Chapter Two.
Friday, April 20th, 1945 was Adolf Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday. The Russians decided to send him a suitable birthday present. The massed artillery of the 1st Belorussian Front sent an artillery barrage right into the heart of the city, whilst the U.S. Army Air Force joined in with a massive air raid by over three hundred B-17 Flying Fortress bombers... a birthday bombardment that continued all day and caused major damage to the centre of the city, cutting gas and water supplies.
The cheerless birthday luncheon in the Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery was attended by Göring and Himmler, who then fled the city after offering the Führer their birthday congratulations. Acting in secret, Himmler had begun a vain attempt to broker a peace settlement through the Swedish Red Cross. When Hitler learned of Himmler's "treason"; one of his last acts before committing suicide was to strip Himmler of all of his party and State offices; specifically: ReichsFührer-SS, Chief of the German Police; Commissioner of German Nationhood; Reich Minister of the Interior; Supreme Commander of the Volkssturm; and Supreme Commander of the Home Army. Finally, he expelled Himmler from the Nazi Party and ordered his arrest.
Himmler departed the Führerbunker for the last time before the order was issued, reaching his headquarters at Ziethen castle, thirty-eight-kilometres northwest of Berlin the next day. He then spent his time fantasising about succeeding Hitler following the collapse of the Third Reich; and whether he should bow, give the Nazi salute or shake hands upon meeting with General Eisenhower to plan a new Germany; whilst Göring travelled to Karinhalle… his large hunting estate some eighty kilometres north-east of Berlin in the Schorfheide Forest, to remove his treasures and arrange for the estate to be demolished at the first signs of a Russian advance towards it.
By April 24th, the Soviet army encircling the city had slowly tightened its stranglehold on the remaining Nazi defenders. There were reports that the entire eastern half of the city was on fire. Fighting street-to-street and house-to-house, Soviet troops blasted their way towards the Government Quarter and the Reichs Chancellery in the city centre. They took every opportunity to infiltrate through back yards, cellar passageways, subway tunnels, and sewers. Using these methods, a considerable number of the German defence positions were stormed from behind or below. The infantry cleared the buildings of anti-tank gunners who were concealed in the basements or in the lower floors. After the buildings had been cleared, the tanks would advance.
Fearful of being targeted by German snipers, or machine-gun strong-points... or even the lone, elderly Volkssturm or Hitler Youth armed with a Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon; the advancing Soviet units used armour and artillery firing over open sights to completely demolish any building which could offer the slightest vantage point. The explosives tore out windows and doors which allowed air in to feed the flames, which burnt away the wooden structural elements and usually caused the fire-weakened walls to collapse.
The buildings lay where they had fallen. Heaps of plaster, broken brick, and splintered timbers choked the streets. Some rubble piles of the taller buildings rose to almost two- storeys in height. Some streets had literally disappeared; buried under shattered masonry and twisted steel; and above it all, hung an enormous, sullen pall of smoke.
Here was the devastation of the Capital of Hitler’s ambition on a Wagnerian scale... Berlin's Götterdämmerung with a counterpoint of acrid, choking smoke and brick-dust. Here was the last act of the "Tausendjähriges Reich"... the "Thousand Year Reich" as Hitler prowled the dismal underground corridors of the Führerbunker, located eight metres below the Chancellery garden.
GröFaZ.... "Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten" - the "Greatest War Leader of All Time"... the sardonic title first attributed to Hitler by his commanding generals in 1943, after Stalingrad; and used by the Berliners' as a nickname for Hitler ever since; was losing touch with reality. Daily briefings were held with his generals amid reports of the unstoppable Soviet advance into Berlin. Frantic orders were made to defend Berlin with armies that were already wiped out or were hastily retreating westward to surrender to the Americans.
As early as March; Hitler had ordered the complete destruction of Germany and the German people... his "Nerobefehl"... Nero Decree. Hitler justified this step as a military necessity, but intended for the destruction of the German people as a punishment for his defeat, He had ranted that the nation had proved itself weak and therefore did not deserve to survive, nor did they deserve him as Leader. This was "Die Verbrannte Erde"... the scorched earth policy that had been used so effectively during the retreat from the Eastern Front; to ensure that nothing of any value would be left to the armies now gathering for their final thrusts into the Third Reich. Chillingly, he had added,
"There is no need to consider the basis of even a most primitive existence any longer."
Hitler's top aide, Bormann, had reinforced this spiteful lunacy with a series of dreadful orders. On March 23rd, he decreed that the whole population of Germany... men, women, children; slave labourers, and prisoners of war were to be rounded up and force-marched to Berlin. The Russian advance on the Seelow Heights fortunately served to countermand this malicious order which would have resulted in the slaughter of thousands of non-combatants. Minister für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion… Minister of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer had been ordered to execute the Decree. Appalled at the lunacy of the order, Speer deliberately failed to carry it out, campaigning clandestinely to prevent its implementation.
In the midst of all this, a handful of Hitler's personal staff remained, including Bormann, the Goebbels family; various SS and military aides, two of Hitler's secretaries, and his naively loyal mistress, Eva Braun.
The remainder of his "Goldfasanen"... "Golden pheasants"... the derogatory term used for high-ranking Nazi Party "armchair warriors;" derived from the brown and red uniforms with golden insignia worn at official functions and rallies; had abandoned Berlin by car, aeroplane, and train to the south and west as the city's fall became imminent. Most Berliners were now openly referring to their devastated city as the "Reichsscheiterhaufen"... the "Reich's funeral pyre."
Eerily, just a week earlier, on the evening of April 12th; the renowned Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester, now known as the "Reichsorchester", and functioning under the control of Goebbels as part of his notorious Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda; had given its last concert in the Kroll Oper before Berlin finally succumbed the Russian onslaught. The hall was in darkness and illumination came only from the lights on the music stands. The first piece was appropriately the final scene from "Die Götterdämmerung," Wagner’s climactic and tragic music of the Death of the Gods.
As the audience listened to the musical denunciation of the malign transgressions of the Gods; of Siegfried on his funeral pyre; of Brünnhilde riding her horse into the flames to join him; did any of them apprehensively draw parallels with what had been taking place in Germany for the last dozen or so, years?
Then, with the tumult of rolling drums and crashing cymbals as the Reichsorchester thundered to its climactic, majestic finale of the terrible holocaust destroying Valhalla; perhaps they realised that this was indeed, the bitter destiny that was about to descend upon them. This atmosphere was certainly not helped at the end of the performance by uniformed Hitler Youths offering baskets to the audience on the way out. The baskets were filled with the little brass tubes which contained a cyanide capsule.
The SdKfz. 250/1 Ausf. B Leichter Schutzenpanzerwagen... a lightly-armoured command half-track with SS licence plates; the number 339 painted across the rear of the vehicle; and carrying the "Curved swastika" insignia of Panzergruppe Saalbach of the 11.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division Nordland painted on its front armour plate, rumbled and jolted through the cratered, burning, corpse-strewn streets, crushing everything in its path beneath its flailing clattering tracks as it lurched over the "Trümmerhaufen"... the heaps of rubble, and twisted iron that had once been the sumptuous buildings lining the devastated Belle-Alliance-Strasse and Belle-Alliance-Platz. Five days previously; an armada of American bombers had dropped a torrent of bombs and other incendiary devices onto the city centre, transforming the streets and squares into a massive inferno. Even after its destruction; the battle on this wasteland of rubble had continued as fanatical members of the Hitler youth constructed barricades at the Belle-Alliance Brück in a last-ditch attempt to halt the advance of Chuikov's 8th Guards Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army from the direction of Tempelhof.
The Soviet steamroller had swept on through the Berlin Mitte district and was now poised on the edge of the Berlin "Defence Zone"... the central sector of the city, known as the "Zitadelle" sector around the Reichstag and the Führerbunker under the Reichs Chancellery.
The six-cylinder Maybach motor howled in low gear as the young SS-Oberschütze driver attempted to negotiate a particularly large mound of splintered granite blocks strewn across the still-hot asphalt. A thick, suffocating blanket of smoke hung over the doomed city... a suffocating blanket smelling of wood, chemicals; and the ever-pervading sour stench of charred flesh. Great flakes of soot floated on the air like the tiny parachutes of wind-blown dandelion seeds.
The half-track had an open-top crew compartment with a single access door at the rear. It was fitted with an armoured body made of angled, multi-faceted plates, behind which, its occupants crouched on slatted wooden benches. The vehicle contained six young SS troopers and two young women, who, except for one trooper standing behind the vehicle's single MG42 machine gun mounted on a swivel mount at the rear of the vehicle; were huddled in their protective armoured womb, trying not to breathe in too much of the foul air. The young SS troopers were on a particularly dangerous enterprise. They had departed from the LSSAH Kaserne at Berlin-Lichterfelde with orders to extract Feldmarschall Keitel from the Führerbunker and transport him south to the headquarters of XX Corps at Weisenburg.
One of the young women was the nurse, Luise Gärtner. The other young woman was Karyn von Seringen. The SS troopers had started their journey from Berlin-Lichterfelde in Luise's commandeered Sanitätskompanie truck, with the two girls, but had discovered that there were so many wrecked vehicles and so much rubble choking the streets that the truck could not proceed along Hauptstrasse much beyond Kaiser Wilhelm Platz in Schöneberg. In the smouldering, skeletal ruins behind the relatively undamaged Rathaus Schöneberg, they had discovered the Sd.Kfz intact, except for a few bullet gouges. It looked as though it was parked up, rather than abandoned; its crew might be anywhere... or, they might well all be dead.
SS-Brigadeführer Ziegler's XI.SS Panzergrenadiers "Nordland" were believed to have made a fighting withdrawal by way of the Schöneberg and Kreuzberg districts in a vicious rearguard action through the rubble-strewn, shattered streets leading towards the Tiergarten.
SS-Panzerobergrenadier Röth jumped up onto the armoured engine cover of the half-track and peered over the front scuttle into the interior of the vehicle. He noted that there was plenty of ammunition for the MG42 machine gun, but no clue as to the whereabouts of its crew.
He snorted.
'She's still got the keys in the ignition. They're either all sitting in Valhalla... or they've decided to pack up their tents and piss off back home to Sweden. Let's see if the old girl will fire up.'
He vaulted over the scuttle into the driving seat; turned the ignition key, and pressed the starter button. The Maybach motor roared into life; its deep bellow echoing through the gaunt ruins as Röth pumped the accelerator pedal. The section leader... SS-Scharführer Erhard Schneider yelled through the driver's observation slit.
'For fuck's sake, knock it off, Willi. You'll have every sodding Ivan between here and the Reichstag down on our necks with that row! This is pretty well a guaranteed "Himmelfahrtskommando"... a "Ride to Heaven" command anyway... without you adding your two pfennigs-worth to it!'
Willi Röth laughed.
'No can do, Erhard. They've never made a quiet Maybach motor yet... and why worry about a few bog-dwellers when we are the proud new owners of one of The Number-One Carpet-Chewer's magnificent, go-anywhere sardine cans? Let's go! We're all invited to a ringside seat for the last act of Der Führerdämmerung; and we don't want to be late!
The dreadful confusion of noise from the continuous pounding of the doomed city centre by the Russian heavy guns drifted through the ruins; punctuated by the hideous grinding, wheezing, shrieking noise of the "Stalin organs"... Katyusha multiple rocket launchers; the most terrifying instruments of all time. The batteries were ranged out in the eastern suburbs. When a salvo struck, it could raze a whole city block instantly... and the Russians had been firing them into the city for days.
Willi Röth laughed again.
'Come on! Listen! It sounds as though they're warming up the orchestra, right now!'
Karyn studied the young troopers' faces. Not one of them was much older than nineteen. Behind the tough bravado she could see the fear in their eyes. They were garrison troops fresh out of SS-Junkerschule; and they had good reason to be fearful. If the Russians caught them, their black uniforms would tar them with the same brush as the Einsatzkommando murderers who had slaughtered their way across Russia in the wake of Operation Barbarossa. All that would await these boys... if they were very, very fortunate; would be an extremely slow, and very painful death at the hands of the vengeful Russian soldiers.
Schöneberg, and Wilmersdorft, the districts closest to the centre of the city, had been virtually obliterated. As the smoke drifted across the gaunt ruins against a backdrop of twisted girders, the city stood blackened by soot and pockmarked by thousands of bomb craters. Whole blocks of five-storey apartments had simply vanished; entire neighbourhoods were piles of rubble. What had once been wide streets and avenues were now brick-strewn pathways between towering escarpments of rubble. Hectare after Hectare were no more than gutted landscapes of windowless, roofless buildings gaping up at the sullen, smoky sky. The sun was nowhere to be seen. It was darker than the darkest rainy day. A fine rain of soot and ash drifted down, powdering the devastation. In the smoke-choked gloom, nothing moved except the dust... and the rats. Thousands of shards of glass carpeted the wasteland... another gargantuan Kristallnacht; but now, it was the ordinary Berliners, not just the Jews who had endured this.
Hitler had declared Berlin as fortress "Festung Berlin" in February; but nothing had been put in place to prepare the city. There were almost no regular troops for defence, and no plans were in place for evacuation of women, children, or old people. The only defenders were made up of army auxiliaries, SS, Luftwaffe; Volkssturm... very young, and very old civilian militia; the civilian police, and Hitler Youth. They were very short of weapons, armour, food, and fuel, and desperately short of ammunition. The final outcome of the battle was never in doubt. The Soviets had smashed through Schöneberg in spite of the hastily erected barricades of rolls of barbed wire, masses of steel anti-tank obstacles cobbled together from girders dragged off the bomb sites; old vehicles, and wrecked tram cars filled with rubble. These had been used to block main thoroughfares into the city. How well they had performed was ironically summed up by a current Berlin joke:
"It will take the Russians at least two hours and fifteen minutes to break through the barricades... Two hours laughing their heads off… and fifteen minutes smashing down the barricades."
The half-track grated, lurched and clattered over the debris-strewn Potsdamer Strasse heading for the Landwehrkanal. Above the sound of the bellowing motor and clattering tracks; Erhard Schneider yelled in his driver's ear.
'We're going to have to get a move on, Willi. They're going to blow the rest of the bridges soon.'
Wrestling with the big steering wheel that threatened to leap out of his grasp with every lump of rubble that the front wheels struck; Willi Röth growled at his section leader with bared teeth.
'Belt up and flaming listen! I'm only going to tell you once, so make sure you take it all in. If you think you can pedal this tub any faster then take over. Otherwise, just let me get the fuck on with it!'
SS-Rottenführer Erhard Schneider let out a long, despairing sigh and glanced at his charges huddled against the sloping sides of the vehicle.
'He wants a good kick up the arse,'
He declared in loud, exasperated tones.
'What does he think we're doing here? Playing fucking tiddlywinks? This lot reeks of Valhalla and a short life, as it is!'
As the half-track lurched past the first few smouldering remains that marked the intersection with Lützow Strasse; Willi pulled her to a halt with an unpleasant squealing of brakes. He thought that he had seen something move amongst the buildings that might well collapse at any moment. Water gushed from broken mains deep in immense bomb craters; escaping gas flared from fractured mains. The whole place was littered with cordoned off areas sprinkled with ominous signs that said: "Achtung! Minen!" meaning that somewhere in the masses of rubble were unexploded bombs, artillery shells or aerial mines. He raised a hand and pointed silently towards a great wilderness of rubble dotted with the roofless shells of burnt-out buildings. Schneider swung the MG42 in the direction Willi had indicated; pulling back the cocking handle, with his finger resting on the trigger, ready to open fire. If it was an ambush that Willi had spotted, the hunter had just become the prey.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Schneider scanned the apparently deserted ruins. The least sign of any suspicious movement in the shadows, from a doorway, at a window, and he would open up. Everything was a single landscape of debris. The sun was virtually invisible. The giant blanket of smoke still darkened the sky. The shell-fire had abated temporarily. It was an eerie silence; almost ghostlike... broken only by the odd rumble of falling masonry somewhere. And it was hot. The heat came out of the cellars, the burnt-out houses, and from cavernous holes that had once been windows. The streets were littered with the dead. Many had been scythed down by shrapnel as they desperately went for water at any one of Berlin's old-fashioned street pumps.
Schneider carefully scanned the whole area. He saw nothing except a nightmare landscape pitted with bomb craters, and reeking with a strange, unpleasant smell; a mixture of stale smoke, smouldering ruins; soot, lime mortar; wet earth, and masonry dust. Indistinct footpaths wound precariously over teetering mountains of treacherous rubble. From beneath it all, rising on the heat of the day, came the hideously disgusting smell of the charred remains of thousands of putrefying corpses.
Then he heard it; a low keening sound coming from somewhere distantly to the east. It rose rapidly to a horrible piercing scream followed by thunderous explosions. The Russians had started shelling the centre of Berlin again. Out over the eastern suburbs it looked as though the very clouds had suddenly caught fire. The ground was shaking and the whole sky was red, flickering with strange lavender and orangey-purple flashes. An acrid, evil-smelling smoke began rolling down over the city. He ducked back down into the relative armoured safety of the half-track and slapped Willi on the shoulder.
'Don't just fucking sit there! Let's get the hell out of here!'
As Willi Röth crashed in the gears and sent the half-track jolting and grinding on over the carpet of rubble, heading towards the Landwehrkanal; there was a furtive movement in the midst of the piles of rubble that had once been the synagogue on Lützow Strasse.
Rebekka Kriegmann carefully folded down the pivoting rear sight, and slipped the safety pin back into the Panzerfaust anti-tank grenade launcher as the half-track rumbled away into the distance. She was one of the Jewish "Untergetaucht"... "U-Boote"; the German name for submarines. The literal meaning of the word was: "Submerged." These "U-Booten" were the remaining Berlin Jews who were living an underground life, posing as non-Jews; many with false identities; many passing as Aryan, and none wearing the Yellow Star. Most of their friends thought they were long dead... and in a sense they were. Some had not seen the sun, or walked in a Berlin street in years
Rebekka Kriegmann was twenty-three; a flaxen-blonde, blue-eyed, porcelain-complexioned beauty. Whilst attending University; she had become influenced by Traute Lafrenz of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance group, and when the deportations and persecutions had started, had decided to try and set up a reliable escape network for those remaining members of the underground Jewish community in Berlin. This network was known as "Zumer Schwalben"... Yiddish for "Summer Swallows"; or "ZS" for short.
"ZS" had been successful for quite a while, until it was infiltrated by an agent of Berlin's notorious Judischer-Fahndungsdienst... the Jewish search service. This was a covert organisation of Jews working for the Gestapo; who didn't wear the Yellow Star, and combed the streets of Berlin hunting down fellow Jews who were living an underground life as "U-Boote."
When they met such people, they gave the impression that they were delighted to see them; but, within a day, these people would be arrested and shipped off on the "deportation" transports. Most of the members of the "ZS" organisation had been rounded up, tried and executed; or deported to the east over the past two years, but Rebekka Kriegmann had always managed to evade the "catchers." She had encountered several of this sinister handful of collaborationist Jewish "Greifer"... the "catchers," or "snatchers"; including the agent known as "Die blondes Gespenst"..."The Blonde Ghost".
This was Stella Goldschlag... the blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful Jewess and notorious "Greiferin" who collaborated with the Gestapo and was said to be able to smell out her fellow Jewish prey.
Rebekka Kriegmann; with her looks and her name... which she had wisely changed from the Jewish variant "Rebecca" to the Germano-Scandinavian version; had always managed to evade capture. Most of the fanatical Nazis could not bring themselves to believe that Jews could be blonde and pale-skinned.
As "Zumer Schwalben" had been systematically, and ruthlessly decimated; she had gone back underground and resolved to avenge her fellow "ZS" comrades by liquidating every Gestapo or SS who gave her an opportunity to do so. The Summer Swallow had become a predatory Hawk.
She had laid low as the first wave of Soviet assault troops had stormed through Schöneberg, and when they had passed by, she had crept out and collected as many weapons as she could find, including three of the Panzerfausts from a slaughtered Hitler Youth detachment at the Potsdamer Strasse - Lützow Strasse barricade. Now, she settled down and waited for her next victims. The half-track had not been a good target. It was about two-hundred-metres away... almost out of range. The sloping armour might well have caused the warhead to glance off, and, although he hadn't realised it; the machine gunner had her directly in his sights, and the back-blast of her weapon would have certainly exposed her position.
She carefully laid the Panzerfaust down, and picked up the MP44 assault rifle she had taken from a dead SS man with a "Nordland" cuff title. There would soon be fresh prey. Goebbels had called for "Rücksichslose Bekämpfung"... a fight without quarter. With German morale crumbling, the Führer had ordered ruthless methods to be used to maintain discipline. The marauding SS and Feldgendarmerie Death squads freely prowled the inner streets of the dying city with a cold fanaticism; executing "defeatist" civilians, deserters, and shirkers. They had the authority to summarily execute any soldier found guilty of "cowardice", "defeatism," or "treasonous acts."
Any who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that "Those not brave enough to fight had to die." Any attempt made cut the bodies down was punished by the offender being hanged beside them. When trees were not available, people were strung up from lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women; ordinary citizens who had been summarily executed by the SS Death squads. No records were kept of the roadside executions carried out, but the rumour circulating was that on the XI SS Corps sector, many, including a number of Hitler Youth had been hanged from trees on the flimsiest of proofs.
It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, in their eyes, was obviously the fault of the people. They had not sacrificed enough and therefore, had forfeited their right to live, as only the Nazi hierarchy was without guilt.
All able-bodied males, from the youngest to the eldest, who were caught not participating in the city's defence were shot down mercilessly in cold blood, or hanged from lampposts and trees in order to harden resistance. The SS squads were manned by junior SS officers... blindly fanatical youngsters with no real combat experience, who were much more willing to execute deserters, real or imagined; than to come to grips with the seasoned soldiers of the Red Army.
Rebekka heard the tell-tale "plop" of small-arms fire coming from the ruins of Körner Strasse directly across from her position. She flicked off the safety of the MP44, and pulled back the cocking lever of the weapon. Then she waited. Her weapon magazine was loaded with thirty, soft-nosed "Kurz" rounds. She watched coldly as the SS Death squad dragged an old Volkssturm out from his hiding place in a bombed-out cellar, slapped him about, and hanged him there and then, from a lamppost. As he kicked and struggled in his death throes, the sound of their laughter echoed through the ruins.
They came swaggering on down the street towards her, singing: "Blut muss fliessen"…based on "Das Heckerlied", a song from the German revolution of 1848, re-written in the Weimar period as an anti-semitic Freikorps song; and rabidly adopted as an SA combat song.
As they bawled out the last verse...
"Wetzt die langen Messer auf dem Bürgersteig,
lasst die Messer flutschen in den Judenleib.
Blut muss fliessen knüppelhageldick
und wir scheissen auf die Freiheit dieser Judenrepublik."
"Sharpen the long knives on the pavement,
let the knives slip into the Jew's body.
Blood must flow, a whole lot of it,
and we shit on the freedom of this Jew Republic."
She smiled grimly; thinking;
'Yes, you black swine... blood must flow...Your blood.'
And squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp crack, and the SS-Obersturmführer in charge; a pasty-faced, skinny individual who looked about eighteen, suddenly folded up in mid-song and fell sprawling and kicking to the ground.
'What the fuck's going on?'
Yelled a voice from the squad. Silence. No sound, except the sporadic scream of artillery shells in the distance; the wind moaning through the ruins, and the crackle and pop of burning wood. No indication at all as where the sniper was hidden.
'What was it? Ivan? Or one of our deserters?'
‘Fucked if I know.'
'Must have been one of ours. I haven't seen any fucking bog dwellers anywhere in this sector.'
'I suppose so.'
'Who else would be firing on us?'
'Dunno. Ivan is too far ahead for it to be one of them.'
'Where the fuck did it come from, then?'
No one answered, because no one actually knew. The dead SS-Obersturmführer lay sprawled in the road where he had fallen, his head skewed sideways in a spreading pool of blood. The eerie silence returned.
As they stood around gawping nervously into the ruins, clutching nervously at their raised weapons; Rebekka Kriegmann flicked the fire selector lever to full automatic; targeted the group and squeezed the trigger. Four of the Death squad fell immediately, splattering their comrades with their guts as the soft-nosed rounds tore through their bodies. The others dived into cover and began to return fire. Rebekka suddenly realised that she was in real trouble. She didn't have any spare magazines... only the Panzerfaust. She quickly surveyed the scene. The SS were cowering behind piles of rubble beneath the tottering remains of a twenty-metre-high wall. She smiled grimly. She could drop the wall onto them, but it would mean exposing herself as she aimed the Panzerfaust. You had to use the top edge of the shaped charge as the front sight. Oh well... no-one to say the "Khaddish," the prayer for the dead for her; and no time at all for God to listen to her "Vidui"... her confession.
She rose from her hiding place and took aim at the wall. Whispering the words of the "Shema Yisrael" prayer to herself, she pressed the trigger, flinching at the thump and burning pain as a burst of sub-machine gun fire from the direction of the rubble pile tore into her chest. She saw the shaped charge explode against the base of the wall, which teetered and toppled onto the Death squad as blackness enveloped her and dragged her down into its depths.
The two battered and dust-covered survivors of the Death squad struggled out from the rubble of the collapsed wall and cautiously approached the sprawled, motionless figure. It didn't matter that she was barely alive. They viciously stamped on her head and chest with their heavy, hob-nailed Marschstiefeln, and dragged her across the rubble by her blood-stained, blonde hair. Then they hanged her from the nearest lamp post.
The seventeen-year-old SS Sturmmann snarled,
"Fick dich, Schlampe"… "Fuck you, Bitch,"
And spat into her ruined face. Then turning; he walked back to where his comrade was checking the remainder of the squad to see if any of them were still alive. He drew his Walther P38, pushed the other SS aside, and coldly put a bullet into the head of any of them who still showed any signs of life. Jamming his Walther back into its holster, he, and his white-faced comrade turned into Lützow Strasse to seek out and join another of the Death squads.
In Körner Strasse, Rebekka Kriegmann, the last surviving member of the brave hope they had called "Zumer Schwalben" swayed gently in the smoky breeze as it whimpered a sooty requiem for her through the choking dust that hung over Berlin during the brief, eerie, almost ghostlike silence that descended as the Russian shelling abated again for a little while.
Five-hundred-metres to the north; in what remained of Potsdamer Strasse, the half-track met with another of the SS Death squads. The squad leader; a cocky young Rottenführer wearing a cuff title of the SS Volunteer Grenadier Division "30 Januar" stood in the middle of the road and raised his hand in a "Halt" signal. Erhard Schneider tapped Willi on the shoulder and told him to obey the young senior lance-corporal's command.
This SS Volunteer Division had only been formed in January from the survivors of other units; staff and pupils from SS schools, and various other troops; so, it was more than likely that this young Rottenführer had never actually seen combat... which would make him jumpy and unpredictable. Erhard Schneider pulled on his glossy-black Stahlhelm and stood up. As the half-track ground to a halt, he leaned over the side of the vehicle and rested his arms on the top of the angled armour plate, so that his Leibstandarte cuff title was prominently displayed to the gaze of the young Rottenführer, who recognised it, and visibly paled. You just didn't fuck about with the Leibstandarte if you had any sense of self-preservation at all. He hesitated.
Seizing the initiative; Erhard Schneider held out his hand and snapped his fingers.
'Your Razzia order, Rottenführer,'
The young Rottenführer delved into his tunic breast pocket and brought out a folded paper which he handed to Erhard with a slight tremble in his hand. Erhard made a great pretence of scrutinising it; then carefully folded it and handed it back.
'Sehr Gut. Now; any signs of Ivan between here and the Landwehrkanal?'
The Rottenführer shook his head.
'Not as far as I know Scharführer; except for dead ones. The pioneers are laying demolition charges on the bridges, even as we speak. We were just doing one last sweep of our sector before we withdraw to the Zitadelle sector. You will find the Berlin regiment of the Leibstandarte are there. They are equipped with a large quantity of weapons, including several Tiger II tanks, and are reinforced with militia men drafted into the Leibstandarte Brigade to help man the defences. The Soviet assault has stalled at the Landwehrkanal, but there are still one or two ways through.'
Erhard studied the young Rottenführer's ingratiating expression. God help him if he ran into any Russians. He would soon discover that facing an armed enemy who hated you was a world away from hunting unarmed and frightened civilians and shell-shocked deserters. The young Rottenführer continued;
'I must report that the road is impassable a little further on at the Bűlowstrasse junction. The Terrorfliegers dropped a big bomb that collapsed the U-Bahn tunnel. The road is nothing but a huge hole. We found that Am Karlsbad is quite clear, and the Köthener Bridge is still standing. The Soviets are further to the east; so you should be able to make it.'
Erhard nodded.
'Thank you, Rottenführer. Your assistance will be mentioned.'
The young Rottenführer drew himself rigidly to attention.
'Thank you, Scharführer.'
Willi crunched in the gears and the half-track lurched forward. As it grumbled away, the Death squad snapped to attention with a perfectly synchronised Hitlergruss, then turned away in seek of fresh prey.
At the corner of Am Karlsbad; a small group of heavily-armed Waffen SS-Feldgendarmerie; the universally despised "Kopfjäger"... the dreaded "Head Hunters" flagged down the half-track. Erhard was instantly suspicious. They were too close to the operating sector of the other Death squad to be legitimate, and they didn't behave like a normal SS execution squad. They seemed to be cautious and jumpy. As the big Scharführer approached; Erhard studied him intently. He wore the metal gorget... the "Ringkragen" on a chain around his neck; but he also wore an orange Feldgendermarie police eagle badge on his sleeve in place of where the silver and black Waffen-SS eagle should have been. This was completely wrong. The Feldgendermarie police eagle had been abolished in November 1944. His SS-Feldgendarmerie cuff title was correct... but sewn, or rather, tacked a little too far up his sleeve.
His squad were armed with MP34 machine pistols. These weapons were only issued to line-of-communications and reserve units, including military police and Army Feldgendarmerie detachments. If they really were Waffen-SS Feldgendarmerie, they should have been equipped with MP40's. Erhard could distinguish the altered uniforms quite easily. He nudged Willi to be ready to move quickly, and indicated that Richard Kaufmann, the nearest Sturmmann to him, should get behind the MG42; ready, but down out of sight.
Who they were, or what they were, didn't really matter. They were much more dangerous that the actual Death squads; for if they were caught as Fahnenflüchtige... deserters; the justice meted out to them would be swift and summary. They would now be looking for a quick ride out of the doomed city and wouldn't think twice about killing everyone in the half-track to get their hands on it... and an SS halftrack at that. In their "Head-Hunter" disguise, the other roaming Death squads wouldn't even give them a second glance if they were in this vehicle... let alone stop them for identity paper checks.
Erhard smiled amiably at the big Scharführer swaggering up to the side of the half-track with his hand extended, about to demand their papers. He noted that the Scharführers' other hand was grasping the butt of the Luger pistol protruding from his service holster. That clinched it. He should have been carrying a Walther P38.
Erhard snapped out an order to Kaufmann, who rose out of the depths of the half-track; cocked, and swung the MG42 around in one smooth movement to cover the rest of the squad, who froze as they stared into the muzzle of the most dangerous weapon they were ever likely to encounter. The Scharführer suddenly found himself staring at the business end of Erhard's P38 as Kaufmann yelled out to the seemingly paralysed squad,
'OK, you dumb bastards; drop the shit.'
The clatter of five MP34's hitting the rubble echoed around the ruins.
Erhard smiled winningly at the glowering Scharführer.
'Gently now, Sunbeam. Luger out, finger and thumb; if you don't want a nine-millimetre, lead headache pill.'
The Luger clattered to the ground.
Erhard grinned, but his tone was icy and portentous.
'Nice try assholes. Now, line up against that fucking wall with your paws behind your heads.'
Slowly the squad obeyed his command; stumbling across the rubble and standing, hands behind their necks, and faces pressed up against the sooty bricks. Erhard vaulted over the side of the half-track and collected the discarded weapons. Only one of the machine pistols was cocked. All the rest still had their safety catches on. He grinned again. Shit-scared amateurs!
Opening the rear hatch and dumping the weapons inside the vehicle, he clambered in and picked up one of the machine pistols. He leaned over the side and cocked the weapon... but left the safety catch on. As they heard the ominous metallic sound of the bolt cocking handle; one of the squad fainted and two more pissed themselves in terrified anticipation of the bullets about to tear into them. He nodded to Willi, who rammed the gearstick into first and floored the accelerator pedal. As the half-track surged away; the Scharführer turned and yelled out,
'You fucking black bastards! I hope Ivan pulls your balls out through your assholes!'
Waving his fist wildly in the direction of the cloud of mortar dust churned up by the screaming tracks.
As they rattled down Am Karlsbad; Erhard was wondering why the Scharführer had chosen to desert. It was obvious that he had guts. But then, perhaps he was just as fed up with this bloody mayhem as the rest of them. Hitler's Empire of The Thousand Year Reich that had once stretched from the west coast of France to the very gates of Moscow was now reduced to a mere handful of kilometres around the ruined centre of Berlin, and had lasted a scant twelve years.
Erhard wondered if he would ever see his parent's farm on the soft slopes of the Hartz Mountains again. He didn't hold out much hope; but his Leibstandarte oath had been "Meine Ehre Heißt Treue"... "Loyalty is my Honour." It was etched into the blade of his dagger, and, if nothing else; Loyalty and Honour... at least, to his Comrades in Arms, if not to the untalented, hysterical little bourgeois journeyman painter who had destroyed his beloved Germany; was really all that was now left.