Luftwaffe Gunner Josef Stefanski barely escaped over the Oder:
On the night of 28/29 March I tried with other comrades to cross over the already blown Oder Bridge. It was an almost impossible undertaking. We climbed over the rubble of the bridge in the darkness. Part of the way we had to slide over the upper works of the bridge as the lower part was under water. The Oder was in flood and had a strong current. A comrade of mine slipped and drowned. I could only hold on with the last of my strength, but on the morning of 29 March I made it, I had crossed the Oder.[7]
Sapper Ernst Müller remembered:
The following night [28 March] I spent partly in the Artillery Barracks, partly in provisionally constructed positions behind the Altstadt railway station. The cellars of the barracks were packed with wounded.[8]
By Thursday, 29 March the Soviet attack could no longer be restrained. Again swarms of aircraft dived on the Altstadt and, after their last bombs had been dropped, the artillery fired for 40 minutes, including the three 203mm batteries dug in on both dykes only 400 metres from the fortress. The attack from the south began at 0830 hours. When the Volkssturm formally surrendered, together with the main dressing station in the Boys’ Middle School, fighting was still going on in the ruins of the Altstadt and the Grossen Glacis, which was like a woodland park, but the last shots were fired at about midday. Á first Soviet count gave 1,760 prisoners, including presumably the wounded in the Boys’ Middle School.
Meanwhile Reinefarth’s group that had crossed the Oder to the Island during the night had to withstand some strong attacks, but held on to the area around the Artillery Barracks and the Altstadt railway station until the evening of the 29th, when Reinefarth convened an officers’ conference to discuss the situation. The overwhelming opinion was that, in view of the heavy losses, lack of heavy weapons and ammunition, as well as the exhausted state of the troops, they would be unable to withstand a further Soviet attack. Reinefarth referred to the last Führer-Order forbidding him to abandon Küstrin, but admitted that further resistance was impossible and, although the breakout of the remains of the garrison was forbidden, he gave the commanders permission to decide matters for themselves, thus absolving himself of responsibility for the decision.
The timing of the breakout was agreed and unit preparations were made. Only hand and close-quarter weapons were to be carried, everything else being left behind. Non-walking wounded would also have to remain behind. Individuals ripped up their pay books and discarded their medals and decorations.
Reinefarth issued his last radio message: ‘The enemy has reached the Artillery Barracks–Island no longer tenable–attacking west of the Oder.’ He sent SS-Captain Siedke to inform District Party Leader and Mayor Körner and his team, who had meanwhile moved into Kuhbrücken as there was no room for them in the Artillery Barracks, and himself arrived shortly afterwards. Meanwhile the decimated combat groups withdrew over the Vorflut Canal, blew the bridges and gathered along the dyke between Kietz and Kuhbrücken. The cellars of the few houses in this area offered a semblance of shelter to a lucky few against the hail of mortar bombs. Apart from the occasional skirmish, the preparations were relatively undisturbed. The troops divided themselves into several columns, each of which would try independently to reach the German lines in front of the Seelow Heights about 7 kilometres away.[9]
Sapper Ernst Müller recalled:
It looked bad for us. The enemy occupied the last part of the Altstadt on the morning of 29 March. He had already landed on the Island between the Oder and the Vorflut Canal and was attacking the Artillery Barracks from the south. Our unit now only held a small bridgehead west of the Vorflut Canal. We no longer had any heavy weapons, only hand weapons, machine guns, hand grenades and Panzerfausts. Water for drinking could only be obtained at risk of one’s life from the Oder or from a pump in full view of the enemy. I had not changed my clothes for three weeks.
On the evening of the 29th I escorted Captain Fischer to a conference with an artillery officer, where the breakout from the fortress was discussed: to the west, attacking the Russian positions in three ranks with the Fortress Engineer Battalion in the centre led by Sergeant-Major Schulz.[10]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns was also caught up in the chaos:
We left the bunker and moved parallel to the railway towards the Oder. We had two rubber dinghies, one large and one small, but had to leave the big one behind. We simply could not get it out of the undergrowth. The little one was extricated without trouble and quickly inflated. The company picked it up and launched it from the middle of the railway bridge. ‘I’ll come back for you!’ called Lieutenant Schröder from the boat, waved and vanished. Many soldiers were in front of the railway bridge and on its intact part. The noise of combat came clearly from the middle of the Altstadt. Possibly some were able to crawl over the girders to the far bank, but they went so slowly there seemed to be no chance for all those waiting to get across.
Among the men on the east bank I thought I recognised Dr Feldmann in uniform, the former head doctor at Küstrin Hospital. I had once been entertained by him with my father while I was still a civilian. It was obvious that he had given up the attempt to cross to the opposite bank.
With several comrades I went along the road bridge to where two bits of it lay in the water. Now we had to hurry, for the darkness was slowly giving way to the dawn. I crawled along the left upper girder until it sank into the water and dived across with widely spread arms over the strong current to the other upper girder, which led back out of the water. I pulled across a comrade who could not swim with a rope from the other side, and we crawled along until this upper girder also went into the water.
This time the distance across the water was even greater. I took off my uniform jacket and asked my comrade, who had come behind me, to throw my bread sack and jacket–all that I owned–after me when I got across. I would then pull him across with the rope. But my attempt to reach the upper girder on the other side failed. A really strong current grabbed me, drove me away, and I came to the bank at the end of the Oder Potato Meal Factory, only a few metres from where my father lay under the rubble.
Meanwhile the day had begun to dawn. An NCO behind me had stripped himself naked in order to swim more easily. His pale body could be seen from the opposite side and there was some infantry fire, but, God be praised, he was not hit. I then tried to get to the western end of the bridge to help the others, but the first part of the bridge went straight down into the water. It had no handrail, making impossible any attempt to approach the place in the stream where some of the comrades were.
I hung up my clothes to dry in the Artillery Barracks and was given bits of clothing by several people. All I could find for my feet were some rubber boots. Outside it was full daylight. I came out of the cellars and thought over recent events. I knew from the Führer-Order that Küstrin was to be defended to the last man and the last bullet. Some German aircraft came–the first that I had seen for a long time–and I later heard that they had dropped ammunition.
For me this hour, in its short silence as the battle took its breath, was the hour of truth. All my experiences forced me to the certainty that the great majority of Germans, and above all German youth, had been frightfully mishandled by leaders who claimed power and used it ruthlessly to constantly overtax the people, while at the same time being totally cynical about all the consequences. Whoever died was a hero, whoever survived had failed. That was the logic of our damnation.