With Our Backs to Berlin

WILLI ROGMANN (5 APR 1923–18 FEB 1997)

THE LAST BIRTHDAY PARADE

At 0300 hours on 16 April 1945, the Soviets began their major offensive on Berlin with what was to be a four-day battle before they broke through the last of the German defences masking their Oderbruch bridgehead only eighty kilometres east of the city.

Of all this we knew little in Berlin, where duty in our barracks at Lichterfelde went on as normal, as if it was of no consequence. However, it was another matter with our Training & Replacement Battalion in Spreenhagen, 25 kilometres southeast of Berlin. Part of our twelve company-strong battalion had already been sent off to the Eastern front as Regiment ‘Falke’ under the 9th Army, and the rest were preparing to march to Berlin to join Combat Team ‘Mohnke’ in the defence of the Governmental Quarter. This battalion under SS-Captain Schäfer was supposed to fight as part of the Regiment ‘Anhalt’.

I myself was sent home by SS-Major Kaschulla, the commanding officer of the Guard Battalion, on a sham duty journey ostensibly to collect some orthopædic boots, as if they were still available. In reality I was being sent home for good. Quietly I understood that Kaschulla had given me the opportunity to decide for myself whether to return to Berlin or not. At this point the front in the west had been shattered and was quickly falling back, and I, as an experienced front line soldier, could count on five fingers the number of days until my home would be overrun. By the time I was supposed to return to Berlin on 4 April, if I did not propose deserting or simply staying at home, in just three days the front had reached Hannover. However, as a conscientious, duty-bound soldier, I took the last train for Berlin and what seemed like certain death.

I could not say anything of this to my wife and relatives. Unlike myself, they all still believed in final victory, hard as it is to credit now. If I had expressed my opinions to them they would have reported me to the local Party official. However, he could not have locked me up, as he would have done with a civilian, for I came under military jurisdiction. No, the Party official would have sent a report to my unit, which would have landed on SS-Major Kaschulla’s desk. He would have put me on report, closed the door behind us so that his adjutant could not hear, for he was a sharp one, and would have told me off for being so outspoken, torn up the report and thrown it into the waste paper basket.

But I had even been outspoken with our Führer when I had had the opportunity to do so, and he had asked me to. This happened as follows. From February 1945, I was in charge of the Inner Guard at the Reichs Chancellery, a permanent duty as I was not allowed to return to the front as I would have preferred because of my golden close-combat badge, for the regiment was my home. One night the sentry at the bottom of the steps rang me, signalling that something special was happening. When I rushed down to him he told me that the Führer was wandering around.

Then I saw him in the half darkness (caused by the blackout) coming toward me. He went past me toward the Mosaic Hall. I stood there like a pillar of salt, as we were not allowed to salute him or draw attention to ourselves. Then he beckoned me to follow him. Shortly before a dud bomb had broken through the Mosaic Hall down to the cellar, leaving behind a hole in the ceiling and floor about three or four metres across. He stood in front of it looking at it gloomily and turning to me, said: ‘Now they want to crush us.’ Naturally I did not reply, as it was not for me to do so.

Then he asked me directly what I as a front line soldier, as he could see from my many decorations, made of the way the war was going. I was taken aback and said: ‘My Führer, you have many more competent advisors.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘certainly, but they all lie to me. I want to know from you, the front line soldiers.’

‘What do you want to hear then,’ I said, ‘a propaganda speech or the naked truth?’

‘Naturally the last,’ he said.

Then I told him: ‘If you haven’t got a good ace up your sleeve, then the war is long since lost.’

‘How does this effect the fighting morale?’ he wanted to know.

‘With the Waffen-SS hardly at all,’ was my reply. ‘We fight on even when we know that all is lost. But with the Wehrmacht it is devastating.’

‘Can you give me examples?’ he wanted to know.

‘That I can.’

Then he sighed deeply and left.

When I went back to barracks after this episode on 4 April, I was told that the commanding officer wanted to see me immediately. When I reported to him, he told me that my Reichs Chancellery duties were finished. There were no more visitors and the SD (the SS security service under Criminal Director Hoegl) had taken over. I was told the same by my deputy and landsman, Karl Berg, when he returned to barracks. As I had to have something to do, SS-Major Kaschulla put a convoy of trucks and men at my disposal, and with them I drove to the Elbe River every day.

At first we drove to an underground petrol depot at Ferchland. Then I went further north along the eastern bank of the Elbe to where there were some moored barges containing special supplies for the U-Boats. There were some police units guarding the Elbe, and I could hear their stomachs grumbling, but from fear of fire from the Americans, who had taken up positions on the other bank. When we arrived, they did not want to let us get at the goodies, which was hardly to my liking. I promised them that they would get a share.

I went ahead with a torch and determined what should be stuffed into the mail bags. The loveliest things that we had not seen for years were stored here for our submariners, who had little hope of returning, and nothing but the best sufficed for them.

So we set off back in the early morning with our rich booty, and the policemen were also very happy. Nevertheless an incident occurred that could have ended badly. One of my men came up on deck with an armload of champagne bottles, shouting with glee. I had found some sekt beforehand and we were all a bit drunk. I kicked him in the shin and he dropped the bottles in surprise. Soon some heavy machine gun fire came from across the river and we had to take cover quickly. The stupid chap had not realised that voices carry easily over the water at night. Of course we could not do any more that night and had to return with half empty trucks.

On the way back I managed to shoot two deer in a wood near Brandenburg. Then a boy suddenly appeared on the roadside and stopped us. ‘Sergeant Major, do you need some schnapps and wine?’ Of course we did. He indicated a manor house on a hill top, where there was plenty for us.

It turned out that a major in the paratroops was in charge of the store there. When he asked for a requisitioning order, I had to let it go, but when I reported to my commanding officer, the situation soon changed. The adjutant had to make out a requisitioning order, and it was on a large scale, authorising me to acquire schnapps and wine for 1,000 men. Now the major issued us as much as we could carry. Naturally I kept aside 200 bottles for my personal use.

This resulted in my having no lack of friends back in barracks. A whole row of my superiors wanted to drink ‘Bruderschaft’ (brotherhood) with me. The sergeant major of the 1st Guard Company wanted to be my friend and invited me to the house near the barracks that he looked after and lived in with his girlfriend. He even invited me to move in with them and bring female company, but I declined, as I believed this period of happiness would only last a few days more.

And that is what happened. We came to 20 April and, to honour our Führer’s birthday, a proper parade was to be held in the barracks once more. Even I was expected to take part. I marched past the saluting base in the first rank of the 1st Company with a drawn rifle to the ringing music. SS-Brigadier Mohnke took the parade with some other senior officers.

After the parade things became hectic in the barracks. The sirens howled a long note: ‘Tank Alert!’ Marshal Koniev’s 3rd Guards Tank Army under General Rybalko had thrust up from the south toward Berlin and was suddenly threatening the city. There was only one serious obstacle in his path, the Teltow Canal. He was soon able to establish several bridgeheads and threaten the southern part of Berlin in which our barracks were located. As the Guard Battalion was expected to man the innermost defences, it could not be sent into action against Koniev’s troops, so the whole battalion had to fall in and be reorganised as a combatant battalion, and not before time!

The commander of the 1st Guard Company, in whose headquarters I lived, had asked me to stay out of this, as he wanted me to act as a sort of adjutant to him, so to say ‘extra to establishment’, as such an appointment did not officially exist. He had confidence in me as he had hardly any combat experience himself. His experience had been a brief period at the front, an Iron Cross 2nd Class, and a posting to an officer cadet school, and since then he had never returned to the front but had made his career here.

For me it was of no consequence where or how I would fight, and I had agreed. While the battalion adjutant did the detailing, I kept in the background, but once he had finished, he noticed me. I told him what the commander of the 1st Guard Company had told me, and the latter ran up when he saw I needed support. When he heard what I had to say, there came a strong denial. I reminded the adjutant of the Führer-Order that prevented him from assigning me to combat duty. The adjutant agreed but called upon my sense of duty. He had still to set up a mortar platoon and needed a commander for it.

As I had not done this before and knew nothing about mortars, I declined. But he rejected this and said: ‘The way you are, you should be able to do it easily, and the other commanders,’ looking at the company commanders, ‘have no experience of leadership in combat. You will learn quickly and probably do better than most.’

When I asked him what men I would get, he pointed to the band, who, when they saw my long face, looked grinning into space, and my heart sank. But with hindsight, they were to show themselves absolutely contrary to what I expected. They never let me down and were with me to the very end.

We then drew six 8 cm mortars with all their equipment, such as telephones, cable, etcetera, and ammunition. In doing so I discovered that my three sergeants knew something about them. I myself knew how to fire them, for I had often done so with captured weapons, but I had no specialised knowledge.

There, in a corner of the armoury, I saw a pile of sub-machine guns of a kind that I had never seen before. To my question, the armourer replied that they had been dropped out of British aircraft to arm foreign partisans. They had fallen into our hands and were just waiting here for someone to take them. I examined them and saw that they were quite primitive in appearance with differing hand grips, and none more than 25 cm in length.[40] Then I thought that if it came to partisan warfare, these would be just right for us.

While our men took the weapons and equipment back to their quarters, I went down to the underground firing range with my sergeants and fired these things. I discovered that they fired even with dirt in their moving parts, and that our ammunition fitted. Now I could put aside my Italian sub-machine gun that I had brought back from Italy because the German sub-machine guns jammed so often.

There was even an MG 42[41] in the armoury that we took. When I gave the armourer a gift of a couple of bottles of wine, he positively hummed with pleasure.

We divided up into three sections, each of a sergeant and twelve men. My Headquarters Section was led by a corporal and consisted of two runners, the linesmen-to-be and the machine gun section. We were in all about fifty men strong.

Then I told my men that they could collect cigarettes and tobacco from me, as I had reserved a considerable amount for myself. Also food and drink were available to them from my supplies. These were taken with murmurs of pleasure, and soon they were celebrating in their quarters as they had not done for years. I had taken the hearts of my men by storm.

Now I must describe my last Hitler’s birthday celebrations, which I held in the two rooms I shared with SS-Sergeant Karl Berg, my deputy at the Reichs Chancellery. He had a stiff leg from a wound acquired during the preparation for Operation ‘Citadel’, the big tank battle.[42] He had come to us as a Luftwaffe replacement, being a sergeant in a Luftwaffe field division, and so was taken on as an SS-Sergeant. I tried to persuade him to become my fourth sergeant. (He had hidden himself during the battalion reorganisation and so not been detailed.) But he was not interested and only wanted to get on one of the vehicles leaving Berlin, which he succeeded in doing. I met him on a tram in Magdeburg after the war, and he told me that he had been taken to Hamburg, where he obtained his release from the Waffen-SS and joined the local police force, thus avoiding being taken a prisoner of war when the British arrived.

But back to my celebration. Tables and chairs were set out and everyone who came was made welcome. Meanwhile the barrack square was filling with vehicles from all kinds of units, all filling up with the petrol that I had brought back, so as to get away on the last route still open, Reichstrasse 6.

Everyone of these ‘heroes’, when one spoke to them, had important reasons for leaving, but the word really was: ‘Get out of the Berlin trap, and don’t get caught by the Russians!’ Several offered to take me along with them. These rear area types did not want to stay behind and fight beside the Führer and die, to remain loyal until death, as they had sworn. But I had to tell them that it was out of the question for me; I did not want to break my oath. But there were other cases.

I was told that my former company commander, SS-Major Ernst Kleinert, who had lost a leg in Russia and now had an artificial limb, and had nevertheless commanded the ‘March’ Company at Hartmannsdorf/Spreenhagen, was on the square with his staff car, accompanied by his wife and child. I quickly wrapped up some food for him and hurried to say goodbye. He was not leaving on his own accord but had orders from Mohnke to take the ‘Leibstandarte’ wounded out of Berlin in buses, which he managed to do, taking them to a polder in Schleswig-Holstein. However, despite some of them being very seriously wounded, they all became prisoners of war and some were held for a long time under primitive and degrading conditions, permanently hungry, so that their artificial limbs no longer fitted.

The most senior guest at my party was SS-Brigadier Meyer (‘Sippenmeyer’) from the SS Sippenhauptamt.[43] His driver, an SS-sergeant major, knew one of my sergeants and had asked if his chief could come. He want to see again how real soldiers celebrated the Führer’s birthday. Now he sat next to me, the host. He too needed to get to Hamburg urgently. While he was still sober, he exuded powerful confidence in victory and explained to me the defensive strategy of our leadership with regard to Fortress Berlin, where, he said, he would take the teeth out of the Russians.

It was not clear to me why he wanted to leave Berlin instead of participating in the great triumph here, but as a mere sergeant major it was not for me to ask a general such a question!

He went on to explain to me in detail the defensive rings around and in Berlin. The last inner defensive ring, which interested us particularly as we had to defend it, was called ‘Zitadelle’ and was commanded by SS-Brigadier Mohnke, who came directly under Hitler. It comprised the inner city with the Reichs Chancellery, the Reichstag, the ministries and main governmental offices.

So that was how I came to be briefed on our Highest Command’s defence concept by SS-Brigadier Meyer. However, in my lowly capacity, I could not use this extensive knowledge, as a platoon commander is only interested in his position and what is to the left and right of him should he have to make contact.

The party was quite jolly, if you can use that word to describe my men’s gallows humour. They got drunk, knowing full well what lay before them. Thanks to my new comrades from the band, I had music in the house, and several played industriously for the last time in their lives.

‘Sippenmeyer’ became drunk and his slurred speech was quite different to his arrogant talking before. This intrigued me more as he whispered into my ear tales of treason by Himmler and Göring. He went on stuttering: ‘There is only the Führer now, only the Führer.’ So they had already baled out, but I said to myself: ‘And what can we dummies do about it? We will share our Führer’s fate.’

But even the best parties come to an end, as did mine. The next day we went into the city centre by tram, so low had the ‘Leibstandarte’ sunk. And then on by foot, one cannot describe it as marching, to Voss-Strasse and across to the Reichs Chancellery.

I gave the female tram driver a few goodies. I had had to leave most of my treasures behind and just hoped that the Russians would choke on them. Of course we had to leave most of our private possessions behind, as in every case of going into action. The fighting soldier has enough to carry as it is, but this was always the way.

So our whole battalion went by tram, for the vast amount of fuel that I had brought from Ferchland on the Elbe had been given to the Hamburg exodus, as a result of which the tanks of the ‘Nordland’[44] when they joined us later had no fuel with which to manoeuvre and had to be employed as static fire points.

As no one seemed interested in us here, I left my platoon on the Reichs Chancellery steps and went to look for accommodation with my section sergeants. The cellars under the Reichs Chancellery, where we looked first, were already occupied, not by combatants ready to take over the defence here, but by officials’ families waiting transport to take them away. This made me furious, for how could one fight here with women and children in the way?

So we went up to the ground floor, where there was an unusual to-ing and fro-ing of important-looking people, but again no real combatants. Here again all the rooms were occupied.

Then I looked into the Führer’s study. This was empty. No one had dared move in here. I thought to myself: ‘Well the Führer will not be working here any more, and my men are not accustomed to living in the open air, and they need accommodation, for the weather is fresh and rainy outside.’

The big windows had been blown out in the last air raid and no one had replaced them, as they would only be damaged again in the nightly raids, but at least one had a roof over one’s head. So I had my men come in, and they managed to fit in with all of their equipment.

Then I searched the big desk and found a box of cigars for visitors, as the Führer smoked as little as I did in those days. There was also a bottle of good Cognac. I sampled it and finished the bottle, not bothering to look for glasses. Then I curled up on the wonderful carpet and slept. A soldier never knows what the next hour will bring. (According to a Soviet general, it later took fifteen men to remove the carpet so as to take it back to Moscow.)

I was rudely woken up during the night. Once I had pushed away the torch shining into my face, (there was no electric light because of the blackout) I saw an SD patrol standing in front of me and talking about shooting me as the senior rank present for desecrating the ‘Almighty’s’ study. The Führer’s study was no doss house, etcetera. I tried to explain to them that I was fully aware of the significance of the room from my previous job in the Reichs Chancellery. We did not want to stay here but would go wherever we were ordered to fight, and that would happen sooner than they, whom one could see wore no decorations and had never been in action, could think.

My men, who had found some more Cognac and were full of bravado, crowded round us and said aggressively that there were only two possible ways of getting us out of here, either to find us better accommodation or to kill us. Neither of the SD ‘heroes’ were in a position to do anything. As they had nothing left to say, I suggested to them that they might like to join us as ammunition carriers, for it would be a shame if the war were to end without them even getting a sniff of powder. I would have a word about this with their chief, Criminal Director Hoegl, I suggested. They were fit enough, I said, having felt their arm muscles. But they did not want to know, and left us muttering threats. But how can one threaten a person already facing certain death?

So we settled down to sleep again. Then early in the morning SS-Lieutenant Puttkamer (a relative of Hitler’s naval adjutant) came in and introduced himself as my company commander. He started giving me a telling off for the way I had treated the SD patrol during the night. I rejected this sharply and said: ‘Unlike myself, you already knew yesterday what your appointment was to be and that you would be responsible for a company. Since you did not show yourself, I had to use my initiative. In case you are unaware of your responsibilities as the commander of a troop, you should know that it is no umbrella that can be left lying about anywhere.’

Thus I made it quite clear between us at the start. As he wore only the Iron Cross Second Class, it was quite obvious to me that he had not been exposed to real fighting before. Perhaps he had been adequately protected by his big-shot relative from having to go to the front, and so had also got a role like this, for there was no such thing as a mortar company in combat. Normally the platoon would be split up in direct support of either the regimental or battalion commander.

He took us down into the cellars, which had meanwhile emptied noticeably, the officials’ families having left during the night. The rooms he showed me were near Mohnke’s command post on Hermann-Göring-Strasse. They filled me with confidence as soon as I saw them, for they were constructed out of reinforced concrete and the partition walls of similar construction supported the ceiling. As an experienced builder, I saw this all with one glance. It would take an enormous shell to break through.

Our company commander occupied a small room down here with his heavily pregnant wife. ‘Good God,’ I thought, ‘is he crazy?’ He had stupidly taken a room with a window next to the outside wall, where the cellar was only one and a half metres below ground. The first shell to explode on the pavement would send splinters straight in. Naturally, I did not tell this superfluous warrior what I thought.

His wife was feeling permanently ill, which was not surprising in her condition, but she had to go on telling everyone about it, while he stood by saying nothing. With her too I had to draw a line, which made me look a unfeeling clot. He even had to sit beside her to comfort her when the shelling started.

After this exchange of words, I moved with my headquarters section into a small room and the rest settled down around. Our predecessors, like ourselves, had left their personal things behind. To my surprise there were a pair of highly polished officer’s jackboots and some passable breeches to go with them. I had not seen such beautiful boots for years, since my father, a master shoemaker, had made me such a pair. In one of them was a holster for a small pistol, a 6.35 Walther, and in the other was a sheath for a stiletto with a needle point and razor-sharp blade. I tried them on and they fitted perfectly. Then I tried walking a few steps in them, which took me out into the cellar passageway. A young woman came toward me with an Alsatian puppy. The puppy leant against one of the shining boots and pissed inside. I kicked him away, which did not please the young woman.

She scolded me and got a sharp response back. Then I noticed that my old company comrade Heinz Jurkewitz, who was now with the Führer bodyguard, was standing behind her, making violent hand signals to me that I could not understand.

I shouted at her: ‘Get your dog out of here and leave us alone!’ Whereupon she put the puppy on the lead and went off with him without a word.

‘For goodness sake, Willi,’ Heinz said to me, ‘what have you done? Do you know who that was?’

‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘That was Fräulein Braun!’

‘It could have been Fräulein Schwarz as far as I am concerned,’ I said. ‘What about it?’

Then he had to tell me confidentially who Fräulein Braun was, and that he had been assigned to her as her bodyguard.

With this explanation I should make it clear that even I who had been on duty in the Reichs Chancellery knew nothing of the existence of this woman. It was a taboo subject and no one talked about it. We were trained to be discreet. Nevertheless, she had been here in the Führerbunker at the Reichs Chancellery since 15 April and had come, against the Führer’s will, to share his fate. She usually lived at the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. The puppy came from Blondi, the Führer’s Alsatian, and he had given it to Fräulein Braun so that she had something to remind her of him, since he could not come because of the war. When it was time to die, the pup would die too.

Of course I took this hard and asked Heinz to ask my forgiveness for my ignorance, as I had no access to the Führerbunker myself.

After this fiasco I took off the boots and breeches. Like their owner, I had no need for these special boots.

Then the company commander ordered us to go into the Tiergarten and practise with the mortars. This was certainly rather late, but necessary, for the mortars had lain unused in the barracks and now had to augment the fighting strength of two regiments.

So we moved into the Tiergarten and practised setting up and so on. The company commander stood there saying nothing. Whether he knew more about these things than I did, I cannot say. It is best in such circumstances to let the sergeants get on with it, so I left them to it.

The 1st Platoon was commanded by a senior officer cadet[45] I knew from the barracks. This was the last time either I or the company commander was to see him. He was on duty in the barracks as Duty NCO every other day, and strutted around like a peacock, which was enough to set me off teasing him. He still did not have the necessary front decorations to go to officer school, and must therefore have had a powerful patron, as otherwise this would not have been possible. When such similar ‘experts’ came to the front and were set above me, although just a lowly sergeant major, they did not have it easy.

I had no intention of being sent with my men into an uncertain mission. Even my men, without my having said anything, would simply turn away if he tried to give orders over my head. For them it did not matter how many stars a superior had. They looked at it from the standpoint of what their chances of survival were with that superior, and I would rather go myself than send anyone into a dangerous mission.

So here this gentleman had no protector any more and at last had to show what he was made of.

While we were exercising, some heavy shells burst unexpectedly several hundred yards away, for the first time in the city centre. As I had heard no discharge, it was immediately apparent to me they were from a long range battery firing off a map, and were of no great concern to an experienced soldier.

So, without haste, I had my platoon move by sections into two concrete garages that stood nearby. These would not have stood up to a direct hit, of course, but that would have been highly unlikely. In order to show my men how dangerously I treated the situation I, a non-smoker, lit a cigarette and passed round the packet and started cracking jokes, and soon the first witticisms were being passed around among my men. So everyone remained calm, which was the main thing.

But the senior officer cadet, who was unfamiliar with such shelling, cried out: ‘All is lost, save yourselves!’ The company commander stood as still as a marble statue, not taking it in.

I immediately took over command of this wildly scattering mob and ordered them to lie down. Then I took them into cover by sections. The firing soon stopped and we had no casualties.

These were the kind of commanders that lead men to destruction for no reason at all, and it boded ill for the future.

As I read in Soviet military literature after the war, the shelling had been purely a propaganda gesture in order to be able to report to Stalin that: ‘The lion’s den now lies under heavy destructive fire.’ I even saw pictures of the guns, primitive things with a range of about 18 kilometres mounted on self-propelled tracks.

I did not wait for the company commander’s orders, but took my troops back to the Reichs Chancellery, not without throwing a look of contempt at these two ‘heroes’, who already had their heads together.

SS-Lieutenant August Krönke was waiting for me at the Reichs Chancellery. He was adjutant to the ‘Anhalt’ Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, commanded by SS-Captain Schäfer, to which my platoon belonged, according to my instructions, thus removing me from Puttkamer’s direct command.

First Krönke had to show me the location of the battalion’s positions. The battalion was already deployed and wherever possible I was shown round by the company commander responsible. But as Schäfer never held a company commanders’ conference, which I too would have had to attend, I never got to know them all. The battalion was fully committed, and there were no reserves. I just had to go along the streets behind the buildings in which our companies were deployed. I made a provisional sketch of the front and later was able to copy everything out on graph paper for my forward observers. I myself would remain primarily at the base position and send out my sergeants as observers, as they knew more about the business.

The battalion boundary on the left was the right wing of Belle-Alliance-Platz (Mehringplatz), from where it followed the Landwehr Canal to the Tiergarten, then cut across the Tiergarten to the Spree River. It then followed the Spree through the Diplomatic Quarter as far as the Kronprinzen Bridge. The Reichstag was our boundary with SS-Captain Thomas Mrugalla’s 1st Battalion. The right flank at the Reichstag was under the command of SS-Lieutenant Babick, whose heroic fight at the Reichstag I will report on later.

In the Tiergarten we could only manage a two-man foxhole every fifty metres, but here were also the tanks of the ‘Hermann von Salza’ battalion of the SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nordland’ under SS-Lieutenant Colonel Peter Kausch, a very brave man and holder of the Oak Leaves to the Iron Cross.[46]

There was also the mighty Zoo flak-tower, whose area was defended by Volkssturm and Hitler Youth units. This flak-tower later evolved into a strong bastion in the defence, although the flak-towers had not been designed for this purpose. With its massive concrete walls and its height, it was almost unassailable and could not be taken by the Soviets. Nevertheless, the thousands of civilians in this bunker had a terrible time.

We returned to the battalion command post on the lowest level of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station, where I was introduced to the battalion commander, SS-Captain Schäfer. Schäfer’s command post was in a platform guard’s office, where he remained until the end. Opposite his office were several S-Bahn carriages full of supplies under the control of a quartermaster.

I was invited to eat. The commander’s batman prepared sandwiches all day long for him and his visitors. With this went either tea or ersatz coffee, and the supplies lasted until the end.

Schäfer instructed me to leave my men in reserve at the Reichs Chancellery. He would call us when he needed us.

When I got back, my men were busy unloading trucks that were driving into the inner yard one after the other with ammunition and supplies from the outer districts. The Reichs Chancellery was being transformed into a vast underground supply depot.

My men had to do this out of self-preservation. No one invited them to eat or take them on ration strength. I could not approach my company commander on such a triviality. As my men told me, he just sat there comforting his wife as the shells exploded outside.

I may be over-critical, but a unit commander cannot take his wife to war with him, and here the war was becoming ever more intense, even in the Reichs Chancellery, so I can rightly accuse him of failing lamentably in his responsibilities.

Consequently, my men had to steal their daily bread by the sweat of their brows. To my shame I must admit in helping them by asking the storekeeper stupid questions while they carried off the stolen items to their quarters. Let the readers think what they like, the full stomachs of my men were more important to me than morals and propriety. Hunger hurts and the food that we had brought with us from the barracks had run out. The storekeeper, who had no hunger, could not understand this. He was a typical quartermaster and such people only respond to written orders for the issue of anything. To find such an order would have only led to unnecessary work and anger, which is why I emphasise this point. Once my men had removed enough, we took time off. No one bothered about the storekeeper’s complaints.

As we did not know what was in the boxes, we opened them with our bayonets and stuffed ourselves full of the choicer items. Without asking me, someone had the idea of taking some food across to the Puttkamer family, and soon we had another drama. I had to take a lecture on morals and propriety, to which I listened without saying a word. No, I would not do it again, I promised.

I did not believe that the Puttkamers with their connections would have to go hungry, but they never thought of giving anything to the soldiers.

Our comrades in the Senior Officer Cadet’s platoon were also hungry, but that was nothing to do with me. I do not know what happened to them later but with the commander they had, it could only have been catastrophic.

Meanwhile a serious incident occurred within our regimental area. Major General Mummert, the commander of the Panzer Division ‘Müncheberg’, with or without the knowledge of our regimental commander SS-Colonel Anhalt, and I never discovered which, as the latter only gave out instructions on rare occasions, ordered our 1st Battalion from its allocated positions into operational reserve at Alexanderplatz. As a result of this a gap opened on our right flank that Schäfer would have been unable to fill with his battalion. That there were no serious consequences is a wonder. I did not understand it.

Next day, 24 April, the situation changed as follows. General Weidling, commander of the LVIth Panzer Corps, which consisted of the 9th Parachute Division, the 18th and 20th Panzergrenadier Divisions, the Panzer Division ‘Müncheberg’ and the SS-Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nordland’, was appointed Battle Commandant of Berlin by Hitler. He replaced General Reymann and came directly under Hitler. General Mummert became commander of the LVIth Panzer Corps.

THE JANNOWITZ BRIDGE

Our going into action happened fully otherwise than had been intended. As only one mortar platoon had been allocated to the Regiment ‘Anhalt’, each of the battalions wanted it for themselves. The other platoon went to Mohnke’s second regiment, which consisted mainly of Berlin-based SS office staff. Strangely enough, Mohnke could not even remember the commander’s name when he returned from captivity, and I did not know it either. These office staff seemed only interested in the defence of their own office buildings, as I was to discover later with the Ministry of the Interior.

During the night of 23/24 April I received the surprise order to go to Alexanderplatz with my platoon and report to SS-Captain Mrugalla there. Fighting was already in progress and my platoon was needed urgently. The commander of the 2nd Battalion, SS-Captain Schäfer, as he later told me, was not informed of this, and went on believing that he still had a platoon in reserve at the Reichs Chancellery that he could call upon at any time. Who was responsible for this sudden decision, I do not know either.

So we marched off to Alexanderplatz, leaving behind our stolen food supplies, and not caring what happened when they were found. For us only the moment was important, and nothing else.

The Police Presidium, a massively powerful building, stood in the middle of the square. Its outer walls were two metres thick and the whole structure was massively built, as I discovered when I went inside to report to the battalion staff. This building was later to be defended like a fortress, and as the Russians could not take it, they went round it.

The adjutant, SS-Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Fey, told me that SS-Captain Mrugalla had gone off with his whole battalion to stop the Russian breakthrough and destroy them. This puzzled me as I still did not know that the battalion had been taken out of its positions. At the time I thought this had been done on Mrugalla’s initiative, which was not the case. Mrugalla was a very brave and obedient soldier. Whenever he received an order, he carried it out without regard for the consequences, as happened here with General Mummert’s order.

But back to me and my platoon. As I did not want to lose my way in the dark, and thought that Mrugalla would be bringing back his battalion, we waited for his return in the Police Presidium. After we had waited some hours, we came under a night bombing attack, which was to prove to be the last by the Western Allies. The Reichs Chancellery was badly hit in this raid, but we in the Police Presidium with its massive structural strength suffered no casualties, even though the windows set about one and a half metres up showered their glass everywhere.

I became bored with this unaccustomed waiting and decided to go ahead with my section leaders and two runners to see for myself, leaving the platoon behind in the Presidium. It was still dark, but a few streets further east at Schillingstrasse I saw something the like of which I had never seen throughout the whole war. SS-Captain Mrugalla was leading his whole battalion as a reconnaissance party. In the middle of the street were two Panther tanks that General Mummert had lent him, for we had none of our own. The men were advancing three paces apart on either side of the street alongside the buildings, which were still not ruins, with the battalion commander and his staff behind the tanks in the middle.

I can still see the scene decades after as if it were yesterday, it was so unusual. They were moving like a funeral procession, going from street to street looking for an enemy that was not there. As I was moving faster than their funereal pace, I soon caught up with the battalion commander and reported to him.

‘Where is your mortar platoon then?’ he asked. ‘It could be needed urgently any minute.’

I replied: ‘You don’t think for a moment that I would have my men take part in this buffoonery, do you? I have never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life! What is going on?’

This naturally came as a shock to him, but I was always one to speak my mind, and what I saw here was beyond comprehension.

He stopped still, as did his whole battalion, including the tanks. Everyone wanted to see what this exchange was about. So I told him that I did not know whether it was his idea or General Mummert’s, but who was going to occupy his section of the defences while he led his battalion into a trap that would destroy them all?

Meanwhile it had become light and as I, like the others, was wearing no camouflage jacket, he could see my decorations. Perhaps he started having doubts about his enterprise, but how could he have known what to do? He was only a senior administration official and, as I later discovered, dean of a school of administration in Arolsen. His men too all came from SS administrative posts. As his company commanders gathered round, I saw that none of them wore a worthwhile decoration, so there was no one that could have advised him in such matters.

He said to me: ‘But I have left a strong standing patrol behind me at the Spree bridges!’

‘You are a useless shit!’ I said to him cheekily, ‘When the Russians come they will overpower them in minutes.’

‘What would you do in my case then?’ he asked.

‘Break off this business immediately and occupy the positions allocated to you by the regimental commander.’

‘But how will I carry out my task of locating the Russians?’

To my mind the Russians did not need locating, but I said: ‘I will take that on with my mortar platoon.’

‘You will do it with only a few men?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘Just march your men back and I will soon let you know how far off the Russians are.’

He agreed that I should take over the role, which was not all that agreeable to me. We each took a Panzerfaust as he gave the order to go back.

Then two Hitler Youth leaders that had overheard the conversation came after us and asked if they could come along with us. We stopped again and I asked these two fourteen year-olds whether they would not prefer to help their mothers with the washing up, which upset them. They told me that they commanded a fifty-strong Hitler Youth unit and were looking for a unit to join on to, and that after our discussion with Mrugalla’s battalion that did not appear to be the right one. However, I still did not want any children coming along with me, and so sent them to await my return at the Police Praesidium.

We went on marching eastward. A few streets further on I came to a barricade manned by two Waffen-SS sentries, both completely drunk. No information could be obtained from them in their state and they would obviously fall easy prey to the Russians for they were incapable of understanding anything.

So we went on further and must have gone quite a distance before we suddenly saw two Stalin tanks standing side by side blocking the street. We crouched down and fired Panzerfausts at them but, as I feared, they failed to penetrate the frontal armour and we could not tackle them from the side, so this only served to wake them up. Then we came under fire from sub-machine guns from two windows, which we soon silenced with Panzerfausts.

We beat a hasty retreat and had just got round the street corner as the tank guns opened up. I made a note of the name of the street so that Mrugalla would not have to look for himself, but in fact we were on the wrong course, as I later discovered.

The main Russian attack was coming from the Schlesischer Station and so went past us. Why the Russians attacked from there I later learnt from Soviet military literature. General Bokov, the political commissar to the 5th Shock Army, whose commander Colonel General Berzarin was appointed City Commandant that day, wrote that the army had captured, together with its ammunition, some heavy German siege artillery of the Thor type in Silesia that had been used in the siege of Sevastopol. These mortars were mounted on railway wagons adjusted to the Russian gauge and, according to Bokov, a track had been adjusted to this gauge as far as the Schlesischer Station and they started firing their bombs into the centre of Berlin on 25 April.[47]

When we got back to the Police Praesidium and I reported back to Mrugalla, he was already preparing to move out his battalion, having received new orders to defend the Schlesischer Station. He gave me the order to set up my mortar platoon – I would know better where than he – in support of his battalion. He gave me a company of Volkssturm in support as he knew how much mortars could fire, and they could collect mortar bombs from the Reichs Chancellery so that I could provide a proper barrage, as he put it. I accepted gratefully, as we only had one set of ammunition with us.

The Hitler Youth boys were also there, asking to go into action. As I now knew that Mrugalla would not think of establishing a proper screen behind which I could operate, I was in desperate need of infantry cover and so reluctantly took on the Hitler Youths. These boys were well equipped with automatic carbines, goodness knows who had arranged that. In comparison, the Volkssturm only had captured French and Italian rifles with hardly any ammunition for them.

So now I moved along between the raised stretch of S-Bahn track and the Spree with my headquarters section, the Volkssturm commander and the runners, as well as the two Hitler Youth leaders, toward the Schlesischer Station.

At the Jannowitz Bridge S-Bahn Station the track was about ten metres up on an almost vertical structure of hewn sandstone blocks. Just beyond the Jannowitz Bridge I found the place I was looking for. The massive S-Bahn elevation was hollow like a kind of casemate with some concrete steps leading down inside. I wanted to set up here in a dead angle of the casemate, where the artillery could not reach me, only high trajectory fire, for which the Russians had more than enough stuff. Their 120 mm mortars, for instance, against which my 80 mm mortars were nothing.

I summoned my platoon, and the Volkssturm men knew where to find me with the ammunition.

My platoon arrived and started setting up. With one of my section sergeants who was assigned as forward observer, the signallers and the Hitler Youths that had arrived meanwhile, we went along the tracks to the Jannowitz Bridge Station. I looked for a good location for the Hitler Youth to set up a defensive position. I found one but, as I was to discover, not as good as our mortar position.

With the forward observer, the signallers and four Hitler Youths, who wanted to protect the observer, we went some distance toward the Schlesischer Station. I found a tall building from where the observer would have a good overall view. The signallers paid out the telephone cable and I went back to my position.

We soon had communication and the forward observer started calling for fire, although he still did not have a proper target. He reported that the Russians were sticking up a red flag every time they took a tall building, but that most of these flags were promptly being shot down again. Then the Volkssturm came over the bridge behind us and delivered about five hundred mortar bombs. Now we had what we needed and could start.

Then the forward observer called. The enemy were advancing in a dense group supported by tanks. We began peppering them and when one thinks that with practice a mortar can have as many as ten bombs in the air at one time, one can get some idea of the fire-power of these six mortars.

A mortar bomb normally makes a hole about two hands wide upon impact, but on a roadway it makes no hole but breaks up into tiny splinters that riddle human targets like a sieve, and there must have been fearful casualties among that dense mob of advancing Russians.

When the Volkssturm came with a second load and saw our barrage they quickly put their bombs into the casemate and vanished. This was quite right, for it was a hot place to be. Then the forward observer called for us to stop. There was no longer a target. The surviving Russians had fled for cover.

My men now thought that they had earned a rest before the next engagement, and I agreed with them. They had acquitted themselves very well in their first action, and I dug out some tobacco for them. Nevertheless, I told them not to stand around in the open but to take cover in the casemates, thinking that we could expect some retaliation for what we had done. But that it would be so bad, I had no idea.

So I was standing outside alone with one of my NCOs when I heard a noise that I recognised as the discharge of numerous artillery pieces and the dull thump of heavy mortars. I quickly grabbed a mortar and took it under cover. The NCO promptly followed suit as the storm burst over us.

We raced down into the casemates and not a second too soon. Then it hit. Our eardrums were nearly displaced with the din of bursting shells. I had never experienced anything like it. How long the barrage lasted, I cannot say. It could have been seconds or hours. We sat or lay there with the anxious feeling that it would never end, unable to communicate with each other because of the din, each man isolated within himself.

When at last we could go outside again, the sudden silence came like a pain to our ears, and the sky had darkened with the fumes from the exploding shells still hanging in the air.

I first looked at our mortars. Only the two that we had taken inside remained serviceable, the rest being nothing but torn and twisted metal, and that after only our first time in action. Our communications were also lost, the telephone cable having been shot through in several places.

I had the two surviving mortars set up roughly and shot off the remaining ammunition blindly. I did not want to stay here, but to withdraw over the Spree, so sent a runner to recall the forward observer, if he was still alive. I went forward myself to see how the boys were and how they had got on under fire.

When I reached the Hitler Youth position, it was a shattering sight. One could say that there was not a single stone left standing on another. Everything had been churned over several times by the artillery fire and the boys shredded into small pieces. I looked on with the tears running down my face.

I reproached myself for having accepted the boys’ offer, when I should have remained firm and sent them away. But my self-reproach came too late, as they too firmly believed that they could do something for their country. Their mothers would wait in vain for their return. I could not inform them of their sons’ fate, for I did not even know any of their names.

Now the forward observer returned with his four Hitler Youth volunteers. The barrage had passed right over them, leaving them unhurt. They too started crying when they saw what had happened to their comrades, but when I hoped that they had had enough, they said to me, still crying: ‘Sergeant Major, this makes us even harder. We want to stay with you until the last!’ What can one say to a boy like that? They were twelve to fifteen year-olds. Today’s youngsters would never believe what their predecessors had to put up with.

When we went back, my platoon was already across the bridge behind us on the other side of the Spree. The bridge was still intact and there was no sign of Mrugalla’s standing patrol. As I now established, the bridge had not even been prepared for demolition. Here too the leadership had left everything to chance. Colonel Lobeck[48] probably did not want to blow the bridge, for like every bridge it carried essential services such as water, gas and electricity for the civilian population, who would be deprived of these things if the bridge were blown.

My two remaining mortars had been set up behind a vast building. As the bridge was unsecured, I used those of my men now without mortars to form a thin protective screen, to which I also sent the machine gun section and the four remaining Hitler Youths with their good automatic carbines. They would not run away when things got hot, of that I was sure.

I sent the forward observer up on to the roof of the building. I did not have the heart to send him back over the Spree after our last fiasco. He now fired on sight, being able to see over the top of the S-Bahn embankment.

Then I went into the cellars of the building to see whether we could shelter here should it hail down on us again. My hair stood on end when I saw what was being stored there unguarded. Big rockets were lying in their wooded crates such as I had never seen before. They resembled Stalin Organs but were much bigger. It struck me that the cases must also serve as their launchers, but I had no idea how they worked. I became angry that our leadership should have left these dangerous things lying around unguarded and unused. What if the Russians occupied this area, would they not use them against us? They certainly had no regard for the civilian population. The rockets were not primed of course, but there were some boxes stacked in one corner with what looked like detonators packed in wood shavings. So everything was there except someone who knew how to use them.

When I got back into the daylight, I beckoned my NCOs over and the forward observer down from the roof. I told them briefly what I had found in the cellar and ordered an immediate change of location to get away from this place with its dangerous devices.

Somewhat closer to the Schlesischer Station we found what we were looking for. A stranger came toward us. From his uniform, I took him to be a Wehrmacht official. I stopped him and asked him who he was walking alone through this area. He identified himself as an ammunition technician working for Colonel Lobeck. ‘So,’ I thought, ‘he can explain something.’

I took him down into the vast cellars, watching him closely. He showed no surprise when he saw the cases. I suggested that he must be the storekeeper, but he denied it.

‘Can you show me how these things work?’ I said.

He said: ‘I am an explosives expert and already had a proper training in it during peacetime and have attended courses ever since, so I know all about the latest products. I can of course show you how these work.’

‘Then help me to get them into position and fire them when necessary.’

He said: ‘I don’t think so. I have officer’s rank and only take orders from Colonel Lobeck.’

‘We can soon change that,’ I told him. ‘Lobeck is far off, but I am here with full executive powers. My Hitler Youths are trigger happy and, having just lost their comrades, are in the right state of mind. One gesture from me and you will be looking down their gun muzzles. But you can at least show me how these things work, and when you have helped me to secure the bridge, you can go wherever you like.’

‘Blowing a bridge without direct orders from Colonel Lobeck is out of the question as far as I am concerned. I wouldn’t do it even if you stood me against the wall.’

‘I too have no orders to do it, nor do I know our leadership’s intentions. I will only secure it so that we are not overrun by Russian tanks,’ I told him.

This made him more amenable. I summoned my comrades and we carried out two of the rockets and laid them in the middle of the bridge. Of course this was not the correct procedure, but I had no intention of getting involved in sapper tasks. If these things should blow up, I thought, they will not leave one stone standing on another. Under cover of my comrades, he prepared a fuse for me and secured it fast. He must have known something of his trade, for General Bokov describes in his book on the conquest of Berlin how their engineers had to work all day to dismantle this particular security device. In fact we did not blow the bridge, nor did our successors, and when I went there after the war I found it still intact.

I then took my NCOs and had him explain to them exactly how they worked, and how one primed them. As this chap took the right pieces out of the right corner without having to look for them, even the batteries that were needed to provide a weak electrical current to detonate the rockets, I said to my NCOs in his presence: ‘Isn’t it strange that this prophet knows where everything is without having to look for it?’ They laughed hollowly. One suggested throwing him into the Spree to feed the fish. When this ‘hero’ saw my NCOs looking at him angrily, he began to stutter fearfully. So I said to him: ‘Get lost before I change my mind!’

We then carried out one of the rockets, which took eight men, and set it up against the wall of the embankment, ready for firing. Having discussed it with my men, I wanted to carry out a trial shot. The forward observer climbed back up to the roof, as this was the tallest building far and wide.

I ignited the rocket while my men took cover. It howled off like a fiery comet and fell in our old target area, as our forward observer reported when he came down again. Now we could see the cloud of dust from ground level. The Russians would have wondered where this monster came from.

Naturally I took care not to set off any more of these monsters. We had enough experience of the Russians not to let them trace them back to us.

However, as far as the bridge was concerned, I would not have hesitated to blow it for a minute if immediate danger threatened. I had no intention of letting ourselves be overrun by tanks.

Then my Hitler Youths came up with the idea of going forward again to recover and bury their comrades. Some sympathetic Volkssturm men accompanied them and I sent my machine gun section to provide them with cover, but I did not go myself as I knew what the outcome would be. How could one find earth to bury the remains in that rubble waste?

And that is exactly what happened. They returned unsuccessful, having only been able to recover a few identity cards and personal possessions from the dead children. The Volkssturm men, many of whom had not seen active service, had never seen anything so terrible and were deeply shocked. Several had nervous breakdowns, but the youngsters became even harder and led them away.

I told the Volkssturm commander to leave a couple of runners behind and take his men to the Reichs Chancellery and wait my call. Should I eventually require more mortar bombs or just need their help, I would let him know. I certainly did not want to use them for defence with their quaint rifles and sparse ammunition.

I then had a whole batch of rockets carried out and set up along the walled river embankment ready for firing. They were set almost vertically so as to aim at the street on the opposite embankment. This meant them exploding only 150 metres from us, so I had the shot-up remains of our telephone cable, which we had reconnected together, used as extensions of the ignition cables. Then I had everyone, including the defensive screen, take cover some distance back and lie in wait for whatever was to come. Although it was quiet where we were, thunder and lightning continued to come from the Schlesischer Station area.

I was surprised not to have received any messages or new orders from Mrugalla. At first he had cried out for heavy weapons and now he seemed to have forgotten us. I think that he had already withdrawn a little toward Alexanderplatz. As I later discovered, he had meanwhile been injured in the arm, but remained with his troops like a good soldier.

We had to wait quite a long time before it came to shooting again. It was evening and already beginning to go dark when a dozen Russian tanks came along the street on the far bank from the east, having gone round the Schlesischer Station, and headed toward Alexanderplatz. This was the moment we had been hoping and waiting for.

Unsuspectingly, for no one was firing at them from the flanks, they slowly rolled forward into the trap. When I thought that they had reached the right point, I fired the rockets, which howled down on their targets, striking them and turning it into a frightful fiasco for the Russians. Some of the splinters even came across the Spree. Several tanks must have received direct hits, as they split apart like soap boxes, increasing the overall effect. One tipped over into the Spree and the water gurgled over it. Some that had been driving next to the exploding tanks either simply tipped over or were slammed against the S-Bahn structure as if they were toys. All had been knocked out. A few crewmen bailed out and tried to escape crouched down and crawling out of the field of fire. We let them get away so that they could report back what had happened to them.

An unusual silence fell. We withdrew and took cover in the cellars, as I was afraid that the storm would descend upon us again, but nothing happened. I can only assume that the Russian forward observers had been unable to identify where the rockets came from. That we had had the audacity to fire at such short range probably did not occur to them.

When we realised that we were not going to be punished, we carried out some more rockets but set them up at another location aimed at the station area. There one could shoot wherever one wanted and be sure of hitting a Russian target, but I was cautious about firing them, for at night the after glow that the rockets trailed behind them was visible for miles.

How the Reichs Chancellery discovered that we were firing these rockets, I have no idea, but suddenly a convoy of trucks drove directly up to us in the night. Accompanying them was SS-Second Lieutenant Triebes, who brought orders for us to load as many rockets and their equipment as possible and take them to Potsdamer Platz. He had also brought the Volkssturm along with him.

IN ACTION AT POTSDAMER PLATZ

We loaded as quickly as possible, our mortars and ammunition too. Then we climbed aboard the trucks and the Volkssturm followed behind on foot.

Thank goodness we had not come under fire while loading, or we would have been blown to smithereens. A sergeant and some men remained behind and detonated the rockets that we had previously set up as soon as we had gone some distance, and they were able to catch up with us before the Soviets retaliated.

The rockets and our equipment were unloaded at Potsdamer Platz and taken below ground to the upper level of the S-Bahn station. The Volkssturm men that had followed us and then helped to unload I ordered to occupy two S-Bahn carriages on the lower level, where I reserved a carriage for my men and the last four of our Hitler Youths. I myself was hardly to use the accommodation at all, as much work awaited me.

Four Red Cross nurses appeared and offered to tend our wounded in the forthcoming fighting, an offer I gladly accepted.

Then I had trouble with our four remaining Hitler Youths. As I had no task for them for the moment, they stood outside our S-Bahn carriage, which was near the entrance to the Potsdamer Strasse tunnel and starting accosting ‘stragglers’, having simply adopted the role of military police.

While the real military police were handing these ‘stragglers’ over to us to feed into our front positions, these young policemen were briefly asking: ‘Where are you going? Where do you come from?’ Whoever was unable to give a thoroughly satisfactory explanation was being shot out of hand.

We had no intention of doing such a thing. When I say ‘we’, I refer to my battalion commander, who was in charge here. As was his way, he was doing nothing about the coming and going of the numerous ‘stragglers’, who could only be described as ‘stragglers’ because they did not want to fight any more. These people lived in the tunnels and only emerged when driven out by hunger or thirst, when they would try to meet their needs in the S-Bahn stations.

Now when one of my men stormed up to me and angrily reported what these military police were up to, I went down with my NCOs. We disarmed them and gave them a dressing down. What could we do with these kids? Shoot them? Of course I could understand that it galled them that most of the soldiers no longer wanted to fight. I felt the same. But they did not have the motto on their belt buckles like us.[49] So I chased the four boys away and shouted after them: ‘Don’t let me see you here again!’

They looked at me as if they could not understand me or the world any more. But it was no use, for our paths crossed again the next day. Having come from an area already occupied by the Russians, they did not know where to go, and promised to behave, but I had to stress to them that my orders were sacred and must be carried out instantly and zealously. I did not give them their weapons back, but there were plenty lying around that those tired of war had thrown away, so they were soon able to rearm themselves.

However, what pleased me was that we were immediately taken on the ration strength, including my supply train, which had not previously been the case. Until now we had only been on stand-by or fighting. What kind of leaders were these that never thought that their men had to be looked after! While I helped myself shamelessly to the battalion commander’s standing table of sandwiches, my men carried their share into their S-Bahn carriage.

Now the real military police started combing through the tunnels and bringing the ‘stragglers’ to us to be fed into our front line trenches.

Then the battalion commander came to me and said: ‘You only have two mortars now, apart from the rockets, of which you have not fired one. You are hardly overloaded.’

Not knowing what SS-Captain Schäfer wanted of me, I said: ‘Then send me forward, and if you are short of a company commander, I will gladly take over, even a platoon will do for me. That would suit me much better than this job here.’

‘Oh no!’ said Schäfer, ‘since your rocket action at the Jannowitz Bridge you have become a well known and respected person. I would be in trouble if I took you away from your post, which was not what I meant. Apart from this, between ourselves, the adjutant has brought back from the Reichs Chancellery the news that you are to get the Knight’s Cross for that action, and also be promoted for your bravery.’

‘And what happens then?’ I wanted to know. ‘Come on, spill the beans! Every day I have to take the stragglers rounded up by the military police forward to the various company commanders. Even though there are officers going about without proper jobs, a sergeant major has to be detailed as Duty Officer!’

Schäfer thought about this and then said: ‘If it hots up outside, these administrative types will be formed into a shock troop, something they have never done before. There are none among them that can replace you, so I will continue to pass on the stragglers to you to fill the holes in the front line.’

So I handed over the command to my senior NCO and set off with the stragglers.

THE DEATH OF SS-COLONEL ANHALT

Early on 25 April our regimental commander came to Potsdamer Platz wanting to speak to SS-Captain Schäfer. With him was his liaison officer, SS-Second Lieutenant Triebes and his driver, SS-Corporal Masbender. They left their staff car up on the square.

When he saw our rockets stacked around and some we were setting up ready for action, he came up to me. I reported to him and he began talking to me about our Alexanderplatz-Schlessischer Station operation, congratulating me. I did not approve of the Mrugalla’s battalion operation and told him so. When it came to the Russians and the unguarded bridges in the city centre, I said that heads should roll. He gave no indication of how much he knew of Mrugalla’s action or of whether he approved, for a regimental commander does not have to explain his thoughts and plans to a mere platoon commander, but I could see that I had caught his attention.

He was impatient and ordered me to accompany him immediately to Alexanderplatz to clarify my accusations. This set my ears burning for having opened my mouth so freely. When commanders argue among themselves, sergeant majors are likely to end up crushed between the millstones. However, I had to follow Anhalt, who did not even go down to see Schäfer, for everything was quiet here. I gave my deputy a wave to indicate that I was going off with Anhalt and hastened after him. I sat down in the rear seat next to SS-Second Lieutenant Triebes.

What neither I nor my regimental commander realised was that the Russians now had the heavy siege artillery ready to fire on the city centre. They would not need many targets, as they could not miss in the city centre. Each shot would be a direct hit, whether on German soldiers or innocent civilians. The buildings would collapse like houses of cards, the roofs of the S-Bahn and U-Bahn tunnels would be broken and numerous people killed by these super shells.

Meanwhile we drove via Hermann-Göring-Strasse, past the Brandenburg Gate, which was barricaded up so that we could not pass through, and stopped in Kleine Mauerstrasse between the Unter den Linden and Behrenstrasse, as Anhalt did not want to travel so openly to Alexanderplatz when the shells started landing. I too was happier on foot and going through tunnels, as it had become very risky. So I left them and went ahead to warn Mrugalla of our arrival.

When we got to the Police Presidium, the adjutant sent off a runner to get Mrugalla. As the others failed to appear, I went back to see what had happened to them.

I found Anhalt lying at the place where I had left him. A large shell splinter had penetrated his lungs from behind, killing him. His escort seemed to have disappeared.

Instinctively, I removed his papers, decorations, etc. and went off to get a stretcher and assistance, as one cannot leave an SS-Colonel lying around like a simple soldier. So I ran back under shell fire to the Police Presidium and got two men and a stretcher, but when I returned both Anhalt and his staff car had gone.

I returned to the Police Presidium and reported to SS-Captain Mrugalla, who had arrived in the meantime, and told him that now one of the two battalion commanders would have to take over command of the regiment. I also gave him Anhalt’s effects.

There was nothing else for me to do there, so I set off back, but via the Villa Goebbels in order to clarify the matter of Anhalt’s death.

I discovered that Anhalt had already been buried in the garden. The two escorts had already left, presumably to the Reichs Chancellery to collect SS-Major Wahl, who was now our regimental commander.

Wahl had a completely different background to the two battalion commanders, for he had been a unit commander and holder of the Knight’s Cross in the 5th SS-Panzer Division ‘Viking’, but I did not know him myself. However, it was through this change in commanding officers that my promotion and award of the Knight’s Cross fell through, not that it bothered me.

As I was returning to my troops via Leipziger Strasse, a mortar bomb, whose approach I had not heard, exploded in front of me on the roadway. A fragment hit me in the throat, blocking my airpipe so that I could hardly breathe. I crawled, for I did not have enough air to walk, back to our field hospital in the Hotel Adlon. There everything was overcrowded with the wounded lying on top of instead of alongside each other. The splinter was removed, my throat bandaged up and luckily I was also given an anti-tetanus injection. I left quickly, depressed by so much misery.

When I returned to Potsdamer Platz, the work went on. The Potsdamer Strasse entrance had received a direct hit from a heavy shell, which had destroyed the concrete steps and exposed the earth below, making it ideal for setting up our mortars. We could now fire our high trajectory weapons safe from all but a direct hit.

The battalion commander came along and said that we should start using our rockets. that was why we had brought them. ‘But where?’ I asked him, for it was stupid demanding something like this. There was no concentration of enemy tanks to aim at such as we had had at the Schlesischer Station. There were only the weasly enemy scouts around that were becoming ever more cheeky as they wriggled their way through our thinly manned positions. Every runner emerging into the open was being shot at, as happened to me when I was returning from taking out stragglers to the forward positions. I was a dead shot and picked off a small group of scouts with my captured sub-machine gun. I asked a survivor: ‘What interests you here?’ and got a surprising reply. These Russians had the mad idea of capturing Hitler, whom in their innocence they believed was hidden somewhere around here. They had come to collect him and fly him back to Stalin, who would award them with a medal and send them home on leave. We could only laugh at this simplicity, as if the bodyguards would allow anyone to get near to Hitler. They would rather let themselves be hacked to pieces first.

But others too had silly ideas. Grand Admiral Dönitz, for instance, sent some specially selected sailors to Berlin to guard Hitler. When they landed at Gatow they were immediately brought to the Reichs Chancellery, but what could Mohnke do with them? There were enough guards there already, apart from the SD. So Mohnke sent them to the Reichstag to fill the gap that the Russians fortunately had not discovered. Unfortunately these sailors were not adequately equipped for combat, having come from an honour guard and a radar school, for it was thought that they would be only used as an honour guard at the Reichs Chancellery. However, despite the senior ranks of the naval officers accompanying them, they subordinated themselves to SS-Lieutenant Babick, who had had combat experience under Joachim Peiper, even though he had nothing higher than an Iron Cross First Class.[50]

I had now sent out two of my NCOs as forward observers, one covering the area Hallisches Tor-Möckern Bridge, the other the area Potsdamer Bridge-Lützowplatz. They both came back at night when there was nothing further to see. But they too could not offer any targets for the rockets, and we could not use these weapons for shooting at sparrows.

However, the pressure from the Reichs Chancellery continued to increase, and I had to do something to please my superiors, sitting in their bombproof cellars with no consideration for the civilian population. The rockets would only destroy their homes, burying them under the rubble. No, I would not do that. If I was not hitting the enemy, I had to find a target where I would not do any damage.

So I went into the Tiergarten where the tanks of the ‘Nordland’ under the command of the brave SS-Lieutenant Colonel Peter Kausch were located. When I explained my problem to him he clapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘You are quite right. Those gentlemen are shitting themselves.’ He pulled out his tanks and I fired two rockets into the vacated area. None of my superiors noticed, as they were not going to stick their heads outside. Following my report, all these gentlemen were content and left me in peace.

As I was curious how things were going, I used my wound as an excuse to visit the Reichs Chancellery almost every day, although I had our own nurses do the bandaging. There were about 1,500 wounded lying in the cellars almost on top of each other. The doctors bustled about tending to them with carbide lamps as only the Führerbunker had its own electricity supply. At least there was enough to eat, as well as sufficient supplies of other kinds. We could also get mortar bombs from there, but the shells for the artillery were almost finished, and once Gatow Airfield had fallen there were no more. Consequently the German artillery fire became ever weaker.

With regard to artillery, a one-armed army lieutenant approached me. He had two 105 mm guns but had lost contact with his unit, and was looking for another unit to attach himself to. With my battalion commander’s permission, we combined forces. He still had some ammunition for his guns, which he had brought with him. We put them under cover down below with us. If a super shell burst through the roof now, we would all be blown to smithereens. These Wehrmacht soldiers stuck with us to the end and we worked well together, including our forward observers.

The military police now wanted me to send my Volkssturm men forward into action. Despite my protests, they said: ‘No one can afford to sit around doing nothing any more. Send them into action somewhere.’

I suggested they comb out the Reichs Chancellery, where there were plenty of Party officials doing nothing, but they protested that that was not their job. These obnoxious types, whom every front line soldier hated, went off grumbling, but I realised that I would have to find something useful for my Volkssturm men to do.

I had asked the women that had established themselves on the station platforms with their children how we could help them. They said that they were hungry, for no one supplied them with anything, but that the worst thing was thirst. There was no water available down below as the system was out of order, and they were going crazy with thirst.

So we collected all the containers we could and set off to search for water. There were still some street water pumps in Berlin that had not been been used for years but were relatively intact. When we found one at last, the water carrying role began. Once I told my men that we would carry on doing this, there was no more wrangling about water. Of course, anyone attempting to use the water for washing would have been lynched, and men under 60 had to fend for themselves, but the Volkssturm men remained undisturbed in their task, for the women would have beaten up the military police mercilessly if they had intervened.

In the meantime the Russians had moved forward up to the Landwehr Canal on one side of the Tiergarten and up to the Spree on the other. Now we had targets enough, except in the Tiergarten where our own forces lay, and especially round the Zoo bunker, whose anti-aircraft guns were now engaged in the land battle.

On 27 April I took another group of stragglers up to Belle-Alliance-Platz (Mehringplatz), but found no one there to hand them over to, so I appointed the senior serving soldier in charge of the mob, which is all you could call them, set them on guard and went back. I could see that they would run when the first Russian appeared, but I hoped that there would still be some of our comrades around in the ruins that would take them on. The companies were now a complete mixture of different kinds of combatants. Often the stragglers made their way back, only to be rounded up and sent forward again like cattle to the slaughter. Among them I recognised some familiar faces, but I played dumb and pretended not to notice.

On my way back I made a detour to check on my forward observer, who was located on top of a tall building, but when I got there the building had gone. A super shell must have demolished it. I thought that he must have had a quick death and could not have suffered much.

It so happened that another group of stragglers had been rounded up for me to deliver to the same area. By some fluke, I was taking them past the pile of rubble under which my comrade was buried, when we heard groans. I stormed into the rubble, assisted by the others, and found the unconscious comrade about two metres down. We carried him back to Potsdamer Platz, where we handed him over to our nurses, who kept him with them rather than take him to the field hospital. ‘We will soon have him back on his feet,’ they said, ‘and he will be among familiar faces.’ And they were quite right. I took my group of stragglers back to the assigned area, and by the time I had returned he had regained consciousness. The shell had struck like lightning and he could remember nothing about it, but all he had suffered was a bruised head and some other contusions. He had been extremely lucky.

On 28 April I went across to the Reichs Chancellery again, overtly to liaise, but in fact trying to get some idea of the overall situation. As I was about to enter the gate off Hermann-Göring-Strasse, I bumped into my old company comrade, Bruno Weinke. Some years before Bruno had been promoted over me, but he was then transferred to the Führer Escort where there were no promotions, so I now outranked him, and there he was standing on sentry duty like an ordinary soldier. He engaged me in discussion about the war situation, which he said he knew about first-hand, for the walls of the Führerbunker were not so thick that nothing got through. Backstairs gossip, I thought, but listened, not wanting to be rude. He told me of Hitler’s plan for the decisive battle of Berlin that would bring about a major change in the war. General Busse, who was southeast of Berlin with his 9th Army, had been ordered to break through the enveloping arms of Marshal Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front, thus cutting through his lines of communication and causing chaos, and then push through to Berlin.

(What no one here knew was that Busse’s young, inexperienced soldiers lying quiet and still in the Halbe woods were currently being shot up like rabbits by Koniev’s tanks and that the remainder, mainly armoured units, were not breaking through to Berlin but to General Wenck’s 12th Army.)

The Führer had great hopes in Wenck’s 12th Army, he said. Since it had been pulled back from the line of the Elbe, assembled and directed on Berlin, its armoured spearheads had reached Treuenbrietzen and tank gunfire had been heard in Potsdam. I said to Bruno: ‘I hear the news but I lack the faith. I got to know those divisions on the Elbe and they consist merely of emergency units. They may have proud names but I do not believe they have anything beyond that. I have met these troops and I simply do not believe that they can get us out of this mess.’

Then Bruno went on about SS-General Steiner and his IIIrd Germanic SS-Panzer Corps. I had more confidence in an SS-general. In accordance with Hitler’s orders, he was supposed to be attacking down from the north in the Oranienburg-Eberswalde area to our relief. But I no longer believed in miracles, so I left Weinke at his post and went on my way.

Gatow Airfield was lost on 27 April, despite a desperate defence. This was a bitter blow for the defence of the capital, as most of the ammunition was being flown in through there. An attempt was next made to use part of the East-West-Axis as an airstrip, but this only lasted a short while. Some of the incoming transport aircraft were shot down by enemy fighters and others crashed into shell holes.

THE BATTLE FOR THE MOLTKE BRIDGE

The main Soviet attack was directed at the Reichstag, which we could not understand as it had been in ruins since the fire of 1933. The assault was conducted by Colonel General V.I. Kutznetsov’s 3rd Shock Army’s 79th Rifle Corps, commanded by Major General S.I. Perevertkin, and led to the Moltke Bridge.

As the situation heated up, our companies deployed near the bridge called for reinforcement, for they were spread out in two-man holes fifty metres apart.

We had not fired in this area until then, but now I had to send a forward observer to direct fire. The area around the bridge was to be brought under fire upon demand. My battalion commander suggested I withdraw an observer from the Potsdamer Bridge, which I did, but I still had the big problem of having to take our stragglers forward several times a day, which was getting on my nerves. So I convinced the battalion commander that the fire direction would be so difficult there that I should do it myself, and that the NCO I had withdrawn should remain at base. My battalion commander did not like this, but I told him that I could not go on dividing my responsibilities. He should look for someone among the unemployed eaters walking around to take over the stragglers from me. Why, for instance, did we need a Duty Officer on our level? We could keep order ourselves. And my men should remain here, ready to form an instant storm troop should the Russians break through. (I did not want them used up, but kept back for the final battle.)

Whether he liked it or not, he must have taken me seriously, for there were no reserves left to deal with such a situation except ourselves. So he left and made no more objections.

I was important in this situation, because I was apparently the only one who could handle the rockets. The buck had been passed to me and my comrades. Goodness knows what had happened to the real owners.

When Kurt Abicht, the battery sergeant major, saw what I was up to, he decided to come along with me as a forward observer. We had become friends in the meantime, which happens quickly under such circumstances; one soon sees what the other is made of. He had absolutely no problems in his relationship with his battery commander, but had been feeling hemmed in and wanted to get out. He was also experienced, about the same age as myself and with the same way of speaking his mind in front of superiors.

The gunners had a radio, but it was needed by their forward observer, who had been sharing a nest close to the Potsdamer Bridge with the observer I had withdrawn. They had used the radio together, but now he would direct fire for both our resources with it, while Kurt would use my field cable.

So we set off for the Ministry of the Interior with my HQ Section NCO, two signallers and two runners during the early evening of 28 April. We were able to go part of the way underground by tunnel, but then had to make a dash across Königsplatz in daylight while paying out the field cable.

At the Ministry of the Interior, an extensive complex like a road block in front of the Moltke Bridge, a police colonel was in charge with his command post in a bunker in the cellars. This man straight away wanted to give me orders and we had a heated argument. I told him that my only interest in his building was as a good viewpoint over the bridge. I wanted to know why he had not sent some of his men to reinforce our positions at the bridge, but he would not be moved. This question caused him to howl with rage and brought a hollow laugh from Kurt and my men.

So we left and went across to the Diplomatic Quarter that filled the bend in the Spree. The embassies should have been left in peace, but neither side had time for that.

We found ourselves inside the deserted Swiss Legation, which had been burning for days and had a bombproof cellar that had been deepened and reinforced with concrete. With the steel door closed behind us, we soon warmed up. Outside it was still relatively cold at night, but here the heat from the fires came through the thick concrete walls.

Once we had warmed ourselves up, we looked for a building with a view of the bridge and the Customs Offices behind on the left. As it was quite dark at the time, I cannot say which building it was. Once the field cable was ready, we fired the first rocket, which landed across on Washingtonplatz to the right of the bridge. I gave the corrections, which could only be done roughly, as previously explained.

Then Kurt fired his guns, taking the bridge as his target. His battery commander had gone with a liaison officer from our battalion to the Reichs Chancellery to ask for shells. As the liaison officer sent by our battalion commander confirmed that he was firing from only two hundred metres, he got what he wanted.

My Volkssturm men then carried the shells across at night. It was relatively quiet at night as our opponents had other things to do and even their snipers disappeared.

Now we fired our mortars at the bridge as well, which was easier than with rockets. If I am not mistaken, this was at their maximum range. Hardly a shot came back from the other side, which made me suspect that they were up to something. Whenever a rocket hit Washingtonplatz there was such turmoil and running about, it was as if we had disturbed a hornets’ nest. I later discovered that their artillery was fully deployed there in the open without any cover whatsoever. We heard more than we saw, because only the odd fire lit the scene.

The Spree was about fifty metres wide at this point with embankments walled with hewn stone rising about three metres above the level of the water. The bridge was also of hewn stone and had four arches spanning the Spree. Although the bridge was massively constructed it had already been badly damaged. There were barricades built at either end of the bridge, but the one on the enemy side had been bulldozed aside.

As the enemy planned a surprise attack, this was not announced by an opening barrage that would have alerted us. The infantry attack began suddenly. According to Russian accounts this was made by a battalion each from the 150th and 171st Rifle Divisions, which stormed across the bridge toward us.

The machine guns of our two companies, which had been reinforced in the meantime by sailors, hacked away with steady fire. On their first attempt the infantry stuck on the barbed wired barricade at our end of the bridge. I was directing mortar fire to hail down on the bridge and my friend Kurt was using his guns to send shells ricocheting along it. They tried to withdraw, but none got away, for as they withdrew they were hit several times by the fine splinters from the mortar bombs and Kurt’s ricochets ripping across the bridge, throwing bodies into the river with their blast.

Meanwhile a whole battery of rockets had been set up on Potsdamer Platz and I had them directed on Washintongplatz and the Customs Yard. I later learnt that General Perevertkin had his forward command post there, where he could observe the attack at close hand, but there is no mention of the effects of the rockets in the books. I only hope that they scared the pants off him and his divisional commanders.

Now bulldozer tanks rolled on to the bridge, scraping the dead and injured aside and then pushing aside the barricade at our end. Kurt’s ricochets soon turned them into scrap. Anti-tank guns had joined in from our side as well as the ‘Nordland’s’ tanks from the Tiergarten. Then the heavy anti-aircraft guns on the Zoo flak-tower also opened fire once they could see a little from the fires on the bridge, and a vast heap of scrap metal formed, blocking the way for the new tanks rolling forward.

Fresh infantry stormed the bridge and were able to form a small bridgehead on our side. Now the officials from the Ministry of the Interior went into action, frantically pouring fire from their windows with their old MG 34s.[51] They defended their building like a fortress, for they knew what their fate would be as ‘Himmler’s people’, and were bypassed at first.

The Diplomatic Quarter was barely defended, for we wanted to respect the neutrality of the embassies as much as possible, something which did not bother the Soviets. This was now stormed by the 171st Rifle Division. It was like the breaching of a dam; there was no holding them back. Russian artillery of all calibres was laying down a barrage on us that left a clear path for their infantry in the centre. We could hardly lift our heads to fight them off. Now I could see that their artillery was not just on Washingtonplatz but also deployed on the Customs Yard with self-propelled guns behind, all firing without cover. However, once it became light, this was not so good for them. Guns of all sizes opened up on them from the Zoo Flak-tower. I had not seen the heavy anti-aircraft guns in action before. They did not simply hit a tank, but blew it apart, especially when catching it in the flank as was the case here.

The piles of scrap metal grew higher, especially on the far bank, but this did not deter the enemy, who simply brought fresh tank regiments in from his reserve like a cardsharper pulling aces from his sleeve.

But now we started to counterattack, and on both sides of the river. From our side we saw some close-quarter fighting suddenly start up among the guns, so the troops on our side attacked too. The Russian infantry in their small bridgehead thus came under fire from both sides, so most of them just kept their heads down, as I charged forward with my men.

Green Verey lights were fired to warn the Zoo Flak-tower to stop firing. Normally this would have meant the opposite, but fortunately the flak-tower gunners understood straight away and held their fire.

But how was it that German troops had so suddenly appeared on the other side of the river? They were in fact men of the Colonel Harry Herrmann’s 9th Parachute Division that had been defending the Lehrter Station and had been cut off in the goods station area. The Russians had overlooked them in their haste to cross the Spree and get to the Reichstag. Now they were using the opportunity to take the Russians by surprise from behind, putting many of the gun crews to flight and creating chaos before charging across the bridge to us.

A demolition team was quickly assembled to blow the bridge at last but, because of the haste and the Russian fire, they succeeded only in causing half of one span of the bridge to fall in the water. To try again was too dangerous as the Russians immediately seized the bridge again, the generals driving their men on. We could hear their hysterical cries from where we were.

Unfortunately the success of the counter-attack soon came to nothing, as we had been unable to drive the Russians out of the Diplomatic Quarter. There were too many of them. Also by this time they were filled with an immense sense of victory, knowing just as we did that this was their final battle of the war.

Now the fighting turned on the Ministry of the Interior, or ‘Himmler’s House’ as the Russians called it, which the occupants defended virtually to the last man.

Then a runner arrived from the battalion commander with instructions for me to report back to Potsdamer Platz immediately. By this time our field cable had been shot through in several places and was useless. I was not unhappy to be called away, as I did not fancy having to fight alongside such a strange and unfriendly unit as that of the Ministry of the Interior. My friend Kurt Abicht thought the same, but I offered to lay a new field cable for him if he remained as our forward observer. However, I took back with me Alfred, my HQ Section leader, and the two runners. I got on with Alfred best of all my NCOs and liked to have him with me. He had no respect for anyone or anything and provided a witty Berliner commentary on events.

Back below in the depths of the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn Station we received a warm welcome not only from our comrades, but also from the battalion commander himself. Here too things had heated up, and it seemed that he was afraid the Russians would burst in at any moment. Apart from my men, he had no one he could use in a close combat role. The civilians could easily panic and hinder or even prevent a defence, and should that occur, I would be the one who knew best what to do.

I was therefore to remain here, first constructing barricades on the upper level behind which we could entrench ourselves and conduct an all-round defence. Should the Russians break in, they would have to be dealt with quickly. We did not know from which entrance the Russians were likely to appear, so we had to have an all-round defence.

Meanwhile, above on the square, a vast scrap yard had formed of burnt-out abandoned vehicles and shot-up equipment strewn everywhere.

My attention now turned to our sector from Belle-Alliance-Platz to the Potsdamer Bridge. The situation at the bridge was still as previously described with an aerial mine suspended from either side and the bridge unblown. The bridge was stormed by the 79th Guards Rifle Division, supported by tanks of the 11th Tank Corps. Sappers had first to neutralise the mines, which cost them heavy casualties from our machine guns. We also fired our mortars and rockets as directed by our forward observer in the immediate vicinity, whose radio worked perfectly.

The Russians later made a big thing of the story that a child crying for its mother was rescued by the standard bearer of the 220th Guards Rifle Regiment at the risk of his own life, but the forward observer reported nothing of this and I think that it was just another one of their propaganda stories.[52]

The enemy infantry first advance under cover of a smokescreen, which enabled them to establish a small bridgehead. Then the tanks tried a new trick that our comrades fell for. The first tanks were shot up by the ‘Nordland’ tanks firing from the Tiergarten, where they were immobilised for lack of fuel. The Soviet tanks had protected themselves with sheet metal and other items against Panzerfausts, so one of them threw sacking over these projections and soaked it with fuel then set it alight to make the tank appear as if it had been hit, which enabled it to get across and take up position without being fired at.

Simultaneously the infantry of the 39th Guards Rifle Division swam across the canal and got up the embankment, while the 12th Motorised Rifle Brigade did the same thing at the Möckern Bridge U-Bahn Station and were suddenly on our side of the canal. Our defending troops were taken by surprise, but counterattacked vigorously and drove some of the Russians back into the canal. Unfortunately not everywhere, only where we had energetic leaders.

Further to the east at the Hallesche Tor the Russians were able to get some tanks across by means of pontoons, but as soon as they got their tracks on to firm ground tank destroyer units engaged and destroyed most of them.

The Russians could no longer use their aircraft against us as the lines were too close, barely two metres separating the antagonists in some places. In some buildings the Russians fought from the lower stories with Germans above them, and I would have to clear the lower stories myself before handing over my stragglers. My British sub-machine gun proved excellent for this close quarter fighting. At a range of thirty metres it was the best weapon going. Hardly any prisoners were taken under these circumstances.

Every reinforcement was gladly received by my comrades, who also welcomed the food and ammunition we brought with us. It was not so easy replacing defective machine guns. We had established an armourer’s workshop in one of the S-Bahn carriages, but it was usually only possible to assemble one effective machine gun out of two defective ones.

The night of 28 April heavy fighting took place around Leipziger Strasse and Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, where the Gestapo HQ was strongly defended. The Russians tried to break through here and succeeded briefly but the Gestapo counterattacked and regained their building. I always gave this area a wide berth to avoid these gentlemen laying their hands on me, and now they were having to fight for their lives.

29 April came and we were having to hold on to our positions and conduct counterattacks, all to little effect. We only knew through rumours of the big political decisions being made in the Reichs Chancellery, so I went across to see what I could find out. The battalion commander and his staff came with me. He too was not informed of what was going on, being too junior, but SS-Brigadier Mohnke was well informed, having had two meetings with Hitler that day. He told Hitler that the Russians were already at Potsdamer Platz and in the tunnels under Voss-Strasse, but that was not true, for the area around was still firmly in our hands.

The Russians finished their assault on the Ministry of the Interior at about 0400 hours on 30 April. I had had to send a forward observer back there, for the battalion commander had forbidden me to go myself. I had told my NCOs on no account to let themselves become cut off in the Ministry of the Interior. If the Russians found their field cable they would cut it and render it useless. So they went to the Swiss Legation building and stayed there until forced out by the 171st Rifle Division clearing the western half of the Diplomatic Quarter.

We had now used up the last of our mortar bombs and there were no more available, so I sent a runner to recall my men. I also recalled the observer from our left flank for the same reason. Now that we were ‘unemployed’, I used my NCOs for taking forward stragglers, and from the reports they brought me on their return I gained the following picture. The Russians had occupied both sides of Leipziger Strasse and had also occupied the Anhalter Station. The pressure was increasing as they closed in from all sides. The Zoo Bunker and its surrounding area was cut off from us and formed its own ‘pocket’. Several stragglers from there got through the Russian positions to us at night and reported that barricades in the area manned by Hitler Youth and Volkssturm had been attacked by the Russians using 45mm guns at point blank range and then the Russians had forced civilians out of their cellars to clear them under German fire. Now that things had hotted up at the Zoo bunker, some of the civilians sheltering there had been driven out, thousands suddenly emerging into the open looking for cover and protection, and had come under fire from the Russians as they left the bunker.[53] Some of them got through to us and reported how terrible conditions were inside the bunker. There was hardly any air to breathe, the guns were constantly firing, and the screams of people breaking down under the strain made it unbearable. In contrast to the Zoo bunker they found the conditions in our tunnels quite pleasant. Even though there was not much room, they could still walk about and move around a bit. We had to supply these newcomers with water too, but there they had only received a mouthful from time to time.

THE BATTLE FOR THE REICHSTAG

This was a real battle in itself. I cannot describe it from my own experience but only from that of surviving combatants and also Russian reports, although the latter should be treated with great caution.

The commander of the defence at the Reichstag was SS-Lieutenant Babick of our battalion, who came from the same 2nd Regiment of the ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ as I did, where he had previously commanded the 11th Company of our 3rd Battalion. After hospitalisation he had taken over the Potential Leaders Company at Spreenhagen in February 1945. I am not sure, but I think it was that company that he had at the Reichstag. The company was about 100 strong and he received no more support from our battalion commander. To this can be added the 250 sailors that had been flown in though, as previously mentioned, these men were not properly equipped for combat. We called them ‘The Dönitz Contribution’ and the accompanying naval officers acted as his platoon and section leaders. Then came the company of paratroopers from the 9th Parachute Division, plus the approximately 100 Volkssturm stragglers that I brought him. So in all Babick had a force of no more than 550 combatants at his disposal, as opposed to the 5,000 attributed to him by the Russians.

An all-round defence was established and Babick set up his command post in a cellar behind the Reichstag, from where there were several underground tunnels leading to other buildings. The Reichstag itself had been walled up after the 1933 fire, presumably to prevent further arson attempts.

The Russian attack began with a massive artillery barrage. As the attacking infantry of the 150th Rifle Division wheeled left out of the Ministry of the Interior building, it came under strong flanking fire from the fortified Kroll Opera House, the ‘Nordland’ tanks in the Tiergarten and Zoo Flak-tower. The attack had been launched immediately after securing the Ministry of the Interior, by which time the division had been reduced to only two regiments, without time for either rest or reconnaissance, and it soon foundered. Meanwhile the 171st Rifle Division had launched an attack on the eastern half of the Diplomatic Quarter across Alsenstrasse with an equal lack of success and at a heavy cost.

The corps commander, realising he would have to clear the Kroll Opera House, called in his reserve 207th Rifle Division, which had first to clear the lightly defended Schlieffenufer block alongside the Spree in order to get at the Opera House. The Russians were under tremendous pressure as Stalin wanted the Red Flag hoisted on top of the Reichstag in time for the May Day celebrations. Additional artillery, tanks and rocket launchers were brought across to reinforce the Ministry of the Interior building in preparation for the next attack.

The second Soviet attack stalled on the line of a cutting for a U-Bahn tunnel that ran across Königsplatz to the Diplomatic Quarter and was not shown on the Russians’ maps. This abandoned worksite was flooded and its depth and steep sides made it an ideal anti-tank obstacle, which had naturally been incorporated into the defensive system.

Although the 171st Rifle Division managed to secure the eastern half of the Diplomatic Quarter as far as the Kronprinzen Bridge, the 150th Rifle Division stuck fast on the line of the ditch under heavy fire from the Reichstag, so it was decided to await the cover of darkness for the final assault.

With nightfall at about 1800 hours, the Russian tanks became invisible to the Zoo Flak-tower and were able to get round the flooded ditch to give support to the infantry storming the building. The infantry used mortars firing horizontally to blast a small hole in the bricked-up doorway and, supported by the fire from the supporting tanks and self-propelled guns, were able to enter the building itself, where merciless close-quarter fighting broke out, gradually spreading over the various stories of this vast building. But it was very dark inside, which placed the newcomers at a serious disadvantage to the defenders who knew their way around.

The military council of the 3rd Shock Army had issued a special Flag No. 5 for this historical occasion and sent it forward under an escort of Communist Party members. Two sergeants were able to slip through and find a way up to the roof and hoist the flag. The official account and the photographs and filming taken next day to commemorate the event for posterity, showed them holding the flag against one of the pepperpot-like ornaments on the rear parapet of the building overlooking the Brandenburg Gate, with the claim that this had occurred seventy minutes before May Day. The two sergeants were awarded the golden stars of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ for their deed. However, it later transpired that the first Red Flag to be hoisted over the Reichstag was in fact raised by an artillery captain on a statue above the front entrance well before midnight, whereas the sergeants had been two hours into May Day and had used an equestrian statue over the rear entrance as their prop. The photographer then made them change location because of the lack of background establishing the site, resulting in the famous picture that was published round the world. The captain received only the ‘Order of the Red Banner’ for his pains.

Fighting continued inside the building all day on 1 May and until 1300 hours on 2 May, when General Weidling’s order to surrender reached the survivors, who had by then been cut off from us for over thirty-six hours. Meanwhile, Soviet flamethrowers had started a fire within the building whose choking smoke made conditions even worse.

The attacking 79th Rifle Corps later claimed to have taken 2,000 prisoners and counted 2,500 German dead in these assaults on the Reichstag, Diplomatic Quarter, Schlieffenufer, Moltke Bridge and Kroll Opera House, but these figures are wildly exaggerated, as I have shown. Their own war memorial built close to the site significantly contains the bodies of 2,200 soldiers presumably killed in this same action.

THE BREAK-OUT FROM FRIEDRICHSTRASSE

The one-armed lieutenant, followed by Kurt Abicht and his men, came down to see me. He said that both his guns were now useless scrap and he thought that we were finished. My mortars were also useless for lack of bombs, and our rockets had long since been used up. We were now just simple infantrymen. We still had our machine gun with six hundred rounds and plenty of ammunition for our sub-machine guns, but that was all.

Losses among my own men had been thankfully few. This may have been because I preferred to do things myself rather than endanger others, but I cannot be sure. One of the sergeants had been wounded when he was buried under debris, but he could move around easily enough and was back on light duties.

As usual I went up to our barricades on the upper level on the night of 1/2 May. We still had not organised a shock troop, as we had been ordered from above, but fortunately we were spared this, and now we had been reinforced in our positions by the one-armed lieutenant and his men. Though they were not armed for close combat like ourselves, we now numbered about sixty in all. Claiming that he was no infantryman, the lieutenant handed over command to me.

I converted a former ticket office cabin into a quiet corner for myself and settled down there to doze. Suddenly a runner appeared with orders for the lieutenant and myself to report to the battalion commander. The lieutenant took along his battery sergeant major Kurt Abicht, and I took two of my Hitler Youths as runners. As usual they were as keen as mustard.

When we got to the command post on the lower level we found the battalion commander and his staff sitting there in the former platform guard’s office with faces that looked pale and distraught in the candlelight. Schäfer said to his adjutant: ‘Right, SS-Lieutenant Krönke, we are all here, you can begin.’

When I asked about the missing company commanders, Schäfer said; ‘We don’t need them at the moment. SS-Lieutenant Krönke has just returned from an order group with SS-Brigadier Mohnke at the Reichs Chancellery.’

Krönke read out what he said were the Führer’s last orders. We were thanked for our loyalty to the Führer and released from our oath to him. We were then informed about the new government that was to be formed, of which still in Berlin were Dr Josef Goebbels, the new Reichs Chancellor, and Martin Bormann, the Party Minister. Anyone could now go if they so wished.

However, SS-Brigadier Mohnke had cancelled the latter statement with written orders for a break-out of all Waffen-SS troops under his command to go north from Friedrichstrasse. General Weidling’s Army troops would break out to the west to join up with General Wenck’s forces. SS-General Steiner would thrust toward us with his divisions and take us on to join our friends the Americans.

(This sounded odd to me, for I had never heard of such ‘friends’ before. Only six months before these ‘friends’ had killed my parents with a direct hit by a bomb on their country home.) Mohnke would lead the break-out from Friedrichstrasse himself, according to these orders.

It was only then that it sunk in that Hitler had already been dead thirty hours. It had been kept secret, the adjutant told us, so that the front would not collapse. Goebbels had wanted to negotiate a ceasefire with the Soviets. When I asked about Goebbels, I was told that he had had SS-Colonel Rattenhuber shoot his wife and himself.

I then asked about Martin Bormann, and was told that Bormann was now the highest ranking party official in Berlin and had nominated Mohnke to lead the break-out.

Now Schäfer issued his orders. We were to go through the S-Bahn tunnels as far as was possible, which would be partly under enemy lines. As the tunnels did not run directly to Friedrichstrasse S-Bahn Station, we would climb up a certain emergency exit and continue above ground to the station, where we would wait for Mohnke to issue further orders.

I now asked about our companies up forward. ‘They will follow on later, but will first have to cover our withdrawal,’ Schäfer said. ‘You and the lieutenant can come with us, but your men will have to stay and cover our rear, or the Russians will get us from behind.’

I did not like the idea of leaving without my men, and neither did the lieutenant, so I said to the battalion commander: ‘You alone are answerable for your companies, but I will not go one step from here without my men.’

The lieutenant said the same.

I went on: ‘So I will stay here until you have gone. No Russians will get you from behind.’

‘Oh no!’ said Schäfer, ‘I need you for your close combat experience in the break-out!’

‘And with whom am I going to break out, if not with my men?’ I asked. ‘With a crowd like this, virtually unknown to me, it will not work. They would run round me like a flock of sheep!’

‘I had not thought of it like that,’ said Schäfer. ‘As far as I am concerned, do as you like. As usual you have the last word!’

I then gave orders to my Hitler Youths, who were standing there with their mouths wide open at this discussion. One of them was told to blow up the two remaining mortars immediately with hand grenades and to return as quickly as possible with the gunners. The lieutenant nodded his approval.

The other one was told to go to our S-Bahn carriages and, if any of our men were there, to get them out with some excuse and send them back here. I used this ruse to avoid having the women and Volkssturm joining us in the break-out.

Kurt Abicht explained to these Volkssturm men what we intended doing. They should discard their armbands and caps and become proper civilians again. I also persuaded my Hitler Youths to go back home. At least they would be held in their mothers’ arms once more, even if the mothers of those that had been killed cursed me.

Then I thrust aside the quartermaster standing distraught outside his S-Bahn wagon loaded with supplies and forced my way in. I sought and found boxes of ‘Schokolada’ and threw them on to the platform, where some burst open, sending the cans rolling around. I looked for some schnapps and found some cases of ‘Aqua-Witt’, a brand sometimes issued to the common soldier as part of his rations, and placed two of them on the platform. Meanwhile my men had gathered round wondering what was happening. ‘Don’t ask too many questions,’ I said. ‘Take as much ‘Schokolada’ as you can, as it will be the only nourishment you get during the next few days. Then everyone take a bottle of schnapps, but only one! You can all take one gulp, but keep the rest in case someone is wounded, when it will help ease the pain.’

They eagerly did what I said, as did the gunners. Then we set off. I led with my men. The torch batteries had all been exhausted, so I held a burning tallow candle in my hand.

We found the right emergency exit from the tunnel and we climbed up into the open air without having taken a step in the wrong direction. We then went across to Friedrichstrasse Station, where thousands of people had gathered. Instead of just Waffen-SS as had been planned, there were soldiers of all arms of the service standing around waiting for the breakthrough to start, even women. Some were secretaries from government offices with their chiefs, but there were also officers with their wives on their arms, which would handicap them in any fighting.

I am not sure of the exact time, but it must have been about midnight and everything was quiet at the Weidendammer Bridge except for the murmuring of the crowd. Our battalion had formed a circle and were discussing the situation. I kept apart, even though they wanted my opinion. There was no point. I had never been in such a situation before and my fighting experience was of no value here. The one-armed lieutenant was bored with it all. He did not feel himself bound to Mohnke’s orders, and said to me: ‘We will find our own way out. Good luck to you.’

I wished him and his men the same, and they left. I saw him again twelve years later, for they did not get through and had to tread the bitter road to Siberia, where they spent the next five years.

It was all too quiet for my liking, and that made me suspicious. Why was it taking so long? Time was not on our side, I thought. I took my HQ Section leader by the arm and we went up Friedrichstrasse. I had learnt not to do things without first making a reconnaissance, and here nobody was getting ready. We got as far as Chausseestrasse, about 780 metres up Friedrichstrasse without coming under fire. Had I been free to do so, I would have taken my men and gone there and then, and with Alfred’s local knowledge we probably would have got through without heavy casualties, but it was not my choice, I had to obey orders. The Russians did not appear to have noticed us and there could only have been some of their scouts in the neighbourhood.

So we returned to our startpoint, where the discussion was still going on. I pulled the battalion commander out of the group and told him what I had observed. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said: ‘I have already realised that this is the weakest point where we will break through.’

The biggest mistake here, however, was hanging around waiting for the leadership. The Russian scouts must have realised what was happening and passed the word. Friedrichstrasse seems to have been the boundary between the 3rd and 5th Shock Armies. Apparently their scouts must have established contact here and the gap was not closed until after midnight.

Gradually the comrades from the outlying companies joined us. Whether they had been informed by runners, or just noticed that the battalion staff had gone, I cannot say, but one company commander knocked Schäfer down under circumstances I was not party to. The Reichs Chancellery people also began turning up at intervals, and from some comrades from the Führer Escort that I knew, I learnt something of what had gone on.

Dismay and panic had broken out among the many wounded that could not come along and had no weapons left to shoot themselves with. Where one had been hidden, it was passed around until the ammunition ran out. Others begged the doctors, Professors Werner Haase and Günther Schenk to give them fatal injections, but they had none to give. Even the bandages were having to be washed and used several times over.

After Goebbels’s ADC, Schwägermann, had set fire to the bodies of Goebbels and his wife, he had sprinkled petrol over everything in the Führerbunker and set it alight so that the Russians would not find anything worthwhile. This again caused panic as people thought the fire was due to sabotage, and the smoke made conditions in the bunker even worse.

Apparently Mohnke himself had decided the composition of the groups that would leave the Reichs Chancellery at regular intervals. There had been no mention of a combined break-out, the situation we now had here. Whether this was intentional, or through misunderstanding, I have never been able to clarify.

While we were waiting for Mohnke, he was already long gone with his group, which consisted of about fifteen people, whose names I was later given by SS-Captain Heinrich Mundt. Those that I can remember were: SS-Major Günsche (Hitler’s ADC), SS-Captain Klingmeier (Mohnke’s Adjutant), who had previously commanded the Training & Field Replacement Battalion of the ‘Leibstandarte’ at Spreenhagen, SS-Captain Mundt, previously divisional quartermaster of the ‘Leibstandarte’, Professor Dr Schenk, Ambassador Hewel (Foreign Office representative at the Reichs Chancellery), SS-Lieutenant Stehr (Mohnke’s liaison officer), Vice Admiral Voss (Naval representative at the Reichs Chancellery), Frau Junge and Frau Christian (Hitler’s secretaries), Frau Krüger (Bormann’s secretary) and Frau Manzialy (Hitler’s cook), plus a few officers from Mohnke’s staff and SS-Major Wahl, our new regimental commander, but I cannot be sure.

The inclusion of four women in this group shows that Mohnke had no intention of leading the break-out from the front. Apparently he had promised Hitler to bring the women out safely, and in this he was successful with three of them who got through to the west, but the very pretty Frau Manzialy vanished without trace.

As I learnt later, Mohnke’s group had taken the following route. They first sprinted across the open Wilhelmplatz to the Kaiserhof U-Bahn Station, along the tunnel to Mitte U-Bahn Station, from where they took the northbound tunnel under Friedrichstrasse, but when they reached the level of the Spree they found their way blocked by a closed bulkhead door guarded by two railwaymen, whose duty was to close the door after the last train had passed through at night. Although no trains had run for over a week, the doors were still closed and they refused to open them. Stupidly Mohnke accepted this and turned back to Friedrichstrasse U-Bahn Station and went along the embankment until they came to a footbridge. When one of the escort made to turn toward the station where we were waiting, Mohnke said to him: ‘No, not by Friedrichstrasse, all hell will break loose there soon!’ How right he was!

Mohnke’s group removed the barbed wire blocking the footbridge and crossed the river. They then tried to find their way toward the Lehrter Station, but when they reached Invalidenstrasse, where SS-Captain Mundt left them, they took a wrong turning and went up Chausseestrasse as far as the Maikäfer Barracks, where they encountered some difficulties but were able to get away, finally reaching the Patzenhofer Brewery where they rested.

Meanwhile, we were all waiting in vain for Mohnke. I went around the crowd and met some people I had not seen for years, but it was no time to chat, we were all too concerned with what might await us.

Then at last there was some movement. A lone King Tiger tank rolled up noisily with a defective track. I crossed the Spree and stopped a short distance behind the barricade there, whose right hand side was open. Then a self-propelled gun and an armoured personnel carrier drew up side by side behind it. Next five armoured personnel carriers drew up and lined up behind the others. In the second one I could see a figure in a cap and overcoat whom in the darkness I took to be Mohnke. I was further convinced it was him when SS-Captain Schäfer ran up to the vehicle and spoke with him, but I was some thirty metres away and could not hear what was said.

As I thought Schäfer would be leading his battalion out at the head of his men, I lined up behind the vehicles with my men. Then Schäfer ran back, banged on the door of the last vehicle and cllmbed in with his adjutant, SS-Lieutenant Krönke. Then Schäfer called out: ‘Rogmann! Do you need an invitation? Climb in!’

I went up to the vehicle and said to him: ‘You don’t think I am going to drive off with you and leave my men behind, do you?’

He started to say something, but I interrupted him with: ‘You can cross me off the list!’

The door slammed shut.

The officer I had taken for Mohnke was in fact SS-Major Ternedde, commander of the ‘Norge’ Regiment of the ‘Nordland’, and all the vehicles were from that division.

It was not only that I did not want to leave my men behind, but also because of my natural infantryman’s reluctance to ride in those ‘mobile coffins’. Even if my men had not been there, I would not have gone with him willingly. Breaking through with those vehicles in street fighting is a really risky business that is only lessened when they are surrounded and protected by infantry, as it is so easy to toss grenades into them from above and turn them into mass graves.

The armoured vehicles started moving forward and we formed up across the street beyond the barricade. The first rank consisted of machine gunners with their weapons on slings, all carrying fifty-round drum magazines. Apart from my machine gunner, I and my men followed in the second rank.

The armoured vehicles speeded up. We followed in quick time, but could not keep up and soon lost contact. We then came under infantry fire from the windows of the buildings on the right of the street and all the machine gunners returned the fire, spraying the front of the buildings. The din caused by a hundred machine guns firing simultaneously was enough to burst one’s eardrums. Now tanks opened up on us from either side.

My men, who had all taken a second swig from their bottles before setting off, were in the mood to face death. I had not taken a second drink, knowing the feeling of indifference that strong alcohol brings, for in this kind of situation I had to be able to think for these inexperienced men and be able to react like lightning.

There was no sense of leadership in this mob. There were no responsible officers. My men only obeyed me because they knew me and trusted me. They had only to catch my eye and signal, for shouting was no good in this din, to follow my orders. Literally thousands of people were thrusting blindly forward behind us. I had never seen such a primitive form of attack, being used to an empty battlefield in modern warfare. This was utter nonsense.

They were not just Waffen-SS behind us, and not just soldiers, but officers with their wives, even my former company commander SS-Lieutenant von Puttkamer with his heavily pregnant wife.

Meanwhile we had reached the level of Ziegelstrasse on our right, which was now full of Russian tanks that must have been alerted to our impending breakout by their scouts. With our incomprehensibly long wait we had given them plenty of time to form up, although the tank had been able to slip through, if a bit damaged. But the self-propelled gun and one of the armoured personnel carriers had been shot up as the other armoured vehicles passed though, as I saw no other wrecks around.

The Russians fired into our packed ranks as we stumbled forward without regard for our dead and wounded. My group was now in the lead. Then we came under fire from tanks in Johannisstrasse on our right, and the effect of high explosive shells bursting in our ranks was simply terrible. The advance came to a halt and thousands of people started streaming back. I had never seen such a fiasco.

However, we did not go with them. It was obvious that there would be another attempt, so we vanished like lightning into the buildings on our left, where we were safe. As we had been out in front, no one could prevent us stepping aside as we did. We were in front because in an attack that is the safest place to be, as experienced front line soldiers know.

So far my own men had suffered no casualties and were still sticking together. We waited for the inevitable second attempt, which was preceded by an armoured personnel carrier firing on all sides as it raced toward us, but it was only hastening to its fate, for it stopped and burst into flames, blocking the street for the other armoured vehicles following.

As those on foot reached us, we jumped out to resume the lead. The street now lay full of dead and wounded, the armoured vehicles racing over them. While under cover in the buildings, we had met up with some experienced men from the ‘Nordland’ and even some parachutists. Enemy tanks appeared in front of us again and we tried to creep up under their fire to knock them out in order to get past, but fresh tanks appeared behind them from the right and sprayed those in front with machine gun fire, the ricochets causing heavy casualties among us. Practically the whole of my platoon was hit by this fire, which broke up the attack, sending the masses streaming back again.

We pulled our wounded into the cover of the buildings and bandaged them up as best we could. I used my bottle of schnapps to pour courage into them. I realised that the whole business was hopeless. The Russians had been reinforced and when another crowd moved up they were slaughtered before my eyes.

We did not take any further part in this massacre. I worked out that the leadership had driven off, abandoning us, so I owed them no further allegiance and must save my own life and those of my few remaining unwounded men. We had to leave our wounded behind, which made my heart bleed, for it was for the first time in this war. So I said farewell to them, encouraging them by saying that the opposing Russians were also front line troops and would not do anything to them. I told them to remove their SS runes and make themselves unidentifiable as Waffen-SS, to get rid of all their documents and paybooks, and then they would be taken to hospital and treated as normal Wehrmacht soldiers.

Only two unwounded men remained, Alfred, my HQ Section leader, and a runner. During a pause in the firing we crept back to the Weidendammer Bridge together. I cannot describe the horror that lay on the street and increased with every attack.

With my remaining men I found the Schlütersteg and crossed the Spree without coming under fire, for the Russians were concentrating their efforts on Friedrichstrasse. We eventually reached the Lehrter Station, where one could see signs of the fighting that had taken place there, but no Russians. Once we got beyond the Nordhafen we headed north. My HQ Section leader knew his Berlin well and gave me good directions, but I still think that I could have found my way without his local knowledge. Wherever possible we went through cellars by means of the holes in the walls that had been knocked through as an air raid precaution, so that people could escape if their house was hit. This way we could go the whole length of some streets.

Eventually we came to a police building, possibly the police hospital, as there were policemen on guard at the windows. So we gradually made progress. It was now daylight and at any moment a Russian patrol could emerge from a doorway or yard entrance, so I removed my medals and insignia, as did my comrades, making ourselves unrecognisable as Waffen-SS. We met up with some German soldiers, making their way one by one in the same direction as ourselves.

Then we came across SS-Captain Mundt, who was alone. He was our divisional quartermaster with an office in the Lichterfelde barracks. It was a post he had held since 1934 and so he had never been in combat. Having once helped him with a job, he had always stopped to talk to me ever since. It was he who now told me what had happened to the Mohnke group, of which he had been a member. After they had crossed the Schlütersteg, firing had broken out in Friedrichstrasse after our first break-out attempt, whereupon Mohnke had commented: ‘Now they have caught it!’

This comment had caused Mundt to leave the group and make his own way out. I told him that the senseless break-out attempt on Friedrichstrasse had cost my men their lives and that I felt responsible. I told him: ‘The Führer is dead and my oath to him over. In future I will pick my own superiors, whether they wear generals’ uniforms or not.’

Mundt did not respond, but went on his own way while we carried on to the north. We did not encounter any enemy and it must have been about 1600 hours when we arrived at the Patzenhofer Brewery premises in Prinzenstrasse, where thousands of men were standing around in groups talking and clearly waiting for something. I thought that they were waiting for orders for the next break-out attempt to the north. I mixed in among them looking for anyone I knew, but found no one and the individual groups were distrustful of outsiders and stopped talking whenever an outsider approached. This made me suspicious in turn and I continued my search with my two comrades. I then noticed a large bunker in the middle of the brewery yard with concrete steps leading down below. I handed my sub-machine gun to my men and went down the steps to a curtain, behind which I could hear voices, including Russian ones. I brushed back the curtain and went into a dimly lit large room full of officers, mainly Waffen-SS.

Mohnke was standing in the middle of the room talking to two Russian officers, one apparently a general and the other acting as an interpreter translating all that was being said. I heard Mohnke say: ‘Let us sum up. At 1800 hours we hand over the city; the men go into honourable captivity and have to work; the officers will only have to work voluntarily; the staff officers retain their decorations and sidearms and of course their orderlies.’

The interpreter nodded eagerly, whereupon I stepped forward and said: ‘And you believe that, Brigadier?’

Mohnke came up to me and said: ‘Don’t speak unless asked when generals are talking!’

We then had a strong exchange of words in front of the Russians that I will not go into. I stormed out of the room in a rage, threatening to warn the comrades above, as we did not want to end up in the Siberian lead mines. I heard Mohnke call out to two of his officers: ‘Bring him back or he will spoil everything!’

But they were unable to stop me and my comrades helped me send them back down the steps into the bunker. Then another officer came after me, it was SS-Captain Mundt, and I said to him angrily: ‘What do you want, then?’

He had been present but I had not noticed him. ‘Oh, Rogmann,’ he said, ‘what a fool I have been thinking there was going to be another break-out. You don’t know how right you are!’

‘Oh yes I do!’ I said.

Mundt went on: “No one dared say anything against it and then you burst in and stirred things up. I do not want to surrender and go into captivity either. Please take me with you on another route that will hopefully bring us to freedom!”

When I agreed, my two comrades put their heads together and started whispering to one another. Then they pulled me aside and said: ‘Willi, just look at him! He can dress in anything he likes but he will still look like a Prussian officer, even at a distance!’

They were right, of course, but how could I leave him behind? I decided to take him, even if his presence might endanger us. Mundt understood what was happening and said: ‘Rogmann, I would rather die than go to Siberia!’

‘Of course I will take you with me,’ was my reply, ‘but I am in charge and you will have to do what you are told without any argument.’

He agreed, but now had to do things our way. I took his officers’ hat from his head and flung it away, for it was easily recognisable at a distance, and then his shoulder straps and cut off his runes and stars with my knife. Of course his boots and tailor-made uniform still showed what he was, but we could not do anything about that for the moment. He removed his officers’ belt and stuffed his pistol into his hip pocket.

In direct contrast, I was filthy, unkempt and unshaven, with a thick stubble on my face and my pockets bulging. I was wearing my trousers outside my boots and looked an absolute tramp, but in these circumstances, where the Russians were equally dirty, this was perfectly acceptable.

Then one of my comrades said: ‘Now we are a foursome, and that is too many to get through. Don’t take it wrong, but we prefer to make our own way.’

I sympathised, for they would have fewer difficulties without Mundt. Also Alfred was a Berliner and would soon find them shelter. So I thanked them for the loyalty they had shown and we hugged each other and said our farewells, thinking that it would be for ever. So off I went with Mundt, our first objective being to find civilian clothes.

I did not have to warn the other comrades. The place had thinned out considerably. Of the thousands that had been there standing around before only a few hundred remained and soon there would be even less. They were enthusiastically throwing their weapons on to a pile, on which I threw the sub-machine gun that I had liked so much, after removing the breech block so that no one else could use it.

We had reached Bornholmer Strasse and were crossing an open square when we were suddenly surrounded by a dozen armed foreigners, whose nationality I did not catch. They demanded we put our hands up and surrender.

I played dumb in order to allay their suspicions, with the idea of making a break for it, and this worked. The gang drifted off, looking for other targets, but two of them remained with us and started searching us. This infuriated Mundt. who picked his opponent up by the scruff of his neck and then kicked him hard. I had to join in too and felled my opponent with a hand chop to the throat. He fell without a sound and I grappled in my message pouch for my hidden 7.65 Mauser pistol.

Now we were attacked by the other foreigners, who had seen what had happened. There must have been a dozen of them dancing around us with knives. Mundt threw aside his lifeless opponent and pulled out the pistol from his hip pocket. We stood back to back for all-round defence. Time was not on our side, so I opened fire, as did Mundt. At this range every shot was a hit and soon they were either lying on the ground or in flight.

Then we suddenly had to deal with a far better armed enemy. There were several of them armed with rifles firing at us from only fifty metres away. We returned the fire but, while fifty yards is nothing for a rifle, it is too much for a pistol.

I emptied my magazine and had to change it, as did Mundt, so for a moment we were defenceless. The enemy, who had been dodging about with every shot we fired, noticed this and kept on firing. Two of them must have aimed at Mundt for he was hit twice in the head and fell down dead.

Having changed magazines, I rushed forward to close the range and so got the advantage of my faster firing weapon. I zigzagged as I ran, but they hit me twice, one a graze to the head and another to my lower left arm, which in my anger I only noted as a light blow. But then my enemies suddenly scattered in front of me and I heard sub-machine gun fire coming from behind me.

I had no time to look round to see who had fired, but raced into a doorway on my right. When my other enemies saw me appear, they tried to stop me, but I quickly pulled my second pistol out of my boot top and shot my way through with both hands. I found myself in a long passageway and, quickly looking back, saw a large group of armed Russians coming round a street corner.

I ran down the passage and came to a door at the far end with a key in it. I opened the door, pulled out the key and locked the door from the other side. Then I stood by the doorway listening to my pursuers creeping up. They began to break down the door. There was a crush of them there, so I fired through it a few times with my 7.65 pistol. Howls of pain announced that several of them had been hit, more than one with each round.

It was time to leave. I went across the backyard, climbed the wall into the next yard and so on. I could hear my pursuers some distance behind as they kept shouting. Eventually I came to an old disused cemetery, which gave plenty of cover with its clumps of bushes and big gravestones. I crouched down behind them as my pursuers passed quite close. I did not want to stay here long, as I was still without civilian clothes. When I checked my pistol, I saw that I had only two rounds left, too few for action. I rummaged through my message pouch, which I had stupidly been reluctant to part with, and emptied my pockets. Those contents that would have identified me, such as my paybook and decorations, I stuffed into my message pouch and buried in a hole that I dug with my hands behind a gravestone.

I crept through the cemetery and saw some multi-storied apartment blocks in the distance that looked undamaged. They were occupied and hardly any fighting had taken place in this area while the occupants sat in their cellars. I jumped over the cemetery wall, entered one of the buildings from the rear, and then went up to the second floor and knocked on a door. It opened and a voice came from inside, where two women, mother and daughter, were peacefully sorting out some bed linen. I told them that I needed some civilian clothing to change into. ‘But why?’ the mother asked naively. ‘The Russians won’t do anything to you, just look out into the street. You can see them leading German prisoners away peacefully.’

I offered the mother some valuables I had with me and said: ‘I only want some old clothes such as your husband does not wear any more.’

So she got me some trousers and a jacket from a cupboard. The jacket was a bit too big and the trousers a bit too short, but these suited me fine. I wanted to look like a foreigner, best of all a Pole, since I spoke a bit of Russian and could pass as a Pole speaking it badly.

But I was not quite finished with these two women. I did not want to change my special boots, but I needed something on my head for, like all soldiers, I felt only half dressed without a hat. When I asked her for one, the woman said: ‘I have only one hat and that’s my husband’s best thing.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘give it here.’

But before she did so, she spotted my wedding ring and said that the Russians would take it off me if they saw it, which was true, finger and all probably. These avaricious women had made me angry so I decided to leave them a ‘present’ that would not please them. I quickly pushed my little pistol behind the kitchen cupboard, thinking that it would do me more harm than good as a civilian. However, I kept the two egg grenades that I still had, and stuffed my knife into my boot.

So I said goodbye to the two women and went down to the street. Two Russians standing in the doorway looked at me curiously. I went straight into the attack, accosting them in Russian with: ‘Instead of gawping at me, give me something to smoke.’

So they gave me a piece of newspaper and some of their strong Machorka tobacco. Although a non-smoker, I knew how to roll a cigarette Russian style, and the Russians’ confidence in me grew as they watched. I then asked them for a light and drew in some smoke. I told them that I had just been visiting my girlfriend, whom I had only been able to see secretly before. As I was about to leave one of them joked that I must have been in my underpants for the last few hours, so we parted on friendly terms.

The street was now empty of victors and their prisoners. I thrust my hands into my pockets and strolled along. I had only gone a little way when I heard a voice from behind me. ‘Willi! Wait a moment!’

I thought that nobody knew me here, but the call was repeated and a hand grabbed my arm. I told them in Russian to leave me alone, but then the familiar voice said: ‘Willi, don’t you speak German any more?’

The two people looking at me, who themselves looked like tramps, were Alfred and his comrade, both now in civilian clothes and no better dressed than myself. We moved aside to avoid drawing attention.

According to Alfred, after we had gone our separate ways, they felt sorry about leaving me alone with Mundt, as they did not think it would turn out well. So they had followed us, but first had to change clothes behind a wall. Both had been carrying haversacks with a civilian jacket and trousers, thinking from the beginning that they would need them at some stage. So they hid their uniforms but in this process lost sight of us. They only found us again when we became involved in the fire fight.

For Mundt they were a minute too late, but firing their sub-machine guns saved me by stopping the Russians. They had then hidden themselves until they could follow the sounds of the chase, which is how they had caught up with me again. Needless to say, we were all delighted to meet up.

Alfred then suggested that we should all go to his home not far away, where he lived with his young wife. I advised against it as he had been seen there in uniform countless times and could easily be betrayed to the Russians, but he insisted that he had no enemies that would do this. I was still sceptical, but it was getting dark and we had better get off the streets, as there was bound to be a curfew. So we set off.

There was a lot of movement on the street. Now that people were no longer confined to their cellars, they were moving around pushing handcarts and carrying parcels. They were also looting the shops, most of which appeared to have no owners present to stop them. The Russians as the occupying power seemed unconcerned and were doing nothing to prevent the looting.

When Alfred announced that his was the next street ahead, I asked him to keep twenty paces behind us and cover our rear in an emergency. He laughed at my cautiousness, but agreed. Looking round the street corner, we saw that it had five-storey buildings on one side, the other being bounded by the two metre brick wall of an industrial site. Parked along the right hand side of the street was a convoy of three-axled American Studebaker trucks, in which ammunition cases could be seen through the partly opened canopies. The trucks were parked closely together with only about two metres between them.

The Russians were so unconcerned that they had made open camp fires alongside about every third truck and were squatting around roasting their delicacies.

Just as Alfred was pointing out which was his apartment, a woman appeared leaning out of the window, her arms held by Russians. She saw us and cried out in distress: ‘Alfred, come quickly! The Russians…’

We heard no more as she was pulled back into the room.

We had arranged that we would remain below to cover him, but the other comrade could not be held back and stormed in with him. I called out to Alfred: ‘Grab your wife and get out over the backyard! I will cover your retreat!’

They had pulled the sub-machine guns out of their bags, and I prepared my grenades. The sound of their sub-machine guns came from upstairs, alerting the Russians squatting beside their fires, who started going across. They did not notice the dirty Gipsy going behind the third truck and throwing a grenade inside, and again into the last-but-one truck, before heading for the street corner. Not that it mattered, for their time was up.

The blast of the explosion blew me to the end of the street and I blacked out. When I recovered consciousness, all I could see was a sea of rubble. The explosion had destroyed the convoy, knocked down the boundary wall and pushed in all the windows and their frames on the other side of the street. My guardian angel had taken care of me again. I had only suffered bruises, but the Russians had been spattered against the walls. Whether Alfred had managed to escape, I could not stay to find out. I limped away.

TO THE LAST MAN

It was now really dark and I had to find somewhere for the night and get off the streets, which were still alive with looters.

I overtook an old woman pulling a fully loaded handcart and offered to help her take it home. She looked at me sideways: ‘I know, you are looking for a place to stay. Unfortunately, not with me. I have two daughters at home and there is coming and going day and night. The Russians just open the door. You know how it is.’

So I had to keep on looking. Eventually I came across an old man coming out of a shop cellar unsuccessfully trying to carry two large boxes on his shoulders. I offered to help. He too saw straight away what I was after. ‘I only have two rooms,’ he said, ‘but my wife is away, so take a box and come along.’

He passed me over a box and we went off like two loaded donkeys. The Russians did not look at us, for people running away do not carry boxes, as those naive lads knew. On our way I discovered what we were carrying. The boxes contained cans of green beans.

‘I’ll prepare something to eat when we get home,’ the old man said, and he did. ‘It would be best if you lay down on the bed with a wet cloth on your head and pretend to be ill. The Russians are bound to look in soon and see who I have brought with me.’

This seemed a good idea, and when the Russians looked in shortly afterwards I groaned in Russian that my head hurt and that I thought I had cholera, which sent them off in a hurry. Then we had our meal of green beans and burnt potatoes.

The night was full of the screams of women being raped.

Next morning I had a real Russian cat wash, which went as follows. I rinsed my mouth with the precious water, then put my head back and sprayed it into the air so that it fell over my face, which I then wiped with a cloth. The old man commented that I was still dirty, so I repeated the process.

Again we had green beans and baked potatoes. Clearly that would be the old man’s diet for the foreseeable future.

Now I needed to scout out the ground. I asked the old man if he could spare me a couple of buckets. As I did not know if I would be returning, I bade him a provisional farewell and thanked him for his support. He said: ‘I have a couple of grandchildren in the same situation as yourself, so it was only natural.’

I went along the street with my buckets looking for a street pump. I found one and stood in the queue for water, as there were quite a few people ahead of me. I half filled the buckets and set off, not back to the old man, but first to Alfred’s apartment to find out what had happened. With my buckets no one would suspect me of being on the run. There were many posters ordering all soldiers, Volkssturm, Party members, officials and others to report to the nearest Soviet post or be shot immediately.

When I got to Alfred’s street an old Russian soldier was shovelling the remains of his former comrades into ammunition boxes to bury them. When I asked him what had happened, he said that there had been an accident.

Below Alfred’s window lay three dead bodies that had been thrown out of the window. They were my comrades and Alfred’s wife. When the Russian saw me looking at them he commented: ‘Fascists with no sense of fun!’

I went off with my half filled buckets. The nearer I got to the city centre, the more and stronger the checkpoints I came across. I noticed that they seemed more interested in those leaving the city centre than those entering, which was understandable as fighting had been taking place only the previous day. There was a checkpoint ahead of me where papers were being examined. I stopped and put down my buckets as if taking a rest.

Then a Russian one-and-a-half tonner, one of their own primitive construction that had no battery and whose windscreen wipers were hand operated, drew up and stopped near me. Inside were three men packed close together on the narrow seat, the driver and two officers, with a German civilian standing beside them on the running board. The officer on the outside hit the civilian in the face with his fist, swore at him and threw him off.

This, I thought, is my chance. I quickly went up to the vehicle and asked the Russians if I could help. They were happy to have found someone who could speak Russian and show them the way to the Reichstag. I said: ‘I am a Pole and so not at home here, but I do know the way to the Reichstag and can take you there. But there is nothing there for you to take.’

‘We just want to scratch our names on the pillars of the Reichstag. Every Russian soldier with legs is making his way to this central point to scratch his name, and if he has a photograph of it he will be a hero back in Russia. Anyone can say he did it, but he needs evidence that he was there. Now stop talking and come!’

This I did as quickly as possible and told the driver to set off. We came to the checkpoint and went through without stopping. When we reached the Reichstag I jumped off the running board, A female supervisor grabbed me and wanted me help clear the rubble. I swore at her in Russian. Then one of the Russians came up to me and asked if I could use a Leica. He had acquired it somehow but did not know how to use it. I checked the camera to see if it had a film in it, then they stood in front of the Reichstag and I took several pictures of them. Then I had to give the camera to the driver for him to take a photograph of me with the two officers.

They were anxious to scratch their names, so I left them without saying goodbye. I wanted to make my way across to Friedrichstrasse to say farewell to my dead comrades if they were still lying there. I thought that the wounded would already have been taken to hospital. Close by was the Charité where during the fighting a point had been made of not taking in military casualties in order to preserve its civilian status, but that probably did not apply any longer.

The Friedrichstrasse was still full of dead and some German prisoners of war were clearing those away on the Weidendammer Bridge. Bulldozer tanks were pushing the burnt out wrecks into the ruins to clear the street.

I still had no papers to identify me, not even the usual Waffen-SS blood group tattoo under the armpit, as I had missed having it done through having been on guard duty when the company was tattooed.

As I passed up Friedrichstrasse into Chausseestrasse I passed a shot-up armoured personnel carrier, a picture of which was later featured in many books. To avoid walking over the dead soldiers lying there, I passed the vehicle on the right side in which there was a small entry hole from a captured Panzerfaust. Several of the occupants had managed to bale out but had then been mown down by machine gun fire. When I reached the place where our way out had ended, I found my comrades lying entangled in death with soldiers of other units. No infantry had been able to get any further, only some armoured vehicles that had been shot up later.

I then looked into the ruins where we had pulled our wounded comrades. They still lay there, not as wounded but dead. The Russians had murdered them with shots at close range, that was obvious. They had been plundered, their pockets opened and their watches taken. Naturally this hit me hard. I stood there and could have howled like a young dog that has lost its master, but I sensed that I was being watched and crept away through the side streets, drawn like a magnet back to the Reichs Chancellery.

I do not know what impelled me, but I made my way through the Tiergarten and over Potsdamer Platz to come to Hermann-Göring-Strasse. There I saw that the boundary wall to the Reichs Chancellery plot had been demolished and one could see over into the garden, where many dead were lying around. (I later learned that the Russians had tasked an engineer battalion to blow down the wall, expecting strong resistance, and that they called it ‘The Suicides’ Garden’ after the many suicides to be found there.) The dead were especially thick around the former fountains in the centre.

I walked around the whole complex like a bored stroller. The Wilhelmstrasse entrance was also open. On a post that had been set up I saw a badly charred corpse that, when I got close, I recognised as Goebbels. Russian soldiers and foreign workers were standing around making comments and making a mockery of his corpse.

I decided to make my way to Lichterfelde and tell Frau Mundt what had happened to her husband, but as I approached the Potsdamer Bridge a new obstacle confronted me. Bulldozers and engineers were making the bridge passable again, but impassable for me. A checkpoint was demanding to see the papers of anyone not a Russian soldier. I was wondering what to do next when the one-and-a-half-tonner came to my rescue once more. They spotted me leaning against a pillar and beckoned me over. Now they wanted to go to Steglitz and asked me if I could help them find it. ‘I have more to do than just drive around with you, but since no one else can help you, I will. Only, that is not on!’ I said, pointing at the checkpoint.

‘Oh, we will soon see about that!’ said one of the officers. ‘Climb aboard!’

He drew his pistol and, when one of the sentries asked for my papers, he showed him the drawn pistol. ‘That’s OK then,’ said the sentry and let us through.

When we reached Steglitz the Russians were about to thank me and disappear into a house. ‘What now?’ I asked. ‘I have had no breakfast and am terribly hungry and now have a long way to go back into the city!’ So they gave me a hunk of bread and a large piece of bacon, and I said goodbye.