SS Charlemagne: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS

Cut off from the rest of the Charlemagne Division by the rapid advance of the 3rd Guards Tank Corps on Rummelburg and Köslin, several isolated elements from the fighting at Bärenwalde and Elsenau were unable to follow SS-Major-General Krukenberg’s instructions as they passed through Flötenstein to try and rejoin at Greifenberg. Instead they were obliged to withdraw to the northeast, back into the big pocket of Danzig-Gotenhafen with the remains of Colonel-General Walter Weiss’s 2nd German Army, which Marshal Rokossovsky’s 2nd Byelorussian Front was in the process of reducing.

Consequently, at 0500 hours on 3 March, a detachment commanded by Lieutenant Fatin arrived at Schlawe and met up with Captain René Obitz, who had already gathered together some 300 men from the Charlemagne. Soon afterwards a convoy under Captain Jacques Martin arrived at the station, having collected a hundred of the Division’s gunners that had completed their training at Josefstadt in Bohemia. At 1600 hours Captain Obitz took over command of the group and chartered a special train that was in the station but without an engine. On the 4th it was learnt that the last railway track to the west had just been cut by the enemy advance near Köslin, thus closing any possible line of retreat by the German 2nd Army.

With no hope of rejoining the depot at Greifenberg or the bulk of the Charlemagne, Captain Obitz then placed the French detachment at the disposal of the headquarters of the 4th SS-Police-Panzergrenadier Division, which was commanded by SS-Lieutenant-Colonel Harzer, who had made a name for himself at the battle of Arnhem. The latter directed him to take his group to Neustadt, northeast of Gotenhafen, where the 9th SS-Police Regiment and the 4th SS-Field Training and Replacement Battalion were located.

At about midday on the 5th, the train set off slowly from Schlawe and arrived at Stolp station at about midnight. By chance, at this precise moment a single Russian aircraft dropped three or four bombs that hit the train. As a result, eight men, including Lieutenant Colnion, were killed and sixty wounded, Captain Obitz mortally, and also Lieutenant Salle. According to witnesses, the wagons were running with blood.

Finally, on the evening of the 6th, the train continued its journey to Neustadt carrying the depleted battalion now commanded by Captain Martin with Lieutenant Pierre Fatin as his adjutant and three weak companies commanded by Second Lieutenants Lapard, Bonnefous and Senior Officer-Cadet Jean Chatrousse. Then, next morning, 7 March, Martin and Fatin set off for Danzig to establish contact with an SS headquarters.

Together with Major General Dr Maus’ 7th Panzer Division, which had been Rommel’s division in 1940, the 4th SS-PolicePanzergrenadier Division formed the IVth Panzer Corps under General Hans von Kessel, but the 7th Panzer Division now only had twenty tanks in working order. The extremely fluid situation was deteriorating by the hour. The Soviets had arrived in front of Neustadt, where they were fortunately stopped by several tanks of the 7th Panzer Division that had been dug in at fixed points for lack of fuel. Encountering this resistance, the enemy wheeled around and enveloped the positions of Martin’s battalion, which was without its commander at the time. The detachments of Chatrousse and Lapard succeeded in disengaging themselves and, marching on a rough bearing at night, they found their way to Captain Martin in Danzig.

The battalion no longer had an effective amount of ammunition and was down to one-third of fit, armed men, one-third of unarmed men and one-third of injured, but was still sufficient to man a third line of defences organised northeast of the important naval installation of Gotenhafen at Kielau, Ciessau and Sagorsch.

The headquarters of the 2nd Army were transferred from Danzig to Pilau in East Prussia and the command of the Gotenhafen pocket given to Lieutenant-General Hans von Kessel’s IVth Panzer Corps. This corps, in addition to its organic elements of the 7th Panzer Division and 4th SS-Police Division, also had the remains of the 32nd, 83rd and 203rd Infantry Divisions under command. The IVth Panzer Corps had to stand up to two complete Soviet armies, the 65th and 70th, which were maintaining a constant pressure to annihilate the defenders of the pocket or throw them back into the sea. On 25 March, the 7th Panzer Division withdrew to Oxhöft, and on the 28th the Soviets committed an entire regiment of twenty extra heavy Josef Stalin tanks.

Along with the Germans, among the defenders, subjected to bombardments and incessant enemy attacks, and suffering from a lack of water, rations and medical supplies, were French, Latvian, Hungarian, Dutch and Italian troops. Russian propaganda detachments harangued the defenders between pieces of Russian music with loudspeakers calling on them to surrender.