Hitler's Final Fortress - Breslau 1945 (42 page)

The blackbird repeatedly sings its call with drawn-out notes. The rain drips slowly from the splintered tree stumps on to the blood-soaked earth which is strewn with dead bodies. This innocent bird does not see the horror all around it, however. For it, it is spring, sunshine, mating time. It sits there without a care in the world, cleans its feathers and shakes the drops of rain off its plumage. It has no idea of the terrible slaughter all around it. It does not breathe in this pestilent air of decaying bodies. It does not see the mutilated human corpses. This little singer has no idea about the brutality and hypocrisy of human insanity. Only a shot could scare this small wonder of nature away and put an end to his wooing.

For many Breslauers, spring was synonymous with hope. “The sun is already wonderfully warm and there’s the trickling and dripping of melting snow everywhere,” wrote Hans Gottwald. “Only a few sporadic clumps of dirty snow still cover the earth. How good that is! But how wonderful it would be to be at home now. Peace, quiet.” He paused. “
Ach
, no point thinking about that.” Medic Gerhard Hauschild stared longingly at the first green shoots appearing. “It would be a godsend for us, too, if we had the hope and assurance that something was sprouting for us,” he mused.
⁷³

Catholic priest Walter Lassmann saw few signs of hope in Breslau. “A strange spring approaches,” he wrote. “All of us are filled with a melancholic foreboding of death.” At midday on 25 March, Lassmann climbed one of the two cathedral towers which had dominated the right bank of the Oder for more than three centuries. From his vantage point 300ft above the city, the priest looked down upon “a scene of terrible reality”: everywhere there were explosions, entire rows of houses and streets aflame beneath a grey sky.

I have often envied the birds which fly around the two cathedral towers by day – all the time the way to freedom is open to them. We however cannot escape, nor may we.

Reason could truly be brought to a standstill if you had to experience everything which evolution, toil, the arts and industry have created down the centuries was wiped out in a hail of bombs, a rain of shells, in firestorms, in a few blinks of an eye, when you witness the senseless destruction of your beloved homeland and thousands of dear fellow human beings suffering an often terrible death.

March 25 was Palm Sunday. “Holy week lies in front of us like a long street which we will have to go down, a street of tears and blood, of terrible desolation and destruction.” Walter Lassmann’s words were more prophetic than he could ever have imagined.
⁷⁴

Notes

1.
Grieger, p.16 and Becker, p.126.

2.
Hanke’s speech is published in various forms, notably in the
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 4/3/45,
Völkischer Beobachter
, Munich edition, 5/3/45,
Berliner Morgenpost
, 6/3/45 and
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
, 6/3/45. It is difficult to know how many Breslauers heard the speech – or read it; the words were reproduced in full in the following day’s
Schlesische Tageszeitung
. There are few references to it in the writings of the fortress’s chroniclers. Priest Paul Peikert was appalled. He found Hanke “impossibly conceited”, his speech “filled with a mania for destruction to the bitter end.” See Peikert, pp.118-19. But medic Gerhard Hauschild was inspired. “He spoke for all of us,” he gushed. “We do not make big, heroic speeches. Hold on, that’s the watchword. Everyone here knows what’s at stake. Most look to the west, wait and fight.” See Gleiss, viii, p.309.

3.
Gleiss, iii, pp.206-7.

4.
Ibid., iii, p.202.

5.
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 9/3/45.

6.
Gleiss, iii, p.26.

7.
Hornig, pp.118-20, Peikert, pp.112-13 and Bannert, p.68.

8.
Van Aaken, pp.197-9.

9.
Gleiss, iii, pp.298-300.

10.
Ibid., iii, pp.446-7.

11.
Ibid., iii, p.352.

12.
Ibid., iii, p.421.

13.
Lauban counterstroke is based on Scherstjanoi, p.115,
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
, 11/3/45, Gleiss, viii, p.400, Hajo Knebel,
Jahrgang 1929
, pp.327-32 and TB Goebbels, 9/3/45.

14.
Völkel, pp.51, 56, 62, 63, 66.

15.
Becker, pp.135-6.

16.
Hornig, pp.43, 118-20.

17.
Becker, p.133.

18.
Gleiss, iv, pp.450-1.

19.
Becker, p.136.

20.
Ibid., p.138.

21.
Gleiss, iii, pp.797, 828 and Gleiss, vii, pp.1091-2.

22.
Gleiss, iii, p.950.

23.
Based on Peikert, pp.170-4 and Majewski, pp.86-7.

24.
Life in Breslau’s hospitals during the siege is based on Hartung, pp.72, 73, Martin Grunow, ‘Erlbenisse und Erfahrungen eines Lazarettpfarrers und Pfarrers in Breslau 1945-1946’ in
Jahrbuch für Schlesische Kirchengeschichte 1964
, p.159, Hans Gottwald’s account in Gleiss, viii, p.327 and Haas, ii, pp.83-5.

25.
Life under the bombs based on Haas, ii, p.145, Gleiss, iii, pp.362-3, Gleiss, viii, pp.532, 538.

26.
Gleiss, iii, p.306, Gleiss, iv, p.748 and Gleiss, viii, p.561.

27.
Konrad, p.16 and Peikert, pp.73-7, 240-1.

28.
Grieger, pp.21-2.

29.
Peikert, p.222.

30.
Based on Malinin’s diary in Gleiss, iii, pp.89, 172, 325, 853.

31.
Majewski, p.104.

32.
Gleiss, iii, p.636.

33.
Majewski, pp.128-9.

34.
Based on Gleiss, iii, p.639, I. I. Diebrin, ‘In the Battle for Breslau’ in
Wrocławska epopeja,
pp.132-3, and Majewski, p.55.

35.
House fighting based on Gleiss, iii, pp.452-3 and
So Kämpfte Breslau
, pp.66-7, 68, 70.

36.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, pp.91-4.

37.
Ibid., pp.74-5, 93-4 and Gleiss, ii, p.758.

38.
Ibid., pp.66-7.

39.
Gleiss, iii, p.910.

40.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, pp.63-4 and Gleiss, ii, pp.588-9.

41.
Van Aaken, pp.197-9.

42.
Gleiss, vii, pp.1648-9.

43.
Ibid., vii, p.728.

44.
Life out of the line from
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.69, Documenty Nr.48, Nr.98, Majewski, p.128, Gleiss, viii, p.1344 and Hartung, pp.61-2.

45.
Gleiss, iii, pp.916-17.

46.
Ibid., iii, p.703.

47.
Based on Peikert, pp.60-1 and Gleiss, ii, p.571.

48.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.53.

49.
Documenty Nr.87.

50.
Based on Franke, pp.44-5, Gleiss, vii, pp.1628-9 and Haas, ii, p.145.

51.
Gleiss, viii, pp.467-9.

52.
Decorations based on Documenty Nr.53 and Nr.88, Völkel, p.48, Bannert, p.83 and
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 6/3/45.

53.
Documenty Nr.155 and Gleiss, iii, pp.611-13.

54.
Based on Peikert, pp.145, 198, 213, Gleiss, viii, p.347, Gleiss,
Pennäler, Pimpf und Volkssturmmann
, p.1 and
Die Grosse Flucht
, ZDF documentary, 2001, Episode 3, ‘Festung Breslau’.

55.
Peikert, p.112 and Grunow, ‘Erlbenisse und Erfahrungen eines Lazarettpfarrers und Pfarrers in Breslau 1945-1946’ in
Jahrbuch für Schlesische Kirchengeschichte 1964
, p.161.

56.
Documenty Nr.41 and Gleiss, viii, pp.660-1.

57.
Horst Gleiss,
Pennäler, Pimpf und Volkssturmmann
, p.9.

58.
Hornig, pp.124-6 and Peikert, pp.215-17.

59.
Gleiss, ii, pp.588-9 and
Die Grosse Flucht
, ZDF documentary, 2001, Episode 3, ‘Festung Breslau’.

60.
Waage, p.34.

61.
Gleiss, iii, pp.627-8.

62.
Morale based on
Izvestia
, 8/5/45, Kaps,
Tragödie Schlesiens 1945/46
, p.55, Hornig, pp.28-9, Gleiss, i, pp.25-6 and Gleiss, iii, pp.165-6, 911.

63.
Bähr and Bähr, p.441.

64.
Author’s papers.

65.
Haas, ii, pp.25-6.

66.
Gleiss, viii, p.292.

67.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, pp.44-5 and Documenty Nr.227.

68.
Gleiss, iii, p.839, Gleiss, iv, p.212 and Hornig, pp.128-30.

69.
BA-MA RL 7/539/108-116.

70.
Rollfeld
construction based on Majewski, p.77, Van Aaken, pp.207-8, Jerrig, pp.30-1, Becker, p.140, Waage, pp.16, 27-8, Siebel, p.75 and
Microcosm
, p.29. Perhaps not quite everyone did their best. “The Germans worked with unparalleled determination, while we only pretended to work,” Alexsander Szniolis recalled.

71.
Gleiss, iv, p.500 and Gleiss, viii, pp.754-5.

72.
Gleiss, ii, p.644C.

73.
For the effects of nature, see Waage, p.34, Franke, pp.82-3, and Gleiss, viii, pp.200, 309.

74.
Gleiss, iii, p.799.

Chapter 7

The Old Breslau Is No More

When the Oder flows with blood to the north and
the destroyed towers reach for the heavens
like scrawny fingers, Breslau will go under

Breslau proverb

T
here was a rumour swirling around Breslau in the final week of March. Rumours were banned – unless, of course, they were planted by the Nazis’ ‘whispering propaganda’ campaign. The planted rumours – normally suggesting relief was imminent – came to naught. The latest rumour was not planted. It was carried from mouth to mouth: the Red Army would present Stalin with an Easter gift. That gift would be Breslau.

So far, however, this rumour too seemed to be just that. Saturday, 31 March – Easter Saturday – began quietly. Hugo Hartung admired the forsythias in bloom in Matthiasplatz. There was sporadic activity by the Red Air Force. Two German mortars in the square, heavily camouflaged under netting, only fired occasionally for lack of ammunition. “Towards evening, everything changes,” wrote Hartung. Loudspeakers warned that 750 bombers would strike at Breslau incessantly on the holy day. It was no bluff. At dusk on Easter Saturday a barrage began “on a scale which surpasses anything experienced to date by us”. It was the prelude to two days which would change the face of Breslau forever.
¹