Judgment in Berlin: A Spy Story by Noel Hynd

Author:Noel Hynd [Hynd, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Cat Tales LLC, Publishing, Los Angeles, CA
Published: 2021-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 42

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania – April - May 1945

The Soviet Sixty-fifth Army and the First Guards Tank Corps, including Colonel Kovalyov’s unit, arrived in Demmin within the hour. Approximately a hundred Wehrmacht troops had not yet left in the city. Russian troops executed them.

The remaining citizens of Demmin hoisted a white banner of surrender on the tower of the main church. A dozen Soviet negotiators, including a captain, approached the anti-tank ditch. They promised to spare Demmin's civilian population from "harassment" and looting if the city surrendered without a fight.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Demmin had been a power center for nationalist right-wing parties. Now, however, was payback time and the town knew it.

Diehard members of the Hitler Youth secured sniping positions while the surrender was being negotiated. Several shots volleyed from within buildings. Three German soldiers, one of them an officer, died from the rifle fire. The remaining Wehrmacht units, including elements of Waffen-SS, retreated. Within the hour, German troops dynamited all three bridges leading out of Demmin. By that time, Soviet units, spearheaded by units of the Soviet Sixty-fifth Army under Colonel Kovalyov’s command, were patrolling the streets of Demmin.

The fallen bridges blocked the flight of the Demmin civilian population, which was trapped by the rivers that circled the town. While many attempted to surrender, chaos reigned.

The scattered Hitler Youth continued to snipe at the Soviet soldiers from positions where white flags had been hoisted. Soviet officers used binoculars to pinpoint the snipers’ locations. Then Russian rifle teams invaded the buildings and killed every German they saw. There were other small incidents of resistance. One Nazi loyalist schoolteacher, having slain his wife and children, used an anti-tank grenade on Soviet soldiers before hanging himself.

Where possible, Russian soldiers dragged the captured snipers out into the main square and executed them with pistol shots to the neck. Colonel Kovalyov supervised and executed the first German snipers. After neutralizing all of them, Soviet troops withdrew to a cautious distance during the late afternoon. A strange quiet descended on the city, right around the time the German citizens caught radio broadcasts of news reports that Adolf Hitler was dead, having taken his own life that afternoon. Demmin had been staunchly pro-Hitler. The death of the leader suggested a morbid finality to the war. Meanwhile, Soviet tanks that had come from the east and the west blocked all the streets.

On the evening of April 30 before darkness fell, joyous, celebratory Soviets troops flooded into Demmin and overran the town, breaking into houses for loot, taking jewelry, heirlooms, and whatever else they found valuable. They broke into the city’s significant storage of alcohol: grain distilleries and several depots and stores that sold gasoline and alcohol.

Later, angry at the unnecessary losses they had taken in seizing Demmin, they used the gasoline to incinerate buildings. In the buildings that were not on fire, they shot the men, grouped the women in specific chambers, and committed mass gang rapes of local women regardless of age. The Russians shot

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.