns. Very early on, paving stones had been torn up by willing men, women and youths. They barricaded empty windows, leaving just an embrasure for the weapons of our infantry. The sturdily-built homes housed many a machine-gun nest, and the bitter fight for Breslau became tougher with each day. The population gave us 100% support. The slogan painted on nearly every door, “Every house a fortress”, was no propaganda in Breslau, but a meaningful military measure. From those provisional embrasures we were able to keep the Russians at bay, very successfully, and for long periods of time. A great compensation for the German soldier in Breslau, was the fully furnished quarters in which he found himself, that were left behind by the fleeing inhabitants. Even when the pauses in the firing were short, the luxury of falling into a made-up bed was thankfully appreciated.

I was also able to enjoy the luxury of a ‘white’ bed when our military doctor ordered bed-rest for me. I had a couple of days in the Military Hospital, which had been erected in the evacuated Institute for the Blind. Pus oozed from the wound after the metal splinters had been removed from my leg, and I wallowed in the care of the friendly Red Cross nurses.

From where the Institute for the Blind was situated on West Park it was not far away to where the company supply unit was to be found. Upon being released from hospital after the third day, I limped my way to the Pöpelwitz housing estate to report for duty once more. The 11th Company military clerks were housed in Malapanese Street in a very large house with many floors. Also there was my friend Georg Haas, the company accountant, who was overjoyed at my appearance. There were no doubts as to where my bed was going to be! That was in ‘his’ flat, in ‘his’ house.

When he was going about his duties during the day, I helped him by preparing the Notification of Death letters that were waiting for signature by the company leader. The letters of communication, to the families of the dead, did not tell the truth of the conditions of death. Of course, that was out of consideration for the bereaved. Our unspoken law was always to retrieve the bodies of our comrades for burial. It caused us great sorrow when circumstances did not allow this to be done. Very often, as I have described, it would have meant suicide for us to have attempted this, in situations that we could not alter. We could, however, with these notifications of death sent to parents and family, imply that it did. Every one of my fallen comrades, and I knew them all, were respectfully given ‘a hero’s death’. The parents, mother, or wife, should and would never know of the long hours in no-man’s land that he had spent in pain, and dying alone. Our message of death had to be as painless as we could make it, and so we deceived and veiled the truth, in doing this duty. It was the worst of any that one had to perform in one’s life.

Fate can often be followed from a photo-al bum. I had this chance while in quarters with Georg. I was much moved, as I looked through a thick raffia-covered album that I had found. Each photo had been neatly and accurately inscribed, so that I could imagine the scenes behind the photos. I followed the fate of that young family and, although unknown to me, I knew all about them.

There were photos from a happy childhood. There were wedding photos. ‘He’ standing proudly in his Air Force uniform as a Technical Sergeant, in his No. 1s naturally. ‘She’ as the pretty bride dressed in white, wore her hair in a large roll on the back of her neck, in the fashion of that time. Of course, those pictures were followed by those of their children, two sons who had been photographed on the Holtei Hill, perhaps on a day’s outing. There were many, including some of their last holiday, where they were seen in a tree-lined avenue on their bicycles. Fredrick the Great had those trees planted. But the growing conditions, plus the raw east winds of Silesia, were not ideal and all had bent trunks. The very last which had been glued into the album, was a cutting from a news paper, edged in black. The article was decorated with a black cross, which announced ‘Fallen for Germany’.

Where was this lady of the house, this war-widow and her children, who had left her house as if she had gone shopping and would be returning soon? Had she, had they survived? It was spick and span and everything was in its place. It was clean and tidy, so we as guests in her home, tried to keep it that way, knowing full well that it would soon be a sacrifice of the war, as would the album, the record of their lives, that she had had to leave behind.

Among her possessions in the lounge was a gramophone, which we happily used, listening to modern hits and martial music. To put this machine into gear after a glass of dry red wine, which Georg had procured from somewhere in the city, was sometimes a problem though. We did not always have the opportunity. The occasions were rare and of short duration, for even in the supply unit the alarm had to be audible. There was also a radio, an extremely good set with a long-range receiving capacity. It was made in elegant black Bakelite, at which we sat to hear the news which was always richly descriptive. We could pick up foreign radio stations too, and did, although that was forbidden.

Sometimes our very human curiosity got the better of us, and among other radio stations we would listen to Radio Moscow. It was transmitted in the German language and prophesied doom and gloom with phrases such as, “Fright eats away the soul!” and other well-known Russian sayings. On every hour, and punctually at midnight, a monotone feminine voice would begin to dramatically proclaim the death of a German soldier. The mixture of ‘hot-air’ and poisonous ‘black propaganda’ made no impression at all on us soldiers. But how was it received by the not-so-robust members of the public who also listened in?

Continual movement of the besieging forces demanded constant movement from us within. We had to change our positions time and time again. On our marches to new positions, we were stopped by many of the residents from the quieter areas, who asked about the current situation on the front-line. Everyone was frightened, in particular the women. The two main questions from everyone, were “how long can we hold out?” and “Will you be receiving help from outside?” We did not know, and could only answer with some vague knowledge based upon rumours. The rumours were that the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, General Ferdinand Schörner, with several divisions from the Strehlen and Zobten areas, wanted to try to reach Breslau. That was true, but throughout the period of the siege, there was no sign of them.

Alongside this hope of outside help, the military leadership within the fortress looked at possibilities of escape. A Breslau-born professor was very useful in that way. He produced parchment scrolls from 1767, showing a system of underground tunnels beneath the city. The entrance was to be found below the City Hall, and ran parallel to Schweidnitzer Street, deep under the Church of St. Dorothy, to the city walls. The engineers then went to work and found the tunnel which, as could only be expected after all those years, was in poor condition. To restore even a couple of kilometres would take months. That does not mean that they did not try, they did! The short distance they restored was very useful. They were able to erect an artillery observation post going under the Russian lines, for the direction of firing and observation of enemy movements.

The inhabitants had much to suffer, which they did with patience. Their stoicism would have pleased the old Greek teachers. Their philosophy taught that it is wise to remain indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune, or as in this case, the vicissitudes of fate. The troops faced that every day.

Helplessness, worry, the loss of homes, together with the ultimate fear of being conquered by the Russians, and fear among women especially, brought about many hundreds of suicides. This we knew, and we tried to calm people, telling them that they could count on us. After the war, Paul Piekert, priest of St Mauritius, reported that the extent of the despair of the Breslau inhabitants had resulted in 100 to 120 suicides every day. This was confirmed by Ernest Hornig, the priest of Silesia’s best known church, in his book Breslau 1945. He wrote that in total, a known 3,000 took their own lives in the 84 days that Breslau was besieged, and that many more have never been recorded.

Breslau’s only remaining line of communication was the Gandau aerodrome. Food was in plenty and no soldier or civilian went hungry in all the months of the siege. It was the ammunition that was very low and our ‘hungry weapons’ that had to be fed! Deliveries were made by our reliable and proven Tante Ju—52 transport machines. They took the lightly wounded out on the return journeys. Those men were to be treated outside the encirclement, so that they were fit for combat once more. The badly wounded who could not be healed so quickly, had to stay in the hospital in the city. It was not only ammunition, many tons of it being flown in up to 19 February, but also supplies of medication, first aid supplies, bandages etc, and also our post which came by air. The loss of the trusted planes was very heavy. The fleet of planes under the command of General Ritter von Greim lost 160 of their machines. At night, the soldiers as well as the civilians would follow the flight paths of the providers in the searchlights of the night skies. The droning of their engines and the timpani of Russian anti-aircraft guns added to the awful and, at the same time, breathtaking spectacle taking place in the heavens. Frequently we saw our planes in flames, falling from the skies, with their helpless passengers on board.

General Hermann Niehoff was rather critical of his flight to Breslau on 2 March. He was replacing the Festung commander General Hans von Ahlfen. He found himself in an unusual situation, flying into a city where the only wish of nearly 250,000 men and women was to be flown out. He described his flight, which to say the least was spectacular, in an article for the magazine Der Welt am Samstag. In the edition of15 January 1956 he wrote as follows:

A second attempt to fly General Niehoff into Breslau also failed. The second time it was because the controls of the Junkers were completely frozen. The third was successful, and it was through the efforts of a Technical Sergeant and Feldwebel. He had a trick up his sleeve, according to General Niehoff, and “simply oozed self-confidence!” The Feldwebel delivered the General with a daredevil flight, but safe and sound, into the inferno of Breslau. His technique was to spiral the Junkers high into the atmosphere, as high as “the old crate” would allow, and then turn the engine off! The Junkers would then noiselessly spiral to earth unnoticed, to just above the roofs of the houses. Daredevil indeed! However, after that experience, and landing safely at the aerodrome, the General then came under fire. He had to crawl on all fours, guided to safety by an ordnance officer with a torch.

It did not take long for this General to win the trust of troops and in-habitants. He was never to be found in his command post, an old ice-storage cellar that had damp walls, because he was always inspecting the current situation. He firstly made a reconnoitre of Breslau, making an underground house-to-house inspection. He squeezed through holes made in the cellar walls of the houses, providing access from one to the other. Up top, on the street, he had to run under fire in order to inspect the troops. Every unit in his command came under his critical eye. As the position of the front-line altered, his command post was changed to the building that housed the State and University Library on Sand Island, very close to Sand Church. He could then be found in the deepest cellars, thought to be the safest in Breslau.

In contrast, the rather young Gauleiter Karl Hanke, resided in a bunker of another quality, with many comforts. It was also assessed to be extremely secure. It had a number of offices, including a telephone centre, a communications room, a kitchen, canteen, shower rooms, and other rooms that were sectioned off with dividing curtains. He would sit in his ‘presidium’, a very large office or committee-room, surrounded by oil paintings, carpets and antique furniture, and using an oversized desk. In those surroundings he must have felt very comfortable indeed, and into which I stumbled quite unintentionally one day.

It was, if I remember correctly, in the middle or end of March that we had to change our positions because of very heavy artillery fire. We were seeking a safer place. Underground we could not know where we were, or where the long flight of stone steps which we took, would lead us. While investigating we suddenly found ourselves in a smoke-filled room. It was a fully furnished cellar. There were many people, both civilians and members of the military, and others wearing the brown Party uniforms. They were enjoying a feast at a very large table laden with food and drink, all of the finest quality. We, with our sudden appearance, had caught them unawares and put them in a very embarrassing position that could be clearly seen. Their guilty consciences demanded that we were invited to join them. We were duly showered with compliments on our performance, and helped with exaggerated gestures to the dishes. It was as if we were guests of honour, and not unshaven, unwashed and tattered ‘front-swine’ fresh from the main line of resistance, with ‘potato-mashers’ stuck into our boots!

We, as small fry, really could not complain about our Front-menu but this was another category. It was another world about which we could only dream, and somewhat grotesque at that. Up above there was all hell let loose. Deep under the centre of the burning city there was this almost Mephistophelian feast. We were sitting at this table! We were also overjoyed some time later, when bottles of ‘good cognac and wine’ were placed in our haversacks, with a hefty slap on the shoulder, to celebrate the ‘final victory’ and a victorious end of the war!

Today perhaps it is not so understandable that we were not disgusted at the Nazi ‘Golden Pheasants’ morals. That was a term very often used after the war and not understood by us at the time. But it did not ‘disgust’ us then. Perhaps we were too phlegmatic? I am no longer sure if in fact Gauleiter Hanke was present. If so, then he would have made himself very noticeable with his continual slogans. Throughout the siege, he was not very well liked by the inhabitants because of his over-exaggerated self-righteousness, when confronted with what he assessed as defeatist attitudes.

There was another encounter with a high-ranking Nazi official that was not so sociable. It happened because of complete carelessness with a weapon. There was thoughtlessness, because of impatience, and it all ended in tragedy. We were about to take over new quarters in the Zimpel district. The responsible district officer accompanied us to garages that had corrugated iron doors. In attempting to open one that had stuck, he attacked the door with the butt of a fully loaded machine-pistol, without its safety catch on. It exploded, as expected. Our sergeant-major received the full load in his intestines and within seconds was dead on the spot. We pounced on the man, taking his weapon away from him, shouting and cursing at him. That should not have happened, not to our sergeant-major. He was a man loved by his men, who fulfilled his duty as ‘mother of the company’ and who, above all else, had come through the whole of the Russian campaign without a scratch. His death was a very bitter affair for us, very bitter indeed.

It was only a matter of time we knew, before Gandau was taken over by the advancing Russians. Hitler also knew. He kept his eye on the situation in Breslau and personally gave directions. One was that another provisional landing-strip be made in the centre of the city. For this plan, all of the houses between the Kaiser and Fürsten bridges in the proximity of the Schneitzniger Park, had to be demolished. Tramlines, telephone poles, iron girders, as well as the mountains of rubble from the houses on the Schneitzniger Stern had to be transported away. It also included every thing from the mighty Luther and Canisius churches. That meant that all of it had to be removed by hand. Part of it could be used for barricades, but the rest had to be removed. Thousands of women and youths were conscripted for the work. They toiled by day and by night to fulfil that project.

And the Russians? They were very quick to find out what was going on in the middle of Breslau, in the Kaiserstrasse. The project was therefore the target of attack from ground-attack aircraft, which spat machine-gun fire and dropped fragmentation bombs on to the civilian labour-force, leaving a bloody trail behind them. The death toll was enormous, increasing daily during the month of March. That project was to be the main cause of death for the Breslau inhabitants, being estimated by the priest Ernst Hornig at 10,000!

The Russian advance on Gandau, and the continual bombardment during March, meant that it could only be days before they took the aerodrome. We knew that, but it did not take place until early in April. Until then, the faithful Junkers had carried out their duty in the supply of everything that the fortress had needed. It was on 4 April that the supply-line was finally severed. It was a day of heavy bombardment from the air, and heavy artillery fire from the ground, until finally Soviet tanks rolled into the aerodrome and took possession. The defence of the air traffic, incoming with supplies, and outgoing with the wounded, had been protected for as long as was humanly possible. It had been the largest and most worrying task of the fortress Commander-in-Chief, who wrote in his diary on 24 March 1945:

Versorgungsbomben were not bombs at all, but supply-canisters attached to parachutes. They fell to a large extent behind enemy lines, into marshland and on to the roofs of the houses. Then it really was not worth breaking your neck in order to recover them. We did however recover some, complete with parachute, for the red, soft silk was readily worn by the lads as a scarf tucked into their shirts. The anger, the disappointment, and the frustration were great when we opened them one after the other. There were 50 altogether, each holding two Panzerfäuste. Firstly we found that the detonators had failed. Secondly, the Panzerfäuste held no explosive substances! We could not imagine why. We just could not understand. The disbelief turned to anger at such shoddy work. We could not believe that it was simply human error. Was it then deliberate? Was it then sabotage? Were secret saboteurs at work in the homeland? As a result, pilots doing their best to bring us much-needed weapons were losing their lives, in waves, in the line of duty, on extremely dangerous sorties.

When we found ourselves in that emergency situation our frustrated minds brought invention to the fore. After all, why did we have the FAMO engineers at hand. From the original employees totalling 8,000, there were then only 680 left in Breslau. They consisted of workers, technicians and engineers and they were there for our problems. They gave us their technical know-how and their time. Working both by day and by night, they replaced what was missing. I must stress that they worked miracles. All made a supreme effort to give us what we needed. For instance we had more than enough new machine-guns, but all without their locking units. The FAMO men constructed this complicated lever-arm from just an illustrated spare-parts catalogue, just as a locksmith would do. Despite bombardments and coming under artiltery fire, the men worked ‘like the devil’ in the partly-destroyed factory. They not only restored small arms, but even tanks as well. The finest achievement of all was the armoured train that they produced in fourteen days and nights of hard work.

From an old chassis, they reconstructed a ‘rolling fortress within the fortress’ which was strengthened with steel plating and armed with 2cm and 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns. It chugged its way right into the middle of the Russian lines. From pure fright this iron Trojan recouped many a lost position for us. Soviet magazine-fed rifles were re-designed to use German ammunition. Because we needed tracer pistols, the FAMO men produced them newly made, from an old existing model that we had given them. The Russians had no equivalent of the FAMO men and were left with the useless newly delivered weapons dropped by our parachutes.

For the defence of a particular railway embankment, a pyramid-shaped shelter was produced from steel tank plating, as a machine-gun nest for a rifle squad. It proved to be very efficient indeed. Their work was interrupted more than once because of damage to workshops. Provisional ones had to be erected elsewhere. The epilogue to the super-human efforts of those men, for whom nothing was impossible, was sadly, that 13% of the remaining employees died as a result of enemy attacks.

Another example of stamina from the inhabitants, was shown by a group of skilled workers at an old factory in the Wilhelmsruh part of the city. They produced grenades with the most primitive of materials. Explosive material from Russian ‘duds’, plus steel splinters, were used to fill 8.8cm anti-aircraft cartridges. The men were then producing as many as 200 to 300 per day. Due to their efforts, we caused heavy losses for the Russians, even when 15% of the hastily produced grenades were also ‘duds’! The soldiers on the front also had ideas, stemming from the new experience of house-to-house fighting. They needed new fighting tactics in an overwhelming experience for which they had had no training. One of those ideas came from the hazards of collecting fresh supplies of ammunition and rations. We had to cross a large and dangerous junction which caused us to lose many men to snipers.

The Russians just waited for us to make a move. We scratched our heads for ways to fool them and came up with the idea of hanging washing lines, with carpets, runners and curtains etc, to obstruct their view. The camouflage washing-line worked so well that we made more of such screens, in every imaginable direction, to draw attention away from our runs. We felt safe enough to hang banners with the message, “The SS Regiment Besslein fights here to greet the ‘Ivans’!” That pledge was adhered to by the Regiment.

During street fighting we didn’t need to worry about the enemy artillery, for the distances between the two sides was such that neither wanted to endanger their own. Small arms and grenades decided the style of fighting. We had to get used to house-to-house fighting. One could not mention the theoretical training at the Close-combat School in Prague or Klagenfurt. That bore no reiationship to the practical experience in Breslau. In the Steppes of Russia, large armies fought over large distances and there were clear physical lines and fronts. Apart from partisans and a few enemy air raids, everyone knew where the front was, and from there only, came the danger.

However, in Fortress Breslau it was very different. Here our enemy hid in unexpected places, perhaps next door, on the other side of the street, or in the house behind you. Sometimes we could feel that he was there, very close to us, but did not know where. With time we developed a sixth sense about him, and even his weapons, just as we had done in the Steppes. We could determine not only the range but even the calibre of his bullets that whizzed around our heads. Then, I could have written a booklet on the seismo-graphic sense that I, that all of us, developed with the day-to-day routine, despite the turmoil in the city. In the maze of uncountable streets and squares, alleys and corners, we had to change our tactics. We were forced to, for the Russians had many a trick up their sleeves that were not so honourable, that were in fact downright cowardly. With time, our tactics were exchanged for sniping, and ambush was the order of the day. However, for us, creeping up on our enemy was made easier, for the cover in the ruins and cellars was better than the Russian Steppes had ever given us. None the less this street warfare was calculated, malicious and brutal. A glaring example of misconduct from the Reds, was the striking misuse of Red Cross armbands, breaking the laws of both the Hague and the Geneva Conventions.

One day three ‘unarmed’ Russians wearing those armbands, carried a stretcher to within yards of us. We honoured the code of stopping firing whilst they recovered their dead and wounded. That to us was sacred! As they came nearer to the house-frontage, they threw hand-grenades that had been hidden under the blankets on the stretcher. As we could not react as quickly, they were able to disappear to the other side of the street, unharmed.

It was the worst form of soldiering that we had experienced, an unfair and unscrupulous method of war and one which we had never used, however hard or bitter the conditions became. But after that, we changed our tactics too, returning to ancient but ethical ones, in which we became specialists. To be fair, I must add that this incident was the only one of its kind that I heard about in Breslau.

In the desperate situation in which we found ourselves, we could not carry on a war without also improvising. If we wanted to come through it in one piece and beat the enemy, we had to use their underhand methods. Sometimes, no-man’s land was no wider than a street that could give us some sort of protection. Our engineers scratched their heads, for the laying of mines in the normal manner could not be considered, as every move that they made was observed by the Reds. It was the soldiers who suggested that the mines be laid as booby-traps in ‘bricks’. There was more than enough material from bricks lying around in powder form which was then used to paint the reconstructed wooden boxes as ‘bricks’ in which the mines had been packed. After the reconstruction the ‘bricks’ could not be distinguished from the real ones. Under cover of darkness, they were pushed into position with long rods, from cellar windows or ground floor balconies. The Russians never noticed and our engineers had ensured that their combat area was as safe as they could make it.

After information was received from the main line of resistance, of the retreat of our soldiers from certain areas, the engineers were very quick to lay explosive material in the houses in the foremost lines. We worked closely with the engineers, relying on the damage caused to the houses and those who had managed to reach them. After a short time, many Russian soldiers had done so. As soon as the engineers, whose positions lay 200 metres behind, detonated explosives, then we sprang into the still-smoking or burning house, to hunt down the Russians still dizzy from shock and surprise. Sometimes a five-storey house had been demolished, flames reaching its roof-beams. Sometimes we had to wait and sleep in a house in which an un-exploded bomb lay. In that situation nerves of jelly were of no use to us. Despite our in genious ideas, the Russians were far superior in their ‘underhand’ strategy of war. Their ingenuity had already been obvious to us in the winter campaign in Russia, where we had had to learn to adapt. We were still learning in Breslau.

Naturally enough, weak links formed in our front-line, even in the ‘take from Peter to give to Paul’ action within the troops. There were occasions where units could not be given any help and were left to their own devices, ingenuity and superhuman effort saving the day. One of those weak links was in Augustastrasse. The Russians knew this and were determined to break through at that point. We were also in Augustastrasse. Budka in the next house to us had a very hard time of it when, in the very large building of the Regional Institution for Insurance, coke stored there was set alight. A fight for their lives started for Budka and his men. Fighting bare-chested, a team of helpers showered cold water over them, so that they could continue to fight in an increasing heat of between fifty and sixty degrees. They were forced to change shifts at half-hourly intervals. The men upon being relieved, went immediately to the entrances of the building. There they were handed supplies of mineral water from the Selters Mineral Water factory nearby, and gasped for ‘fresh air’. This superhuman effort paid off. The Russians did not break through, for Budka had known that relief from reserves was not possible and to retreat would have given the Reds exactly what they wanted.

Another unforgettable encounter took place in an old and very large school. Another lesson had to be learnt from the Reds, in the use of small arms. The scene was a changing one. It took place in the corridors and then on the staircase of this large building. We were to be found on the top-most floors and the enemy in the cellar, where we eventually penetrated to in total darkness. It was so dark, that we could not see a hand in front of our faces, so communication from one to another was verbal. Only so could we determine how close we were to the Reds. We were in fact actually as close as the length of the unexpected use of a flamethrower, i.e. 30 metres. Such indoor use of flamethrowers was very rare. We could not anticipate it, and some of the men suffered terrible burns at such a close range. It was pure hell. But we eradicated the fire-fiend with a Panzerfaust.

As mentioned before, it was not only the military who made sacrifices, or who became sacrifices, as General Niehoff came to experience. He was approached by a young Breslau-born woman who made a very dangerous suggestion. It could not be hidden within the fortress that we had a ‘problem-child’. It was a small one, but nonetheless one that was our own fault. It need not have arisen if we had done our work properly. A wooden bridge over a small river had been left intact on our retreat, much to the delight of the Russians as bridges are always of strategic importance. This ‘little bridge’ enabled Russian supplies to be brought, as and when needed, and as expected, was strongly defended. After asking for help from the 17th Army outside the fortress, it was still intact, two air-raids having both been unsuccessful because of very strong anti-aircraft fire.

Ursula, nineteen years old, a telephone operator in the Breslau telephone exchange and a BDM Gruppenführer, knew all of this. She appeared in the Command Post of General Niehoff, offering her services in destroying this bridge with explosives. The offer moved General Niehoff, for what more could prove the desire of this ‘Silesian’ to defend her home city? It would however have been totally irresponsible of him in allowing it. So he told her that her work in the telephone exchange was also vital and that was where she should return. It was just four days later that General Niehoff learned that the bridge had been destroyed, only charred wooden remnants for posts being all that could be seen emerging from the water. Ursula? Had she not taken “no” for an answer? It was to prove so. Research revealed that she had found an explosives expert and with feminine wiles had convinced him that she could learn everything that could be learned about this material and its uses. She learnt quickly, in days, what usually took engineers weeks, if not months. She was not alone in her work, for two other BDM girls accompanied Ursula on her mission to the western front-line. They swam under a drifting paddleboat using the flow of the river to bring them to the bridge. It lay immediately behind enemy lines, and there they completed their mission.

Whether she, whether they, lived to see the success of their mission is not known. Nothing more is known about Ursula and her friends. Did they die in the explosion? Were they killed by guards when trying to return to the city? Even today nothing more is known and their fate that cannot be pursued. Their sacrifice must however, never be forgotten.

Other women and teenage girls within the fortress, also gave ‘over and above their call of duty’, especially in the now-overfilled First Aid posts, and military and civilian hospitals. Nurses and auxiliaries worked day and night under the worst of conditions, showing civil courage and garnering achievements beyond human expectation. It was an incredible talent and invention when literally hundreds of people, including patients from sanatori ums, mental institutions etc, had to be evacuated from these sometimes burning buildings and under fire from the artillery.

In bunkers, three above ground and four underground, and the ten hospitals in Breslau, an eighteen-hour operation programme was the order of the day. The flow of casualties was unending. I had cause to visit one of the above ground-bunkers, in the search for a friend of mine, who had been wounded when we were fighting in Augustastrasse and whom I found after a long search. I found him eventually in the round, concrete and steel six-storey bunker at Striegauer Platz, which I could only describe as a catacomb of death. Originally it was to be used as an air-raid shelter for the in-habitants, but the building, which was without windows, had been used for the wounded since the siege began and housed as many as 1,500 patients. It was always full and the doctors and nurses always gave dedicated care in that mausoleum.

Entry into this bastion was through two steel, fireproof doors, designed of course for the protection from fire. Because of that, one was confronted with firstly a wall of darkness, upon passing through the doors. Secondly, one was immediately met with foul air, the stench of pus, blood and ether, mixed with a pungent sweetness, reminding one of the battlefields. A narrow stair case wound its way upstairs around the round building. The electric light was sparse, very sparse. Leading from the passages were concrete cells, for want of a better word, housing three patients lying on collapsible beds, almost in darkness, for the only light came from the passages. The delirium of dying men emerged from the ghostly darkness, together with the cries of pain or the faint murmur of “Comrade, com rade”. The suffering of mankind rang in their voices. It came from the remnants of men, who had ‘run the gauntlet’. They had received the military ‘punishment’ of that destructive war.

I wanted to escape from that horrifying place, but I found my friend in his wretchedness, lying on bare boards, bandaging protruding from underneath his open jacket. There was a light in his eyes as he saw me and silently he gave me his hand. I did my best to console him, telling him that he would pull through. But three days later he died from his wounds. If that was not enough, I saw with my own eyes the facilities available for the dead, in that situation and place of death, which were far, far less than offered in a cata -comb. The corpses were piled one on top of the other, on the ground floor near the stairs that I had to pass. My friend, with his broken ‘dog-tag’, was finally to be put on top of that pile of corpses.

There were many rumours about that bunker at Striegauer Platz, some becoming a legend. They stemmed from German soldiers not wanting to surrender it, but abandoning the burning bunker in the end. My friend and as sistant field-doctor from those times, Markwart Michler, who was an eyewitness and with whom I have been friends since we were both prisoners of war of the Russians, told me however, that a planned evacuation of the bunker took place at the end of April and the bunker was left to the Russians.

I visited Breslau in 1972 and apart from obvious shell holes in the structure, I could not determine any other form of damage and certainly no burn marks. That still mighty concrete bastion was naturally sealed against inquisitive eyes and stretched itself to heaven as usual twenty-seven years later. Twenty-seven years after, the Polish authorities had not thought it necessary to clear the rubble of war away from its portal where it still lay.

Life in the besieged city was full of contrast. Here one fought and died, there one lived and loved. The front was not recognisable as anything but a communications zone, and there was practically nothing to determine soldier from civilian, for we had become a conspiratorial community. The war was everywhere, but even that slept, if only for a short while, like a beast of prey, bloated from the blood of its sacrifice. It was then somewhat peaceful and the soldier-lad dreamed for a couple of hours of the love of a lovely girl, for it helped him to forget the nightmare of war.

Everyone in the fortress, be it soldier or civilian, now greeted one another with an ironic “Stay healthy!” this irony interpreting the ever present mind-set which did not hold much optimism of surviving. When however, the few opportunities presented themselves, then they used them to the full, with wine, song and girls, with the motto “Enjoy the war, as freedom will be hell on earth”!

We were frustrated young men. We had seen nothing of the world. We had not sown our wild oats. We had not lived or loved. What had we had from life? Was our final chapter to be death, or to freeze in the wilds of Siberia? To ignore a ‘tantalising situation’ is a question of moral determination, is it not? To enjoy this ‘tantalising situation’ while in the midst of it, one needed to adapt, to make the best of life under the slogan, “Live today, for tomorrow you die!” And we did! People must understand, that with the enormous exertions that we had to make in that besieged city, in war-time, inhibitions that we would have had to overcome in normal times, were at a minimum and quickly thrown aside.

A new order was received and executed, in the middle of March. All women and girls, from the ages of 16 to 35 years of age, were conscripted into the Labour Service, to help the military, some in uniform helping the Wehrmacht. Naturally enough this brought us into closer contact with the feminine species. Many of the girls were employed in the ordnance units and were mostly very young assistants of supplies. Some were engaged as helpers in the kitchens, others as auxiliary nurses, who were lovingly called ‘carbolic-mice’ by the men. Despite their age, these girls became mothers for confessions, comforters of the soul, and bracketed as ‘soldier-brides’. It was very easily understood, by everyone, when such young girls, alone and away from their familiar surroundings, sought the company of the soldiers. In sharing the same fate as we did in that inferno, the ‘fortress Lolitas’ were dancing on the top of this volcano with us. It is therefore no wonder that they sought, and found, more than willing guardians and protectors, in order to survive the ‘fate of Breslau’.

As a man of the cloth, the priest Ernst Hornig saw the situation differently. He criticised it as “depraved, a definite lowering of moral standards and inhibitions” and described “Orgies, whereby women and alcohol were the main priorities, and the overflowing cup of lust led to intoxication”.

Of course it was a contradiction and a paradox. Soldiers were engaged in bloody house-to-house fighting and people were enduring unbearable pain and suffering in Breslau’s hospitals. At the same time, perhaps just a couple of buildings away, comrades danced a ‘ring o’ roses’. It was however a very big exception to the rule and not to be over exaggerated, for after that ‘honeymoon in hell’ the said soldiers found themselves in the middle of a merciless battle, just a few minutes later. They could, and many often did, lose their lives. Willingness and discipline suffered the least of all under those conditions, for such virtues were too deeply rooted. Although strongly forbidden by the rules within the fortress, a short visit by lady-friends was allowed, even in the foremost lines of the front. The ‘hard-necked’ and love-hungry among the girls, donned long military coats as camouflage, daring to visit the chosen warrior at his post. It was dangerous not only because of the iron-polluted air, but also the danger of attack, and of course of being discovered on the spot. The comrades did not care and looked in the other direction. It must be said in looking back, that the soldier lost his life before his innocence. The reality of fighting within Breslau’s fortress was far from ‘love and lust’ as described by the priest Hornig, but of fighting and dying.

An affair, and my feelings for a female worker from the East, developed into a spectacular story, and one that could have had a fatal end. In the same manner that foreign volunteers fought in Germany’s army, foreign volunteers worked in civilian positions as nurses. For example, some came from the north and west European countries, as well as forced female labour from eastern Europe. It was a pure coincidence that I learned that both Flemish and Dutch nurses were working in the Spital, on the west side of the city. Overjoyed at being able to use my mother tongue, I found not only them, but also the beautiful Tanya, a Russian girl working in the kitchen. She came from somewhere around Smolensk and was very sympathetic. She had been a student and spoke very good German. In our ‘fire-pauses’ I visited her, drawn very much by her beauty, and the strange aura that she radiated. She had high cheek-bones denoting her Slavic origin. I can remember very well how her dark curly hair peeped from the white headscarf that she wore. Despite her simple clothes, for me she was the absolute Venus. I warmed in particular to her sympathetic interest in the fate of my comrades at the front. When I told her of the fate of some of my friends in that merciless war, the resonance was of utter pity and sorrow.

I could not, and did not want to believe that her absence one day was because she had been arrested as an enemy spy. Tanya a Russian agent? My friends advised me very strongly not to intervene on her behalf and luckily I followed their advice. Unwillingly I realised, and later it was to be very clear to me, how dangerous such a tête-à-tête could be, for she was in truth a Russian agent. My behaviour was based on the presence of soldiers from Ukraine fighting alongside us. I wrongly assumed that she was of the same opinion as they. Before she had begun to work in the Spital, her mission had been to inform her Red Army comrades of the supply routes and movements of German troops. It was done from her hiding place under the eaves of a deserted house in Striegauer Platz, for the Russian artillery. She was not to be compared with Mata Hari from the First World War, but was more the perfect actress. I own up to being a romantic and clearly naive admirer, and became one of many of her ‘sacrificial candidates’.

We had been warned so many times! Many times in our training period we were warned about sabotage and spies, as in Reibert’s “Service Laws of the Armed Forces”. We were particularly warned about the wiles of the feminine species. I had fallen, ‘hook, line and sinker’, into that trap. Only now is the enormity of the potential results of that situation quite clear. Cleary Tanya was very interested in the situation in our fighting zone, and had shown false sympathy for the fate of my friends. I found some consolation in the fact that I, as a subordinate, could not and did not give her any important strategic information, thank God! Despite an enormous disappointment in Tanya’s character, I had to admire her courage and her dedication to her Bolshevik convictions. It could have led to her execution, as the International Rights of Law permitted. But it pained me too. It did not turn out that way, however. Fate decided to show Tanya some mercy, at least provisionally.

Long after the war, I was informed by one of the women who had also worked in the Spital, that she had seen Tanya, in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the Red Army, driving in an open horse-drawn coach through the city, decorated with medals. I would have loved to have had the chance to ask her how she had escaped, or was freed, for that was a real wonder. The throw of the dice from ‘lady luck’ had given her the ‘six’ that she needed. Never had a German soldier such a peaceful, happy and also naive relationship, with a member of the enemy, and a Russian agent at that.

There are times when the truth is not as believable as fantasy or fiction, but is none the less the truth, such as the following. Our soldiers bumped into their well-armed Russian counterparts on a wander through the cellars, looking for wine. It was to be found in well-stocked but deserted cellars. They bumped into a group of Russian soldiers with the same idea. The ‘Ivans’ and the ‘Fritzes’ it would appear, had the same fine nose for the bottle, and both had the same needs.

Although armed, there was a stand-off. Perhaps the Russians, already in a light state of stupor, decided that reasonableness under the motto, ‘well, you find what you want, and we’ll do the same!’ was the best course of action. For that is exactly what they did. Is there anything more curious than that? It is said that Roman warriors fought with a short, sharp sword in their right hand and a bottle of ‘juice from the grape’ in the other.

The ‘good stuff’ was not the only necessity sought after in the cellars of Breslau, shelter was sought, too. It was in those cellars that both the civilians and the military found protection, when not on duty. The ceilings had been strongly supported with wooden or steel posts, to prevent collapse. The advantage of the man-made passages through the cellars, connecting whole streets with one another, was that one could escape when trapped in a house. It was carried out at the beginning of the siege and was the escape route for both the inhabitants and the soldiers, during the air raids. There was, at the same time, an orienteering problem down below. You had to know where you were and how to get to your destination. Otherwise you very quickly found yourself behind enemy lines, bumping into the ‘Ivans’. The problem was quickly recognised and the routes provisionally walled-up, or under armed guard.

Along the front-line, the cellars of the houses were emptied of their contents. Everything landed in the garden or the back yard, but the big, fat rats, in whose territory we were encroaching, stayed. The doors of their quarters were the drains into the underworld and their numbers were not small. There were literally hundreds, which is why one had to sleep, when sleep was possible, with one’s blanket over one’s head. Chairs had been commandeered for the cellars from the deserted or damaged flats and houses. So we were hunched together in the pantries or coke-rooms, or where space allowed, pale faces giving a ghostly appearance in the flickering candlelight. There was seldom conversation, as it disturbed those who dozed while sitting in a chair. We were in a continual state of listening, with at least one ear cocked as an antenna. Our weapons had been cleaned in the lull and were at the ready, for the ‘enemy’ must not surprise us.

When peaceful in our zone, then we always heard the spasmodic rat-tat-tat of Russian machine-guns and mortar fire somewhere else. When we were the target, we knew that we had to go into action immediately after the firing ceased, into close combat. With that habit one could have slept for a couple of hours, in theory, but we never relied on this, it being the unspoken advice of our inner guardian. When exhaustion overcame us, which was often, and we slept, then it was always only enough for a short dream or two. Our dreams were never about the gruesome war, for our unconscious saw to it that we had a recovery period from it. We dreamed about the exciting and the peaceful. With death breathing down the back of my neck, I dreamed about my trouble-free childhood playing in green meadows, in the polder. My brothers, sisters and parents, and all of Zierikzee, came to life when I was dreaming. It was only after the war and my time as a prisoner of war was over, that my dreams then plagued me. They became nightmares about the war and followed me in my sleep for many, many years after.

In comparison with our brothers-in-arms on the front line, who were never in danger of aerial bombardment or very heavy artillery fire, we were regularly under shell fire from the Russians. “When the ‘Ivan’ spits”, began the verbal apprenticeship of newcomers from the ‘old hands’ of the Eastern Front, or “when it bangs over there, then count to twenty, for it’s a twenty-gun salute!” Then we had to ‘watch out’. If you were surprised by a sudden swish in the air, then hit the ground ‘pronto’, for that could be your end. “If that hits you, it is not only you but everything and everyone around!” The conversation was about the Russian ‘Big Bertha’ whose shells had a very sensitive detonator. The shells detonated on a hair’s-width contact with the earth, without making a crater but reducing everything to splinters as they raced, flat over the ground. Everything and everyone without adequate protection, was grated into splinters, within a radius of 50 metres. A weapon with a steep trajectory, it was ideal in reaching much wider targets behind the defensive lines and field positions. Although we had this weapon too, it was of course the German version.

When the alarm went, we sprang up instantly, using the already rubble-covered steps, to join the combat above. In the pauses, the positions were only protected by a one-man guard and a machine-gunner. When well and truly lost in rubble-reduced Breslau, and one heard that whistling projectile, then one had to duck to avoid it. Your luck had run out when you were a part of a direct hit. In the mountain of rubble within the fortress, we felt that we had returned to that of the Middle Ages with battlements and embrasures. We were surrounded by an overpowering enemy outside its walls.

The reliability of our comrades within our battalion was still very strong, despite heavy losses. That was something at which Tanya had wondered, on meeting my comrades, into whose eyes she looked, to find them still full of optimism. It must have been clear to her, why all of the assaults of her Red Army friends had failed till then. The crown of laurel leaves was for them as ‘victors’, but it remained out of reach. The field-grey uniforms were perhaps tattered and patched, but the spirit of their owners inside was not. Their faces had not shown her any fear of this merciless siege. She could not ignore the fact that these Germanskis had been able to withstand the stranglehold on Breslau for so long. The spy from the east had perhaps felt some apprehension, that despite the dull silver runes on their collars, such men could still survive a storm or two.

The fortress had now been under siege for some weeks and not fallen to the enemy. It was not only the German newspapers that reported the high losses of the Russians and “the fanatic fighting of the brave defenders of Breslau”, but also neutral foreign newspapers regularly reported on ‘the tough defence of Silesia’. In the Stockholm News of 22 March 1945, they said the following, “One cannot really imagine how the defenders can supply themselves with food, water, and ammunition. During the whole of the war, there has been no other example to compare with this dramatic and fantastic battle of wills, where the bitter defiance of death is second to none. Pravda echoed the report of “stiff resistance in Breslau”. They had paid “a high and bitter price for a success that could only be called at that stage, minimal. The toll in men was unimaginable.”

We made the assaults of the Russians harder with every day that went by and they began to make tactical mistakes that were to our advantage. Even General Niehoff began to scratch his head, wondering at his Russian counterpart. In his account, printed in on 5 February 1956, he stated that he had never understood why Major General Vladimir Gluzdovski had always attacked from the south. When it had been seen that a supposed combined attack from both the west and the north was planned, he had so easily broken the belt of defence around Breslau. The Russian radio messages were never disguised. They were heard, translated and therefore delivered a mass of information for the military leadership in the city, which was also to our advantage.

We could also ascertain many a mistake from enemy behaviour, an attack from them never being a surprise. For instance, we always knew of an assault when they were seen to collect together on the front-line, were loud in their actions, and hasty in their chaotic organisation in the combat zone. The moment that we heard the ‘neighs’ of their shaggy steppe ponies, always to be found in front of their anti-tank guns, we knew what was about to happen. From our experience on the Oder, ‘forewarned is forearmed’. That one advantage evened up the many disadvantages in which we found ourselves.