After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (13 page)

Despite the run of successes, by April 1945 it had become increasingly hard to motivate British troops to fight. They knew the end of the war was close at hand – and no officer wanted to see men unnecessarily killed at the conflict’s close. And yet, when the objectives of the Baltic ports of Lübeck and Wismar were announced, the 21st Army Group galvanised itself. General Miles Dempsey, commander of the British 2nd Army, believed that a rapid strike at Lübeck would stop the Soviets from reaching Denmark and push Germany into a final capitulation, and on 2 May ordered the 11th Armoured Division to reach the port with all speed. Striking farther north-east, towards Wismar, would hasten that process.

Then news of Hitler’s death, which had been publicly announced for the first time on Hamburg radio at 10.30 p.m. on 1 May and was then relayed to Anglo-American troops the following morning, had an electrifying effect.

Montgomery brought up the 6th Airborne Division for the advance to Wismar. The twin objectives of Lübeck and Wismar would allow British and American troops to carve a land corridor across north-west Germany and seal off Denmark from the Russians.

Moving across the Elbe and into the plain of Mecklenburg was certainly hazardous, for as many as 250,000 Germans troops were caught there between the British and Russians. If they surrendered to the British all well and good – but Montgomery certainly didn’t have the resources to deal with them if they decided to fight. Only after Eisenhower promised two supporting US divisions – the 7th Armored and 82nd Airborne – did he commit himself to the advance to the Baltic, on 29 April – and even then with considerable reluctance. General Eric Bols’s 6th Airborne Division would lead the attack; the American divisions would advance on his right flank. Bols needed eighteen hours to ready his troops: the operation would start at first light on 2 May.

The window of opportunity was narrow. Montgomery did not exactly know where the Russians were, but his reconnaissance – and he had the best reconnaissance system of all the Allied army groups – warned him that they were moving up fast and the roads in between were increasingly clogged with German soldiers and civilians. All of these were fleeing westwards, so they would be an obstacle for the British, not the Russians. There was little time to spare. Montgomery’s troops would ride on top of tanks and armoured vehicles. There was no time to take the surrender of German units. The men would have to keep pushing forward, for if Wismar was not reached by nightfall on 2 May the operation would probably fail.

At the forefront of Bols’s deployment was Lieutenant Colonel Fraser Eadie’s 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. At 4.00 a.m. the entire battalion moved forward, sitting astride the tanks of the Royal Scots Greys. Their orders were to press forward as fast as possible and run over or around anything that got in their way – advancing around 60 miles if possible. If all went well, they were to capture Wismar on the Baltic Sea.

Sergeant Andy Anderson recalled on the morning of 2 May:

It is expected that at some point we may run up against the Soviet Army, who are advancing in the opposite direction. We have no clear idea of where the Russians are, or how fast they are coming – and there is real concern that we do not end up shooting at one another by accident.

As we moved off, we attempted to remember the briefings we had had about the Red Army, their tanks and vehicles, how they were marked, what the uniformed soldier looked like and the weapons he carried. I picked up two Polish Americans from other platoons who claimed they could speak some Russian …

By noon we were moving at a great rate, through towns and villages – it was impossible to recall any of the names. The strangeness of the situation was that we were passing complete units of the German Army, lying by the roadside, some with vehicles, even horse-drawn artillery, but no shots were exchanged, no white flags shown and we could not stop to disarm them. The advance was incredible to experience. We pushed through division after division of the enemy – completely out on a limb as we dashed onwards. It was almost like an unofficial surrender.

As we continued this mad dash, the roadside became more and more clogged. Fully armed German troops mixed with civilians, prisoners of war, in fact just about everything. The Germans looked tired, downcast and dirty. We passed many POW cages – some of the prisoners were visibly overcome, others had a wild look about them. We were not able to stop – and could only throw chocolate or rations to them.

Anderson was feeling a powerful mixture of exhilaration and apprehension. He knew his small force was dangerously overextended, its communications stretched – and thousands of Germans were now behind it. He could only hope that someone in the rear was taking charge of the situation and disarming them all. The adrenalin surge kept him going. He had a dawning realisation that this might be the end of the war – an experience he would never forget.

The leading tanks reached the outskirts of Wismar. Anderson continued:

‘We dismounted and moved forward on foot, cautiously, through the town. It seemed untouched by the war, a very pretty place and some civilians were moving about with white flags. We got to the far end and I received orders to stop. I set up an HQ in the last house on the main highway and sent one of my sergeants and a platoon to establish a roadblock about 100 yards down the main road, reinforced by a machine gun crew.’

The 11th Armoured Division had now reached Lübeck and occupied the town. There had been little organised resistance from the Wehrmacht. Farther east, Anderson settled in to the new HQ at Wismar – a pleasant house, two storeys high with a stucco finish. It was beautifully furnished – and its occupants seemed to have fled only hours earlier. Field telephones were installed – and then he decided to check on the roadblock. A remarkable sight met his eyes. Thousands of Germans were coming down the road – fully armed – yet looking scared and wanting to surrender. They began to gather by the roadblock. Amid the confused milling-about Anderson could see German ranking officers – and even two generals. He radioed for assistance, telling his men to stack the Germans’ weapons and send them on into the town. He could only hope someone would take charge of the situation. And yet, watching it all, Anderson said:

‘It began to dawn on me that this was the end of the war – at least as far as the German army was concerned. They seemed to be extremely pleased to be surrendering to us. Things settled down into an orderly process. The pile of weapons stood about ten feet high, and twenty-five at the base and was growing rapidly.’

The way was now barred for the Russians to continue along the Baltic coast and occupy Denmark. Hugh Lunghi remembered the moment that the British Military Mission in Moscow received an urgent signal from London that Montgomery’s Army Group had reached the Baltic. ‘It had been suspected for some time that Red Army forces might make an attempt on Denmark,’ Lunghi said. ‘As I remember, we did not pass on the news of the capture of Lübeck and Wismar to the Soviet Ministry of Defence.’ The Russians would come across Anderson’s wooden barricade entirely by chance.

As interrogations of some of the Germans began, it became clear that their entire army was in full flight from the Red Army, which was only a few miles up the road. There were many tales of brutality and atrocities. ‘We could not verify this,’ Anderson said, ‘but from the fright on some of their faces it seemed it might be true.’

Shortly after 11.00 p.m. Anderson went to bed. He was quickly woken up again. A Russian patrol had now arrived at the roadblock. They were demanding entry into the town. They were very belligerent – and also quite drunk. Anderson arrived at the roadblock. He had no interpreter. ‘My first impression of them was that they were the hardest-looking bunch of toughs I had ever seen.’

General Eric Bols had now established a forward divisional HQ and got in contact with his opposite number, Soviet General Panfilov. At first Panfilov warned Bols that his orders were to move on to Lübeck and if the British commander did not immediately move his men out of the way, he would use his armour to blast a way through. Bols replied that he had substantial air support – and was quite happy to bomb the advancing Russian tank column in return. After this exchange of pleasantries was concluded, a demarcation line was set up for the night – and then, in a sudden change of mood, Anderson found himself invited to an impromptu reception to celebrate the Allied meeting:

‘We were escorted to the Soviet divisional headquarters,’ Anderson recalled. ‘We were greeted by a Russian general in full dress uniform, with rows of medals, attended by many aides – including several young women soldiers. A full banquet table had been prepared, loaded with caviar, a multitude of other dishes and bottles of vodka. Once seated, there began a series of toasts – to Churchill, Stalin and just about everything else.’ By departure time, Anderson’s interpreter had passed out and he and his companions could hardly see. Later – safely back in British lines – he reflected: ‘I was conscious of the fact that we had been party to an historic meeting. My regret was that I had no memory of who or what we had linked up with.’

The Western Allies and the Russians had already met at the central section of the front, on the Elbe river at Torgau in Germany. The first contact had been made on 25 April – an auspicious day, as it coincided with the opening session of the San Francisco talks that aimed to create a new world body, the United Nations. Subsequently more meetings were held, and contact established at a higher level of army command on both sides. They took place under the remit of US general Courtney Hodges’ First Army. Dialogue between the two sides was not always easy.

On 2 May General Hodges noted that General Bill Kean – his army chief of staff – had left for a conference with the Russians over the transfer of displaced persons and liberated Russian POWs. Hodges stated bluntly:

‘For some reason – the most charitable being that the local commanders require orders from Moscow before they can proceed – the Russians do not appear either interested or concerned to facilitate the return of these many thousands of people, and likewise have not been too co-operative as yet on the return of the many American POWs liberated by their advance. However, with patience on our side, the problem will work itself out.’

The issue of returning POWs had become a thorny one for both sides. The Russians would overrun German camps with American prisoners held within them; the Americans and British would now liberate increasing numbers of Russian POWs. The Russian system of dealing with United States and British servicemen was byzantine in its complexity – they were relocated to camps in Odessa in the Ukraine, and only then, after long delays and in piecemeal fashion, allowed to return home. This understandably led to bad feeling and suspicion between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. But Russia had complaints of its own – that when camps were liberated the British and American forces had not adequately protected Russians within them.

Russian POWs could certainly create problems. An American army doctor with the 438th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion had participated in the liberation of the slave labour camp at Nordhausen near Leipzig, and was subsequently stationed there. He wrote home on 2 May:

Meanwhile, I come back here to find the French [POWs] moving out and a mob of Russians moving in. Boy – are they a wild bunch, and completely uncivilized! They really run us wild. They have no discipline and have never really soldiered. With most of them it was a question of being given a uniform, a rifle and being told to go out and kill Germans – which they did. I have a heck of a time with them on sick-call – but if I stay here long enough I will learn a little Russian. It’s a sure bet they won’t learn a little English. I’ve had a few suture jobs – cuts about the face. Usually the story is the same – someone’s friend bashed him with a bottle. But they don’t seem to mind. They’re tough and I use the so-called Bulgarian anaesthetic, which is no anaesthetic at all. To date, I’ve had no complaints.

Two days later, the doctor wrote again from Nordhausen:

Here the work continues – and I’m learning a little Russian. They’re a tough people and damned hard to handle, from an administrative point of view. They just won’t be disciplined and they run wild all over the place – and this camp is going to be all-Russian! They get hold of liquor somewhere or other – and the first thing they do after drinking it is to start a brawl. Someone always get beat up badly.

But both sides were trying to improve the situation. The Russians began to keep a better check of how many Allied prisoners were being returned and when, and started to allow local commanders to transfer prisoners direct, if and when it was feasible. And in return, more Russian POWs were kept in properly secure camps until they could be transported back to the Soviet Union. Despite the problems and mutual suspicion, the goodwill was there.

At Hodges’ First Army HQ on 2 May there were plenty of grounds for optimism. He noted the ‘biggest news’, the unconditional surrender of all enemy forces in northern Italy and western Austria. There were the ‘tremendous gains’ by the British 2nd Army, ‘which has almost cut off the Danish Peninsula by advancing 20 miles to reach Lübeck’. The US 36th Division had just captured First Army’s greatest opponent, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, who was found at a castle in Bad Tolz with his wife and son. Hodges believed that the whole front opposing him would collapse soon. Amid all this, the behaviour of the Russians remained an enigma.

Ten days earlier, with a link-up between American and Russian forces imminent, Hodges had spent the better part of the day on the phone trying to ascertain from SHAEF instructions for the army group on procedures for making contact with their allies fast approaching from the east. He commented:

‘Although SHAEF must surely have envisioned such a meeting in the near future, they were apparently caught completely off-base. When instructions were finally received, they consisted of “treat them nicely”. Information on mutual recognition signals will follow, General Bradley stated, if we can get the Russians to agree to a satisfactory procedure.’