By this time, Soviet soldiers had been fighting for three years and ten months, or 1409 days, in a war foisted on them by Nazi Germany on 22 June 1941. Under the slogan ‘Crusade against Bolshevism’, the Germans’ eastern campaign was, from the outset, planned as a war of extermination against an inferior race, the Soviet Untermensch. Even before the first shots were fired, the German command had issued to troops a series of orders in clear breach of international law—orders that not only encouraged but actually demanded that they commit crimes against enemy soldiers, prisoners and civilians. It was hardly surprising, then, that the battle was fought from the start with unprecedented ruthlessness and brutality on both sides. Behind the 1600 kilometres of front line, SS units were organising systematic murder operations and the industrial extermination of the so-called enemies of the people. And when the German retreat began in 1943, Wehrmacht soldiers set fire to thousands of towns and villages and fields in the east as part of the ‘scorched earth’ policy.
From day one, the eastern campaign claimed an exceptional number of losses. While an average of 2100 Germans died daily, the death toll on the Soviet side—slain soldiers, starved POWs, murdered civilians—reached more than 14,100 a day. By the end of April 1945, at least twenty million Soviet nationals had lost their lives—at the hands of the Germans whose towns and villages the Red Army soldiers were now rolling through with their tanks. It is unlikely that the Russian soldiers were aware of the precise figures, but they all knew that the Germans had set out to herd them into slave camps or throw their bodies into pits. Each one of them had cause for revenge and retribution, for feelings of hatred and triumph. Many had lost loved ones, and what’s more, they had been fighting since 1941 without a single day’s leave. Now, after 1409 days of exterminatory war, they were on the point of victory, declaring: ‘The time has come to annihilate the fascist beast once and for all, so that it can never again threaten our homeland with a new war.’
• • •
Two hundred kilometres south of Demmin, the soldiers of the 1st Belorussian Front saw their goal near at hand when they stormed the Reichstag on the morning of 30 April. The Soviet commanders hoped to see the red hammer-and-sickle flag fluttering on the roof in time for the victory parade in Moscow on 1 May. Tanks, assault guns, howitzers and rocket launchers fired endless salvos at the Reichstag and into the government district, where about ten thousand people were congregated in small clusters. This motley crew at the heart of the Third Reich was all that remained of its former elite: grim defenders and despondent reservists, Waffen SS men, Hitler Youth boys and Volkssturm soldiers, government clerks and party representatives. Meanwhile, in a bunker deep down below the Reich Chancellery with his retinue, the Führer and Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, was, in his own way, preparing for the final act.
The night before, mindful of posterity, he had dictated to his secretary a political and a private testament setting out his vision of the world—a vision he had repeatedly set out to his entourage over the years in endlessly circling monologues. The subjects are the same as ever: his struggle for peace, international Jewry’s responsibility for war and destruction, his own people’s betrayal. But the tone changes when he turns his attention to the imminent end of the Reich; suddenly his self-righteous litany is shot through with fear of the opponent’s revenge:
I do not, moreover, want to fall into the hands of enemies who are eager for a new Jewish-staged spectacle to amuse the hate-filled masses. For that reason, I have decided to remain in Berlin and to die by my own free will at such a time as I believe that the very position of Führer and Chancellor is no longer tenable.
Directly confronting the enemy, negotiating a ceasefire, perhaps even signing a capitulation—all that was inconceivable to Hitler. Surrendering himself to the victorious Soviets would have been at once the worst possible ignominy and a terrible punishment. Leaving the burning capital to become a prisoner of whatever kind in southern or western Germany was equally out of the question. It would never have entered his mind to answer for his twelve years as the leader of the German Reich before a judge, before the Allies, the world or his own people. Even less did it occur to him to face his conscience.
That left suicide. After a life of such extremes—from deepest humiliation to supreme power—there could be no alternative. A number of people had long predicted this move; in 1939, a German writer living in exile in London had called him ‘the potential suicide par excellence’. No one knew this better than Hitler himself, who had prepared for the eventuality that his plans might fail by indulging in self-destructive fantasies and researching various suicide methods, some of which he discussed openly. If he failed, there could be no carrying on—not for him, and not for his people either. Downfall had to be total. His political testament ends with a call to fight on in the knowledge ‘that the surrender of a territory or a city is impossible’. Hitler’s own suicide presupposed the annihilation of Germany. The longer he put off the former, the closer he came to the latter.
Few farewell performances have been so minutely documented as that staged on 30 April 1945 in Hitler’s bunker—those thirty rooms spread over two floors, five metres underground. We have the reminiscences of the telephone operator, the secretary, the adjutant, the chauffeur, the valet, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, the captain lieutenant, the Reich youth leader, the staff sergeant—and each of these accounts points at a contradiction at the heart of this epochal event. In every one we see the Thousand Year Reich gutter out in a cramped, dank bunker—a setting vastly at odds with the bombastic nature of the regime. The rooms were crammed with an indiscriminate collection of occasional tables, armchairs and narrow sofas. The somewhat feeble attempt to liven up the cold grey of the bunker walls with rattan chairs and brightly coloured rugs only accentuated the atmosphere of gloom, and perhaps most oppressive of all was the oversized oil portrait of Frederick the Great, whose sad gaze dominated the Führer’s tiny study.
By the end of April 1945, Adolf Hitler had given up. His back was hunched, his face sallow, his eyes lacklustre, his arms trembling, his whole body slumped. And yet he remained the fulcrum of the last few square feet of unoccupied German territory. In the early hours of 30 April, he embarked on an extended leave-taking ceremony, shaking the hands of dozens of servants and guards, doctors and nurses, to thank them for their service. Some replied with the oft-repeated slogans of Treue, Endsieg—loyalty, final victory—and Heil. At about seven o’clock, Hitler received the last update from the commander of Berlin, predicting that the city would fall within twenty-four hours. While Soviet artillery fire sent shock wave after shock wave through the bunker, he conferred with his personal adjutant, Otto Günsche.
I don’t want the Russians to display my corpse in a panopticon. Günsche, I expressly order you once again to ensure that nothing of the kind can happen under any circumstance.
• • •
In Demmin, a magnificent spring day was dawning, bright and fresh and sunny. The Wehrmacht men were interested only in their own retreat. The military hospitals had been evacuated, the depots and warehouses cleared or looted. Most of the remaining soldiers were on the far side of the old town, on the west bank of the Peene. ‘Didn’t sleep all night—how many does that make it?’ Gustav Skibbe noted in his journal. He could feel the front closing in, like an immense force hurtling towards him, a dark wave of pressure and noise.
Two days before, after weeks of calm, his unit had been ordered to up sticks, and now the soldiers were in a frenzy of activity, coming and going, running and shouting. Skibbe was glad of any assignment that allowed him to use his new vehicle.
At daybreak, he was rolling along the country road. He crossed Meyenkrebs Bridge over the Peene on the northern edge of town and drove a few miles through the marshland of the Trebel Valley, past farmsteads and squat houses and the village church of Wotenick to the town of Nossendorf. What a relief it was to feel the wind on his face after the atmosphere of panic and despair that had filled Demmin. In Nossendorf, he stocked up on fuel for the forthcoming retreat towards Dargun and Rostock. No one knew where they would end up. There were no longer clear destinations—only stops on the escape route. But the only way Skibbe could get onto the main road west was to drive all the way back and over the two bridges that had just been made ready to dynamite.
• • •
If the previous weeks had seen Demmin become ever more crowded, the old town was now emptying as if on command. Ursula Strohschein looked on with a sense of growing unease: ‘Many, many people were leaving town on foot over Kahlden Bridge, with or without handcarts—or by car, though cars were a rare sight now.’ In the depot, soldiers distributed the last of the tinned food to remaining residents before marching away over Kahlden Bridge. People were hurrying to get home, and the streets were soon deserted—no soldiers, and barely any locals, only a few refugees.
Ursula stood around in the yard with the other people from her building, at a loss and dully apprehensive, knowing that nobody was going to help them. It was not reassuring that the Russian and Polish women, forced labourers billeted across the road, were as frightened of the Soviet soldiers as they were. Out on the street, Ursula could see no one. She looked up at the buildings and wondered whether there was anyone left in them. Around the corner, on Baustrasse, the vicarage was the only house that was still inhabited. Over at one house, an elderly couple called the Kessels had hung a white sheet from the window. Not long after, Ursula said, a couple of her neighbours arrived:
Herr Stoldt, a town councillor of many years’ standing and latterly deputy mayor, came round with his wife to say goodbye. They were heading west on bicycles laden with suitcases. ‘Please keep an eye on our flat,’ he said before they left.
The sun shone in a clear, blue sky. The German troops, including the SS, had left the centre of town. The promised Volkssturm units were nowhere to be seen. The traffic had come to a halt. Only a grinding, clattering noise could be heard in the distance, accompanied by a low rumble. For those who had stayed behind, there was nothing to do but wait. When Adolf Hitler’s twelve-year reign came to an end, the world stopped for a moment in Demmin. Those still in town had time to wonder whether they’d been wise to stay.
The furrier’s and gentlemen’s outfitter’s was a hive of activity that morning. The day before, Marie Dabs had walked to a friend’s estate in the district of Deven, on the west bank of the Peene, with her children and her servant Martha Schröder, then twenty-five years old. When they got there, the place was full of German soldiers, who offered to take the children along with them. Again, Marie Dabs passed up the opportunity. ‘If only I’d said yes! But could I have let them go without knowing what the future held?’ After a peaceful night on the straw of the farmhouse cellar, she and Nanni had fought their way back across the Peene against the flood of soldiers and refugees. On the other side, they were met by oppressive emptiness; the old town was deserted as they walked home over the cobbles. During the night, lying in her friend’s cellar, Marie Dabs had decided to secure the flat against shelling. They took the big paintings down from the walls and put them behind the sofa. They rolled up the rugs. The water had already been turned off. In the distance they heard the thunder of heavy artillery. That scared them.
Nanni took her mother by the hand, saying, ‘Come on, quick, quick!’ All they wanted now, Marie Dabs says, was to get out:
We managed to get across Kahlden Bridge just before it was blown up along with the other bridge over the Peene and the Tollense Bridge. What a terrible fate to befall our beautiful and beloved Demmin.
Three massive detonations broke the silence and put an end to the peace—explosions that could be heard far off in the surrounding villages. At the same time, the grinding and clattering of the Soviet tanks grew closer, as they approached the southern and eastern outskirts of the town. For the people of Demmin, these explosions were a signal to take refuge in their cellars. Some took a suitcase, packed with a change of clothes, identity papers, valuables and a few provisions, as if they could escape their fates by going underground. Everyone expected heavy fighting.
In the cellars, communities born of necessity gathered in the half-darkness—mothers and children, aunts and grandparents, young women and old men, thrown together by the war. Families were joined by friends and relations with no cellars of their own, and by refugees from the east who’d been billeted in Demmin homes by the party. The Strohscheins shared their cellar with some of the forced labourers from across the road. In some places, twenty or more people were squeezed in together, near strangers to one another. The young women wished they could disappear; their only hope was to smear their faces with soot, painting crow’s feet and wrinkles around their eyes with charred matchsticks and wrapping their faces in torn headscarves to make themselves old and ugly—inconspicuous, if not invisible. They had heard of this ploy along with stories of the Soviet advance. Some held children on their laps.
• • •
But not everyone in Demmin took refuge underground. Some decided to anticipate the town’s capture and the end of the world as they knew it. Twenty-seven-year-old Lothar Büchner of the National Labour Service was dead even before Russian soldiers reached his house in Jahnstrasse. He had hanged himself, as had his wife, her sister, and their mother and grandmother. Before that happened, though, one of them had first put a noose around the neck of three-year-old Georg-Peter. Something similar took place in the house of the seventy-one-year-old director of the General Local Health Insurance Fund Bewersdorff. Before he, his wife and their grown-up daughter hanged themselves, his two grandchildren, aged two and nine, had died in the same way. The young wife of a first lieutenant who lived alone with her three-year-old son somehow summoned the will to loop a noose around the boy’s neck and hang him before doing the same to herself. Within these same few hours, an elderly policeman and his wife also hanged themselves. The wife of a chief police constable hanged herself. Her two grown daughters hanged themselves. Only three people—a forty-seven-year-old carpenter, and the wife and daughter of a landowner in Waldberg, west of the Peene—chose another way out: they shot themselves in the head.
These twenty-one suicides—classifying the deaths of the children as ‘murder suicide’, in line with common legal parlance—are recorded in the death register of Demmin Registry Office. Looking at the register and seeing the sudden spate of suicides in Demmin on 30 April 1945, even before the Soviet invasion, you have the sense that this was something unprecedented—but those twenty-one suicides were only a prelude.