Next day we drove in our own vehicles via Hagenow to Sückau, near Neuhaus, where we assembled and camped with 7,000 men in a meadow. We were to remain there for the time being and pitch our tents. At midnight on 7/8 May Germany capitulated unconditionally.[36] The war was over.
We stayed in the meadow near Sückau until 17 May virtually unguarded and unenclosed. Then we marched singing by companies through the Mecklenburg villages to an ammunition dump near Lübtheen, abused and spat on from passing trucks carrying foreigners, while our own people wanted to give us flowers and refreshments, though the latter were denied us by our American escorts.
On 30 May we marched to Pritzier, where we were loaded into goods wagons in which we rode with open doors via Hagenow, Ratzeburg, Lübeck and Neustadt to Eutin. From there we marched to the Oldenburg-in-Holstein Reservation through an area well known to me, as I had spent my last holiday there before joining the Army. It was under its own German administration, which set up offices for our release. We set up a tented camp in a beautiful, leafy wood near the little village of Grubenhagen, half an hour from the Baltic resorts of Dahme and Kellenhusen. After all the hard times we had been through we found recuperation on the beaches of the Baltic.[37]
After his brief experience as a prisoner of war, Averdieck obtained a doctorate in biology and for thirty years thereafter worked as a geologist and botanist in northern Germany and as an archaeologist at the University of Kiel. Retired since 1985, his current hobbies are botany, geology and the writing of the history of his old division.
NINE
At the Zoo Flak-Tower
HARRY SCHWEIZER
Harry Schweizer wrote to me after reading the German version of my book The Battle of Berlin 1945, providing me with further details about the armament on the Zoo Flak-tower. Subsequently, upon my request, he provided me with this account of his experiences as a schoolboy Flak Auxiliary.
On 1 January 1944, I was conscripted into the Auxiliary Flak along with others born in 1928. After basic training, I served on a 150 cm searchlight site near Blumberg outside Berlin. Our searchlight battery lay some two kilometres from Blumberg in the middle of a field near some woods. The battery consisted of four 150 cm searchlights and a separate 200 cm spotting searchlight and radar apparatus. We usually picked up our target from the 200 cm searchlight and followed it through. The personnel consisted of a sergeant, a corporal and several young flak auxiliaries, who all came from the same school. In the mornings we went to school by train to Berlin, but in the afternoons we were on duty at the battery. Often Russian prisoners of war were employed on construction work at the position. They slept in another barrack hut and got the same food as ourselves. In time we developed almost friendly relations with them, although we all had a great fear of the Russians, especially later at the Zoo Bunker.
Our school class was a colourful mixture of characters, mainly as a result of our different upbringings at home. We included some fanatical Nazis, but also some convinced Communists.
In July 1944 we were replaced on the searchlight battery by female flak auxiliaries and sent to join the flak artillery at the Zoo Bunker, where we were met by the NCOs. Our easy times were over! First we had to put our uniforms in order, sewing our Hitler Jugend armbands and badges back on, and then we were given some hard drill.
There were two big lifts in the centre of the tower and four cargo lifts at the corners. The central lifts were for passengers and were covered with reinforced glass. The NCOs took these lifts while making us run up the five stories wearing our gas masks, and that was only one of many exercises we were put through at the beginning to accustom ourselves to being on active serve. But things got better later on. The officers and NCOs were very decent toward us and we got on well.
On one occasion we were sitting in our barrack room on the fifth floor, having skipped an aircraft recognition class, and were listening to some lively music from an English station. Suddenly there was a break in the music, then came a drum beat and: ‘Germany calling! Germany calling! Hier ist BBC London in deutsche Sprache!’ At that moment the door opened and Second Lieutenant Skodowski stood in the room. He had heard everything but said nothing, only ordering us to report for duty. He did not betray us, which was just as well, for listening to foreign broadcasts was a heavily punishable offence.
The Zoo Bunker was the most comfortable of the three big flak-towers in Berlin. It was well equipped with the best available materials, whereas the interior fittings of the Friedrichshain and Humbolthain Bunkers had been skimped, only the military equipment being first rate. The Zoo Bunker’s fighting equipment consisted of four twin 128 mm guns on the upper platform, and a gallery about five metres lower down with a 37 mm gun at each corner, and a twin barrelled 20 mm gun in the centre of each side flanked by solo 20 mm guns left and right. The twin 128s were fired optically (by line of sight) whenever the weather was clear enough, otherwise electronically by remote control. The settings came from the smaller flak bunker nearby, which only had light flak on its gallery for its defence, but was especially equipped with electronic devices. A long range ‘Blaupunkt’ radar was installed there and our firing settings came from a giant ‘Würzburg’ radar as far away as Hannover. That bunker also contained the control room for air situation reports and was responsible for issuing air raid warnings to the public.
Our training went along simultaneously with action with the heavy and light artillery pieces. We also received some basic training on radar and explosives. We suffered no casualties from air attacks, but comrades were killed by gun barrels exploding and recoils. The shells for the 128s relied on the radar readings for their fuse settings and were moved centrally on rubber rollers up to the breech. If there was the slightest film of oil on the rollers, the already primed shell would not move fast enough into the breech and would explode.
The smaller flak bunker was once hit by a bomb, but it turned out to be a dud and they were just shocked.
The 128s were used mainly for firing at the leading aircraft of a group, as these were believed to be the controllers of the raid and this would cause the others to lose direction. Salvoes were also fired, that is several twins firing together, when according to the radar’s calculations, the circle of each explosion covered about 50 metres, giving the aircraft in a wide area little chance of survival.
When we were below on the gallery with the 37s or 20s driving off low flying aircraft, we would hear the din and have to grimace to compensate for the pressure changes that came with the firing of the 128s. We were not allowed to fasten the chin straps of our steel helmets so as to prevent injury from the blast.
Later when we fired the 128s at clusters of tanks as far out as Tegel, the barrels were down to zero degrees and the shock waves were enough to break the cement of the 70 cm high and 50 cm wide parapet of the gallery five metres below, exposing the steel rods beneath.
The 37s and 20s were seldom used against British and American aircraft as they flew above the range of those guns, and low flying aircraft seldom came within range. It was different when the Russians set their low flying aircraft against the tower. The magazines of the 37s were normally filled with eight rounds of tracer but, as the Russian machines were armoured, this was changed to red tracer and green armour-piercing shells. These aircraft attacked almost ceaselessly in April to try and weaken the 128s, which were already firing at ground targets. The towers had considerable fire power and many aircraft were shot down. We had no protection like a shield on our guns and, when the wings of the attacking aircraft spurted fire at us and the shells whistled over our heads, it was not a nice feeling. The fire power of the three towers was quite noticeable and we could see that after the first salvo following units would turn away to get out of firing range.
37
7 The way that the remains of the 20th Panzergrenadier Division were kept intact and isolated by the British before allowing the division to disband itself, lends colour to the Soviet allegation that the British were contemplating using German troops against the Red Army should the need arise.