‘Can’t you deploy the air force?’ I asked General Polynin.
‘They will attack immediately!’ he replied.
I told him that I wanted to relocate Vikentiev’s howitzer brigade and Dejniechovski’s anti-tank brigade there.
The losses that the Steiner group incurred through our airmen, gunners and troops of the 2nd Infantry Division were so considerable that the planned counterstroke ended as a local counterattack.
With their attacks, the Polish airmen destroyed the enemy positions and delayed the bringing forward of his reserves into our army’s attack area. On the 29th April alone there were 237 sorties by aircraft of the 4th Air Division. In the night leading to the 30th April the 2nd Bomber Regiment attacked the enemy concentration in Fehrbellin, and in the night leading to the 1st May the Night-Bombing Regiment ‘Krakow’ attacked troops in Neustadt and Friesack. On the 2nd May the night bombers bombed the Fascists retreating from the blows of our army to Rhinow and Spaatz.
Assemblies of troops had formed in Rhinow, where several roads met, and from where ran the shortest route to the Elbe crossing points. They were subjected to intensive air attack. On the 3rd May fighter and bomber aircraft strafed the enemy columns on the roads between the Havel and the Elbe, thus destroying a large number of vehicles, extensive amounts of equipment and hundreds of soldiers.
Early on the morning of the 3rd May Rola-Zymierski and I drove to the 6th Infantry Division on the army’s right wing. Its 14th Infantry Regiment under Major Domaradzki had already crossed the Havel with improvised crossing means and reached the Elbe bank while pursuing scattered groups. The remaining regiments of the 6th Division soon followed, Colonel Szejpak being the most agile this time.
For the whole of the 4th May the commander-in-chief remained in Berlin with those elements that had participated in the storming of the city. That evening the duty officer brought us a telegram from Korczyc. The Polish Army chief of staff congratulated Rola-Zymierski on his promotion to Marshal of Poland – in other words the highest rank in the Polish Army. I was congratulated on my promotion to colonel-general.
Berlin had fallen, but the fighting at the approaches to the Elbe continued relentlessly. In the Klietz area the 4th Infantry Division encountered the resistance of strong forces defending the crossing places. A large underground explosives factory was still at work near the town. No Polish soldier was allowed in and no worker out. General Kieniewicz did not want any advice. A surprise attack could well resolve the problem, but Kieniewicz feared that the mad director could blow up the factory. It could not be excluded that the demolition would be effected with a long fuse. A solution was found unexpectedly. Two captured soldiers offered to conduct negotiations with the underground factory. ‘We will deal with the workers and not the Fascist directors,’ said one of them. ‘I am a worker myself and will soon convince them.’
In fact it did not take long and hundreds of people left the underground factory with white flags. Only one did not come up: the director, who had shot himself.
During the morning of the 4th May the 2nd Division reached the Elbe, followed in the night leading to the 6th May by the 4th Division, which had beaten the enemy in the Klietz area. Now the whole right-hand bank of the Elbe in the army’s sector was in our hands. American troops had reached the river on the other side.
Once Marshal Rola-Zymierski had left for Warsaw, I quickly went to the Elbe. Everywhere on ‘our’ bank fluttered the victorious flags of the Soviet and Polish units. In honour of the joint victory, the Allied armies greeted each other with gun salutes. Our representative, Colonel Stanislaw Domoracki, went to the Americans, taking with him the best wishes of the Polish soldiers on the victory over the common enemy.
Our units left Berlin. The regiments of the 1st ‘Tadeusz Kosciuszko’ Division with the Grunwald Cross 3rd Class and the Virtuti Militari Order 4th Class marched in parade step past the Brandenburg Gate, over which the Polish flag waved next to the Soviet one.
The army was reassembled near the Seelow Heights and the headquarters accommodated in Seelow itself.
Later I was permitted a stay in Berlin. My sight-seeing naturally took in the Reichstag, on whose walls thousands of inscriptions could be seen, among them also the signatures of Polish soldiers.
The city was breathing again little by little. Here and there were people with picks and shovels, clearing ruins and dismantling barricades. Not far from the Brandenburg Gate a queue of Berliners had formed at a Soviet field kitchen. A jolly cook filled the utensils they had brought with them with Kascha. The orders of the City Commandant, General Berzarin, were conveyed over loudspeakers, spoken by representatives of the new German self-administration.
The crimes of the Fascists in Buchenwald, Majdanek and Auschwitz were broadcast from a vehicle. The Berliners standing next to it listened attentively, some shaking their heads unbelievingly. The loudspeaker fell silent. From the crowd rose a voice damning Hitler. A woman cried out, ‘We are all guilty for this war and now we have to pay!’
On one square the inhabitants and soldiers were watching a film in the open air. Being shown was the Soviet film Soja. I went nearer to observe the reactions of the audience. ‘I cannot believe that the German soldiers could be guilty of such bestiality,’ said a woman standing nearby. ‘That is Russian propaganda!’
‘Unfortunately that is all true,’ a man answered her in a low voice.
To be in Berlin and not call in on General Berzarin was simply unthinkable. He commanded an army to which my corps had once also belonged. I had the friendliest feelings for this talented army commander and outstanding man. Without thinking about it long, I ordered Wladek to drive to the Soviet Kommandatura.
In Berzarin’s reception room were packed many people, both civil and military. The General greeted me warmly: ‘Yet another representative of a friendly army! How would you like to be greeted; strictly according to etiquette or unconstrainedly?’
‘Better unconstrainedly.’
‘Shall I tell you the latest lies of the Fascist underground muck-rakers?’ Berzarin wanted to know. ‘Here is it: yesterday about 50,000 Mongol soldiers arrived from the Elbe, plundering and murdering their way through the city. It is said even the Soviet commandant was completely powerless against them. Naturally some of the inhabitants panicked.’
‘But everything is quiet in the city,’ I remarked.
‘Yes, the anxiety has died down again. Even the distrustful inhabitants have noticed that rumours of that kind come from Fascists who have not been uncovered yet.’
Berzarin then told me about the protocol on the interrogation of General Weidling – the commander of the Berlin defence sector – and other Wehrmacht generals being completed. They threw light on the circumstances in which the Reichs Chancellery and the headquarters had governed during the last days of the Fascist Reich: reciprocal mistrust of those who long before had quite different opinions, reciprocal threats, doubts, uncertainty, indifference about the fate of the Berlin people, suicides.
I did not want to detain Berzarin any longer from his important obligations. We parted warmly. Could I then have believed that this was our last encounter? It hit me deeply when I heard of his death.
Chapter 5
The Steel Guard
By Lieutenant-Colonel Wenjamin Borissovich Mironov
Mironov was an experienced officer, having attended the Tomsk Artillery School and the Frunze Academy before participating in the defence of Kiev, serving in a parachute battalion behind German lines near Smolensk, at Stalingrad, then on the Northwestern Front, the Kursk bend, Byelorussia and Brest. He had been wounded near Briansk.