On the day I arrived, the greater part of the city was already in our hands but fighting was continuing in the north-eastern outskirts. The Germans were retreating, after dogged skirmishes, into the protection of the citadel they still held.
From its commanding height, and with a still powerful enemy ensconced in it, the fortress was a threat to the city. Shells periodically exploded as artillery fired from the fortress, but there was no stopping the great, solemn procession of the Polish population, who had come out in large numbers to commemorate the victims of the occupation. They were carrying wreaths to lay at a symbolic mass grave within the cathedral grounds. How touching it was to see among the ranks of the marchers children in school blazers they had so outgrown they looked quite strange, but which their parents had kept as a sign of patriotism and despite the strict orders of the German regime that every reminder of the old Poland should be destroyed. The Poznań tradespeople, butchers and tailors, bakers and furriers, came out to greet the Red Army with the banners of their guilds, which they had secretly preserved at the risk of their lives.
The stream of people stretched the length of the street, all the way from the railway station. Over five years ago, when the Germans overran Poznań and annexed it to the Reich, Alfred Rosenberg, the ideologist of their racism, arrived from Berlin, got off the train and promptly gave a speech. ‘Posen ist der Exerzierplatz des Nazionalsozialismus.’ Poznań is the training ground of National Socialism. What that meant was closing Polish schools, banning the Polish language and publications in Polish, and banning the performance of Polish music or songs, not only in public but even at home. The Poles were to be crushed by every manner of humiliation, like not being allowed to sit in the front tramcar, only in the one drawn behind it. I saw a notice to that effect on one tramcar.
On the day I am describing, amateur bands came out of hiding, and the Polish tunes they played in the streets were met with gratitude and much jubilation. Joy at being liberated mingled with sorrow at so many losses, in a united spirit of thanksgiving.
Bombardment of the city from the fortress had almost ceased. Evidently our forces had managed to suppress the guns or the enemy were running low on shells. The army assigned units to storm the citadel and then moved further westwards. Troops of our 1st Byelorussian Front had crossed the German border on 29 January.
No order came, however, to storm the citadel. It really was all but impregnable and the cost would have been too high. The situation of the troops holed up in the besieged fortress was in any case hopeless: capitulation was only a matter of time.
In my first days in Poznań German aircraft were busily dropping supplies to the besieged. There was no sign of our own fighter planes. We had no anti-aircraft guns here and, although we shot at the planes, they were fairly free to fly in and back at will. Periodically leaflets were dropped over the citadel, which rotated slowly in the air before landing in the fortress. Some of them blew our way.
1945 will bring us victory and our reward. Of this our soldiers are profoundly sure, their faith is rock hard. Our valorous homeland expects feats of unexampled heroism from us this year. Loyalty and fortitude in the name of our Führer and Fatherland – let that be our watchword in 1945. Heil Führer!
There were other leaflets along much the same lines, and one that was not quite what we might have expected:
To German soldiers on the front line!
The Modern History Publishing House announces that the High Command has published the following booklets for 1945:
Victory over France, 4 marks 80 pfennigs; 1939: Against England, 3 marks 75 pfennigs; Victory in Poland, 3 marks 75 pfennigs. Orders taken.
Such persistent marketing! ‘Orders taken’, so everything is hunky-dory in the Fatherland. Right then, back to more victories! This primitive drivel, designed to flatter the soldiers’ vanity by playing up earlier battles, was now being dropped, with a remarkable lack of tact, on troops irremediably holed up in the Poznań citadel. It was the height of absurdity, not immediately distinguishable from an act of derision.
Initially the aircraft were also dropping mail, to judge by the postbag sealed with wax and packed with letters that was misdelivered to our sector. It contained letters dating from the autumn. Our surmise, subsequently confirmed, was that the unit to which they were addressed had been straying about for months in one of the ‘mobile cauldrons’ before breaking out of encirclement and joining up with the German troops in Poznań. There it was finally located by the German forces’ post office and its correspondence forwarded when the opportunity arose, albeit with a substantial delay.
We greatly valued enemy correspondence at the front, because letters often contained significant information, sometimes unexpectedly important, and this all contributed to our intelligence effort. Letters also contained information about morale, facts, the climate, events, hopes, circumstances, anxieties, threats, hardship and changes – everything, in fact, that constituted our adversary’s world at the front and at home. They were studied at the level of the front headquarters, in whose operational section I was temporarily working in Poznań. I was instructed to compile a summary of these letters.
Most of them were from relatives in the western regions of Germany. That told us where the main contingent of soldiers in the unit had been recruited: on the territorial principle, as was often the case. Also that later, having suffered losses, the unit had been reinforced with soldiers from other regions.
During those months the western regions of Germany were being mercilessly bombed by the British Royal Air Force. Tales of intolerable suffering and despair were raining down from home on these front-line soldiers. But letters from the front, as we read in the soldiers’ answering correspondence, also conveyed the soldiers’ despair. Family members wrote very openly, not sparing each other, or perhaps their sufferings were already such that they were beyond being able to conceal them. Or it may be that a merciless lack of empathy was part of the way the Germans viewed the world during the war.
I still have some of the letters from that sack. Here are some excerpts:
Uncle Otto writes from Berlin to private soldier Gerhard:
September 1944
Much has happened during this time. On 20 July our Führer nearly departed this life. Then Romania deserted and Finland followed. Bulgaria is looking much the same. You poor soldiers at the front are suffering more as a result, I do not doubt for a moment, though, that in the end, in spite of everything, we will cope with all this, because the German soldier is the best in the world. We believe that after the counter-attack victory will be ours. We have nine girl soldiers quartered in our extension near Berlin. People here call them noknapsack soldiers.
‘My dear René,’ his wife writes to Grenadier Renatus Coulognie,
I can’t possibly ask for you to come on leave, telegraphing that I’m in bed and about to give birth when it simply isn’t true. You are being completely crazy, because no leave has been given for ages, let alone to Alsace-Lorraine when they’re already so near. I only wish myself that you could be here instead of stuck out there. If only it could all be over. It’s enough to drive a person out of their mind. The fighting is going on now on German territory and they still won’t stop. ‘To the last man!’ Air raids day and night, and now we can even hear gunfire. They are advancing so quickly. They’re already in Holland and Luxembourg. Another 2–3 days and they’ll be here. We’ll be all right, but what about you at the front?