The Last Leg
1 MAY 1945
By midnight the leading elements of 9th Army were in the woods between the Märtensmühle forest warden’s lodge and Berkenbrück. Discussion about when and how the break-out should continue was interrupted by the armour moving off and the rest automatically following.
Relatively weak Soviet resistance in Berkenbrück was rapidly overcome and the road to the west was open. At about 0330 hours the leading elements broke through Hennickendorf, where a barrier was crushed by a Tiger. The fighting here was again described by SS-Lieutenant Bärmann:
We took over the lead at about 0400 hours. The woods were full of the exhausted and wounded. Just before Hennickendorf we had to go over a little hill that was defended by Russian anti-tank guns. A few shells and these anti-tank guns were silenced and the Russians withdrew. We drove on through Hennickendorf, where some houses were burning. After a few hundred metres we came to a barricade at the Pfefferfliess stream. Karl Hörl drove the SPG to the edge of the woods on the left and took up a firing position where we had a good view. On both sides of the stream in front of us lay a swampy meadow, and about 1,500 metres away there was a hill with a few buildings and the Dobbrikow windmill. In between were Russian tanks and anti-tank guns, and some Stalin-Organs to the right of the windmill.
There was a Königstiger near us, still in the lead, and an eight-wheeled armoured car of 10th SS Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion. About fifteen of our men advanced across the meadows, making a start, and a flood of soldiers and civilians streamed out from everywhere, thousands of them, across the Pfefferfliess stream towards Dobbrikow.
The Russians let fly with all their barrels from the windmill hill. Our SPG, Tiger and armoured car returned the fire. Then, as ammunition and stacks of rockets began exploding alongside the windmill, the enemy fire faltered and the Russian tanks started to withdraw.1
Major Otto-Christer von Albedyll, commander of the Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion Kurmark was killed near Hennickendorf when going to the assistance of his wounded adjutant. He was a brave, wise and much loved officer, whose men stopped to bury him by the roadside.2 The last vehicles of 561st SS Tank-Hunting Battalion ran out of fuel at this point, and Lobmeyer’s men had to go on as infantry.3
Hermann Pätz, a soldier at home on sick leave in Hennickendorf as the result of an eye injury, remembered these events:
The Russians came on Sunday 22 April, at about noon, having occupied Luckenwalde. We had all hidden ourselves, everyone having a bunker in their garden. They even set up a command post in Hennickendorf and many Russian positions were prepared.
The firing started early on 1 May, when German troops chased out the Russians. Three T-34s were shot up, one towards Märtensmühle, one towards Stangenhagen and the third towards Schönhagen. German soldiers were here all day; the leaders went along the road from here to Dobbrikow. At about 0700– 0800 hours a half-tracked APC stopped in front of our house with several others behind it.
In the first was General Busse. Busse’s APC was fitted with aerials and large batteries, and manned by six or seven men. I remember Busse as an imposing person wearing the Knight’s Cross. They got out and spread out a map. I offered them some milk, which they drank. I plucked up my courage and asked the general: ‘Where do you want to go to?’ He replied, pointing to the map: ‘Here near Rieben is a large wooded area; we will stop there and break through at night.’ And: ‘We must find out how strongly Dobbrikow is occupied.’ To one of his officers: ‘Find an NCO and a few men for this!’
He had hardly finished speaking when the Soviets fired from the direction of the village. Busse and his people quickly jumped back into the APC and raced off towards the woods that began about a kilometre away from us. Then came several wounded Germans and shortly afterwards the Russians. These were the last of the 9th Army. For days afterwards the Russians were pulling German soldiers out of the woods.4
SS-Sergeant-Major Streng also described his experiences here:
Our tanks rolled along the Hennickendorf–Dobbrikow road. Half-way along we came under artillery fire from a copse on the right. Anti-tank guns? We couldn’t tell for certain. Suddenly a heavy blow struck our Tiger and the track mudguards fell to the road with a clatter.
Our gun roared at the copse some 330 to 400 metres away. There were some bright, explosive flashes and branches and treetops whirled into the air.
Like lightning came a second direct hit on the hull of our tank. A shell hit the right side of the hull with enormous force and shot upwards. Then followed another frightful bang. We clenched our fists and gritted our teeth. ‘Hit on right side of turret! Driver, hard left! Quick, go, go!’ I screamed on the intercom. Our tank reared itself up and rolled left into a field sloping down to a small lake. After going several hundred metres, we turned back to the right. Meanwhile the other tanks had overcome the Russian anti-tank guns and the march of thousands continued.
Our fuel ran out. Somehow we got hold of some petrol and drove on. As we were climbing aboard, our tank received a direct hit from half left across the lake from a Russian tank standing there that we had not seen. I was wounded in the left upper arm and left thigh. They laid me down inside the tank, which Läbe took over. The Wenck Army was only a few kilometres away, but here at Wittbrietzen–Rieben–Zauchwitz the Russian cordon seemed impenetrable.
The whole column, including the remains of the 2nd Battalion, Panzergrenadier Regiment Kurmark, moved via Dobbrikow on to Rieben. Russian bombers and ground-attack aircraft kept attacking, each time leaving more dead and wounded.
Rieben was taken by storm, but the break-out group kept coming up against more and more Russian blockades. The mass of German soldiers and civilians, not bound to the roads and tracks like the vehicles, swarmed their way westwards between Zauchwitz and Rieben. Seydlitz-Troops were particularly active in this area, leading unsuspecting splinter groups into Soviet captivity.5
Streng then went on to describe the fighting between Rieben and Schönefeld:
Warm spring sunshine was streaming over the land. It was 1000 hours. We moved on. Some wounded emerged from an asparagus field6 and clung tightly to the exterior of our Königstiger, these unfortunates lying all over the tank from our gun to our stern. Actually we were feeling quite happy, being hopeful of reaching Wenck’s Army during the course of the day.
We rolled along the road to Beelitz. Troops came out of the woods and asparagus fields and marched behind us. We speeded up. If only we had had better communications inside the tank; every order had to be shouted.
The tank stopped again. An anti-tank gun on the road was swept aside with a blast of high explosive. Half left stood a Russian tank. ‘Armour piercing!’ The Tiger’s turret turned slowly left. Fire! Hit! Clouds of smoke obscured the view.
Suddenly there was a metallic crack on the tank’s right side and a long drawn-out hissing. A blinding whiteness sprayed in from outside. There was dead silence for a second. We must have overlooked a Russian tank on our right. A white cloud of smoke filled the interior of the tank and a wave of heat took our breath away.
The tank was on fire. Everyone fumbled for the escape hatches to get to the open air. Tongues of bright flame burned our unprotected hands, upper bodies and faces. Heads and bodies collided with each other as hands unfastened the hot escape hatches. Vital air entered the lungs as racing pulses hammered in the throat and brain. A purplish blackness pierced by green flashes filled my eyes.
I grasped the hatch with flying hands, wriggled and thrust myself through, standing on the breech shield and gun. Two heads met in the hatch. I instinctively pulled Läbe up and pushed him out of the top of the turret with my head and body. I caught my leather jacket on a hook, ripping it off my body and it fell back into the burning tank
with a final flash of silver from the Iron Cross.
I let myself fall head over heels from the three-metre high turret, pushing myself away from the sides with my hands as I fell. In falling I saw that the skin of my left forefinger had been torn loose, so I tugged it off, leaving a bloody something.
The burning, reeling figure of the radio-operator jumped right in front of me. Hartinger, Neu and Öls ran past. Was anyone still inside? The tank exploded behind us, the 18-ton turret lifting off and being hurled aside. This was the end.7
Rudi Lindner also witnessed this event, as he described in his account of his experiences that day:
We had to cross several open spaces during the night, and each time the infantry and tanks were called forward. There was repeated fighting and shooting. When we had to take cover we tried to make sure that we five stayed together. With this came great fatigue, hunger and thirst. We wanted simply to remain lying there with the consequent danger of falling asleep. It cost us much effort to keep forcing ourselves on and stay awake. We avoided the open spaces and tried to remain in the woods, which was not always possible. I am still amazed today that we managed to maintain contact with the leading tanks in this unholy turmoil.
Everywhere there was gunfire and cries from the wounded. The dead lay around as we overcame several enemy positions and cordons. The 12th Army’s front line should be immediately behind the last Russian cordon, but would we ever reach it alive? Our leading tank drove out of the woods, was immediately engaged by the Russian anti-tank guns, and pulled back again. There was now artillery fire on our edge of the woods and we had to turn south to get away from the road. About 15 minutes later our last two Tigers attacked out of the woods to the north of us and a broad stream of soldiers and refugees poured over the open ground to the west and north-west.
Unfortunately, as we discovered later, that was the most strongly manned sector of the Russian cordon between Schönefeld and Wittbrietzen. The Russians fired flat out with tanks, anti-tank guns, Stalin-Organs, artillery and mortars on the defenceless people in the open ground, and bombers and ground-attack aircraft joined in. Death struck viciously again and reaped a rich harvest. There was no cover for the soldiers and civilians, who were completely exposed to this murderous fire. Mercilessly, the remains of 9th Army were being given their death blow only a few hundred metres from the protection of 12th Army’s front line.
Of the heavy tanks we now only had Klust’s Königstiger from No. 1 Company and Streng’s from No. 2 Company. Streng’s tank had been hit several times during this decisive breakthrough. Even so, he was still able to engage in a tank duel and knock out three T-34s, but then his tank was hit by an anti-tank gun and burst into flames. After a dozen severe hits, this time the tank could not be saved. It was the tank that I had been on in Halbe and which had been hit by a phosphorous shell and caught fire there. A few minutes later SS-Second Lieutenant Klust’s tank was also knocked out, thus writing off the last of the 14 Tiger tanks which 9th Army had sent to join up with 12th Army.
For the first time I held my four comrades of the 1241st Regiment back from attacking as we had done so often in the last days and weeks. We remained lying at the edge of the woods and watched the course of the uneven fight. It was not fear or cowardice, but military common sense and combat experience that led me to this decision, its correctness being demonstrated only a few minutes later.
An APC with Hitler Youth leaders appeared from the left flank and drove into cover near us. They had the task of warning the remains of 9th Army about this strong enemy cordon and were meant to direct us south-west towards Wittbrietzen. These youngsters looked just like Seydlitz-Troops. What an irony of fate for the many who had fallen on this open ground and the soldiers and civilians who had been wounded.
While death awaited north of Wittbrietzen, the way south of it was ‘an easy walk’ to 12th Army’s front line. Had this APC with its certainly courageous crew arrived only two or three hours earlier, 9th Army’s spearhead could have been directed in this direction.
With unfortunately so few soldiers, we turned to the south-west and within about 1,200 metres reached the described spot under cover of the woods, from where it was only a short distance over open ground to the woods opposite. The men of 12th Army dug in on the edge of the woods were expecting us and directed us back behind the railway line.
We could hardly believe that we had managed to make the last section alive, and without having fired a shot. It was only later that we realised how often death had stretched out a finger towards us, in the purest sense our constant companion, and what enormous luck we had had to belong to the few to have survived the fighting on the Oder Front, the Hell of Halbe and the death march to 12th Army’s lines.8
SS-Lieutenant Klust, commander of the other Königstiger in this group, gave a slightly different account of his experiences during this final stage:
We approached Schönefeld. The engine of our Tiger started spluttering, being about to run out of fuel. There was none to be had anywhere. Then we learned from local civilians that there should be some stored at the transmitter south of Schönefeld, so we struggled on there on the last drops in our fuel tank.
We found, as described, a 200-litre barrel and put the contents into our fuel tank, but when the engine started up, Bert Fink, my driver, expressed doubts about the fuel. The engine was running unevenly and kept stopping. Only through my driver’s technical skill could our Tiger be got moving. We had to keep the engine hatch open with a man pulling on a lever.
The 12th Army’s reception point could not be far off. Thousands of soldiers and civilians were streaming across the open ground to the west. But our tank could not go much further either.
We received orders again, but orders had little effect anymore. Our Tiger engine gave up, making bubbling noises. We were then told to dig the Tiger in and to use the gun as artillery to cover the remains of 9th Army but, in view of the situation, I decided otherwise. We made our Königstiger unserviceable and made off to the west with the others. We left our our old wreck behind with pangs of regret, for we had fought so many fights together.
My radio-operator, Heimlich, was killed in a bombing attack on the autobahn south of Beelitz.9
Ernst-Christian Gädtke also battled through successfully:
The morning of 1 May was as cold as the night. We prepared ourselves for the attack with some more ersatz coffee and a few cigarettes.
We rolled on towards Beelitz via Ahrensdorf, Stangenhagen and Zauchwitz.10 Shortly after Zauchwitz the road emerged from a wood on to open fields, and round a bend to the left we could see Beelitz ahead of us and hear artillery and infantry fire coming from there. On either side of the road stragglers were waiting in the ditches for a breach to be forced up ahead. We could see flashes of gunfire coming from Beelitz and then fountains of earth sprang up around us as the shells exploded, splinters whistling through the air.
Our guns received the order to open fire, so we had to get off as the hatches were closed down. I jumped off to the right and tried to keep up with the moving gun at some distance to the side, but the guns speeded up towards Beelitz and I was soon left behind. Russian artillery fire was still falling on the road, so I moved away northwards from the road without noticing I was doing so. The meadows were strewn with clumps of bushes and trees, and here we found cover. There were small groups of soldiers from various units advancing here, but no properly led attack, more of a loose and accidental movement. No one was in command, and no one really knew what was happening. After a few minutes I found myself separated from my group, having got lost somehow. The assault gun had vanished up the road, and with it went my last worldly goods including my carefully packed haversack.
Unwillingly, I let myself be drawn away from the road and the artillery fire. Someone shouted: ‘Get round the place to the north’, and ‘Keep right.’ Then we came to a drain that cut right across the land. A wounded man was lying on the bank with his thigh ripped open by shell splinters. ‘Take me with you!’ he cried. We called for medical orderlies, but there were none around. Finally four of us placed him on a tent-half and carried him through the knee-deep water. We laid him down again at the edge of the woods, by which time he had lost consciousness, and left him there.
The woods were swarming with stragglers, most of them unarmed. They were lying down in groups, apparently having decided not to do anything, just wait for it to be all over.
I joined on to a section of infantry under a lieutenant who were moving purposefully through the wood. ‘Come with us, comrade’, one of them called out to me, ‘You don’t look as if you just want to be taken prisoner.’
We went a short distance through the woods to the north-west and then concealed ourselves in a thick pine plantation. The lieutenant called us together and explained what he proposed doing. According to him the Russians were only holding a thin line here, concentrating on places like Beelitz. An attack on Beelitz was just stupid. North and south of there one had a far better chance of getting past the Russians. We would wait hidden in this plantation until dusk and then make our way through the Russian lines in the dark. Everything depended on sticking together, moving dead quietly, maintaining discipline and, should something happen, acting decisively. This made sense. We set sentries on the edge of the plantation, stretched ourselves out on the ground and got a little sleep.
Once it was dark, we shared out all that we had left to eat, crispbread and tinned cheese. We left the plantation in single file moving silently towards the west. We reached the autobahn without stopping and observed the wide gap from the edge of the woods for a few minutes. Nothing moved. Then we raced across, ducked down, in a body. Not a shot was fired as we disappeared into the woods on the far side.
We reached the Borkwalde settlement unscathed. Light was coming from a cellar window. We went down to the cellar, where a few men and women were sitting. The Russians had passed through here a few days before heading north for Potsdam, but there had been German troops in the area for several days. They had evacuated several hundred wounded and nurses from the Beelitz sanatorium, but had gone again. No Russians had been seen west of the autobahn in the last few days.
Now we were sure – we had got through.11
The last of the armoured vehicles kept to the Rieben–Schönefeld road, where several Soviet anti-tank barriers were overcome. But then the leading armour was struck again, as SS-Lieutenant Bärmann remembered:
We saw about ten T-34s near Schönefeld. A Königstiger stood about 400 metres in front of Schönefeld, taking the anti-tank barrier and Russian tanks under fire, and only pulling back when it ran out of ammunition. We couldn’t get through on the Beelitz road, so turned off left on a track and drove across open country. Despite enemy fire, we reached a wooded hill on which there was a radio transmitter mast, about 400 metres south of Schönefeld, where we stopped to reorientate ourselves.12
Helmuth Jurisch, who was also in this area, reported:
From the radio station near Schönefeld a track led through a wood to the village of Elsholz about two kilometres away. Along this track towards Elsholz were moving soldiers like myself who had fought their way from Halbe. Then in the wood in front of Elsholz I was taken aboard another of our tanks as radio-operator. As we came out of the wood the village lay suddenly in front of us, the houses hidden behind trees, the church back a bit on the right, and green fields in front. Everything was quiet at first, but soon an enemy machine gun opened up rather ineffectively from the church tower on the attacking soldiers, who, according to a witness, were able to take the machine gunners in the tower.
Fortunately the Russians had no anti-tank weapons in the village, so our tank was able to reach the village intact. Ivan took to flight and crept away. After a short stop to ensure all was in order, we rolled on into the village. We then came to the Nieplitz swamp, in which our last four Panthers became stuck fast. This swamp lies west of Elsholz behind Route 2. From here a track went past the railway station, through a wood and over fields to cross some meadows short of the Nieplitz stream. There in the meadows right of the track lay the graveyard of the last remains of our tanks, the four Panthers of 1st Battalion, Panzer Regiment Brandenburg, which had fought since 4 February 1945 with Panzergrenadier Division Kurmark. We bailed out for the last time and had to watch as our four Panthers, virtually out of fuel and ammunition, literally sank into the swamp. We twenty tankmen then marched towards Beelitz, crossed the Nieplitz stream by the nearest bridge, made our way across streams and ditches and finally reached Route 246 south-west of Beelitz, where troops of the Wenck Army were moving towards Brück. After several days we reached Fischbeck on the Elbe and crossed the collapsed Elbe bridge into American captivity near Tangermünde.13
Totally exhausted, an estimated 30,000 people, including 5,000 civilians, reached General Wenck’s lines, leaving behind 13,000 prisoners and over 5,000 killed.14 Busse later suggested that some 40,000 men and several thousand refugees reached Wenck’s lines. Other figures are lower. Koniev says that about 30,000 of the 200,000 who broke out of the Halbe pocket reached the Beelitz area, but were then set upon again by his forces and that at the most only 3–4,000 could have got through to 12th Army. In any case, whatever the numbers, for those who had achieved their goal, it had been a considerable physical and mental feat.15
On 1 May Marshal Zhukov’s 33rd Army relieved 13th Army as Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front redeployed for ‘Operation Prague’. By this stage the reduction of the remaining breakthrough groups had become a secondary task and was completed with varying degrees of success.
NOTES
1. Tieke, Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe, p. 338.
2. He was the heir to the Klessin estate featured in the author’s With Our Backs to Berlin.
3. Tieke, Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe, p. 338.
4. Schulze, Der Kessel Halbe–Baruth–Radeland, pp. 74–6.
5. Tieke, Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe, p. 339.
6. The area around Beelitz is famous for its asparagus crops. The asparagus fields with their deep corrugations would provide some measure of cover from fire for the troops sheltering there.
7. Tieke, Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe, pp. 340–1.
8. Lindner in the author’s Death Was Our Companion.
9. Tieke, Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe, p. 342.
10. From Stanganhagen onwards the road was Route 246, the main road from Trebbin to Beelitz, so Gädtke’s subsequent moves took him north of the latter town.
11. Gädtke, Von der Oder zur Elbe, pp. 36–7.
12. Tieke, Das Ende zwischen Oder und Elbe, pp. 339–40.
13. Jurisch to the author. Although he gives the date of this incident as 30 April, it seems most likely to have occurred on 1 May. In a subsequent discussion with the author, Jurisch stated that the driving of the tanks into a swamp just north of Salzbrunn was deliberate.
14. Kollatz: ‘Die Front an der Elbe 1945’, p. 65.
15. Busse, ‘Die letzte Schlacht der 9. Armee’, p. 168, describes the break-out as having taken place on the night of 26/27 April and the union with 12th Army on the morning of the 29th, but this is in conflict with Wenck’s chronology and that of other witnesses, and allowance should be made for the fact that Busse’s article was apparently written in captivity some ten years after the event; Wenck, ‘Berlin war nicht mehr zu retten’, pp. 68–9. Koniev, Year of Victory, pp. 180–2, denies the break-out was effective.