Less than four months ago, it would have been the fear of the Gestapo that would have troubled the woman all the way from her bed to the door.
Now the heavy insistent knocking summoned up images of the NKVD, who had similar habits to the GeheimeStaatsPolizei, with pretty much the same end result.
People went missing.
It had been difficult for the residents of Metgethen. Occupied by the Red Army, retaken by the Wehrmacht and then reoccupied once more. There had been atrocities visited upon the German populace. Unspeakable atrocities that had become world knowledge, although in truth, many who heard them merely shrugged and mentally balanced the reports against the actions of German and other axis soldiers in many faraway places.
A number of visitors from the International Red Cross had been and gone, and with their departure the enthusiasm of the world’s press waned, and so the village was settling back into a life of obscurity once more.
However, insistent loud knocking on a door at half four in the morning is never a good thing, but more especially if it is your door.
A match was struck and a candle lit, throwing its eerie light on the hallway.
“Open up,” came a voice used to instant obedience, “Open up or I will break the door down.”
She reached the front door, calling out her approach, reaching down to slide back the bottom bolt, the noise of which confirmed her presence to those outside.
Undoing the top bolt, she opened the door.
There were the local policeman and an NKVD soldier, side by side, illuminated by the headlights of the car behind them.
“What on earth do you want at this time in the morning Karl?” she said, asserting her strong community position and addressing the policeman.
There was no reply.
The two folded back as if hinged like double doors, opening up to reveal a black silhouette.
“Guten Morgen gnädige Frau.”
Some voices carry venom and hate no matter what is said and this voice, speaking a cultured yet clinical German, was such a voice.
“I am Major Savitch, gnädige Frau, Major of NKVD. You and your family have five minutes to dress. Then you will all come with me.”
“On what charge?” rallied the woman.
The NKVD officer laughed dismissively.
“No charge whatsoever. Come now, you are wasting time,” and he clapped his hands, trying to chivvy the confused woman along.
“No charge? If there is no charge, why must I come with you? To be interrogated? I know nothing.” The woman’s two daughters were now visible on the stairs and she gestured at them, “We know nothing.”
Again Savitch laughed, this time in real amusement.
“I do know that gnädige Frau. It is not what you know but who you know that interests us.”
He made a great play of checking his watch.
“Three minutes now.”
Confused by the early awakening, the lack of sleep, the car headlights and the threat to self and family, the woman swept up her children and grabbed what she could.
The three men waited in silence on the porch, two smoking American cigarettes, the policeman hoping above hope to be offered one from the pack of either of the NKVD officer’s,
Savitch allowed her an extra five minutes, which he considered extremely generous.
Knocking on the doorframe, he waited for her to appear.
The silence from inside was deafening and he exchanged looks with his subordinate.
His growing anxiety was soon assuaged as an NKVD Serzhant marched round the corner, heading a party consisting of four troopers surrounding the mother and her two daughters. A swift explanation from the Serzhant detailed how they had apprehended the family sneaking out the back door.
He stood there, legs apart and hands on hips, looking down on the family.
“Now, now, gnädige Frau, why do you run away from us. We just want to talk.”
The woman brought herself up to her full height, defiance apparent in her gaze, fear present in her words.
“Herr Major, I do not know anyone or anything of interest to you. We keep ourselves to ourselves.”
Savitch stepped down to ground level and shepherded the group towards a large Mercedes, the back door of which stood open ready to accept them.
The girls both slipped inside easily but the woman was a more reluctant entrant.
“Please,” he encouraged her to enter, “You and your family will come to no harm. We just wish to ask a few questions and to have you somewhere that we can ensure your safety Frau Knocke.”
She reluctantly took her seat.
With the door shut, the car and occupants moved slowly away, never to return.
Soviet Forces – 215th Rifle Regiment and 259th Rifle Regiment [less 1st Battalion] and 619th Artillery Regiment, all of 179th Rifle Division, and 938th Rifle Regiment and 3rd Btn, 992nd Rifle Regiment both of 306th Rifle Division, both of 1st Rifle Corps, and 2nd Btn, 39th Guards Tank Brigade and 2nd Btn 28th Engineer-Sapper Brigade, all of 43rd Army, and 283rd Howitzer Artillery Regt and 376th Howitzer Artillery Regiment, both of 64th Gun Artillery Brigade of 21st Breakthrough Artillery Division,, and 10th Guards Mortar Battalion and 1st Coy, 106th Pontoon Bridge Battalion and 134th Knapsack Flamethrower Company, all of 1st Baltic Front.
Allied Forces [Llewellyn Force] – A, C and D Coys, 4th Royal Welch Fusiliers of 71st Infantry Brigade, and B Coy, 1st Manchester Regiment [MG] and C Battery, 71st Anti-Tank Regiment R.A. and 83rd Field Regiment, R.A. and Ad-hoc section, remnants of 555th Field Company, R.E., all of 53rd Welch Division, and B Coy, 7th Black Watch of 154th Infantry Brigade of 51st Highland Division, and C Sqdn, East Riding of Yorkshire Yeomanry of 33rd Armoured Brigade, all of British XXX Corps of British 21st Army Group, and 4th Hamburg Defence Unit, also known as Fallschirm Batallione Perlmann [formerly III Btn/22nd Fallschirmjager Regiment, 8th Fallschirmjager Division.]
Lieutenant-General Afanasii Pawlantevich Beloborodov was a worried man, and not without justification.
He had seen a great deal of action during his time, not the least of which was the bitter fighting around Memel the previous year through to January 1945, but this action was proving to be his most difficult yet.
Getting to Hamburg had been far easier than moving through it, and far less costly, save for the loss of the man he had replaced as commander of 43rd Army.
Beloborodov had started the assault with three Rifle Corps under his command. Two, the 1st and 92nd were roughly at 90% strength, the third one at about 50%, that being the 60th Rifle Corps.
The last few days of hammering against the defences of this huge German city had altered all that.
92nd Rifles were out of the fight temporarily, losses in Officers and command facilities making the unit combat ineffective. The 60th had all but ceased to exist, having bravely thrown itself onto the English defences, albeit in vain, and died in their hundreds.
Beloborodov’s problem was manoeuvre, or rather the inability to do so.
Hamburg is a city of canals that run alongside streets, separating city blocks and neighbourhoods, almost parcelling them into individual islands.