Armageddon (56 page)

Where civilians were foolish enough to remonstrate about looting, the troops simply torched their homes. Once some Russian women, forced labourers, appeared at Vasily Krylov’s headquarters and began to explain the difference between good and bad local Germans. An officer said roughly: “We don’t have time to start classifying fascists.” The scale of plunder in East Prussia overwhelmed the officers’ 32-pound monthly parcel allowance: “You could hardly send an accordion.” But Krylov’s orderly managed to dispatch a magnificent tea set to his family, and when he himself got home to his collective farm near Novgorod after the war he found his mother and sister wearing clothes he had sent them from East Prussia in January 1945.

The invaders swiftly overran the Wolf’s Lair at Rastenburg, the vast headquarters complex from which Hitler had directed the operations of his eastern armies. Russian soldiers wandered curiously among the buildings, awed by the sophistication of its defences and bunkers. The German staff and guards were long gone, but in the commandant’s office the occupiers found an order dated 8 January, instructing all personnel that they were bound by a lifelong oath of silence about everything they knew concerning the Führer’s affairs. A Russian flicked curiously through the headquarters telephone directory. Hitler’s extension number, he reported, was inevitably “1.”

Lieutenant Alexandr Sergeev’s infantrymen were fascinated by the ghostly emptiness of most East Prussian villages. They kicked open the doors of houses, and found ovens still warm, food on tables. The only people they met were foreign forced labourers on the farms, abandoned among the livestock. Special units following the advance were deputed to herd captured beasts into Russia, to replace the enormous numbers which had perished since 1941. They also herded “liberated” slave labourers into the Red Army, the factories, or—in the case of hundreds of thousands of “suspicious elements”—NKVD camps. Soldiers became warier about looting after early experiences with booby traps, which the retreating Germans had left behind in large quantities, wired to tempting prizes. “Our boys would open a door, we’d hear a loud explosion, and that would be that,” said Lieutenant Alexandr Markov. His artillery unit learned to attach a telephone cable to a door before opening it from a safe distance. But such precautions offered no defence against the Red Army’s terrifying vulnerability to alcohol. Markov’s brigade captured a railway station in which they found a tanker wagon full of neat spirit. Many men were reduced to helpless stupor before the Germans counter-attacked. The unit only narrowly avoided disaster.

The Red Army did not behave with universal brutality. Indeed, many Germans were bewildered by the whimsicality with which they were treated. In one village, local people were praying in church, awaiting their end, as the first occupiers arrived. The villagers were astounded when instead a Soviet officer brought them bread. One German woman marvelled: “The Russians have been here half a day, and we are still alive!” Forward units often behaved in a punctilious, even kindly fashion, but warned local inhabitants: “We can vouch for our people, but not for what is coming behind”—the great undisciplined, wantonly barbaric host which followed the spearheads. It was in East Prussia that the Red Army began to rape women on a scale which surpassed casual sexual desire and reflected atavistic commitment to the violation of an entire society.

At first, it seemed that Königsberg would fall immediately, that the entire defence of East Prussia would collapse. Yet, once again, the Wehrmacht took desperate action. The 372nd Infantry Division, supported by assault guns, was rushed into the line north of the city, and by a margin of minutes was able to stem the Soviet assault, destroying some thirty tanks. Königsberg, together with a narrow coastal perimeter, was now besieged. It would maintain its defence for two terrible months. Naval action was decisive in enabling the Germans to maintain supplies and gunfire support for ground formations fighting with their backs to the Baltic.

Boys and old men in their thousands were summoned to active duty with the Volkssturm. When seventeen-year-old Joseph Volmar reported for morning
Appel
at his Luftwaffe glider school outside Königsberg on 20 January, he and his class were hastily marched to the nearest station, almost two miles through driving snow. They fought their way on to a train for the city, through a mob of terrified civilians. On arrival, they were paraded before a harassed infantry captain. “Men or boys or whatever you are,” he said, “you have been assigned to my command for the heroic defence of Königsberg. I hope you will do justice to yourselves when the time for combat comes.” They were issued with French long rifles of 1914 vintage, and twenty-five rounds of ammunition. One boy was given a Czech machine-gun. To their sergeant’s fury, only Polish ammunition proved to be available for it. They were loaded on to a city bus, under command of a Hitler Youth leader, and drove slowly through the street. An NCO coaxed them into song. They joined hesitantly in a chorus of “Edelweiss.” As they gazed from the windows at the throng of refugees stumbling through the snow, the early morning’s sense of adventure gave way to mounting unease, then to fear: “Hundreds of frostbitten faces stared up at us as we sped in the opposite direction. One face was like another, each showing hunger, fatigue and fear as a pair of weary eyes peered out from under a scarf. Small children were bundled up in a sled or riding uncomfortably in baby carriages stuffed with clothing and household goods. Often, the carriages were abandoned at the roadside.”

They travelled some thirty miles into deepening darkness. They began to pass soldiers, plodding in the opposite direction. Then, without warning, they heard shellfire. The bus stopped in a village which had been abandoned by its inhabitants. They were told to bed down in two houses beside the church. “What about food, Scharführer?” someone asked their NCO. He shrugged: “You’re out of luck today.” They wandered among the buildings until they chanced on a supply dump that had been set on fire, and salvaged a few wheels of cheese and bottles of wine. Then, wrapped in their greatcoats, they drifted into anxious sleep.

They were roused four hours later by their sergeant: “Everybody up and outside! The Russkis are coming!” Some ninety-strong, they were marched to an embankment in front of a railway line at the edge of the village. They had just begun to dig holes in the snow when Russian mortaring began. One boy groaned and slid down the embankment, rolling in agony as he came. Lying at Volmar’s feet, he muttered, “Say farewell to my mother,” and died. They could hear screams from other wounded. When Volmar tried to load his rifle, he found the bolt was frozen. He attempted to put a tourniquet round the bloody leg of their machine-gunner. There were cries of “
Sanitäter! Sanitäter!
”—“Medic! Medic!” As Russian fire intensified, the boy crawled among dead comrades, searching for ammunition. For four hours, they lay and fired as best they could at the Russians, who advanced steadily closer. Finally their NCO shouted: “Let’s get out of here! We can’t hold on any more! Everybody get across the tracks and make for the river! Bring the wounded if you can.”

They could not. They simply ran, more boys falling to a Russian machine-gun. One, hit in the leg, cried as he lay: “Help me across the tracks! I don’t want to be taken prisoner.” Volmar began to drag him, but suddenly saw a Russian soldier fifty yards away, holding a machine-pistol. The young German abandoned his screaming comrade and started running again, throwing away helmet, gas mask and finally a beloved camera. Just as he crossed the railway tracks, he heard a burst of fire and felt a hammer blow in his arm. He stumbled on across a frozen river, until at last he saw a medical orderly who roughly bandaged his throbbing wound. He was given a swig of wine and fell into instant sleep. Somebody put him on a truck. At a Königsberg hospital, he was helped into a bed as its previous occupant was wheeled away to the morgue. A 7.65mm bullet was removed from his arm without anaesthetic. He later found that the futile stand of his company had cost the lives of twenty teenage student pilots.

One of the men who commanded Hitler Youth units such as Volmar’s was Gefolgschäftersführer Hans Siwik. He was a twenty-five-year-old Berliner, though his father came from Austria. Before the war, to his immense pride he had served in the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s personal bodyguard. He warmed to the memory of the Führer’s small personal attentions to him, such as discussing a presentation samurai sword one afternoon when Siwik was on duty in his private quarters: “Hitler could be a real softy.” His SS career foundered, however, after he failed the officer course at Bad Tolz. He was sent to East Prussia as a Youth leader.

In the first days of 1945, Eric Koch ordered Siwik to form “Hitler Youth battle groups”—“do it any way you like that will stop tanks.” Siwik banded his sixteen-year-olds in companies of 200. They were issued with First World War Mauser ’98 rifles. “The oldest boys were about 16, but there were others who could not have been more than 13,” wrote a German soldier who saw such a body march out.

They had been hastily dressed in worn uniforms cut for men and were carrying guns which were as big as they were. They looked both comic and horrifying, and their eyes were filled with unease, like the eyes of children at the reopening of school . . . Some of them were laughing and roughhousing, forgetting the military discipline which was inassimilable at their age . . . We noticed some heart-wringing details about these children, who were beginning the first act of their tragedy. Several of them were carrying school satchels their mothers had packed with extra food and clothing, instead of schoolbooks. A few of the boys were trading the saccharine candies which the ration allotted to children under 13 . . . What could be done with these troops? Where were they expected to perform? Was Germany heroic or insane? Who would ever be able to judge this absolute sacrifice?

Siwik’s group was at first employed digging anti-tank ditches. Then, on the morning of 20 January, he was ordered to take a company in trucks with a single anti-tank gun to occupy positions some thirty miles south-east of Königsberg. They drove through deep snow, the boys at first excited rather than fearful. They dug trenches beside a sunken road, and sited their gun. After a long, shivering wait, they saw Russian infantry advancing towards them, three T-34s following. “Open fire,” Siwik told his company. They began enthusiastically enough, but soon the aged Mausers began to jam. The soldier ran from foxhole to foxhole, helping to clear them. The nearest Russians came within eighty yards before, to the Germans’ surprise, pulling back in failing light. The children fell asleep in the snow where they lay.

Early next morning, the Soviet advance recommenced, this time supported by accurate mortar fire. Siwik, who had once told the Führer that he yearned for a posting where he might win a medal, found that his interest in decorations had now faded: “the issue wasn’t winning. It was delaying the Russians long enough for the refugees to escape.” He hardly knew the names of any of his boys, he simply addressed them as “you.” In the middle of the morning, a truckful of fausts arrived. No one knew how to use them. They fired some twenty without effect before a lucky shot hit a T-34, which brewed up. Russian mortaring was causing casualties. They could only use strips of torn shirt to bandage wounds.

After hours of indecisive firing, there was a muffled roar of armoured vehicles behind them. A panzer officer dismounted, and gazed in amazement at the children. “What the hell’s all this?” he cried in some disgust. He told Siwik and his company to make themselves scarce. Gratefully, they scrambled out of their holes and plodded towards the rear. They had lost six killed and fifteen wounded. “The boys were traumatized. Their patriotism had shrivelled away,” said Siwik. His own enthusiasm for combat had also waned. As they marched towards the coast among the throng of refugees, he told his company to throw away their weapons and try to find civilian clothes. “They were all from towns the Russians now held. I could not send them home.” Siwik kept his own uniform, and with a handful of boys eventually secured space on a naval supply ship leaving Pillau. It may be assumed that he was able to exercise his authority as a Party functionary. After two days at sea, he reached the temporary safety of Stettin.

THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

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ANUARY
onwards, with most of East Prussia in Soviet hands, the German Army struggled, first, to hold its surviving enclaves—notably Königsberg and the nearby port of Pillau—and, second, to keep open a line of retreat along the coast south-westwards to Germany for hundreds of thousands of teeming refugees. The fortunes of the battlefield, and of the precarious escape routes, seesawed violently, tragically, through ten weeks that followed. On 30 January, a Russian assault towards Königsberg’s rail line to Pillau brought ghastly consequences for a trainload of fugitives. The engine was halted by a T-34 on the tracks. The passengers jumped out when Red soldiers started firing on the carriages. Russian infantry embarked on a familiar onslaught of looting and rape. Königsberg’s principal defenders were 5th Panzer Division and the East Prussian 1st Infantry Division. In mid-February, the garrison and the German forces on the Samland peninsula staged a ferocious counter-attack, to reopen the link to Pillau. This was achieved on the 20th, a notable feat of arms. Once again, refugees began to flee from the city towards the port, somewhat reducing the burden of hungry mouths among the besieged. Some 100,000 people fled during this lull. On 26 February, the Russians decided that for the present it was foolish to commit further resources to the seizure of Königsberg. The German forces in the city and on the Samland peninsula north-east of it represented no possible threat to the grand Soviet design. Chernyakhovsky’s Thirty-ninth and Forty-third Armies were ordered to hold their existing positions, masking the German garrison until time and forces could be spared to finish it off.

Meanwhile further south and west, 2nd Belorussian Front under Rokossovsky, whose advance had begun on 14 January, cleared most of East Prussia while Chernyakhovsky was still hammering at its capital. As the defences were rolled up, German commanders pleaded with Berlin to allow Fourth Army to make a major withdrawal, to avoid envelopment. Inevitably, Hitler refused. On the 19th, Fourth Army reported that a desperate shortage of munitions of all kinds was crippling its ability to hold ground: “Any further losses would precipitate a serious crisis.” Yet, early on the 21st, Guderian told the commander of Army Group North, Hans Reinhardt, that Fourth Army would have to maintain its existing positions. “But that’s quite impossible,” protested its commander. “It means everything is going to collapse.” “Yes, my dear Reinhardt,” said Guderian wearily. When at last a modest withdrawal was authorized, it was too late.