During the course of the afternoon I looked for the rest of my company and found them in the cellar of another block in the Artillery Barracks. As I wanted to get my dry clothes, for I had nothing else other than trousers and shoes on, and went to get them, the cellar was blocked by SS sentries who would not let anyone out. ‘We are breaking out!’ was the word. A sergeant gave me an assault rifle: ‘Take it, I don’t need it any more.’
Shortly afterwards we marched as quietly as possible over the railway bridge and then turned right on the narrow strip of land between the road and the canal that delineated the front line here. There was no cover apart from a narrow trench in the bank of the chaussee and that was much too small to take the several hundred men moving north-west between the water and the road. Mortar bombs would have caused terrible losses.
Finally the groups of men closed up as the leaders stopped and then we climbed down the bank in complete silence. Of course we were expecting enemy rifle fire to break out but despite our fears, it remained quiet and the men formed into three columns, which moved through the uncertainty of the dark night in single file.[11]
Sergeant Horst Wewetzer also recalled the events of that night:
On 29 March 1945 we still held the Artillery Barracks area, the Küstrin-Altstadt railway station and surroundings, the abattoir and the north-western corner of the Island, i.e. everything between the Oder and the Oder-Vorflut Canal. Further on we held Lunette Dora, the causeway from the Oder-Vorflut Canal bridges to Kuhbrücken-Vorstadt and the suburb itself. The enemy had pushed up close to our positions and was said to have advanced from the south to within about 50 metres, breaching distance, of the Artillery Barracks.
This everyone knew would be the last day of ‘Fortress’ Küstrin. My impression of an organised defence was over. Each unit, as far as such organisations still existed, was defending itself wherever it happened to be. Everyone sought an acceptable compromise between their duties as a soldier and self-preservation, for unfortunately, as everyone knew, the Fatherland could not now be saved.
On this last day I moved into Lunette Dora as I was determined not to become a prisoner of the Russians and wanted to get as far west as possible. That afternoon I performed an infantry role for several hours on the Vorflut Canal causeway, as the infantry previously deployed there had abandoned their foxholes, presumably because of the continuous Soviet mortar fire. It was in fact very unpleasant, but we held on until dark, when the Russians ceased fire.
Going back to Lunette Dora, I discovered that the fortress commandant, SS-General Reinefarth, had tried to obtain permission from Führer Headquarters to break out with the remainder of the garrison, but Berlin had refused, having the intention of ‘sending us into the history books’, as it was rather pathetically called when sending victims into last stands. The officers had then gone to the commandant to appeal to him to break out without permission, as it was tactically and strategically the same whether the fortress was abandoned that night or the next day.
That evening the officers returned at something between 1800 and 1900 hours and told us that a breakout would be made, despite the Führer-Order, but participation would be voluntary. This decision released me from my conflict of conscience whether to desert or not. Those wishing to take part got themselves ready. Anything that made a noise was discarded, faces were blackened, radios rendered unserviceable and thrown into the moat surrounding the Lunette. Not all the soldiers in the Lunette were taking part. While I oiled my assault rifle, others lay around sleeping.
We were told that the breakout would be made in four groups. Those from the Lunette and its vicinity would be in the southernmost. As Kietz had long since been in Soviet hands, no one would be breaking out between Kietz and ourselves. We assembled on the causeway and then moved about 200–300 metres north-west along it to reach our start point.[12]
At about 2300 hours the assembled troops thrust forward into the Oderbruch along a broad front of about 2 kilometres. A dark night with low-hanging clouds and rain showers favoured the enterprise. The progress of the main group containing Reinefarth and guided by Senior Corporal Friedrich Kruse, a local inhabitant, is described by District Leader Hermann Körner in some detail in Annex C.
The first Soviet line, where no German action from that direction was apparently expected, was relatively quickly overrun. But then came close-quarter fighting with rifle butts, knives and spades, and a furious exchange of shots that immediately alerted the whole sector, and the action dissolved into numerous individual fights. The next trenches could only be taken with high losses. One 30-man team pushed through almost a kilometre to the north to reach the Tannenhof sheep farm.
Fearing a Soviet night attack, and apparently unaware of the last radio message from Küstrin, the German artillery also started firing on the breakout area, and several groups ran straight into its salvoes. At dawn the survivors, soaked through from having crossed numerous ponds and irrigation ditches, and close to nervous and physical collapse, reached the 9th Army’s positions at several places in the Oderbruch. Army Group Headquarters reported 32 officers and 965 NCOs and men of the Küstrin garrison having got through. However, they bore the stigma of not having fought to the last man, and an investigation of the commandant was ordered.[13]
Lieutenant Victor Hadamczik was the adjutant at the headquarters of the 20th Panzergrenadier Division, commanded by Colonel Scholze:
Shortly before the attack on Berlin began, elements of the Küstrin garrison broke out at night. Colonel Scholze (the divisional commander) ordered me to take two vehicles and two or three men to look for the Küstrin garrison men fleeing through our lines and take them to certain collecting points. He came up close and said: ‘Should the commandant of the fortress, an SS officer, be among them, bring him to the divisional command post.’
During the course of the morning a vehicle carrying an SS-General approached and I informed him of my task. He told me: ‘You surely have enough to do,’ and had me show him on the map where the command post was. When I reported back to the command post late that afternoon, I was asked about the SS-General. He had not reported there and Scholze threatened me with court-martial for not fulfilling his orders.[14]
Lieutenant Erich Bölke was also part of the breakout:
As we paraded on the dyke of the Vorflut Canal near the railway bridge for the breakout on the night of 29/30 March, the word was passed: ‘Second-Lieutenant Bölke and his men to lead!’ We crossed the dyke road quite a distance further north. Some considerable time later we stumbled on some quiet Soviet tanks. Until then there had been no enemy activity. The quiet ended when a German soldier shot an enemy tanks in flames with a Panzerfaust. The Russians raised the alarm, manned their tanks and drove apart. Shortly afterwards there was the sound of a mighty explosion behind us coming from the direction of Küstrin, and I saw the flames of an explosion. From then on the devil was loose behind us.
We came across Russians in a trench. One of them threw a hand grenade. I was lucky and was only wounded by a splinter but lost my men through it. In front of the German lines I stumbled over a tripwire. The German artillery was firing a barrage at us! When I looked at my watch, it was 0345 hours.[15]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns also broke out of Küstrin that night: