I am not sure of the exact time, but it must have been about midnight and everything was quiet at the Weidendammer Bridge except for the murmuring of the crowd. Our battalion had formed a circle and were discussing the situation. I kept apart, even though they wanted my opinion. There was no point. I had never been in such a situation before and my fighting experience was of no value here. The one-armed lieutenant was bored with it all. He did not feel himself bound to Mohnke’s orders, and said to me: ‘We will find our own way out. Good luck to you.’
I wished him and his men the same, and they left. I saw him again twelve years later, for they did not get through and had to tread the bitter road to Siberia, where they spent the next five years.
It was all too quiet for my liking, and that made me suspicious. Why was it taking so long? Time was not on our side, I thought. I took my HQ Section leader by the arm and we went up Friedrichstrasse. I had learnt not to do things without first making a reconnaissance, and here nobody was getting ready. We got as far as Chausseestrasse, about 780 metres up Friedrichstrasse without coming under fire. Had I been free to do so, I would have taken my men and gone there and then, and with Alfred’s local knowledge we probably would have got through without heavy casualties, but it was not my choice, I had to obey orders. The Russians did not appear to have noticed us and there could only have been some of their scouts in the neighbourhood.
So we returned to our startpoint, where the discussion was still going on. I pulled the battalion commander out of the group and told him what I had observed. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said: ‘I have already realised that this is the weakest point where we will break through.’
The biggest mistake here, however, was hanging around waiting for the leadership. The Russian scouts must have realised what was happening and passed the word. Friedrichstrasse seems to have been the boundary between the 3rd and 5th Shock Armies. Apparently their scouts must have established contact here and the gap was not closed until after midnight.
Gradually the comrades from the outlying companies joined us. Whether they had been informed by runners, or just noticed that the battalion staff had gone, I cannot say, but one company commander knocked Schäfer down under circumstances I was not party to. The Reichs Chancellery people also began turning up at intervals, and from some comrades from the Führer Escort that I knew, I learnt something of what had gone on.
Dismay and panic had broken out among the many wounded that could not come along and had no weapons left to shoot themselves with. Where one had been hidden, it was passed around until the ammunition ran out. Others begged the doctors, Professors Werner Haase and Günther Schenk to give them fatal injections, but they had none to give. Even the bandages were having to be washed and used several times over.
After Goebbels’s ADC, Schwägermann, had set fire to the bodies of Goebbels and his wife, he had sprinkled petrol over everything in the Führerbunker and set it alight so that the Russians would not find anything worthwhile. This again caused panic as people thought the fire was due to sabotage, and the smoke made conditions in the bunker even worse.
Apparently Mohnke himself had decided the composition of the groups that would leave the Reichs Chancellery at regular intervals. There had been no mention of a combined break-out, the situation we now had here. Whether this was intentional, or through misunderstanding, I have never been able to clarify.
While we were waiting for Mohnke, he was already long gone with his group, which consisted of about fifteen people, whose names I was later given by SS-Captain Heinrich Mundt. Those that I can remember were: SS-Major Günsche (Hitler’s ADC), SS-Captain Klingmeier (Mohnke’s Adjutant), who had previously commanded the Training & Field Replacement Battalion of the ‘Leibstandarte’ at Spreenhagen, SS-Captain Mundt, previously divisional quartermaster of the ‘Leibstandarte’, Professor Dr Schenk, Ambassador Hewel (Foreign Office representative at the Reichs Chancellery), SS-Lieutenant Stehr (Mohnke’s liaison officer), Vice Admiral Voss (Naval representative at the Reichs Chancellery), Frau Junge and Frau Christian (Hitler’s secretaries), Frau Krüger (Bormann’s secretary) and Frau Manzialy (Hitler’s cook), plus a few officers from Mohnke’s staff and SS-Major Wahl, our new regimental commander, but I cannot be sure.
The inclusion of four women in this group shows that Mohnke had no intention of leading the break-out from the front. Apparently he had promised Hitler to bring the women out safely, and in this he was successful with three of them who got through to the west, but the very pretty Frau Manzialy vanished without trace.
As I learnt later, Mohnke’s group had taken the following route. They first sprinted across the open Wilhelmplatz to the Kaiserhof U-Bahn Station, along the tunnel to Mitte U-Bahn Station, from where they took the northbound tunnel under Friedrichstrasse, but when they reached the level of the Spree they found their way blocked by a closed bulkhead door guarded by two railwaymen, whose duty was to close the door after the last train had passed through at night. Although no trains had run for over a week, the doors were still closed and they refused to open them. Stupidly Mohnke accepted this and turned back to Friedrichstrasse U-Bahn Station and went along the embankment until they came to a footbridge. When one of the escort made to turn toward the station where we were waiting, Mohnke said to him: ‘No, not by Friedrichstrasse, all hell will break loose there soon!’ How right he was!
Mohnke’s group removed the barbed wire blocking the footbridge and crossed the river. They then tried to find their way toward the Lehrter Station, but when they reached Invalidenstrasse, where SS-Captain Mundt left them, they took a wrong turning and went up Chausseestrasse as far as the Maikäfer Barracks, where they encountered some difficulties but were able to get away, finally reaching the Patzenhofer Brewery where they rested.
Meanwhile, we were all waiting in vain for Mohnke. I went around the crowd and met some people I had not seen for years, but it was no time to chat, we were all too concerned with what might await us.
Then at last there was some movement. A lone King Tiger tank rolled up noisily with a defective track. I crossed the Spree and stopped a short distance behind the barricade there, whose right hand side was open. Then a self-propelled gun and an armoured personnel carrier drew up side by side behind it. Next five armoured personnel carriers drew up and lined up behind the others. In the second one I could see a figure in a cap and overcoat whom in the darkness I took to be Mohnke. I was further convinced it was him when SS-Captain Schäfer ran up to the vehicle and spoke with him, but I was some thirty metres away and could not hear what was said.
As I thought Schäfer would be leading his battalion out at the head of his men, I lined up behind the vehicles with my men. Then Schäfer ran back, banged on the door of the last vehicle and cllmbed in with his adjutant, SS-Lieutenant Krönke. Then Schäfer called out: ‘Rogmann! Do you need an invitation? Climb in!’
I went up to the vehicle and said to him: ‘You don’t think I am going to drive off with you and leave my men behind, do you?’
He started to say something, but I interrupted him with: ‘You can cross me off the list!’
The door slammed shut.
The officer I had taken for Mohnke was in fact SS-Major Ternedde, commander of the ‘Norge’ Regiment of the ‘Nordland’, and all the vehicles were from that division.
It was not only that I did not want to leave my men behind, but also because of my natural infantryman’s reluctance to ride in those ‘mobile coffins’. Even if my men had not been there, I would not have gone with him willingly. Breaking through with those vehicles in street fighting is a really risky business that is only lessened when they are surrounded and protected by infantry, as it is so easy to toss grenades into them from above and turn them into mass graves.