Throughout the fortress great efforts were made to improve the defensive positions and provide protection from enemy fire and bombs. This involved not only soldiers but also people who had seldom if ever been concerned with the principle ‘fight and dig’, especially the Volkssturm, civilians, forced foreign labourers from the factories and prisoners of war. The clearing of fields of fire and the reduction of fire risks in the town’s narrow streets was conducted by the sappers.[16]
Suddenly permission to evacuate the civilian population was received. Gauleiter Emil Stürtz telephoned it through on the morning of 4 February, stressing the need for action, but the public heard nothing of this telephone call, not even a rumour. It seems that Reinefarth must have suppressed any mention of such an evacuation because of the sheer difficulty of implementing it at this stage. The evacuees would have had to run the gauntlet of the pipeline under the noses of the Soviets to reach the comparative safety of the German front line. Next day a Soviet thrust reached the line Gorgast–Bleyen, thus cutting off Küstrin from the last route over the fields.[17]
Although isolated from the hinterland, Küstrin was not entirely cut off. The Soviet forces from the bridgeheads south and north of Küstrin had acted one after another, but lacked the strength to effect a proper union between Bleyen and Gorgast. Consequently both sides tried to hold on to the positions they held or had reached. The besieged garrison was unable to gain a way out, although the 9th Army was banking on the 21st Panzer Division now arriving from the west to improve the situation in its favour. The Soviet 5th Shock and 8th Guards Armies had orders to dig in on the Oder while most of the rest of the 1st Byelorussian Front was engaged in Pomerania. Consequently the disputed flat terrain of the Oderbruch was ruled by machine guns, anti-tank guns and mortars during the day, both German and Soviet, while at night patrols of reconnaissance and storm troops from both sides tried to prevent their opponents from infiltrating and establishing themselves further forward.
In any case it was obvious that there would be no major attack on the fortress in the immediate future, and Reinefarth could breathe again. The strongest Soviet blows had so far been directed on the town with only some minor subsidiary actions. The German deployment remained substantially unchanged. The troops were a colourful collection, including even the remains of some Turkomen and North Caucasian battalions, and had at best a combatant strength of 8,196 men (not identical to the almost double ration strength), an acceptable potential force. The increased firepower of the flak batteries, now consisting of twenty-four heavy 105mm guns and the same number of medium 20mm and 37mm guns, was the most valuable asset, but in inadequate positions. These batteries formed the backbone of the defence sometimes even in the foremost locations, their crews mainly consisting of the youngest RAD boys and Luftwaffe auxiliaries with no front-line experience.
On the morning of 6 February the commandant unexpectedly issued orders for that part of the Altstadt around the Schloss bordered by the market and Berliner Strasse to be evacuated by noon. The only exceptions were in such establishments as the post office and shops in order to prevent looting. The police were made responsible for informing the inhabitants and meeting the evacuation deadline, the NSV for accommodating those evacuated. No official reason was given for this action, leaving it a matter of speculation. One possible explanation was that Reinefarth’s staff believed the smoking chimneys acted as aiming points for the Soviet artillery observers, so the area around the command post had to be evacuated and declared a smoke-free zone.
The townsfolks’ reaction to this order ranged from anxious questions about where they could go and how they would find somewhere to live, to angry remarks about the conduct of the war. The police who had to go from door to door were not in an enviable position. They were mainly elderly men, including some with friends and relations among those being evacuated, so none of these adverse comments was reported.
Many evacuees appeared outside the town hall without their baggage wanting to know where their future accommodation was to be; they wanted to see it before deciding what to take with them. In any case they had to take all items of value, for they were instructed to leave the doors of their vacated premises open. Everyone knew what that meant: by the next day there would not be a single drawer that had not been rummaged through.
The allocation to new quarters took hours. The NSV had only two of its normal staff of three, assisted by young messengers. The whole of the remaining Party apparatus, although concentrated in the town hall, remained out of sight, leaving the people to their fate. The lists of available accommodation that had been carefully compiled over the previous days were already out of date in many cases, for the homeless from the burnt-out part of the Neustadt had taken them over, or attic dwellers had moved into less dangerous lower storeys, and many of the beds had been removed from the premises the day before. It was evening before the last people had moved into their new accommodation. Many of the old people had brought with them only the most urgent items, as much as they could carry or pull behind them on a handcart. Nobody had offered to help them. They intended returning to their homes the next day to collect more stuff, but they would only too often find empty shelves.[18]
Reinefarth reported for 6 February: ‘Small enemy breaches on northern side of Neustadt. Fighting in progress to clear them. Several enemy attacks in the Kietz area repelled.’ The Neustadt once more became the target of an early morning barrage on 7 February from Stalin-Organs. The buildings along Zorndorfer Strasse and some individual houses on the roads leading to the town centre and on the Landsberger Strasse and Schützenstrasse turn-offs to the railway station were in flames. The fire brigade had to defend its own premises when its Neustadt station became flanked by burning buildings, but escaped unscathed.
Tumbled walls, torn-up tramlines and burning stock in the shops made Zorndorfer Strasse impassable as far as the Stern. Shards of glass from shattered shop fronts, broken mirrors, torn bedding and bent chairs lying in the roadway recalled the November night six-and-a-quarter years before when brown-shirted mobs had demolished Jewish premises, thrown the furniture of Jewish citizens into the streets and set light to the synagogue near the railway station. Such recollections were naturally not to be found in the War Diary that the Party officials had ordered to be kept. An elderly civil servant was acting as the chronicler, his task being to record daily the latest information from the Party offices, police and fire brigade.
Totally unexpected was the arrival in Küstrin of about a dozen women, children and elderly people from a village on the east bank of the Oder. They arrived with a few household goods on two horse-drawn wagons. Overtaken by the front, they had been living ‘on the other side’ for a week. The women had been allowed to cross the Soviet lines to buy food when their supplies ran out, but had been stopped by German sentries who had orders to prevent anyone entering the town. The Soviet commander responsible for the area had ordered them to leave, giving them the choice of heading for the hinterland or going into the beleaguered town.[19]
From 7 to 10 February the 21st Panzer Division, newly allotted to this sector, encountered bitter resistance in its attacks northwards out of Gorgast to Küstrin, but it broke through the Soviet encirclement and opened a narrow passage, and the first supplies were driven through to the fortress that night. This ‘corridor’, as the opening was called, began in the south near Gorgast and ended in the north in the Genschmar area, its width varying from 3 to 5 kilometres; it was about 6 kilometres long, running from Gorgast, via the Bleyen manor farm (Gut Bleyen) to the Vorflut Canal railway bridge. It was only usable at night and heavy loads could be carried only by tracked vehicles.[20]