Notices displayed in the town announced the Fortress Commandant’s order that coal and potatoes could be taken from abandoned buildings. Everything else was considered as looting and would be severely punished with death. This almost included me, as I took a half-filled bottle of paraffin from the cellar of Siedler’s Waldgastätte pub. I wanted to soak the damp wood in our bunker stove with it, but I was caught by Captain von Oldershausen, who was accompanying my company commander. The battalion commander wanted to make an example of me and demanded a statement as the basis for a court martial. Second-Lieutenant Fleischer was able to prevent this, but was himself given a severe reprimand at the battalion command post next day.
While on a reconnaissance of the area at the beginning of February, we had come across some cans of sausage in the cellars of the abandoned hospital in the woods. Each of us three soldiers took a full box of cans. Speed was needed to cross the railway embankment, which was under enemy observation. Anyone moving attracted at least Russian mortar fire. When we returned next day, the cellars had been emptied.
By the end of February our rations were even more reduced. Apart from this, the warm rations were cold by the time they reached us, and our displeasure could be seen on our faces. The paymaster responsible appeared with a drawn pistol, being concerned for his own safety while the food was being handed out.
After four weeks in action our platoon had earned a rest in the von Stülpnagel Barracks. Meanwhile a heavy machine gun was deployed in support of our position in the Kohlenweg-Zorndorfer Chaussee crossing, its crew being Waffen-SS.[14]
Kietz came under fire all day on 27 February, but was not attacked. However, as the OKW report put it, the enemy was able ‘to enlarge his small bridgehead south of Küstrin a little with the aid of strong artillery support’. In the town area, mortars and light guns kept the Warthe crossings under fire. The team protecting the bridges withdrew to trenches and earth bunkers on the banks of the Winterhafen (winter harbour) on the west bank. A prominent building here was the boathouse, which stood on a small hillock above the harbour and so became a target for all the shots coming over the roads and bridges. Even this deeply cut bay was not safe from mortar fire. An old steam paddleboat long since withdrawn from service already lay here with its bows ashore, its funnel shot away and its wooden decks and contents long since burnt in the bunker stoves.
A horse and cart trying to take advantage of a pause in the firing had just reached the middle of the bridge when a direct hit tore the horse apart, smashing the cart and injuring the driver, the wreckage momentarily halting the traffic between the Altstadt and Neustadt. However, the Soviets were apparently not intending to destroy the bridge completely, for they could have done so long before with aimed bomb attacks and intensive use of large calibre guns. The assumption was that they reckoned on using the crossing themselves in due course and would also profit from the railway station. Even the Feste Küstrin said: ‘We still do not know when the storm from the east will be stopped…’. Nevertheless the newspaper continued to insist that: ‘Every German town, every German village, every small market town, every crossroad must be a fanatically defended bulwark. A German must be waiting for the enemy with a Panzerfaust from behind every cellar window, from behind every bush, and nail him when he comes.’
Gauleiter Stürtz arrived with the first evening convoy, apparently to reassure himself that people in Küstrin were conducting themselves as was expected. He conferred with Reinefarth, Mayor/District Leader Körner, and the former Landsberg district farmers’ leader Herr Siedke, who had meantime taken up a kind of chief-of-staff function in the local Party office. A robust, healthy man, he had somehow managed to avoid the military service he had been threatened with three days previously when rebuked with his colleagues.
Stürtz saw neither simple soldiers, Volkssturm men nor civilians before he climbed into the co-driver’s seat of a tracked vehicle, waved at those remaining behind and vanished into the darkness. Crouching in one of the vehicles in the convoy were the inhabitants of the town’s old folks’ home, who had been deserted by most of their carers and had hardly dared move outdoors since. When the vehicles arrived in Seelow, no one knew what to do with these old people. The latest fighting around the Soviet bridgehead at Reitwein had thrown the little town into confusion, especially as the population had received orders to evacuate that same day. Even in the offices, suitcases and rucksacks stood next to the desks ready for flight. The evacuees had to wait until morning in unheated pubs or even on the streets for transport to take them on, but Stürtz had only to get into his staff car to get away.[15]
By 28 February a month had already passed since the first Soviet tank appeared in the town on a frosty Wednesday. The ‘Gateway to Berlin’ was being held, even though the walls on either side had started to crumble. Küstrin was the leading point of a narrow wedge between the two bridgeheads, between the 5th Shock Army in the north and the 8th Guards Army in the south, that the XIth SS-Panzer Corps under SS-Gruppenführer Mathias Kleinheisterkamp was still able to contain. It required no general staff education to appreciate that the Soviets must overcome this obstacle before they could start another campaign. Only the date and the possible tactical variations remained in question: a direct attack on the fortress, or its complete encirclement.
All the observers said that the enemy in the extensive woods northeast of the Neustadt were ready to attack. From there it was only 3 kilometres to the Warthe bridges, and even less from the flanks near Drewitz and Warnick. The field positions on the town perimeter were being systematically extended. Volkssturm men, for example, were working on an anti-tank ditch opposite Warnick in front of the Engineer Barracks. The barracks themselves had been developed into a strongpoint, the surrounding wall reinforced with sandbag barricades and barbed wire. Camouflage nets hung over the entrance and there were notices warning of enemy observation and snipers. Until recently it had not been necessary to have the greater part of the armed forces available in the front line. The ‘unreliable’ Hungarians and the so-called Eastern Peoples’ Volunteers were now building anti-tank barriers in the streets of the inner town.
It will be recalled that the Neustadt sector commandant was Feldgendarmerie Colonel Franz Walter, who had been personally selected by Reinefarth for this position, presumably because they knew each other from the past, and despite severe criticism from the Corps staff. Walter was now in a difficult position. Should Soviet tanks penetrate the town, the newly built anti-tank barriers were only capable of holding them at bay for a few hours at best. Saving some of the troops and the most valuable parts of their equipment would only be possible under cover of darkness. However, that entailed–should the storm begin in the morning as expected–at least ten hours’ resistance, or an hour’s street-fighting for every 300 metres, an hour of blood-letting for the average distance between two bus-stops, should there be anything left to save.
Should the enemy have the nerve to cross the Warthe, which was only the width of a canal in places, they would come up against the nucleus of the fortress at its most vulnerable point. The Warthe frontage of the mighty rectangle of bastions that once enclosed the Altstadt had been reduced to almost nothing in the early 1930s, the demolished and levelled terrain having been built on only sparsely. There were few support positions for the defence, and the high water table near the bank severely limited the construction of earthworks. All the streets and alleys leading from this side to the centre of the Altstadt had barricades that could be quickly closed in an emergency. Even the side doors to these streets were blocked. Thus in one still-used building the only way to the cellar was barred and it could only be reached from the back yard. The engineers, who did not value its use too highly, let themselves be persuaded by the occupants to provide them with access by means of a set of stable steps to the adjoining property.