During the night I suggested we lay our weapons outside the bunker door and stick up a white flag. Second-Lieutenant Metz agreed. On the bunker steps sat four young German-Brazilians, who had come by a neutral ship via Portugal, Spain and southern France and reached Küstrin in December 1944. They were very proud and said that they would not go into Soviet captivity but would shoot themselves. Although I could only speak with difficulty, I tried to get them to change their minds: ‘The Russians can shoot us, but perhaps we will survive.’ It did not help. As we were leaving the bunker, they shot themselves.
Meanwhile I was wearing a blood-soaked bandage over my mouth. One of my Berlin comrades said: ‘Half your mouth is gone.’ On the morning of 9 March the first Russian came down the bunker steps and said: ‘All comrades out!’ and aimed his sub-machine gun going backwards. As I was sitting next to the steps, I went first.[14]
On 9 March the barricades on the streets leading to the centre of the Altstadt were manned. Some were already closed, others only passable through a narrow gap. All were waiting for the enemy to cross the Warthe. For the first time in days there were no swarms of bombers overhead, but instead ground-attack aircraft filled the skies. Smoke and fire made exact observation of the approaches in the parts of the Neustadt near the riverbank impossible. The only certain thing was that fighting was still going on in the factory area. Most of the radio links had been broken, many sets presumably destroyed in the heavy fighting or lost. Occasional contacts gave no overall picture.
‘It cracks and thunders without pause. The walls of the courthouse shake, our candles flicker uneasily and a badly-burning carbide lamp goes out more than once from the blast of explosions’, noted a Volkssturm member of the quartermaster unit stationed in the Altstadt. ‘Just about everyone is thinking about their end when an officer pulls open the door: “The Russians are coming in rubber boats over the Warthe. The trenches behind the building are now the front line. Occupy them immediately!” We hesitate. What can we do outside without weapons? He goes off making threats but does not come back.’
There was in fact no effective attempt to make a landing. The Soviet regiments were putting everything into the destruction of the Neustadt garrison, which had been split during the course of the day into three groups. The backbone of the largest and most strongly defended sector comprised the massive defence installations of the Infantry and Engineer Barracks, together with the Neues Werke bastion. Also in the sector were the goods station, the big rations stores and the Water Works. The two knots of resistance in the west were in essence focused around the Potato Meal Factory and the Rütgers Werke. The third sector consisted mainly of the now-ruined shopping centre between the Neumarkt, Stern and Moltkeplatz that was linked to the river by gardens and meadowland. Lacking any substantial buildings, this area was now only just defendable. The terrain was already more of a place for flight rather than fighting for those soldiers who had lost their units. There was no coordinated fighting command any more, and it seemed no one had the strength or the initiative to combine the forces available, in order for the survivors to withdraw in a controlled way to the more solid sector to the north-east.
Already on the previous day it had been noticed that some units of the Soviet artillery that were originally directed against the Neustadt had changed their target to the Altstadt. In the close-quarters street-fighting in progress, with its frequently changing points of main effort and the close engagement of friend and foe, the most useful weapons were self-propelled guns, tanks and mortars. The dwellings built shortly before the war on the demolished walls and ditches on the Warthe side of the Altstadt island offered no worthwhile resistance to the shells. A few hits soon knocked down the thin walls from roof to cellar. These mainly free-standing buildings and new housing blocks had only shallow cellars, so no troops had taken cover there and therefore no one had bothered to risk their lives putting out fires there. Elsewhere in the inner town, where cellar after cellar lay under the massive buildings, the loss of quarters could be compensated with equally good accommodation. A row of quartermaster trucks with empty petrol tanks long since parked here and of no further use were left to burn. Even after dark Soviet planes flew over Küstrin and the town hall was badly damaged by a bomb after being previously damaged by shellfire, like all the other buildings on the market place.
The situation in Kietz also worsened. Following a heavy artillery preparation, during the course of the day Soviet tanks reached almost as far as the Vorflut Canal bridges. Once again the link to the last way out to the hinterland was under acute threat. Consequently the supply convoys ceased operating, taking with them (presumably) the last civilians from the place. They had to wait, as did a small group the previous evening, before room could be found for them among the densely packed wounded. There was no longer a reception camp waiting for the civilians. It was up to them how they got to Seelow to beg onward transport to Berlin the next day.
As the fighting continued in the Neustadt, staff at Headquarters XIth SS-Panzer Corps hastened to formulate some justification for the collapse there in a secret report entitled ‘Over the Fighting in Küstrin Fortress’. Well aware that higher command would demand some reason for the disaster, or at least the name of the person responsible, they pointed the finger at Reinefarth. They blamed him for Colonel Walter’s failure to hold the Neustadt sector, remarking that Reinefarth had brushed aside criticism of his choice as Sector commander, declaring Walter ‘suitable’. They made it quite clear who was to blame, writing that: ‘Colonel Walter was personally selected by the fortress commandant for this task.’ Their criticism went much further than this apparently faulty decision. ‘The failure of the staff involved to provide tactically responsible command assistance made command more difficult’, they wrote, and ‘the whole communications system of the fortress must be considered completely inadequate’. To cover their own backs, the staff report concluded: ‘The Corps has taken into account the use of overlaying communications (telephone, teleprinter and radio) as well as the daily despatch of liaison officers.’[15]
Corporal Hans Arlt recounted his experiences:
We were relieved on 9 March and had two days in the von Stülpnagel Barracks to sleep it off, clean ourselves up and change our underwear. Although this was necessary, we found little peace as the situation became worse and we were surrounded.[16]
Sapper Karl-Heinz Peters concluded his account:
All hell broke loose at daybreak on 9 March. Ceaseless drumfire of all calibres covered our sector. Machine guns were also firing. Suddenly I saw how the Russians were launching long thin boats on the opposite embankment. I began firing at them, causing them to give up their attempt to cross, but they resumed after a while. Again I was able to prevent them. Excitedly, I fired without interruption. Meanwhile my carbine became hot. I was standing in a well-camouflaged position in the embankment immediately off the western end of the bridge. Suddenly two machine guns were firing at me. The enemy had found me.
Then a belt of machine-gun fire caught me. I felt a hard blow on my left shoulder and could not lift my arm any more. Blood was running out of my sleeve. I thought I had been shot in the lungs, for I started breathing hard, but this could later be attributed to fear and overstress. In panic I ran back to our machine-gun position. At last I reached the end of this short stretch. It was without cover and the dam in front looked as if it had been ploughed up, but thank God my comrades were still alive. I reported the situation at the Warthe and took myself to the company command post. The machine-gun team was immediately sent to the road bridge. From the bursts of fire from their MG 42 that I could hear, I gathered that they were dealing with the rest of the enemy boats.