A contingent of Katyusha multiple-barrelled rocket launchers arrived and took up firing positions. The T-34 tanks were also ready. The night passed without much emotion; they knew it would be ‘hot’ next day.
It began early in the morning. The Katyushas softened up the Germans for ten minutes, then the infantry went in to clean out whatever tried to resist. Harry’s squad piled itself on to the leading tank, which moved towards the forest where the remains of the pocket were concentrated. The tank stopped a hundred metres short of the woods to avoid being hit by Panzerfausts, and the squad jumped off and ran into the woods. A few gunshots were all the resistance that was encountered from the remaining German soldiers. One was shot, the others dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Further on a whole mass of Germans stood up with raised hands, obeying the order for the prisoners to assemble in groups. At the same time the rest of the platoon captured a colonel who was a highly decorated tank commander.[39]
Next day it was all over. Sixty thousand Germans from this pocket surrendered. An estimated forty thousand, including the civilians sheltering with the remains of the 9th Army, had been killed in the encirclement and break-out.
Later Harry was awarded the Order of Glory, the second highest ranking medal for valor, but received no explicit citation with it, so he could not attribute it to any particular event.
Harry served on in the Soviet Army after the war, attaining the rank of sergeant major. He left to become a newspaper photographer back in Riga. Later he was one of the first of the younger generation to obtain a visa allowing him to emigrate to Israel, where he continued to work as a photographer, got married, raised a family and divorced. Years later he was invited to visit his grandchildren in America and decided to stay on, becoming an American citizen. During a state visit by President Yeltsin he eventually received his award of the Order of Glory from him at a ceremony held at the White House.
ELEVEN
The Surrender of the ‘Phantom Division’
TONY LE TISSIER
This story came to my attention at a luncheon of the 94th US Infantry Division Veterans’ Association at Perl, Germany, in September 1999, when related by Professor Schaeffer-Kehnert, a former artillery officer with the 11th Panzer Division that had opposed them in the fighting for the Orscholtz Switch of the Siegfried Line. This account is gleaned from the official history of the 11th Panzer Division and an article by Brigadier General William W. Molla in the magazine of the 21st US Infantry Division’s Veterans Association.
Its predecessor in the 1940 French campaign having been dubbed the ‘Phantom Brigade’ by the British, the 11th Panzer Division took over the title with pride, calling itself the ‘Gespenterdivision’, which the Americans then translated as the ‘Ghost Division’.
On 15 April 1945, by which time the 11th Panzer Division had been obliged to withdraw to the line of the Weisser Elster either side of the town of Greiz, its respected commander Lieutenant General von Wietersheim belatedly handed over command of the division to Major General von Buttlar in accordance with orders received several days previously to take over command of the XXXXIst Panzer Corps east of Berlin. Aware that the route to the north was already blocked, General von Wietersheim decided to stay with the division until the end of the war. He therefore reported sick to the divisional medical unit with a feigned stomach complaint and remained close to the Rear Command Post, where he kept in touch with the divisional Ia (Chief of Staff).
That same day the division took delivery of twenty Hetzer tank-destroyers from a factory in nearby Plauen, thereby increasing its armoured strength at a time when the manpower establishment was more than filled, as stragglers and parentless units seemed to be drawn to the cohesive organisation of the division as if by a magnet.
However, the division happened to be in imminent danger of being surrounded as the Americans broke through the neighbouring units on either flank. Some hard fighting developed that day during which one of the panzer-grenadier battalions destroyed fifteen American tanks in close combat.
During the night orders were received by radio to break out to the south, so the division formed up into a long column and drove off with headlights blazing. The Americans did not intervene and the division was able to reach the western edge of the Erzgebirge Mountains and form a northwest front between Eibenstock and Klingenthal, where conditions remained peaceful.
Then on about 23 April the division received orders from Army Group G to link up with the LXXXVth Corps at Passau. The rumour spread that it would be joining SS units in the defence of the so-called ‘Alpine Redoubt’. The division set off and eventually reached the area of Taus in the Bohemian Forest, 45 kilometres southwest of Pilsen. A new front was then formed facing southwest along the German-Czech border between Forst am Wald and Zwiesel. As this was happening, Patton’s 3rd Army was passing across the divisional front toward the Alps, occupying the last part of southern Germany.
Meanwhile some more fuel had become available, and so the newly reconstituted 111th Panzer-Grenadier Regiment and divisional support units under Major General von Buttlar were able to push forward to the Wallern area, about 40 kilometres northeast of Passau, in accordance with orders received to block the American advance on Linz, leaving the main body behind to follow as best it might.
General von Wietersheim thereupon returned to duty, taking over command of the main body on his own responsibility. The main body then moved a short distance toward Klattau and Neuern. Poor radio conditions in this mountainous area led to a complete breakdown in communications between these two elements now 100 kilometres apart, and they were only to meet up again in captivity.
Then on 2 May the expected order arrived from Field Marshal Schörner for the division to join the Eastern Front in Czechoslovakia. All guns and armoured vehicles immobilised through lack of fuel were to be destroyed and their crews set off on foot as infantry.
At a conference of unit commanders and senior staff officers, it was agreed that to comply with these orders would only lead to the needless destruction of the division and inevitable captivity in Soviet hands. The Alpine Front had already surrendered and other formations around them were disappearing or disbanding themselves without orders. It was therefore unanimously agreed to surrender to the Americans if honourable terms could be met.
On the morning of 4 May General von Wietersheim sent two of his staff officers, Major Voigtmann and Lieutenant Knorr, with an interpreter under a white flag to the headquarters of the 90th US Infantry Division on the German-Czechoslovakian border at Neumarkt with a letter that read: ‘The development of the military and political situation makes it desirable for me to avoid further losses on both sides. I have therefore ordered the Major, and the bearer of this note, to negotiate with you the cessation of hostilities.’
The honourable terms requested were beyond the competence of the commander of the 90th Division, General Earnest, to agree so he referred them on to General Patton, who approved them with the comment that the 11th Panzer was the ‘fairest and bravest’ German division that his 3rd Army had fought! General Bradley also approved the terms, adding that the division should arrive in proper order, ‘with its kitchens’.
39
2 Exactly fifty years later on this battlefield, sixty-nine year-old Harry would meet his former enemies, the ‘Halbe Gruppe,’ and among them the eighty-four year-old Panzer leader Hans von Luck, commander of the 125th Panzer Regiment of the 21st Panzer Division.