The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

On 5 October Soviet troops launched their attack in Memel and five days later were on the Baltic, surrounding the town. The 3rd Panzer Army, weakened though it had been, managed to hold out in the siege until reinforcements arrived, with the help, as we noted, of much battered Volkssturm units. Two days before the Red Army’s attack, local civilians were still frantically digging trenches and anti-tank ditches. The Wehrmacht wanted the area evacuated.⁴⁸ But only on 7 October were evacuation orders belatedly issued by the Party authorities. Anyone not obeying was to be treated as a traitor. Panic and chaos resulted, all the more so when the local District Leader of the Party countermanded the order and decreed that people should for the time being stay where they were. The confusion was all the greater since there had already been an earlier partial evacuation of Memel and surrounding districts in early August, but the population had returned when the danger had receded. There was initially some sense, therefore, that this, too, would prove to be a false alarm. But when the order to leave was finally given, on 9 October, it was for many already too late. Thousands were left behind, cut off by the rapidly advancing front. Many were reluctant to leave their farms unprotected against what they saw as a ‘roaming mob’ of prisoners of war and Polish workers. They missed the chance to escape. Most who could—predominantly women, children, the elderly and infirm, since men were generally held back for service in the Volkssturm and other duties—took to the road in horse-carts, or on foot, carrying with them a few possessions hastily thrown together. Rumours that the Red Army was in the immediate vicinity caused renewed panic. A sense of terror was widespread.

Explosions and fear of air raids sometimes caused the refugees to take cover where they could, in the fields away from the road. Women fell on their knees to pray. It was a race against time as main highways became cut off by Soviet troops. Abandoned wagons and household goods littered the roadside. The lucky ones, after an anxiety-ridden wait on the shores, finally crammed into a fleet of little boats that ferried them, though without their livestock and most of their possessions, to temporary safety over the abutting saltwater inlet, the Kurisches Haff, to improvised billets in parts of East Prussia. Some sought to swim across, and were drowned. The last most of those fleeing saw of Memel was a red glow in the night sky. An estimated third of the population fell into Soviet hands. There were stories of plunder, rape and murder by Red Army soldiers.⁴⁹

The fate of Memel marked the start of more than two weeks of dread and horror for the population close to the East Prussian border. Worse was yet to come. As General Guderian later commented, ‘what happened in East Prussia was an indication to the inhabitants of the rest of Germany of their fate in the event of a Russian victory.’⁵⁰

On 16 October, the Red Army began its assault on East Prussia itself amid a barrage of artillery fire over a 40-kilometre stretch of the front and intensive air raids on border towns. There was as good as no defence offered by the Luftwaffe, and the German 4th Army, severely weakened in the collapse of Army Group Centre in the summer, was forced to pull back westwards. On 18 October Soviet troops advanced across the German frontier. Within three days they had penetrated German lines and forced their way some 60 kilometres into the Reich across a front of around 150 kilometres. The border towns of Eydtkau, Ebenrode and Goldap fell into Soviet hands, while Gumbinnen and Angerapp narrowly escaped that fate, though the former was heavily damaged through air attacks and Soviet troops reached the outskirts. The Soviets reached as far as the village of Nemmersdorf in the early morning of 21 October where, despite their finding a key bridge over the river Angerapp intact, the offensive halted.