Hitler's Final Fortress - Breslau 1945 (54 page)

The orgy was largely fuelled by alcohol. “So long as he is sober, one has almost never anything to fear,” one report stated. “Only under the influence of alcohol and also when several are drunk together do the excesses begin.” A Russian pilot touring the city encountered “shooting and general drunkenness” everywhere. Kegs of beer and wine were rolled into the street from cellars. Soldiers fired their pistols into the air, drinking their booty from pots and pails. “At every step there was the staggering body of a drunk.” The flier regretted visiting Breslau. “It would have been better not to go,” he sighed. Thirty soldiers were taken to hospital suffering from severe stomach cramps and blindness after drinking “a sweetish liquid”. The sweetish liquid was methanol – anti-freeze – and the men had drunk between ten and thirty times the lethal dose. Each one died in agony.

More typically, the victims were Breslauers. A drunken tank commander picked up a boy and threw him into a burning building.

“Why did you do that? Of what was the child guilty?” an officer asked him.

“You just shut up captain!! Do you have children?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they killed mine.”
⁶⁷

Such crimes did not always go unpunished. In Zimpel, three Soviet soldiers were shot after being caught plundering or assaulting women. At dusk each night the Soviet commandant and two of his staff patrolled the streets to maintain order. And raiding Breslau’s vast supplies of alcohol did not always lead to violence. One night the sick and wounded in First Aid Post No.5 in Schweidnitzer Strasse were ordered to gather in a cellar room, irrespective of their condition. The patients feared the worse. Instead, a drunken Russian soldier climbed on to a box and preached to the wounded soldiers and civilians about the achievements of communism for several hours. A
Landser
from Upper Silesia, fluent in Russian, was drafted in as translator – but he deliberately mistranslated the orator’s words. “This drunken swine wants to teach us about culture,” the translator explained. After each sentence, the ‘audience’ applauded enthusiastically. The speaker “was as happy as a child,” unaware his words were being twisted. Finally he fell off the box and collapsed into a drunken sleep. His audience crept out of the room and back to their beds.
⁶⁸

Drunkenness, raping, pillaging, plundering. Arson was a natural progression. Official reports blamed German ‘saboteurs’ or Polish bandits for the fires. Neither was responsible. Accidently or wantonly, Soviet soldiers set what was left of Breslau aflame. “They entered closets with burning candles, tore everything out, and what they didn’t take with them, they trampled on and set it ablaze,” recalled Joachim Konrad. “If you didn’t have the courage to act immediately your house burned.”

It wasn’t just Breslau’s houses which burned. Librarian Friedrich Grieger had still not recovered from the shock of the Easter firestorm. He sat in the Botanical Gardens, in front of the ruins of his home – one of the countless victims of the conflagration a month before – “waiting for things to happen”. He had grown accustomed to the smell of burning and the sight of towers of smoke rising above the city each day. Today, 11 May, the Sandkirche burned once more – it was ravaged by fire for three days which left ninety-five per cent of it destroyed. Huge dark clouds enveloped the church’s blackened steeple while the May breeze carried small scraps of singed paper. Sometimes, larger pieces fell from the heavens. One landed at Friedrich Grieger’s feet. Although partially burned, he immediately recognised it as a page from a university library catalogue, a catalogue which lay at the bottom of a pile of books in the Annenkirche. More than half a million volumes were destroyed. A few days later, the Oder bridges were reopened. Grieger headed straight for the Annenkirche. The church was a hollow ruin. Inside there was nothing but “one gigantic pile of waste paper”.

The fire brigade was powerless to help. There were no modern engines; the men relied on three relics wheeled out of the fire service museum. Nor was there enough water to douse the flames, for the city’s hydrants had collapsed. But then the sheer scale of the problem would have tested a fire brigade in peacetime. As late as one month after Breslau’s surrender, Joachim Konrad counted up to thirty blazes a day. A voluntary fire watch saved his beloved Elisabethkirche – they barricaded the iron doors to the tower and found rags soaked in petrol before they could be set alight. The St Barbarakirche was not so fortunate. It fell victim to the flames on 11 May. The Church of St Maria Magdalena, two decades older than Cologne’s great cathedral, survived until the seventeenth. Soviet troops emptied a barrel of petrol in the towers and set them alight. Both towers were burned out, so too the western side of the church and its magnificent organ. In the heat, the 550-year-old Armesünderglocke – poor sinner’s bell – melted in its steel bellcage. Of the 113 hundredweight of bronze, just twenty-two hundredweight of almost worthless slag were found in the ruins.

Three days later, St Maria Magdalena’s priest Ulrich Bunzel led the Whitsun service in the smoke-blackened vestry of his ruined church. He began with a prayer:

Now our Father’s work goes under in rubble and horror.

What our ancestors achieved through many years of toil

Suddenly turns to ruins overnight,

And will only appear to our grandchildren in their dreams.
⁶⁹

Breslau
would
rise again. The grandchildren of Breslauers
would
see its towers and spires restored and rebuilt. But they would see the new Breslau as visitors, not as its inhabitants.

Notes

1.
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 1/5/45 and Gleiss, v, p.24.

2.
Majewski, p.115.

3.
Gleiss, v, p.57.

4.
Ibid., v, p.65.

5.
News of Hitler’s death in Franke, pp.132-3, Gleiss, viii, p.1227, Gleiss, v, p.51 and Gleiss, v, p.54.

6.
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 3/5/45 and Documenty Nr.274, 276.

7.
Becker, p.149.

8.
Gleiss, viii, p.1236.

9.
Gleiss, v, pp.91, 94, 161, 238,
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 2/5/45, and
So Kämpfte Breslau
, pp.107-8.

10.
Based on Hornig, pp.214-16, 218, Konrad, p.17,
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.108 and Gleiss, v, p.185.

11.
Gleiss, v, p.204.

12.
Ibid., v, pp.222-5, 231.

13.
Ibid., v, p.236.

14.
Ibid., v, pp.233-4, 236 and
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.107.

15.
Based on Gleiss, v, pp.243, 245, Hartung, p.90 and Völkel, p.83.

16.
Wrocławska epopeja
, p.87.

17.
Gleiss, v, pp.246-61, 685.

18.
Gleiss, v, p.482 and Gleiss, viii, p.1432.

19.
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 6/5/45.

20.
Gleiss, v, p.289.

21.
Ibid., v, pp.326, 327.

22.
Ibid., v, pp.289, 301.

23.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.111.

24.
Terp, pp.76-7; Gleiss, v, p.626.

25.
Gleiss, iii, p.202 and Gleiss, v, pp.385-7.

26.
Bannert, p.93.

27.
Gleiss, v, pp.394, 395-6.

28.
Ibid., v, p.393.

29.
Based on Gleiss, v, pp.416, 424 and
So Kämpfte Breslau
, pp.109-10.

30.
Izvestia
, 8/5/45.

31.
Gleiss, v, pp.394, 395-6.

32.
Franke, pp.140-1, 145.

33.
Gleiss, v, p.453.

34.
Ibid., v, p.447.

35.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.111.

36.
Jerrig, p.59, Gleiss, v, pp.432, 468.

37.
Wrocławska epopeja
, p.86.

38.
Gleiss, viii, p.1307.

39.
Hornig, p.231.

40.
Gleiss, v, p.493 and Hornig, p.231.

41.
Gleiss, v, p.433.

42.
Hornig, pp.231-2.

43.
Kaps,
Martyrium und Heldentum ostdeutscher Frauen
, pp.37-8.

44.
Waage, p.47 and Haas, ii, pp.244-5.

45.
Konrad, p.19; see also Gleiss, iv, plates 42-4.

46.
Kaps,
Martyrium und Heldentum ostdeutscher Frauen
, pp.37-8.

47.
Gleiss, v, pp.564-5.

48.
Franke, pp.168-70.

49.
Gleiss, v, pp.542, 570.

50.
Majewski, pp.135-6.

51.
Kaps,
Martyrium und Heldentum ostdeutscher Frauen
, pp.37-8, 39-40.

52.
Izvestia
, 8/5/45, Majewski, p.136 and
Microcosm
, p.408.

53.
Gleiss, v, p.785.

54.
Ibid., v, pp.810, 966.

55.
Bannert, pp.96-7.

56.
Gleiss, viii, p.1473.

57.
Gleiss, v, pp. 680, 837, 839.

58.
Gleiss, viii, pp.1317-18.

59.
Gleiss, v, p.779.

60.
Casualties based on Gleiss, v, pp.1088-1101, Gleiss, ix, pp.400-03, Peikert, p.272 and
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.118.

61.
Level of destruction based on Gleiss, v, pp.1103-29, Gleiss, viii, pp.1527-8 and Thum, p.180.

62.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.112, 118-19 and Majewski, pp.131, 133.

63.
Becker, pp.158-9.

64.
Gleiss, v, p.571 and
Izvestia
, 8/5/45.

65.
Russian actions based on Gleiss, v, pp.565, 582, 734, 944, Vertreibung, ii, pp.344-5, and Gleiss, viii, pp.1417, 1452.

66.
Gleiss, viii, p.1423 and Vertreibung, ii, pp.327, 344-5.

67.
Naimark, pp.112, 113 and Gleiss, v, p.1003.

68.
Gleiss, v, pp.566, 742.

69.
Fires based on Gleiss, v, pp.799, 911, 941, Konrad, p.19 and Thum, pp.173-5.

Chapter 9

The Land of the Dead

The future of our people appears to be an unparalleled
life of suffering and sacrifice

Paul Peikert

O
n the afternoon of Wednesday, 9 May, a truck made its way along the lanes and highways of Silesia. It had pulled out of Krakow early that morning carrying thirteen men, supplies for several days and the Polish standard. In the coming days more lorries would make the 160-mile journey carrying a hundred volunteers in all – hoteliers, clergy, journalists, filmmakers, academics, university lecturers, teachers, doctors, experts from utility companies, builders, electricians – a ‘Noah’s Ark’ of pioneers who would lay the foundations for the city’s rebirth. A dozen miles from their destination, the passengers spied columns of black smoke rising on the horizon to the south. As they drew closer, the clouds rose higher, fires were also visible now. “All of Breslau seemed to be in flames,” Kazimierz Kuligowski recalled uneasily. In the suburbs, the vehicle edged its way around barricades. Soviet troops warned the driver not to stray on to the pavements – they were probably mined. The truck followed Oppelner Strasse and Tauentzienstrasse while the passengers stared at the city in disbelief. “Breslau burned, the streets were buried beneath the ruins of houses still on fire,” wrote Kuligowski. “We heard the exploding of ammunition, set off by the fires. We got lost in the burning streets, weaving our way until we could no longer go any further.” The men continued on foot. After several hours of wandering through smoke and fire, they eventually reached the headquarters of the city’s Soviet commandant, Colonel Lapunov, in Ritterplatz. There they were advised to find quarters in the relatively undamaged district around Waterlooplatz, near the Dominsel. The visitors located three apartment blocks in Blücherstrasse, numbers 23, 25 and 27. They were occupied by Breslauers, but no matter. In twenty minutes, all but one of the inhabitants – a baker who would provide fresh bread in the days to come – had been evicted. At around 6pm, the Polish standard was fixed to the outside of the building and the red-white flag raised. It was the first act of a terrible drama which would turn German Breslau into Polish Wrocław.
¹