Siege of Küstrin, 1945

Soviet troops from Kietzerbusch penetrated the Altstadt on 28 March 1945. By this time the Altstadt was just one heap of rubble. During the last two weeks the Russians had been attacking two or three times a day with twin-engined dive-bombers. Hardly any of our heavy weapons were serviceable, so there was no longer any air defence, artillery or anti-tank artillery. On this last day in the Altstadt the only heavy weapons available were one 150mm heavy infantry gun with six shells, and two 75mm light infantry guns with about 30 shells left. We all knew that the end in Küstrin would come quickly, but we wanted to fight on as long as possible.

Our three guns were deployed right on the northern edge of the Altstadt. Fire directing was not possible in the Altstadt, as our observation post was in Lunette Dora, west of the Oder-Vorflut Canal, so we could only fire in front of Lunette Dora or at the edge of Kietz. If we remained on the edge of the Altstadt with our guns, there was a danger that the Russians would crush us without our being able to aim a last blast at them. I therefore sought permission to bring my gun–the heavy infantry gun–over the railway bridge to the west bank of the Oder and redeploy it at the abattoir.

By about 1800 hours on 28 March 1945 the Soviet infantry had penetrated about as far as the Schloss in the Altstadt. With the permission of the second lieutenant in charge of the gun’s firing position, I went across to Lunette Dora to get Captain Wüstenhagen’s permission to redeploy. The captain told me that he was not authorised to do so, but agreed that I should take my request to the fortress artillery chief of staff. I went straight back to the firing position and told the second lieutenant before going on to the Schloss, where the staff were still located. On my way I passed through a casemate in which I met Captain Langenhahn coming towards me clad in a steel helmet, camouflage jacket and carrying a sub-machine gun, all brand new. With him were two or three gentlemen of his department, all similarly newly equipped, and a quite deranged prisoner.

Captain Langenhahn gave the impression of being in a very excited state as I made my report. His decision was that Second-Lieutenant Schmitz should fire off the remaining ammunition, blow up the gun and then deploy with his men in a certain Altstadt street. He then disappeared in great haste. The order made no sense: it was too dark for aimed fire and there were no explosives to destroy the gun with. I later understood why the captain had been in such a hurry. Apparently the Oder bridge was about to be blown and he wanted to get across in time.

I turned back again and begged our second lieutenant, who had no front-line experience and had been combed out of Norway, to ignore Captain Langenhahn’s order and carry out the change of position on his own initiative, but he did not feel himself competent to do so. So I went back to Captain Wüstenhagen again to get him to take a personal interest in the matter and give the orders, but he refused. Even if everything fell apart, strict obedience to superior orders applied.

It was at about 2100 or 2200 hours–in any case it was fully dark–when I set off to return to my battery in the Altstadt again. I was just about level with the abattoir where we had another gun in position, although damaged and no longer operational, and approaching the railway bridge to cross the Oder, when I was ordered to take cover as the bridge was about to be blown. As my gun team was still over there, I asked if all the soldiers in the Altstadt had come across, but received no answer and was once more ordered to take cover, so I went back to the cellars in the nearby abattoir.

Once the bridge had been blown, I went to Lunette Dora again to tell the captain that he was now without any guns, but when I returned to the abattoir I met all of my gun team except for one man. Staff-Corporal Macknow had long before, and without informing anyone, acquired a large rubber dinghy from the engineer stores and hidden it on the Oder river bank. Once the line of retreat over the bridge had been cut, he led his comrades to the dinghy, inflated it and crossed the river. Only Corporal Block had refused to come. He could not swim and was afraid of drowning should something happen to the dinghy.[2]

I remained two days in the Middle School. Here were wounded for whom no immediate operation was necessary. Early in the morning and in the evening we were given a thick slice of bread with canned meat and a large glass of cognac. Two of the field hospital personnel stood out on account of their goodness, peacefulness and personalities, one a woman wearing the golden Nazi Party badge on her jacket, and the head of the hospital, a fat lieutenant whom I only saw wearing his steel helmet in the cellar.

There was the constant sound of explosions coming from outside. The building shook, sometimes more, sometimes less. Only at night was it quiet, except for a little artillery fire. I found nobody I knew. News was hard to come by, only rumours. The radio merely gave the Wehrmacht Reports, commenting among other things on the increased attacks on Küstrin and the advance of the Americans on the Lower Main River.

In a small neighbouring room there was a pile of books on the floor. I sought out Apis und Este and Das war das Ende by Bruno Behm, but I could not read. I now realised that I had become nervous and that my hands were trembling a little.

On Wednesday the sounds of battle increased considerably. The Altstadt lay under constant attack from Soviet bombers and ground-attack aircraft and artillery fire. The constant howling, roaring, explosions and crackling broke through the regular discharge of our ‘Stukas zu Fuss’ that must have been stationed in the immediate vicinity of the Middle School. The noise and shuddering was so strong that we failed to notice when a heavy bomb hit the school; fortunately it was a dud that stuck in the ground floor.

A room in the cellars accommodated signallers, and another two engineer platoons guarding the nearby, still intact Oder Bridge. Those guards were happy when they returned to the sheltering cellars without having suffered any losses.

Volkssturm men carried wounded into the Middle School. Their platoon leader needed to use a lot of persuasion to get the men back out into the inferno.

The latest Wehrmacht Report contained nothing good: constant attacks on Küstrin, street-fighting in Gotenhafen and Danzig, further advance by the Americans in the Wetzlar area.

Towards noon and through the afternoon the situation reports worsened. ‘The Schloss is on fire!’ then ‘The Russians are in front of the Law Courts!’ And that was in a wing of the Schloss. The engineers too were restless. They had to keep the Oder Bridge ready for immediate demolition and the enemy were getting closer and closer.

At last came pleasant news. The enemy had been stopped and thrown back. But hardly an hour later darkness had fallen, the noise of fighting had died down, when came: ‘The Altstadt is to be evacuated!’ All the walking wounded were sent back to their units.

The Fusilier Battalion was supposed to be in Kuhbrücken. I set off together with Hans Schmidt, the sergeant from 3rd Company. Half an hour later the Oder and Dammvorstadt were behind us, we had already crossed the railway bridge to Kietz when a mighty explosion sounded behind us. Our engineers had blown the last bridge over the Oder.

First we tried to find accommodation in the lunette, but unsuccessfully. The wounded were lying on the floor there practically on top of each other.

We separated in Kuhbrücken, each seeking his own company. I was directed to a cellar in which Sergeant Manninger lay with the remaining platoon of the 2nd Company and a number of wounded. I was greeted enthusiastically. There was much to relate. The worst news was the destruction of the Thomagk section. In order to keep the attackers away from the dyke road, the section leader had had to dig in with his section on the enemy-facing side of the dyke at night, and without connection to the rear. When the Russians discovered them next day they engaged every foxhole with an anti-tank gun at close range until it was eliminated. Only the section leader was left alive that evening, albeit with a broken jaw bone.[3]

The last day in the Altstadt gradually became confused. The wounded in the Schloss cellars were given hand grenades with which to commit suicide should the Russians break through and start a bloodbath. With three other comrades I was attached to a squad and equipped with Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks. We were deployed in a still-smouldering ruin on the right side of the Marktplatz, where we were supposed to stop a Russian attack from the Kietz Gate. All around us we could see only ruins. The Schloss was on fire.

Soviet storm troops attacked through the Kietz Gate and from the north-west and took the Marktplatz as far as the Court House that afternoon. There was a desperate German counterattack shortly after dusk that was supported by a Hetzer.

Following the heavy bombardment during the day there came a sudden pause. Some time later we left our position and went through the communication trenches to the Schloss. The fortress commandant and his staff had disappeared. No one was there except the wounded in the field hospital. An uncomfortable feeling crept over us. All we could hear were occasional machine-gun bursts, the cries of the wounded and the crackling of flames. We followed some soldiers who had also realised that we had been left in the lurch. Later I heard that Gruppenführer Reinefarth had left the Altstadt in a Königstiger with many soldiers and had the bridge over the Oder blown once he had crossed it, even though there were still German soldiers on it, who all lost their lives.

Our group, which had meanwhile grown to 28 men, tried to get across the blown bridge to reach the steep west bank of the Oder. We got through soaking wet but only as far as the last pier, where we stayed and waited to see what would happen next.[4]

Suddenly it was announced that all who could walk and wished to do so, should go over to the west side of the Oder. A breakout would be attempted. With the help of some comrades I went along too, having nothing wrong with my feet.

Later I met up with men of my company, including Wolfgang Paul. He had been the gun layer in the Panther turret at the road junction in front of the Kietz Gate. When the Russians attacked, in the exchange of fire he received a sudden blow, opened the hatch and saw a metre-long tear in the gun barrel. An enemy shell must have hit it, putting it out of action.

In fact I first met Wolfgang Paul when we gathered together for the breakthrough west of the Vorflut Canal on the dyke road. We lay down together until the order: ‘All non-wounded to the north!’ and were finally just a few men.

Suddenly there was a mighty barrage from mortars and light infantry weapons, so we went back towards the railway bridge. More Germans joined, both wounded and unwounded, including a sergeant. Under the circumstances, we wanted to wait. By chance we found some dugouts with plank beds. I found a tin of dripping and a can of sardines in oil in my satchel. We lay down on the beds and I fell asleep. My comrades fastened a white cloth to a stick and stuck it in the earth on the roof of our dugout.

In the morning we went into captivity between Soviet soldiers with their sub-machine guns slung. At first I held my arms up, but after passing the first Russians I let them drop again.[5]

When enemy fire put an end to my observation post on the Marien Church, I left the Schloss Barracks. Captain Langenhahn wanted me to stay with him, but I went to my men, about 20 to 30 of them, who were sleeping in the casemates. On the evening of 28 March, a Wednesday, when the Altstadt was abandoned, the last Oder bridge, the railway one, was blown, so my men and I crossed the blown road bridge over the Oder and reached the Island wet, exhausted and only partly clothed. I sent my men to the abattoir and then went to the Artillery Barracks, bathed my feet and had just had my jacket replaced by my men when a colonel unknown to me appeared and wanted to know why I had not reported immediately; he accused me of shirking, and did not want to know when and how I had got there or that I was shaking from the wet, cold and exhaustion. Just as the situation threatened to become dangerous for me, my superior Captain Langenhahn fortunately appeared and immediately engaged the colonel and described me as one of his most reliable and bravest officers. Nevertheless, the colonel took me with him to the blown road bridge over the Oder and left me there to guard it. But one or two hours later Captain Langenhahn had secured my release and brought me back to my men at the abattoir. Thank God, for with the crowd at the bridge it was every man for himself. My men had already constructed a float for us to leave Küstrin by the Oder.

But the situation changed that evening when I discovered from Second-Lieutenant Haug that he had destroyed the radio in the Artillery Barracks immediately after sending the last message from the Küstrin Fortress. We were about to break out.

It had been quiet since dusk. A German voice called from a Soviet loudspeaker: ‘Soldiers, come over! Nothing will happen to you! Let the SS keep on fighting! Everything will end tomorrow anyway!’[6]

On the night of 28/29 March I tried with other comrades to cross over the already blown Oder Bridge. It was an almost impossible undertaking. We climbed over the rubble of the bridge in the darkness. Part of the way we had to slide over the upper works of the bridge as the lower part was under water. The Oder was in flood and had a strong current. A comrade of mine slipped and drowned. I could only hold on with the last of my strength, but on the morning of 29 March I made it, I had crossed the Oder.[7]

The following night [28 March] I spent partly in the Artillery Barracks, partly in provisionally constructed positions behind the Altstadt railway station. The cellars of the barracks were packed with wounded.[8]

It looked bad for us. The enemy occupied the last part of the Altstadt on the morning of 29 March. He had already landed on the Island between the Oder and the Vorflut Canal and was attacking the Artillery Barracks from the south. Our unit now only held a small bridgehead west of the Vorflut Canal. We no longer had any heavy weapons, only hand weapons, machine guns, hand grenades and Panzerfausts. Water for drinking could only be obtained at risk of one’s life from the Oder or from a pump in full view of the enemy. I had not changed my clothes for three weeks.

On the evening of the 29th I escorted Captain Fischer to a conference with an artillery officer, where the breakout from the fortress was discussed: to the west, attacking the Russian positions in three ranks with the Fortress Engineer Battalion in the centre led by Sergeant-Major Schulz.[10]

We left the bunker and moved parallel to the railway towards the Oder. We had two rubber dinghies, one large and one small, but had to leave the big one behind. We simply could not get it out of the undergrowth. The little one was extricated without trouble and quickly inflated. The company picked it up and launched it from the middle of the railway bridge. ‘I’ll come back for you!’ called Lieutenant Schröder from the boat, waved and vanished. Many soldiers were in front of the railway bridge and on its intact part. The noise of combat came clearly from the middle of the Altstadt. Possibly some were able to crawl over the girders to the far bank, but they went so slowly there seemed to be no chance for all those waiting to get across.

Among the men on the east bank I thought I recognised Dr Feldmann in uniform, the former head doctor at Küstrin Hospital. I had once been entertained by him with my father while I was still a civilian. It was obvious that he had given up the attempt to cross to the opposite bank.

With several comrades I went along the road bridge to where two bits of it lay in the water. Now we had to hurry, for the darkness was slowly giving way to the dawn. I crawled along the left upper girder until it sank into the water and dived across with widely spread arms over the strong current to the other upper girder, which led back out of the water. I pulled across a comrade who could not swim with a rope from the other side, and we crawled along until this upper girder also went into the water.

This time the distance across the water was even greater. I took off my uniform jacket and asked my comrade, who had come behind me, to throw my bread sack and jacket–all that I owned–after me when I got across. I would then pull him across with the rope. But my attempt to reach the upper girder on the other side failed. A really strong current grabbed me, drove me away, and I came to the bank at the end of the Oder Potato Meal Factory, only a few metres from where my father lay under the rubble.

Meanwhile the day had begun to dawn. An NCO behind me had stripped himself naked in order to swim more easily. His pale body could be seen from the opposite side and there was some infantry fire, but, God be praised, he was not hit. I then tried to get to the western end of the bridge to help the others, but the first part of the bridge went straight down into the water. It had no handrail, making impossible any attempt to approach the place in the stream where some of the comrades were.

I hung up my clothes to dry in the Artillery Barracks and was given bits of clothing by several people. All I could find for my feet were some rubber boots. Outside it was full daylight. I came out of the cellars and thought over recent events. I knew from the Führer-Order that Küstrin was to be defended to the last man and the last bullet. Some German aircraft came–the first that I had seen for a long time–and I later heard that they had dropped ammunition.

For me this hour, in its short silence as the battle took its breath, was the hour of truth. All my experiences forced me to the certainty that the great majority of Germans, and above all German youth, had been frightfully mishandled by leaders who claimed power and used it ruthlessly to constantly overtax the people, while at the same time being totally cynical about all the consequences. Whoever died was a hero, whoever survived had failed. That was the logic of our damnation.

During the course of the afternoon I looked for the rest of my company and found them in the cellar of another block in the Artillery Barracks. As I wanted to get my dry clothes, for I had nothing else other than trousers and shoes on, and went to get them, the cellar was blocked by SS sentries who would not let anyone out. ‘We are breaking out!’ was the word. A sergeant gave me an assault rifle: ‘Take it, I don’t need it any more.’

Shortly afterwards we marched as quietly as possible over the railway bridge and then turned right on the narrow strip of land between the road and the canal that delineated the front line here. There was no cover apart from a narrow trench in the bank of the chaussee and that was much too small to take the several hundred men moving north-west between the water and the road. Mortar bombs would have caused terrible losses.

Finally the groups of men closed up as the leaders stopped and then we climbed down the bank in complete silence. Of course we were expecting enemy rifle fire to break out but despite our fears, it remained quiet and the men formed into three columns, which moved through the uncertainty of the dark night in single file.[11]

On 29 March 1945 we still held the Artillery Barracks area, the Küstrin-Altstadt railway station and surroundings, the abattoir and the north-western corner of the Island, i.e. everything between the Oder and the Oder-Vorflut Canal. Further on we held Lunette Dora, the causeway from the Oder-Vorflut Canal bridges to Kuhbrücken-Vorstadt and the suburb itself. The enemy had pushed up close to our positions and was said to have advanced from the south to within about 50 metres, breaching distance, of the Artillery Barracks.

This everyone knew would be the last day of ‘Fortress’ Küstrin. My impression of an organised defence was over. Each unit, as far as such organisations still existed, was defending itself wherever it happened to be. Everyone sought an acceptable compromise between their duties as a soldier and self-preservation, for unfortunately, as everyone knew, the Fatherland could not now be saved.

On this last day I moved into Lunette Dora as I was determined not to become a prisoner of the Russians and wanted to get as far west as possible. That afternoon I performed an infantry role for several hours on the Vorflut Canal causeway, as the infantry previously deployed there had abandoned their foxholes, presumably because of the continuous Soviet mortar fire. It was in fact very unpleasant, but we held on until dark, when the Russians ceased fire.

Going back to Lunette Dora, I discovered that the fortress commandant, SS-General Reinefarth, had tried to obtain permission from Führer Headquarters to break out with the remainder of the garrison, but Berlin had refused, having the intention of ‘sending us into the history books’, as it was rather pathetically called when sending victims into last stands. The officers had then gone to the commandant to appeal to him to break out without permission, as it was tactically and strategically the same whether the fortress was abandoned that night or the next day.

That evening the officers returned at something between 1800 and 1900 hours and told us that a breakout would be made, despite the Führer-Order, but participation would be voluntary. This decision released me from my conflict of conscience whether to desert or not. Those wishing to take part got themselves ready. Anything that made a noise was discarded, faces were blackened, radios rendered unserviceable and thrown into the moat surrounding the Lunette. Not all the soldiers in the Lunette were taking part. While I oiled my assault rifle, others lay around sleeping.

We were told that the breakout would be made in four groups. Those from the Lunette and its vicinity would be in the southernmost. As Kietz had long since been in Soviet hands, no one would be breaking out between Kietz and ourselves. We assembled on the causeway and then moved about 200–300 metres north-west along it to reach our start point.[12]

Shortly before the attack on Berlin began, elements of the Küstrin garrison broke out at night. Colonel Scholze (the divisional commander) ordered me to take two vehicles and two or three men to look for the Küstrin garrison men fleeing through our lines and take them to certain collecting points. He came up close and said: ‘Should the commandant of the fortress, an SS officer, be among them, bring him to the divisional command post.’

During the course of the morning a vehicle carrying an SS-General approached and I informed him of my task. He told me: ‘You surely have enough to do,’ and had me show him on the map where the command post was. When I reported back to the command post late that afternoon, I was asked about the SS-General. He had not reported there and Scholze threatened me with court-martial for not fulfilling his orders.[14]

It was a wonder that no shots were fired. Nevertheless, heavy infantry and mortar fire broke out behind us towards Küstrin. I was happy to be away from there, where it must be bad.

There was no sign of any Soviets when my column passed a few metres from an anti-tank gun. I do not know how long we marched silently through the night, but it must have been for some time. Finally an even darker line appeared through the dark night, a road running along a slightly raised embankment. A horse-drawn cart was moving from left to right. We could hear it but not see it. Suddenly the driver began to shout; the horse started galloping and we began running.

At the same time firing broke out from left, right and in front of us and we ran as quickly as we could across the weak ground, up to and across the road, and as we ran we sang: ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, über alles…’.

It was so exhausting that I had no strength left to sing. We could not do anything but run through the night over the heavy ground through the continuing fire. But the firing was not always intended for us. One could get out of it with a bit of luck. My main thought was to keep going forward. They were not firing at individuals, and I found myself quite alone at one stage. I knelt down until I saw or heard the first man behind me. Then I looked for the lead again and jumped over a trench, seeing in the middle of my leap three or four Russians on my right who were beginning to shoot.

Then it was quiet for a short while, after which machine-gun fire opened up and mortar bombs started exploding. I was so exhausted that I could only run on when a machine gun turned on me. Someone fell close by who had been in the lead with me.

Again it became quieter. I jumped into a stream. The water ran into my rubber boots and cooled my feet and then became uncomfortable. I had to go round a large pond, passing some dead lying in the mud. I recognised the uniforms as Waffen-SS. I went round a shot-up tank with a German cross on it and was shocked when I saw and heard another tank a little later as it slowly moved across my line of march. I got out of the way, as I could not make out whether it was Soviet or German.

Then another dark strip appeared out of the darkness of the night. I thought: ‘If it is another trench, then I will stop and lie down. I can’t go on any more!’ It was a railway embankment, hardly higher than a metre. I let myself fall on the slope. A steel helmet appeared a few metres away. ‘German?’ I asked and received in reply: ‘Man, I nearly shot you!’ Ever after I was grateful that I had come across a man who had inhibitions about killing. I crawled across and embraced him. He was, I believe, no older than myself and appeared very insecure. He told me that the company command post was in a farm behind him. I reached it a few minutes later. Some German soldiers came up to me and said: ‘We have just stopped firing our mortars.’

Trucks arrived at first light, loaded us aboard and drove a while and then we climbed up to a railway line that took us, despite the proximity of the front line, to Fürstenwalde.[16]

The breakout took place at about midnight. It was a purely infantry attack without any preparation or support from heavy weapons. In the darkness of the night there were no orders, no leadership and no general engagement. The whole crowd marched, at first closed-up, simply westwards. After about 300 metres we came to the Nork Ditch (a name I learnt later), which was full of water and too wide to jump across, so we had to wade through and became wet up to our stomachs.

The enemy was alerted as we climbed out of the ditch and the first shots fell about 20 metres from us. We immediately took cover and wanted to wait, but then I said to a captain next to me: ‘If we take cover at the first shot, we will never get out of here!’ That acted like a signal–or so at least I thought–for they all climbed out of the ditch firing blindly into the night and shouting ‘Hurrah!’, storming the first Soviet position.

For a short while I thought that was the main task complete, but it then appeared that this was only the outermost Soviet line that we had broken through. Because of the lack of manpower on our side, we had become accustomed to only having a thinly manned front line and I suspected that it was not very much different with the Soviets, but I was grossly mistaken and we had only overrun one of their forward positions.

After perhaps another 200 metres we came up to the real Soviet front line. They had naturally been alerted and fired flares, in the light of which I could make out our seemingly compact group of some two to three hundred soldiers at most. The Soviets now opened fire on us and we spread out as far as possible, only a few of us dropping to the ground. It was a repeat of the first line, fire and ‘hurrah!’. I had already been wounded in the lower thigh during the attack on the first line, but it was only a flesh wound right through the leg, and I was still able to carry on.

During the course of the night we stormed one Soviet trench after another. No sooner had we crossed one than we came under fire from the next. As I remember it, we crossed six Soviet trenches, three facing Küstrin and three the west.

As the first weak morning light appeared, presumably at about 0500 hours, I saw the outline of several tanks, but could not make out whether they were German or Soviet, not that it made any difference, we had to keep going. The tanks did not fire at us, and today I think that they must have been German tanks that had been shot up or abandoned on 27 March during the attempt to relieve Küstrin.

In any case we also stormed the first German line, and when we reached the second German line we found a few apparently bewildered soldiers, who showed us the way to the first aid post. This was accommodated in a barn on the edge of a village and so far from the front line and so conveniently located that the ambulances could drive right up to it without being shot at. I was driven to Schlagenthin, seen to by a doctor, and then sent off from nearby Müncheberg station to a field hospital in Naumberg on the Sale. My Staff-Corporal Macknow, who had also been wounded in the break-out, was in the bed next to me.[17]

As far as I know, only the middle rank got through. I was one of those that Captain Fischer had told that when we reached the first Russian positions we should quickly cross the first line and run to the west so as not to be cut off by the enemy. Accordingly, I hurried forward, although hampered by rheumatism. I threw my Panzerfaust away after a while as I could not carry it any further. Loud sounds of heavy fighting had broken out behind us. It was a dark night. The only chance of finding one’s way was when a flare went up, then I ran towards where I saw comrades.

After a long time I met a technician who gave me a compass that I still have 50 years later. The technician later trod on a mine and was killed. At that time we were only 20 metres apart as we were disputing which direction to take. From then on I kept to tank tracks, where presumably there were no mines. Finally I was alone.

At dawn I reached a railway embankment with a watery ditch in front of it. There were several dead near a shot-up tank. Here I met a Luftwaffe second lieutenant who had a slight wound in the heel. We discussed whether there could be German or Russian positions behind the embankment. We first quenched our thirst in the ditch, then the second lieutenant went ahead over the low embankment and called me after him. We had made it and reached the German lines.

I was at the end of my strength and could hardly move. I could not climb up on a truck without help. Many hundreds who had broken out of Küstrin were assembled in the Mars-la-Tour Barracks in Fürstenwalde. Among them were Captain Fischer and Corporal Dahlmanns. I was put in the sick bay suffering from severe rheumatism.[18]

On 29 March I was once more deployed as an infantryman on the Island near the Reichsgarten pub, opposite the Kattewall. On the same day came the order to withdraw from Küstrin. I was in the last group that left the positions around the Artillery Barracks late evening in darkness and crossed the Vorflut Canal by the railway bridge. Shortly afterwards the bridge was blown. We had not come very far when we came under heavy fire from all sides and had to flee to the lunette off the dyke leading to Kuhbrücken. As I had had no sleep over the past days, I was totally exhausted. I did not care. I only wanted to sleep. So I stayed the night in this lunette with about 30 comrades. There was also the crew of a Tiger tank that had run out of fuel.

Next morning the Russians appeared and took us prisoner.[19]

On the morning of Maundy Thursday the Soviet firing resumed and lasted until late afternoon. Then followed the Russian attack that we had been waiting for for hours. The dyke road near the spider’s web of tracks was crossed with jubilant cries of ‘Urrah!’ making a breach in the last German lines. But the resistance stiffened, growing more and more like the tension of a spring under frightful pressure. Beyond the dyke road there were only 300 metres to the Vorflut Canal and the Oder. It developed into close-quarter fighting, in which the members of the Küstrin Volkssturm and their District Leader joined in on the German side.

At this point the German ammunition was finished. One went into the cellars and pleaded for every cartridge and hand grenade from the wounded. The forward artillery observer in Kuhbrücken had our heavy ‘fortress artillery’ in the Seelow area firing on the grid, firing within 100 metres. The heavy shells bellowed down on us, but were all duds! A runner panted up from the battalion commander: ‘Hold on until dark; then we will be saved!’

The jubilant ‘Urrahs’ of the Russians had lessened, mixed more and more with rifle and pistol shots and bursts from sub-machine guns, the explosions of hand grenades and Panzerfausts with the cries of the wounded and shouted commands, and above all with the shouts of ‘Hurrah’ from the defence that grew ever louder and finally replaced the others. Yet again the determined German defence was stronger and threw the attackers back, partly even to the other side of the dyke. And then the sounds of fighting broke off as suddenly as they had begun.

Manninger came down the steps with his section and slumped completely exhausted into a corner. The wounded had their wounds dressed as well as was possible. Not much was said for it was clear to everyone that the next attack could not be repelled for lack of ammunition.

Somewhat later a second lieutenant appeared with a doctor. They took Manninger’s section with them and every man that could hold a weapon. Then an SS officer came into the cellar with the same objective. I was one of those that remained in the cellar, together with Heinz Buder, another officer cadet from Wandern who had been wounded that day. Together we waited for nightfall.

Among those wounded that afternoon was my company commander, Lieutenant von Burgsdorf, who had been hit by three bullets. My machine-gunner had been killed. Fischer, the Alsatian, who had always said that he would not fall in this war and that he would not die, had been shot in the head.

Both sides were so exhausted from the close-quarter fighting that they now waited for darkness and did nothing although they were only the width of the dyke apart. At night came suddenly: ‘All out for the breakout!’ It was pitch black. We quickly destroyed all our papers, including our pay-books and removed our officer cadet flashes while others removed their rank insignia and decorations. Everything superfluous was left behind.

Before the still-mobile remains of the fortress garrison had finished assembling behind the Vorflut dyke our engineers blew the Kietz railway bridge and with the explosion we lost the element of surprise. The enemy immediately noticed that the Germans were forming up for a breakout on the dyke road and began a constant barrage, mainly with mortars. At the pond both Heinz Buder and myself were wounded again. Shell splinters hit his shoulder and the back of my left knee. There was no time to bandage them, so we tried forcibly to move shoulder and foot and they worked.

Our first attack had resulted in the Russians becoming aware of the breakout attempt and was beaten back. While the beaten spearheads wanted to go back, those coming from the Kietz bridge and from Kuhbrücken pushed forward. The narrow bank of the Vorflut Canal was limited by a minefield. Only a trench running along the dyke offered any cover for those in it. All the others remained exposed to the murderous fire. When the mortars fired, up to five men lay on top of each other in the trench. The individual units had tried to keep together when they assembled, but now everything was lost. The confusion increased when some of our own mines exploded. The call: ‘Officers forward!’ was answered by only a few.

When Heinz Buder and I reached the breakout assembly point, the second breakout attempt had already failed and increased the panicky confusion on our side. We realised that it was highly dangerous to remain in this leaderless mass. We therefore decided to hide ourselves in the ruins of the Dammvorstadt and to try to reach our main front line 24 hours later, by which time the inner enclosing ring would no longer exist.

We worked our way across the Kietz railway bridge. Several men had already sought shelter behind the bridge pillars. When even more bombs hit the dyke, a rough voice said in the darkness: ‘So perishes the Third Reich with fire and the sword.’ At this moment I too realised that everything was lost.

Once we had completed the necessary bandaging of each other, Heinz Buder and I climbed over the blown bridge to the Dammvorstadt. At the station we encountered the lightly wounded Klaus Kothe, who convinced us that hiding on the peninsula would be more promising than in the buildings. We crossed the mine belt with thumping hearts across the entrance to the peninsula. But it offered no cover. One could hide in the light undergrowth on the riverbank, but there was only enough room for two persons and we were one too many. Heinz Buder decided to return to the Dammvorstadt. We shook hands in parting for the last time.

Heinz Buder had reminded me beforehand that this was Good Friday, 30 March, and that we had now been soldiers for exactly one year.

Meanwhile further German attempts to break out had succeeded. The last one went well and we could hear the fighting some distance away.

Our hiding place was wretched. It was on a sandbank overgrown with bushes on the bank of the peninsula and consisted of a hollow of a man’s length and about 30 centimetres deep. We could get in with our arms either stretched alongside our bodies or tucked under our chests. We dared not move, as the bushes were so meagre that they only offered scanty protection from enemy sight. Apart from this, the hollow was half full of water and we would have to lie in it.

We took our places when it became light. All was quiet for a long time. Only a rising lark sang. Then came the first loud guttural shouts, occasionally broken by a shot or burst of fire. The Red Army was taking over the last German positions in Küstrin, including the important railway and road bridges over the Oder, even if they had been destroyed. All the while the trilling of the larks could be heard.

Russian could be heard everywhere: from the Dammvorstadt, from the other bank of the Vorflut Canal and from Kuhbrücken.

Uninterrupted sounds of work could be heard coming from the Kietz railway bridge. The crossing was being restored and at about noon the first truck slowly crossed the bridge that had been blown the night before.

It was torture lying in that hollow. Only a few times during the day did we dare change the positions of our arms or move our heads from one side to the other. We dared not do more from fear of discovery. If we stayed still, then even if we were seen we would have been taken for dead.

Although we lay in water the whole day, we did not freeze. Our fear of falling into Russian hands, our determination to break through to the German lines and our conviction that within 24 hours at the most we would be lying in a German field hospital and able to rest gave us the strength to remain alert and not freeze. We even hardly felt hungry.

Red Army soldiers fired often at the trees on the peninsula. If we lay directly in the line of fire, the shots went closely over us or crossed over us as ricochets from the water, making us break out into a cold sweat, as everything hung on chance whether we were fired on as targets or were hit unintentionally. We had not counted on this when we selected our hiding place.

We went through an even bigger period of anxiety that afternoon. Shots and explosions went off around our sandbank, sometimes closer and sometimes further away. At first we thought that we had been discovered and were being fired at with light mortars. After some time we recognised the cause: the Russians were firing captured Panzerfausts at the trees behind us. Unfortunately we were lying directly in the line of fire and not far from the trees. Because of the mine belt the Russians did not dare come on to the peninsula. In the late afternoon, however, two of them landed from a rowing boat. They first wandered around on foot, then went around the peninsula and came close to our sandbank. We were lucky. They both rowed past within 5 metres of our hiding place and either did not see us or took us for dead.

At last the darkness came and we could sit up and move around, take some sodden biscuits from our pockets and eat them. But still we could not move off. As it became dark the Red Army soldiers set fire to a house on the railway embankment, illuminating the Vorflut Canal so that we dare not cross it. It took hours before the fire died out and the soldiers went to rest.

My wound was hurting throughout the long lying down and my left knee and right arm would not move properly. Consequently I had great difficulty swimming the canal. The strong current carried me several hundred metres and tore off my boots. Completely soaked through, barefoot and limited in my movement, but still armed with two pistols, two spare magazines and a hand grenade, we set off towards the main front line. We had neither map nor compass and orientated ourselves simply by the noise and lights from the distant front line. Oddly, this night appeared nevertheless quite quiet.

Again and again we had to cross water ditches and twice swam the Alte Oder. We gradually began to feel the effects of exhaustion. As the first signs of dawn were appearing on the horizon we reached the Soviet front line. Unnoticed, we stumbled into a mortar position in a bushy area where Russian soldiers were lying around in unexpected numbers. Further forward the land was flat and uncultivated. Even further on was a little wood from which shots and bursts of fire came from time to time. That was the German front line.

In view of the time and my condition, we decided to leave the breakthrough until the following night and looked for a new hiding place. We wanted to go back to the meadow thicket that we had passed on the way. Suddenly I was overcome with such exhaustion that nothing mattered any more. Instead of going around two cottages that stood about 100 metres apart, we simply walked through between the Soviet sentries. In the firing that followed I became separated from my comrade.

Once more I managed to escape. On the other side of the Alte Oder I reached some shot-up German positions with lots of dead lying around that had not yet started to decay. On one of them I found an open tin of meat that satisfied my great hunger. Then I found a Soviet leaflet calling upon us to surrender, which contained a pass written in several languages, crept into a foxhole, camouflaged myself a little and immediately fell asleep.

When I awoke I found myself looking at the muzzles of Russian rifles. Several men in earth-brown uniforms were standing in front of my hiding place and signalling for me to come out. Once I was out, the rifles were still aimed at me and someone said, ‘Stoj, Gemane!’ I slowly raised my hands over my head. It was Easter Saturday and the sun stood high in the sky. I did not look like a hero. I was barefoot and wore only my underwear, uniform trousers and shirt, all torn. I was wearing blurred Wehrmacht spectacles, and my hair was completely dishevelled. I was also very dirty.[20]

The Russians appeared next morning, climbed on the blown bridge and examined its condition. They did not see us at first as we were below their line of sight, and they did not suspect our presence. I had previously removed my SS uniform jacket and thrown it into the water. Those comrades who did not do so were later to pay for it with their lives. Once we were discovered, we had to clamber back to the east bank of the Oder, where some female Soviet soldiers immediately searched us. About eleven men were either beaten to death or shot. I only had my teeth knocked out.

We survivors were next kept in a ruin near the church. Next day we had to throw all the dead into an anti-tank ditch on the right of the Schloss together with all their military equipment. This also included the dead from the field hospital in the Schloss, who had all committed suicide. The doctor had shot himself and the nurse had taken poison. Both were sitting at a table, where they had opened a photograph album. I will never forget the sight.

We then marched via Zielenzig and Landsberg on the long journey to Posen. The villages we passed through gave the impression of awful wretchedness. There were many dead along the road that had been crushed by tanks. At night came the cries of women being raped and calling for help. From Posen we went by train to Siberia for fully five years.[21]