Chapter Seven

Evacuation

By 19 February the nightly passage of the supply convoys had already lasted a week without any significant incidents. Now at last the civilian population was to be evacuated by the same route. Those concerned had been waiting impatiently for this moment, yet very little had been done to prepare for it.

Fearing accusations of defeatism, the Party authorities had caused the subject of civilian evacuation to be ignored throughout the preceding weeks, but now entered a hectic debate about how it should be conducted. There was no hint of a plan for informing the inhabitants or for any sort of organisation at the assembly point. No provision was made for assisting the elderly and handicapped, who constituted a considerable part of the remaining population. Eventually the Neustadt was chosen as the first area to be evacuated, with the square in front of the Boys’ Middle School, now the main dressing station, designated as the assembly point at 1800 hours. The fortress newspaper did not appear that day because of the failure in the electricity supply, so leaflets had to be prepared but, for the same reason, these were insufficient in number to convey the evacuation instructions to everyone, and many people had to rely on word of mouth as the means of passing on the official instructions.

Although a large group of people duly assembled for the breakout at the appointed time, they first had to wait for transportation while the route to Alt Bleyen was discussed for hours. The halftracks could only drive as far as Alt Bleyen, and for a regular shuttle service through the ‘corridor’ some form of intermediate transportation was necessary. The women, children and old people had already walked 2 kilometres to the school and were unable to walk on twice that distance to the front line in the dark. Apart from two tractors with trailers and three horse-drawn carts, there were no other means of transport available from civilian resources, and urgent pleas resulted in two trucks being sent from the fortress headquarters. This for an estimated 2–3,000 people!

Reinefarth’s staff suddenly intervened when he suspected that soldiers desperate to escape the war might try to make use of the evacuation certificates. These were typewritten blank forms–three to a page–reading ‘On the orders of the fortress commandant, Frau—with—children/Herr—from Küstrin,—Street No.—, is to leave Küstrin as part of the general evacuation. The receiving district is Westprignitz.’ Not only was there no master list of inhabitants with names and addresses, but there was also no time to complete the individual certificates, so they were merely stamped and signed, often by young helpers. However, Reinefarth need not have worried, for even if the certificates fell into the hands of soldiers, such primitive documents would never have passed scrutiny at any military checkpoint. His headquarters staff finally dropped their objections to the certificates in order not to endanger the entire operation, but a security police detachment was posted at the assembly point to ensure its orderly conduct.

Mistrustful and cautious from bitter experience, many Neustadt inhabitants were on their way hours before the appointed time. The fortunate owners of handcarts, bicycle trailers and strong children’s scooters were envied by those having to carry their worldly goods in suitcases, rucksacks and bedding rolls. The only official assistance was shown by the Volkssturm leaders tolerantly allowing their off-duty personnel to leave their quarters to escort their families to the assembly point. Use of the adapted railway bridge was forbidden to the civilians without explanation, and they had to use the badly damaged road bridge, where the heavily laden handcarts were often hampered by the ripped decking of the narrow side strip that was still passable.

Soon hundreds of people were standing in front of the Middle School on the old chestnut tree-lined Marktplatz, where the surroundings offered little cover. A sudden bombardment would have resulted in a bloodbath, but fortunately the Soviet guns remained quiet all day long. Young messengers handed out the blank evacuation certificates, and then the crowd was left to itself again, with the women and children sitting on their baggage. Others, especially old folk on their own, wandered around restlessly in the hope of finding people they knew to group with. Responsible persons from whom information could be obtained about what was to happen were sought in vain, as were marshals whose job it was to allocate individual groups to vehicles. The Party administrators remained out of sight in their quarters only 100 metres away, providing neither staff, policemen nor Hitler Youth work teams. Certainly a sufficient number of helpers could have been deployed immediately without deflecting them from their responsibilities, even men from the fire brigade or Volkssturm staff, but nothing of the sort occurred. Instead the numerically weakest part of the civic apparatus, the NSV, had suddenly been detailed for the task that morning. When they arrived at dusk, its three staff, ‘reinforced’ by an adolescent messenger, were confronted by between 2,500 and 3,000 people. Obtaining an exact figure was neither planned nor possible; a rough assessment being estimated from the number of certificates handed out. Women were stamping and signing the certificates in the NSV office as they were run off in the Hitler Youth office on the Marktplatz.

The evacuation took hours. This was foreseeable but no provision had been made for it. There was no handing out of warm drinks, although the evenings and nights were still decidedly cool. Disappointment spread when it became known how limited the transport available for the first stage was. Only a few were prepared to walk all the way to Alt Bleyen so as to keep the places on the wagons free for women with small children, the sick and feeble. The instruction that the vehicles could only take small items of luggage brought an angry reaction from the crowd. Even old people who had given up the chance of a place on one of the trucks in order not to lose the last of their belongings gathered on the approaches to the nearby Oder bridges, hoping for a lift. There were still many handcarts, as those who wanted to go on the vehicles–and they were the majority–did not need them any more. They began marching off in batches of 20 or 30 in the darkness, with their escorting security guards giving the impression of shepherding prisoners on the march. The armed escorts were explained as precautionary against nervous bridge and road sentries as the evening curfew for civilians, to whom the password could not be given, even as an exception, had already begun. But everyone knew that their presence was really to deter potential army deserters from slinking into the column.

At last the first vehicle moved off and was promptly stormed. A few voices calling for calm could be heard in the trampling crowd, amid the complaining and wailing. Older people dared not enter the turmoil. There were no kind hands to pull them up on to the high truck beds, and there were no stools or mounting blocks to help people climb aboard. Loaded to the limits of their capacity, the wagons drove off, winding their way through the anti-tank barricades of ancient cannon rammed into the roadway before the bridges, and vanished into the night. Ownerless suitcases, purses and prams, for which no room had been found or which had been torn from people’s hands in the press, remained behind.

Only half an hour went by before the first vehicle returned, during which time the crowd had quietened down a bit and the second trip began in far less dramatic circumstances. Thus the evacuation went on until midnight, when an officer brought instructions to stop as bright moonlight now made any movement in the ‘corridor’ risky, and the shuttle service from Alt Bleyen to Seelow/Werbig had to be stopped. However, there were still about 150 people waiting and the dressing station in the school could not take them. A return to the Neustadt during curfew–and crossing the Warthe bridge, which was dangerous even in daylight–was out of the question. So abandoned buildings in the neighbourhood were broken into and used as temporary accommodation. The vacated assembly point bore the depressing evidence of the breakout. Between the old trees were strewn suitcases and satchels, prams and even a bicycle. The NSV people were in no position–and anyway were far too tired–to secure the ownerless items, but stacked them under a tree so the police could collect them the next day; however, when the police duly came they found only a few ripped open and plundered items, the rest having vanished.¹

Lieselotte Christiansen remembered the evacuation:

On 19 February we received the order to leave Küstrin immediately. We left our cellar in the Neustadt under fire and reached the Altstadt over an almost completely destroyed bridge. We arrived in a hail of fire. It seemed as if the heavens were in flames. We thought it was the end, but it could not be. It became quieter again and we went to the collecting point where the vehicles were standing. Only old and sick people could be taken. The Wiese family, my mother and I obtained a place on a truck that had brought ammunition into the town. We were all squeezed up together, but were happy to get away. The driver drove in such a way as to dodge enemy fire.

We arrived unharmed in Gusow from where in the morning a train took us on to Erkner and then to Woltersdorf.²

The inevitable looting started after the first departures and increased during the evacuation of the population, but soon the fortress commandant got a grip on the situation and hanged people for even the smallest offences, both soldiers and civilians. The Feste Küstrin reported that the Standing Court dealing with looting and desertion sentenced one soldier for looting on 15 February, another for desertion on the 18th, another for desertion and looting on the 23rd, an Italian prisoner of war for looting on the 24th, and one soldier and a girl for looting on the 26th. Almost all the fortress news-sheets carried in bold letters the notice that ‘Looters will be shot!’, and later ‘Looters will be shot or hanged!’ This had some effect on reducing this crime.

Ten German soldiers were shot in Kietz one day. On or around 20 February two members of the Wehrmacht were hanged from the Kietz Gate with a placard saying, ‘I deserted’. From then on there was no further absence without leave. It was just about impossible to get out by the ‘pipeline’ and no one wanted to go over to the Russians. The incident at the beginning of the siege in which the Volkssturm troops captured at the Cellulose Factory had been executed had been discussed by many of the fortress’s defenders.³

Luftwaffe Officer Cadet Sergeant Helmut Schmidt continued his account of the defence of the Weinbergshof Farm on Monday, 19 February:

The night was exciting and we remained alert until dawn. Should the Russians have risked a second attack, we would have given them a hot reception. Our machine gun was back in its old position. In the trenches the men chatted about the Russian surprise attack and our counterattack. They spoke concernedly about Hans Hof and thought about the fallen. In the cellar of the manor Lieutenant Kühnel went over the events of the previous hours with his platoon commanders. What had gone wrong? In my opinion we should have provided cover for the minelayers, and they should not have been working in the open ground without protection.

We thought that the Russians had made a spontaneous surprise attack when they discovered the minelayers. We calculated the attackers at about one or two dozen. They had gone forward without preparation and counted on surprise. I think they must have asked for reinforcements but had set off before they arrived. Support from the mortar had come at the right time, and its blocking fire had enabled their rapid withdrawal. The Russians had only been able to hold the Weinbergshof for an hour, but this had been enough to reconnoitre our positions. They now knew the exact situation of our trenches, the company command post and the weakness of our defence. Their opportune attack had proved a valuable reconnaissance.

We had hardly sat back in our shelter holes when the Russians started shooting at us again with their machine guns. We noticed their nervousness and irritation. They were angry. They put the hedge and my section of the trench under particularly intensive fire, and the mortar went on firing with the hits crashing down between the buildings, and at daybreak the 76.2mm gun joined in too. We ducked down in our primitive holes. The barrage increased and lasted longer. The Russians wanted to keep us awake. We urgently needed a breathing space, for we were frightfully tired.

Towards midday we came under an especially bitter barrage from the 76.2mm gun, most of the shells exploding in the area of our communications trench. I crouched down in my hole. All hell was being let loose around me. I began mechanically counting the explosions to get through it.

It gradually quietened down. My ears were drumming. Dazed, I crept out of my hole. As I stood up I saw a dud shell lying on the barely 30-centimetre-thick cover of my shelter hole. The shell was right in front of my eyes. For seconds I stared at it like a mouse at a snake. I was unable to react or move. I looked at this plain piece of slightly rusted iron lying crossways. I saw the badly dented detonator, the fine threads and the blackened copper ring that the rifling of the barrel had caused.

Eventually I overcame my shock and quickly left that dangerous spot. I called out to Tiedemann and crept into his hole. He gave me my next shock. Tiedemann was kneeling propped on his carbine with his back to me. He was not wearing his steel helmet and a shell splinter no bigger than a fingernail had gone into the back of his head. There was a thin trickle of blood from the wound. Tiedemann’s face was totally altered and I could hardly recognise him. His face was unnaturally yellow, waxen and completely relaxed. He seemed to be asleep. Heinz Tiedemann, the unwarlike soldier, was dead. Why wasn’t he wearing his helmet and lying flat on the ground?

Sadness and anger overcame me. Yesterday Tiedemann had passed his 31st birthday unnoticed by us all. That evening Tiedemann’s body was taken back to Kietz by two men of my section, carried in a tent-half. We stood sad and depressed in the trench and saw him taken away without a word. We were not allowed to bury him ourselves.

A few days later came some totally unexpected news for Schmidt’s unit:

Like a bombshell came a radio message from the 23rd Flak Division that the company commander passed on immediately to the men in the trenches. All members of the division were to be withdrawn from Küstrin.

At first we took the order for a latrine rumour. Why should we be selected to leave the fortress? It took a while for us to begin to believe the authenticity of the news. The company command post announced that we would be leaving the position that night. But what would happen to the Army members of our company? We were actually a Luftwaffe battery, but without our guns. Could we take the comrades that had joined us with us? I thought of Bombardier Horn. Could we leave him behind? We were completely confused.

It became dark early that evening. Our relief appeared, a mixed bunch. Many young soldiers and with them old corporals with Iron Cross ribbons. Their arms were not much, just carbines and a few machine guns. Then things began to happen quickly. We briefed our successors quickly as the company commander was calling for us to hurry. Saying farewell to our brave Bombardier Horn was particularly hard. I stood before him and gave him my hand and wished him well. Both of us tried to smile, but it did not come right. We knew that we would never see each other again.

I did not look back. Even before we reached the Chaussee I was overcome with weariness. I did not register that vehicles were waiting for us in Kietz, that we climbed on to the trucks, drove to the Alt Bleyen manor farm and left the fortress area from there in a bumping, rocking night journey. I slept on the truck like a dead man. It was daylight when I awoke from my exhausted sleep. I tried to remember what had happened but was unable to. My comrades had also slept through it. The air was fresh and my legs were stiff. I got up from the bench and pushed the tailgate of our little truck down and saw two pairs of boots hanging in front of my eyes. I jumped down from the truck and found two soldiers hanging from telephone wires with cardboard notices around their necks on which was written: ‘I was a coward!’ The sight was shocking. The soldiers’ boots almost touched the garden fence alongside which we had stopped. Everyone found this barbaric, disgusting and idiotic. On the roadside was a shield that read: ‘Anyone who is encountered west of the Oder as a straggler has forfeited his life. Any soldier that has become separated from his unit must immediately join the nearest front-line unit. There is no going back from here. The Russian avalanche must be finally stopped at the Oder!’

We were in Seelow. Our truck was alongside a small cottage. A group of men were standing near the hanged men, cursing and swearing at the SS and Feldgendarmerie; they would not be quiet.

In Fürstenwalde we went to a hutted camp. We thought that we had landed in another world, it was so clean and orderly. Signs showed that there was even a canteen. The barrack rooms were large and everyone got a freshly made bed. We could at last have a wash, a shower to scrub away the earth of the Weinbergshof trenches. And we got fresh underwear. What a luxury! A little later we were given a good lunch.⁴

The leading article in the newspaper of 20 February began in encouraging style: ‘The garrison and population of Küstrin already have twenty days of fighting behind them. Traces of the fighting have made themselves more evident in the appearance of the town.’ Success could be measured in physical terms: 54 prisoners taken, 23 tanks and SPGs destroyed, 3 aircraft shot down and ‘several Soviet divisions held up’. There was also a flood of decorations: 28 Iron Crosses First Class, 94 Iron Crosses Second Class, two Tank-Destroyer awards, three Infantry Storm awards, one Close-Fighting award. There was even an award for the population: Reinefarth had given the Party district leader 16,000 packets of fruit drops from the soldiers’ supplies as a gift from the garrison to the women and children of Küstrin. These would be distributed as soon as possible.

It was now the turn of the people of the Altstadt to dig out their most valuable and useful items from cupboards and drawers, and secure them in handy bundles. Some had seen the first transports leave and knew what to expect, and so were able to prepare themselves better. They were also spared the long march to the assembly point, but the weeks of anxious waiting made them leave their houses earlier than necessary. The crowd of people waiting in front of the school and nearby grew quickly and soon amounted to another 3,000, including late arrivals from the Neustadt, people who had only just received the order to evacuate or did not want to wait in uncertainty from one hour to the next. Others had not yet been able to make up their minds, although eviction threatened sooner or later. Quite a number of those surprised at the assembly point by the breaking off of the evacuation the evening before and sent into emergency accommodation had gone back to their homes, lacking the energy to become involved in the turmoil yet again.

The Party authorities had again done nothing to make things easier. Not once had they contributed anything, although this time there was some hot coffee prepared by two women in a wash-oven and carried in buckets, as even Thermos flasks and a wagon to carry the container was lacking. (An ownerless bicycle trailer taken for this purpose from the assembly point the night before had been stolen from the NSV cellars during the night.) So the same procedure as on the previous evening was pursued: members of the SD (security element of the SS) escorted the groups on foot, and there was a storm on the first vehicles waiting. Most people took hardly any notice when, one after the other, the mayor and the fortress commandant in full parade uniform appeared. They stood a few minutes talking together and then disappeared equally unnoticed. The people’s only interest was in finding a suitable position in the street and perhaps getting a place on the next wagon.

It was already midnight when suddenly the sound of an aircraft engine was heard in the sky. Invisible, but almost palpable, the PO2 flew several times over the square. Off-duty soldiers who had been watching the evacuation in the absence of any other form of entertainment and some individuals hoping for new loot from the luggage left behind all vanished. They had experience of these double-deckers, which often lurked over the front lines. Most people searched the night sky, bewitched. Where was it? Would it drop bombs? A flare flamed brightly only a little to one side towards the Oder. Hundreds stared as it moved and stopped. There was no movement, no recognisable target, either seen or heard. The light flak woke up. The plane flew off, the light dwindled and vanished. The transport started up again. People relaxed, they had been lucky yet again. But the solders’ scepticism was correct. Fire rose over the roofs and, although the explosion was a good distance away, it caused anxiety in the narrow streets. The next shots were even closer. One wagon was already loading, but the driver was nervous and set off before all the places had been taken. Seconds later there was an explosion on the cobbled square in front of the school, bringing the shattering of glass, cries of horror, trampling and flight. Three people were left unconscious, a soldier and two civilians, and were taken injured to the dressing station. After this interruption the transportation continued until two o’clock in the morning. Even before the last wagon was ready to leave, inhabitants of the neighbouring quarter slunk up to the assembly point to fall unembarrassed and unhindered on the abandoned bundles and cases.

The evacuation was more successful once the ‘corridor’ had been properly established, with the tracked vehicles coming right through to the Altstadt on the nights of 19 to 23 February, all with minimal casualties.

The Mayor of Küstrin and NSDAP County Leader Hermann Körner was also responsible for the security of the considerable supplies stored in the Neustadt. The foodstuffs in the Norddeutschen Kartoffel-Mehlfabrik (Potato Meal Factory) alone were estimated by him to be worth 3.5 million Reichsmarks. When the nightly convoys on the return journey were not required for personnel and wounded, they took these supplies with them.

The 9th Army’s eight-day-old operational orders for Küstrin were now enforced in a formal order from the staff of the XIth SS Panzer Corps. This specified that the defence of the fortress area was to be conducted in such a way as to prevent a Soviet attack on the Warthe and Oder bridges, and to hinder enemy traffic over the Oder within range of the garrison’s heavy weapons.⁵

Lieutenant Erich Bölke recalled:

I was placed under Captain Langenhahn, who was a liaison officer between the artillery and flak units and the staff, under Major Fenske of the fortress commandant’s staff. Captain Langenhahn was a soldier through and through and carried out his oath of duty until his death. He was not especially liked by the simple soldiery, because he sought to be hard and thorough in sticking to orders. I knew him for many years and can personally only speak well of him.

Mostly I was deployed as an observer on the tower of the Marienkirche in the Altstadt. I remember three special events from this time. First, a Stuka attack by part of Rudel’s squadron. Secondly, a Soviet bridge downriver on the Oder. Once I called down our heavy artillery fire on it from behind the German front line. Direct hits broke the bridge, but within hours the Russian engineers had repaired the damage. Thirdly, Major Fenske. He had been in the First World War and came from Dresden. When I was on duty as observer on the church tower of the Marienkirche he would sometimes join me. As he was a heavy smoker, I gave him my cigarettes. He would set himself at the periscope and ask: ‘Bölke, where are the cigarettes?’ and smoke one after another. Major Fenske possessed good military knowledge and also a cooperative attitude. Between ourselves, he said to me: ‘Bölke, we are not going to win the war any more. Don’t put yourself so much at risk. Let Langenhahn do it. You have to survive.’ I believe that his main thought was how to survive this engagement and come out of this shitty situation.

The fortress had two reactive mortars. They were not mobile but fired from racks. Their chief had been promoted from Second-Lieutenant to Major in the course of the events of 20 July 1944 and fell during the siege. One day a war correspondent appeared in Küstrin and wanted to take pictures of the reactive mortars being fired. He misunderstood the instructions by the officer responsible about the danger from the rocket-like tail blast, got too close and scorched his forehead. He then complained to the staff about his destroyed camera and damaged uniform.⁶

Again on 22 February it proved impossible to get all the civilians through the ‘corridor’ before the moon rose. About 150 people had to wait at Alt Bleyen manor farm, condemned to a 24-hour wait in the immediate front line, accommodated in a barn. After all that had gone before, it was hardly surprising that the fortress staff refused to take responsibility for the evacuees. Even a request for a sturdy vehicle to take the most pressing cases through that morning was not met. So, as the Party administration had grabbed many of the few remaining vehicles, someone had to go to help them. A motor vehicle courageously set off with a driver, assistant and medical orderly, laden with big milk cans filled with coffee, biscuits and cartons of sweets. The road along the dyke was slippery from hours of fine rain. The cold, wet weather appeared fortunately to have affected the alertness of the Soviet observers, for the vehicle only came under mortar fire on its return journey and then suffered only minor damage. When a warm meal had to be delivered to Alt Bleyen at noon, the vehicle became stuck and had to be pulled out by a jeep that was fortunately coming by. The Altstadt people would have to be taken by tracked vehicles from Alt Bleyen that evening before the next batch of evacuees, this time from Kietz, reached the shuttle service boarding point in the farmyard. Only about 300 people gathered in the pouring rain at the sawmill next to the Vorflut Canal that was being used as an assembly point, showing that the majority of this westernmost suburb’s inhabitants had already left with the last treks or trains.

For the first time there were no problems with the transport to Alt Bleyen, which had taken about 6,000 people in the previous three days. Those responsible within and outside Küstrin could consider themselves lucky that everything had gone so well and that neither in the previous three weeks nor during the evacuation had there been any big losses.

Nevertheless not all the civilians had left their home town. Consequently, when the Neustadt was stormed, some 500 to 600 of them fell into the hands of the Red Army. In addition, individual inhabitants kept returning to collect belongings they had left behind until 22 March, and some of these became trapped and remained in Kuhbrücken until the very end.

For lack of fresh material–even the local situation report was reduced to four and a half lines of nothing new, with not even the evacuation being mentioned–the Feste Küstrin produced just two ‘holding-out’ contributions. After six days of vain attempts to gain some operational depth in Pomerania following some local successes in Operation Sonnenwende, the attack had been broken off. Küstrin remained a distant goal.⁷

All those living in the Altstadt who had not already taken to sleeping in the cellars were driven down their cellar steps at 0500 hours. Medium calibre guns firing from the south poured a dense volume of shells into the town centre, the main target being Friedrichstrasse between the courthouse and the old army bakery. This lightly built-over terrain along the line of the filled-in fortress ditch, on which Reichsstrasse 1 ran, had hardly been troubled until now, as it was probably protected by the camouflage screen. Several 150mm infantry guns were deployed in the open on the little Rosengarten Park, not 100 metres from the dressing station in the Boys’ Senior School.

The firing came at regular intervals of 15 to 20 minutes, then there was a hefty explosion and a chain of lighter detonations in quick succession. A rain of splinters poured over into the Altstadt. A provisional ammunition dump near the youth hostel, in which heavy flak shells had been stacked in open pits, had been hit. The blackened remains of wickerwork baskets used for carrying shells were blown into the water, and the ground was strewn with bits of explosive materials and unexploded shells over a wide area. This dangerous hail came right over the fortress walls and hit the quarters of an engineer platoon in the hostel there.

Although a considerable number of civilians still remained in the town, they had not been hurt. Because of the apparent peace of the past days, some were already thinking about leaving the fortress. Many elderly people found it unbearable to be carted off somewhere else when their own four walls still stood, and many families of soldiers and Volkssturm men serving in the fortress wanted to stay on as long as possible to be with their fathers, husbands and sons.

This barrage and its consequences had a sobering effect, especially among those who lived close to ammunition stores. The capacity for accommodating military stores in vacant or somewhat shellproof rooms in the Altstadt was already about exhausted before the convoys from Seelow started arriving. Since then, however, many truckloads of supplies had arrived in the last ten nights, particularly ammunition. For instance, the shells for the heavy infantry guns had been stacked under the archway of the Berlin Gate, in the last remaining fortress stores, and the adjacent small casemates. But cases of Panzerfausts, together with anti-tank and flak ammunition, had been laid out on the grass under canvas in the immediate vicinity. A nearby garage was packed to the roof with aircraft bombs, being unusable in that role because of the lack of fuel for the aircraft to carry them, but useful to the sappers for demolition purposes. Even the lower-ranking Wehrmacht staff who had taken up quarters in this area were unhappy, and eventually protested when it was proposed putting a petrol canister depot in the open air here.

Towards evening the area around Friedrichstrasse came under a short barrage again when about 300 civilians were gathered waiting for transportation from the nearby Boys’ Middle School. One shell hit the new Law Courts. Volkssturm men accommodated there left their supper and took shelter in the passages. Later recorded as the only damage, the swastika over the doorway lay smashed on the ground.⁸

‘Artillery activity continues to increase’, commented the Feste Küstrin of 23 February. The front lines and the town continued to resound to surprise bombardments of varying intensity. There was hardly a building whose roof had not already been pierced, whose façade had not been damaged with shell splinters. There were shattered stones and glass splinters everywhere. Only in the narrow alleys of the inner town, where the buildings provided some shelter for each other, could the ground-floor rooms still be used without permanent danger. But here too rows of windows had been broken. Sappers went from one staff quarter to another to prepare the cellars for permanent residence, putting wooden timbers under the ceiling beams to support them, and sandbags over the rooms above and in front of the windows.

The subject of the mail came under discussion in the town hall, regarding the fate of the packages and packets abandoned by the officials in the Neustadt post office when fighting broke out. There were thousands of items, mostly en route to places east of the Oder, that had only been found by chance. Since then a Volkssturm guard had been maintained on the stores at the station, which already showed clear signs of having been looted. Cut strings, paper strips, ripped cartons and trampled cakes covered the floors of the passages from the stores to the loading platform. Withered sprigs of fir clearly showed that many of the packages had been there since before Christmas. Getting any to their destinations or back to the sender could not be taken seriously under the circumstances, so the post office was ordered to open the parcels and sort out the contents for distribution to the Volkssturm and soldiers.⁹

Of particular significance to the future of Küstrin that day was the fall of Posen after five weeks of siege, releasing those six divisions of the 8th Guards and 69th Armies that had been engaged there and could now be used on the Oder front.

Heavy rain overnight washed away the dust from the road surfaces, making the dirty traces of artillery strikes barely noticeable on the morning of 24 February. The progressive diminution of the population began to have an impact on the town, much to the chagrin of the self-justifying Party administration, whose estimated 1,000soul domain would vanish within a week at the current rate of evacuation. The local authorities were embarrassed by the idea of having to do Volkssturm service, but the Landsberg prominenti knew how to utilise their special position. The task of managing the civilian supplies, given to them now that nearly all the shops were closed, had become meaningless, but their three-week stay in the beleaguered fortress would be well noted in ‘higher places’. The lesser civil servants could be sacrificed to hold the fort, while the close circle around the former mayor of Landsberg could leave the hot seat on the Oder inconspicuously. The gentlemen gathered together in their quarters out of the rain that evening to wait for transport. Some had donned civilian overcoats over their brown uniforms ‘because it will be cold in the open wagons’. They could only conceal their unease with difficulty as they puffed away on thick cigars. One of them went to the door from time to time to ensure they would not miss the arrival of the tracked vehicles. For the first time the evacuees were to be taken from the town and not from Alt Bleyen, the rapidly reducing numbers having made the special intermediary shuttle service unnecessary. The refugees’ departure time had nevertheless yet to be agreed by the headquarters, by which of the two night convoys–at 2000 hours or midnight–the requisite number of vehicles would be available. The 2000 hours convoy had already gone and they now had to wait another four hours before the halftracks rattled back along the empty streets. This time the gentlemen did not even allow themselves time to button up their greatcoats before plunging outside.

That same day the Fortress newspaper sang the praises of a 76year-old man: ‘He too did not want to be left behind’. He had–possibly simply out of fear of exile in an asylum–tried to be taken on by the Volkssturm for attachment to a fighting unit. However, in view of the volunteer’s age, he had been taken on instead as a clerk in a Wehrmacht office.¹⁰

Officer Cadet Alfred Kraus recalled:

Towards the end of February the enemy brought many tanks and trucks into Alt Drewitz, the noise of which came over to us. Observers established the presence of Stalin-Organs and guns. We expected a Russian attack. Instead, one lunchtime a Stuka squadron appeared, Rudel’s squadron, and bombarded the enemy positions.

Although this meant that a Soviet offensive was now unlikely, enemy pressure on the Cellulose Factory increased. It was less quiet in our position on the north-west side of the factory premises. The firing of mortars and Stalin-Organs increased. Since we were not visible from the front, I sometimes had the impression that an enemy observer was located on the chimney behind us and was directing the fire.

When a returning Soviet bomber squadron flew over us, our anti-aircraft gun shot down the leading aircraft, whose tail plane hit a second bomber and the remainder hit a third. All three enemy bombers fell from the one direct hit.

I was wounded by a shell splinter in the right arm while taking a message to the firing position. Nils Fauck brought me back. The dressing station was on the first floor in one of the housing blocks opposite our company command post. It was in the charge of a corporal with a glass eye. He had tended the wounded during a mortar barrage. There was a rumour that he was a degraded doctor. He operated on me straight away. During the night I awoke from my drugged sleep when a 105mm flak gun fired not far from my window. This gun which we had found in the Cellulose Factory had an alternative firing position in front of our dressing station and was tended by former Luftwaffe auxiliaries of our company. While I was detained at the dressing station I saw it shoot up two enemy tanks that advanced over the open land between the Cellulose Factory and the Drewitzer Unterweg at night camouflaged as haystacks.

I was still at the dressing station when I was wounded for a second time. French civilian workers were digging an anti-tank ditch in front of the buildings. The Russians laid down mortar fire on them and a splinter hit my back when I looked out of the window. Until I was fully recovered I was detailed to work in the company’s radio position, but this did not happen, as I had a confrontation with the quartermaster-sergeant, who sent me back into the front line. When I arrived at the Cellulose Factory, Second-Lieutenant Thom had already been informed by a runner and told me: ‘I’ve already heard. However, you will remain as a runner as before. The quartermaster-sergeant can come here and see me if he doesn’t like it.’

That same evening our company commander, Lieutenant Schellenberg, organised a night fighting patrol as ordered. Nils Fauck, who during my absence had been manning the radio and telephone, went of his own accord. The attack took place on 23 February, supported by flame-throwers, artillery and mortars, the latter firing from the Cellulose Factory. (Whether the mortars had been moved here for this reason, I do not know.) In our opinion the undertaking was senseless and costly. My friend Wolfgang Warner was wounded in it. Nils Fauck was brought back to the dressing station with a shot through the arm. I did not see him again, nor did I find him again after the war. I met Wolfgang Warner again in Munich and we are still in contact.¹¹

The first execution by hanging took place on 25 February, the victim being a flak sergeant-major. According to the announcement, he had been living in his allocated quarters with a 20-year-old girl, and they had packed a bag with underwear and clothing with which to leave the fortress. Within the same hour that her boyfriend was hanged from the crossbar of a telephone pole near the Altstadt railway crossing, the girl was sentenced to death by shooting. It seems that the real reason for their planned flight was the actual crime of looting. How could the garrison’s flak units, which consisted of so many young soldiers and Luftwaffe auxiliaries under the physical and nervous strain of being in combat, grasp that one of their superiors – for whatever reason–saw nothing wrong in discontinuing to endanger his life? Making a disciplinary example of an officer over stolen property would certainly have a widespread impact. There had been anger for a long time over the increasing looting and malicious damage in abandoned buildings, especially among the remaining civilians and local Volkssturm.

A front-line cinema was opened that day only a few hundred yards from the place of execution. The three cinemas in the town, Urania, Apollo and Küstriner Lichtspiele, had been closed at the end of January and damaged since. A new location was chosen, a former air-raid shelter on the youth hostel plot in the Altstadt. Various containers of household goods deposited there for safety by several families during the evacuation were dumped outside and primitive wooden benches were used to fill the now musty vaults. For the première there was the film Menschen vom Varieté and an old newsreel exhorting victory.¹²

Fighting around the town continued to remain minimal on 26 February. The local situation report–as it already had done for days–spoke only of the activity of the heavy weapons, implying the two sides were equally matched:

Enemy artillery fire especially on the Cellulose Factory and the Oder Vorflut bridges. Lively activity by our own artillery with good success. Our own patrols active against positions northwards of Alt Drewitz and south of Kietz.

Low cloud interrupted the deployment of Soviet aircraft and enabled work on the fortifications to continue relatively undisturbed. This was concentrated on strengthening the naturally poor defences in the Neustadt along the curve of the front line based on the Warthe. After an eight-day interruption, traffic into this sector over the road bridge was partly resumed, engineers having built a wooden structure over the sunken arch. Nevertheless it was little more than one track wide and was only usable by light vehicles owing to its limited weight capacity. Other traffic had to be directed over the railway bridge.

One of the SD (security service) teams stationed in the fortress had begun combing through the streets one by one, ordering the remaining inhabitants to leave. This team of about 30 men, supported in the Altstadt by a few members of the Party administration, pursued the task with enthusiasm. The end of the evacuation was finally achieved when even the rear area troops were withdrawn. Those civilians who had refused to leave were scattered over the whole town, and short-notice changes of residence following fire or artillery damage was part of the daily routine, so another check had to be made of all inhabitable buildings down to the cellars. But the manpower available was insufficient, as the SD also had to enforce the stricter blackout regulations.

The emergency power station restarted after several days of disruption, but only operated from 2000 hours in the evening to 0600 hours in the morning, partly in order to save fuel and partly to avoid smoke from the factory chimney alerting the Soviet observers. As the power came on during the first evening lights appeared in windows all over the town. The fear quickly arose among some fanatics that this was either sabotage or a deliberate act intended to aid the enemy, but the real connection with the evacuation was soon realised. After five years of enforced blackout, thoughtlessness among those remaining rarely occurred. The problem almost exclusively involved buildings whose inhabitants had left for the assembly point in daylight. Most had not closed the shutters and curtains and in those areas where the power had gone off, light switches had been left on unheeded. Because of the increase in these cases and out of well-founded respect for the PO-2s flying over the town at night, the patrols received orders to shoot through the windows at these light sources when shouted warnings were not immediately responded to.¹³

Corporal Hans Arlt was serving on the Neustadt outskirts:

Another reconnaissance in an easterly direction was made towards the end of February. This time we got stuck in no-man’s-land with a similar enemy undertaking. No one attained their goal. Here the greater firepower of the enemy showed itself. This was the first time I had had an assault rifle and experienced a blockage. Nevertheless it ended well.

Our position was in open country east of the Zorndorfer Chaussee. In front of us was a low, lightly wooded hill that was in Russian hands. We lay in partly covered foxholes. Our weapons consisted of carbines, some assault rifles and hand grenades. The enemy was at times only about 100 metres away. Apart from occasional shell bursts, it was quiet all day long, as snipers prevented all movement. At night Soviet double-deckers (‘Sewing Machines’) flew over us and dropped small explosive charges. A three-man team in a hole 20 metres from us received a direct hit.

One day as we were celebrating the shooting down of a fighter with a lot of noise, the Russian side reacted with a long-lasting hail of shells.

Notices displayed in the town announced the Fortress Commandant’s order that coal and potatoes could be taken from abandoned buildings. Everything else was considered as looting and would be severely punished with death. This almost included me, as I took a half-filled bottle of paraffin from the cellar of Siedler’s Waldgastätte pub. I wanted to soak the damp wood in our bunker stove with it, but I was caught by Captain von Oldershausen, who was accompanying my company commander. The battalion commander wanted to make an example of me and demanded a statement as the basis for a court martial. Second-Lieutenant Fleischer was able to prevent this, but was himself given a severe reprimand at the battalion command post next day.

While on a reconnaissance of the area at the beginning of February, we had come across some cans of sausage in the cellars of the abandoned hospital in the woods. Each of us three soldiers took a full box of cans. Speed was needed to cross the railway embankment, which was under enemy observation. Anyone moving attracted at least Russian mortar fire. When we returned next day, the cellars had been emptied.

By the end of February our rations were even more reduced. Apart from this, the warm rations were cold by the time they reached us, and our displeasure could be seen on our faces. The paymaster responsible appeared with a drawn pistol, being concerned for his own safety while the food was being handed out.

After four weeks in action our platoon had earned a rest in the von Stülpnagel Barracks. Meanwhile a heavy machine gun was deployed in support of our position in the Kohlenweg-Zorndorfer Chaussee crossing, its crew being Waffen-SS.¹⁴

Kietz came under fire all day on 27 February, but was not attacked. However, as the OKW report put it, the enemy was able ‘to enlarge his small bridgehead south of Küstrin a little with the aid of strong artillery support’. In the town area, mortars and light guns kept the Warthe crossings under fire. The team protecting the bridges withdrew to trenches and earth bunkers on the banks of the Winterhafen (winter harbour) on the west bank. A prominent building here was the boathouse, which stood on a small hillock above the harbour and so became a target for all the shots coming over the roads and bridges. Even this deeply cut bay was not safe from mortar fire. An old steam paddleboat long since withdrawn from service already lay here with its bows ashore, its funnel shot away and its wooden decks and contents long since burnt in the bunker stoves.

A horse and cart trying to take advantage of a pause in the firing had just reached the middle of the bridge when a direct hit tore the horse apart, smashing the cart and injuring the driver, the wreckage momentarily halting the traffic between the Altstadt and Neustadt. However, the Soviets were apparently not intending to destroy the bridge completely, for they could have done so long before with aimed bomb attacks and intensive use of large calibre guns. The assumption was that they reckoned on using the crossing themselves in due course and would also profit from the railway station. Even the Feste Küstrin said: ‘We still do not know when the storm from the east will be stopped…’. Nevertheless the newspaper continued to insist that: ‘Every German town, every German village, every small market town, every crossroad must be a fanatically defended bulwark. A German must be waiting for the enemy with a Panzerfaust from behind every cellar window, from behind every bush, and nail him when he comes.’

Gauleiter Stürtz arrived with the first evening convoy, apparently to reassure himself that people in Küstrin were conducting themselves as was expected. He conferred with Reinefarth, Mayor/District Leader Körner, and the former Landsberg district farmers’ leader Herr Siedke, who had meantime taken up a kind of chief-of-staff function in the local Party office. A robust, healthy man, he had somehow managed to avoid the military service he had been threatened with three days previously when rebuked with his colleagues.

Stürtz saw neither simple soldiers, Volkssturm men nor civilians before he climbed into the co-driver’s seat of a tracked vehicle, waved at those remaining behind and vanished into the darkness. Crouching in one of the vehicles in the convoy were the inhabitants of the town’s old folks’ home, who had been deserted by most of their carers and had hardly dared move outdoors since. When the vehicles arrived in Seelow, no one knew what to do with these old people. The latest fighting around the Soviet bridgehead at Reitwein had thrown the little town into confusion, especially as the population had received orders to evacuate that same day. Even in the offices, suitcases and rucksacks stood next to the desks ready for flight. The evacuees had to wait until morning in unheated pubs or even on the streets for transport to take them on, but Stürtz had only to get into his staff car to get away.¹⁵

By 28 February a month had already passed since the first Soviet tank appeared in the town on a frosty Wednesday. The ‘Gateway to Berlin’ was being held, even though the walls on either side had started to crumble. Küstrin was the leading point of a narrow wedge between the two bridgeheads, between the 5th Shock Army in the north and the 8th Guards Army in the south, that the XIth SS-Panzer Corps under SS-Gruppenführer Mathias Kleinheisterkamp was still able to contain. It required no general staff education to appreciate that the Soviets must overcome this obstacle before they could start another campaign. Only the date and the possible tactical variations remained in question: a direct attack on the fortress, or its complete encirclement.

All the observers said that the enemy in the extensive woods northeast of the Neustadt were ready to attack. From there it was only 3 kilometres to the Warthe bridges, and even less from the flanks near Drewitz and Warnick. The field positions on the town perimeter were being systematically extended. Volkssturm men, for example, were working on an anti-tank ditch opposite Warnick in front of the Engineer Barracks. The barracks themselves had been developed into a strongpoint, the surrounding wall reinforced with sandbag barricades and barbed wire. Camouflage nets hung over the entrance and there were notices warning of enemy observation and snipers. Until recently it had not been necessary to have the greater part of the armed forces available in the front line. The ‘unreliable’ Hungarians and the so-called Eastern Peoples’ Volunteers were now building anti-tank barriers in the streets of the inner town.

It will be recalled that the Neustadt sector commandant was Feldgendarmerie Colonel Franz Walter, who had been personally selected by Reinefarth for this position, presumably because they knew each other from the past, and despite severe criticism from the Corps staff. Walter was now in a difficult position. Should Soviet tanks penetrate the town, the newly built anti-tank barriers were only capable of holding them at bay for a few hours at best. Saving some of the troops and the most valuable parts of their equipment would only be possible under cover of darkness. However, that entailed–should the storm begin in the morning as expected–at least ten hours’ resistance, or an hour’s street-fighting for every 300 metres, an hour of blood-letting for the average distance between two bus-stops, should there be anything left to save.

Should the enemy have the nerve to cross the Warthe, which was only the width of a canal in places, they would come up against the nucleus of the fortress at its most vulnerable point. The Warthe frontage of the mighty rectangle of bastions that once enclosed the Altstadt had been reduced to almost nothing in the early 1930s, the demolished and levelled terrain having been built on only sparsely. There were few support positions for the defence, and the high water table near the bank severely limited the construction of earthworks. All the streets and alleys leading from this side to the centre of the Altstadt had barricades that could be quickly closed in an emergency. Even the side doors to these streets were blocked. Thus in one still-used building the only way to the cellar was barred and it could only be reached from the back yard. The engineers, who did not value its use too highly, let themselves be persuaded by the occupants to provide them with access by means of a set of stable steps to the adjoining property.

An especially zealous unit commander spoilt his men’s off-duty time that evening by making them listen to Goebbels’s speech on the current situation over the communal radio. ‘The war is like a marathon,’ said the Propaganda Minister. ‘Every runner experiences a weak moment on the way and only he who overcomes it reaches the goal as winner. Since the time of Frederick the Great…’ and so on. Every reluctant listener comforted himself with the fact that every sermon has to end sometime. Finally the day brought something to celebrate: the first post arrived, if only for a few lucky ones. Meanwhile the whole garrison had been allocated the number 18 203, with different letters signifying individual units.¹⁶

In late February and early March the commandant ordered all the members of the Hitler Youth to leave the fortress. The boys had volunteered to assist with the defence of their home town but belonged to no military unit and were unarmed. They had served as runners, helped to carry the wounded and assisted in the evacuation of people and animals, as well as carrying food and supplies from the Neustadt to the Altstadt, or the hinterland. They were officially evacuated because they were under 16, but also to spare them the possibility of capture by the Russians. The remaining men were members of the Volkssturm, the fire brigade or the police, doctors and nursing staff, duty personnel of important services and establishments, such as the water works, gas works, sewage farm, electricity supply and cemeteries, and an emergency administration as well as a small NSDAP county staff.¹⁷

In a letter written to his wife at about this time, Major Werner Falckenberg wrote:

The focus of attention is on the Bienenhof. An officer commanding there considers Monte Cassino, where he was from the beginning until it was abandoned, as child’s play in comparison to what our men at the Bienenhof have to put up with! Perhaps a bit overstated, but it is certainly violent.

From Russian field post letters taken by us from them, it seems that the Russians have had enough of the war. Further, they have become anxious, for they write that they have come against an especially strong position that they cannot do anything about. They can be hit by a bullet at any moment!

Things are still all right for us now that I know where you are! The rations are very good. We also have water now, only the power has given up. Of course it does not come from main grid any more, but from one of the big plants. Yesterday a few cables were hit but are now working again.¹⁸

The new month of March arrived unkindly. Stiff winds whipped rain showers through the damaged streets. Bunker stoves emitted smoke and sparks. The Neustadt and Kietz lay under heavy shellfire from early in the morning, as did the Warthe bridges. Then ground-attack aircraft appeared and, after a long time, a couple of German fighters. The front line remained relatively quiet.

In Küstrin the Party officials were hoping to track down the last civilians with orders to report in. They tempted and threatened in order to achieve their aim. They tempted with the production of a unique identity card and threatened defaulters with punishment by the Standing Court. This was the third action of its kind within a few weeks, owing to the lack of an effective population census or labour force registration system.

The numbers appearing at the reporting centre were meagre, but the original purpose of giving these people a shock was essentially achieved on the evening of 1 March. About 150 people found themselves on the convoy, including also the last large emergency accommodation group that had been sheltering in a Neustadt brewery cellar until then. While they waited thickly wrapped for the night journey in the entrance to the Boys’ Middle School and in the hallways of neighbouring buildings, the roar of two mighty explosions thundered over the town. No fires indicated the direction and no one knew what had caused them.¹⁹

These mysterious explosions, the blast from which had broken windows in various places, gave rise to numerous avenues of speculation on 2 March. As no one had really reliable information, all kinds of suspicions arose. One idea was that frogmen had blown the Soviet underwater bridge north of Küstrin. That such an attempt had been made was possible, but could not explain the proximity of the explosions to the town. And any success would surely have been mentioned in the local newspaper, successes being so rare that such an opportunity would not have been missed.

In one of the rare exchanges of fire of these days, a young Polish girl was killed by a shell splinter. She left behind a baby only a few months old that she had kept in the seclusion of her place of work, a market garden in Neu Bleyen. With the death of her mother, the child now became an outlaw according to the establishment. She was handed over by soldiers to the police and so became an official case. The local Gestapo chief ordered the ‘thing’ to be shot, but his subordinates did not want to dirty their hands at this last minute. They knew that word would soon leak out, and thus a ‘silent execution’ would not be possible. Soon concern about the planned murder was raised in the adjacent Party offices. In view of this, the Gestapo chief withdrew his order without expressly rescinding it. The officials could breathe again, having been spared the decision between committing a crime and open disobedience, but someone had to be responsible for the child. The hundred-odd foreign forced labourers that had been retained in Küstrin to work on the fortifications were due to be moved later that evening under SD escort, so the child was given to a Polish woman. What would happen when she appeared at the next camp with a child that was not entered on her papers, nobody bothered about. They had done their ‘best’ and someone had even surreptitiously slipped a 100-Mark note under the pram blanket.²⁰

The leading article in the Feste Küstrin on 3 March read:

Anyone who deserts now will not be saving his life…We must free ourselves from all peacetime ideas to pursue this war. We have done everything to raise the soldier from the mass of the people as a warrior. We have simplified his life. He gets even more to eat than has to be worked hard for at home. We have made separation from their families back home easier with generous welfare measures. Now is the time for soldiers to show themselves worthy of their homeland…If we don’t do it, it will be all over for us.

This rallying call broke like a thunderstorm on the nerves of an already anxious garrison. The local situation report read: ‘Some heavy weapons…damaged the Soviet bridge at Kalenzig.’ The same day the news-sheet reported a Luftwaffe attack on the Oder–Warthe bend: ‘Despite an unusually heavy flak concentration in this area, and permanent defensive flights by Bolshevik fighter aircraft, two almost completed bridges over the Oder were destroyed by bombs. This success is significant, for the Soviets possess no complete bridges in this sector.’

In a letter to his wife that day Major Falckenberg said that in the evening he had made a reconnaissance of the Gorin (the northern tip of the peninsula on which the Altstadt stood) and that he had been fired on by Soviet machine-gunners already installed there.²¹

‘Today we realise that all that has happened until now was just a prelude. Our main task lies ahead of us’: so one read in the article ‘A month of Fortress Küstrin’, contained in the Sunday issue of the newspaper on 4 March. It went on:

The heavy weight of the encirclement around the fortress has moved during the course of this month from the daily and nightly skirmishing with enemy infantry and armoured forces to the battle with the heavy weapons, as shown during the course of today. [The garrison’s measurable value in weaponry had virtually been eliminated, as the latest information in the last official statistics published showed only one tank and three aircraft destroyed in eleven days.] Meanwhile the Soviets have carried out a vast planned deployment of their artillery and engaged important targets in the fortress. On separate days they have increased their fire capacity quite considerably without revealing special objectives or using their whole firepower together.

Both bridges over the Vorflut Canal between the Altstadt and Kietz were among the more prominent targets of late. A direct hit on the road bridge tore it up and made it impassable. Since then traffic had been diverted over the railway bridge, which had been given a wooden decking. The trucks, particularly the nightly convoys, drove from the Oder dyke/Berlin railway crossing point and reached the road again from the Altstadt railway station by means of a provisional ramp. Communication between the individual sectors of the fortress, whose outermost points in an east–west direction were 6 kilometres apart, was thus assured. Nevertheless, artillery and low-flying aircraft caused even more interruptions to traffic, particularly on the Warthe bridges, which were wide open to enemy observation, so most deliveries were conducted during the evenings and at night.

In the daytime only those areas occupied by the headquarters and troop accommodation came to life. Civilians were rarely seen. The evacuation had practically come to an end and whole streets were blocked with debris. Individual small groups of civilians scattered among the protected ground floors and cellars kept going on their own (or ownerless) winter stocks of potatoes, coarse vegetables and preserves. Up to two or three bakeries were still working, but irregularly, providing no normal opening times, so it was of little importance when it was announced that the current ration period had been extended to 10 March, which meant that the already meagre rations must last another week. New ration cards would be issued in the forthcoming weeks but only on production of an NSDAP district office registration card.

The troops’ food supply system functioned well. Apart from some particularly exposed positions, warm rations were delivered regularly from the kitchens of the three big barracks, even in the main front line. The food stores had been well stocked up at the end of January, enabling resupply from outside to be limited to fresh meat and similar perishable items. Nevertheless it should be noted that there were enough supplies in the depots for several tens of thousands of men for several months.

The hope of feeding the Volkssturm rather better and with greater variety from the packets and parcels in the Neustadt post office proved over-optimistic. After more than a week’s work by at least five men, only a fraction of the contents had been examined, but none of it was suitable for augmenting the rations. The only exceptions were some Red Cross parcels containing tinned meat, fat, rice, currants and cigarettes, destined for a long-since-departed officers’ prisoner-of-war camp near Woldenberg. Food and sweets were only found in small quantities and had suffered from the long storage. The search revealed tobacco, cameras and watches, material, underwear, even fashion-model clothing, mixed with bits of uniform and even a pistol. The majority of edible items found were cakes in various forms, from primitive potato cakes to the finest confectioneries. As it was impossible to sort out these diverse items separately, they were put in half a dozen mailbags. The Volkssturm men were annoyed about this pig-food mix of at least six-week-old confectionery. The only usable items went to the main dressing station, medicines and surgical instruments having been found in surprising quantities. Individual items addressed to soldiers formerly stationed in the town could also be delivered.²²