In the second half of 1944, political discussions became commonplace among the troops for the first time in the war. We realized that something must be wrong with Hitler and the Nazis. Most of the time, you could express yourself more freely with comrades at the front than back in Germany. Of course, you still needed to be careful with whom you shared your opinions. If you openly stated, “Hitler is an idiot,” it would undoubtedly land you somewhere very unpleasant.
A few weeks after the Allied landings in France, a German officer-led assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler failed. Like some of the troops around me, I felt disappointed that the plotters had botched the effort. Not all German troops supported assassination, but there was certainly a widespread negative attitude toward the Nazi leadership and a growing indifference to Hitler’s fate.
When the Nazis issued an order on July 23, 1944 that required all units in the Wehrmacht to adopt the Nazi Party salute, the 58th Division declined to obey this command, instead maintaining the traditional soldier’s salute used in most armies. Perhaps on the basis of our combat record, our refusal was not punished.
If our unit had been given some hard-core Nazi troops, they would have received a rough time from the other men. We were patriotic soldiers fighting for Germany, not a bunch of Nazi brownshirts fighting for Hitler. Most of the soldiers I knew did not support the Nazi Party, even if the practical result of our military effort was to maintain the Nazi regime in power. It is an irresolvable dilemma when you want to serve your country, yet oppose its political leadership.
While my own hostility toward the regime increased, Anneliese condemned the German officers who had carried out the plot against Hitler as traitors, retaining her deep belief in both the Fuhrer and German victory. Even during the last months of the war, Anneliese remained absolutely convinced that Germany was building miracle weapons that would rescue us. When she told me in a letter that a framed photograph of Hitler hung on the wall of her room, my reaction was one of utter disbelief.
Though many Germans shared her commitment to the regime, I considered such faith to be completely ludicrous. Yet, whatever one’s feelings toward the Nazi government, we were all engaged in a fight to the bitter end. Unlike the First World War’s negotiated armistice, this war would be decided on the battlefield.
Because the Nazi eagle resembled a vulture, Germans had sometimes jokingly referred to it as the Pleitegeier (the bankrupt vulture). The reference implied that the Nazis, for all their bombast and early successes, were not leading Germany to a bright future, but rather to a calamitous fate.
Chapter 16
CATASTROPHE
SAMLAND: Late January–April 13, 1945
On January 13, the Red Army began a major new offensive into East Prussia. This assault to the south of Memel quickly threatened to isolate us from the other German forces in the region. The cancellation of all furloughs wrecked my plans to marry Anneliese. No further successful communication with her or my family would take place for half a year, despite our mutual attempts to send letters.
The evacuation of German troops from Memel to the Samland region of East Prussia began in the last week of January. Traffic departing for the southwest jammed onto the long sandy neck of the Kurische Isthmus, located between the Baltic Sea and the Kurishe Bay.
As Soviet forces moved to block the exit from the Kurische Isthmus into the Samland, the last elements of the 58th Division rushed to pass through the escape route. German artillery held off the enemy’s advance just long enough for all of my division to reach the Samland. Linking up with the main body of German forces, we immediately went into combat in the bitter cold of the East Prussian winter.
The mission of the newly designated Army Detachment Samland was to defend East Prussia and provide a shield for German civilians fleeing the Soviet onslaught. Our immediate objective was to relieve the city of Konigsberg, which was surrounded by the Soviets at the end of January. While the 58th and other German divisions would make a push toward the city from outside, troops within would simultaneously attempt to break out in the direction of the relieving forces.
The attack began early on the morning of February 19. Joined to a lesser extent by our company’s heavy guns, our division’s artillery conducted a devastating barrage against the Soviet rear in preparation for the assault by our infantry. Placing my old comrade Schutte in charge of directing our heavy guns in the rear, I took my usual place at the front, where I could get a better sense of what was occurring.
As our regiment’s attack advanced in the direction of the Soviet frontlines in a wooded area, I moved forward beside three or four German Sturmgeschutze (tracked armored vehicles with 75-millimeter guns), which were crossing the open terrain of rolling hills. Simultaneously, our infantry began advancing about one or two hundred yards to my right.
Unfortunately, our shelling of the enemy’s position had failed to crush their ability to resist. Within moments of the start of our assault, the Sturmgeschutze began to be picked off one after the other by Soviet anti-tank guns concealed along the line of trees about a hundred yards ahead of us.
Suddenly alone among the smashed vehicles, I cautiously began to move back toward my company’s gun position 300 yards behind me. Long before I reached it, my company’s 75- and 150-millimeter howitzers retaliated for the destruction of the vehicles, pouring a barrage of a couple of hundred rounds into the tree line.
The infantry’s offensive meanwhile pushed on about five miles before losing momentum. In the process, it revealed that our strike had taken the Red Army by surprise, preempting an assault they had been preparing to make against our own lines a few hours later.
The Soviet concentration of American-made high-velocity antitank guns at regular 20-foot intervals at the edge of the forest might have been optimal in an offensive operation, but their close deployment also served to magnify the destructive impact of my company’s guns. Similar results had been achieved in the rear of the Russian lines by our artillery. All that remained of a couple of Red Army divisions were the remnants of their forward headquarters and the wreckage of other equipment. The attack was a success, but it would be the last hurrah for us.
As the coordinated assault of Army Detachment Samland hit the enemy forces arrayed along the front, German units within Konigsburg succeeded in punching a six-mile-wide corridor through the Red Army units encircling the city. Refugees who had been trapped inside the city when it was initially surrounded quickly began streaming through this escape route. The tragic plight of civilians forced to flee westward cast my mind back to the parallel scene I had witnessed in France in the summer of 1940, though the danger to those who fell under Soviet control was greater.
In the small area that we had liberated from Soviet occupation, we received firsthand accounts of atrocities committed by the enemy troops. In one of the worst incidents, we heard that every sister in a Catholic convent for blind nuns had been raped. Word of such barbarity helped inspire our efforts to hold our ground as long as possible before retreating. It also reinforced the urgency of evacuating all German residents to the west as rapidly as possible, employing force if necessary to make them depart.
Directed to assist in this mission, my company joined other units behind the lines in loading civilians aboard a couple of trucks sent over by the division. Arriving at a farm only a few miles from the front, we encountered an elderly couple in their seventies. The wife boarded the truck but her husband refused to leave, insisting, “I am going to stay here and I am going to die here.” Obeying our orders, I commanded my soldiers to forcibly haul the man onto the truck, but it was a gut-wrenching moment. If my parents were ever forced to abandon our family’s farm in Puggen, I knew it would break their hearts.
Beyond trying to shield the civilian population, we were now simply fighting for our own lives with a desperation born from hopelessness. There was no place to retreat and no more illusions that some miracle would rescue Germany. We had no choice but to accept whatever fate held in store for us. While my basic instinct to
