With Our Backs to Berlin

by Tony Le Tissier

  Meanwhile an officer had arrived in Hostau to organise its defence. At first he refused to meet the Americans, but after long discussions, not least with the relevant Corps commander, he was persuaded that resistance would be pointless, and that it would be a good idea to get the horses back into Bavaria. The next day the Americans arrived and took over the entire stud establishment without having to fire a shot.

  On 15 May the bulk of the herd set off, partly on foot and partly in trucks acquired from a captured artillery school. The Americans blocked all the main crossroads so that the horses passed through safely via Furth im Wald to prepared quarters in the little village of Schwarzenberg. Out of the whole herd only three young colts were lost when stopped by armed Czechs near the border. Again the Americans had successfully prevented the Soviets from intervening.

  The first discharge certificate from the 11th Panzer Division went to the man leading the mounted procession in the Kötzting carnival.

  Apart from the Generals and General Staff Officers, who came under a special detention category, all members of the division were soon released in accordance with the instructions given. Those going to the western part of Germany were provided transport to near their homes, while those from eastern Germany that did not accompany them found accommodation locally.

  TWELVE

  The Band of the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler

  WILLI ROGMANN (5 APR 1923–18 FEB 1997)

  A builder by trade, Willi Rogmann volunteered to do his military service as a policeman, but found himself transferred into the ‘Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler’ when it suffered heavy casualties in the invasion of Poland in 1939, for both the police and the Waffen-SS came under Himmler’s aegis. He served in the same company for four years as their smallest man, first in Greece and then in Russia, ending up a SS-Oberscharführer (sergeant major) and winning the Iron Cross Second and First Class, the German Cross in Gold (see Citation at rear) and the Gold Close Combat Clasp. After being wounded for the eighth time in the fighting near Caen, and subsequent convalescence, Willi Rogmann was posted to the Guard Battalion in Berlin, where he served in the Guard Platoon on duty within the Reichs Chancellery until those duties were taken over by the SD Security Service of the SS.

  Cheeky, outspoken and opinionated, he held strong views on the ineptness of some of his superiors and was seldom afraid to voice them.

  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. N
evertheless 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.