Hitler's Final Fortress - Breslau 1945 (28 page)

Schütze
Karl Friedrich Oertel was not wounded, but he was exhausted. The twenty-year-old philosophy student had been sworn in on 20 January and sent into action two days later. He had looked forward to battle. “This new year will bring a great decision, one whose effects will echo far into the future,” he had written at the end of 1944. “It will bring an end to the most terrible of wars – the time is ripe.” The reality was less enticing: “long, terribly cold hours in my foxhole”. Many of his comrades fell victim to frostbite, but not Oertel. “I am overtired,” he admitted in a letter home, “yet after ten hours in a quiet spot I cannot sleep properly. These days have been very hard for me but I probably need them to grow up.” He assured his family: “I am full of confidence.”
⁶²
Volkssturm
man Hermann Krätzig also tried to reassure his wife Margarete, eighty miles away in Greiffenberg. “Things will not turn out so badly because we expect the counter-effects to make visible progress soon. I have trusted my future to Fate. Don’t let your head drop! Against fate!”
⁶³

Hermann Krätzig was one of 25,000 men defending Silesia’s capital – soldiers, militia, scratch units, garrison troops, 850 Waffen SS non-commissioned officers from a training school, 5,000 Luftwaffe personnel, 1,700 police officers and nearly 9,000
Volkssturm.
They possessed 1,200 machine-guns, a dozen howitzers, nearly fifty field guns, 120 flak guns and 11,000
Panzerfaust
, but barely any ammunition.
⁶⁴

This mixed bag of troops was led by a mixed bag of seventy officers, many of whom “had never been in combat and did not know what to expect or how to prepare for it,” Siegfried Knappe observed. “The place was a military mess.” The twenty-eight-year-old officer had been flown into the city to help the
Festung
’s staff. As the new operations officer, Knappe’s tasks were many: designating defensive lines, overseeing the digging of trenches, ensuring the evacuation of the wounded, making provision for refugees still passing through the city, maintaining order, keeping vital public utilities running – “all in addition to normal staff functions”. He never slept more than two hours without interruption, or for more than five hours in any twenty-four-hour period. “Slowly, with time,” wrote Knappe, “everything began to function better.”
⁶⁵

Everything except the fortress commander. Johannes Krause was sick. He spent the opening days of February 1945 confined to bed with pneumonia. The telephone at his bedside rang. The new army group commander, Ferdinand Schörner, was in Breslau – and demanding to see Krause. Krause refused. The telephone rang again. An aide took the call. As he replaced the receiver, he turned to the fortress commander. “
Herr General
, you must come. Schörner is stomping around like a madman and threatening to shoot you. He has brought his firing squad with him.” Krause refused. A few minutes later, another staff officer appeared at the fortress commander’s bedside. Schörner was now “foaming at the mouth” and had ordered his firing squad to “lock and load”.

Now Johannes Krause rose from his bed, dressed and headed to the
Wehrkreis
headquarters. There he found Ferdinand Schörner, not foaming at the mouth but rather conciliatory. The army group commander rose, then shook Krause’s hands. “I am sorry that you are so ill,” he apologized. “You must be able to see that under these circumstances I have to relieve you. A sick commanding officer cannot lead the struggle as it demands. The Russians are close. Now get yourself to bed and get well very quickly.”

In his place, Schörner chose an experienced pioneer officer,
Generalmajor
Hans von Ahlfen. He took charge of
Festung
Breslau on the morning of 3 February “with orders not merely to hold out,” he proclaimed to the city’s inhabitants, “but to beat back.”
⁶⁶

And so, proclaimed the city’s newspaper, “
Festung
Breslau stands armed”. It left its readers in no doubt about what was expected of them – and what fate awaited Silesia’s ancient capital.

If such an undamaged, such a wealthy, and such a beautiful city has to turn to rubble house by house, and we hold on in its ruins, then it will be an even more precious treasure than when it possessed all its former beauty.

The general stands beside the president of the
Reichsbahn
, the Hitler Youth leader crippled by the war stands next to the leader of a large organisation. For each and every one of them, there is a single, clear mission: the city must be held. And whoever does not know how to use the
Panzerfaust
is starting to learn about it. This people will not go under.
⁶⁷

Notes

1.
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 22/1/45.

2.
Echolot, iii, pp.478-9.

3.
Based on Frodien, p.124, Becker, p.125; Gleiss,
Pennäler, Pimpf und Volkssturmmann
, p.2, Gleiss, i, pp.282, 517 and Gleiss, vii, p.872.

4.
Gleiss, viii, pp.21, 29, Ibid., vii, p.549.

5.
See
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 28/1/45, 31/1/45 and 3/2/45.

6.
Gleiss, i, pp.247, 279.

7.
Als die Deutschen weg waren
, pp.30, 32-3.

8.
Magenheimer, p.99, Duffy, pp.94-5.

9.
Polewoi, p.150.

10.
Gleiss, vii, p.422.

11.
Based on BA-MA RL7/531, Ahlfen, pp.89-90 and Römhild, Helmut,
Geschichte der 269. Infanterie-Division
, p.270.

12.
Gleiss, vii, pp.424-5.

13.
Becker, p.30.

14.
Kaps,
Tragödie Schlesiens
, p.362.

15.
Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945-1948: Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28 Mai 1974
, p.265 and Schwarz, pp.50-1.

16.
Arnhold, p.188.

17.
Kaps, pp.386-9.

18.
Gleiss, vii, p.803.

19.
Vertreibung, i, pp.452-3.

20.
Werth, p.846, Alexijewitsch, p.323 and Naimark, p.74.

21.
Ilya Ehrenburg, ‘Nastala rasplate’ in
Krasnaya Zvezda
, 30/1/45.

22.
Knopp Documentaries.

23.
Echolot, iv, p.685.

24.
Ibid., ii, p.370.

25.
Ibid., iii, pp.162-3.

26.
Ibid., iv, p.634.

27.
Polewoi, pp.181-2.

28.
Scherstjanoi, pp.56-7.

29.
Ahlfen, p.74.

30.
Gleiss, vii, p.357.

31.
Höss, pp.190-2.

32.
The liberation of Auschwitz is based on Polewoi, pp.140-1, Knopp,
Der Verdammte Krieg
, iii, p.146,
Pravda
, 2/2/45, and Rees, Auschwitz, pp.264-5.

33.
Alexijewitsch, p.323, Koriakov, p.67, and Knopp,
Der Verdammte Krieg
, iii, p.163.

34.
Alexijewitsch, p.25 and Werth, p.863.

35.
BA-MA RH 2/2683 and Zeidler, p.151.

36.
See Koriakov, p.68, BA-MA RH 2/2470 and ‘Nase mscenie’ in
Krasnaya Zvezda
, 9/2/45.

37.
Echolot, iv, p.683, Gleiss, vii, p.493, TB Goebbels, 25/1/45.

38.
For details of atrocities on both sides see Scherstjanoi, pp.56-7, Ahlfen, p.169, Alexijewitsch, pp.24, 143, Echolot, ii, p.830 and BA-MA RH2/2681.

39.
Pravda
, 31/1/45.

40.
Gleiss, i, pp.577, 578B-C and
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 29/1/45.

41.
This brief biography of Hanke is based on material kindly provided by Michael Miller, plus Rudolf Sparing, ‘Karl Hanke’ in
Das Reich
, 11/3/45, TB Oven, 9/7/44, Schimmel-Falkenau, p.118, Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
, p.52, NA WO309/140 and Gleiss, ix, p.478. His affair with Magda Goebbels can be found in Goebbels’ diaries of 1938-39 as well as David Irving’s biography of Joseph Goebbels, Anja Klabunde’s biography of Magda Goebbels, and Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
, pp.214-15, 218. Details of his relations with Rommel and service in France are based on
The Rommel Papers
, pp.39, 42; Irving,
Trail of the Fox
, pp.43, 44, 52-3 and Manteuffel, p.67. Hanke’s role in the Holocaust can be found in
A Community Under Siege
, p.214, Microcosm, pp.392-3 and Speer,
Inside the Third Reich
, pp.506-07.

42.
Details of Hanke’s ruthless acts can be found in
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 1/2/45, 3/2/45, 5/2/45, 6/2/45, Documenty, No.32, and Gleiss, vii, pp.759-60.

43.
Gleiss, vii, pp.817-18 and
Schleschiche Tageszeitung
, 5/2/45.

44.
NA FO898/187, p.187.

45.
Echolot, iii, pp.478-9.

46.
Ibid., iii, pp.573-4.

47.
Kain, pp.319-20.

48.
Neugebauer, pp.18-19.

49.
Echolot, iii, p.693.

50.
Ibid., iii, pp.800-02.

51.
Peikert, pp.37, 42.

52.
Life in Breslau based on Becker, p.132, Majewski, p.68, Haack, p.29, Gleiss, i, p.240, Gleiss, vii, pp.208, 872, and Hornig, pp.116-18.

53.
Propaganda in Breslau based on Gleiss, i, p.475 and Geiss, vii, p.707, Echolot, ii, p.141, and
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 30/1/45, 31/1/45, 4/2/45. Hitler’s speech of 30/1/45 in
Schlesische Tageszeitung
, 31/1/45. Rundfunkprogramm, 30/1/45 in Kempowski, iii, p.153 and Gleiss, vii, p.678.

54.
Hornig, pp.27-8.

55.
Konrad, pp.11-12 and
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.18.

56.
Arnhold, pp.147-50, 157-8.

57.
Echolot, iii, pp.162, 353-4.

58.
Fighting for Peiskerwitz is based on
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.20, Gleiss, vii, pp.616-18, 651-3, 677, 950-1 and Verton, pp.139-40.

59.
Peikert, p.272.

60.
Hartung, pp.45-8, 54-5.

61.
Gleiss, vii, p.803, 861.

62.
Bähr, pp.438-40.

63.
Gleiss, vii, p.924.

64.
Ibid., vii, p.547.

65.
Knappe,
Soldat
, pp.303-5.

66.
Gleiss, ii, pp.66-7. Krause left Breslau three days later for treatment at a specialist lung hospital in the Sudeten Mountains.
So Kämpfte Breslau
, p.21.