We relieved units of the 25th Panzergrenadier Division and took up positions in the area around Alt Bleyen manor farm, the battalion headquarters and dressing station being set up in the farm. The 2nd Company’s command post was set up in the cellar of one of the few farm labourers’ cottages. The company itself occupied the prepared trenches directly in front of the farm, with a field of fire covering the Schäferei [sheep farm] and Alt Bleyen. The dugouts, however, only provided protection from splinters and light shells. Immediately south-west of the farm were two infantry guns, and two machine guns were positioned about 100 metres south-west from them. From there they could cover the whole western and southern sides with their fire. Another 100 metres further on towards Gorgast was an 88mm flak gun dug in for ground fighting. A communications trench connected these firing points and ended in the trenches we were occupying. The flat terrain started in front of our positions, extending to the Schäferei and Gorgast to the south-west. Far off to the south, towards the railway, a line of trees obstructed our view. The land was completely flat and easy to observe. Behind the labourers’ cottages were three self-propelled guns. The supply route between the hinterland and fortress ran past near the farm. Every night German tracked vehicles went along to the Altstadt and back again.
We obtained our ammunition and food supplies at night, as our supply column was located well behind the main front line. The noise of fighting came from Küstrin and the Gorgast direction all day long. At night fires reddened the sky over the fortress. For us at the Alt Bleyen manor farm Tuesday and Wednesday passed peacefully. We just had to be careful, for the Russian snipers reacted to every movement.[5]
The whole area was now facing four days of aerial bombardment preparatory to the ground attack by the 8th Guards and 5th Shock Armies, as witnessed by Officer Cadet Corporal Fritz Kohlase:
On Wednesday afternoon [21 March] two to three hundred twin-engined Soviet bombers in close formation dropped two bomb carpets on the boundary line near Gorgast. Although the bombing area was 3 kilometres from us, the earth around us shook. This and an otherwise suspicious silence indicated that the next enemy offensive was imminent.[6]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns continued his account:
On 20 March my company command post moved into the cellars of the Court House. It was no longer possible to check the Warthe water level and report it to fortress headquarters, but nobody asked for it. I made my rounds as a messenger under fire, visiting my father every day, on the last occasion just a few hours before his death. I believe this was on 24 March.
I remember that I returned to the Court House at dusk and was given the job of mending a shot-though cable providing power from a generator in the town to the courthouse cellar to enable us to hear the news on the radio. It had become dark, but nevertheless I still had to take cover from the ‘Sewing Machines’ flying overhead and dropping flares and incendiary and explosive bombs on anything that moved. Once the aircraft had flown off, I resumed looking for the break in the cable and was suddenly shocked by a tremendous explosion that must have occurred close by. But I had heard no bomb falling, which shocked me, as it was completely unusual. Soon afterwards I found the fault in the cable, repaired it and turned back for the Court House cellar. Then I heard on the radio the news that Allied troops had crossed the Rhine and were fighting around Dinslaken, my home town.
A little later, an NCO of my company came in and told me that my father’s command post at the Oder Potato Meal Factory had been hit by an incendiary bomb that had ignited a stack of shells. After a while the fire had reached the hand grenades stored there, setting off a violent explosion that had destroyed the north-west side of the factory. Second-Lieutenant Schröter had been left hanging head down in the beams, still conscious, but he died soon afterwards. Nothing had happened to my father, however. So I had another quiet night.
The next morning I went to my company commander asking to go to the Oder Potato Meal Factory to see what had happened. The whole way I thought what the worst could be. The previous evening the NCO had said that my father had not been seen. I found the factory mainly destroyed, above all glowing as hot as an oven so that it was impossible to go in. I then went to the nearby Artillery Barracks to ask Captain Fischer about it. On my way I passed a soldier named Müller in a trench who was in my father’s company and asked about him: ‘I cannot say’, he replied and turned away, and at that moment I knew that my father was dead.
I remember the feeling that suddenly overcame me and blanketed out everything else. I felt no sadness or despair, rather a frightful emptiness before a background that was filled with anxiety, an increasing depression and returning anxiety. A strange rigidity gripped me. If I had recognised it, it was as if I had slipped out of myself.
It was in this state that I met Captain Fischer, who officially informed me that my father was dead and expressed his sympathy. My father had personally led the team trying to extinguish the burning ammunition with water from the Oder and wet sacks. The explosion caused the building to partially collapse, burying the firefighters under the debris. They experienced a mercifully swift death, while those who had survived the collapse in the hollow space beyond were behind a wall of fire that no one could penetrate. Their cries for help could be heard but no one could get through and they were burned alive. Between ten and twenty men of my father’s company died with him.
I went back to the command post in the Court House, but cannot remember what I did or felt.[7]
The 25th Panzergrenadier Division, whose fighting strength had been reduced to 5,196 men by 17 March, had been withdrawn to rest and refit near the village of Friedersdorf on the Seelow Heights. Hitler had come up with the unrealistic idea of using this and three other experienced divisions to attack northwards from Frankfurt, where the Germans still had a bridgehead on the east bank, in order to cut off the Soviet Reitwein-Lebus bridgehead and eventually relieve Küstrin. This operation, which depended upon getting four divisions across the only bridge, was to be achieved within three days commencing on 24 March. On the first day of the operation there was to be a big surprise attack that would methodically destroy the enemy bridges between Frankfurt and Küstrin. However, the Soviets forestalled this plan by attacking on 22 March before it could be implemented, and the 25th Panzergrenadiers had to be thrust back into line in considerable haste.[8]
That same day Colonel General Gotthardt Heinrici, until then commander of the 1st Panzer Army, reported in Zossen to the Chief of the General Staff, Colonel General Heinz Guderian, who had surprised him in Upper Silesia with a telephone call announcing that he was Heinrich Himmler’s successor as commander-in-chief of Army Group ‘Weichsel’. Guderian briefed him on his area of responsibility, which extended from the Baltic to the mouth of the Neisse river, and his forces, which consisted of the 3rd Panzer Army in the north and the 9th Army in the south. Guderian especially stressed the critical situation at Küstrin.
That evening Heinrici arrived at the Army Group Headquarters near Prenzlau, where Himmler received him in front of a portrait of Frederick the Great, saying that his relief was due to some important tasks that Hitler had given him. He then gave a widely rambling account of his leadership since January. Then came an important telephone call. The commander-in-chief of the 9th Army reported that a Soviet attack to combine the two bridgeheads, cutting off Küstrin, had occurred. Himmler handed the telephone to Heinrici saying: ‘You now command the army group.’