After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (39 page)

Well-honed military coordination had triumphed over superior numbers. The Soviet general could hardly believe it. ‘He went round each individual foxhole,’ Kaufmann remembered, ‘calling out, asking how many were inside. After a while he turned to us in bewilderment, saying: “How could you hold the line with so few people?”’

Kaufmann and his comrades had fought for a deeply corrupt ideology but at least they could take pride in their army’s professionalism.

On the morning of 8 May General Bunyachenko’s troops left Prague. A day earlier, they had saved the city from the SS and its local radio hailed them as heroes. But now the pro-communist National Council in Prague, aware the Red Army was rapidly approaching and that they loathed the Vlasov forces, panicked – and demanded that they leave.

‘In a matter of hours our euphoria – a belief that we were engaged in an historic and important struggle, valued by the Czech people – changed to despondency,’ said Vlasov Army soldier Sigismund Diczbalis.

No longer were we liberators – we were now dubbed ‘collaborators’ and ‘enemies of the people’. At first our commander, General Bunyachenko, in the thick of directing us in the street fighting in the city, simply did not believe it. But after a while it sank in – and he comprehended the situation his men were now in. He ordered the immediate withdrawal of his troops from Prague.

We began to evacuate positions won in hard fighting the day before. I checked the house where I had stayed, filling my pockets with cigarettes, a piece of bread and two bags of field rations. None of us knew where we would go now – or what fate awaited us.

As Diczbalis and his fellow soldiers prepared to leave he noticed something, a small metal box by a bedside table. It was in the shape of the Holy Bible and it had a tiny figurine of the Virgin Mary inside it. The 1st Division of the Russian Liberation Army had renounced Bolshevism, but Diczbalis had been brought up an atheist and was a stranger to the Christian religion. He looked at the box briefly and then – realising time was pressing – moved towards the door.

No sooner had I left than I felt something inexplicable, as if some force had turned me around and made me return against my will. Back in the room I took the little box in my hand to have another look at it. At that moment a stray artillery shell exploded behind the wall. Plaster from the ceiling collapsed over me as the door to the corridor was blown in. Coming to, I scrambled over the bricks and debris. It took me a while before I could stand up straight, gather myself and think clearly. Where I had been standing only a few minutes earlier – before I had returned to look at the little figurine – there was now a huge, gaping hole.

Sigismund Diczbalis took the little box and put it in his pocket. He would need all the help he could get. The Russian Liberation Army was now in a desperate situation. Its last hope was to head westwards, in an attempt to reach the American lines.

Ordinary Czech civilians were bewildered and frightened that the Russian Liberation Army had been ordered to leave, and with good reason. As the Vlasov forces departed from Prague, the Germans launched a powerful new offensive against the rebels.

‘At about 11.00am the SS attacked our area in force,’ Antonin Sticha recalled. ‘We slowly pulled back towards the town square – constantly shooting. It was a terrible day. Everything around us was ablaze. There was the constant din of artillery and tank fire. It seemed we would no longer be able to hold out.’

Once more German troops broke through into the Old Town Square with tanks and artillery, this time in even greater strength. They began shelling the Old Town Hall and Radio Building. Soon the Town Hall was in flames and part of the structure collapsed completely. The Radio Building was hit by more than forty shells. The power lines were brought down and the transformer disabled. The main water pipe suffered a direct hit. The upper rooms were now ablaze, the lower ones flooded.

The SS, moving up in support of the Wehrmacht, began rounding up and shooting civilians. Women and children were herded in front of German armoured vehicles and used as human shields. More and more troops pushed past the barricades and converged on the city centre. They were closing in for the kill.

As Prague struggled for its very survival – dangerously short of tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery after the departure of the Vlasov troops – two Czech armoured units within the Grand Alliance were desperate to support their compatriots. One, a brigade of some 4,000 men, was fighting for the Western Allies (as part of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group) and for the last six months had been besieging Dunkirk. On 8 May it received the surrender of the German garrison commander there, Admiral Frisius. It had been allowed by General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery to send a token force of some 150 men to General Patton’s Third Army, so that it could participate in the American liberation of western Czechoslovakia. On 8 May this force, stationed close to Pilsen, in the village of Kysice on the road to Prague, was suffering terribly. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Alois Sitek, was now in touch with the Czech rebels by radio.

At 11.00 a.m. Sitek contacted the commander of the nearby US 2nd Division, General Robertson. He told him about the dire situation in the Czech capital. Sitek said: ‘The SS are now using civilians as human shields in front of their tanks to remove barricades. The situation is critical. In addition to my men, I have assembled a force of more than a thousand Czech partisans. We have the necessary transport and our intelligence indicates that there is a clear route into the city. I ask you to release my force immediately and allow it to proceed to Prague.’

Robertson was sympathetic. He said he totally understood Sitek’s wish to aid the uprising and would have gone there himself if he had not had direct orders to halt. But the American general was frank. He had been ordered to hold his present line and not take any offensive action beyond it. Permitting a body of armed men to cross over that line would be a breach of his orders and therefore he could not give his consent. However, he said he would try to get those orders reviewed in the light of what was now happening in Prague.

Robertson put a call through to the US Fifth Army Corps. The Fifth Army Corps called the headquarters of the US Third Army. The headquarters of the Third Army called Supreme Allied Command at Rheims and asked to speak to General Eisenhower himself. Eisenhower told them to stay put.

Vaclav Straka was with Sitek’s force as a war correspondent. ‘It was agonizing for us,’ he said. ‘We were with the US troops advancing on Pilsen, and we heard the first Prague radio appeal [of 5 May] “Calling all Czechs! Calling all Czechs!” Every man in our unit wanted to help. Sitek told us “Let’s go to Pilsen – and then we’ll go on to Prague”. We now begged the Americans to release us. It was all to no avail.’

On the morning of 8 May Radio Prague had sent out a last appeal for help in English, again broadcast by William Greig. US soldiers were now close enough to pick up the transmission: ‘Calling all Allied Armies. We need urgent help. Send your planes and tanks. The Germans are closing in on the city centre. For the Lord’s sake, please help us. Do not let them destroy our city.’ Sounds of fighting could now clearly be heard in the background.

‘One of the most terrible days of my life was hearing the Czechs in Prague crying out for help on the radio,’ recalled Lieutenant Robert Gilbert of the US 2nd Infantry Division. ‘We could do absolutely nothing.’

While the Czech and American troops around Pilsen waited in helpless frustration, another Czechoslovakian unit, the 1st Armoured Corps commanded by General Ludvik Svoboda, was advancing rapidly. It had been transferred to the 1st Ukrainian Front for the Prague offensive, assigned to the Soviet 38th Army and given a leading role as a ‘fast group’, an armoured formation ordered to bypass German formations – leaving them to the troops coming up behind – and keep moving. The Red Army and the Czech Armoured Corps were also monitoring Radio Prague’s appeals for help and every soldier realised the urgency of the situation. They were approaching the Czech capital as quickly as possible – there was little time left to save the city.

At 1.00 p.m. Prague’s Military Council held an emergency meeting. The underground passages that ran from the Old Town Hall provided an escape route – but there was now a mass of wounded in the building and also many children. Reports were coming through of the SS rounding up groups of unarmed civilians and shooting them. The defenders resolved to fight to the death.

Small groups of insurgents, armed with bazookas, were sent out into the square to try to slow the advance of the German tanks.

‘Our Panzerfausts were crucial,’ Jan Svacina remembered. ‘We did not have many of them, but they were easy to use and very effective in city fighting. On 8 May these weapons bought us precious time. I saw one nineteen-year-old standing behind the corner of a house. He let a German tank go right past him, then stepped out and blew it up with one bazooka shot.’

The rebels were clinging on desperately. Some teenage boys were fighting the Germans. Others were being rounded up and shot. Twelve-year-old Jaroslav Oliverius said:

The 8 May 1945 was the worst birthday of my life. We were all huddled in the basement. The Germans had started to move along the street clearing each house of its occupants. All the men inside them were being shot. And then they reached our house. We suddenly heard blows on the door, hobnailed boots on the stairs and the chilling command: Alle männer aus! – ‘All the men out!’ We were hauled on to the street and lined up. We all thought the end had come.

At 3.00 p.m. the Town Hall was completely in flames and its roof had collapsed. Fighting was going on in the building and the square outside it. ‘We were living by the hour, by the minute,’ Antonin Sticha said. ‘There was only one thought in our minds – to hold off the Germans.’

The position of the insurgents was now hopeless. But at 4.15 p.m. a little miracle happened. Three German officers appeared at the Jan Hus Monument in the Old Square with white flags. General Toussaint, the Wehrmacht commander of Prague, had received reports of the rapid approach of the leading Red Army units. Russian artillery could be heard in the distance. The mood of the Germans changed. Toussaint decided to begin negotiations with the rebels. He offered to halt the fighting in return for safe passage out of the city.

Jaroslav Oliverius’s birthday suddenly took a turn for the better. ‘Instead of being shot we were ordered to sit up on the front of their tanks,’ he recalled. ‘The Germans now knew that the Red Army was approaching – it was more important for them to evade their clutches than expend further time crushing the uprising.’ Oliverius and his fellows were being used as hostages, so that the Germans could pass through the Czech barricades and then leave the city as fast as possible, heading west towards the Americans.

As he sat on the tank, holding a white flag, Oliverius was stunned by his good fortune: Wehrmacht soldiers, who had been gunning down his compatriots only an hour earlier, were now cheerfully telling him they no longer wished to fight but only escape the Russians.

At 6.00 p.m. General Toussaint and the rebels reached an agreement. All German heavy weaponry would be surrendered on the outskirts of the city; light weapons would be handed over to the Czech National Army before Toussaint’s troops reached American lines. All POWs held by the Wehrmacht would be transferred to the Czech police. Toussaint’s troops were allowed to take out necessary food and supplies and were granted unhindered passage through Prague. Any German women and children remaining in the Czech capital would be protected by the International Red Cross. General Kutlvasr signed for the insurgents. The leading column of Wehrmacht troops – consisting of 27 tanks, 32 lorries and 3,000 infantrymen – left the city centre fifteen minutes later. Some SS fanatics remained – but the crisis had passed. Against all odds, Prague had survived.

On the morning of 8 May Brigadier General Robert Stack was interviewing his new prisoner – Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring – at the headquarters of the US 36th Infantry Division at Kitzbuhel in Austria. Stack had told the Reichsmarschall’s aide that he wanted Göring in his room at 9.00 a.m. prompt. The man looked shocked, said that Hermann Göring always slept late – and that 11.00 a.m. would be a better hour. Stack – mindful that Göring was terrified of being captured by the Russians, the Austrian communists and even the German SS – simply repeated: ‘He will not sleep late tomorrow morning. I want him in my room at nine.’ Göring arrived punctually.

Stack started proceedings by questioning the Reichsmarschall about the National Redoubt. American military intelligence had made much of this supposed Alpine fastness, even believing that diehard Nazis had constructed underground factories, aircraft hangars and munitions depots and that they intended to conduct a last-ditch stand there. Göring looked surprised. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there had been some talk of such a plan – but nothing had been done to implement it.’

Stack moved on to the last time Göring had seen Hitler – and what had happened subsequently. Göring told the brigadier general that he had met the Führer on his birthday, on 20 April 1945 – and that the German leader was already very sick. The Reichsmarschall had then left Berlin and gone to the Berchtesgaden. Hitler had not followed him there. On 23 April he had found out that the Führer was surrounded by the Russians in Berlin and had had some form of breakdown. Göring then telegrammed Hitler – asking for the authority, as the Führer’s successor, to assume authority over the Reich and negotiate a peace. Hitler had flown into a rage, accused him of treachery, dismissed him from his offices and placed him under arrest.

Göring told Stack that he had been guarded by an SS unit and that after the RAF had bombed the Berchtesgaden, he had been transferred to Salzburg. Here, a command had come through to shoot Göring and all of his family and staff. While the SS commander sought confirmation that this order was really from Hitler, two companies of Luftwaffe troops had rescued him. The Reichsmarschall and his entourage had then travelled north-west in an attempt to contact American troops.