As I was curious how things were going, I used my wound as an excuse to visit the Reichs Chancellery almost every day, although I had our own nurses do the bandaging. There were about 1,500 wounded lying in the cellars almost on top of each other. The doctors bustled about tending to them with carbide lamps as only the Führerbunker had its own electricity supply. At least there was enough to eat, as well as sufficient supplies of other kinds. We could also get mortar bombs from there, but the shells for the artillery were almost finished, and once Gatow Airfield had fallen there were no more. Consequently the German artillery fire became ever weaker.
With regard to artillery, a one-armed army lieutenant approached me. He had two 105 mm guns but had lost contact with his unit, and was looking for another unit to attach himself to. With my battalion commander’s permission, we combined forces. He still had some ammunition for his guns, which he had brought with him. We put them under cover down below with us. If a super shell burst through the roof now, we would all be blown to smithereens. These Wehrmacht soldiers stuck with us to the end and we worked well together, including our forward observers.
The military police now wanted me to send my Volkssturm men forward into action. Despite my protests, they said: ‘No one can afford to sit around doing nothing any more. Send them into action somewhere.’
I suggested they comb out the Reichs Chancellery, where there were plenty of Party officials doing nothing, but they protested that that was not their job. These obnoxious types, whom every front line soldier hated, went off grumbling, but I realised that I would have to find something useful for my Volkssturm men to do.
I had asked the women that had established themselves on the station platforms with their children how we could help them. They said that they were hungry, for no one supplied them with anything, but that the worst thing was thirst. There was no water available down below as the system was out of order, and they were going crazy with thirst.
So we collected all the containers we could and set off to search for water. There were still some street water pumps in Berlin that had not been been used for years but were relatively intact. When we found one at last, the water carrying role began. Once I told my men that we would carry on doing this, there was no more wrangling about water. Of course, anyone attempting to use the water for washing would have been lynched, and men under 60 had to fend for themselves, but the Volkssturm men remained undisturbed in their task, for the women would have beaten up the military police mercilessly if they had intervened.
In the meantime the Russians had moved forward up to the Landwehr Canal on one side of the Tiergarten and up to the Spree on the other. Now we had targets enough, except in the Tiergarten where our own forces lay, and especially round the Zoo bunker, whose anti-aircraft guns were now engaged in the land battle.
On 27 April I took another group of stragglers up to Belle-Alliance-Platz (Mehringplatz), but found no one there to hand them over to, so I appointed the senior serving soldier in charge of the mob, which is all you could call them, set them on guard and went back. I could see that they would run when the first Russian appeared, but I hoped that there would still be some of our comrades around in the ruins that would take them on. The companies were now a complete mixture of different kinds of combatants. Often the stragglers made their way back, only to be rounded up and sent forward again like cattle to the slaughter. Among them I recognised some familiar faces, but I played dumb and pretended not to notice.
On my way back I made a detour to check on my forward observer, who was located on top of a tall building, but when I got there the building had gone. A super shell must have demolished it. I thought that he must have had a quick death and could not have suffered much.
It so happened that another group of stragglers had been rounded up for me to deliver to the same area. By some fluke, I was taking them past the pile of rubble under which my comrade was buried, when we heard groans. I stormed into the rubble, assisted by the others, and found the unconscious comrade about two metres down. We carried him back to Potsdamer Platz, where we handed him over to our nurses, who kept him with them rather than take him to the field hospital. ‘We will soon have him back on his feet,’ they said, ‘and he will be among familiar faces.’ And they were quite right. I took my group of stragglers back to the assigned area, and by the time I had returned he had regained consciousness. The shell had struck like lightning and he could remember nothing about it, but all he had suffered was a bruised head and some other contusions. He had been extremely lucky.
On 28 April I went across to the Reichs Chancellery again, overtly to liaise, but in fact trying to get some idea of the overall situation. As I was about to enter the gate off Hermann-Göring-Strasse, I bumped into my old company comrade, Bruno Weinke. Some years before Bruno had been promoted over me, but he was then transferred to the Führer Escort where there were no promotions, so I now outranked him, and there he was standing on sentry duty like an ordinary soldier. He engaged me in discussion about the war situation, which he said he knew about first-hand, for the walls of the Führerbunker were not so thick that nothing got through. Backstairs gossip, I thought, but listened, not wanting to be rude. He told me of Hitler’s plan for the decisive battle of Berlin that would bring about a major change in the war. General Busse, who was southeast of Berlin with his 9th Army, had been ordered to break through the enveloping arms of Marshal Koniev’s 1st Ukrainian Front, thus cutting through his lines of communication and causing chaos, and then push through to Berlin.
(What no one here knew was that Busse’s young, inexperienced soldiers lying quiet and still in the Halbe woods were currently being shot up like rabbits by Koniev’s tanks and that the remainder, mainly armoured units, were not breaking through to Berlin but to General Wenck’s 12th Army.)
The Führer had great hopes in Wenck’s 12th Army, he said. Since it had been pulled back from the line of the Elbe, assembled and directed on Berlin, its armoured spearheads had reached Treuenbrietzen and tank gunfire had been heard in Potsdam. I said to Bruno: ‘I hear the news but I lack the faith. I got to know those divisions on the Elbe and they consist merely of emergency units. They may have proud names but I do not believe they have anything beyond that. I have met these troops and I simply do not believe that they can get us out of this mess.’
Then Bruno went on about SS-General Steiner and his IIIrd Germanic SS-Panzer Corps. I had more confidence in an SS-general. In accordance with Hitler’s orders, he was supposed to be attacking down from the north in the Oranienburg-Eberswalde area to our relief. But I no longer believed in miracles, so I left Weinke at his post and went on my way.
Gatow Airfield was lost on 27 April, despite a desperate defence. This was a bitter blow for the defence of the capital, as most of the ammunition was being flown in through there. An attempt was next made to use part of the East-West-Axis as an airstrip, but this only lasted a short while. Some of the incoming transport aircraft were shot down by enemy fighters and others crashed into shell holes.
THE BATTLE FOR THE MOLTKE BRIDGE
The main Soviet attack was directed at the Reichstag, which we could not understand as it had been in ruins since the fire of 1933. The assault was conducted by Colonel General V.I. Kutznetsov’s 3rd Shock Army’s 79th Rifle Corps, commanded by Major General S.I. Perevertkin, and led to the Moltke Bridge.