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Wounded

Fritz did not want me to come. It was much too close to the front and he hoped soon to be transferred to a hospital near Berlin. He wrote every day, but it was mostly only one sentence I come soon, I come soon. And I carried his letters wherever I went.

And after a sheer endless time came the day when unexpectedly Fritz stood at the garden gate of Woltersdorf. We just wanted to leave for a walk. Ottfried was holding my hand and Christian was on my arm.

Fritz kissed us so much that it hurt. He kissed us over and over again. He had thrown his crutches away when he embraced us, but had completely forgotten that his leg was missing and he lost balance and we all fell into the hedge of jasmine. But he did not stop kissing us. And then we all laughed, laughed out of joy.

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The Hoping And The Waiting

And then came the sixth of June. It was the year 1944. The Allies had landed. The neighbor whose garden was next to ours came running to the fence and she shouted the news to me.

"The Americans have landed" she yelled jubilant. I ran to her. "The Americans have landed" and her eyes were shining, and I repeated: "The Americans have landed," and my eyes were gleaming. More you could not dare to show. It was always possible that somebody could listen.

The landing of the Americans made us and all our friends deliriously happy. We saw at least an end of the dark tunnel, saw some hope to survive that horrid war. Now all available soldiers were rushed to the western front. It was good that Fritz was not too badly wounded, but on the other hand they soon would send him too. He was told that it wouldn't be too long till he could be put into combat. A soldier with one leg was still able to drive a tank, but my hope was that soon they might not have any more tanks and no more gasoline either.

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By the way, it was very risky to hear foreign stations. They could sentence you to death, kill you on the spot when they caught you, even when you were only listening to music on these foreign stations. Therefore I had to walk around the house while Fritz had his ear to the radio.

But we heard not only the good news. We also heard the bad one. We also heard the advances of the Russian Armies, of the Army of Zhukov, of the Army of Koniev. We heard of Rokossovski, of Chuikov. The Eastern front had collapsed. The Germans on the East were retreating, but the brave German soldiers fought outnumbered at least 10 to 1. They fought without air cover to the last man just to slow the Russians down. They knew that the war was lost but they hoped with their sacrifice to gain precious time.

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The Fear

When I think back it was very merciful that Christian died in that frightful wartime, and especially in that period where all your energy was occupied for the living and their survival.

Now the bombers came with incredible numbers of planes. Sometimes the entire sky was covered. Whole neighborhoods in the city had vanished completely. Hundreds of streets were by now in ruins. There were avenues which only showed deep craters lined by mountains of rubble, and there were black charred skeletons of former buildings everywhere. When one street was destroyed people moved to the next and found shelter somehow somewhere.

Besides the bombing another fear had gripped the people in and around Berlin. The fear of the Russian army.

At the end of January we could already hear the cannon's thundering. The Russians were standing at the river Oder, only one hour's drive by car away. Fortunately the Russians had over-stretched their supply lines and waited for new tanks, artillery, guns and men. The Oder is a wide river that over-flooded each year and then there was marsh-land for a long time. The Russian tanks and artillery could not move in the swampy soil. So this wet-land was the best defense for the Germans. But soon the earth would dry up and then the Russian horde would come for the kill.

The radio in Berlin was bringing continuously horror stories about the savage Russian soldiers. About their raping, their brutal killing. I never believed anything that Goebbels brought, but now refugees from the Eastern provinces arrived. People who had tracked as far away as from Poland, from East Prussia, Pommerania and Silesia.

They brought leaflets of manifestoes written by the leading Soviet poet, the State poet Ilya Ehrenburg urging the Soldiers to spare no one." The German race is nothing but evil. Kill, kill. Rape and kill as you storm forward you gallant soldiers of the Red Army. and in one of his poems he wrote" Cut the children out of their mother's belly."

The refugees told nightmarish stories and if you saw their faces you knew these stories were true. Most women had been raped by whole hordes of Russians, very young girls to women of very old age, and mostly husbands, mothers old fathers and children were forced to watch. Often females had been sadistically killed after being raped. Some of these refugees were tracking on horse or oxen drawn wagons, some driving animals in front of them, Some were walking on foot and carrying their children on their backs, or in primitive pushcarts, bundles over their shoulder with the rest of their belongings.

There on the main road we saw the misery of the fleeing civilians in endless lines. There were women with dead infants in their arms. Whole masses of trembling and horrified people. Some had been on the run for several hundreds of miles. Frau Bachmann saw a little wooden garden wagon with an old grandmother in it, covered with featherbedding. And this wagon was pulled by two children not older than six. They were all on the run from the Russians, from the horror they had witnessed and barely escaped. They did not want to stop. They had only one goal, to reach the American troops. All were obsessed simply by one thought, the thought to make it to the West, only not to meet the Russians again.

But the Russians were barely 38 miles away and the American forces 200 miles.

Fritz thought that I and Ottfried should flee to the West too. He doubted that the Americans would be here first. And on top of it Woltersdorf was located east of Berlin. The brother Heinz was now a medical doctor, and he and his colleges confirmed the stories of the refugees. They had given first aid to hundreds of mutilated women.

But I was against leaving. I wanted to stay with Fritz. And after all we might just get into the middle of a large battle especially since we were fleeing in the direction of the American troops. The SS was put up against them. There would be fierce fighting. Nazis wanted to make sure that the newly recruited SS would not or could not run over to the other side. Now many young boys were forced into the SS. No, I did not want to flee. I was expecting a child. and I did not want to leave Fritz.

To day - of course -I know that it was wrong. But then I should have done it much earlier. And I did not want to leave my parents and my sister Ellen who had come back from Straßburg. And what would have happened to all our possessions, all we had piled up in Woltersdorf, all of Mutti's belongings and also our own?

You are much stronger when you are not alone.

On the East front the German soldiers were desperately trying to hold the Russians back, hoping that in the meantime the government would evacuate the civilians. What the soldiers didn't know was that Hitler did not want to save the civilians.

He did not want to save his soldiers either, the soldiers who fought so bravely for him. He did not want to save anyone. All he wanted was victory. He wanted victory or death. Since it could not be victory let it be death. Hitler expected no mercy from the enemy for himself. So if he had to die he was determined to take all of Germany along. All soldiers, all women, all children, all that had been formerly Germany. Victory or death. Death to all of Germany. He wanted to go down in history dramatic like the old Germanic heros in glorious extinction.

Suddenly some people saw what Hitler was really up to. They saw that Hitler's aim was to ruin Germany completely.

Hitler ordered, as I later on heard, the radical eradication of everything. Each general or officer who did not obey the order of the scorched German earth was dismissed and shot on the spot, or like Rommel had to kill himself. There was an official order from Hitler, that if the war was lost, the Nation has to perish too. Germany was to be totally exterminated, everything was to be blown up - power, water and gas plants, all food supplies and stores of whatever kind, dams, ports, all industrial complexes, all networks, all bridges, all vehicles, also the country's highways.

The city of Berlin was his last stand and he expected the population to fight in a house to house combat to the last person. Any survivor should be shot, since he had obviously not done his duty.

But for us in and around Berlin the white flag would not help. The Nazis would shoot us right away. They had the guns, we didn't. And you were never sure who was a Nazi and who wasn't. The Germans have the habit of obeying orders no matter what. They obey the order till they get another order.

We could only hope that the Americans would come, come soon before Hitler would kill us all.

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The Russian Army Stands By For The Kill

The end fight for the beleaguered City was near. The Western Allied pounded Berlin continuously. Now the planes came wave after wave, each time the sky was covered with these pitiless machines as far as the eye could see. We heard the grinding noise of their motors and we knew what they had loaded, and they attacked day and night ceaselessly. The Allies bombed Berlin without mercy. At this point nobody in or around Berlin cared anymore who came first, the Americans or the Russians. If it was up to us even the devil was welcome or Lucifer or Beelzebub with their relatives including all his cousins. If only the war came to an end, only the bombing would stop, for once and for all be finished. Whatever came afterward we would handle one way or the other.

At that time a lot of wild rumors started to circulate. One rumor was that Hitler had a secret weapon, a mysterious bomb. A new type of bomb, capable of destroying whole cities in seconds. A bomb he would use in the last minute and which would be a turning point.

The second rumor started that the blind people insisted Hitler was not Hitler anymore. They firmly believed that it was the voice of another person faking Hitler's speaking. That Hitler might be dead and that they had substituted another person. Since Hitler was always screaming it was impossible for me to hear any difference. At this stage of the war all Nazis were not speaking anymore but screaming, may it be on the radio or otherwise, screaming in hysterical ecstasy. By the way, we thought that it could be true that Hitler was dead already. In case somebody really had succeeded in killing Hitler it would not have been difficult to find an actor to imitate Hitler. That silly mustache and that ridiculous parting of his sticky hair. Maybe somebody else was now running the tragic show and they had ten Hitlers in the closets, for just in case. But it would not have mattered a bit since we always had the feeling that a lot of people were in charge anyway, people who never showed their face.

The third rumor was that Hitler was actually directed from Moscow and that he was a Soviet secret agent. After the first victories Hitler actually played everything into the hands of Stalin. Each of his military actions and the striving for the total ruin of Germany would fit into that pattern too. The incredibly crazy order to remove all tanks from the East, the withdrawal of troops desperately needed to fight the Russians would make sense in that case. New young soldiers, sent as reinforcement to the East were only given foreign guns in which the German bullets would not work. Soon all Eastern soldiers did not get any more ammunition. But Hitler gave the order, not to retreat an inch, to fight till death. All supplies and the best troops were put against the Western armies. If Hitler was a madman, there was too much system in his madness.

A lot of people believed the first rumor. It was the more pleasant one. And we, well we thought, it really did not matter what you believed in. It seemed a little bit late to figure all that out and would not have made the slightest bit of difference anyway not before and not now. We were actually more concerned how we could survive.

One day a lot of high ranking Nazis began to flee in wild haste, even though it was forbidden by death to leave Berlin unauthorized. They used official or military cars, loaded them with their valuables or that of others and many malicious Nazis were able to escape.

Now some people lost their heads and started to prepare for suicide in case they had to face the Russian savages. And a lot of these were not necessarily Nazis at all. Some desperate people tried to get sleeping tablets, cyanide capsules and razor blades, even rat poison, and a lot had pistols ready. And others were looking for places to hide their women and children. They pushed wardrobes in front of doors, they tried to find niches in basements.

I had hoped to the last minute that the Allies would come and rescue us.Some of the Western Allied forces had already raced full of enthusiasm across the Elbe and were only 45 miles away from Berlin. But suddenly Eisenhower ordered retreat to the West banks of the Elbe and commanded leaving all land East of the Elbe to the Russians. That was nearly half of Germany including Berlin. The Allied troops, as we later on learned, were furious about this incredible decision. They had been determined to beat the Russians to Berlin. All was already prepared, even the landing of trained parachute troops on the Berlin airport Tempelhof. Berlin was the prize. The prize everybody wanted, ever since the invasion on the beaches of Normandy. "To Berlin" was written on their tanks, on their cars. But as soldiers they had to follow their order. And now the order was to leave Berlin to the Russians. Now the order was to leave Berlin to Comrade Stalin.

And to make it easier for Comrade Stalin the air force was sent in for the pitiless bombing of the City of Berlin. Now the directive was, bomb Berlin without interruption, bomb Berlin day and night, eradicate all life in Berlin. Once they came with 1000 bombers. No, we didn't count them. We couldn't. But they boasted later on with how many they came and how many tons they dropped on Berlin. We only saw and felt the results. The order for these bombing came even when they knew that there were no soldiers in Berlin. There were still- as I learned later on - 2,700 000 people in Berlin. 2,000 000 were woman and there were 100 000 children under ten, not including all the refugees caught in the city. And the Western Allies knew that the Berlin people had defied Hitler at all his free elections, that the people of Berlin always had hated Hitler. They also knew that the Nazis remaining in Berlin were by now in safe bunkers, and that Hitler and his group were shielded in their underground world.

I like to pause a little bit in order to say something about the brave people of Berlin. Most of the population had to stay. They were forced to work at the factories in Spandau. There was the death penalty on leaving your workplace. The population had to produce ammunition. Ammunition desperately needed. The people believed that their ammunition would hold the Russians back. They did not know that Hitler used it mostly to fight the Western Allies. By the way the war-material producing factories in the district of Spandau were not even scratched from the bombing, not even by the last heavy offensive.

Some people stayed because they did not want to desert their loved ones. When I am talking of the people of Berlin. I am not speaking about the ones with a special permit who were sitting in safe bunkers like the bunker in the Zoo station. I am speaking of the average person in Berlin. These people showed no panic. They were prepared bravely to meet their fate head on. Even among the ones who had been ordered to Hitler's last army. The army of little boys, old or sick men. Hitler's secret weapon, as the people joked. In this last army you saw bitter but not desperate faces. They had only a few guns for them. Some got one single grenade to throw at the Russian tanks, And they were ordered to stay at their place till death. Anyone who left his unit even only for a short time was shot and hanged on a lantern post.

And finally one day the Russian Army crossed the river Oder. It started with a tremendous roar from 11 000 guns, as we were told later on. And it went on for a sheer endless time. It sounded like ceaseless thunder. The earth in Woltersdorf was shaking with vibrations and suddenly a hurricane like wind came from the East and a strange smell was in that storm. The Russian offensive had started. Fritz was just in Berlin getting the artificial leg fitted. He was in his fathers store when the Russian artillery started full blast at the river Oder. Zhukow was using all his guns and all his cannons. You could hear the frightening sounds in the center of Berlin clear and loud. Fritz said good bye to his father and brother."This is the beginning of the end. Let's hope that we will see each other again." They did not hug and kiss in Berlin. They just shook hands. "Lets hope we will see each other again."

And Fritz hurried back to Woltersdorf

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Leaving The City In Time

It did not look too good for Berlin. We had hoped that Hitler would evaporate (vamoose, scram) to his Berchtesgarden as he was urged by all his faithful. But no he didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay in Berlin. I could never understand why he wanted to die in Berlin. In Berlin, the city he hated, in Berlin the city who hated him. But Berlin was after all the capital of his thousand year Reich.

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And then Hitler did his greatest and his most noble deed. He gave the SS the rest of his Hitler-youth-boys age 15 often 13 or younger to fight with the SS to their heroic death. The children marched in large and small groups with a Panzerfaust right into the fire of the Russians. Often they gave the little boys bicycles and put a Panzerfaust on their shoulder with the order to blow up the Russian tanks. And many small boys eager to be grownup heros tried just that. A few who resisted were killed and hung on trees. Hitler really succeeded to kill a lot of people in Berlin. But he did not succeed to kill us all.. Some survived to tell the tale.

Papa decided to leave with Mutti the city before the Russian shelling of Berlin started. There were many signs that the end fight would begin very soon. So Papa simply sent all his workers home. The women were grateful because they were very anxious to be with their children. Closing was strictly forbidden. But Papa closed anyway. People did not care anymore. The Nazis could not shoot them all. They did not have enough bullets. Papa was lucky that he was not immediately put into the army of the Volkssturm. Papa claimed that he first had to wire his workshop for the destruction, to be blown up the moment the Russians would enter his district. But he didn't do it- of course- he left with Mutti right away on little side-roads for Woltersdorf.

Soon afterwards panic gripped the City of Berlin, as I was told by surviving friends. The bombing by the Allies had stopped. Now desperate women and children were trying to reach a shelter before the storming of the inner city by the Russians began. And then the shelling started. When the houses were gone people crawled into the ones that where still standing, until these fell down too. Most of the streets were destroyed and there were not too many basements left to hide in. By now people lived permanently underground, in holes or whatever they could find. In some parts of the city they fled into dark subway tunnels. Thousands of people were in these tunnels. Later on we learned that the Nazis - as ordered by Hitler- had blasted the part of the tunnel which crossed the river Spree under water. In the same moment the water rushed into the tunnel. It was so crowded with people that you could find only standing place. At the time when the water was breaking in three Lazarettzüge (trains with wounded soldiers) were stationed in the tunnel too.

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Some people heard and saw tanks, but nobody could tell for sure if they were German or Russian tanks. We assumed that they were Russian. You mostly believe what you wish. Hitler did not have many tanks anymore. If he had then it would mean fighting and killing again.

It was a strange feeling for a lot of Germans. Germany was your homeland. The land of their father and forefathers way back, way back to the beginning of time and now it would be destroyed and conquered by the Russians. How could you be happy about it. On the other hand it would mean the end of the war, that horrible war, the end of the Nazis and all that suffering.

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