In order to block the Soviet view from the Sonnenburger Chaussee of the high dyke between the Altstadt and the Neustadt, screens made of tarpaulins and sacking sewn together from air raid shelter bedding were strung from tree to tree on the south side of the road. The red thorn trees on Friedrichstrasse were felled to make a landing strip for a Fieseler Storch, but none ever came. Anti-tank barricades were erected at the southern exit of Kietz, and an anti-tank ditch was dug in the middle of February from Warnicker Strasse to the Jungfern Canal right across the yard of the engineers’ water training area.
The main front line ran from the Oder through Alt Drewitz (half of which had been lost in the previous fighting), through the Stadtwald woods, across the Stülpnagel Barracks exercise ground and ended in Warnick. The huge tanks of the Spiritusmonopol company lay outside this perimeter, and the 3,000,000 litres of drinking spirits and 4,000,000 litres of invaluable aviation fuel they contained had to be sacrificed.[13]
According to SS-Grenadier Oscar Jessen:
In January 1945 came the order to pack up and we moved to the Alt Drewitz sector of Küstrin. The front line lay only 40 metres in front of us. The place formed a half circle around a large meadow. Opposite us were the Russians. They must have had an observation post in the church, as they kept going in and out. We could watch them and occasionally raise a hand in greeting to each other.
The whole time in this Drewitz position we could hear German music and were called upon by fellow Germans to desert to them. It seemed very strange to us that the Russians or their German assistants knew the names of our superior officers.
There were several cows still wandering in the meadow and bellowing loudly to be milked. Our anti-tank guns stood between two houses. If I remember correctly, the row of houses opposite was of newer construction. We kept close to one house in which we ate and slept and in which the owners still lived. They did not want to leave their old and very sick mother behind and had made an encampment in the cellar out of a lot of bedding. The other houses were already abandoned and many of them had a notice attached to the door bearing the request not to plunder the house.
Once I was a witness when three ragged figures, whom we took to be Russians, came to plunder. However, they were expected by our headquarters and went into the house next door. I then discovered that they were in fact our own people who spoke Russian and had been spying behind the enemy lines in Russian uniform.
Enemy soldiers also took cover behind dead animals. Sometimes we received shots from the houses behind us, an indication that Russians or their German allies must have got through.
The occupier of our house asked us to bury her husband’s corpse. He still had all his documents and papers with him. The Russians had shot him on the street from part of the village opposite.[14]
Dramatically embellished reports about events on the other side of the Warthe sped from mouth to mouth in the Altstadt after the sounds of fighting had died down. Those who had heard the tank cannon fire and the explosions of Panzerfausts believed the noise was ice on the river being blown up or some other harmless event, for there was no official warning–even the sirens were silent–nor were there any instructions or recommendations to leave the town. Now hundreds broke out, joining the treks that were coming in along the still open roads from Landsberg and Sonnenburg. Many wanted to await the next developments in Kietz on the west bank of the Oder, or to try their luck at the railway station. The town administration had collapsed and the town hall was virtually empty. Consequently no one knew that Soviet troops had already crossed the Oder near Kienitz 20 kilometres from Küstrin in the early morning.
The fortress staff had received the news about the Soviet tanks too late to take action and now expected to see them rolling over the Warthe bridges, and were contemplating whether to blow the bridges and abandon the Neustadt. Now they also had to attend to the problem of securing the west bank of the Oder.[15]
Those elements of the 25th Panzergrenadier Division that had unloaded in Küstrin during the day returned to the west bank of the Oder later that evening as ordered. In view of the changed situation, the 9th Army had given the division the new task of driving back the Soviet bridgehead at Kienitz and preventing any further bridgeheads from forming. The divisional headquarters then withdrew to Gusow, committing the divisional units into action piecemeal on the west bank as they arrived.
Two batteries of the divisional artillery regiment and the 2nd Battalion of the 119th Panzergrenadier Regiment off-loaded with considerable difficulty in Golzow, for panicking supply troops had set light to the tall army store depot standing immediately next to the track, attracting Soviet artillery fire. The railway personnel fled and the train driver had to be caught and forced to take the wagons through the flames one at a time to be unloaded by the troops at the only ramp available. The battalion commander had to order the immediate occupation and defence of the village, leaving only a few men to finish the unloading at the station. Soon afterwards orders arrived for them to move to Letschin without delay.
Meanwhile the 1st (APC) Battalion of the latter regiment off-loaded in Werbig, where it was stuck for lack of fuel until the following evening.[16] When the Soviets first crossed the river at Kienitz earlier that day, no German troops in units of any size were prepared to meet them on the west bank. It was not until 1300 hours that Major Weikl, commanding a North Caucasian infantry battalion in Küstrin, was ordered to take his 345th Provisional Battalion and connect with the 203rd Provisional Battalion from Berlin. He was to form the two battalions into a combat group, and then report to Colonel Schimpff, who was establishing a command post in Letschin. The roads west of Küstrin were choked with refugees, so it was 1600 hours before Major Weikl came across Captain Bohl’s 203rd Battalion in Zechin. Only assembled that day in Spandau, this unit had been brought out in Berlin city buses. Both battalions then deployed under cover of darkness, with the 203rd taking up a defensive position along the line Sophienthal–Sydowswiese and the 345th covering the west bank of the Oder between there and Küstrin.
At 0100 hours orders came from Colonel Schimpff for the 203rd to attack at 0400 hours up both sides of the Letschin–Amt Kienitz road and to push on to Kienitz itself. For this they would have the support of some driver-training tanks from the NSKK (National Socialist Motorised Corps) school at Wriezen. The German attack happened to coincide with a Soviet thrust from Kienitz, resulting in the German battalion, none of whose members knew each other, and armed only with rifles, being driven back to their start point in Sophienthal. Within the next six days the battalion lost half its manpower, either killed or wounded, but the survivors continued to hold out until relieved on 17 February, when they were reallocated to other units.[17]
Officer Cadet Corporal Hans Dahlmanns:
Upon promotion to captain at the beginning of 1944, my father was posted to Küstrin, where he commanded a company of Territorial Rifle Battalion 513, which was responsible for the security of the bridges in Frankfurt/Oder and Küstrin, as well as the canal ship lift at Niederfinow. In July 1944 I took my annual leave as a flak auxiliary [and went] with my mother to stay with my father in the Engineer Barracks in Küstrin and got to know a little about the town as a visitor. Due to the increasing air raids, my mother moved residence from Dinslaken to Küstrin, while I did my Reichsarbeitsdienst in the Pfalz Mountains. My father suggested in a letter that when I finished my labour service I should check out with the police in Dinslaken and reregister in Küstrin. This was possible as I could defer my military service for the first month and we were able to be together as a family for a short while.