Fourteen-year-old Rudolf Reschke had only time enough to see that the planes glinted like silver in the sky—too high for the dangerous game of tag he liked to play with strafing fighters. Then his mother, yelling and nearly hysterical, dragged him down into the cellar where his 9-year-old sister, Christa, sat shivering and crying. The whole shelter seemed to be shaking. Plaster fell from the ceiling and the walls; then the lights flickered and went out. Frau Reschke and Christa began to pray aloud, and after a minute Rudolf joined them in the “Our Father.” The noise of the bombing was getting worse and the shelter now seemed to be shuddering all the time. The Reschkes had been through many raids, but nothing like this. Frau Reschke, her arms about both children, began to sob. Rudolf had seldom heard his mother cry before, even though he knew that she was often worried, especially with his father at the front. Suddenly he was angry at the planes for making his mother frightened—and for the first time Rudolf felt frightened himself. With some embarrassment he discovered that he was crying, too.
Before his mother could detain him, Rudolf rushed out of the shelter. He ran up the stairs to the family’s ground-floor apartment; there he headed straight for his room and his collection of toy soldiers. He chose the most imposing figure among them, with distinct features painted on its china face. He went to the kitchen and took down his mother’s heavy meat cleaver. Oblivious now of the air raid, Rudolf went out into the apartment house courtyard, laid the doll on the ground, and with one stroke chopped off its head. “There!” he said, standing back. Tears still staining his face, he looked down without remorse upon the severed head of Adolf Hitler.
He came shuffling into the bunker corridor—half bent, dragging his left foot, the left arm shaking uncontrollably. Although he was 5 feet 8½ inches tall, now, with his head and body twisted to the left, he looked much smaller. The eves that admirers had called “magnetic” were feverish and red, as if he had not slept for days. His face was puffy, and its color was a blotchy, faded gray. A pair of pale green spectacles dangled from his right hand; bright light bothered him now. For a moment he gazed expressionlessly at his generals as their hands shot up and out to a chorus of “Heil Hitler.”*
The corridor was so crowded that Hitler had some difficulty getting past everyone to reach the small conference room. Eismann noticed that the others began talking again as soon as the Führer passed; there was not the respectful silence he had expected. As for Heinrici, he was shocked by the Führer’s appearance. Hitler, he thought, “looked like a man who had not more than twenty-four hours to live. He was a walking corpse.”
Slowly, as though in pain, Hitler scuffled to his place at the head of the table. To Eismann’s surprise, he seemed to crumple “like a sack into the armchair, not uttering a word, and held that prostrate condition, his arms propped up on the sides of the chair.” Krebs and Bormann moved in behind the Führer to sit on a bench against the wall. From there, Krebs informally presented Heinrici and Eismann. Hitler feebly shook hands with them both. Heinrici noted that he “could hardly feel the Führer’s hand, for there was no returning pressure.”
Because of the smallness of the room, not everyone could sit, and Heinrici stood on the Führer’s left, Eismann on his right. Keitel, Himmler and Doenitz took chairs on the opposite side of the table. The remainder of the group stayed outside in the corridor; to Heinrici’s amazement, they continued to talk, although their voices were now subdued. Krebs began the conference. “In order that the commander”—he looked at Heinrici—“can get back to his army group as soon as possible,” he said, “I propose that he give his report immediately.” Hitler nodded, put on his green glasses, and gestured to Heinrici to begin.
In his measured and precise manner, the General got straight to the point. Looking directly at each man around the table, then at Hitler, he said, “My Führer, I must tell you that the enemy is preparing an attack of unusual strength and unusual force. At this moment they are preparing in these areas—from south of Schwedt to south of Frankfurt.” On Hitler’s own map lying on the table, Heinrici slowly ran his finger down along the threatened section of the Oder front, a line roughly seventy-five miles long, touching briefly on the cities where he expected the heaviest blows—at Schwedt, in the Wriezen area, around the Küstrin bridgehead, and south of Frankfurt. He entertained no doubts., he said, that “the main attack will hit Busse’s Ninth Army” holding this central area; also, “it will strike the southern flank of Von Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army around Schwedt.”
Carefully Heinrici described how he had juggled his forces to build up Busse’s Ninth Army against the expected Russian onslaught. But because of this need to strengthen Busse, Von Manteuffel had suffered. Part of the Third Panzer Army front was now being held by inferior troops: aged Home Guardsmen, a few Hungarian units and some divisions of Russian defectors—whose dependability was questionable—under General Andrei Vlasov. Then, said Heinrici flatly : “While the Ninth Army is now in better shape than it was, the Third Panzer Army is in no state to fight at all. The potential of Von Manteuffel’s troops, at least in the middle and northern sectors of his front, is low. They have no artillery whatsoever. Anti-aircraft guns cannot replace artillery and, in any case, there is insufficient ammunition even for these.”
Krebs hastily interrupted. “The Third Panzer Army,” he said emphatically, “will receive artillery shortly.”
Heinrici inclined his head but made no comment—he would believe Krebs when he actually saw the guns. Continuing as though there had been no interruption, he explained to Hitler that the Third Panzer owed its present safe situation to one thing only—the flooded Oder. “I must warn you, he said, “that we can accept the Third Panzer’s weak condition only as long as the Oder remains flooded.” Once the waters drop, Heinrici added, “the Russians will not fail to attack there, too.”
The men in the room listened attentively, if a little uneasily, to Heinrici’s presentation. Such directness at a Hitler conference was unusual; most officers presented the gains and skipped the drawbacks. Not since Guderian’s departure had anyone spoken so frankly—and it was clear that Heinrici was only beginning. Now he turned to the matter of the garrison holding out at Frankfurt-on-Oder. Hitler had declared the city a fortress, like the ill-fated Küstrin. Heinrici wanted Frankfurt abandoned. He felt the troops there were being sacrificed on the altar of Hitler’s “fortress” mania. They could be saved and used to advantage elsewhere. Guderian, who had shared the same opinion regarding Küstrin, had been broken for his views about that city. Heinrici might meet the same fate for his opposition now. But the Vistula commander saw the men of Frankfurt as his responsibility; whatever the consequences, he was not to be intimidated. He raised the issue.
“In the Ninth Army’s sector,” he began, “one of the weakest parts of the front is around Frankfurt. The garrison strength is very low, as is their ammunition. I believe we should abandon the defense of Frankfurt and bring the troops out.”
Suddenly Hitler looked up and uttered his first words since the meeting began. He said harshly, “I refuse to accept this.”
Up to this point Hitler had sat not only silent but unmoving, as though completely disinterested. Eismann had had the impression that he wasn’t even listening. Now, the Führer suddenly “came awake and began to take an intense interest.” He began asking about the garrison’s strength, supplies and ammunition, and even, for some incomprehensible reason, about the deployment of Frankfurt’s artillery. Heinrici had the answers. Step by step he built his case, taking reports and statistics from Eismann and placing them on the table before the Führer. Hitler looked at the papers as each was handed over and seemed impressed. Sensing his opportunity, Heinrici said quietly but emphatically, “My Führer, I honestly feel that giving up the defense of Frankfurt would be a wise and sound move.”
To the astonishment of most of those in the room, Hitler, turning to the Chief of OKH, said, “Krebs, I believe the General’s opinion on Frankfurt is sound. Make out the necessa
ry orders for the Army Group and give them to me today.”
In the stunned silence that followed, the babble of voices in the corridor outside seemed unduly loud. Eismann sensed a sudden and new respect for Heinrici. “Heinrici himself seemed completely unmoved,” he remembered, “but he gave me a look which I interpreted as ‘Well, we’ve won.’” The victory, however, was short-lived.
At that moment there was a loud commotion in the corridor and the vast bulk of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering filled the doorway of the little conference room. Pushing his way in, Goering heartily greeted those present, pumped Hitler’s hand vigorously and excused himself for being late. He squeezed in next to Doenitz, and there was an uncomfortable delay while Krebs brought him quickly up to date on Heinrici’s briefing. When Krebs had finished, Goering got up and, placing both hands on the map table, leaned toward Hitler as though to make some comment on the proceedings. Instead, smiling widely and with obvious good humor, he said, “I must tell you a story about one of my visits to the 9th Parachute Division …”
He got no further. Hitler sat suddenly bolt upright in his chair and then jerked himself to his feet. Words poured from his mouth in such a torrent that those present could scarcely understand him. “Before our eyes,” recalled Eismann, “he went into a volcanic rage.”
His fury had nothing to do with Goering. It was a diatribe against his advisors and generals for deliberately refusing to understand him on the tactical use of forts. “Again and again,” he yelled, “forts have fulfilled their purpose throughout the war. This was proven at Posen, Breslau and Schneidemühl. How many Russians were pinned down by them? And how difficult they were to capture! Every one of those forts was held to the very last man! History has proved me right and my order to defend a fort to the last man is right!” Then, looking squarely at Heinrici, he screamed, “That’s why Frankfurt is to retain its status as a fort!”
As suddenly as it had begun, the tirade ended. But Hitler, though slack with exhaustion, could no longer sit still. He seemed to Eismann to have lost all control of himself. “His entire body trembled,” he recalled. “His hands, in which he was holding some pencils, flew wildly up and down, the pencils beating on the arms of the chair in the process. He gave the impression of being mentally deranged. It was all so unreal—especially the thought that the fate of an entire people lay in the hands of this human ruin.”
Despite Hitler’s choleric outburst, and despite his mercurial change of mind about Frankfurt, Heinrici doggedly refused to give up. Quietly, patiently—almost as though the outburst had not occurred—he went over all the arguments again, underlining every conceivable reason for abandoning Frankfurt. Doenitz, Himmler and Goering supported him. But it was token support at best. The three most powerful generals in the room remained silent. Keitel and Jodl said nothing—and just as Heinrici had expected, Krebs offered no opinion one way or the other. Hitler, apparently spent, only made tired gestures with his hands as he dismissed each argument. Then, with renewed vitality he demanded to know the credentials of the commander of the Frankfurt garrison, Colonel Bieler. “He is a very reliable and experienced officer,” replied Heinrici, “who has proven himself time and again in battle.”
“Is he a Gneisenau?” snapped Hitler, referring to General Graf von Gneisenau, who had successfully defended the fortress of Kolberg against Napoleon in 1806.
Heinrici kept his composure. Evenly, he replied that “the battle for Frankfurt will prove whether he is a Gneisenau or not.” Hitler snapped back, “All right, send Bieler to see me tomorrow so that I can judge him. Then I shall decide what’s to be done about Frankfurt.” Heinrici had lost the first battle for Frankfurt and, he believed, the second, too, in all probability. Bieler was an unprepossessing man who wore thick-lensed glasses. He was not likely to make much of an impression on Hitler.
There now approached what Heinrici regarded as the crisis of the meeting. As he began to speak again, he regretted that he had no skill in diplomatic niceties. He knew only one way to express himself; now, as always, he spoke the unvarnished truth. “My Führer,” he said, “I do not believe that the forces on the Oder front will be able to resist the extremely heavy Russian attacks which will be made upon them.”
Hitler, still trembling, was silent. Heinrici described the lack of combat fitness among the hodgepodge of troops—the very scrapings of Germany’s manpower—that made up his forces. Most units in the line were untrained, inexperienced or so watered down by green reinforcements as to be unreliable. The same was true of many of the commanders. “For example,” explained Heinrici, “the 9th Parachute Division worries me. Its commanders and noncommissioned officers are nearly all former administration officers, both untrained and unaccustomed to lead fighting units.”
Goering suddenly bristled. “My paratroopers!” he said in a loud voice. “You are talking about my paratroopers! They are the best in existence! I won’t listen to such degrading remarks! I personally guarantee their fighting capabilities!”
“Your view, Herr Reichsmarschall,” remarked Heinrici icily, “is somewhat biased. I’m not saying anything against your troops, but experience has taught me that untrained units—especially those led by green officers—are often so terribly shocked by their first exposure to artillery bombardment that they are not much good for anything thereafter.”
Hitler spoke again, his voice now calm and rational. “Everything must be done to train these formations,” he declared. “There is certainly time to do this before the battle.”
Heinrici assured him that every effort would be made in the time still remaining, but he added, “Training will not give them combat experience, and that is what’s lacking.” Hitler dismissed this theory. “The right commanders will provide the experience, and anyway the Russians are fighting with substandard troops, too.” Stalin, claimed Hitler, is “nearing the end of his strength and about all he has left are slave soldiers whose capabilities are extremely limited.” Heinrici found Hitler’s misinformation incredible. Emphatically he disagreed. “My Führer,” he said, “the Russian forces are both capable and enormous.”
The time to hammer home the truths of the desperate situation had, to Heinrici’s mind, arrived. “I must tell you,” he said bluntly, “that since the transfer of the armored units to Schörner, all my troops—good and bad—must be used as front-line troops. There are no reserves. None. Will they resist the heavy shelling preceding the attack? Will they withstand the initial impact? For a time, perhaps, yes. But, against the kind of attack we expect, every one of our divisions will lose a battalion a day. This means that all along the battle front we will lose divisions themselves at the rate of one per week. We cannot sustain such losses. We have nothing to replace them with.” He paused, aware that all eyes were upon him. Then Heinrici plunged ahead. “My Führer, the fact is that, at best, we can hold out for just a few days.” He looked around the room. “Then,” he said, “it must all come to an end.”
There was dead silence. Heinrici knew that his figures were indisputable. The men gathered there were as familiar with casualty statistics as he. The difference was that they would not have spoken of them.
Goering was the first to break the paralyzing silence. “My Führer,” he announced, “I will place immediately at your disposal 100,000 Luftwaffe men. They will report to the Oder front in a few days.”
Himmler glanced owlishly up at Goering, his arch rival, then at Hitler, as if sampling the Führer’s reaction. Then he, too, made an announcement. “My Führer,” he said, in his high-pitched voice, “the SS has the honor to furnish 25,000 fighters for the Oder front.”
Doenitz was not to be outdone. He had already sent a division of marines to Heinrici; now he declared that he, too, would subscribe further forces. “My Führer,” he announced, “12,000 sailors will be released immediately from their ships and rushed to the Oder.”
Heinrici stared at them. They were volunteering untrained, unequipped, unqualified forces from their own private empires, sp
ending lives instead of money in a sort of ghastly auction. They were bidding against one another, not to save Germany, but to impress Hitler. And suddenly the auction fever became contagious. A chorus of voices sounded as each man tried to suggest other forces that might be available. Someone asked for the reserve army figures and Hitler called out, “Buhle! Buhle!”
Outside in the corridor, where the crowd of waiting generals and orderlies had turned from coffee to brandy, the cry was taken up. “Buhle! Buhle! Where is Buhle?” There was a further commotion as Major General Walter Buhle, Staff Chief in charge of supplies and reinforcements, pushed through the crowd and entered the conference room. Heinrici looked at him, and then away in disgust. Buhle had been drinking and he smelled of it.* Nobody else seemed to notice or care—including Hitler. The Führer put a number of questions to Buhle—about reserves, supplies of rifles, small arms and ammunition. Buhle answered thickly and, Heinrici thought, stupidly, but the answers seemed to satisfy Hitler. According to what he made of Buhle’s replies, another 13,000 troops could be scraped up from the so-called reserve army.
Dismissing Buhle, Hitler turned to Heinrici. “There,” he said. “You have 150,000 men—about twelve divisions. There are your reserves.” The auction was over. Hitler apparently considered the Army Group’s problems settled. Yet all he had done was to buy, at most, twelve more days for the Third Reich—and probably at a tremendous cost in human lives.
Heinrici struggled to preserve his control. “These men,” he stated flatly, “are not combat-trained. They have been in rear areas and in offices or on ships, in maintenance work at Luftwaffe bases…. They have never fought at the front. They have never seen a Russian.” Goering cut in. “The forces I have presented are, for the most part, combat fliers. They are the best of the best. And also there are the troops who were at Monte Cassino—troops whose fame outshone all others.” Flushed and voluble, he hotly informed Heinrici, “These men have the will, the courage, and certainly the experience.”