PART 6:HELLSTORM, THE DEATH OF NAZI GERMANY 1944-47....THE LAST BULLET

Hellstorm The Death of 
Nazi Germany 1944–1947 
By Thomas Goodrich

6 

The Last Bullet 

While the end of Nazi Germany loomed in the east, the end also steadily advanced from the west. Unlike the howling savagery to the east, fraught with nightmarish ferocity, defeat in the west came methodically, inexorably and, judged by the standards of the east, almost silently. 

Following its devastating defeat during the Ardennes offensive of December 1944, the Wehrmacht withdrew and regrouped behind the “west wall,” a mostly imaginary line that roughly traced the Reich’s western border. There, as elsewhere, the German Army was a dim shadow of its former self, vastly outnumbered in men and materiel, but above all, totally overwhelmed in the air. 

“We felt powerless before the immeasurable material superiority of the Americans, without which the Russians and British would have capitulated long since . . . ,” revealed one German officer.1 

Nevertheless, the hard-pressed Landser was still more than a match for the American “GI” and the British “Tommy.” Whenever the two sides met on anything approaching equal numbers, the results were always the same.2 Defending its homeland reinvigorated the German Army, of course, but during the fighting in Italy and North Africa, the outcome was similar. Asked his opinion of American troops during the fighting in North Africa—a campaign where Germany’s ally, the Italian Army, had scattered and surrendered like sheep—one captive Landser told his US interrogators bluntly: “The Americans are to us what the Italians are to you.”3 

Though American commanders were understandably outraged by such sentiment, the panic created among Allied ranks during the Ardennes offensive only reinforced this assessment within the German Army. One reason for the Landser’s low opinion of his American adversary could simply be attributed to lack of experience. Sights and sounds that many German soldiers had long since become accustomed to were terrifying novelties to most GIs. Remembered a British sergeant: 

The Americans will bunch, whereas we go up two sides of a road. . . . They were shouting at each other and firing at nothing. . . . It appeared that the American infantrymen were not trained in “battle noises.” They seemed to drop to the ground and fire, whenever shots were heard close by. When passing a burning farmhouse, there was a sound of what appeared to be a machine-gun; no one could have been in the house, because of the flames, and it was obviously ammunition burning; but it took some time to get the Americans up and on again. As we [proceeded] I saw a figure in a long German greatcoat rise to his feet from the center of a field, and walk towards us with his hands up. The man was Volkssturm, about 50 or 60 years of age, a long, thin chap. Before we could do anything about it, three Americans let fly with their carbines and the figure fell. God, we were angry.4 

While small arms fire was frightening, green US troops found artillery barrages utterly horrifying. 

“Shells would not only tear and rip the body,” said one frantic American, “they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity.”5 

“The pure physical terror that savages you when loud and violent death is screaming down from the sky and pounding the earth around you, smashing and pulping everything in search for you” was, a comrade added, “emasculating.”6 

Recalled another American newcomer: 

I asked the sergeant if he was hit and he sort of smiled and said no, he had just pissed his pants. He always pissed them, he said, when things started and then he was okay. He wasn’t making any apologies either, and then I realized something wasn’t quite right with me. . . . There was something warm down there and it seemed to be running down my leg. . . . I told the sarge. I said, “Sarge, I’ve pissed too,” or something like that and he grinned and said, “Welcome to the war.”7 

Accustomed to the bloodless “clean” kills of Hollywood, sudden, hideous sights also worked to unman the average American novice. After taking direct hits, some saw their buddies vaporize in a spray of “red spots.” Others viewed comrades laying along roads, nothing more than “half a body, just naked buttocks and the legs.”8 With the war obviously nearing its end, and with sights like the above vivid in their minds, few GIs “went looking for a Purple Heart.” Also, and as was the case in 1917, many American soldiers suffered what some observers called “spiritual emptiness”; a seeming uncertainty as to what exactly they were fighting for . . . or against. 

Despite years of anti-Nazi propaganda and attempts to demonize the German soldier, front-line troops, as always, were first to discard hate. From released or escaped prisoners, it soon became apparent that Allied POWs were treated well and accorded all the rights of the Geneva Convention. Additionally, details that were seemingly trivial matters to politicians, propagandists and rear-echelon troops were all-important concerns to the actual fighters. 

“One thing I’ll say for the Germans,” a British Tommy admitted, “they were better than we were with enemy dead; buried them properly and neatly with their equipment . . . over the crosses.”9 

Not surprisingly, “understandings” among the adversaries were quickly reached to make the war more tolerable to both parties. “We maintained very friendly communications with the Germans . . . ,” confessed an American major. “Before they shelled Homberg they would let us know in advance the exact time. Before we shelled Leverkusen we would let the Germans know in advance. So everybody took cover ahead and nobody got hurt.”10 On countless other occasions front-line troops met, mixed, traded trinkets, even socialized. In more than one instance, drunken American, British and German soldiers found themselves rioting together in the same bars and brothels and even standing in the same lines to use the same restrooms.11 

Such incidents as the above had a way of putting an all-too human face on the “evil Hun.” The same factors which worked on Allied attitudes of the German worked on German attitudes of the Allies. Unlike the East Front, German soldiers were well aware that their foe in the west were signatories of the Geneva Convention. Under this agreement, Landsers were guaranteed by law the status of POW upon capture or surrender. And like their Allied counterparts, with the end of war in sight, many “Jerrys” along the West Wall were unwilling to play hero. “I am neither looking for an Iron Cross,” a German soldier declared,“nor a wooden one.”Also, it was no secret that Landsers, high and low, considered the Western Allies the lesser of two evils. With the Red Army roaring across Germany from the east, many Germans were secretly hoping the Americans might occupy what remained of the Reich before the communists did. 

Nevertheless, and although the war in the west was not characterized by the same “do or die” determination as it was in the east, thousands of patriotic German officers and men were committed to defend their homeland to the “last ditch.”As the Americans and British pressed the Wehrmacht back from the West Wall, then over the Rhine, a glimpse at the task faced is given by an English officer from the town of Rees: 

They had been chased out of France, Belgium and Holland, into Germany, back over the Rhine, and now street by street across Rees into a corner. Yet they were still fighting it out.... The situation now was that the enemy were confined to the last hundred yards, at the very tip of the east end, but they were in a strong position with deep trenches and concrete and any attempts to get at it were met by heavy fire. I was going to make a last effort with C Company, when in came four or five prisoners, including a captain, who said he was in command. . . . He was marched in front of me as I sat at my table poring over the map, and he gave me a spectacular Hitler salute which I ignored. . . . He was a nasty piece of work, cocksure and good-looking in a flashy sort of way, but I had to admire the brave resistance which he had put up. The strain of battle was apparent in the dark black chasms under his eyes.12 

In spite of such fierce resistance, the massive weight of the Allied advance slowly ground all opposition into the mud.“It must be stated that the morale of our men in the west is slowly sinking . . . ,” admitted propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. “They have now been fighting uninterruptedly for weeks and months. Somewhere the physical strength to resist runs out.”13 

If morale among troops was “slowly sinking,” that of many civilians in the west had long since sunk. After enduring years of air attacks and now invasion, some Germans were more than willing to accept defeat. Unlike the terrified trekkers to the east, relatively few Germans in the west abandoned their homes. Despite the best efforts of Nazi propaganda, the racial and cultural ties with the Western Allies, particularly the Americans, was simply too strong to arouse the same depth of fear as did the Soviets. Hardly was there a German family that did not have at least one close relative in America and most felt that there was an essential goodness in any people who could give to the world a Mickey Mouse, Shirley Temple or Laurel and Hardy. Far from fleeing the advancing Allies, many civilians actually ran to greet them. Remembered a young German: 

One very sunny morning we saw across the fields a convoy of vehicles coming, and as they came closer we saw they were Americans, with little white stars on the side. There was a jeep up front and then tanks and troops carriers, and the bloke in the jeep had both his hands up, and in one hand he had a loaf of bread and in the other a lump of cheese. They came on very slowly . . . and as they came the Home Guard threw down their weapons and rushed toward the Americans, and my mother leapt up and started racing over the fields, with me about two hundred yards behind her, straight toward the American column. The man in the jeep turned out to be a very fat American sergeant, and my mother threw her arms around his neck and kissed him and hugged him in absolute joy and relief. It was all over.14 

“Wherever we drove through the Rhineland those first weeks in April the feelings of the German people were unmistakable,” reported war correspondent, Leonard Mosley. 

The war was not yet over but they knew it was lost, and they were engaged in an instinctive effort to save something from the wreck. The mass of the people were casting off National Socialism like an old coat, almost without grief or regret, determined to forget it and to work to recreate, in cooperation with their conquerors, the things that had now been destroyed.... The men and women we stopped on the streets to ask the way were polite and helpful; they gathered round in bunches when they heard us speaking German, and bombarded us with questions: “How far had we advanced? When would the war be over? Where were the Russians?”15 

When reports from recaptured towns and villages stated that Americans had treated civilians well and had not even engaged in looting, the desire among other Germans to surrender became overwhelming. Home Guard units were disbanded, white flags sprouted from doors and windows and many communities refused to aid the German Army in any way. 

“Twice,” recalled a British POW, “I watched an SS corporal go to a house and ask for water and each time the housewife, having seen his uniform, slammed the door in his face. He meekly retreated.”16 

In a desperate bid to shore up crumbling resistance, Dr. Goebbels’s propaganda office warned citizens that “these Americans were combat troops whose only function was to fight; but after them come the rearguard service troops and especially the Jews, who have in all other cases acted ruthlessly against the population.”17 Unfortunately, the truth in these words became apparent once the front-line troops pushed on. 

♜♜♜♜♜♜♜

Unlike the wild and almost unmanageable Red Army, US military commanders might have prevented much of the excesses committed by their men against helpless civilians had they but so willed it. In many cases, however, they did not. On the contrary, the words of some high ranking officers seemed designed to encourage atrocities. 

“We are engaged in a total war, and every individual member of the German people has turned it into such,” US general Omar Bradley announced. “If it had not been Hitler leading the Germans, then it would have been someone else with the same ideas. The German people enjoy war and are determined to wage war until they rule the world and impose their way of life on us.”18
[Total horse dung and a reprehensible thing to say given his position of power.Total psychopath leading men,no wonder this country is so screwed up.This nutjob Bradley,was only one of tens of thousands like him at that time.The majority of them are soulless courtesy of Zion.Asshole cursed the united states with that error in judgment about German people. DC]  

“The German is a beast,” echoed Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight David Eisenhower, a man whose hatred of all things German was well known. In much the same vein as Stalin and Roosevelt, Eisenhower advocated the outright massacre of German army officers, Nazi Party members and others. In all, according to the American general, at least 100,000 Germans should be “exterminated.”19 

“In heart, body, and spirit . . . every German is Hitler!” faithfully trumpeted the US Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes. “Hitler is the single man who stands for the beliefs of Germans. Don’t make friends with Hitler. Don’t fraternize. If in a German town you bow to a pretty girl or pat a blond child . . . you bow to Hitler and his reign of blood.”20 Not surprisingly, such sentiment from above quickly worked its way down. Soon after combat soldiers moved out of a community and rear echelon troops moved in, the reality of occupation became clear. Wrote one shocked reporter, William Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News: [Zionist propaganda at work from east and west DC]

Frontline troops are rough and ready about enemy property. They naturally take what they find if it looks interesting, and, because they are in the front lines, nobody says anything. . . . But what front-line troops take is nothing compared to the damage caused by wanton vandalism of some of the following troops. They seem to ruin everything, including the simplest personal belongings of the people in whose homes they are billeted. Today, we have had two more examples of this business, which would bring tears to the eyes of anybody who has appreciation of material values.21 

“We were crazy with happiness when the Americans came . . . ,” one woman said, “but what they did here was quite a disappointment that hit our family pretty hard.” 

They broke everything and threw it all outside. Later, we found only piles of rubbish. . . . Those who came in the first few days were fighting troops and they had seen something of the war. But those who came later . . . hadn’t seen anything at all. And many of these very young soldiers wanted to experience something, like repeat a little of the war. . . . We had original watercolors and so forth on the walls, which weren’t framed, and they wrote all over them. In the cellar we had bottles of apple juice. When we wanted to get some later, after the Americans had left, they’d drunk it all up and filled the bottles with urine. Or, in our cooking pots was toilet paper, used toilet paper.22 

In many towns, the invaders unlocked jails, prisons and concentration camps and invited the inmates to join the revelry.“They just opened up the camps and let them go,” noted Amy Schrott, a young German raised in New Jersey. “The Russians and Poles were looting the houses and killing the shopkeepers. Then they began raping the girls.”23 

When a prison camp at Salzwedel was thrown open, a mob of various nationalities literally tore the town to pieces. Locating the mayor, a gang of Russians dragged the man, his wife and daughter to the cemetery. After lashing the mayor to a tombstone, a line of laughing men began taking turns with his naked wife as she screamed on her hands and knees. When a Mongolian started to rape his daughter, the father, in a final fit of rage, tore the tombstone from the ground, then fell over dead.24 

A glimpse at the anarchy unleashed is given by Christabel Bielenberg of Furtwangen as she pedaled a bicycle near the town: 

It was like a drunken circus along the road. There were hordes of liberated Russian forced laborers, all dressed in clothes they had looted from all the ransacked shops, roaring with laughter and falling all over the road. And there were soldiers in huge army trucks tearing past all over the road in a crazy kind of way—it was a fantastic scene.... 

When we got to Furtwangen it was in pandemonium. All the radios had been requisitioned from their German owners and put in the windows facing outward toward the street—and each radio was playing a different program at full blast. All the freed Russians and Poles were waltzing down the street—it was just like a carnival going through the town. The Germans were walking round in a daze wearing white armbands as a sign of surrender. As for the French . . the troops were not French but Moroccan.... These were the men who occupied our area. 

That was when the raping started. They raped up and down our valley in the first few days. Two people were shot trying to protect their wives. Then they moved out and another lot of French colonial troops moved in—Goums from the Sahara, tall, black, strange people in uniforms like gray dressing-gowns. They were terrifying. First they came into Rohrbach and stole all the chickens and my children’s rabbits. A few days later they came at night and surrounded every house in the village and raped every female between 12 and 80. . . . What was so frightening about them was the silent way in which they moved....They came up to the door and one of them asked:“Where’s your husband?” I said that he was away and as I was talking to them I suddenly realized that one of them was standing right behind me—he had climbed in through a window and crept right up to me through that creaking wooden . . . house without making the slightest sound.25 

While Moroccan and other French colonial troops had an especially bad reputation and raped on a massive scale in Germany and Italy, American and British soldiers were not above reproach. “Our own Army and the British Army . . . have done their share of looting and raping . . . ,” a US sergeant admitted.“We too are considered an army of rapists.”26 

“Many a sane American family would recoil in horror if they knew how ‘Our Boys’ conduct themselves . . . over here,” added another GI.27 “We expected Russian lawlessness . . . ,” said one German, “but we once believed the Americans were different.”28 

♜♜♜♜♜♜♜

In part because of propaganda and the attitudes publicly espoused by western political and military leaders that “the only good German is a dead one,” in part because of unfounded rumors of massacres and rapes committed at captured US field hospitals, in part because of genuine German atrocities, such as at Malmedy, wherein scores of American POWs were mowed down by SS troops during the Ardennes campaign—because of these and other factors, large numbers of captured or surrendering Germans were simply slaughtered on the spot.29 Among many American units, “take no prisoners” was the motto. For those members of the SS, Wehrmacht and Volkssturm lucky enough to survive capture, death often awaited behind the lines. In the transit from front to rear, hundreds of prisoners were allowed to suffocate, starve or freeze to death in railroad cars. Upon reaching the prison camps, thousands more perished. Wrote an eyewitness from Rheinberg in April: 

One inmate at Rheinberg was over 80 years old, another was aged nine.... Nagging hunger and agonizing thirst were their companions, and they died of dysentery. A cruel heaven pelted them week after week with streams of rain.... Amputees slithered like amphibians through the mud, soaking and freezing. Naked to the skies day after day and night after night, they lay desperate in the sand . . . or slept exhaustedly into eternity in their collapsing holes.30 

With General Eisenhower turning a blind eye to the Geneva Convention, only the threat of retaliation against Allied POWs still held in Germany prevented a massacre of prodigious proportions.31 

Despite the numerous atrocities committed on the western front, such savagery never became officially sanctioned. Considering the blood-thirsty propaganda they had been subjected to for almost a decade, as well as the active incitement of their political and military leaders, the average GI and Tommy comported himself amazingly well, and certainly far, far better than his Soviet counterpart. Efforts by writers in Stars and Stripes to draw favorable parallels between the American and Red Armies, in hopes of covering the crimes of the latter— “There is really not much difference between Joe and Ivan . . . both are fun-loving and happy-go-lucky”—were gross perversions of the truth. 

♜♜♜♜♜♜♜

Meanwhile, with the nation hopelessly locked in the grip of its enemies, the death struggle of the Reich began. For those armless, legless, half-blind, and totally deaf German veterans who had imagined their war was over, they soon discovered otherwise. It was, noted an observer, “the last round-up of the old and the lame, the children and the dotards.”32 Recalled eighteen-year-old Landser, Guy Sajer: 

Some of these troops ...must have been at least sixty or sixty-five, to judge by their curved spines, bowed legs, and abundant wrinkles. But the young boys were even more astonishing. . . . We were looking literally at children, marching beside these feeble old men. The oldest boys were about sixteen, but there were others who could not have been more than thirteen. They had been hastily dressed in worn uniforms cut for men, and were carrying guns which were often as big as they were. They looked both comic and horrifying, and their eyes were filled with unease, like the eyes of children at the reopening of school. . . . Some of them were laughing and roughhousing. . . . but we noticed some heart-wringing details about these children, who were beginning the first act of their tragedy. Several of them were carrying school satchels their mothers had packed with extra food and clothes.33 

Most children of the Volkssturm, as well as those in the “Hitler Youth,” an organization similar to the American Boy Scouts, were armed with a motley array of old, discarded and almost worthless weapons, including .22 caliber rifles. For the most part, the “uniforms” of these new levies were a bizarre, rag-tag mix of civilian dress crossed with all branches of the service. Though there was no shortage of standard helmets, most were so large that they completely covered the eyes of the young wearer when a weapon was fired.34 

“We looked like gypsies,” remembered Siegfried Losch as he and his companions moved out to face the Red Army.35 Surprisingly, the spirit of Losch and other youngsters was high. 

“The morale among us young people was excellent,” Losch continued. “We were ready to fight and die for Hitler. . . . Everybody felt that we were going to win the war and that he/she could be held responsible.”36 

Perhaps understandable among adolescents, few elders were so eager to fight for the Fuhrer at this late stage of the war. Nevertheless, most did. With unconditional surrender and prison camps staring them squarely in the face, with rape, torture, enslavement, and death looming for their families, most men saw fighting to the last as not only their duty, but their only option. For others, however, additional incentive was needed. Rumors that Roosevelt intended to hand over millions of German slaves to Stalin energized many laggards.“This news,” wrote one official, “worked like a bombshell among some of the cowards.”37 There were even stronger incentives for wavering soldiers. Announced Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Admiral Karl Donitz, expressing the mood of all military branches: 

I need not explain to you that in our situation capitulation is equivalent to suicide, is certain death, that capitulation implies the death, the annihilation sooner or later of millions of German people and that, compared with this, the toll of blood exacted by even the sternest battles is trifling. . . . Let us fly at anyone who, even in the smallest degree, falters in his loyalty to the National-Socialist state and to the Fuhrer. Such people can be swayed only by fear. . . . Anyone who, without an express order from the Fuhrer, leaves his area when under attack by the enemy or fails to fight to the last gasp . . . will be branded and treated as a deserter.38 

Squads of ruthless army police, the Feldgendarmerie, roamed stealthily behind the fronts dispensing military justice on the spot. Any soldier unlucky enough to be stopped by these “chain dogs,” and who could not provide a written order for his absence, was dead within minutes. No excuses were valid. Reveals tank commander, Hans von Luck: 

I had sent one of my best sergeants, the highly decorated leader of an anti-tank platoon, to our workshop in the rear, with a couple of drivers, to bring forward some armored tractors that were being repaired. I had told him to put the screws on as we needed the vehicles urgently. He passed word to me through a messenger that he would be arriving with the vehicles the following morning. What happened then was told me the next day by one of the drivers. In tears, hardly able to control his voice, he said, “We were sitting together in the evening, after we had made sure that the last vehicles would be finished during the night, in a little inn, eating our day’s ration and talking about the future, our homes and all the other things that soldiers talk about. Suddenly the door was pushed open and in rushed a staff officer with some military policemen.‘I am Chief Judge Advocate under the direct orders of Field Marshal Felix Schoerner. Why are you sitting about here while up at the front brave soldiers are risking their lives?'” 

My platoon leader replied: “I was ordered by my regimental commander, Colonel von Luck, to bring some armored vehicles that are being repaired here up to the front as quickly as possible. Work will be going on through the night. We’ll be able to go back to the front tomorrow morning.” 

The judge advocate: “Where is your movement order?” 

Answer: “I had it from the commander by word of mouth.” 

Advocate: “We know about that, that’s what they all say when they want to dodge things. In the name of the Fuhrer and by the authority of the commander in chief Army Group Center, Field Marshal Schoerner, I sentence you to death by shooting on account of proven desertion.” 

“But you can’t do that,” shouted our platoon leader, “I’ve been at the front right through the war. Here, look at my medals.” 

Advocate: “But now, when it matters and everyone is needed up at the front, you soon decided you’d like to dodge things after all, didn’t you? The sentence is to be carried out.” 

Then the military police took our platoon leader and shot him in the garden behind the inn.39 

All too swiftly the work of these roving courts-martial became familiar sights on an already nightmarish landscape. As one civilian recalled: 

As I walked along the winding . . . road I saw on a tree growing along the roadside a man hanging. His face was sunk forward on his chest and he was just dangling there. . . . He had a hand-written notice round his neck. It read “I was a coward.” The sight of that terrible hanging thing frightened me and although I did not want to look at it, it kept drawing my gaze. It was a horrible sight. The man’s face was blue-black in color, although his hands were natural color. I walked on quickly, trembling. Then I saw another body hanging, and then another. The rest of that frightening journey . . . was horrible. I had to pass so many of those dead men and I was alone on the road. Even in broad daylight and on a warm day I was shivering.40 

I DID NOT OBEY MY TRANSPORT COMMANDER, read the placards. I WAS A DESERTER...I WAS TOO YELLOW TO FIGHT...THIS IS WHAT BECOMES OF A COWARD

“There was no mercy,” muttered one horrified army officer.41 

With death in front, death above, and now, cruelly, death behind, some frantic soldiers sought other means of escape. Self-mutilation was one method, noted Jan Montyn. 

Some boys were so desperate that they shot themselves in the foot or the arm, sometimes even in the shoulder or chest. There was a contradiction in this, because it required courage to do. But it was almost invariably found out, if not as a result of the victim’s own behavior, then from the nature of the injury. Such cases were also handed over to the Feldgendarmerie. There was no need for the wound to heal. . . . Finally, there was the possibility of crossing the lines. To this end the Russians put out propaganda, for nights at a time. Metallic voices from loudspeakers, alternating with music. Usually in German, of course, but sometimes also in Dutch. They seemed to know exactly who were in the opposite trenches, probably because of information given to them by boys who had crossed the lines earlier. Sometimes one of us would even be addressed by name and nick-name. 

“. . . Lay down your arms. The Allied Forces are on the banks of the Rhine and the Oder. It is pointless to go on fighting. Come and join us. You will be treated correctly, in strict accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention. You will get good food, you will have a bed, a decent roof over your head. . . .” Sometimes sweet girls’ voices came out of the loudspeaker, voices that not only sounded promising, but actually made promises, in quite specific terms.42 

Desperate as many German soldiers were to escape the front, little did they realize that there was virtually no sanctuary anywhere in the Reich. Ran a secret memo of the Internal Intelligence Service: 

Every member of the community knows that we are facing the greatest national catastrophe and that it will have the most serious repercussions on every family and every individual. The population is suffering severely from the bombing terror. Human ties are being largely severed. Tens of thousands of men at the front do not know whether their relatives, their wives and children, are still alive or where they are. . . . In recent years the German people has accepted every sacrifice. Now for the first time it is becoming weary and exhausted. Everyone is still trying to avoid admitting that this is the end.... 

For the first time in this war the food position is making a noticeable impact. The available rations leave people hungry. The potato and bread supply is no longer adequate.43 

With almost nothing moving on the roads, rails or waterways by day, and little by night, the dark specter of starvation spread swiftly across the Reich. Transports of food that normally took hours, now took days, even weeks, and those shipments that did successfully run the gauntlet arrived with spoiled or rotting cargoes. “My center . . . is the stomach,” a woman in Berlin moaned.“All my thinking, feeling, desires, and hopes begin with food.”44 

A glimpse at the almost impossible task of staying fed is given by Ilse McKee, who was forced to pedal into the countryside to beg food from farms. 

On one of those trips a Russian aircraft spotted me, a big, ancient-looking kite, rather harmless, I thought, until the gunner started to let fly. Immediately I was off my bike and into the ditch at the side of the road. I saw the bullets hit the road dangerously near, raising little puffs of dust. Then it went away. When it did not return I went back to my bike, which I had left lying in the road, mounted and rode on. Ten minutes later the Russian was back, and we played our little scene all over again. Even though I was badly scared now, I was determined not to give in, for if you are really hungry a few machine-gun bullets don’t matter all that much. Seven times the wretch got me off the bike. When I got home I was bruised and dusty all over, but in my bag I carried a large loaf of bread and four pounds of gray flour.45 

♜♜♜♜♜♜♜

While hunger held the Reich tightly in its grip, thirst was no problem. When all else was in short supply—food, fuel, medicine, clothing— one essential of German life not only survived, but actually flourished— beer. Of the seventeen breweries in Berlin—a place that more resembled a lunar landscape than a city—eleven factories somehow managed to keep running.46 In other cities the situation was the same as German men and women momentarily escaped the war “by other means.” 

“Enjoy the war, for the peace will be terrible,” drunken people laughed as parties erupted throughout the doomed nation. 

“Around ten o’clock the siren broke up the festivities with its harsh warning,” remembered one Berliner. 

“While the guests hesitated and time was wasted in deciding where to take shelter, a blast shook the house. As it was too late to leave, the orchestra played louder, all joined in the dancing and singing to drown out the sound of explosions, to drink and forget.”47 

Like victims on a sinking ship, many Germans were determined to live each and every moment to its fullest. 

Everybody had linked arms and they were rocking to the tune of the song.... I pushed my way through the crowd, using my elbows, stepping on people’s toes. They were all too happy to notice. An old man grabbed me and gave me a smacking kiss on my cheek. People were laughing and embracing one another all round me. Even the Party official on the rostrum was in a glorious mood. 

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he shouted, lifting up a bottle of red wine. ‘And now a bottle of Italian wine. Italy, you understand, the Axis, our gallant allies, Mussolini, fat stomach—too much macaroni.’ 

The mob roared and started to sing a rather nasty little song about the Duce. . . . Very few could still walk in a straight line. “Today we’re happy, tomorrow we’re dead!” they shouted.48 

Like drinking and revelry, sex was another way to forget the future. Already noted for its lusty attitude toward matters carnal before the war, Germany experienced a veritable sexual revolution as the end approached. 

A mattress on the floor. And that was all. Marika sat down on the mattress, I on the chair. I accepted a cigarette, although I rarely smoked. Where did I come from? she wanted to know. From Holland. Did I have brothers and sisters? Six. She had one brother, but she did not know whether he was still alive. She had fled from Riga, her parents had been killed. She had been here for less than a month. And a question—no, many questions—burned on the tip of my tongue. . . . But at once she gave a barely perceptible shrug of her shoulders, lay down on the mattress, her eyes open, and muttered: “Come.”49 

Like the above, sex among passing strangers became pandemic and as the end neared encounters on park benches, in doorways or in plain view amid the rubble was simply too common to note. Additionally, wild orgies erupted spontaneously as thousands of men and women cast aside all inhibitions. When Werner Adamczyk and eleven other exhausted comrades entered a hay barn for the night, the young Landser imagined he was in for “a good night’s sleep.” 

I . . . was just dozing off when the large sliding door opened and a crowd of figures stormed into the barn. I jumped up and grabbed my rifle next to me. “Ivan is not getting me without a shot out of my rifle,”was my instinctive thought. Well, it was an attack, but not by Ivan. It was an attack by the females of that farm. They were falling over us, hugging and kissing every soldier in the barn until they were consumed in what nature calls for. One girl or woman, as fat as an elephant, fell over me. In the dim light of the few bulbs lighting the barn, I could see that she was very ugly.... 

The natural drive for love had overcome them, especially under the conviction that their lives would be over as soon as the Russians arrived here.50 

Jan Montyn: 

It was Anna who, shortly after midnight, when the party was at its height, enticed me away, outside, without anyone noticing. Between the carts and across the yard, her fingers on her lip. Into the barn. The door was bolted with a wooden cross bar and she led me into the darkness, her hand squeezing mine confidentially. Up a ladder, and then we crawled through the hay, further and further, to the very back of the barn. There was a hollow in the hay, and a hanging oil lamp, and lo and behold, Karin, too. And Hanna. And another girl, no more than thirteen years old, whom I had not noticed at the party. 

Not a word was spoken. Everything seemed to have been agreed in advance. Karin and Hanna held me pressed down on my back in the dusty hay, a hand on my mouth. Anna was the one who pulled my trousers down. Anna was the one who crouched on me. And then, Hanna. And then Karin. And then, Anna again. And so it went on, while I, lying helpless on my back, was unable to move. Three pairs of eyes above me, three mouths. Groping hands. Breasts above white lace bodices. Girls’ legs under tucked-up, multicolored skirts. Whose was what? Who was who? While the younger girl watched motionless, wide-eyed. This was her first lesson in love. It was my second.51 

When a climax was reached or the liquor wore off, the gray dawn of reckoning was always there to be faced anew. No amount of sex, drinking or merry-making could deny the fact that the end was now one day closer. Continues the secret Internal Intelligence Service memo: 

Now no one believes that with our present resources and possibilities catastrophe can be avoided. The last spark of hope lies in some salvation from without, in some quite extraordinary development. . . . Even this spark of hope is dying. . . . Many are coming round to the idea of doing away with themselves. The demand for poison, for a pistol or some other method of putting an end to one’s life, is high everywhere. Suicide in sheer despair at the certainty of approaching catastrophe is the order of the day.52 

“Better a horrible end than horror without end,” explained those intent on taking their own lives.53 

The one person in Germany who could not give up, was also the one person in Germany who would not give up. Adolf Hitler: 

No game is lost until the final whistle. . . . Like the great Frederick we, too, are combating a coalition, and a coalition, remember, is not a stable entity. It exists only by the will of a handful of men. If Churchill were suddenly to disappear, everything could change in a flash! We can still snatch victory in the final sprint! May we be granted the time to do so. All we must do is to refuse to go down!54 

♜♜♜♜♜♜♜

On April 12, that which Hitler so fervently sought seemed about to occur—a miracle. 

“My Fuhrer, I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead . . . ,” announced Joseph Goebbels when he excitedly phoned Hitler with the news. “This is the ‘miracle’ . . . we have been waiting for, an uncanny historical parallel. This is the turning point.”55 

Though himself hopeful that a new American president might dissolve the alliance, might view the Soviet thrust into western Europe as the greater of two evils, Hitler wisely held a wait and see attitude. Recalled one who overheard the chancellor’s comments to Goebbels: “He said something to the effect that, with this remarkable turn of events, the US Army and the Red Army might soon be exchanging artillery salvos over the roof of the Reich Chancellery.”56 

The realization that there would be no modern miracle, that the Allied coalition was in tact despite Roosevelt’s death, became abundantly clear later that night when a massive British air raid began blasting the Berlin rubble to dust. Nevertheless, Adolf Hitler refused to “go down.” 

Clearly, Berlin was a political and post-war prize which neither the communists or capitalists could afford to lose if either hoped to dominate Europe. As the two armies approached the capital, there was the very real possibility that a fight would break out over the spoils. Unlike their leader, many German generals were secretly hoping the Americans would, as one officer phrased it, “roll up our backs,” not because they held out hope of miracles or victory but because the more of Germany occupied by the West, the less that would be enslaved by the communists.57 As a consequence, by mid-April 1945, only token resistance—or none at all—was offered on the western front while at the same time Germans fought to the death in the east. 

Unbeknownst to either Hitler or his generals, Supreme Allied Commander in the west, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had no intention of capturing Berlin. Additionally, by ordering a halt on the Elbe River, the American general was in effect presenting a gift to the Soviet Union of central Germany and much of Europe. Not only was Winston Churchill shocked and angered by the decision, but so too were many of Eisenhower’s lieutenants.58[Zionist tool Ike leaves the people of Eastern Europe to a Communist fate,what pond scum DC] 

“We had better take Berlin, and quick, and on to the Oder,” argued George Patton, a general whose hatred of communism was no secret.59 

Despite only sixty miles of undefended autobahns between him and Berlin, however, Eisenhower was firm. 

“No German force could have stopped us,” spit one staff officer in disgust.“The only thing that stood between us and Berlin was Eisenhower.”60 

On April 16, the pre-dawn quiet along the Oder River was shattered by a massive Soviet artillery barrage that signaled the final offensive of the war. One sector of the broad attack was the German position along the Seelow Heights. Remembered Russian general,Vasily Chuikov: 

The whole valley of the Oder rocked: forty thousand guns had opened fire. Forty thousand! It was as light as day on the bridgehead. An avalanche of fire descended on the Seelow Heights. The earth reared up in what seemed an unbroken wall reaching up to the sky itself. . . . The artillery bombardment, using every gun and mortar, and reinforced by bombers and dive-bombers, lasted twenty-five minutes. In its wake, and under cover of a double moving barrage, the infantry and tanks moved forward. Hundreds of powerful searchlights lit up the ground in front of the advancing troops.61 

When the barrage lifted, survivors rose up from their smoking holes. The horror was recounted by a young German. 

The din of motors and clank of tracks was tremendous. The earth trembled.... From behind came an abrupt, heavy-throated chorus as 88 mm shells screeched overhead and smashed into the first tanks. Flames shot up, parts of metal and shell fragments rained over the foxholes. At least six tanks were on fire, but others kept coming on and on. In the reddish glare they stood out with clarity and were helpless before the withering fire of big guns. Red Army infantrymen began erupting from the middle of this massive conflagration.... They scrambled up the hill shouting like madmen. . . . We fired rifles and machine guns, and hundreds of Russians toppled over. The rest came on, still yelling.62 

“Here they come,” thought Siegfried Losch, a quiet seventeen-year old who had never heard a shot fired in anger.

My emotions were fear, of course. A lot of people were running in our direction. . . . I sighted my rifle and squeezed the trigger at the first Russian I saw. I don’t think I was shaking. I aimed real carefully and he kept on walking, so he was either too far away or his number wasn’t up yet.... 

When I tried to reload, the extraction claw broke off and my rifle became worthless. . . . It just so happened that a buddy from our company had been hit by an artillery round fragment. He gave me his Enfield rifle and about 7 rounds of ammo. I then used two or three of them with little success. . . . Then the word came that our Commanding Officer had been killed. Next we were told to move back. As I ran zick-zack, as I had been taught in my pre-military training, I noted that to my right and left bullets were hitting the surface. This made me run faster. . . . In all this mixup we lost contact with all our buddies with the exception of a fellow from Potsdam. We decided to keep on walking toward Berlin and report to some organization.63 

In much the same manner as young Losch, other brave but raw recruits fled the wall of fire pell-mell. Within two days the massive Soviet Army was over the Oder, its path to Berlin barred only by pathetic pockets of resistance. 

“‘We’ consisted of three men . . . ,” Dutchman Jan Montyn recalled with a smile.“A Dane about twenty-three years old, also from the navy, a boy from the Hitler Youth who looked no more than fifteen, and I. Three men, one machine gun. There we stood, mortal terror in our hearts, keeping watch.” 

For an hour and a half nothing happened. Then the Russians came. They looked like an entire army as they advanced towards us in the twilight, along the edge of the wood. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. But silent. Utterly silent. No sound but the rustling of thousands of leaves, the swishing of branches, the creaking of boots. We threw hand grenades at random, we fired hit or miss with everything we had—our aim being to make as much noise as possible and so give the impression that the defense of the village consisted of more than a single light machine gun, two sailors and a schoolboy in short trousers. It seemed almost impossible that they would be misled by it. All the same, they withdrew among the trees and we saw them no more. From time to time there was some mortar fire. First a few misses. Then a direct hit. I was flung to the ground, binoculars and all. Deafened I scrambled up. I was unhurt. The . . . round landed exactly between my two companions. Of the machine gun nothing was left but twisted scrap-iron. I sat there in a daze. It was suddenly very quiet. And it was getting dark. 

At half past eight I could stand it no longer. I ran.64 

Devastating as defeat on the Oder had been, there was no wild rout— the “chain dogs” made sure of that. “There was one restriction on our flight,” revealed Jan Montyn, as he joined the retreat.“We could run as much as we liked, but we mustn’t run too fast. Anyone in too much of a hurry ran the risk of bumping into a Feldgendarmerie patrol. The fatal narrow borderline was still in force; anyone who overstepped it was a deserter. What happened to you then could be guessed from the bodies hanging from the trees. In front of us the Feldgendarmerie, behind us the Russians.”65 

“I saw lots of people with war decorations, who were not asked, they were just shot,” added a horrified Siegfried Losch as he pressed toward Berlin.66 

News of the disaster fifty miles to the east caused barely a ripple in Berlin. By now, disasters were nothing new.“No excitement, no groups talking in the streets,” a French physician reported. “Housewives queue in front of the shops, men go to work, the squares are full of children at play.”67 

Nevertheless, as the weary, dispirited troops began trailing into the capital, few Berliners could doubt that the much dreaded final hour had at last arrived. Wrote a woman in her diary: 

Standing in the door of the house I watched a troop of soldiers march by, dragging their feet. Some of them were limping. Stubble-faced, sunken-eyed, weighed down by their packs, they trudged silently, out of step, toward the city. . . . All these creatures are so wretched, they are no longer men. One neither hopes nor expects anything from them any more—one feels only pity for them. They already give the impression of being defeated and taken prisoner. They looked past us with expressionless faces. . . . I didn’t want to look at them any more.68 

What was obvious to this woman was obvious to everyone else in Berlin. And yet, with no recourse left to rape, torture and enslavement but death, thousands of old men and boys, women and girls, made ready to die “on their feet, like Germans.” 

Soldiers of the German front in the east! 

The hordes of our Judeo-Bolshevist foe have rallied for the last assault. They want to destroy Germany and to extinguish our people. You, soldiers of the east, have seen with your own eyes what fate awaits German women and children: the aged, the men, the infants are murdered, the German women and girls defiled and made into barracks whores. The rest are marched to Siberia. . . . If during these next days and weeks every soldier in the east does his duty, Asia’s final onslaught will come to naught—just as the invasion of our Western enemies will in the end fail. Berlin stays German. Vienna will be German again. And Europe will never be Russian! 

Rise up to defend your homes, your women, your children—rise up to defend your own future! At this hour, the eyes of the German nation are upon you, you, my fighters in the east, hoping that your steadfastness, your ardor, and your arms will smother the Bolshevist attack in a sea of blood! 

Adolf 

Hitler 69 

Next

A Sea of Blood

NOTES

1. Woltersdorf, Gods of War, 121. 

2. Fussell, Wartime, 123; J. D. Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes (Washington, D.C. : National Defense University Press, 1994), 21–22. 

3. Fussell, 123. 

4. Strawson, Battle for Berlin, 100. 

5. Fussell, 278. 

6. Ibid. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Ibid., 272. 

9. Strawson, Berlin, 101. 

10. Douglas Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich (New York: Crown, 1985), 6. 

11. Ibid., 7; Interview with Walter B. Delge, Sr., Lecompton, Kansas, July, 1975. 

12. Strawson, 98–99

13. Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., Final Entries, 1945 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978), 67. 

14. Botting, Ruins of the Reich, 18. 

15. Ibid., 6–7. 

16. Crawley, Spoils of War, 12. 

17. Steinert, Hitler’s War, 305. 

18. Ibid., 305. 

19. James Bacque, Other Losses (Toronto: Stoddart Pub. Co., 1989), 23. 

20. Davidson, Death and Life of Germany, 54. 

21. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest, 42–43.

22. Owings, Frauen, 209. 

23. Amy Schrott Krubel interview, Jan. 9, 1997, Topeka, Kansas. 

24. Botting, Ruins, 19–20. 

25. Ibid., 22–23. 

26. Kelling, 61; Time Magazine, Nov. 12, 1945; Life Magazine, Jan. 7, 1946. 

27. Time Magazine, Nov. 12, 1945. 

28. Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1949), 248. 

29. George Fowler,“Malmedy: The Case Against the Germans,”The Barnes Review 2, no. 2 (Nov.1996):

30. Bacque, Other Losses, 36. 

31. Ibid., 23. 

32. Charman, German Home Front, 185. 

33. Sajer, Forgotten Soldier, 395. 

34. Siegfried Losch manuscript (copy in possession of the author), 6; Duffy, Red Storm, 164. 

35. Losch manuscript, 6. 

36. Ibid. 

37. Steinert, Hitler’s War, 301. 

38. Marlis G. Steinert, 23 Days (New York: Walker and Co., 1969), 19. 

39. Hans von Luck, Panzer Commander (New York: Praeger, 1989), 199. 

40. Lucas, Last Days of the Third Reich, 101. 

41. Fritz, Frontsoldaten, 94. 

42. Montyn, Lamb to Slaughter, 103. 

43. Steinert, 23 Days, 3–4. 

44. Anonymous, Woman in Berlin, 16. 

45. McKee, Tomorrow the World, 123. 

46. Charman, Home Front, 195.

47. Horstmann, We Chose to Stay, 40. 

48. McKee, Tomorrow, 137–138. 

49. Montyn, Lamb, 79.

50. Werner Adamczyk, Feuer! (Wilmington, N.C.: Broadfoot Pub. Co., 1992), 366.

51. Montyn, 55–56. 

52. Steinert, 23 Days, 4. 

53. Steinert, Hitler’s War, 308. 

54. Toland, Last 100 Days, 73. 

55. Strawson,Berlin,114; James P. O’Donnell,The Bunker(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,1978), 94–95. 

56. O’Donnell, The Bunker, 95. 

57. Toland, 100 Days, 407. 

58. O’Donnell, Bunker, 92; Toland, 326; Nadeau, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, 153–154; Davidson, Death and Life of Germany, 57. 

59. Toland, 371.

60. Lucas, Last Days, 196. 

61. Strawson, Berlin, 123–124. 

62. Ibid., 122–123. 

63. Interview with Fred Losch, Aug. 14, 1997, Kansas City, Missouri; Losch manuscript, 8.

64. Montyn, Lamb to Slaughter, 150. 

65. Ibid., 151. 

66. Losch interview. 

67. LeTissier, Battle of Berlin, 65. 

68. Anonymous, Woman in Berlin, 34 

69. Thorwald, Flight in the Winter, 210–211