Armageddon - Max Hastings [337]
On 22 March, General Gotthard Heinrici, commander of First Panzer Army in the Carpathians, a dogged little old soldier, went to see Guderian at his headquarters in the complex of low, camouflage-painted concrete buildings at Zossen, nerve centre of the German Army’s war effort. Guderian told him that a big counter-attack was being planned from the Frankfurt-on-Oder bridgehead, against the Russians threatening Küstrin. This fortress, once the prison of Frederick the Great, stood on an island in the Oder some fifty miles east of Berlin. The Russians had briefly penetrated its defences early in February, before being evicted.
Now, Hitler insisted that an attempt to relieve Küstrin should start in two days. The hapless Heinrici must assume responsibility. Yet before the attack could be launched, the Russians themselves attacked, on that same morning of 22 March. When the German counter-attack was launched on the 23rd, it was halted in its tracks by Soviet artillery fire. Heinrici urged Hitler to abandon Küstrin, which was isolated. As usual, the Führer demurred. He insisted on further counter-attacks. On 27 March, three divisions of Ninth Army launched an assault which so surprised the Russians that the leading German tanks reached the outskirts of Küstrin. But there they were stopped, and ruthlessly destroyed. “It was a massacre,” said Heinrici grimly. Eight thousand men had died for nothing. Next day, Hitler dismissed Guderian, asserting that his health required an immediate six weeks’ convalescent leave. The last of Germany’s great field commanders was replaced as Chief of Staff by General Hans Krebs on 29 March. The same day, the Russians launched an intense bombardment of Küstrin. The garrison broke out and escaped on its own initiative that night, though a few survivors lingered to die fighting as the Russians occupied the fortress. On reaching the German lines, Küstrin’s commander was immediately imprisoned by Hitler.
Breslau, capital of lower Silesia, held out through an epic siege of seventy-seven days, which only ended a week after Hitler’s death. The city was encircled on 16 February. It took the Russians a fortnight to fight their way through a bare mile of southern suburbs, against determined resistance. The garrison, some 50,000 strong, still looked for relief from Schörner’s Army Group Centre. After the flight west of many Silesian refugees, plunging into snows and perils that brought death to thousands, some 80,000 civilians remained in Breslau. Behind the front lines, scores of houses had been destroyed by the defenders to open a fire zone. Firemen, industrial workers, service personnel threw themselves into the defence with a courage worthy of a better cause. Factories continued to produce ammunition, cigarettes—600,000 of them a day—heavy mortar bombs. The garrison even constructed an armoured train. Luftwaffe night sorties maintained deliveries of mail and some stores.
The gauleiter, Karl Hanke, was among the most repellent officials of the Third Reich. He hanged Breslau’s burgomaster for suggesting that the city was indefensible. He sent exuberant daily reports to Berlin, prompting Goebbels to remark in delight: “If all our gauleiters in the east were like this . . . we should be in better shape than we are.” Hitler described Hanke admiringly as “a devil of a fellow.” Yet Hanke’s interventions in the military conduct of the defence were disastrous. He pressed constantly for a breakout to reach Schörner’s army, a notion which the army’s commandant dismissed. Such an initiative would have required several divisions. Thousands of Breslau men and women were forced to work almost to death, building a new airstrip at Hanke’s bidding.
The gauleiter established his own headquarters in the cellars beneath the city’s university library. He proposed to demolish the building above, to render his own quarters impregnable beneath its rubble, and was dissuaded from incinerating half a million books only by fears that the pyre would