After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (43 page)

But Canadian gunner James Brady, who was in the town of Marx in Germany when the war ended, struck a more reflective tone. He wrote in his diary on 8 May: ‘At last the wondrous day – Victory in Europe. Our crew, however, are silent and thoughtful: anti-climax. There is no feeling of exaltation, nothing but a quiet satisfaction that the job has been done and we can see home again.’

Brady remembered his artillery regiment’s commemorative service:

‘We assembled and paraded before our commanding officer, Colonel Gagnon. Then we marched to a memorial service in a little rural church nearby. The Colonel began to read the thirty-six names of the fallen. Tears were in his eyes. He faltered – then handed the list to an adjutant, who calmly folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Then, quietly, he said: “It is not necessary. They were our comrades. We remember.”’

The war had left more than 42,000 Canadian servicemen dead: 23,000 in the army, 17,000 in the Royal Canadian Air Force and 2,000 in the navy. More than 54,000 had been wounded – and 9,000 taken prisoner. Total casualties among the Western Allies from D-Day to the end of the war numbered 186,000 dead, 545,700 wounded and 109,600 missing in action.

Some were numbed by it all. Major Harry Jolley of the 5th Canadian Armoured Division wrote to his sister that his own and his comrades’ reaction to the Nazi surrender had almost been a disappointment: ‘I imagined it would be a day of unforgettable scenes. Not so. I saw a few men gathered around our signals waggon as I went over to listen but none of us shouted, threw hats in the air or anything of that sort. I remember I shouted to a friend “It’s all over now!” He barely acknowledged what I had said.’

Lieutenant William Preston with the US 65th Infantry Division (part of General Patton’s Third Army) wrote to his brother about VE-Day:

The war in Europe is over. I can hardly believe it, for it seems only yesterday that we were seeing our first action on the Siegfried Line.

On VE Day I sat by an open window and listened and watched as German soldiers, thousands of them, passed by me on their way to a POW camp.

I don’t know what the reaction is like in the States as a whole. Over a patched-up radio we heard that ticker tape and paper floated down from New York buildings. We heard that there were wild celebrations in the streets of London by civilians and British and American soldiers. But the front-line troops didn’t celebrate. Most of the men merely read the story from the division bulletin sent to the troops, said something like ‘I’m glad’ and walked away. Perhaps it was a different story in their hearts, or perhaps they were too tired or thinking about home or their buddies who didn’t see the victory to do too much celebrating or merry making. But I’m sure of one thing – the troops were glad they wouldn’t have to fight anymore.

Corporal Tom Renouf of the Black Watch Infantry Regiment (51st Highland Division) had fought from the Normandy beaches to Bremerhaven in Germany. He had been wounded crossing the Seine – and awarded the Military Medal for Gallantry at the crossing of the Rhine. ‘We were told the war was over – and at first it just didn’t sink in,’ Renouf said. ‘We had been living from day to day, just trying to survive. And then I began to realize that I was one of the lucky ones – and how fortunate I was to have survived.’

General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the British General Staff, said of the 51st Highland Division: ‘During the war I had the opportunity to see most of the British and Dominion Divisions, many of the American Divisions and some of the French and Belgian Divisions. I can assure you that amongst all these the 51st unquestionably takes its place alongside the very few which, through their valour and fighting record, stand in a category of their own.’

In North Africa, Sicily and north-west Europe the 51st had lost 3,084 men killed, 12,047 wounded and 1,457 missing in action.

Field Marshal Montgomery commented: ‘It is both a humiliation and an honour to have had such a Division under my command. I shall always remember the Highland Division with admiration and high regard.’

At the end of the war, the 51st had been opposed by its old rival from North Africa, the German 15th Panzer Grenadier Division, a formation that had kept its cohesion and discipline to the last. Now the fighting had stopped. Corporal Renouf continued:

And then other things started to happen. I was no longer listening for bullets and mortars coming in my direction. I was no longer looking for enemy strongholds that would be sniping at us. I was no longer smelling the cordite from exploding shells. It was all gone.

And instead, I was listening to the birds, smelling the flowers, enjoying the scenery – just looking at the beauty of the world. What a contrast it was – from one extreme to the other. And I felt that I had been born all over again.

And I vowed from then onwards that I would lead a proper life. I would not waste my time. I would try to make full use of everything that lay ahead of me.

A Royal Canadian naval officer on convoy escort duty on VE-Day recalled how startling it was to see the lights go on at sea: ‘The sight of 60-odd ships, in formation and fully illuminated, was a truly remarkable one,’ he said, ‘and after five and a half years of darkness a little frightening to behold.’

The darkness over Europe was ending.

Lee Dickman of the 11th Field Company South African Engineer Corps was near Klagenfurt in Austria on the night of 8 May. He wrote:

Some God, somewhere, said ‘Let there be again light’ and there was light.

Searchlights swept magic wands from side to side, parachute flares, brilliant white, floated slowly down. Star shells plucked bursts of flame out of the sky. Verey lights formed arcs of red, green and orange in pale glimmers near the horizon; tracers dropped red necklaces into the cupped hands of the night. Everybody threw anything that exploded into the sky in an outpouring of joy, of relief, of hope.

I walked slowly through the dark of this small Austrian town. Golden droplets of light spilled across my feet as black-out curtains were swept aside, shutters burst open and street lights sputtered, flickered, then burned strong.

I remembered comrades who had died next to me. The horror of falling bombs. The sullen surrender of a disillusioned German soldier.

And I thanked that anonymous God for the fact that I, however minutely, had helped cast aside the evil that had shrouded Europe for so long.

It was VE Day. The killing had stopped. I could go home.

10

Moscow

9
May
1945

M
OSCOW JOURNALIST LAZARUS
Brontman – who wrote for
Pravda
– had heard about the Eisenhower signing at Rheims, but was unsure whether or not they should celebrate it. The news had been embargoed. Then, on 8 May, it emerged that Marshal Zhukov was to host a second signing at Karlshorst with Field Marshal Keitel – once the pictures of this came through they could run the story; 9 May would be Russia’s ‘holiday of victory’.

The last few days had been worrying ones for the Russian people. ‘The Eisenhower treaty at Rheims was not reported,’ said Grigory Klimov, ‘but instead we heard rumours that the western allies and representatives of the German High Command were involved in secret negotiations. Nobody knew anything exactly, but the uneasiness increased. It was a time of strained expectation.’ Now Russia could properly celebrate its triumph.

In the Courland Pocket, the sustaining Nazi propaganda image of a breakwater, forever shoring up the defences of the Reich, had finally cracked asunder. There would be no sudden turnaround of fortunes. Fortress Courland had repelled countless Red Army attacks but a total surrender was now coming into force. ‘The order to lay down our arms took me completely by surprise,’ Corporal Günther Klinge of the 563rd Grenadier Division confessed. ‘I still believed that new “miracle weapons” would bring us final victory.’ The Germans began to realise they were not just giving up their weapons – all traces of their presence in Courland were being expunged.

Sergeant Wilfried Ohrts of the 14th Panzer Division wrote in his diary on 9 May:

The outcome that we had resisted for so long has now come to pass – the war is over and we have been defeated. Our homeland has been ravaged and occupied by the enemy. And here in Courland we have submitted to captivity and a future of misery, hardship and hunger. As we began our march, as prisoners of the Red Army, we passed former battle sites and saw that our military cemeteries had been desecrated by the Russians. The ground where our comrades lay buried had been ploughed up and the marker crosses smashed to pieces. I had a sudden, terrible realization. Across all the land east of the rivers Oder and Neisse, land now held by the Soviet Union, it will no longer be possible for a German grave to remain intact. The Bolsheviks want revenge, and they will take it not only on the living but also on the memory of the dead.

The last evacuation of German troops had been taking place at the Latvian port of Libau. Lieutenant Gerhard Anger had been struck by the discipline of his soldiers. There were only a few boats remaining – and thousands waited on the quayside. The Red Army had put the port under an artillery and aerial bombardment of growing intensity. ‘If a panic had broken out it would have led to a disaster,’ Anger said. ‘The ships would have been stampeded and swamped.’ Yet the men waited calmly and in silence. A steamer docked at the harbour and its captain told Anger he could take fifty men. The lieutenant found places for all his soldiers. And then an officer came on board and asked whether there was space for another forty wounded German soldiers. The captain replied that there was no more room and it would not be safe. Anger remarked: ‘I do not even have to give an order – all my soldiers immediately left the boat to make way for the wounded.’

Now it had all ended. ‘The morning of 9 May was our first day of peace at Courland,’ said Captain Sergei Isachenko of the Soviet 198th Rifle Division. ‘German weapons were gathered at agreed collection points – the soldiers formed long columns as they moved off to designated camps. All along the front our guns fired victory salvoes into the air.’ The Russian soldiers had heard about the German unconditional surrender at Karlshorst. And in Courland it was being enforced within the agreed twelve-hour period from the actual signing – although a small minority of Wehrmacht soldiers and Latvians refused to accept it, vowing to carry on fighting in the forests.

On 9 May Red Army lieutenant Pavel Elkinson was in Hungary. He had witnessed much loss of life in the bitter fighting in eastern Europe. His unit heard about the German surrender that morning. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘The silence is piercing my ears. Not a single shot – it’s wonderful.’

Soviet lieutenant Nikolai Inozemtsev was in Stettin on Germany’s Baltic coast. He found out what was happening at 2.00 a.m. when a long burst of anti-aircraft fire was followed by flares and staccato gunshot. The gunshot continued in regular bursts – a signal of victory. Inozemtsev was immensely proud of the Red Army’s achievement. ‘We have shown the world what we can do,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘and how much grief and suffering we can bear. Our victory has been won by iron determination and a selfless love of our motherland. Now we must rebuild our country.’

Inozemtsev paused for a moment and thought of the comrades he had lost. ‘How many lives have been given in the name of our victory,’ he reflected. ‘How many smart, capable, talented people have died, so that we might enjoy a happy and secure future. We must never forget their sacrifice.’

But elsewhere, the war continued. Sergeant Alexei Nemchinsky’s 207th mine-clearing battalion was crossing into Czechoslovakia across the Ore mountains with the Soviet 21st Army. The troops, part of Marshal Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front, had advanced over 60 miles in three days. The men heard about Germany’s capitulation in the early hours of 9 May. They pulled off the road, shooting their rifles in the air and letting off flares to celebrate the victory. But then they were on the move again, following Field Marshal Schörner’s army group. Although it was now without its commander, they had been warned that these men were not accepting the ceasefire but retreating westwards towards the Americans.

Later that night Nemchinsky’s unit suffered casualties in a clash with German troops. They would be fighting for a further three days. ‘Holding a funeral for a fallen comrade after victory has been declared is particularly painful,’ Nemchinsky said.

Captain Vasily Zaitsev’s Soviet 4th Tank Army was also pushing through the Ore mountains towards Prague. The men were driving hard. ‘We kept hearing the desperate radio appeals of the rebels,’ Zaitsev remembered.

On 8 May it seemed that Prague was dying. The insurgents were running out of ammunition – and we feared that the Nazis would completely eradicate the city in one last act of hate. They kept saying to us: ‘Russian brothers – help Prague!’

Early on 9 May we heard on the radio about the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces. Our entire staff embraced each other. But later that night we found the behaviour of the enemy had not changed. They knew about the signing. They had ceased attacking operations – but they were not going to surrender to us. Whenever we met them on the road we had to fight.

Red Army troops had liberated the first concentration camp at Majdanek in Poland on 23 July 1944. Early in the morning of 9 May they would liberate the last, at Theresienstadt, 39 miles north-east of Prague.

Theresienstadt had been a Jewish ghetto and then a deportation camp, sending trainloads of prisoners directly to Auschwitz. With the Germans preoccupied in quelling the Prague uprising, the administration of Theresienstadt had been handed over to the International Red Cross. But conditions there remained unstable and dangerous. On the evening of 8 May, one of the camp inmates, Erich Kessler, remembered, SS troops passed through the ghetto. ‘They lobbed hand grenades into the camp,’ Kessler said, ‘then opened up with machine gun fire. Everyone had to run for cover.’