Berlin Finale (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Heinz Rein

  ‘But of course I wasn’t blind,’ the lieutenant continues, ‘the gulf between Germanness and National Socialism soon became clear to me, but then I took refuge in another interpretation, and that has stayed with me until the present day, and I think it is there that you should seek a reason for the loyal obedience you speak of: as Germans we must win this war – we thought that, with the small reservation that as human beings we were almost afraid of it.’

  ‘That is a widespread view,’ Dr Böttcher says, ‘but it is easily refuted. How can there be a divergence between being German and being human? Something is out of line there, my friend. If German is not at the same time human, if I must first subtract the Germanness from my humanity, then I no longer want to be a German. But German has always been human, Dürer, Beethoven, Kant, Goethe and Leibniz have been German and universal in all of their works, there was no difference between their nationality and their cosmopolitanism. Or do you think that Beethoven, if he were alive today, would have written the closing movement of his Ninth like this: ‘Be embraced, millions of pure-blooded German descent’? No, his kiss was meant for the whole world, and are you going to say that can no longer exist? All of your reservations, Lieutenant, have been empty vessels, you must have been able to tell from the hollow sound they made.’

  ‘I am no match for your dialectic,’ the lieutenant says.

  ‘You can no longer ignore the truth, that’s it,’ Gregor says. ‘Why do you still hesitate to acknowledge that? There is nothing more to excuse or defend, but’ – Gregor stands and hurls his words into the room – ‘you have one chance to relieve your conscience, and that is by preventing a calamity with a manly deed.’

  ‘Which calamity, and where?’ Tolksdorff asks and rises to his feet. ‘I am ready.’

  ‘Some calamity I don’t know which,’ Gregor replies, ‘but it won’t be hard to find an opportunity.’

  ‘Tell us, seeing as we are effectively living on an island here, if we are in danger,’ says Wiegand.

  ‘I will happily do that,’ the lieutenant says, ‘but which danger do you mean? If the Russians come?’

  ‘I’m not afraid of the Russians,’ Wiegand says clearly, ‘the Russians are coming to me and to all of us as liberators. The only danger threatening us comes from our own so-called national comrades, the military police and the SS.’

  The lieutenant listens to the answer with a nod. ‘But now I want to go.’

  ‘Just one moment!’ Klose cries. ‘Tell us a few military secrets very quickly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the lieutenant asks, surprised.

  ‘I mean today’s Wehrmacht report,’ Klose replies, and taps the radio, ‘Goebbels’ treasure chest has run out of juice again.’

  ‘There isn’t much to report,’ says Tolksdorff, and takes a copy of Angriff out of his pocket.

  ‘The usual old claptrap,’ Klose says, looking at the newspaper. ‘OKW, how small is your vocabulary. Listen to this, men and women of Germany:

  “The battle for the Reich capital has been unleashed in all its ferocity. South of the city our troops intercepted heavy Bolshevik tank units on the line Beelitz-Trebbin-Teltow-Dahlewitz. The lost station of Köpenick was retaken in the counter-attack, and an enemy incursion along the Prenzlauer Allee was halted.”

  ‘According to this, the battle for Berlin is looking excellent. Attack intercepted, attack halted, retaken in the counter-attack, sweetness, what more could you ask? A few more days and it’ll be: Bolshevik advance halted on the first floor of the Reich Chancellery, the second floor still remains firmly in our hands, there is still fierce fighting for the gentlemen’s toilet on the ground floor.’

  In spite of the gravity of the situation everyone laughs.

  ‘Read on,’ Wiegand says, ‘the other fronts are of equal interest.’

  ‘The others aren’t that bad either,’ Klose reads on.

  “Between Dessau and Eilenburg, after fierce fighting our troops have built up a new and strong front line on the east bank of the Mulde.

  From the Franconian Jura and to the north-east, scattered American tank units are advancing to the east, their spearheads have crossed the Naab at Weiden. The situation intensified yesterday in the region of Württemberg and Bavaria. Superior tank forces of the 7th American Army and Gaullist units reached our front after fierce fighting in several places and, advancing southward, reached the Danube between Dillingen and Donaueschingen. The defensive battle in Italy continues amidst fierce fighting with heavy losses on both sides. While the enemy was intercepted after gaining several kilometres of ground on the Ligurian coast and in the Apennines in western Tuscany, superior enemy forces made several deep incursions around Bologna, which were halted on both sides of Modena and north of Bologna. Between Bologna and Lake Comacchio the enemy was able, with heavy artillery fire and numerous aircraft, to breach our most important front line in various places.”

  ‘On the eighth of November 1918 Hindenburg, the general who became a national hero, demanded armistice negotiations at any price from the Emperor’s government, even though his armies were still deep in enemy territory,’ Gregor says. ‘He had seen, as a responsible soldier, albeit too late, that the war was lost, and he drew the only possible conclusion from that. Our famous generals are fighting on under the thumb of a deranged hysteric, they are shameless enough to present their irresponsibility as courage and their cowardly weakness as an unshakeable will. If you still have a spark of honour, Lieutenant, call it off!’

  XII

  24 April

  The night of 23–24 April passes peacefully. The artillery fire subsided towards evening, every now and again there is the sound of a shell being fired and striking home, a dull echo, afterthoughts like the last few rockets of a firework display, here and there another shot drops into the silence like a stone into water, and then evening has fallen. There are remarkably few planes over the city, only every now and again does an engine rumble, receiving as an echo the brief rattle of a light anti-aircraft emplacement chasing the glowing trails of a tracer bullet into the dark sky. For several minutes the silence is broken by the monotonous clatter of armoured vehicles, of the dull trot of horses’ hooves, but those noises disappear in the night, they sound and then fall silent.

  When the new day breaks, the silence is shattered by a terrible cannonade. It is 5.15: the barrage of the Russian artillery that has taken up position in the suburbs around Berlin has begun. The salvoes explode like an infernal storm, and dig as if with octopus tentacles into the streets and houses, mortars fire at surface targets, the Soviet Air Force flies mission after mission, bombers drop their payloads, low-flying planes swoop down on the supply columns that are wedged into the streets and unable to avoid them. The barrage lasts for forty-five minutes, then the Russian infantry and tank units launch their attack. From the south they cross the Teltow Canal and force their way into Neukölln, Britz, Lichterfelde, Zehlendorf and Neubabelsberg, from Tegel and Reinickendorf tank units advance to Wedding and don’t stop until they reach Nordhafen and the Ringbahn by Lehrter Station, additional tank units force their way from the north through Tegel Forest and over the Jungfernheide to the Spandau ship canal, cross it even though all the bridges have been blown up, and push in to Siemensstadt, violent fighting is under way around Fürstenbrunn, between Westend and Spandau, and around the embankment of the railway line to Gartenfeld. In the north-east and east of the city the Russian units have advanced as far as the big intersection of Elbinger Strasse, Petersburger Strasse and Landberger Allee, and are reaching the edge of Friedrichshain, always bringing artillery after them, putting the city centre under constant fire. As soon as a breach is made anywhere, the tanks immediately advance with infantry on board.

  The battle is fought with varying degrees of severity and over different lengths of time. While little resistance is put up in the south of the city, and the few Volkssturm units there prefer to liberate themselves of their own uniforms, or clothing that resembles uniforms, SS units, the on
ly ones adequately and properly armed, put up fierce resistance and pull the Wehrmacht and Volkssturm units with them into the murderous conflict. In Siemensstadt and Zehlendorf police units are fighting in complete isolation and with entirely substandard weaponry, some of them only with Italian carbines for which they have been issued with Greek ammunition.

  The military organization of the defenders of Berlin demonstrates that they are inspired by fury and a desire for destruction. Their own artillery fire is directed mercilessly at the residential areas of the population. German aircraft bomb their own city, and bridges, factories, electrical substations, tunnels, gasometers and waterworks are blown up. The men of the fourth Volkssturm recruitment drive, tubercular, asthmatic, suffering from heart disease, epileptics, wearers of prosthetic limbs, diabetics, are all dragged ruthlessly along by the retreating SS units and the military police, women, old people and children are forced to construct new anti-tank barriers while still under heavy fire. The city is crammed full of people. In the residential zone, which air raids have reduced by 40 per cent, there are still almost three million people, including over 800,000 foreigners. The cellars, bunkers and underground stations are all overflowing, but still the battle continues relentlessly.

  While the combat zone of Friedrichshain and the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer brewery on Landsberger Allee at the corner with Tilsiter Strasse is being defended, to spare the lives of the civilian population the Russians order the clearance of the quarter between Friedrichshain and the abattoir. Thousands of people climb from the dark catacombs, above the burning, smoking, shattered streets a clear blue sky arches with the brightness of a warm spring sun, but the people can’t see it, not yet, the smoke and miasmas are still stinging their weary, reddened eyes, they are still too busy gathering together their few pitiful belongings in a few minutes, because they don’t know whether they will be able to return to their flats, whether the shells of the German artillery or the bombs of the German planes are about to reduce to rubble what the enemy’s weapons have hitherto spared. They are not valuable objects that are being collected together under the roaring of the guns and the orders of the Russian soldiers, beds, suitcases, food, household objects, because this part of the city is inhabited by people who are hard-working but poor, manual workers, office workers, lowly officials, small businessmen, pensioners and invalids.

  The endless procession of refugees drifts eastwards along the Landsberger Allee and the Landsberger Chaussee towards Marzahn, Hönow and Alt-Landsberg, with prams, small transport carts, handcarts, old men and women on sticks, legless people in self-propelling chairs, children being carried and holding their mothers’ hands, gaunt, careworn, exhausted people, consumed with fear, shaken with horror, but stirred by the will to live. To protect themselves from the shells of their own compatriots, they have all put themselves under the protection of the Russian troops.

  When they step out of their narrow streets into the wide arterial road their hearts fill with hope again, not yearning or confident hope, but avid and blazing, like thirst, because only now do they notice the clear blue sky arching cloudlessly above the racked and tormented city, the bright sun that revives the chilled senses, the first tender green on the trees and bushes and the bright white of the cherry blossom. Nights filled with bombs, fire-fights, Gestapo terror are all left behind them. It is as if they were climbing out of the strange shadows that had clung to them for so long. Uncertainty still lies in front of them, but it no longer weighs so heavy, because they have brought their most precious belongings and the only real possession they have to lose, their lives, out of the dark confinement of the cellars into the new day. They do not guess that their few effects and their wives will become the booty of the victors.

  The Landsberger Chaussee is a wide road, it runs between summer houses, gardens, fields and newly built estates out of the cramped conditions of the city and into the open countryside. The refugees are not the only ones travelling along it. On the northern side of the street the Russian army reinforcements are advancing into the city, tanks with infantry on board, trucks, utility vehicles, ambulances, gun emplacements, teams of horses, teams of horses, teams of horses, long, low farmers’ wagons with stout, shaggy little horses under the duga, the round yoke. So two streams are flowing along the Landsberger Chaussee: eastward the women, the old and the children of the defeated people, westward the sons of the victors.

  Then from somewhere, still a long way off, there comes a hum, as if a swarm of bees were on the way, but the volume rises very quickly and becomes a roar of thunder. The people in the street look in amazement at the unit flying in, there seem to be ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty planes, maintaining a level course towards the street … Russian planes returning from duty at the front? No, these are German Junker Ju 87 aircraft, they are suddenly huge, the black crosses on their wings are already visible. The refugees trek doggedly on. What do they have to fear from German planes? But then the unexpected, the improbable, the incredible thing happens – the German dive-bombers plunge with wailing motors at the Russian reinforcements, regardless of the fact that tens of thousands of German people are moving along the same street towards the hinterland. They are flying at their target and bombing it as orders decree. Again and again the Stukas swoop down towards the street, then rise roaring into the sky and plunge again like greedy hawks. When they fly away, hundreds of dead and wounded are left on the side of the Landsberger Chaussee, German people, mown down with German bombs and German aircraft cannon.

  Where in the south of the city the Kottbusser Damm widens into Hermannplat and six major streets come together, the finest and most modern department store in Germany, the Karstadt building, stands, constructed as if for millennia, of heavy sandstone blocks, steel and concrete, seven storeys high, with two towers whose tops are seventy-eight metres above street level, and whose blue lights used to shine far over the city. The huge building no longer serves its original purpose, the general lack of goods emptied most of the sales rooms long ago, and ever since the Russian attack from the south reached the Teltow Canal, Wehrmacht operations staff and the artillery observation post of the anti-aircraft batteries in the Hasenheide were based here until the ‘Nordland’ SS division took over the building. They immediately began taking away the considerable food supplies, the trucks now roll constantly in and out. Just as one throws a dog a titbit, and the passengers on a luxury steamer enjoy making the natives dive for coins in the harbours of Alexandria or Colombo, every now and again the SS men throw a tin can, a tin of meat, a packet of biscuits out to the onlookers, and a wild competition begins to catch the morsel. Some things are left in the courtyard and in underground warehouses and ‘given away’ with casual cynicism, no attempt is made at an orderly distribution. A furious scuffle breaks out in the midst of the heavy fire from the artillery and the mortars, people are trampled and literally suffocated among groceries, others climb over the dead and wounded, wade through flour and sugar, pounce on tins of milk and meat, many collapse under the weight of the goods they have managed to grab, they wheeze and pant over their booty, unable to get up again, while people ruthlessly run over them. Suddenly the SS are there again, shooting wildly among the looters they themselves have enticed there.

  Meanwhile over five hundred terrified women and children crouch in the cellar of the building. They have sought refuge here because the air-raid shelters of the Karstadt building are considered the safest in Neukölln, far below the ground and with a massive block of concrete on top. When the fire from the artillery and mortars intensifies and the Russian tanks are rolling into Hermannstrasse, the SS lay fuses and distribute petrol canisters among the individual storeys and parts of the building, and explosives in the cellars. No warning is given, either to those seeking shelter in the cellar or to the residents of the surrounding houses. The will to the complete destruction of all values which devastated great stretches of the country, left Warsaw in ruins and attempted to wipe the cities of England off the map does not even stop at th
eir own capital city. All of a sudden the second floor in the wing on Urbanstrasse is ablaze, the fire leaps from storey to storey at furious speed, the petrol canisters burst open with a hiss, the flames spray as if from flamethrowers, windowpanes explode and shatter and the interior walls collapse. First the main façade on Hermannplatz is seized by the flames, then the wing on Hasenheide, and at last the whole huge building is burning all the way up to its towers, like a flaming torch. The iron joists glow and yield, at short intervals explosions go off in the cellars, the rattle and crackle of the flames is mixed with the shooting of the artillery and the rattling of machine-gun fire. The women and children in the shelters, already almost entirely encircled by fire, are fetched from the cellars by a few plucky men from the civilian anti-aircraft defence organization and, still under artillery fire, brought to the tunnel of the underground. A short time later the walls and ceilings fall in, and the proud, great building collapses like a felled primeval giant, a glowing, smoking pile of rubble, iron and glass.

  The north-south line of the S-Bahn, a cross-connection between the furthermost points of the northern and southern curves of the Ringbahn, disappears briefly below ground behind Humboldthain Station, runs underground to Stettiner Station and the stations of Friedrichstrasse and Potsdamer Platz below streets, squares and houses, and surfaces again only briefly behind Anhalt Station, before the line forks into two and rises to the stations on Grossgörschenstrasse and Yorckstrasse, and then runs beneath the Landwehrkanal at Schöneberger Bridge and Möckern Bridge. It is the nerve centre of the five-kilometre-long tunnel; it is protected against water penetration by the construction of a large watertight chamber.