THE DEATH OF SS-COLONEL ANHALT
Early on 25 April our regimental commander came to Potsdamer Platz wanting to speak to SS-Captain Schäfer. With him was his liaison officer, SS-Second Lieutenant Triebes and his driver, SS-Corporal Masbender. They left their staff car up on the square.
When he saw our rockets stacked around and some we were setting up ready for action, he came up to me. I reported to him and he began talking to me about our Alexanderplatz-Schlessischer Station operation, congratulating me. I did not approve of the Mrugalla’s battalion operation and told him so. When it came to the Russians and the unguarded bridges in the city centre, I said that heads should roll. He gave no indication of how much he knew of Mrugalla’s action or of whether he approved, for a regimental commander does not have to explain his thoughts and plans to a mere platoon commander, but I could see that I had caught his attention.
He was impatient and ordered me to accompany him immediately to Alexanderplatz to clarify my accusations. This set my ears burning for having opened my mouth so freely. When commanders argue among themselves, sergeant majors are likely to end up crushed between the millstones. However, I had to follow Anhalt, who did not even go down to see Schäfer, for everything was quiet here. I gave my deputy a wave to indicate that I was going off with Anhalt and hastened after him. I sat down in the rear seat next to SS-Second Lieutenant Triebes.
What neither I nor my regimental commander realised was that the Russians now had the heavy siege artillery ready to fire on the city centre. They would not need many targets, as they could not miss in the city centre. Each shot would be a direct hit, whether on German soldiers or innocent civilians. The buildings would collapse like houses of cards, the roofs of the S-Bahn and U-Bahn tunnels would be broken and numerous people killed by these super shells.
Meanwhile we drove via Hermann-Göring-Strasse, past the Brandenburg Gate, which was barricaded up so that we could not pass through, and stopped in Kleine Mauerstrasse between the Unter den Linden and Behrenstrasse, as Anhalt did not want to travel so openly to Alexanderplatz when the shells started landing. I too was happier on foot and going through tunnels, as it had become very risky. So I left them and went ahead to warn Mrugalla of our arrival.
When we got to the Police Presidium, the adjutant sent off a runner to get Mrugalla. As the others failed to appear, I went back to see what had happened to them.
I found Anhalt lying at the place where I had left him. A large shell splinter had penetrated his lungs from behind, killing him. His escort seemed to have disappeared.
Instinctively, I removed his papers, decorations, etc. and went off to get a stretcher and assistance, as one cannot leave an SS-Colonel lying around like a simple soldier. So I ran back under shell fire to the Police Presidium and got two men and a stretcher, but when I returned both Anhalt and his staff car had gone.
I returned to the Police Presidium and reported to SS-Captain Mrugalla, who had arrived in the meantime, and told him that now one of the two battalion commanders would have to take over command of the regiment. I also gave him Anhalt’s effects.
There was nothing else for me to do there, so I set off back, but via the Villa Goebbels in order to clarify the matter of Anhalt’s death.
I discovered that Anhalt had already been buried in the garden. The two escorts had already left, presumably to the Reichs Chancellery to collect SS-Major Wahl, who was now our regimental commander.
Wahl had a completely different background to the two battalion commanders, for he had been a unit commander and holder of the Knight’s Cross in the 5th SS-Panzer Division ‘Viking’, but I did not know him myself. However, it was through this change in commanding officers that my promotion and award of the Knight’s Cross fell through, not that it bothered me.
As I was returning to my troops via Leipziger Strasse, a mortar bomb, whose approach I had not heard, exploded in front of me on the roadway. A fragment hit me in the throat, blocking my airpipe so that I could hardly breathe. I crawled, for I did not have enough air to walk, back to our field hospital in the Hotel Adlon. There everything was overcrowded with the wounded lying on top of instead of alongside each other. The splinter was removed, my throat bandaged up and luckily I was also given an anti-tetanus injection. I left quickly, depressed by so much misery.
When I returned to Potsdamer Platz, the work went on. The Potsdamer Strasse entrance had received a direct hit from a heavy shell, which had destroyed the concrete steps and exposed the earth below, making it ideal for setting up our mortars. We could now fire our high trajectory weapons safe from all but a direct hit.
The battalion commander came along and said that we should start using our rockets. that was why we had brought them. ‘But where?’ I asked him, for it was stupid demanding something like this. There was no concentration of enemy tanks to aim at such as we had had at the Schlesischer Station. There were only the weasly enemy scouts around that were becoming ever more cheeky as they wriggled their way through our thinly manned positions. Every runner emerging into the open was being shot at, as happened to me when I was returning from taking out stragglers to the forward positions. I was a dead shot and picked off a small group of scouts with my captured sub-machine gun. I asked a survivor: ‘What interests you here?’ and got a surprising reply. These Russians had the mad idea of capturing Hitler, whom in their innocence they believed was hidden somewhere around here. They had come to collect him and fly him back to Stalin, who would award them with a medal and send them home on leave. We could only laugh at this simplicity, as if the bodyguards would allow anyone to get near to Hitler. They would rather let themselves be hacked to pieces first.
But others too had silly ideas. Grand Admiral Dönitz, for instance, sent some specially selected sailors to Berlin to guard Hitler. When they landed at Gatow they were immediately brought to the Reichs Chancellery, but what could Mohnke do with them? There were enough guards there already, apart from the SD. So Mohnke sent them to the Reichstag to fill the gap that the Russians fortunately had not discovered. Unfortunately these sailors were not adequately equipped for combat, having come from an honour guard and a radar school, for it was thought that they would be only used as an honour guard at the Reichs Chancellery. However, despite the senior ranks of the naval officers accompanying them, they subordinated themselves to SS-Lieutenant Babick, who had had combat experience under Joachim Peiper, even though he had nothing higher than an Iron Cross First Class.[50]
I had now sent out two of my NCOs as forward observers, one covering the area Hallisches Tor-Möckern Bridge, the other the area Potsdamer Bridge-Lützowplatz. They both came back at night when there was nothing further to see. But they too could not offer any targets for the rockets, and we could not use these weapons for shooting at sparrows.
However, the pressure from the Reichs Chancellery continued to increase, and I had to do something to please my superiors, sitting in their bombproof cellars with no consideration for the civilian population. The rockets would only destroy their homes, burying them under the rubble. No, I would not do that. If I was not hitting the enemy, I had to find a target where I would not do any damage.
So I went into the Tiergarten where the tanks of the ‘Nordland’ under the command of the brave SS-Lieutenant Colonel Peter Kausch were located. When I explained my problem to him he clapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘You are quite right. Those gentlemen are shitting themselves.’ He pulled out his tanks and I fired two rockets into the vacated area. None of my superiors noticed, as they were not going to stick their heads outside. Following my report, all these gentlemen were content and left me in peace.
50
11 SS-Colonel Peiper of the 1st SS-Panzer Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ was accused of slaughtering American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge offensive.