On one occasion we were sitting in our barrack room on the fifth floor, having skipped an aircraft recognition class, and were listening to some lively music from an English station. Suddenly there was a break in the music, then came a drum beat and: ‘Germany calling! Germany calling! Hier ist BBC London in deutsche Sprache!’ At that moment the door opened and Second Lieutenant Skodowski stood in the room. He had heard everything but said nothing, only ordering us to report for duty. He did not betray us, which was just as well, for listening to foreign broadcasts was a heavily punishable offence.
The Zoo Bunker was the most comfortable of the three big flak-towers in Berlin. It was well equipped with the best available materials, whereas the interior fittings of the Friedrichshain and Humbolthain Bunkers had been skimped, only the military equipment being first rate. The Zoo Bunker’s fighting equipment consisted of four twin 128 mm guns on the upper platform, and a gallery about five metres lower down with a 37 mm gun at each corner, and a twin barrelled 20 mm gun in the centre of each side flanked by solo 20 mm guns left and right. The twin 128s were fired optically (by line of sight) whenever the weather was clear enough, otherwise electronically by remote control. The settings came from the smaller flak bunker nearby, which only had light flak on its gallery for its defence, but was especially equipped with electronic devices. A long range ‘Blaupunkt’ radar was installed there and our firing settings came from a giant ‘Würzburg’ radar as far away as Hannover. That bunker also contained the control room for air situation reports and was responsible for issuing air raid warnings to the public.
Our training went along simultaneously with action with the heavy and light artillery pieces. We also received some basic training on radar and explosives. We suffered no casualties from air attacks, but comrades were killed by gun barrels exploding and recoils. The shells for the 128s relied on the radar readings for their fuse settings and were moved centrally on rubber rollers up to the breech. If there was the slightest film of oil on the rollers, the already primed shell would not move fast enough into the breech and would explode.
The smaller flak bunker was once hit by a bomb, but it turned out to be a dud and they were just shocked.
The 128s were used mainly for firing at the leading aircraft of a group, as these were believed to be the controllers of the raid and this would cause the others to lose direction. Salvoes were also fired, that is several twins firing together, when according to the radar’s calculations, the circle of each explosion covered about 50 metres, giving the aircraft in a wide area little chance of survival.
When we were below on the gallery with the 37s or 20s driving off low flying aircraft, we would hear the din and have to grimace to compensate for the pressure changes that came with the firing of the 128s. We were not allowed to fasten the chin straps of our steel helmets so as to prevent injury from the blast.
Later when we fired the 128s at clusters of tanks as far out as Tegel, the barrels were down to zero degrees and the shock waves were enough to break the cement of the 70 cm high and 50 cm wide parapet of the gallery five metres below, exposing the steel rods beneath.
The 37s and 20s were seldom used against British and American aircraft as they flew above the range of those guns, and low flying aircraft seldom came within range. It was different when the Russians set their low flying aircraft against the tower. The magazines of the 37s were normally filled with eight rounds of tracer but, as the Russian machines were armoured, this was changed to red tracer and green armour-piercing shells. These aircraft attacked almost ceaselessly in April to try and weaken the 128s, which were already firing at ground targets. The towers had considerable fire power and many aircraft were shot down. We had no protection like a shield on our guns and, when the wings of the attacking aircraft spurted fire at us and the shells whistled over our heads, it was not a nice feeling. The fire power of the three towers was quite noticeable and we could see that after the first salvo following units would turn away to get out of firing range.
When we watched the carpet bombing of the city from the tower, several times in the Lichtenberg direction where my parents lived, we thought that no one could possibly survive unharmed. I was especially pleased one day to get a short leave and to find that my parents were still well. The partition walls in the apartment were missing and the windows nailed over with cardboard, but that was normal in Berlin.
I visited my parents for the last time shortly before the Russians arrived in Lichtenberg. We could already observe their artillery fire. The people in the block told me that the war was lost and that I should put on civilian clothes and stay with my parents, but I had already seen several soldiers hanging from lampposts on the Unter den Linden with placards round their necks on which was written ‘I was too much of a coward to defend my country’. Fear of being arrested by the SS and of dying in that way was greater than that of the front line. I still reckoned that I had a chance of surviving and preferred to return to the Zoo Bunker.
The fighting bunker had been built with an elastic foundation to take the shock of the discharge of the 128s. Two twin-128s firing alone would have been sufficient to break a rigid foundation. The bunker had its own water and power supplies along with an up-to-date and well-equipped hospital in which, among others, prominent people like Rudel, the famous Stuka pilot, could be cared for. Rudel had a 37 mm cannon mounted in his aircraft, but we had later versions of the gun on the tower and he often came up to the platform to see the weapons in action during our time there. Normally only the gun crews were allowed on to the platform, but our superiors made an exception in his case.
During the last days the hospital was completely overcrowded and the wounded were even lying in the passage ways, the orderlies and doctors only being able to attend emergency cases. Our beds were removed from our accommodation for them and, as we had little time for sleep anyway, sacks of straw sufficed.
Apart from ourselves, some of the guns were manned by so-called ‘SS-Cadets’. These were White Russians of our age who wore a yellow-blue armband with a lion’s head in the centre. We got on quite well with them, but they were extreme fanatics with a great hatred of the Soviet Army. Any of them that fell into Russian hands would have been lucky to survive.
Even on the fifth storey the walls of the barrack accommodation were over two metres thick and there were 5 cm thick steel shutters hung on two hinges over the windows. Whenever there was an alert or we had to leave the room for a long period, these shutters had to be closed. When the Russians approached the bunker and started shooting with their anti-tank guns and other artillery at the walls and shutters, they eventually concentrated on the shutter hinges. The hinge outside the tailor’s shop was destroyed and the shutter hung askew. A shell entered the room and killed two people, so the room was cleared and further hits there were to no avail. The passage ways behind the outer rooms were so designed that nothing could happen.
On 26 April 1945, volunteers were called for the tank destroyer teams and many of my age group, among them myself, volunteered. We were quickly instructed and equipped for our new role. There were four men in a team, one with a Panzerfaust, one with a glass bottle containing a milky fluid which, when mixed with the oxygen in the air would cause a tank engine to stop, and two escorts armed with sub-machine guns to fire at the enemy as soon as they bailed out. Apart from this a Volkswagen jeep was put at our disposal to give us mobility, but was then taken away again next day because of the shortage of fuel, and since we were only intended for deployment in the Zoo area.
Our second lieutenant had some trees chopped down between the Zoo Bunker and the Zoo Railway Station to provide us with a good field of fire, and also had some anti-tank barriers erected at the station. Our command post was located in the Aquarium.
The first member of our small team was wounded at the anti-tank barrier when a burning beam fell from a building on his thigh. He was immediately taken to the hospital and fully recovered later, as he told me after the war.
A
unit had paraded in front of the barrier. Why the person in charge had so badly misjudged the situation, I cannot say, but suddenly Russian aircraft appeared like lightning and started dropping shrapnel bombs, and many of the soldiers were wounded. We rushed to their aid but had no stretchers to carry them on, so used table tops from a nearby abandoned restaurant. It was frightful. I helped carry a table top on which a soldier lay whose leg had been ripped up to the knee. He spoke quite normally to us without complaining, but the pain must have been greater than we could imagine.
The only occasion we went into action against a tank was catastrophic for both sides. We had to destroy a tank on the corner of Wichmannstrasse and Keithstrasse whose gunfire was dominating the street. We crept through ruins and cellars until we could see the tank from a cellar window each. The tank stood across the street from us and was firing steadily down Keithstrasse. A Russian with a slung sub-machine gun was standing in a doorway near the tank watching it fire. We debated whether we should shoot the soldier or the tank first, deciding upon the tank since the tank crew would be alert. Comrade Hitzinger fired at the tank with a Panzerfaust from his cellar window and hit it, but at the same time cried out with pain, as he had not taken the back blast into account and was burning all over. The Russian in the doorway had vanished. We attended to our comrade and put out the flames with our jackets, and then took him back to the hospital in the bunker. (He too survived.)
Now only two members of our team were left. We reported back to the Aquarium and were given the order to report to an SS unit that was involved in the street fighting in the Budapester Strasse. We reported there and were ordered to fire out of a doorway at a Russian machine gun post that was dug in on a corner and keeping the street under fire. We left the safety of the doorway for a few seconds and fired in the direction of the Russian machine gun post, but whether we hit anything, I do not know. My friend, Bernd Vandre, who was bigger than me and perhaps also somewhat heavier, reached the cover of the doorway too late and was wounded in the lungs. He was taken straight back to the bunker and tended to. (Incredibly, he survived and we met again after the war.)
Now I was the only one left, and when I reported back to the SS unit I was sent to the Aquarium to get reinforcements. Eight elderly soldiers were detailed off to me at the Aquarium as reinforcements. When we came to a crossroads I asked a soldier lying on the other side of the street whether it was free from fire. He called back that everything was all right, so I ran across the street with three of the soldiers and got across safely. Then I beckoned the others to come cross quickly. They started off, but too slowly, for when they reached the middle of the street they were shot at and some of them were wounded, although they all got across. We took the wounded men to a nearby barber’s shop below street level and gave them first aid. They were later taken to the hospital.
I had now had enough of this and, instead of reporting back to the SS unit, I returned to my proper unit in the Zoo Bunker.
Once more I was sent back into the Zoo gardens, this time with a soldier and orders to wait for the Russian tanks with a Panzerfaust in a slit trench. We laid the Panzerfaust down carefully some distance from our trench to avoid being blown up should it be hit by chance. It was already dark and no tanks came. Eventually we were relieved and returned to the Zoo Bunker.
When I unbuckled my pistol back in the barrack room, I saw that a shot had gone through the holster and smashed the spare magazine against the pistol. I had not noticed it happen and had been extremely lucky that the pistol had stopped me getting a shot in the stomach. That was on 30 April, and I remained in the bunker. The Russians were close by, packages of explosives were being thrown down on them from the gallery and being replied to with mortar fire. There were now about 25,000 people in the Zoo Bunker, including all kinds of servicemen, and it was a complete mix-up.
There was a female flak auxiliary working in the bunkers signals section, a very pretty blonde called Dora from East Prussia, with whom we were all in love, myself especially. It was nothing really serious, but as it is with one’s first youthful love, I could think of hardly anything else. On 1 May 1945, the last day in the Zoo Bunker, an officer cadet of the Luftwaffe with whom I had become friends, Dora and myself spent most of the time together. He had been seconded to us as there was no fuel left for flying.
At about 2300 hours on the evening of 1 May an announcement came over the loudspeakers to prepare for a break-out from the tower. We quickly put our things together. There was not much, just a haversack, water bottle, weapon and ammunition, and an emergency ration of chocolate. We three waited together until several thousand had left the tower, not wanting to be among the first to leave, as we did not know what awaited us outside. Several of the older soldiers, some of them highly decorated, remained behind as they said it was all the same to them if they met their fate there or elsewhere.
As we mixed in the stream of people and emerged outside, it seemed to be quite peaceful with only the occasional shot nearby coming out of the dark night, and we were not fired at. We could not understand how we could get out of the bunker so easily. Somehow this stream of all kinds of servicemen, without any leadership, found its way to Spandau via the Olympic Stadium. Apart from a few shots at the Olympic Stadium, we reached a newly built part of Spandau without any interference from the enemy.
On the morning of 2 May, combat teams were formed to fight their way over the Charlotten Bridge through the Russians occupying Spandau to the Elbe River in the west. We joined one of these teams, as we were determined to get through to the Americans. Our propaganda had made us afraid of falling into Russian hands.
The Russians defended their position on the opposite side of the Charlotten Bridge, but we were able to get across with the help of tanks and other heavy weapons, and to reach the street leading to the west. The buildings on either side of the street were occupied by Russians and we were fired on from the rooftops. It was difficult to go on and eventually we had to seek shelter in the entrance to a building. We kept Dora between us to give her the maximum protection, and were very lucky, as several times shots from rifles or sub-machine guns sprayed the road surface close to us.
At midday we sought shelter in a cellar with some other soldiers all waiting for nightfall to go on. Wounded were crying out with pain in the yard behind the cellar and begging us to shoot them, but it was absolutely impossible to do anything for them without exposing oneself to heavy fire.
We waited until dark and then got as far as a residential area without attracting fire. Vehicles were racing along the streets with soldiers hanging on to them like bunches of grapes. We tried to get on a vehicle several times in order to get through to the west quicker, but it was just not possible. (Later on as a prisoner I had to march through Döberitz and saw these shot-up and burnt-out vehicles with their many dead soldiers.)
Between us and the residential area was a big open space that we had to cross if we were going to get any further. We started crawling across it on our stomachs, but shots came toward us from the buildings up ahead, so we crept back again. We could see that we no longer had a chance of getting through, so we threw our weapons away and waited for things to happen. Dora put on a Red Cross armband in the hope of fooling the Russians. I gave her my parents’ address, as she had no one in Berlin to whom she could turn. After my time in captivity I learned from my parents that she had been to see them and had been given shoes and clothing, but that nothing more had been heard of her. During the first part of my captivity I could not get her out of my mind. I was always thinking of her. Such is young love.
On the morning of 3 May some civilians came into our cellar and begged us to give ourselves up. They were afraid that if soldiers were found in the building they would suffer for it. We said goodbye to Dora and left the cellar. A big Russian with a pistol in his hand took us. We had to walk ahead of him with our hands up. Whenever we passed dead Russian soldiers on the street he would say something in Russian that we did not understand. We were t
erribly frightened that he was going to shoot us. With my hands up, my ‘Mauthe’ watch that I had been given by my parents for my confirmation in 1944 was soon gone. In my fear, I did not care. I was also wearing a silver signet ring with a death’s head on it of a type that was all the rage with us youngsters. He took the ring, but fortunately did not associate me with the SS because of it. We were taken to a cellar that already contained some captured German soldiers. Frightening rumours were making the rounds, whoever had this or that uniform would be shot straight away, etcetera, but nothing happened. After a short while an officer appeared and climbed on to a table. He said that the war was over, Hitler dead, and we would now just be registered and then sent home. However, it did not work out that way and we began our period of captivity.
Taken prisoner by the Soviets, Schweizer was too frail in body to be of any useful work potential to them, and so was released in November 1945. He trained as a mason before qualifying as an architect and engineer in 1952.
Fifteen years later he was entrusted by the East German government with the planning and supervision of construction of a steel rolling mill in North Vietnam. From there he went to work on a project in Czechoslovakia before returning to North Vietnam to construct a glass works. Later he worked on similar projects in Algeria, the Congo, Cuba and East Germany, retiring in 1991. He now lives on the Baltic coast.
TEN
Halbe
HARRY ZVI GLASER
This is part of the quite extraordinary tale of Harry Zvi Glaser, whom I met in 1996 at an annual reunion of survivors of the break-out of the German 9th Army at Halbe, in which some 40,000 troops and accompanying refugees were killed. Most of those present were former Waffen-SS, but Harry had been on the other side, a corporal in the Red Army. A short, slim, bronzed figure armed with a large camera, Harry was happily conversing in imperfect German with his hosts. This was his second visit and clearly he was an honoured guest.
With Our Backs to Berlin Page 16
