After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (44 page)

Early the following morning Kessler was awakened by a commotion just outside the camp’s perimeter fence. He heard the sound of tanks – and cries of jubilation. It was the Russians. ‘I ran across the hospital courtyard,’ Kessler said. ‘Their armoured vehicles were already tearing the fencing down. A procession of tanks was moving steadily past us on their way to Prague. It was pitch dark, but the light of their headlights lit up the road. We cheered them on and all sang the “Internationale” – each as well as he could, German, Czech, Polish, Hungarian – all mixed together, but every version rendered with grateful enthusiasm.’

Other Red Army soldiers followed up behind. Halina Reingold remembered: ‘A Russian officer shouted out to us: “The war is over, you are free, you will get bread and you will never be hungry again.” It sunk in – we were free – and as it did so, people seemed to form into three groups: those who cried for joy and embraced each other, those who immediately ran to the food depots and those who started rounding up Germans and beating them.’

The beating was not just of SS guards. Ben Helfgort had left the camp and walked to the nearby town of Leitmeritz. Theresienstadt was on the border of the Sudetenland – and the Sudeten Germans were now being expelled from their homes by the Czechs. They had become scapegoats for Czechoslovakia’s misfortunes. The cycle of violence and revenge would continue – and others joined it. Helfgort was horrified to find a German woman and her two children – already chased out of their home – being beaten by two Jewish women survivors of the camp. ‘I told them to stop it. They said: “But she’s German. The Germans beat us – so now we will beat her.” I pushed them away.’

Helfgort did not experience joy at liberation – but a kind of sickness. And Halina Reingold also felt a painful mix of emotions on being freed from Theresienstadt: ‘I was left wondering about my sick mother and the whereabouts of my father,’ Reingold said. ‘An unexpected, deep sadness came over me.’

The very first Russian units arrived in the Czech capital at around 6.00 a.m. on 9 May. Captain Zaitsev and his comrades reached Prague at about 10.00 a.m. They were warmly greeted by the city’s inhabitants. The Czechs were now making Sudeten Germans dismantle the barricades. In victory, there would be a settling of old scores. The Germans were forced to lie prostrate on the ground as the Red Army soldiers approached. ‘They are not worthy to see you,’ one of the Czechs told Zaitsev. There was something ominous about this scene.

The German garrison had pulled out of Prague on the evening of 8 May – but diehard SS units were still holding out there. However, the main threat to the city had passed. ‘We knew that our capital was now safe,’ Antonin Sticha said. ‘Early on 9 May advance units of the Red Army had reached Prague’s outskirts. And at about 10.00am a column of their tanks rumbled past us. I remember a Russian soldier, sitting atop one of the vehicles, machine gunning a German sniper position. I was struck by his presence of mind – to him, it was a simple reflex action.’

Jaroslav Oliverius recalled:

On the morning of 9 May we heard on Prague Radio that Red Army troops were approaching. The sense of relief was extraordinary – people began to shout, hug and cry. A group of us rushed to one of the main thoroughfares and began to pick sprigs of lilac, which had just come into bloom. And then a line of Russian tanks and lorries could be seen. The soldiers were grubby and covered in dust – they had clearly been on the move for days – but were smiling at us. One tank stopped right by our group. We presented the driver with lilac – and he offered us a ride. A day earlier, I had been carried to Prague’s outskirts by the German tank; now I was being brought back to the city-centre on a Russian one.

The Red Army soldiers entering Prague were welcomed as liberators. It was a moment of profound joy for the inhabitants, but Russian troops were still fighting the Germans to the east and west of the Czech capital and Marshal Konev ordered that celebrations in the city be cut short so that his men could push on and surround the remnants of Army Group Centre.

At Deutsch-Brod (Nemecky-Brod), in the Bohemian mountains 70 miles south-east of Prague, a mass of German divisions were now trapped by the Red Army. Deutsch-Brod was the main headquarters of Army Group Centre. The troops had abandoned the town in the early hours of 9 May and began moving westwards towards the American lines, desperate to avoid surrendering to the Russians. But the US positions were simply too far away. Czech partisans put the German columns under rifle and machine-gun fire, slowing their progress.

German soldier Joachim Halfpap remembered:

We were under constant bombardment. Our convoy stopped, started, and then stopped again. Shortly after dawn on 9 May our escape bid had slowed to a walking pace. We were in a valley and all around us were lightly wooded hills. The road ahead of us rose up and as the light grew stronger I saw that it was blocked by Russian tanks.

The soldiers behind me were pushing and shoving. They did not understand why we had come to a stop. There was a sense of rising panic – with men jostling and colliding into each other. But as the sun rose the reason for our halt became only too clear. In the fields around us, the hills, woodlands, everywhere were Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles.

The Russians began to move down the road. Their machine guns were trained on us, their rifle bayonets fixed. They fired their rifles into the air and yelled at us to put our hands up. I had never seen a more menacing sight.

The Red Army had surrounded a considerable number of Wehrmacht troops, including most of the 253rd and 304th Infantry Divisions, the 78th and 320th Volks Grenadier Divisions and part of the 19th and Brandenburg Panzer Divisions. Other German soldiers were still on the move.

Gustav Lombard’s 31st SS Division had swung north of Prague in an effort to reach the Americans at Pilsen. At Neu-Paka the road was blocked by Czech insurgents. They told Lombard of the surrender agreement made by General Toussaint and added that if the men laid down their arms, they would be allowed safe passage to the Americans. But it was a trap. The treaty with Toussaint had been honoured but after the events of the uprising the Czechs had a score to settle with the SS. The troops surrendered their weapons and continued along the road – only to run straight into an ambush. Lombard and the other lead vehicles managed to accelerate, drive through their assailants and escape. Those following them were overwhelmed and almost certainly murdered.

Although the Wehrmacht’s chain of command had broken down and most of these German soldiers were now fending for themselves, they were united in a desire to escape the Red Army. Few in Czechoslovakia intended to honour the Karlshorst surrender, even with the twelve-hour period of grace that Field Marshal Keitel had obtained in his negotiations with Marshal Zhukov.

This reaction was in part a result of race propaganda and a fear of the Slav, along with knowledge of the atrocities the Red Army had committed on German territory. But it ran deeper than that. Hitler had launched his predatory war on the Soviet Union after both sides had signed a non-aggression pact. And in the brutal struggle that followed, German soldiers were instruments of the Führer’s belief in the racial superiority of his people over the Slavs. They were perpetrators – not victims. As General Eisenhower had remarked to General George Marshall, the German fear of the Russians primarily stemmed from the crimes that they themselves had committed or were complicit in within the Soviet Union. ‘They are being repaid in the same coin,’ Eisenhower said.

In the winter of 1941/42 alone, more than 2 million Red Army POWs had been starved to death – and most Wehrmacht soldiers knew about this. By 1944 their front-line units had been involved in anti-partisan operations in Belorussia so brutal and indiscriminate that they amounted to genocide. The soldiers knew or sensed their collective guilt – and it manifested as collective terror. In the words of German liaison officer Captain Wilhelm Hosenfeld: ‘We carry too much blood-guilt on our hands to receive a shred of sympathy from our opponent.’

The Red Army had been propelled into Germany on a tide of ‘revenge propaganda’. Some Russian soldiers found it hard to let go of that outlook; others began to change their attitude to the German people. But now, that revenge policy had, officially at least, been disavowed. Instead, the Russians wanted to make their German captives work – work to rebuild the swathes of Russia and the Ukraine that their armed forces had earlier laid to waste. They regarded this as their moral right after all the destruction that had been inflicted on their country by the German invasion – and they were determined to enforce it. If German soldiers chose not to honour the Karlshorst surrender, and tried to evade the Soviet forces, they would be pursued and surrender imposed on them at the barrel of a gun.

Many Westerners, unaware of the full military situation, were bewildered by what they saw as Russian intransigence. The day after VE-Day in the West, Britain was enjoying its second public holiday.

‘Another day of meals in the street and bonfires at night,’ wrote Frank Lockwood of Acocks Green, Birmingham. ‘Celebrations continued,’ recorded Mary Derrick in Bristol. ‘Everyone was marching around – there were lights, and excitement. I shall never forget this day – it was just complete joy. There was no vandalism – everyone was so happy.’ Mary Derrick closed her diary entry with a simple yet heartfelt comment: ‘War is terrible – I hope it never happens again.’

The surrender of the Channel Islands was received with overwhelming happiness. It had been the only part of the United Kingdom to fall under German occupation – and now the Nazi yoke was lifted.

Guernsey had been occupied on 30 June 1940, followed by Jersey on 1 July. Alderney and Sark were occupied two days later. The islanders had not been allowed to communicate with relatives or friends overseas, except by a closely scrutinised twenty-five-word British Red Cross message once a month. They could not travel outside the Islands, run a car or listen to the radio. On 20 December 1941 the death penalty was announced for anyone keeping pigeons. More than a thousand British-born islanders were deported to Germany and hundreds more were sent to camps across Europe. Those who remained were forced to live side by side with the occupation forces. They endured curfews, censorship and a host of other restrictions – including growing shortages of food and clothing.

In the summer of 1944 the British armed forces had prepared a military unit – known as Force 135 – with responsibility for recapturing the Channel Islands. On 9 May a small contingent of this force, led by its commander, Brigadier Snow, left for the islands on board two destroyers, HMS
Bulldog
and HMS
Beagle
. At 7.15 a.m., on the quarterdeck of the
Beagle
, General Siegfried Heine signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of the entire German command of the Channel Islands.

Within an hour, a British advance party had arrived in St Peter Port, Guernsey. A British war correspondent described what followed:

Behind the dock gates was a seething, cheering crowd of men, women and children. The church bells were clanging tumultuously. The crowd pushed their way through the gates and engulfed the small British force. ‘We have waited so long for you,’ one woman said. Two girls with great Union Jacks led the little procession through the town, with more and more people joining it. At the Old Court House the soldiers formed up on each side of the steps, at the top stood the Bailiff of Guernsey. A command rang out, the halyard was pulled and the Union Jack floated out in the soft, sunlit breeze. One could hear a sob from the crowd, then, rising to a great volume of sound, ‘God Save the King’.

‘Oh what a day of days this is,’ Guernsey resident Violet Carey confided to her diary. ‘The town is crowded. The banks are changing Reichsmarks into good money again and the queues are enormous. The Post office is taking masses of letters and stamping them … At about 1.30pm we heard the sound of [RAF] engines over the island. The planes! The planes! Another moment of pure bliss. They have been flying over every ten minutes since. I really think I shall blow up with emotion!’ Dorothy Higgs wrote simply: ‘We are alive and well and BRITISH again.’

Molly Bihet said: ‘It is difficult for me to put into words all the emotion I felt. I never dreamt I could feel such happiness and exhilaration.’ Hans von Aufsess, head of civil affairs within the German administration, recorded the actual transfer of power: ‘I performed a last official duty, in making the formal return of the island to the States [Legislative Assembly] of Guernsey. This was brought into effect briefly, in a single sentence spoken in English: “The war is over – we herewith hand back the island to you”. All members of the States were present. We faced each other with polite but wordless bows – like so many Chinese mummers.’

Shortly afterwards, a second group departed for Jersey. There followed another series of joyful ceremonies. One resident of the island remembered:

Amidst roar after roar of delirious cheering, the welcome visitors at length reached a waiting car and, as it crawled at a snail’s pace through the masses of excited people who pressed up to and even mounted the running boards, the occupants were compelled to shake dozens of hands through the windows. Soon, however, the car was forced to a standstill … and finally the officers were plucked forcibly from it and, showered with flowers, carried shoulder high to the office of the Harbour Master.

‘Everyone just stopped what they were doing and ran out to greet the liberating force,’ Elaine Langley recalled. ‘Shops were left unattended – their entire staffs ran out leaving the doors wide open behind them.’ At 2.00 p.m., the commander of Jersey, Major General Wulf, signed a separate surrender for the island at the Liberation HQ, the Pomme d’Or Hotel. At 3.40 p.m. the Swastika flag was lowered from the hotel balcony, signalling the end of the occupation, and the Union Jack hoisted – after which the crowd once again broke into a spirited rendition of the national anthem.