Hitler's Final Fortress - Breslau 1945 by Richard Hargreaves Page A

soldiers, prison camps in the Soviet Union; for civilians, rape, plunder and starvation, and finally expulsion from their homes as Silesia became Polish and Breslau became Wrocław. For Polish settlers – many driven from their homeland like the Germans they displaced – there were decades of toil and hardship as they struggled to rebuild the Silesian capital.
    They succeeded. Today Wrocław is a flourishing city once more, the fourth largest in Poland, its war-scarred landscape cleared, its battle-scarred buildings restored and rebuilt. It is a seat of learning, the heart of Poland’s electronics and rail industries, a centre of banking and finance, a destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Most of these visitors are oblivious to the bitter struggle for Breslau.
    The actors may be bit-part players compared with those at the fall of Berlin, the stakes not as high as at Stalingrad, the suffering not as protracted as in Leningrad, but the siege of Breslau is terrible, if compelling, drama. For the sake of the men and women involved on all sides it is a story which deserves to be told.
    Gosport, November 2010
    * Around one in five buildings in Berlin was destroyed during the war; the figure in Dresden was double that; some two in every three homes in Hamburg and Breslau were uninhabitable; the heart of Aachen lost four out of five homes; and in Cologne, an estimated ninety-five per cent of the old town was destroyed.

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations Used in References

 
  AOK
Armeeoberkommando – staff of an army in the field
  BA-MA
Bundesarchiv-Militär Archiv – Bundesarchiv Military Archive, Freiburg
  Div
Division
  DDRZW
Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg
  Documenty
Festung Breslau: Documenty Oblezenia 16/2-6/5/45
  HGr
Heeresgruppe – Army Group
  IMT
International Military Tribunal
  IWM
Imperial War Museum, London
  Kdo
Kommando – command
  KTB
Kriegstagebuch – war diary
  NA
National Archives, Kew
  NMT
Nuremberg Military Tribunal
  OKH
Oberkommando des Heeres – German Army High Command
  OKW
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – German Armed Forces High Command
  Pz
Panzer
  SD Meldung
Sicherheitsdienst – SS Security Service – report
  TB Cohn
Diary of Willi Cohn
  TB Goebbels
Diary of Joseph Goebbels
  TB Oven
Diary of Wilfred von Oven
  Vertreibung
Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa I, Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neisse
    Author’s note
    German ranks throughout, with the exception of Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal), have been left in their original language. An explanation of the comparative ranks can be found in the appendix. The names of towns, villages, streets and buildings in Silesia retain their German names for events prior to their becoming Polish; thereafter they revert to their post-1945 Polish names.























Prologue
    The Square

Chapter 1
    The Happy Fusion

The war on the Eastern Front only interests me when
the first Russians appear before Namslau

Chapter 2
    The Bridgehead

Chapter 3
    God Has Washed His Hands of this World

An entire city with more than one million
inhabitants was beginning to die .

Chapter 4
    The Reckoning Has Begun

Chapter 5
    In Defiance of Death and the Devil

Every house of Fortress Breslau, which has been entrusted to us
by the Führer, will cost the enemy rivers of blood

Chapter 6
    The Breslau Method

Oh, you beautiful Breslau, how you have changed,
how you have turned into a field
of ruins and all because you are no fortress,
you were merely turned into one with words

Chapter 7
    The Old Breslau Is No More

When the Oder flows with blood to the north and
the destroyed towers reach for the heavens
like scrawny fingers, Breslau will go under

Chapter 8
    Any Further Sacrifice Is a Crime

Now it’s all over. My ideals are destroyed, Germany lies in ruins.
What will the Russians do with