In this confusion we lost our school comrade Erdmann. Finally the shooting died down. The Russian armoured thrust ended between the Warthe bridges and the Stern in the Neustadt. Four tanks were destroyed. One of them on Plantagenstrasse directly under the railway bridge was smoking all day long, emitting a frightful stench.[5]
It was only in the middle of the Neustadt that the tanks came up against any resistance. Even they could not get through the Stern, the intersection of the most important streets, where wild panic had created an impenetrable barricade of cars, horse-drawn wagons and sledges blocking the exits and obstructing the only street leading to the Warthe bridges about 400 metres away. The tanks had to turn back out of the unexpected cul-de-sac they found themselves in. Without local knowledge and prior reconnaissance, the tank crews were unaware that they could turn into Plantagenstrasse just before the level crossing gates and from there thrust through to the river crossings across undeveloped land. It was at this juncture that the tanks lost contact with their infantry escort. One of them stopped and fired at the traffic jam in front of the bridges. Then, annoyed and frustrated, the tank crews withdrew the way they had come. Meanwhile, behind them the Germans’ surprise and initial confusion were overcome when it was realised that this group was operating well ahead of the rest, and the tanks came under hefty Panzerfaust fire in the streets. The first one to fall was a Sherman. Eventually only two of the tanks got away. It was said that the remains of their infantry escort had withdrawn to Loeber’s restaurant in the woods.[6]
The town hospital had been cleared during that morning, bedridden patients being driven to the goods station for loading on a train, while the others had to walk there escorted by some nursing sisters. But it was too late. The Oder bridges were already under enemy shellfire, so the sick had to be taken off the train again. They were supposed to return to the hospital but on the Pferdemarkt (Horse Market) their allocated bus, marked with a Red Cross, was suddenly confronted by Soviet tanks. The emergency stop caused its engine to fail and the bus had to be towed back to the bus depot, where the patients were hastily accommodated, unmolested by the Russians. It was late evening before the patients could be taken back to the railway station and early the next morning before they finally left the town on a hospital train that was already laden with many wounded. The train was repeatedly diverted and eventually the Küstrin patients ended up in Straubing, where they were unloaded and provisionally accommodated in an auxiliary hospital set up in a monastery.[7]
Sapper Ernst Müller saw the Soviet tanks arrive at the Stern. He had only been in Küstrin since the day before, having just endured a six-day rail journey in open wagons with 150 other members of Armoured Engineer Replacement Battalion 19. Müller had been seriously wounded in Russia and was not yet fully recovered, but had been ordered back to active duty. He reported:
We were attached to Engineer Replacement and Training Battalion 68 in Lieutenant Schröder’s company, in which I remained in Second-Lieutenant Schröter’s platoon. The company command post was at the Küstrin Rowing Club.
On the morning of the 31st January we were supposed to take up positions in the Neustadt. In the late morning Second-Lieutenant Schröter called out to us: ‘Gentlemen, it’s getting serious. Take up positions in the cellar window pits immediately!’
At this juncture I was standing with a comrade on Adolf-Hitler-Strasse between the Warthe bridge and the Stern crossroads. In front of a bicycle shop, about 70 metres from the Stern, we went into a cellar window pit as ordered. A woman saw us out of a window and called out to us: ‘You can’t get in there! We have valuable things in there!’
Meanwhile the artillery fire had increased. The street was still full of refugees when I saw the first tank. Mad confusion reigned. The refugees were whipping up their horses to get forward faster. Only when a senior paymaster was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire did I realise that enemy tanks were involved.
My comrade had vanished. I sought cover behind the nearest building. I then realised that I had an Italian rifle but German ammunition. This example shows how bad our hasty equipping had been.[8]
Just arrived from the western front, the leading train carrying elements of the 25th Panzergrenadier Division immediately came under attack at the congested railway station in the Neustadt. As the wagons carrying the guns were shunted into the adjacent goods station for unloading, one of the division’s anti-tank sections used its Panzerfausts to good effect, as Colonel Professor Erwin Boehm’s history of the division relates:
Thus upon the arrival of the train carrying the 1st Battalion of the 25th Artillery Regiment, the first in action was an anti-tank section, which under Sergeant Sommer shot up three Soviet tanks with Panzerfausts before unloading could begin. There was general chaos in the station area. The guns had to be off-loaded from the wagons by hand. They then went straight into action. Once the German resistance had stiffened, the Russians withdrew to the north-eastern edge of the town. That evening the elements of the division that had detrained in Küstrin withdrew in accordance with orders to the west bank of the Oder.[9]
Artillery Second-Lieutenant Erich Bölke was a regular soldier and holder of the Iron Cross First Class who became caught up in the retreat from the Vistula. He too was involved in repelling the Soviet tank attack:
I reached Küstrin ahead of the Russian spearheads and remained there for the whole of the siege from the first to the last day, apart from a courier trip to the OKH.
At first I was on the fortress commandant’s staff as an ADC. Once I had to take orders to retreat to Küstrin to a major commanding an infantry battalion on the approaches to the town between the Oder and Warthe rivers. I believe it was a motorised unit. I do not recall the date, but there was snow on the ground when I reached them by car.
On the 31st January Soviet tanks penetrated Küstrin-Neustadt as far as the Stern. Among the damage inflicted there by tank shells, I recollect a hit on a shop and a refugees’ horse-drawn wagon that was shot up towards the Warthe bridge; there were two dead horses. Under the railway overpass in Plantagenstrasse was an enemy tank that had fallen victim to a German Panzerfaust. During the course of this day I was deployed with some men to counter this Soviet penetration and the crew of a shot-up tank surrendered to me in a garden area. I cannot recall the exact place.[10]
Luftwaffe Officer Cadet Sergeant Helmut Schmidt was a section leader in a motorised flak unit that had lost its guns in the retreat from the Vistula and was now operating as infantry. Having arrived in Küstrin the previous night, he recalls how his unit became involved in the aftermath of the tank attack:
I cannot remember where we slept in Küstrin, only that we slept the whole night through without being disturbed. In the early morning we drove along Reichsstrasse 1 a bit towards Tamsel, a village on the northern edge of the Warthebruch. We posted sentries inside the place where the road took a bend to the north. It was an unfriendly morning, foggy and cold, with poor visibility. We had orders to wait for a Königstiger unit reported to be coming from the direction of Landsberg and provide the tanks with infantry support.
We waited for hours, straining our ears listening out for the tanks and frozen to the core. The traffic from Landsberg gradually dried up and there were no Königstigers. Those of us not on sentry duty disappeared into a house north of the road where an old man lived. He was friendly and took us in and put a jar of honey on the table. Real bee honey! I don’t think the man was oversupplied with it, either.