Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns was one of the lucky ones:
As I recall, for three days we had special rations, even chocolate in round tins intended for airmen or U-boat crews. I was given new trousers, a summer field jacket, two handkerchiefs, and a set of underwear, a mess tin, a spoon and a knife, a gas mask in a canister and a canvas washing kit, but no boots, no overcoat, no cap, no steel helmet, no fork and no toothbrush. I was given a new pay book on 5 April, my 18th birthday, but without a photograph, which had to be dispensed with at this time. I was then given a few days to recover before I was sent to a company at Wriezen in which no one knew each other.[5]
Lieutenant Erich Bölke also survived the breakout, but his treatment at the hands of the Germans was hardly what he had expected:
With others that had broken through, I was taken to the Mars-la-Tour Barracks in Fürstenwalde. Next morning, Easter Saturday, we were issued with new clothing, and in the process I met Captain Langenhahn again and followed him into a room where I saw Captain Wüstenhagen. The Küstrin officers had had to give up their weapons and had been placed under guard. They were in a building with double sentries at the entrance. SS-Gruppenführer Reinefarth’s quarters were somewhere else. When going for a walk he was always escorted by two other SS officers. I often talked with Captain Langenhahn and he said among other things that he would ask the Führer for his officers to be released.
That Easter Saturday, 31 March, we celebrated our reunion with beer and schnapps, as originally it had been said that I had been killed. Other officers took part, including Major Fenske and a captain decorated with the Knight’s Cross. During our celebrations an ADC appeared and informed us that all officers from the former Küstrin fortress were to appear in the officers’ mess next morning at 0900 hours.
If I remember correctly, there were 30 or so officers in the Officers’ Mess on Easter Sunday. There the Führer-Order to continue the fight for the Küstrin fortress was read out to us. Then began the individual interrogations.
I was questioned two or three times. We were asked why we had not complied with the Führer-Order and had taken part in the breakout. When I said that in Küstrin basically we could only bring a few weapons against the Russians and in the end had hardly any ammunition left, the interrogating officer said: ‘It would have been better if you had had an assault knife on your back to slit the throat of a Russian and now lay dead in Küstrin rather than sit here before me.’ I then said that I had received an order to break out. I was not accused by him of other things at the further interrogations, but he upset me by saying that the Führer was disappointed with his officer corps. It went similarly with Captain Langenhahn.
After that we continued to remain under arrest while awaiting the decision of the Führer. Then it was at last said that we all had to serve afresh and should volunteer for front-line duty. Captain Langenhahn volunteered immediately and told me: ‘Bölke, you are coming with me!’ I obeyed his order. Captain Langenhahn had several times telephoned people he knew at a central location during the Fürstenwalde process and kept himself informed of what was going on. His idea was to be posted to the Werwolf in Thuringia, as he came from Friedrichroda, where his father was a priest. But that was not allowed and front-line engagement against the Russians was demanded. Captain Wüstenhagen and Major Fenske remained behind. The latter said to me that I should remain in Fürstenwalde and let Captain Langenhahn go ahead on his own, but I could not do that. Meanwhile several days had passed since our breakout from Küstrin.
We reported back to duty with the artillery in the Mars-la-Tour Barracks. We went to our allocated sector of the front between the Märkischer Schweiz and Wreizen via the Anhalter railway station in Berlin. The officer positions in the new unit were already taken, making us surplus to establishment.
When the Russians started their main offensive on 16 April, my last unit neared its end, in which I survived the following experience. I was supervising the change of position of the artillery train. Captain Langenhahn sent a sergeant as a dispatch rider back from the front that I could meantime send on a short journey. Then he was to report back to me and return immediately to Captain Langenhahn. I waited and waited for him. The sergeant turned up hours later. The Feldgendarmerie had arrested him and some others. Those not carrying weapons were shot in the presence of those carrying them. The latter were then sent into action and their previous orders declared invalid. The sergeant had used a suitable opportunity to escape with the motorcycle. Neither of us understood what was going on any more.
On 19 April 1945 I was captured in Reichenow, near Strausberg. We were surrounded and wanted to break out. Captain Langenhahn fell from a shot in the head during this action. His adjutant and I then occupied the servants’ quarters of a manor. Later the adjutant shot himself.
I met Major Hassler in Soviet captivity in the Posen and Dorpat camps. He had been the flak commander in Küstrin. He had not taken part in the breakout but had been captured. He told me that when he was captured, the Russians had already known his name and rank and even his last appointment.[6]
Ad hoc units formed from demoralised survivors of the Küstrin garrison were later deployed in the defence of Seelow main railway station at the foot of the Seelow Heights and were involved in the Soviet assault of 16 April 1945, when they were overrun on the first evening.[7]
SS-Gruppenführer Reinefarth clearly had a lot of explaining to do. His somewhat shaky account of his actions is to be found in Annex B. Luckily for him, it does not appear to have come under Hitler’s close scrutiny, presumably because the latter was engaged with more urgent matters by that time. The result was that Reinefarth got away with his failure to obey Hitler’s orders. As Norman Davies wrote:
In the final reckoning, relatively few of the Nazi murder-mongers who had operated in Warsaw met with the retribution that they had earned. SS-Gruppenführer Reinefarth, for example, escaped scot-free. After leaving Warsaw, he was appointed commander of the fortress of Küstrin. But in the chaos of the German collapse in March 1945 he was arrested for leaving his post. This incident no doubt helped his later claim to have been an anti-Nazi Resistance fighter. All attempts to have him extradited to Poland were vetoed by the Americans to whom he had surrendered and for whom he acted as an adviser on Soviet military methods. So he was free to pursue a political career in West Germany. He never stood trial, and publicly denied that he had ever been a member of the SS.[8]
Yet in Warsaw: ‘They concentrated on massacring every man, woman and child in sight. No one was spared–not even nuns, nurses, hospital patients, doctors, invalids, or babies. Estimates of the noncombatant victims in the suburbs of Ohota and Vola vary from 20,000 to 50,000.’[9] Worse stilclass="underline" ‘Reinefarth complained about the shortage of ammunition. “We just can’t kill them all,” he grumbled. On 5 August alone an estimated 35,000 men, women and children were shot by the SS in cold blood.’[10]
Reinefarth was released from captivity in June 1948 and later became mayor of the bathing resort of Westerland on the island of Sylt, where he died on 7 May 1979.[11]