Category: Writing

“From Speer’s office Reymann made a quick visit to one of the defense sectors on Berlin’s outskirts. Each of these inspections only served to deepen Reymann’s conviction that Berlin’s defenses were an illusion. In the strutting, triumphant years, the Nazis had never considered the possibility that one day a last stand would be made in the capital. They had built fortifications everywhere else – the Gustav Line in Italy, the Atlantic Wall along the European coast, the Sigfried Line at Germany’s western borders – but not even a trench had been built around Berlin. Not even when the Russians drove with titanic force across eastern Europe and invaded the Fatherland did Hitler and his military advisors act to fortify the city.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 380

“As people waited for news, they hid their anxiety in grim humor. A new greeting swept the city. Total strangers shook hands and urged each other “Bleib übrig” – Survive. Many Berliners were burlesquing Goebbels’ broadcast of ten days before. Insisting that Germany’s fortune would undergo a sudden change, he had said: ‘The Führer knows the exact hour of its arrival. Destiny has sent us this man so that we, in this time of great external and internal stress, shall testify to the miracle.’ Now those words were being repeated everywhere, usually in a derisive imitation of the Propaganda Minister’s spellbinding style. One other saying was making the rounds. “We’ve got nothing at all to worry about,” people solemnly assured one another. ‘Gröfaz will save us.’ Gröfaz had long been the Berliner’s nickname for Hitler. It was an abbreviation of ‘Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten‘ – the greatest general of all time.

…

But would barricades such as these [such as “old trucks and disused tram cars filled with stones”] stop the Russians? ‘It will take the Reds at least two hours and fifteen minutes to break through,’ a current joke went: ‘Two hours laughing their heads off and fifteen minutes smashing the barricades.'”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 371-2, 375 (italics in original)

“It almost seemed as if the authorities were not prepared to face the fact that Berlin was endangered. Although the Red Army was now barely thirty-two miles away, no alarm had been given and no official announcement had been made. Berliners knew very well that the Russians had attacked. The muffled thunder of artillery had been the first clue; now from refugees, by telephone, by word of mouth, the news had spread. But it was still fragmentary and contradictory, and in the absence of any real information there was wild speculation and rumor. Some people said the Russians were fewer than ten miles away, others heard that they were already in the eastern suburbs. No one knew precisely what the situation was, but most Berliners now believed that the city’s days were numbered, that its death throes had begun.

And yet, astonishingly, people still went about their business. They were nervous, and it was increasingly difficult to preserve the outward appearance of normality, but everyone tried.

At every stop, milkman Richard Poganowka was besieged with questions. His customers seemed to expect him to know more than anyone else. The usually cheerful Poganowska could not provide any answers. He was as fearful as those he served. On the Kreuznacherstrasse the portrait of Adolf Hitler still hung in the living room of the Nazi postal official, but that no longer seemed reassuring to Poganowska.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 368-9

“Inside the fort the noise was almost intolerable. Added to the firing of the batteries was the constant rattling of automatic shell elevators, which carried ammunition in an endless stream from a ground floor arsenal to each gun. G Tower was designed not only as a gun platform but as a huge five-story warehouse, hospital and air raid shelter. The top floor, directly underneath the batteries, housed the 100-man military garrison. Beneath that was a 95-bed Luftwaffe hospital, complete with X-ray rooms and two fully equipped operating theaters. It was staffed by six doctors, twenty nurses and some thirty orderlies. The next floor down, the third, was a treasure trove. Its storerooms contained the prize exhibits of Berlin’s top museums. Housed there were the famous Pergamon sculptures, parts of the huge sacrificial altar built by King Eumenes II of the Hellenes around 180 B.C.; various other Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, including statues, reliefs, vessels and vases; “The Gold Treasure of Priam,” a huge collection of gold and silver bracelets, necklaces, earrings, amulets, ornaments and jewels, excavated by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in 1872 on the city of the ancient city of Troy. There were priceless Gobelin tapestries, a vast quantity of paintings – among them fine portraits of the 19th-century German artist Wilhelm Leibl – and the enormous Kaiser Wilhelm coin collection. The two lower floors of the tower were mammoth air raid shelters, with large kitchens, food storerooms and emergency quarters for the German broadcasting station, Deutschlandsender. Entirely self-contained, G Tower had its own water and power, and easily accommodated fifteen thousand people during air raids. The complex was so well stocked with supplies and ammunition that the military garrison believed that, no matter what happened to the rest of Berlin, the zoo tower could hold out for a year if need be.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 167-8

“Blaschke took one look at the tooth and told Hitler that it had to come out, there was no way he could save it. Blaschke explained that he would need to remove two teeth – a false tooth at the rear of the bridge as well as the infected one next to it. That meant cutting through the porcelain and gold bridge at a point in front of the false tooth, a procedure that called for a considerable amount of drilling and sawing. Then, after making the final extraction, at some later date he would either make an entirely new bridge or re-anchor the old one.

Blaschke was nervous about the operation: it was intricate and there was no telling how Hitler would behave. Complicating matters even further was the Führer’s dislike of anesthetics. He told Blaschke, Kathe remembered, that he would accept ‘only the bare minimum.’ Both Blaschke and Kathe knew he would suffer excruciating pain; furthermore the operation might last as long as thirty to forty-five minutes. But there was nothing they could do about it.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 55

“Everyone had a score to settle. But along the Western Front the German Army scarcely existed any longer as a cohesive, organized force. Decimated during the Ardennes offensive, the Reich’s once-powerful armies had been finally smashed in the month-long campaign between the Moselle and the Rhine. Hitler’s decision to fight west of the Rhine rather than withdraw his battered forces to prepared positions on the eastern banks had proven disastrous; it would be recorded as one of the greatest military blunders of the war. Nearly 300,000 men had been taken prisoner and 60,000 were killed or wounded. In all, the Germans lost the equivalent of more than twenty full divisions.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 130-1

“On March 6 [Major General Hellmuth] Reymann assumed command. Within a few hours he made an appalling discovery. Although Hitler had declared Berlin a Festung, the fortifications existed only in the Fuhrer’s imagination. There was no plan, there were no defenses and there were virtually no troops. Worse, no provision had been made for the civilian population; an evacuation plan for the women, children and old people simply did not exist.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 65 (italics in original)

“The Nazis occupied a particular place in the life of the city. Berliners had never fully accepted Hitler or his evangelism. They had always been too sophisticated and too international in outlook. In fact, the Berliner’s caustic humor, political cynicism and almost complete lack of enthusiasm for the Fuhrer and his new order had long plagued the Nazi Party. Whenever torchlight parades or other Nazi demonstrations to impress the world were held in Berlin, thousands of storm troopers had to be shipped in from Munich to beef up the crowds of marchers. ‘They look better in the newsreels than we do,’ wisecracked the Berliners, ‘and they also have bigger feet!’

Try as he might, Hitler was never able to capture the hearts of the Berliners. Long before the city was demolished by Allied bombs, a frustrated and angry Hitler was already planning to rebuild Berlin and shape it to the Nazi image. He even intended to change its name to Germania, for he had never forgotten that in every free election in the thirties Berliners had rejected him. In the critical balloting of 1932 when Hitler was sure he would unseat Hindenburg, Berlin gave him its lowest vote of all – only 23 percent. Now, the fanatics among the citizenry were determined to make Berlin, the least Nazi city in Germany, the last Festung (fortress) of Nazism. Although they were in the minority, they were still in control.”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 52 (emphasis in original)

“Dr. Margot Sauerbruch also expected the worst. She worked with her husband, Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Germany’s most eminent surgeon, in Berlin’s oldest and largest hospital, the Charité, in the Mitte district. Because of its size and location close by the main railway station, the hospital had received the worst of the refugee cases. From her examination of the victims, Dr. Sauerbruch had no illusions about the ferocity of the Red Army when it ran amok. The rapes, she knew for certain, were not propaganda.

Margot Sauerbruch was appalled by the number of refugees who had attempted suicide – including scores of women who had not been molested or violated. Terrified by what they had witnessed or heard, many had slashed their wrists. Some had even tried to kill their children. How many had actually succeeded in ending their lives nobody knew – Dr. Sauerbruch saw only those who had failed – but it seemed clear that a wave of suicides would take place in Berlin if the Russians captured the city.

Most other doctors apparently concurred with this view. In Wilmersdorf, Surgeon Gunther Lamprecht noted in his diary that ‘the major topic – even among doctors – is the technique of suicide. Conversations of this sort have become unbearable.'”

Ryan, Cornelius. The Last Battle. 1966. p. 31