188 AFTER THE BATTLE.pdf

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THE BATTLE FOR

FESTUNG POSEN

No. 188

£5

NUMBER 188

After the Battle

2020

Editor: Karel Margry

Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey

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Having captured Poznan in September 1939 during the Blitzkrieg invasion of Poland, the

Germans soon made it the capital of their Reichsgau Wartheland, a new Nazi province

created after the annexation of western Poland to the Reich. Appointed Gauleiter of the

new region was Arthur Greiser, who for the next five and a half years ruled the region

with iron fist, exploiting the economy, terrorising the Polish people, persecuting the

Jews, and bringing in German colonists to germanise the region. Greiser set up his resi-

dence in Poznan’s Imperial Castle (Kaiser-Schloss). Hitler had already ordered that the

castle was to be made his official residence (Führer-Residenz) which led to much of its

interior being altered along Nazi architectural lines, with some of the rooms mirroring the

New Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Here Greiser (right) is reviewing Wehrmacht troops out-

side the castle in November 1939. With him are Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister of the Inte-

rior (centre), and General der Artillerie Walter Petzel (left), the commander of Wehrkreis

XXI (Posen), the newly-created Wehrmacht home army district in the new Gau.

The city of Poznan (Posen in German) lies

in the region known as Wielkopolska

(Greater Poland) in western Poland, which is

regarded by Poles as the heartland of the

Polish nation. Situated on the banks of the

Warta (Warthe) river, from the early begin-

nings of the Polish state Poznan was one of

the most important of its strongholds and the

seat of its kings and princes. Its location on

the Central European east-west axis and at

the junction of major trade routes was a

source of its wealth and growing importance

through the centuries. On the other hand,

this key position also made it liable to inva-

sion from both east and west. In due course

the city lost its political importance but it

always remained a chief economic centre.

In the wake of the partitions of Poland at the

end of the 18th century, Wielkopolska became

one of the provinces of Prussia, with Poznan as

its capital. The new rulers soon decided that

the city should be fortified, both to block the

shortest route of advance by Russian forces

towards Berlin as well as to suppress Polish

efforts to gain independence. Work began in

1828 and by the end of the 19th century the city

was ringed by a set of 18 forts and with a large

Citadel (Fort Winiary) just north of the Old

Town. It represented the third-largest fortress

system of its kind in Europe.

CONTENTS

THE BATTLE FOR FESTUNG

POSEN, 1945

FROM THE EDITOR

UNITED KINGDOM

Trent Park, Cockfosters

IT HAPPENED HERE

Bomb Disposal Tragedy at Eastbourne

IRELAND

German Crashes in Ireland

Front Cover:

A Russian T-34/76 tank

exhibited outside the Muzeum Uzbrojenia

(Armaments Museum) at Fort Winiary in

the Cytadela Park in the Polish city of

Poznan is a reminder of the month-long

battle that raged for the city between

German and Soviet forces in January-

February 1945. (Tomasz Zgoda)

Back Cover:

The German War Cemetery

at Glencree, County Wicklow, is the

central burial place for German dead

from the Second World War in Ireland.

Interred here are 134 men — mainly

Luftwaffe personnel killed in crashes and

Kriegsmarine sailors washed ashore in

Eire.

Photo Credit Abbreviations:

BA — Bundes-

archiv. NAC/ADM — Narodowe Archiwum

Cyfrowe. MWN —Muzeum Wojsk Niepod-

leglo ciowych. RGAKFiD —Russian State

Documentary Film and Photo Archive. The

photos by Zbigniew Zielonacki are prop-

erty of Lech Zielonacki and available

through cyryl.poznan.pl. Unless specified

otherwise, all illustrations are from the

After the Battle archive or The Society for

the Studies of the ETO.

The later alteration of the castle along Nazi architectural lines also affected the

exterior as can be clearly seen from the re-styled entrance.

TOMASZ ZGODA

BA BILD 183-E12078

In late January 1945 the Soviet Red Army first encircled and

then laid siege to the Polish city of Poznan in western Poland.

The Germans, who judged Poznan, or Posen as they called it,

very much a German city (it had formed part of Prussia for over

a century), decided to defend it as a Festung (fortress), the aim

of their stand being to hamper the advance of the Soviet

armies streaming past on either side. It took a full month of

heavy and costly fighting before the Russians finally managed

to reduce Festung Posen. Here the crew of a Russian 122mm

M1938 (M-30) howitzer, emplaced at the north-east corner of

Stary Rynek (Alter Markt), the city’s Old Town Market, takes

aim at the enemy entrenched in Wielka Street (Breite Strasse).

THE BATTLE FOR FESTUNG POSEN, 1945

The Prussian rulers also made efforts to

germanise the region, particularly after the

founding of the German Reich in 1871, and

from 1886 onwards the Prussian Settlement

Commission was active in increasing Ger-

man land ownership in formerly Polish areas.

Following the end of the First World War,

after more than a century of foreign rule, the

Poles gained their independent state accord-

ing to the Versailles Treaty of 1919. The suc-

cess of the Wielkopolskie Uprising of 1918-

19 ensured that most of that region and

Poznan became part of the new state.

On September 1, 1939, after just 20 years

of independence, Poland was attacked by

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and

partitioned once again. Poznan was occupied

without a fight by Wehrmacht troops on

September 10 after the Polish Poznan Army

had abandoned it and moved eastwards to

avoid encirclement.

Following the German-Russian occupa-

tion, Poland was carved up into three parts:

the eastern half was annexed by the Soviet

Union; the middle part became the so-called

Generalgouvernement under German rule,

and the western provinces were annexed by

Germany and became part of the German

Right:

The Nazi authorities during their

five-year reign in Poznan introduced Ger-

man names for all streets in the city,

hence all locations in our story go with

two names, the Polish one — stubbornly

kept in use by the Polish inhabitants in

defiance of the Nazi oppressor — and the

German one. Today this is again Wielka

Street.

Reich. They formed three new Reichsgaue

(administrative and party districts): Danzig-

Westpreussen, Wartheland (with Poznan as

its capital) and Oberschlesien, each governed

by a Reichsstatthalter/Gauleiter. In Warthe-

land, the new ruler was SS-Obergruppen-

führer Arthur Greiser, who quickly estab-

lished himself in Poznan, setting up his

residence in the Zamek Cesarski (Kaiser-

Schloss), the imperial castle built by Kaiser

Wilhelm II in 1905-10.

By Tomasz Zgoda

In the following years the city played a

crucial role in the German war effort, both as

a road and rail junction and as a supply cen-

tre for the Eastern Front. Like other cities in

Poland, the city suffered cruelly under Ger-

man occupation. Around 100,000 of its Pol-

ish inhabitants, one-third of its population,

TOMASZ ZGODA

Right:

On October 16, 1944, Adolf Hitler

decreed the creation of the Volkssturm,

conscripting all males between the ages

of 16 and 60 years who were not already

serving in some military unit. Volkssturm

militias, consisting mainly of old men and

Hitlerjugend teenagers, were raised in all

towns and cities within the Reich. Here

members of the Posen Volkssturm

parade past Reichsführer-SS Heinrich

Himmler on Schlossfreiheit, the street

passing in front of Poznan’s Imperial

Palace, in October 1944. Taking the

salute with Himmler from the SdKfz 7

heavy half-track are Gauleiter Greiser

(left) and Generaloberst Heinz Guderian,

the Chief of the OKH General Staff (right).

were expelled to the Generalgouvernement

and an estimated 10,000 perished in German

concentration camps. Thousands of others

(mostly intelligentsia, scientists, participants

of the 1918-19 insurgency, etc.) were killed in

the notorious Fort VII on the western out-

skirts and at other places in the city. Many

more were turned into forced labourers.

At the same time, Greiser’s administration

set about germanising the region and the

city. Poznan was renamed Posen and all city

districts, all streets and all landmark build-

ings received German names. All signs of

Polish presence and culture in town and

region were to be erased. In the place of the

Poles that had been expelled came tens of

thousands of ethnic Germans from the Baltic

States, Volhylnia, Eastern Galicia, the

Ukraine and elsewhere. This Germanisation

campaign was systematically pursued

throughout the occupation but had to be

abandoned as the Eastern Front approached

the borders of the Third Reich.

THE SOVIET DASH TO THE ODER

On January 12, 1945 the Soviet Red Army

started its Vistula—Oder offensive, attacking

on a broad front with five army groups — from

north to south the Third, Second and First

Byelorussian Fronts and the First and Fourth

Ukrainian Fronts. Within a few days the Ger-

man front collapsed and the Russian spear-

heads surged forward. In the sector of Marshal

of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov’s First

Byelorussian Front the 1st and 2nd Guards

Tank Armies made good progress westwards

almost unopposed. The first major obstacle on

their way to the Oder river was going to be

Poznan. Soon the fortifications of the city were

to be tested for the task that they had been

erected for many decades before.

Right:

Schlossfreiheit is today named

Adam Mickiewicz Square, and where

the half-track was set up now stands

the monument commemorating the

anti-Soviet

demonstrations

that

occurred in Poznan in June 1956. Begun

as a general strike for better work con-

ditions in the Joseph Stalin Metal

Works, the city’s largest factory, on

June 28, the protest quickly developed

into a mass demonstration against the

dictatorial regime of the Communist

rulers, a crowd of 100,000 assembling in

front of the Imperial Palace and

protesters attacking and occupying

party, government and secret police

buildings. That same afternoon a force

of 400 tanks and 10,000 troops of the

Polish People’s Army and the Interior

Security Corps entered the city and vio-

lently suppressed the uprising, at least

57 people being killed, with some 600

others wounded and over 700 detained.

‘Poznan June’ was the first of a series of

anti-Soviet mass protests that rocked

the Polish People’s Republic in the sum-

mer and autumn of 1956, leading to the

installation of a less hard-line Stalinist

government under Wladyslaw Gomulka

in October of that year.

GERMAN PREPARATIONS FOR

THE SIEGE

The Germans had already started prepara-

tions for defending the city in the autumn of

1944. The first line of defence was planned to

run around the city at a radius of 25 kilometres

from its centre. Some 160 kilometres long, it

never got beyond the planning stage as the

Germans had neither the manpower to build it

nor the troops to man it. The second line,

drawn at a distance of 12 to 15 kilometres from

the city, had a length of 100 kilometres and

was to consist not only of field fortifications

but also of Ringstand 58c bunkers. It never

fully materialised but of the works that were

completed, most were located east of the city.

The third and final line was based on the

perimeter of the 18 forts and several dozens of

small bunkers. It consisted of foxholes,

machine-gun posts and trenches connecting the

forts and other fortified objects. An anti-tank

ditch barred the entrance to the city though it

was not finished everywhere. The last point of

resistance was the Citadel, or Kernwerk as the

Germans called it, on the hill immediately north

of the Old Town. Though built in the 19th cen-

tury and by now outdated, the forts offered pro-

tection against most of the Soviet artillery as

well as from the cold. They also served as ware-

houses for uniforms, equipment and arms.

The city itself could be used for defence in

a varying degree. The districts of Glówna

and Zawady (Oststadt) and Osiedle

Warszawskie (Heinrichstadt), located north-

east and east of the Warthe river, were

densely built up, thus offering the Germans

good conditions for defence, while the

Zegrze (Bamberg) and Staroleka (Louisen-

hain) districts, located in the south-eastern

part of the city, consisted of small farms and

isolated houses scattered in open fields,

which gave an attacker easy access to the city

from this direction.

The districts west of the Warthe were

more-densely built up. However, the two

southern districts Wilda (Wilde) and

Debiec (Dembsen), with parts that had

more open spaces between the buildings,

offered the easiest access to the city centre.

A line of monumental public buildings

located on the site of the former Prussian

ramparts favoured the defenders if the

attacker was able to penetrate up to this

point. Also the Old Town offered good

opportunities to set up a defence within the

walls of its old buildings.

The Warthe river remained frozen for

most of the month-long battle, providing

both sides with the opportunity to cross it

with infantry forces.

The monument, designed by sculptor Adam Graczyk and architect Wlodzimierz Woj-

ciechowski, was unveiled in June 1981, the 25th anniversary of the uprising.

TOMASZ ZGODA

NAC/ADM

Right:

These Volkssturm troopers on Mar-

tin-Strasse (the continuation of Schloss-

freiheit) are pulling MG 151/20 machine

guns, a type produced in the local arms

factories of the Deutsche Waffen- und

Munitionsfabrik. The building in the back-

ground is the University Hall of the Poznan

University, known under German rule as

the Reichsuniversität Posen (Reich Univer-

sity of Posen). This building would become

a heavily-contested bastion during the

battle for the city three months later.

The German strategy was to hold the city

as a Festung (fortress) and have it serve the

role of a ‘Wellenbrecher’ (breakwater). The

aim was to let the enemy encircle the city and

engage him in a long-lasting siege that would

prevent him from concentrating his addi-

tional forces further west along the Oder in

the area of Küstrin and for a later offensive

towards Berlin. The other objective was to

hold the city’s important road and railway

junctions for as long as possible in order to

deny the enemy the best ways to supply his

advancing armies.

ALARM FOR FESTUNG POSEN

Alarm for the Festung Posen was sounded

at 5.25 a.m. on January 20, 1945. General-

major Ernst Mattern, the commander of the

Warthelager, the large Wehrmacht training

ground to the north of the city, had been

appointed Festungskommandant (Fortress

Commander). He quickly ordered the evacu-

ation of all civilians from the city. However,

despite the approaching battle, many of them

decided to stay, and an estimated 100,000

Poles and an unknown number of German

inhabitants remained in the city. Along with

the civilian evacuation, Gauleiter Greiser

and all Nazi Party and German administra-

tive authorities abandoned the city.

The force that defended Posen included

many second-line and training units that had

been part of the city’s regular garrison before

the battle. They included the instructors and

infantry officer cadets of the Schule V für

Fahnenjunker der Infanterie — some 1,300

men in all (the cadets were all given the rank

of Leutnant and would form the core of the

lower cadre in the defence units); an assault

gun training unit, Sturmgeschütz-Ersatz- und

Ausbildungs-Abteilung 500, and several

fortress units: Festungs-Pak-Abteilung 102

(anti-tank), Festungs-MG-Bataillone 82 and

83 (machine gun), Festung-Pionier-Kom-

panie 66 (engineers) and Festungs-Bataillon

1446. In addition, there were four Home

Army guard battalions (Landesschützen-

Bataillone 21, 312, 475 and 647), two garrison

units (Standort-Bataillon z.b.V. and Dol-

metscher-Abteilung XXI) and one militia

unit, Volkssturm-Bataillon 15, one of four

such battalions originally raised by the city.

Three battalions were made up of Luft-

waffe personnel. Formed out of Flieger-

Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Abteilung 1 and

many smaller air force units, they were Batail-

lon Rogalsky (named after its commander,

Oberstleutnant Fritz Rogalsky), Bataillon

Degive (Major Carl Degive) and one battal-

ion whose commander’s name is not known.

Finally, there were SS-Kampfgruppe

Lenzer, made up of all the SS personnel

found in the city, and Polizei-Regiment

Schallert, comprising three company-size

units formed from the city’s police. In addi-

tion, there were various smaller units consist-

ing of members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst

(RAD, Reich Labour Service), Organisation

Todt, fire service, air raid service and other

rear-echelon troops.

The garrison’s artillery included eight field

artillery batteries with a combined strength

of 38 guns, and Flak-Untergruppe Posen

armed with 32 88mm and 88 37mm and

20mm anti-aircraft guns.

A powerful element of the garrison was the

so-called Panzer-Stoss-Reserve (Armoured

Assault Reserve), commanded by Haupt-

mann Wolf von Malotki and consisting of one

Tiger I, two Panthers, one PzKpfw IV, one

Hetzer tank destroyer, a self-propelled gun of

an unknown type and around 17-18 StuGs

and StuH 42s (the latter provided by Sturm-

geschütz-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Abteilung

500).

It was these forces — some 8,000 to 10,000

men in all — that formed the core of the city

garrison. According to the German plans,

they were to be reinforced by Wehrmacht

forces retreating from the east. As soon as

the first alarm sounded on January 20, spe-

cial collecting units started gathering every

man that came in from the east. However,

many of the latter, knowing what fate would

await them if they got holed up in the city,

avoided getting in there. As it was, the only

sizable forces that reinforced the garrison

were Kampfgruppe Uhlig, comprising the

remnants of the 251. Infanterie-Division; an

infantry training battalion, Infanterie-Ersatz-

und Ausbildungs-Abteilung 67; an anti-air-

craft battery, RAD-Doppel-Batterie, armed

with six 88mm and two 20mm flak guns; and

a battalion of Hungarian officer cadets.

These newly arrived troops numbered 3,000

to 4,000 soldiers.

In total, the city was defended by an esti-

mated 15,000 to 20,000 men. They were

organised into new units and divided over

the various defence sectors as follows:

Sector East (Abschnitt Ost)

commanded

by Oberst Ernst Gonell:

- subsector I: Bataillon Werner and

Bataillon Schomaker (later Pfeiffer),

- subsector II: Bataillon von den Driesch

and Bataillon Koch,

- subsector III: Bataillon Styx and

Bataillon Hamel,

- Reserve-Bataillon Ost/Kampfgruppe

Schulte (later Säger)

- six artillery batteries and part of

Festungs-Pak-Abteilung 102.

Sector West (Abschnitt West)

under

Major Heinz Martin Ewert:

- subsector IV North (Unterabschnitt

Nord): Bataillon Prasser and Bataillon

Zaag (later Fütterer)

- subsector V West and South

(Unterabschnitt West und Süd):

Volkssturm-Bataillon 15, Luftwaffe-

Bataillon Degive, Luftwaffe-Bataillon

Rogalsky, Kampfgruppe Uhlig,

SS-Kampfgruppe Lenzer, seven artillery

batteries and many smaller infantry

units.

Since 1955 the university has been known as the Adam Mickiewicz University after

Poland’s greatest poet (1798-1855). As for the machine guns, it is an irony of history

that the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabrik, where they came, later became the

Joseph Stalin Metal Works from which the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956 emanated.

TOMASZ ZGODA

NAC/ADM

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