Although we were still delighted to be defending the Fatherland and believed in final victory, none of us was looking for a hero’s death. The possibility of imprisonment hardly occurred to us, as we had often heard from people in the front line how the Russians killed prisoners. There only remained the high risk and unpleasantness connected with crossing the Warthe. Various possibilities were discussed among the stragglers and those thrown together. Above all, the crossing of the Warthe could only be done under cover of darkness, as the sector concerned was under enemy observation and fire in daylight. Even in the darkness there was the danger of being seen through the light of fires and flares.
Together with my classmates Blauberg and Chmilewski, I decided to swim across the Warthe. Salvation before our eyes and the danger behind us gave us unusual strength to overcome the cold and wet. Staying together so as to be able to help one another if necessary, we reached the bank of the Altstadt peninsula. Two others from our school, Roeder and Specht, must also have swum across, for we met up with them again in the Altstadt in our next job. How the last two got across I have no idea, nor do I know what happened to our officer-cadet comrades. I don’t remember what clothing we wore to swim across. I only know that we reached the far bank and walked on a few steps. Then my strength must have deserted me. I awoke in a cellar of the Boys’ Senior School in front of the Oder bridge in the Altstadt. I was lying on a double-decker bunk under several water pipes and had no idea where I was for quite a long time.[4]
Officer Cadet Alfred Kraus also recalled the violence of the Soviet assault:
On 7 March the long-expected offensive from Alt Drewitz began. The Russians broke through to the southern end of Drewitzer Strasse and reached the railway embankment. On the morning of the 8th, Lieutenant Schellenberg took two sections from the north-western position and made a front facing southeast with them and the headquarters troop. As we in the Cellulose Factory did not know the reasons for this, we first thought the company commander wanted to go this way over the nearest railway bridge across the Warthe into the Altstadt. From the factory premises we established that the Russians were pressing from the three landward sides and only the fourth side bordering the Warthe was free.
Surrounded by the Russians, Lieutenant Schellenberg surrendered with both sections and the company headquarters troop. As all the others put their hands up, my barrack room comrade, Heinrich von Kölichen, wearing his steel helmet and overcoat, jumped into the Warthe. The Russians shot at him and hit him in the head. When he went under we all thought he was dead. But I met him about eight years later in Münich and worked with him in his business until his death 30 years later.[5]
Luftwaffe Gunner Josef Stefanski recalled:
From mid-February we were in the Neustadt Schützenstrasse with our two guns. At about the beginning of March, I was assigned to an infantry role in my battery. An anti-tank ditch was dug right across Schützenstrasse at about the level of the Apollo Cinema. Russian tanks breaking through were supposed to be stopped there.
When the Russians attacked the Neustadt they came from an unexpected direction and we had to withdraw. I was able to get over the Warthe railway bridge to the Altstadt. The swinging part of the bridge had already been pulled aside. We laid a wooden plank across to the swinging part to get across. As the plank was not very secure, some comrades slipped and fell into the water. No one could pull them out under the enemy fire. I crept across on all fours.
We were immediately sent into the trenches on the Gorin at the Böhmerwald Restaurant to prevent possible Russian attempts to cross.[6]
And Sergeant Horst Wewetzer had to take charge of his section:
Meanwhile my troop leader had been killed and I had to take over the role of observer myself. That was not the worst part. The artillery chief of staff had let it be known that the heavy weapons would be firing at a gap-free system of target areas, and thus not from the map. The whole thing had the air of a desk-bound illusion. It was hard to believe that two light infantry guns and a heavy mortar would be able to shoot on these lines, which took no account of their slow rate of fire, and depended upon numerous guns being available, which was not the case. Apart from that, we had not only one but several target areas to cover. The impossibility was clear to me as a mere NCO laden with a false responsibility.
In fact my superior, Second-Lieutenant Pfeiffer, had to take over the observation post. I asked him to come to the observation post, in order to see him at least once, as there was only an NCO on duty. He came. It was 7 March 1945. We climbed up the air raid observation tower, but when the second lieutenant saw the big hole in the roof made by the Russian anti-tank gun, the blood on the floor and the splintered map board of the artillery observer who had been killed here, he took a quick look at the landscape and we climbed back down into the cellar, where I was accommodated with my signalmen and had prepared a little breakfast with the motto: Always hopeful!
We had hardly taken our first bite when the dreadful din of the Russian barrage broke over us. It was proper drumfire–perhaps like the First World War in Flanders. I do not know how long it lasted. Who was watching the clock? We all knew that Ivan was attacking. It was also obvious that no one could survive the drumfire on the front line. Through the cellar window we could see big chunks of the upper storeys of the field hospital falling. The hospital doctors’ quarters and the housing estate houses through which the front line ran were being smashed to the ground. I stood at the cellar gable exit and waited for the fire to ease off. When it did so, I could hear the tanks moving and the firing of sub-machine guns. The attack was under way.
When the firing of tank guns and handguns had about reached the level of the field hospital, the second lieutenant, his sergeant and I ran out of the cellar and behind the building. The signalmen and most of the infantry remained in the cellars. The first barrage had destroyed our communications. It was hoped that some of those remaining in the buildings would get out, but those that remained were all lost.
During the first day of the attack the Russians had taken half of the Neustadt as I saw it. Of the leadership on our side in the Neustadt nothing can be said, they had all gone.[7]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns found himself a witness to some horrors:
There were some quiet and warm days at the beginning of March that we enjoyed in front of the casemate on our sheltered peninsula. We had three or four hens, whose eggs were shared among the men. Things changed when the Soviet troops reached the east bank of the Warthe and attacked over the river.
My company commander was extremely concerned when the ordered demolition of the damaged road bridge for which he was responsible failed to work at first, as he imagined himself being put in front of a court martial. The delay, however, was advantageous, for several people were able to get back safely before the bridge finally blew up.
Four or five members of my company were captured by the Russians at the engineers’ water training place on the east bank of the Warthe. One of them, whose mother tongue was Polish, was able to understand the Soviet soldiers. They argued as to who should take the prisoners back and then, as no one wanted to, they switched their sub-machine guns to single shots and shot them one after the other. Only the witness was able to save himself as, thanks to his knowledge of the language, he realised early enough what was going to happen. Knowing the area well from his training time, he threw himself desperately into the water and swam across the Oder to us. He told us everything.