Authors: Roger Moorhouse
much prefer it’, he wrote, ‘if I could crawl into a cellar and sleep until
the war is over.’37
The fate of the city’s many remaining civilians, now huddled in
their cellars, was hardly better. By the last weeks of the war, any
semblance of ‘normal’ life in Berlin had become impossible. As Helga
Schneider vividly described:
We are vegetating in a ghost town, without electric light or gas, without
water; we are forced to think of personal hygiene as a luxury and hot
meals as abstract concepts. We are living like ghosts in a vast field of ruins
. . . A city where nothing works apart from the telephones that some-
times ring, glumly and pointlessly, beneath piles of fallen masonry.38
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berlin at war
As a result of such difficulties, most Berliners had by now taken up
permanent residence either in their own cellars or in nearby bunkers
and shelters. Given that many of them were already very well accus-
tomed to spending time below ground during air raids, they were well
prepared, with blankets and other necessities brought down from the
houses above to provide a modicum of comfort. Else Tietmeyer spent
the last week of the war in a cellar in Steglitz, which had ‘children’s
beds, mattresses, a sofa and a comfy chair’. It was ‘all very nice’, she
wrote to her children.39
But any extended stay in a cellar could be very trying, especially as
the extreme emotions of the approaching conflict would be exacerbated
by petty disagreements and rivalries, babies crying or squabbles over
food. Hygiene, too, quickly became a major problem in these straitened
circumstances. One Berliner found a novel use for her copy of Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
, when her cellar ran out of toilet paper.40 Helga Schneider,
meanwhile, recalled that her cellar had only a single metal bucket to
serve as a toilet. ‘Located at the end of a long and gloomy corridor’, she
wrote, ‘it gives off the most disgusting odour. There is an old man who
would rather soil himself than go all the way to the bucket. As a result
the stench we breathe is indescribable. Because we are permanently short
of water, the wretched man can’t even have good wash.’41
The public bunkers were no better. The flak towers, for instance,
were quickly packed to bursting, with as many as 30,000 Berliners
huddled together in their bare concrete halls and stairwells. Basic
human hygiene was impossible, food was scarce and suicides were
frequent. In one instance, two old ladies were found sitting bolt upright;
both had taken poison and had been dead for days, but they had been
propped in position by the crush of bodies around them.42 Through
it all, the flak guns on the roof continued to pound away at their
targets, though they were most often lowered to aim at Soviet tanks
on the ground. With every shot fired, the structure shook, the thun-
derous sound echoing through the building.
Those who ventured out of their refuges to search for food and
water were often presented with a searing vision of destruction.
Conditions outside the Zoo flak tower were particularly macabre.
There, beneath its very walls, what remained of Berlin Zoo had become
a Hades of broken and dying animals. Arno Pentzien was a soldier
who witnessed a Soviet raid on the area:
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367
Some of the bombs fall in a large basin in which there are pelicans and
other seabirds, it is barely 20 metres away from us. We get a powerful
splash from it, which was really not so unpleasant. However, at that
moment, some of the large birds, which had been blown into the air,
start falling dead around us. A large brown bear in a cage is bleeding
heavily from a shoulder wound and roared and bellowed from the
pain.43
Few of the animals would survive the onslaught.
By the final weeks of the war, the centre of Berlin had been reduced
to a moonscape of bomb craters and ruined houses. The Swede Sven
Frykman was leading a Red Cross humanitarian mission in the city in
those final weeks and saw the conditions for himself during a night-
time evacuation of former concentration camp prisoners:
Berlin . . . presented a dreadful scene. A full moon shone from a cloud-
less sky so you could see the awful extent of the damage. A ghost town
of cave-dwellers was all that was left of this world metropolis. We drove
along the largest and most famous streets. The imperial palace, all the
splendid castles, the prince’s palace, the Royal Library, Tempelhof, the
buildings along the Unter den Linden – hardly anything was left of any
of these. Because of the moonlight which shone through all these
empty windows and doorways, the city gave an even more grotesque
impression than by daylight. Here and there a flame was still burning
after the most recent bombing raids, and the fire brigades were at work.
Burst pipes on some of the streets made you think of Venice and its
canals.44
Moving about in the ruins could be perilous, but as one eyewitness
recalled, Berliners had become ‘fatalistic, scornful of danger . . . willing
to risk their lives for a slice of bread or a spoonful of sugar’.45 With
the Luftwaffe now largely absent in the skies above the capital, the
Soviet air force patrolled at will, routinely strafing vehicles or groups
of civilians. Artillery was also a threat, and in one incident a bread
queue on Steubenplatz in the western suburbs was shelled, with the
loss of twenty-four lives.46 In Adlershof, meanwhile, Eva Richter lost
a leg when a Soviet grenade landed close to her while she was queuing
for food. Already living as a refugee in the capital, having survived
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berlin at war
the flight from the eastern provinces now overrun by the Soviets, she
was thrown into despair. As she gave her consent to an amputation
the following day in hospital, she silently hoped that she would not
come round from the operation.47
Despite the attendant perils, food
was
available in the capital, at
least for those with patience, determination or ingenuity. On 22 April,
an extra ration allocation had been ordered, by which jam, cereals,
sugar, peas, coffee and meat were all made available, albeit after lengthy
queuing and the presentation of the appropriate paperwork. In some
instances, the authorities even seem to have taken a hand in ensuring
that foodstuffs were distributed to the civilian population, even if it
meant doing it themselves. As one diarist explained:
Around midday a car arrived with policemen, stopped outside our house
and asked after the [Schumann] grocery shop. I pointed it out to them,
and they explained that they were to open the shop and sell its stock
right away. Then they broke in, inspected what was there, took a few
things for themselves; small boxes and larger bags (probably coffee
beans and other choice things), handed over sale of the items to Frau
L and some other people from the building, and then disappeared. In
spite of the incessant firing, in a flash there was a huge crowd and a
frightful crush.48
In the suburbs, especially, bakers and grocery stores could still be
found operating near normally. In Buckow, for instance, the local baker
was providing 1lb. loaves of bread to each of his customers right until
the Soviets arrived and confiscated his supplies.49 Quality could be
highly questionable, however. Though wartime bread had already been
adulterated with all sorts of dubious additions, standards often hit a
new low at the very end of the war. One housewife was disappointed
to find that the loaf she collected in late April was full of sand. She
concluded, perhaps a touch generously, that ‘mortar must have fallen
into the mix’.50
Closer to the city centre, meanwhile, the situation was more diffi-
cult and the rumour mill was full of tips about where food stores
might be found. Gerda Langosch recalled hearing that there were pota-
toes to be found packed into rail wagons at the Lehrter Station. When
a member of her cellar was dispatched and discovered the rumour to
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369
be true, she found herself with enough potatoes to last for a few
weeks. The following day, a local market hall was found with supplies
of meat and butter, which was distributed among her fellows, with
each of them receiving four pounds of butter and a sizeable portion
of pork. ‘The joy in the cellar’, she wrote, ‘was immeasurable.’51
Information was at a premium, as most Berliners had been effect -
ively cut adrift from the momentous events that were taking place
right outside their front doors. The newspapers had been replaced
by Goebbels’
Panzerbär
news-sheet, which would peddle propaganda
almost until the very end. Otherwise, the only sources of informa-
tion were the military situation reports that would periodically be
handed out or posted at local Nazi Party offices.52
Even radio, which had previously been such a staple source of
information and entertainment, was going through a lingering demise.
Most broadcasters had already ceased transmitting, particularly after
the city’s power had failed, and the majority of Berlin households had
long since switched off, or run out of precious batteries. A service of
sorts was, however, being maintained. Helmut Altner, a teenager
serving with a ramshackle Wehrmacht unit in the area of Spandau,
recalled the broadcast of a blood-curdling appeal by Goebbels himself,
which was transmitted by Greater German Radio:
Berlin will not be given up to the Bolsheviks . . . The Russian onslaught
must be smashed in a sea of blood. Those traitors who hoist the white
flag on their homes no longer have a right to the protection of the
community. All the occupants of such buildings will be regarded as
traitors . . . Berliners, the whole German nation is looking at you. Think
about it! The hour before the dawn is the darkest, and our victory eagle
will rise up into the sun of the new day radiant and magnificent!53
Beyond such threats and desperate imprecations to hold out, there
was precious little information of value to Berliners. The city was
alive with rumours that spring, which reflected civilians’ innermost
hopes and fears. The most common of these was that Berlin would
be relieved by the ‘Armee Wenck’, a semi-mythical force approxi-
mating to the remains of the German 12th Army, which was expected
to lift the siege, but it was actually heading
away
from the capital.54 It was also rumoured that the British and Americans had agreed terms
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berlin at war
with the Nazi leadership and were already racing to Berlin to assist
in holding back the Soviet tide.55 Others suggested that Hitler had
already taken his own life or that the SS were planning to flood the
city’s underground tunnels. Most worrying for civilians were the stories
of the mass rape of German women by the Red Army. Berliners did
not know what to believe. As one diarist summarised: ‘Rumours,
rumours. We live on them, like rotting food, but we have nothing
else.’56
This enforced ignorance also affected the city’s defenders. Unable
to accurately gauge the progress of the Soviet advance, even soldiers
were often reduced to asking fleeing civilians whether the next street
or the neighbouring suburb was still in German hands. One Wehrmacht
staff officer in the
Führerbunker
even resorted to using BBC and Reuters reports in preparing his briefings: ‘We found ourselves in a grotesque
position’, he recalled, ‘whereby any situation report given to Hitler
was based largely on information derived from listening to enemy
radio.’57
In some instances, the telephone system could be used to good
effect; armed with a Berlin phone book, one could track the progress
of the Red Army by phoning various suburbs and seeing if a Soviet
soldier picked up the receiver. It was a game the Soviets also played.
Viktor Boev was a young Soviet interpreter, who was persuaded by
his superior officers to pose as a German citizen and attempt to get
through on the telephone to Goebbels himself. After a fifteen-minute
wait and much questioning by the switchboard, Boev was finally put
through to the Minister of Propaganda. After confessing to being a
Soviet officer, he asked Goebbels some questions, such as how long
he intended to hold Berlin, and in which direction he had planned his
escape. He finished the conversation with a warning: ‘Bear in mind,
Mister Goebbels, that we will find you wherever you will be, and a
gibbet has already been prepared for you.’58
By now, death was all around. While the Battle for Berlin produced
large numbers of military casualties, among the civilian population
suicides increased dramatically. There were numerous petty tragedies
among them. When a young mother in a cellar discovered that her
baby had stopped breathing, ‘she sat in silence with the infant for a
day and a night, before a break in the fighting allowed her to go out