October 1944–January 1945

“FORTRESS MEMEL”

October 5, 1944–late January, 1945

Upon being issued orders to retreat from Latvia to the German port city of Memel on October 5, most of the regular infantry from the 58th Infantry Division headed by truck to Riga’s harbor and then set out aboard ship on the short sea voyage down the Baltic coast. Before their departure, Lt. Col. Ebeling assigned me temporary command of all the 154th Regiment’s horse-drawn equipment, of which my own heavy weapons company comprised only a part.

Directed to deliver the detachment to Memel by road, I led the three-mile long column out of the Riga area on a 100-mile trek to the southwest. During the first part of the march, Soviet aircraft made frequent strafing runs that forced us to scramble for cover off the road, but the raids diminished once we left the area around Riga.

When our slow-moving procession had traveled a little more than halfway to Memel, a Red Army thrust reached the Baltic Sea ahead of us, blocking our planned overland route to the city. New orders redirected me to lead the column toward the German-controlled port of Libau in northwestern Latvia, from where we would sail down to Memel by ship.

Riding my horse Thea out in front of our column soon afterward, I heard a voice from behind me ask, “Where are you going?”

Caught off guard, I spun around to see an officer’s staff car moving just off to the left side of my horse. Inside the vehicle sat Field Marshall Ferdinand Schörner, the commander of Army Group North.

Startled by his sudden appearance, I nonetheless managed to snap off a salute and reply, “Libau, as far as I know, Sir.”

Schörner had a reputation for ruthless discipline and for making surprise appearances all over the front. The story went that when his driver made some error, Schörner ordered him to stop and demoted him right on the spot. The next time the driver did something that pleased Schörner, he again ordered the car to stop and promoted him back to his original rank. Fortunately, I avoided the Field Marshall’s displeasure and was ordered to continue with my mission.

Our column finally reached the harbor in Libau on the afternoon of October 15. Using cranes to hoist the heavier equipment, everything was loaded aboard ship in a matter of hours. Evacuating by sea that night, our blacked-out vessel hugged the Baltic coast on the roughly 35-mile voyage south. Behind us, the trapped divisions of Army Group North would fight on until the end of the war.

In the morning, our ship docked in “Fortress Memel,” as Nazi propaganda referred to the city in an effort to inspire its defenders. We were now under the command of Army Group Center and back inside the territory of the Greater German Reich, about 25 miles from where the 58th Division had begun its advance into Russia three and a half years earlier.

By the time we arrived, our battered regimental infantry had already helped to repulse a number of fierce Soviet assaults against Memel. Forced to rely on only machine guns and other light weapons to this point, they urgently sought the fire support of our heavy weapons. Within a few hours of docking, our company’s guns and other equipment had been unloaded and we set out for the frontlines six or seven miles from the harbor.

After passing through the edge of the city, we immediately deployed in position behind the infantry, firing a series of ranging shots to establish our zones of fire. Attacks struck our position the next day, but no major offensive followed. In the ensuing weeks, the Red Army mounted only company and battalion-sized operations against our defenses, and even these grew increasingly intermittent.

Though it usually stayed fairly quiet in our sector, Russian assaults elsewhere around Memel pushed the German lines slowly back toward the city during the following weeks. Despite persistent enemy pressure, most German units in Memel were soon transferred southward in response to more urgent crises. In the end, only our division and the 95th Infantry Division remained to man the city’s defenses, but that proved enough to hold it.

While the Red Army’s high command had other priorities, they may also have concluded that dislodging us was not worth the cost, just as we had eventually given up trying to eliminate the isolated Soviet pocket at Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland. A cornered enemy fighting for their lives is tough to overcome.

Throughout the siege, I occupied a bunker halfway between the frontline and Memel, while the rest of the personnel in my company were stationed at a farm a mile or two closer to town. With its civilian population evacuated to the west, the city itself became a virtual ghost town.

During one of the breaks in the fighting, I entered a nearby vacated home where I savored the luxury of a bath for the first time in months. In another of the abandoned residences, an officer in our regiment had found a shotgun. He would occasionally loan it to me so that I could hunt jackrabbits, which our company cook would convert into a delicious meal.

About nine o’clock one morning, I was still resting in my bunker after a late night when Lt. Col. Ebeling unexpectedly appeared at the entrance. Still not dressed, I sprung out of my bunk and saluted, but he did not appear impressed. My relationship with our regimental commander was good, but it was embarrassing to have been caught sleeping at such a late hour in the morning.

Around this same time, a more serious incident occurred. Since the men in my company had not fired their rifles for a while, I decided to find a suitable area for them to conduct target practice. A hill located near our company’s billet on the farm seemed the natural choice. The fact that the bunker housing the regimental headquarters was situated on the other side of the hill never entered my mind.

After about five minutes of shooting, a corporal ran up to me with an urgent order from Ebeling for my troops to cease their fire. Stray bullets were soaring over the hill and whizzing through the air around the regimental bunker. Though the soldiers in my company were proficient in the use of our heavy weapons, most of them, unfortunately, were not skilled marksmen with their rifles.

On the city streets near the farm where our company was garrisoned, my men posted signs with the words Einheit Lübbecke (Unit Lübbecke) to direct anyone seeking our location. Typically, the letters sent to soldiers at the front did not indicate the name of the company and regiment since this was militarily valuable information. Instead, the writer addressed the intended recipient’s Feldpost number (postal number in the field), which remained constant throughout the war.

Perhaps because the military situation had deteriorated so greatly, increasing numbers of our letters home passed through censors during this period. Despite this scrutiny, I never felt limited regarding what I could communicate. Likewise, I felt that I received a clear sense of what was happening with Anneliese and my family as well.

THE CHALLENGE OF LEADERSHIP

On January 20, 1945, the army elevated me from Kompanieführer (company leader) to the more permanent status of Kompaniechef (company commander). My satisfaction at this promotion was reinforced when the men in my company honored me with an informal celebration at the farmhouse where they were quartered. Ultimately, the respect of the soldiers I led in combat was even more important to me than the approval of those above me. This elevation in my command status was soon followed by a promotion in rank from second lieutenant (Leutnant) to first lieutenant (Oberleutnant) on January 30, but by then other events would intervene.

The burden of my duties as a company commander were much lighter in Memel than they had been when we were in action at the Düna, but there were increasing manpower problems. By late 1944, the declining pool of replacements in Germany made it impossible for the Wehrmacht to provide us with an adequate number of troops to make up for our losses. As in the rest of the German Army, I could only reorganize my remaining 150 men in an effort to fulfill our combat mission as effectively as possible.

Though leading men in combat was something for which I felt well suited, there were many additional non-combat duties for an officer to perform. When soldiers under my command were killed, it was my responsibility to send letters notifying their wives and families back home. Despite the routine sentiments contained in such letters, I always felt this duty to be the most difficult in my service as an officer.

Yet death is an inevitable reality of war. The side that wins the field at the end of a battle controls the treatment of dead and wounded. Often, the fate of those listed as missing is never known. Though concerned for those lost in battle, the unit must look to its immediate needs. The enemy is not interested in an accounting of your casualties and the fighting moves on. The bodies of the dead lie in the woods and rot. It is terrible, but it is an ugly side of war that is often forgotten.

During the latter part of the war, combat on the Eastern Front grew even more brutal. When the Soviets won battles after 1943, they would sometimes shoot our wounded and leave our dead unburied. In those situations, only those who could walk would be sent off to the POW camps. Ultimately, the treatment of soldiers depended on when and where a battle was fought.

In my experience, the Wehrmacht never issued orders that forbade German troops to take prisoners. I never personally witnessed German troops shoot wounded or surrendering Red Army soldiers, though these things could have happened. While we did not necessarily bury the enemy’s dead, especially when the front became fluid, to the best of my knowledge German forces provided medical care to the wounded Russian troops and sent all those who surrendered back to POW camps, even if the conditions in these facilities were utterly inadequate.

Though German troops did not always behave properly, a military code of conduct was strictly enforced. As commander, I sometimes administered disciplinary action for the troops in the company who failed to obey it.

One case involved the court martial of a sergeant who was one of my oldest comrades. After being drafted into 13th Company with me back in 1939, he had worked his way up to command a gun crew operating one of our 75-millimeter howitzers. Finding a family’s silver belongings buried in a yard near Memel, he ordered one of his men to dig them up and pack them in a parcel for shipment back to Germany.

When the crime came to my attention, I enforced military procedure and sent him back to the division to receive his sentence. Last that I heard, he ended up in the punishment battalion that we called the Himmelfarhtkommando (roughly, the heaven-bound force), a unit so named because they received the most dangerous combat assignments.

Although lacking the subordinate officers who would normally assist the company commander, I did receive some limited support from the regimental command staff as well as from our “mother of the company,” Senior Sgt. Jüchter, who was in charge of the Tross. His assistance was invaluable in carrying out my many mundane but nonetheless essential administrative chores, such as requesting supplies, ammunition, and hay for our horses.

My other tasks included issuing authorizations for furloughs, based on Jüchter’s determination as to who was due one, as well as sending up requests for decorations or promotions. On my recommendation, two men in the company returned to Germany for officer training. The downside of this action was that I lost a couple of my better men.

By my estimation, about fifty percent of the troops were married, a proportion that had increased since the beginning of the war when a larger percentage were young volunteers. At this time, divorce was frowned upon in German society. Married couples typically pursued a divorce only when there were severe and irreconcilable problems, but war tended to worsen these problems as well as create new ones. The separation of soldiers from their wives and girlfriends at home sometimes exposed these women to unscrupulous men who would take advantage of the situation.

During my year in command, there were at least four situations where I had to respond to legal papers requesting me to verify that a particular soldier had not been on leave during the previous ten months before his wife had a baby. This confirmation would provide either the soldier or his wife grounds for a divorce.

Separately, I had to respond to about five or six sets of court papers from wives seeking divorce from soldiers in my unit. Calling the soldier into my bunker, I would ask him to tell me man-to-man what had happened.

When a soldier learned for the first time that his wife wanted to end the marriage or was having an affair, it would rip his guts out. Naturally, such traumatic news would also have grave repercussions on the way the man behaved in combat. The end of a relationship with a wife or serious girlfriend usually caused a sense of psychological torment that exceeded even the emotional suffering that resulted from the death of a close comrade.

Dealing with these situations only reinforced my own concerns about Anneliese. As I wrote to her in a letter at the time, “The price of war goes way beyond the battlefield.”

ANNELIESE

At the end of two months with my family in Püggen following her evacuation from Belgium, Anneliese received new orders on November 9 transferring her to a hospital run by the Kriegsmarine in Zeven, located about 100 miles northwest of Püggen between Bremen and Hamburg. Her previous service as a nurse had been in military hospitals run by the German Army, but the Kriegsmarine now provided her with a different uniform and issued its own regulations governing the conduct of medical personnel.

Following a couple of months working in Zeven, Anneliese was transferred further north to a hospital in Altenwalde, a suburb of the city of Cuxhaven located at the juncture of the Elbe River and the North Sea. While she spent most of the next nine months based in Altenwalde, she was later detached to the hospital in neighboring Süderdeich, further up the Elbe.

Earlier in Belgium, and later in northern Germany, Anneliese was exposed to other perils besides Allied bombing. As an attractive 23-year-old nurse in a military hospital, she worked in a harsh environment for which her upbringing had left her wholely unprepared. She was lonely and vulnerable without me or a family to provide her with any love or support.

My concern for her safety and well-being in that environment caused me immense stress. Despite her engagement to me, Anneliese was forced to continually fend off advances from the soldiers and sailors whom she encountered daily as well as from the doctors with whom she worked. In several letters, I warned her to be cautious and guard against the predations of such men.

In a previous letter to me written on July 20, 1943, Anneliese expressed the pain she still suffered because of the absence of affection in her childhood: “You had such a happier youth than me. It is so hard for a girl without a mother’s love.” Now, she was a woman on her own without the benefit of a mother from whom she could seek advice about men and the dangers they might pose to her.

As a result of the lack of love in her youth, Anneliese had a deep need for affection as an adult. This made her a natural target for aggressive males pursuing female companionship, especially when such a man dishonestly promised that he only sought her innocent company. In this regard, her environment at the military hospital was more hazardous than my situation at the front where there were no women who might divert our attention.

Realizing the inherent risk to her, it was extremely difficult for me as a 24-year-old man to endure our separation while simultaneously performing my duties as a company commander. Several lines from my various letters reflect my anxious efforts to reassure her of my love and to encourage her to remain strong.

“How many times a day do I think I about you?”

“The biggest problem I have is missing you, Annelie.”

“Mutual love overcomes all separations.”

“Our love gives us peace in these sorrowful days.”

“The remembrance of our past times together hurts badly.”

“My thoughts are always with you far away, my love.”

“I cannot describe with words my love for you.”

“I am thankful that God showed me the way to you, Annelie.”

Ultimately, my upbringing imparted to me a strength of character and self-control to bear my burdens. Lacking a similar upbringing, Anneliese was less able to cope with our separation. As I would later discover, there would be consequences.

While my deep apprehensions persisted, Anneliese and I had decided that we no longer wished to delay our marriage until after the war. We now only awaited the necessary official permission, following the completion of the required investigation into the Jewish surname of her mother. Indeed, we had already plotted out our imminent wedding in Hamburg down to the last detail in a series of letters.

Using some cloth purchased when I had been on occupation duty in Belgium, I had hired a tailor in Hamburg to make me a suit. Anneliese had meanwhile purchased her wedding dress. We planned to have a covered carriage pulled by two white horses to carry us to the ceremony at the church and then deliver us to a wedding reception at Aunt Frieda’s apartment. Afterward, we would celebrate our honeymoon at a Hamburg hotel.

On January 23 and 24, 1945, the division and then the regiment signed the Marriage Allowance Paper, providing us with the last of the official documentation that we needed. Since I was next in line for a three-week leave from duty, I pushed my concerns about Anneliese’s situation from my mind and looked forward impatiently to our impending marriage.

EVOLVING VIEWS ON THE WAR

Throughout the war, German soldiers had regular access to the news through the weekly issues of the divisional newspaper and armed forces radio, but the heavily censored information offered us only a general picture of what was happening in Russia and the wider war.

My general lack of concern about Germany’s declaration of war against America during the winter of 1941 in Uritsk had been typical. At that time, the United States seemed too far away to make a difference in our struggle against Russia, but it turned out that American industry would provide crucial material support that helped the Red Army recover from its early disasters.

Reports of the surrender in Stalingrad in early 1943 sparked much more concern among the troops, but most of us still remained confident that Germany would ultimately win, or at least obtain a favorable peace settlement. The surrender of Italy, Germany’s main ally in Europe, in September 1943, only inspired us to fight harder to obtain this ultimate victory. Even with the news of our steady retreat from Russia, almost everyone at home and at the front still fully expected that we would win the war as late as mid-1944.

This persistent optimism partly reflected the power of the Nazi-controlled media to shape perspectives and opinions among the German public. There were also rumors, grandly reinforced by Göbbels, that Germany was developing secret wonder weapons to ensure ultimate victory. When our new Vergeltungswaffe (Vengeance) missiles began striking England in the summer of 1944, they appeared to give credence to the rumors, though their effect may have been exaggerated.

While the regime’s reports, exhortations, and propaganda skillfully manipulated the public’s hopes and fears, I believe that Germans also allowed themselves a certain amount of self-deception about the situation in order to sustain their morale in the face of overwhelming odds.

Soon after my return to the front from Germany in May 1944, we learned about the Allied landings in France. This was not necessarily considered bad news because for years the Allies had been targeting our cities with air raids, as though they were hesitant to again confront the Wehrmacht on the ground in France. It was hoped that once they had staged the landings we could then force another Dunkirk, eliminating the threat from the West for the foreseeable future.

When the expected repulse of the Allies failed to materialize within the first couple of weeks, it was apparent that Germany now faced a second front. Perhaps if Germany had possessed more veteran divisions like the 58th on the Western Front, the D-Day landings would have failed, but by then experienced troops were in short supply.

Before the war, there was a deep resentment toward the West that stemmed from the harsh treatment meted out to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. By the time the Western Allies landed in France on D-Day, I had come to see the current conflict against the Western powers as more like a game compared with the brutal nature of our struggle against the Russians.

A German soldier captured by the Western Allies expected to survive, but one captured in Russia did not. Upon learning of my brother Otto’s capture by the Americans in the summer of 1944, I was not concerned because I knew he was safe. From my perspective as a soldier on the battlefield, the war with the American or British troops in the west was a struggle between civilized foes, while the war against the Red Army in the east was generally perceived as a clash with a barbaric mortal enemy.

The view toward the Western Allies inside Germany was different. Because the German people expected the Americans and the British to conduct the war in a more humane fashion and to follow the Geneva Convention, they were surprised and embittered at the Anglo-American bombing of cities that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of German civilians. Rather than breaking their spirit, the attacks probably made most Germans more determined to resist.

Although the troops around me in Russia still did not pay too much attention to events on the Western Front, the success of the Allied invasion of France in June increased our pessimism. Even while still writing to Anneliese that there was “no doubt that we will prevail in this war,” my doubts were growing.

During the previous summer’s retreat through the Düna in the wake of the destruction of much of Army Group Center, I had begun to think for the first time that Germany would lose the struggle, even if we really did possess wonder weapons. Recognizing the increasing inevitability of Germany’s defeat, I admitted to Anneliese in a letter, “I gave up expecting the impossible.” With the Wehrmacht retreating on all fronts, Allied willingness to reach a negotiated peace appeared more and more remote. Uncertain what would happen next in the war, we were increasingly fighting for our survival in the hope that we could somehow eventually make it back to Germany.

In the second half of 1944, political discussions became commonplace among the troops for the first time in the war. We realized that something must be wrong with Hitler and the Nazis. Most of the time, you could express yourself more freely with comrades at the front than back in Germany. Of course, you still needed to be careful with whom you shared your opinions. If you openly stated, “Hitler is an idiot,” it would undoubtedly land you somewhere very unpleasant.

A few weeks after the Allied landings in France, a German officer-led assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler failed. Like some of the troops around me, I felt disappointed that the plotters had botched the effort. Not all German troops supported assassination, but there was certainly a widespread negative attitude toward the Nazi leadership and a growing indifference to Hitler’s fate.

When the Nazis issued an order on July 23, 1944 that required all units in the Wehrmacht to adopt the Nazi Party salute, the 58th Division declined to obey this command, instead maintaining the traditional soldier’s salute used in most armies. Perhaps on the basis of our combat record, our refusal was not punished.

If our unit had been given some hard-core Nazi troops, they would have received a rough time from the other men. We were patriotic soldiers fighting for Germany, not a bunch of Nazi brownshirts fighting for Hitler. Most of the soldiers I knew did not support the Nazi Party, even if the practical result of our military effort was to maintain the Nazi regime in power. It is an irresolvable dilemma when you want to serve your country, yet oppose its political leadership.

While my own hostility toward the regime increased, Anneliese condemned the German officers who had carried out the plot against Hitler as traitors, retaining her deep belief in both the Führer and German victory. Even during the last months of the war, Anneliese remained absolutely convinced that Germany was building miracle weapons that would rescue us. When she told me in a letter that a framed photograph of Hitler hung on the wall of her room, my reaction was one of utter disbelief.

Though many Germans shared her commitment to the regime, I considered such faith to be completely ludicrous. Yet, whatever one’s feelings toward the Nazi government, we were all engaged in a fight to the bitter end. Unlike the First World War’s negotiated armistice, this war would be decided on the battlefield.

Because the Nazi eagle resembled a vulture, Germans had sometimes jokingly referred to it as the Pleitegeier (the bankrupt vulture). The reference implied that the Nazis, for all their bombast and early successes, were not leading Germany to a bright future, but rather to a calamitous fate.