Kolberg, 1945: Evacuation from a besieged city

From 4 to 18 March 1945, Kolberg was besieged by troops of the Red Army and the Polish People's Army. The German seaside resort on the Baltic coast had not seen war since 1807. Back then, the siege by Napoleon's troops had ceased after an armistice was signed between France and Prussia. The propaganda film 'Kolberg' about this siege, premiered as recently as January 1945, was supposed to encourage Germans to hold out even now. They would not succeed, but until 17 March almost the entire civilian population was evacuated from the city by fishing, merchant and naval vessels by sea. Below is an excerpt from Kevin Prenger's book ' Hitler’s Last Chance: Kolberg' about this evacuation.



Thanks to the connection by sea, during the first stage of the siege it was still possible to provide food and ammunition to the beleaguered city by ships from Swinemünde and Stettin. From the first day the port was under fire, although initially less intensively than later on. During those first days chaos reigned in the harbour as people tried to flee in their masses and the flow of refugees wasn’t coordinated properly. Various people were trampled to death by horses that had panicked due to the roaring of enemy guns and other forms of violence and were running wild.

Everyone wanting to flee the city was lucky to the extent that due to the stormy weather many vessels were at anchor in the harbour. Many ships departed every day with refugees aboard, in particular under the cover of darkness. The vessels usually assembled in the anchorage off the coast of Kolberg before sailing in convoy to other ports further west. The major destinations were Swinemünde, Stralsund and Sassnitz on the island of Rügen. During their voyage the vessels had to stay close to shore as the deeper waters were mined.



From 7 March onwards fleeing the city was only possible by sea. After disappointing results, attempts to liberate the route along the beach to Gribow by force were prohibited by higher authority. Prior to 5 March some citizens could also have got away by aircraft taking off from Bodenhagen air base east of Kolberg, although pilots were not actually allowed to take on refugees. On 5 March the airfield could no longer be defended and had to be surrendered to the enemy, but not without part of the facilities being blown up by Luftwaffe personnel first.^[1] The employees of the air base retreated to the city, where they were deployed in the defence.

Hans-Jürgen Brand witnessed how things unfolded in the harbour during the evacuation of citizens. In the morning of 4 March he had said goodbye to his mother and sister, who were being evacuated to Swinemünde aboard the steamer Heluan. The vessel held some 1,500 refugees. Hans-Jürgen and his father stood on the eastern pier as the vessel sailed past, carrying his mother and sister, the latter waving from the deck. Suddenly Soviet fighter planes appeared overhead and opened fire on the harbour. ‘It was my baptism of fire,’ Brand said after the war. ‘I never had experienced anything like it. We were lucky they didn’t hit us.’ But the Heluan sailed on unharmed.

Being under fire wasn’t the last frightening event Brand experienced in Kolberg harbour. Awaiting his own evacuation, he spent much time there and witnessed how ruthless some people could be. ‘It was everyone for himself,’ he recalled. ‘Everyone just thought of getting away, getting away on a ship.’ He watched people crowding on the quay to board the ships via the narrow boarding ramps. The mass was pushed forward from behind with the result that ‘women with children and women with prams could no longer stand still and were pushed into this ice-cold, filthy water, usually in the sleet, still yelling and screaming and drowning before our eyes.’ According to him, this happened ‘frequently’. There were no rescue vessels, no swimming vests, so anyone who fell into the water was lost, unless they could get out of the water by themselves, something Brand never witnessed though.^[2] He did see, however, how a woman attempted to hold on to a floating suitcase, but went under, suitcase and all.^[3]

Whereas many had trouble enough to board a ship safely, shells rained down in and around the harbour as well. In the water, according to Brand, exploding shells triggered ‘fountains of water so high, I had never seen anything like it’. He also watched people die as shells exploded amongst the waiting refugees. Their bodies were kicked into the water to make room. ‘It was terrible to watch,’ Brand said after the war. ‘People were helpless, but we were afraid as well to be shoved into the harbour basin as those behind kept pushing.’ Amongst the ‘enormous, filthy mud-like fountains, caused by shells’, he saw ‘people floating or drowning everywhere’.^[4] The most horrendous sights were undoubtedly the corpses of children bobbing around. As this misery unfolded before them, people on the quay said nothing. ‘Everyone only cared about themselves.’^[5]

In the end the gruesome experiences in the harbour became too much for Brand. He saw a woman with two children subjected to fire from grenade launchers. ‘We called these things ‘‘swoosh, boom’’ and body parts of this family were scattered everywhere,’ Brand remembered. ‘Not one of them survived. It was terrible. The stairs hadn’t been damaged. They were made of cement and covered in blood.’ The boy burst into tears which seemingly had no end. ‘I couldn’t cope any more,’ he declared. ‘I couldn’t do anything any more, I could only cry.’ Anonymous people took him to an aid station, where he only quietened down after having been given a sedative. ‘I was unable to do anything any more. For years and years I saw this family in my mind’s eye. That was traumatic.’^[6]

The chaos as described by Brand was one point in time, but the evacuation wasn’t accompanied all the time by chaos and gruesome sights. Boarding by refugees preferably took place in the dark when the city wasn’t under fire. To maintain order a harbour patrol was established. The soldiers who made up this unit were tasked not only with seeing to it that boarding proceeded in an orderly fashion, but also with ascertaining that only women, children and males aged over 65 went aboard. Younger males attempting to get aboard were treated harshly. A physician who helped his daughter with a pram to get aboard the steamer Thesaus on 7 March experienced this: ‘Guards in charge of boarding swore at me as they thought I was trying to escape with her,’ the man stated. ‘Without saying goodbye, I parted from my family, perhaps never to see them again.’^[7]


Not everyone was satisfied with the conduct of the harbour patrol. According to Doctor Brand, appointed by Fullriede as supervisor in the harbour, ‘the work of those in charge of boarding’ was severely hampered by members of the patrol. ‘They continuously made gestures to the refugees, waving their machine guns in front of their eyes and created unrest instead of calming them down. Members of the patrol swore at everyone and commanded everyone in the harbour.’ Police officers from the city, assisting children and the elderly with boarding, were even thwarted by the harbour patrol when doing their relief work. According to Doctor Brand, ‘an imminent firefight between the two parties could only be averted with difficulty’.^[8]

It was partly owing to the crews of the various vessels that evacuation, apart from a few incidents, proceeded smoothly in general. Fregattenkapitän Kolbe was in charge of the operation, initially aboard the U-Jäger 119 (a submarine hunter) and from 12 March onwards from the destroyer Z43.^[9] A motley collection of vessels was made available for this evacuation, large and small, civil and military. Among them were merchantmen and the Kolberg fishing fleet. In addition, the Kriegsmarine made an important contribution. For instance, Siebelfähre were deployed to ferry as many people as possible at a time out to larger navy vessels on the anchorage. These vessels, invented by aircraft manufacturer Siebel, were the provisional landing craft of the Wehrmacht which would have been deployed in Operation Seelöwe, the invasion of Great Britain. They were a sort of ferry or pontoon, propelled by aero engines. In addition, minesweepers and Flugsicherungsboote (Luftwaffe search and rescue vessels) were also deployed.



Continuous high waves meant that the transfer from smaller vessels to larger ones wasn’t only difficult for the refugees, but also demanded a high degree of seamanship from the crews as well. Once aboard, the privations for the refugees weren’t over yet. In the holds and cabins of the overcrowded ships, usually lacking in sufficient sanitary facilities, it was hard. Most of those on board were not used to sailing in rough seas and many became seasick. Conditions were worse on some vessels than on others.

The voyage aboard the steamer Winrich von Kniprode, which departed on 8 March from Kolberg harbour, was particularly awful. One of the passengers was 14-year-old Manfred Gruhlcke from Köslin. On 7 March he had arrived in town in order to escape by ship, and was able to depart as early as the following morning. A landing craft took him and the others to the anchorage where the Winrich von Kniprode was waiting. This vessel, which once carried passengers on the Hamburg-America line, was too large to berth in the harbour. The enemy opened fire on the landing craft, but once it reached the anchorage it was out of range of the enemy guns. Manfred and the rest of the people on board could transfer safely. Once aboard, they found accommodation in the hold, where straw mattresses had been laid down for them and sufficient food was available. Up to and including 10 March more refugees were taken aboard while Manfred watched how ever-larger parts of the city were set ablaze as a result of enemy bombing. On 10 March the Winrich von Kniprode left the anchorage with between 4,000 and 5,000 refugees aboard, and escorted by other ships.

Less than a full day into the voyage to the west, on 11 March the vessel dropped anchor on the high sea as there was no more coal left to fuel the engines. While the other ships of the convoy continued their journey, it took until 14 March before Winrich von Kniprode could resume the journey after coal from another ship had been taken aboard. Meanwhile, food was running low and people had to satisfy themselves with ‘half a litre of watery soup with barley for two persons’. According to Manfred, ‘it was too little to live on and too much to die of’. Fortunately, on 13 March fresh food was brought aboard. As a result of the privations and the lack of hygiene, many suffered from diarrhoea in the meantime. At anchor on the high sea, without any protection, the vessel was extremely vulnerable, but although swimming vests were distributed once as enemy planes flew overhead, an attack didn’t happen.

After resuming her voyage on 14 March, the vessel reached the anchorage at Swinemünde on 15 March. Here, dozens of other vessels were already waiting. Berthing in port was impossible as the city was recovering from the heavy bombardment of 12 March, carried out by the aircraft that had flown past the Winrich von Kniprode earlier. After fresh food had been delivered on 16 March, the refugees could finally have a good meal again. Breakfast on 17 March consisted of three slices of bread with butter, sausages and marmalade. The morning after, anchor was weighed and the vessel entered the port. After disembarking in Swinemünde, Manfred Gruhlcke continued his journey on a special train for refugees, which took him on to Rostock the same day. ‘Saved. Escape endured,’ he wrote in his diary when his journey of a few days from Kolberg was finally over.^[10]



Apart from participating in patrols to track down looters, spies and deserters, Waffen-SS soldier Paul Martelli also helped escorting citizens from the city to the harbour. One day in the port area ‘a woman around 50 years old, bejewelled and almost hidden by a luxurious fur coat’ approached him. In her arms she was carrying a ‘Pomeranian poodle’. ‘In a voice heavy with melancholy’, she asked the soldier if he could put down her ‘dear friend’ without pain. She wanted to prevent the little dog from falling into enemy hands. Although he was touched by her request, Martelli decided to fulfil the woman’s wish. He took the unknowing animal from her and took it to the beach. But his first shot wasn’t lethal and the dog cried out, to the horror of its owner. A shot fired immediately afterwards by Martelli was fatal, though. He handed the dead animal back to the woman, who was crying softly. ‘She hugged him, squeezing him in a tight grip, careless about the blood stains smearing her expensive fur coat.’ Suddenly, enemy artillery opened up on the beach. Everyone hit the ground, seeking cover, except the lady. Martelli yelled at her to take cover too, but in vain. She answered that she was looking for a spot to bury her dog. ‘I had seen bizarre moments during recent bombings, but that scene was astounding,’ Martelli wrote in his book. ‘The woman wandered back and forth, in search of a nice spot on the foreshore. I shook my head in disbelief . . .’^[11]

Notes

1. Voelker, J., Die letzten Tage von Kolberg, p. 73.
2. Brand, H.-J., Testimony on zeitzeugen-portal, via: YouTube.
3. Knopp, G., De Oorlog van de eeuw (documentary), deel 9, 2005.
4. Brand, H.-J., Testimony on zeitzeugen-portal, via: YouTube.
5. Knopp, G., De Oorlog van de eeuw (documentary), deel 9, 2005.
6. Brand, H.-J., Testimony on zeitzeugen-portal, via: YouTube.
7. Schön, H., Pommern auf der Flucht 1945, pp. 171–2.
8. Ibid., pp. 166–7.
9. Ibid., p. 181.
10. Ibid., pp. 174–7.
11. Martelli, P., On the Devil’s Tail, p. 129.