After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (2 page)

I am grateful to Amanda Helm for giving me access to the unpublished memoir of her father, Captain Derek Thomas, and to Russell Porter for sharing the reminiscences of his father, Lance-Corporal Ray Porter, both of the British 6th Airborne Division, and to the Airborne Forces website for additional veteran information. I would like to thank the BBC for permission to cite from their ‘People’s War’ online archive (those involved are individually acknowledged in the endnotes). I have also benefited enormously from the material on the numerous US divisional websites. Soviet material has been provided by the Russian Veterans’ Association, Moscow, the Blavatnik Foundation Archive, New York, and Artem Drabkin’s ‘I remember’ link at
www.russianbattlefield.com
. On the German side, the Courland Pocket website,
www.kurland-kessel.de
, has been of particular value. Place names have been modernised – except in those instances (as with Breslau instead of Wroclaw) where the original allows the narrative to be clearer. All Soviet source references – in the Endnotes and Bibliography – have been translated from the Russian.

It has been a privilege to assemble such moving material – and to tell the story of the last days of the Second World War in Europe.

Timeline

29
April
1945

H
ITLER DRAWS
UP
his last will in the bunker by the Reich Chancellery. Later that day he marries his former mistress, Eva Braun. The Red Army has now captured most of Berlin except for the central government quarter (the area around the Reich Chancellery, the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate).

Russian forces continue to push forward in Austria and Czechoslovakia. In Vienna, the Soviet Union sets up a provisional government.

The British 2nd Army crosses the Elbe at Lauenburg, 20 miles east of Hamburg, and advances towards Schwerin and Wismar in Mecklenburg.

French forces liberate the last part of their country still held by the Germans, on the Alpine frontier.

The 30,000 surviving inmates of Dachau are freed by the US Third Army. The American advance continues towards Munich.

Arctic Convoy
RA-
66, leaving Murmansk, becomes involved in the last convoy battle of the war.

In western Holland, still held by the Germans, a truce is agreed to enable the Allies to drop food on the starving population. Over the next ten days, in Operation Manna, British Bomber Command drops over 6,000 tons of food; the US Air Force joins in (Operation Chowhound), supplying another 4,000 tons.

Venice is liberated by the British 8th Army. The US 1st Armored Division enters Milan.

The German garrison in Italy prepares to surrender unconditionally. Terms are signed at Caserta – to come into effect on 2 May. Once they are ratified twenty-two German divisions in Austria and Italy will lay down their arms.

30
April

Red Army forces break into the Reichstag (although fighting within the building will continue for another two days). Russian troops are now within 400 metres of the Reich Chancellery and Führer Bunker. Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide at around 3.45 p.m. Under the terms of Hitler’s will, the new German leader will be the head of the navy, Admiral Karl Dönitz.

In northern Germany, soldiers of Marshal Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front advance towards Straslund. In Czechoslovakia, the Red Army occupies Ostrava. German forces continue to hold parts of Moravia and most of Bohemia.

The French 1st Army enters Austria near Lake Constance. The British 2nd Army advances towards the Baltic coast. The US 7th Army enters Munich.

In northern Germany, British troops free over 21,500 prisoners at Sandbostel camp. The Red Army liberates Ravensbrück concentration camp.

1
May

General Krebs begins surrender negotiations in Berlin with Russian General Chuikov. They are suspended when Goebbels refuses to accept unconditional surrender. Early that evening Goebbels and his wife decide to kill their six children and then commit suicide. Later, in a breakout from the bunker, Martin Bormann is also killed. Dönitz announces the death of Hitler to the German nation.

In the north, the British continue their advance towards Lübeck and Hamburg. The US First and Ninth Armies are firmly established along the Elbe and Mulde rivers, but have been forbidden to advance any farther into the zone designated for Soviet occupation. The US Seventh Army continues to advance into Austria.

The Americans capture three German field marshals, von Rundstedt, von Leeb and List.

2
May

German forces in northern Italy and parts of Austria surrender to Field Marshal Alexander. Montgomery’s 21st Army Group seizes Lübeck and Wismar, the latter only hours ahead of the Russians. Alexander sends troops into Trieste – although the city is already occupied by Tito’s Yugoslav partisans.

German rocket scientist Werner von Braun is captured by troops of US 12th Division in southern Bavaria, after he and his team of scientists flee from their rocket research base at Peenemünde.

3
May

Admiral Dönitz moves the seat of his government to Flensburg.

The German delegation begins surrender negotiations with Montgomery on Lüneburg Heath. Hamburg surrenders to British forces.

The
Cap Arcona
is sunk in the Bay of Lübeck.

4
May

Montgomery receives the unconditional surrender of German forces in Schleswig-Holstein, western Holland and Denmark (to be effective from 8.00 a.m. on 5 May). It is estimated that more than half a million German troops are involved, who will join another half-million who have surrendered in the last forty-eight hours.

German forces in northern Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria conduct rearguard actions against the Red Army, as they attempt to break away and reach the Anglo-American lines. Fighting continues in besieged Breslau, Moravia, the Vistula Delta and the Courland Pocket in Latvia.

US troops enter the Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s Bavarian stronghold.

During negotiations for the formation of the United Nations in San Francisco, Soviet foreign minister Molotov informs US Secretary of State Stettinius that the Red Army had arrested sixteen Polish peace negotiators (an event that actually took place in March).

5
May

German Army Group G surrenders unconditionally to US forces at Haar in Bavaria. US 11th Armored Division liberates Mauthausen concentration camp.

On the Baltic coast, Russian troops capture the German rocket research centres at Swinemünde and Peenemünde.

At Wageningen in Holland, General Blaskowitz surrenders the German 25th Army to Canadian general Charles Foulkes.

British paratroopers land in Copenhagen.

The beginning of the civilian uprising in Prague. General Patton’s US Third Army invades western Czechoslovakia.

6
May

Dönitz sacks Himmler from all official positions within the Third Reich.

The US 97th Division occupies Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. The US 12th Corps advances towards Prague, but is then halted on the orders of Eisenhower – to allow the Soviet forces to occupy the rest of the country, as had originally been agreed.

The Soviet Union publishes a full report on the death camp at Auschwitz.

That evening, the 1st Division of the Russian Liberation (Vlasov) Army enters Prague in support of the rebels and Breslau surrenders after an eighty-two-day siege.

7
May

General Jodl signs the instrument of unconditional surrender between Germany and the Allies in a schoolroom at Rheims at 2.41 a.m. The Soviet Union refuses to accept this, and asks that a revised treaty be signed in Berlin the following day.

In western Czechoslovakia, a platoon from the US Army’s 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion is ambushed by the Germans, and one of the unit is killed. GI Charles Havlat will be the last American soldier killed in Europe.

US troops arrest Göring.

After a day of fierce fighting in defence of the Prague uprising, General Bunyachenko, commander of the 1st Division of the Russian Liberation Army, is told the city will soon be occupied by the Red Army, and his forces must leave the following morning.

8
May

VE (Victory-in-Europe) Day for the Western Allies. The German surrender is ratified in a second signing at Karlshorst, a suburb of Berlin.

The Red Army occupies Dresden. German forces on the Courland Peninsula in Latvia – undefeated in more than six months of fighting against the Red Army – agree to surrender the following morning.

The ‘day of death’ in Prague as SS and regular Wehrmacht units come close to obliterating the uprising. But the approach of the Red Army forces General Toussaint to negotiate. The German garrison leaves the city that evening, although some SS units keep fighting. The Russian Liberation Army’s 1st Division retreats westwards through Czechoslovakia towards American lines.

9
May

VE-Day for the Soviet Union. The Courland Pocket and final German outposts on the Vistula Delta surrender. So do the remaining garrisons at Dunkirk, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle and the Channel Islands.

The Red Army occupies the Danish island of Bornholm. In Operation Doomsday, British troops prepare to fly to Norway to accept a German surrender there.

11–12
May

Battle of Slivice in western Czechoslovakia.

13–14
May

Battle of Poljana in northern Yugoslavia.

15
May

Final cessation of hostilities on the Eastern Front.

20
May

Ceasefire enforced on the Dutch island of Texel.

23
May

Arrest of the Dönitz government at Flensburg. Heinrich Himmler commits suicide.

1

The Funeral Pyre

30
April
1945

A
T
6
.
00
A.M.
on 30 April 1945 Major General Wilhelm Mohnke was summoned to attend Adolf Hitler in the Reich Chancellery Bunker in the centre of Berlin. Mohnke’s forces were responsible for defending the government quarter of the city. ‘I was taken to meet the Führer in his own bedroom,’ Mohnke recalled.

He sat on a chair beside his bed. Over his pyjamas he was wearing a black military greatcoat … His left hand shook incessantly and yet he exuded a strange sense of calm, as if his thoughts were collected and he had slept well – which of course he had not.

Hitler was precise. He began: ‘Mohnke, how long can we hold out?’ I answered ‘24 hours my Führer, no longer than that.’ I then described the military situation. The Russians had reached the Wilhelmstrasse and advanced through the U-Bahn tunnel under the Friedrichstrasse. Most of the Tiergarten was in their hands, and they had fought right up to the Potsdamer Platz, only 300 metres from the bunker. Hitler digested this calmly.

With military matters concluded, he began to talk to me about politics. It struck me that this might be his last discourse of any length on this subject. The basic theme was the future fate of Europe. The western democracies were decadent, and the powerful momentum of the peoples of the east – successfully channelled by the Communist system – could not be opposed by them. The west would fall under their domination. His tone of voice, as this argument was developed, was subdued and distant. Shortly after 7.00am I left and returned to my command post.