We, as small fry, really could not complain about our Front-menu but this was another category. It was another world about which we could only dream, and somewhat grotesque at that. Up above there was all hell let loose. Deep under the centre of the burning city there was this almost Mephistophelian feast. We were sitting at this table! We were also overjoyed some time later, when bottles of ‘good cognac and wine’ were placed in our haversacks, with a hefty slap on the shoulder, to celebrate the ‘final victory’ and a victorious end of the war!
Today perhaps it is not so understandable that we were not disgusted at the Nazi ‘Golden Pheasants’ morals. That was a term very often used after the war and not understood by us at the time. But it did not ‘disgust’ us then. Perhaps we were too phlegmatic? I am no longer sure if in fact Gauleiter Hanke was present. If so, then he would have made himself very noticeable with his continual slogans. Throughout the siege, he was not very well liked by the inhabitants because of his over-exaggerated self-righteousness, when confronted with what he assessed as defeatist attitudes.
There was another encounter with a high-ranking Nazi official that was not so sociable. It happened because of complete carelessness with a weapon. There was thoughtlessness, because of impatience, and it all ended in tragedy. We were about to take over new quarters in the Zimpel district. The responsible district officer accompanied us to garages that had corrugated iron doors. In attempting to open one that had stuck, he attacked the door with the butt of a fully loaded machine-pistol, without its safety catch on. It exploded, as expected. Our sergeant-major received the full load in his intestines and within seconds was dead on the spot. We pounced on the man, taking his weapon away from him, shouting and cursing at him. That should not have happened, not to our sergeant-major. He was a man loved by his men, who fulfilled his duty as ‘mother of the company’ and who, above all else, had come through the whole of the Russian campaign without a scratch. His death was a very bitter affair for us, very bitter indeed.
It was only a matter of time we knew, before Gandau was taken over by the advancing Russians. Hitler also knew. He kept his eye on the situation in Breslau and personally gave directions. One was that another provisional landing-strip be made in the centre of the city. For this plan, all of the houses between the Kaiser and Fürsten bridges in the proximity of the Schneitzniger Park, had to be demolished. Tramlines, telephone poles, iron girders, as well as the mountains of rubble from the houses on the Schneitzniger Stern had to be transported away. It also included every thing from the mighty Luther and Canisius churches. That meant that all of it had to be removed by hand. Part of it could be used for barricades, but the rest had to be removed. Thousands of women and youths were conscripted for the work. They toiled by day and by night to fulfil that project.
And the Russians? They were very quick to find out what was going on in the middle of Breslau, in the Kaiserstrasse. The project was therefore the target of attack from ground-attack aircraft, which spat machine-gun fire and dropped fragmentation bombs on to the civilian labour-force, leaving a bloody trail behind them. The death toll was enormous, increasing daily during the month of March. That project was to be the main cause of death for the Breslau inhabitants, being estimated by the priest Ernst Hornig at 10,000!
The Russian advance on Gandau, and the continual bombardment during March, meant that it could only be days before they took the aerodrome. We knew that, but it did not take place until early in April. Until then, the faithful Junkers had carried out their duty in the supply of everything that the fortress had needed. It was on 4 April that the supply-line was finally severed. It was a day of heavy bombardment from the air, and heavy artillery fire from the ground, until finally Soviet tanks rolled into the aerodrome and took possession. The defence of the air traffic, incoming with supplies, and outgoing with the wounded, had been protected for as long as was humanly possible. It had been the largest and most worrying task of the fortress Commander-in-Chief, who wrote in his diary on 24 March 1945:
The supply-line for Breslau has become extremely difficult to protect because of increasingly heavy anti-aircraft guns and search tights. On 15 March, from a total of 55 machines that had tried to land, only half of the machines managed to do so. Despite this, 150 of our wounded were flown out, most of the machines being able to take 20 of the wounded per flight. Inside three days, 150 planes were able to drop ammunition overboard, small arms and mail for the troops using Versorgungsbomben.
Versorgungsbomben were not bombs at all, but supply-canisters attached to parachutes. They fell to a large extent behind enemy lines, into marshland and on to the roofs of the houses. Then it really was not worth breaking your neck in order to recover them. We did however recover some, complete with parachute, for the red, soft silk was readily worn by the lads as a scarf tucked into their shirts. The anger, the disappointment, and the frustration were great when we opened them one after the other. There were 50 altogether, each holding two Panzerfäuste. Firstly we found that the detonators had failed. Secondly, the Panzerfäuste held no explosive substances! We could not imagine why. We just could not understand. The disbelief turned to anger at such shoddy work. We could not believe that it was simply human error. Was it then deliberate? Was it then sabotage? Were secret saboteurs at work in the homeland? As a result, pilots doing their best to bring us much-needed weapons were losing their lives, in waves, in the line of duty, on extremely dangerous sorties.
When we found ourselves in that emergency situation our frustrated minds brought invention to the fore. After all, why did we have the FAMO engineers at hand. From the original employees totalling 8,000, there were then only 680 left in Breslau. They consisted of workers, technicians and engineers and they were there for our problems. They gave us their technical know-how and their time. Working both by day and by night, they replaced what was missing. I must stress that they worked miracles. All made a supreme effort to give us what we needed. For instance we had more than enough new machine-guns, but all without their locking units. The FAMO men constructed this complicated lever-arm from just an illustrated spare-parts catalogue, just as a locksmith would do. Despite bombardments and coming under artiltery fire, the men worked ‘like the devil’ in the partly-destroyed factory. They not only restored small arms, but even tanks as well. The finest achievement of all was the armoured train that they produced in fourteen days and nights of hard work.
From an old chassis, they reconstructed a ‘rolling fortress within the fortress’ which was strengthened with steel plating and armed with 2cm and 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns. It chugged its way right into the middle of the Russian lines. From pure fright this iron Trojan recouped many a lost position for us. Soviet magazine-fed rifles were re-designed to use German ammunition. Because we needed tracer pistols, the FAMO men produced them newly made, from an old existing model that we had given them. The Russians had no equivalent of the FAMO men and were left with the useless newly delivered weapons dropped by our parachutes.
For the defence of a particular railway embankment, a pyramid-shaped shelter was produced from steel tank plating, as a machine-gun nest for a rifle squad. It proved to be very efficient indeed. Their work was interrupted more than once because of damage to workshops. Provisional ones had to be erected elsewhere. The epilogue to the super-human efforts of those men, for whom nothing was impossible, was sadly, that 13% of the remaining employees died as a result of enemy attacks.
Another example of stamina from the inhabitants, was shown by a group of skilled workers at an old factory in the Wilhelmsruh part of the city. They produced grenades with the most primitive of materials. Explosive material from Russian ‘duds’, plus steel splinters, were used to fill 8.8cm anti-aircraft cartridges. The men were then producing as many as 200 to 300 per day. Due to their efforts, we caused heavy losses for the Russians, even when 15% of the hastily produced grenades were also ‘duds’! The soldiers on the front also had ideas, stemming from the new experience of house-to-house fighting.
They needed new fighting tactics in an overwhelming experience for which they had had no training. One of those ideas came from the hazards of collecting fresh supplies of ammunition and rations. We had to cross a large and dangerous junction which caused us to lose many men to snipers.
The Russians just waited for us to make a move. We scratched our heads for ways to fool them and came up with the idea of hanging washing lines, with carpets, runners and curtains etc, to obstruct their view. The camouflage washing-line worked so well that we made more of such screens, in every imaginable direction, to draw attention away from our runs. We felt safe enough to hang banners with the message, “The SS Regiment Besslein fights here to greet the ‘Ivans’!” That pledge was adhered to by the Regiment.
During street fighting we didn’t need to worry about the enemy artillery, for the distances between the two sides was such that neither wanted to endanger their own. Small arms and grenades decided the style of fighting. We had to get used to house-to-house fighting. One could not mention the theoretical training at the Close-combat School in Prague or Klagenfurt. That bore no reiationship to the practical experience in Breslau. In the Steppes of Russia, large armies fought over large distances and there were clear physical lines and fronts. Apart from partisans and a few enemy air raids, everyone knew where the front was, and from there only, came the danger.
However, in Fortress Breslau it was very different. Here our enemy hid in unexpected places, perhaps next door, on the other side of the street, or in the house behind you. Sometimes we could feel that he was there, very close to us, but did not know where. With time we developed a sixth sense about him, and even his weapons, just as we had done in the Steppes. We could determine not only the range but even the calibre of his bullets that whizzed around our heads. Then, I could have written a booklet on the seismo-graphic sense that I, that all of us, developed with the day-to-day routine, despite the turmoil in the city. In the maze of uncountable streets and squares, alleys and corners, we had to change our tactics. We were forced to, for the Russians had many a trick up their sleeves that were not so honourable, that were in fact downright cowardly. With time, our tactics were exchanged for sniping, and ambush was the order of the day. However, for us, creeping up on our enemy was made easier, for the cover in the ruins and cellars was better than the Russian Steppes had ever given us. None the less this street warfare was calculated, malicious and brutal. A glaring example of misconduct from the Reds, was the striking misuse of Red Cross armbands, breaking the laws of both the Hague and the Geneva Conventions.
One day three ‘unarmed’ Russians wearing those armbands, carried a stretcher to within yards of us. We honoured the code of stopping firing whilst they recovered their dead and wounded. That to us was sacred! As they came nearer to the house-frontage, they threw hand-grenades that had been hidden under the blankets on the stretcher. As we could not react as quickly, they were able to disappear to the other side of the street, unharmed.
It was the worst form of soldiering that we had experienced, an unfair and unscrupulous method of war and one which we had never used, however hard or bitter the conditions became. But after that, we changed our tactics too, returning to ancient but ethical ones, in which we became specialists. To be fair, I must add that this incident was the only one of its kind that I heard about in Breslau.
In the desperate situation in which we found ourselves, we could not carry on a war without also improvising. If we wanted to come through it in one piece and beat the enemy, we had to use their underhand methods. Sometimes, no-man’s land was no wider than a street that could give us some sort of protection. Our engineers scratched their heads, for the laying of mines in the normal manner could not be considered, as every move that they made was observed by the Reds. It was the soldiers who suggested that the mines be laid as booby-traps in ‘bricks’. There was more than enough material from bricks lying around in powder form which was then used to paint the reconstructed wooden boxes as ‘bricks’ in which the mines had been packed. After the reconstruction the ‘bricks’ could not be distinguished from the real ones. Under cover of darkness, they were pushed into position with long rods, from cellar windows or ground floor balconies. The Russians never noticed and our engineers had ensured that their combat area was as safe as they could make it.
After information was received from the main line of resistance, of the retreat of our soldiers from certain areas, the engineers were very quick to lay explosive material in the houses in the foremost lines. We worked closely with the engineers, relying on the damage caused to the houses and those who had managed to reach them. After a short time, many Russian soldiers had done so. As soon as the engineers, whose positions lay 200 metres behind, detonated explosives, then we sprang into the still-smoking or burning house, to hunt down the Russians still dizzy from shock and surprise. Sometimes a five-storey house had been demolished, flames reaching its roof-beams. Sometimes we had to wait and sleep in a house in which an un-exploded bomb lay. In that situation nerves of jelly were of no use to us. Despite our in genious ideas, the Russians were far superior in their ‘underhand’ strategy of war. Their ingenuity had already been obvious to us in the winter campaign in Russia, where we had had to learn to adapt. We were still learning in Breslau.
Naturally enough, weak links formed in our front-line, even in the ‘take from Peter to give to Paul’ action within the troops. There were occasions where units could not be given any help and were left to their own devices, ingenuity and superhuman effort saving the day. One of those weak links was in Augustastrasse. The Russians knew this and were determined to break through at that point. We were also in Augustastrasse. Budka in the next house to us had a very hard time of it when, in the very large building of the Regional Institution for Insurance, coke stored there was set alight. A fight for their lives started for Budka and his men. Fighting bare-chested, a team of helpers showered cold water over them, so that they could continue to fight in an increasing heat of between fifty and sixty degrees. They were forced to change shifts at half-hourly intervals. The men upon being relieved, went immediately to the entrances of the building. There they were handed supplies of mineral water from the Selters Mineral Water factory nearby, and gasped for ‘fresh air’. This superhuman effort paid off. The Russians did not break through, for Budka had known that relief from reserves was not possible and to retreat would have given the Reds exactly what they wanted.
Another unforgettable encounter took place in an old and very large school. Another lesson had to be learnt from the Reds, in the use of small arms. The scene was a changing one. It took place in the corridors and then on the staircase of this large building. We were to be found on the top-most floors and the enemy in the cellar, where we eventually penetrated to in total darkness. It was so dark, that we could not see a hand in front of our faces, so communication from one to another was verbal. Only so could we determine how close we were to the Reds. We were in fact actually as close as the length of the unexpected use of a flamethrower, i.e. 30 metres. Such indoor use of flamethrowers was very rare. We could not anticipate it, and some of the men suffered terrible burns at such a close range. It was pure hell. But we eradicated the fire-fiend with a Panzerfaust.
As mentioned before, it was not only the military who made sacrifices, or who became sacrifices, as General Niehoff came to experience. He was approached by a young Breslau-born woman who made a very dangerous suggestion. It could not be hidden within the fortress that we had a ‘problem-child’. It was a small one, but nonetheless one that was our own fault. It need not have arisen if we had done our work properly. A wooden bridge over a small river had been left intact on our retreat, much to the delight of the Russians as bridges are always of strategic importance. This ‘little bridge’ enabled Russian supplies to be brought, as and when needed, and as expected, was strongly defended. After asking for help from the 17th Army outside the fortress, it was still intact, two air-raids having both been unsuccessful because of ver
y strong anti-aircraft fire.
Ursula, nineteen years old, a telephone operator in the Breslau telephone exchange and a BDM Gruppenführer, knew all of this. She appeared in the Command Post of General Niehoff, offering her services in destroying this bridge with explosives. The offer moved General Niehoff, for what more could prove the desire of this ‘Silesian’ to defend her home city? It would however have been totally irresponsible of him in allowing it. So he told her that her work in the telephone exchange was also vital and that was where she should return. It was just four days later that General Niehoff learned that the bridge had been destroyed, only charred wooden remnants for posts being all that could be seen emerging from the water. Ursula? Had she not taken “no” for an answer? It was to prove so. Research revealed that she had found an explosives expert and with feminine wiles had convinced him that she could learn everything that could be learned about this material and its uses. She learnt quickly, in days, what usually took engineers weeks, if not months. She was not alone in her work, for two other BDM girls accompanied Ursula on her mission to the western front-line. They swam under a drifting paddleboat using the flow of the river to bring them to the bridge. It lay immediately behind enemy lines, and there they completed their mission.
Whether she, whether they, lived to see the success of their mission is not known. Nothing more is known about Ursula and her friends. Did they die in the explosion? Were they killed by guards when trying to return to the city? Even today nothing more is known and their fate that cannot be pursued. Their sacrifice must however, never be forgotten.
Other women and teenage girls within the fortress, also gave ‘over and above their call of duty’, especially in the now-overfilled First Aid posts, and military and civilian hospitals. Nurses and auxiliaries worked day and night under the worst of conditions, showing civil courage and garnering achievements beyond human expectation. It was an incredible talent and invention when literally hundreds of people, including patients from sanatori ums, mental institutions etc, had to be evacuated from these sometimes burning buildings and under fire from the artillery.
In the Fire of the Eastern Front Page 21
