by J. Lee Ready
This day Vinzenz Kaiser was killed in Nuremberg.
On the 21st Hitler ordered Busse’s Ninth Army to counterattack northwards, while Steiner was to counterattack southwards to meet Busse and trap the Soviets between them, but the Fuehrer had forgotten that Steiner no longer controlled any troops, and no one in the Fuehrer bunker had the nerve to correct him! However, they did get Hitler to order Goering’ to send his private bodyguard of 15,000 Luftwaffe troops to Steiner, but Goering did not bother to tell the Luftwaffe guards where Steiner was. Himmler had convinced Hitler that an SS officer should command the city of Berlin, so the Fuehrer chose Standartenfuehrer Ernst Kaether, who was flabbergasted when the news reached him!
This day at least one fighting detachment reached Berlin with the intention of battling to the death, Obersturmbannfuehrer Neiland’s SS Lettische Battalion of the 15th SS Lettische Grenadier Division. They dug in next to the 11th SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division and 101st and 102nd SS Spanish Companies.
To the north of Berlin SS Corps West of the 27th SS Langemarck and 28th SS Wallonie Grenadier Divisions actually counterattacked, but it was such a feeble effort that the Soviets probably did not even notice it. Within hours these Belgians thought better of it and fell back to the line Bruch-Randow.
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On the 22nd the defenders of Nuremberg including the SS GvB and elements of the SS Nibelungen were finally crushed by the Americans. A few survivors fled eastwards hoping to cross the Danube at Donauwoerth or Munich.
Among the units trying to stop the American advance into Bavaria were SS Battlegroup Dirnagel, SS Battlegroup Nord and the 38th SS Nibelungen Grenadier Division, the latter now commanded by Standartenfuehrer Martin Stange. When the Nazi party boss of Bavaria Obergruppenfuehrer Fritz Waechtler suggested surrender, some startled members of the Allgemeine SS led by Brigadefuehrer Ludwig Ruckdeschel arrested him and executed him for cowardice!
On the 22nd Busse demanded permission for the remainder of Ninth Army to retreat into Berlin. Hitler acquiesced. Both the request and the reply came far too late. This day Harmel launched his SS Frundsberg, SS ‘30te Januar’ and other units into an all-out counter attack to try to break out of the Spremberg Pocket.
This day Steiner was at Oranienburg twenty miles north of Berlin, still trying to create an army. So far Goering’s bodyguard had not reached him and he had gathered only local 2nd Levy Volksturm and 1,200 sailors. But suddenly he was attacked by the Polish First Army.
The SS Nordland, Neiland’s SS Lettische Battalion and the 101st and 102nd SS Spanish Companies were still falling back under fire at the edge of Berlin, reaching the suburbs of Mahlsdorf and Karlshorst. Perhaps two or three members of the British Free Corps were still left with the Nordland. The remainder of Weidling’s troops joined the city’s defenders along the bank of the Teltow Canal, assuming its brick warehouses would give them cover and that the canal would stop tanks.
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By 23 April the 23rd SS Nederland Panzergrenadier Division was forced to radio Ziegler that they could not join him in Berlin - they were surrounded at Fuerstenwald.
By now the exit route westwards from Berlin was fifteen miles wide but narrowing every hour. Thousands of civilians fled, ignoring the police, Gestapo and SD.
Hitler sent for Gruppenfuehrer Hermann Fegelein, his liaison officer with the Waffen SS, but he was nowhere to be found. Even Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, did not know where he was. Fegelein was married to her sister Gretl. An Allgemeine SS team was sent to his home, dodging shellfire, and they found him packing, obviously attempting to escape. They arrested him.
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On the 24th Goering radioed Hitler to ask if he should take over the Reich as Hitler was trapped in Berlin. The Fuehrer went into a rage, yelling such things as ‘betrayal’. He ordered Goering’s arrest, and Himmler jumped at the chance. He sent Obersturmbannfuehrer Bernhard Frank of the Allgemeine SS to place Goering under house arrest.
Clearly Goering’s move was in violation of Hitler’s orders, but everyone was disobeying the Fuehrer these days. General Wenck was ordered to rescue Berlin with his Twelfth Army and keep the Americans on the Elbe at the same time. He had replied that he had no army, but in fact he had managed to conjure up some units, as only the Germans seemed to be able to do, but he announced his intention to fight eastwards towards Berlin only to create a corridor to enable the defenders of the city to escape from the Soviets in order to surrender to the Americans!
This day Hitler received news of yet another betrayal: the Eleventh Army had surrendered to the Americans. Its units including SS Panzer Brigade Westfalen were no more.
Also in violation of the Fuehrer’s explicit orders Artur Seyss-Inquart, Hitler’s representative in the Netherlands, had made a proposal to the Allies: if they stopped advancing into the Netherlands against his forces, including the 34th SS Landstorm Grenadier Division, he would allow Allied planes to drop food for the Dutch people. His flak gunners agreed not to fire on the aircraft, and the Gestapo, SD and police agreed to ensure that the people received the parcels. The Allies accepted his offer.
Obersturmfuehrer Albert Gemmeker agreed that the Dutch Red Cross could take over Westerbork transit camp, thus saving the thousand or so prisoners.
In Croatia the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps turned and launched another riposte at Varazdin, but seemingly made no impact, so they turned about and continued to flee northwards. Most of the other Axis units in this region of Europe including the Gendarmerie Division had already fled.
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By now the 25th Panzer Division had failed to stop the Third Guards Tank Army from crossing the Teltow Canal inside Berlin. The Muencheberg Panzer Division upon being attacked by the First Guards Tank and Eighth Guards Armies had fallen back deeper into the Neukoelln district of the city, while the III SS Panzer Corps now tried to defend the Spree Canal using the SS Nordland and the Spaniards and Latvians. The combat was frenzied. Sturmbannfuehrer Per Soerensen, the head of the SS Nordland’s Danish contingent, was killed this day.
Hitler demanded Weidling explain why he had retreated to Berlin, suggesting he might be shot! When Weidling reported to the Fuehrer, no doubt to Standartenfuehrer Kaether’s relief, Hitler now placed Weidling in command of Berlin, telling him the city had 60,000 defenders, not counting the Ninth Army or Weidling’s men. Weidling knew better. Many 2nd Levy were taking off their Volksturm armbands and fleeing at the first shot. Worse, some of the Volksturm were charging ahead and getting in the line of fire of the ‘real soldiers’, forcing them to cease-fire.
Even more worrisome were the reports that behind the advancing Soviet infantry, who were crawling over the rubble like ants, the enemy’s rear-echelon troops were looting, murdering and raping. Some Soviet soldiers even ripped out cupboards, plumbing and light bulbs as souvenirs. Drunk on stolen alcohol they were going berserk.
However, Weidling’s hopes were lifted somewhat when he learned that Hitler had appointed Standartenfuehrer Wilhelm Mohnke to take command of all SS personnel in the city [except Waffen SS units] and form a battlegroup from them in order to defend the government buildings. Weidling knew that the Waffen SS trainees, instructors and rear-echelon troops that Mohnke could find would fight well. However, both he and Mohnke had less faith in the Gestapo, SD, Kripo, Allgemeine SS, SS VOMI, SS RuSHA, SS WVHA and SS KZL.
One thing was certain, there was one large group of defenders who were battling to the bitter end, namely the thousands of hiwis, hiwas, schumas and osttruppen who had once been Soviet citizens. They knew only death awaited them if captured. Inside Berlin they included several hundred veterans of the 30th SS Russische Grenadier Division who were now members of the ROA.
Refugees and deserters were pouring out of the city to the west, but one small group was fighting to get inside this city of hell, namely a task force of the SS Charlemagne Sturmbrigade led by Hauptsturmfuehrer Henri-Joseph Fenet, including Rottenfuehrer Eugene Vaulot, Oberscharfuehrer Appolot
, Obersturmfuehrer Wilhelm Weber [a German] and Unterscharfuehrer Brunet, all renowned tank killers. Gruppenfuehrer Gustav Krukenberg the Charlemagne’s commander used these men as an escort so that he could reach the Fuehrer bunker. Upon reporting for duty Krukenberg informed Weidling that while he was entering the city he had not seen any manned defenses in western Berlin. Weidling accepted this news fatalistically, but did express satisfaction that this SS officer had come to join him, and he gave him command of the 11th SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division. While talking Krukenberg noticed that a Soviet tank/infantry assault was brewing just yards away and he ordered his Charlemagne troops to take care of it. Ably helped by Rottenfuehrer Vaulot the Frenchmen soon destroyed sixteen tanks and inflicted hundreds of casualties on the enemy infantry.
Krukenberg did not really gain any control over the SS Nordland until nightfall, by which time the division, pounded by overwhelming Soviet artillery fire, and had been forced back from the Spree Canal into the Neukoelln neighborhood. Every man of the division was a true warrior, but it wasn’t much of a division now. Saalbach’s reconnaissance battalion was little more than a few half-tracks.
This day the Muencheberg Panzer Division fell back to Tempelhof Airport and together with Luftwaffe flak guns and airmen fighting with rifles they repulsed a Soviet tank thrust.
The 9th Parachute Division had been ordered to defend the Prenzlauerberg district, but many of its soldiers had melted away.
To the northwest of Berlin the remainder of the SS Charlemagne Sturmbrigade was withdrawing westwards under the command of Sturmbannfuehrer Boudet-Gheusi.
Degrelle ordered the survivors of his 28th SS Wallonie Grenadier Division to make for the north coast and try to sail to Denmark. He assumed the last stand would be made there.
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GIs of the US 69th Infantry Division ran into Ivans of the Soviet Fifth Guards Army at Torgau on the Elbe. Hitler had predicted that the GIs and the Ivans would fight each other when their armies collided. They did not. They danced.
Unbelievably some of Wenck’s men had advanced to within fifteen miles of the Fuehrer bunker. They rescued 3,000 German wounded from their Soviet guards and shipped them westwards towards the Americans.
With powers equally miraculous, Steiner had rounded up enough airmen, sailors, Volksturm, Goering’s bodyguard, stragglers and rear-echelon troops to not only repel the Polish First Army, but also begin a counterattack from Oranienburg southwards towards Berlin. These die-hards came within fifteen miles of the Fuehrer bunker, but then they had to withdraw.
During the 25th Harmel and the men of his SS Frundsberg and SS ‘30te Januar’ and thousands of army troops broke out of the Spremberg Pocket, but his entire force was reduced to light infantry as he had been forced to abandon most of his vehicles and artillery owing to a lack of fuel. He may not have expected a medal for this magnificent accomplishment, but surely he was surprised by Hitler’s response. He was relieved of command. Without him the SS Frundsberg kept retreating southwards away from Berlin towards the Sudetenland.
This eventful day the XI SS Corps, falling back in disarray from Kuestrin, was surrounded in the Halbe Pocket. The chief of the headquarters company, Obersturmfuehrer Gustav Reber, was told to form up his rear-echelon personnel as an infantry battlegroup. Also trapped here were two grenadier divisions: Fritz Schmedes’ 36th SS Dirlewanger and Rudiger Pipkorn’s 35th SS Polizei. Oberst Pipkorn tried to lead a breakout attempt, but was killed riding in a Panther tank. His division continued its attempt, crashing through Taubendorf, where Sturmbannfuehrer Paul Landwehr was killed leading his infantry battalion.
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By the morning of the 26th in Berlin the Muencheberg Panzer Division had been forced to abandon Tempelhof Airport and fall back to the Anhalter rail station, and the SS Nordland had fallen back yet again and was preparing to defend the city zoo. The army’s 18th Panzer and 20th Panzer Divisions, still held in reserve, would have been invaluable now, but no one could locate the latter’s headquarters to give them orders, and the former was itself under attack from a Soviet column that had broken through to Tiergarten Park.
Meanwhile Brigadefuehrer Ziegler had a personal problem. He was informed that the Gestapo was looking for him, so he handed command of the III SS Panzer Corps to Krukenberg and went off to seek a personal audience with Hitler. It was after all only a short walk to the Fuehrer bunker, climbing over rubble, dodging strafing planes and artillery salvoes.
At this time Krukenberg saw that the situation was hopeless and he ordered the corps to fall back to the central rail station just 400 yards from the Fuehrer bunker. There he commandeered 200 marines.
Hitler was told that the Soviets were now advancing inside the underground rail subway tunnels. He had an answer to this, ordering engineers to blow holes in the bed of the Landwehr Canal, which was above the subway. This was done, despite the fact that the tunnels were the temporary haven for tens of thousands of German wounded and terrified civilians. The flooding stopped the Soviets, but also drowned thousands of Germans!
Later in the day the SS Nordland together with Fenet’s Charlemagne troops launched a counterattack against the Soviet Eighth Guards and First Guards Tank Armies along the Hermannstrasse in the Neukoelln district. These pitiful few did indeed regain some ground, but Fenet was wounded and that night they all fell back towards the central rail station.
Outside the city near Fuerstenwald another veteran SS warrior was killed - Sturmbannfuehrer Siegfried Scheibe, commander of the SS Seyffardt Regiment of the SS Nederland. This Dutch division was rapidly disintegrating.
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By the 27th the defenders of Berlin were only holding onto an area about 6,000 by 3,000 yards. The 25th Panzer Division had ceased to exist. The Muencheberg Panzer Division was holding the Potsdammerplatz rail station, while the 18th Panzer Division was battling for Tiergarten Park and the III SS Panzer Corps was fighting off the Soviets near the Fuehrer bunker at the central rail station. By now this corps only consisted of the 11th SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division, the 101st and 102nd SS Spanish Companies, Fenet’s French SS and Neiland’s SS Lettische Battalion, plus a few Dutchmen from the SS Nederland - perhaps a total of 2,000 fighting men.
However, much of Ninth Army was now pushing on westwards out of and around the city through Wenck’s corridor, and thus thousands of German troops and civilians were saved from Soviet hands.
At Marienbad a column of SS KZL guards became tired of marching their prisoners around Germany, so they massacred them, and then fled, some in civilian clothes.
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On the 28th Fenet’s Frenchmen proved to be still full of fight, knocking out many advancing Soviet armored vehicles in the Belle Allianz Platz area.
There is a suggestion that some of the Swedes serving in the SS Nordland sought sanctuary in the Swedish embassy, hoping to escape death and capture. It is unknown how successful they were. Certainly Hauptsturmfuehrer Hans-Goesta Pehrsson, the Swedish deputy commander of the Nordland’s reconnaissance battalion, was unable to find succor here, nor was Unterscharfuehrer Erik Wallin, who had been battling the Soviets since 1939. Wallin was soon wounded and he took this opportunity to disguise himself as a civilian, and hoped that as a ‘neutral’ Swede he would be allowed by the Soviets to return home. [He was successful.]
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On the 28th in Munich several hundred German army troops occupied the radio station and broadcast an appeal for everyone to surrender to the Americans and avoid further bloodshed. Karl Fiehler the mayor of Munich was an old Munich Putsch comrade of Hitler’s and a reservist in the Allgemeine SS, and he could not believe his ears. He sent several units to the radio station including Gestapo, SD and Allgemeine SS [1st SS Pioneer Company, 15th SS Cavalry Regiment, 1st SS Schreck Infantry Regiment and 34th SS Infantry Regiment] with orders to recapture it. The army troops resisted and a mini civil war began. On the following morning the Americans arrived and took everyone prisoner.
> Southwest of Munich the XVIII SS Corps was pressed by the French First Army against the Swiss border. Perhaps its commander Obergruppenfuehrer Georg Keppler and chief of staff Brigadefuehrer Peter Hansen hoped to be interned in Switzerland, but Swiss troops made sure no Germans crossed the border.
On the 28th the Cossacks announced they were formally joining the ROA. This was a last ditch diplomatic move. The XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps of three divisions was now in Slovenia retreating towards Austria in hopes of surrendering to the British. Claiming ROA membership and playing down their SS membership was a way of ingratiating themselves to the British. Their leaders told them: “You can trust the British”.
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On the 29th Hitler authorized bravery decorations for the Frenchmen Appolot, Fenet and Vaulot.
Hitler also changed his mind about Standartenfuehrer Heinz Harmel and decided to allow that disgraced officer to prove himself once again, sending him orders to proceed to southwest Austria to establish SS Battlegroup Harmel. The dutiful officer did as told and flew to Klagenfurt, no mean feat at this stage of the war, but there he found none of the troops he had been promised, so in true SS style he created the battlegroup himself out of the local Allgemeine SS [15th Pioneer Company and 90th Kutschera Infantry Regiment] and the local Volksturm 2nd Levy, and added to it the 7th SS Training and Replacement Battalion [of the SS Prinz Eugen] and some scattered elements of the 24th SS Karstjaeger Mountain Division. With these Austrians, Germans, Volksdeutsch, Carinthian Slovenes and Italians he manned the mountain passes, hoping to keep them open long enough for hundreds of thousands of Axis troops to escape from Yugoslavia and Italy into Austria.
