On 16 February the fortress, which until then had come directly under 9th Army Headquarters, was allocated tactically to SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Waffen-SS Matthias Kleinheisterkamp’s XIth SS Panzer Corps. Kleinheisterkamp’s headquarters were located at Neuentempel, 6 kilometres south-west of Seelow.[34]
There was still no indication that an evacuation would take place in the foreseeable future. The information in the fortress newspaper on 18 February, however, gave the impression that those in the know expected some more difficult days, perhaps weeks, ahead. New identity cards were being introduced, with passes for the Oder bridges and special passes for going out at night during the curfew. Anyone who had moved into a different building without official approval had to obtain an official permit immediately; NSDAP cell leaders and Red Cross personnel were requested to report for further duties. The former Landsberg District farmers’ leader, now head of civilian supplies in Küstrin, spoke of the efforts being made to provide the town with enough supplies to enable it to withstand a siege of weeks or months. Even tobacco would be rationed for men on ration cards in future. ‘The biggest problem is with milk and butter supplies as, due to enemy artillery fire, often milk cannot be delivered from Alt Bleyen and Kietz. Here the NSV is helping out with dried milk. Instead of butter, the same weight in clarified butter or margarine will be issued.’ Issues of ersatz milk were actually not made regularly and in any case were limited to children up to 4 years of age. The official rations were set out as follows:
Infants up to 1 year: 1 x Dried milk for 8 days; 1 x Condensed milk for 14 days
Children 1–2 years: 2 x Condensed milk for 8 days; 1 x Condensed milk for 14 days
Children 2–4 years: 2 x Condensed milk for 8 days
The dried items came from the stocks of Küstrin merchants. Canned milk had been brought in from Frankfurt on the night of 4 February in a truck guided along by tracer bullets. The route via Seelow was unknown to either the driver or his companion, and from Manschnow they had been exceedingly lucky to get through the Soviet advance positions. Theirs was the last vehicle to reach the town by Reichsstrasse 1.
Fortress surgeon Dr Weglau considered the state of hygiene in the town ‘very good at the moment’, commenting that ‘infectious illnesses have not appeared to any extent’. Nevertheless, the population had only the Altstadt pharmacy to turn to, in its lightly damaged building on the Marktplatz. The Neustadt pharmacy had been closed since the first fighting, and plunderers had subsequently rendered it unrecognisable in their search for narcotics.
Following a relatively peaceful morning there was an unusually big explosion that afternoon that gave rise to the rumour that the Warthe bridges had been destroyed. The engineer staff who quickly appeared at the site discovered that the situation was not as bad as first feared. The bridge structure had not been torn apart, as only one of the two demolition chambers on the central piers had exploded after receiving a direct hit. However, vehicular traffic over this single road bridge between the Altstadt and Neustadt was now impossible. The roadway hung down at a steep angle into the flooded Warthe. At considerable risk pedestrians could cross on the pathway resting on the remains of the piers, but these had substantial cracks in them. The construction of an emergency bridge over the sagging structure would take time, but meanwhile one could use the railway bridge 100 metres away from Breslauer Strasse. Thick planks were laid over the tracks between street-level crossings in the Altstadt and Neustadt, and by evening the first wagons were able to use the new crossing. Nevertheless it was open to one-way traffic only, controlled by the sentries at either end. The water pipes and telephone and electricity cables that had been ripped apart in the explosion could not be replaced so quickly, and the carefully assembled sightscreens had come to the end of their life.[35]
Major of the Reserve Werner Falckenberg, who owned a sawmill and factory in Warnick that had been taken over by the Wehrmacht during the war, wrote a letter to his wife on 16 February:
I have written to all the places where you might be, perhaps one of them will reach you. The uncertainly of not knowing where you are, and how you are, is trying. All my thoughts are of you.
We are all right here. Our resistance has strengthened considerably. The Soviets attacked the day before yesterday with 8 tanks, 2 battalions and 4–6,000 rounds of shells from artillery and mortars of various calibres. They wanted to get to the Altstadt via the Bienenhof. Three tanks were knocked out, as was the attack. Yesterday we made several sorties that succeeded, including our own, inflicting considerable casualties on the Russians. Overall the Soviet losses are especially high in comparison to our own.
The following occurred the day before yesterday: a Soviet unit, perhaps a platoon or something similar, approached along the Sonnenburger Chaussee to where the bridge leads to the ‘Pilsenweg’–how lovely it would be if we could both go there again! So the unit was there. A car led the way. Apparently orders were issued, then the man who had got out of the car began to shake everyone by the hand. Of course our people were not asleep, they blasted the unit and the whole business off the chaussee with direct hits from a gun or battery.
Our accommodation is well protected. The Middle School in front of us catches everything.[36]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns recalled:
About the middle of February we officer cadets were marched off to the front line. We marched from the Engineer Barracks across the Warthe Bridge to the premises of an aquatic sports club on the west bank, where we took a rest between two parked pontoons. I looked around for a place to sit down. I saw my comrade Günther Franzak, whom I liked, sitting on an ammunition box in front of a building. As there was another box near him, I sat down on it. ‘Can you keep that place free for Hans, he’s coming back any moment,’ he said. I knew that Günter and Hans Priebenow were friends, so I stood up and sat down on another ammunition box two or three paces away. A moment later both friends were sitting together. Suddenly a mortar bomb fell on the edge of our group and killed both of them. They came from around Küstrin, one being a dairyman and the other a postman. I had sat immediately next to them and remained unwounded, apart from a pronounced deafness in my right ear. After the mortar bomb explosion the remainder of the officer cadets were sent back to Küstrin-Neustadt, where we were accommodated in the hospital in the south-west part of the barracks.
Next day I with two others received orders to report to my old company commander, Lieutenant Schröder, whose command post was in a casemate on the small peninsula between the harbour and winter harbour in front of the swing bridge over the Warthe. The other officer cadets, as far as I know, were deployed in an infantry role on the southern or eastern front. After a few days the news came that one or another had been killed or severely wounded. I heard that one had lost his eyesight from a flare coming out of a flare pistol.[37]