Seelow and the complex issue of historical memory for Germans

Guide Nick Jackson at Chuikov's bunker on Reitwein Spur.

One of the lesser-known engagements of WWII was the battle for the Seelow Heights in April 1945. It pitted the retreating Germans against the advancing Russian army in the last major engagement before the Battle of Berlin began. In terms of casualties it was the largest battle in WWII on German soil. 

I wanted to do a battlefield tour of the area, but knew zero about any of it beyond a quick web site read. To do it properly I engaged a local history guide, Nick Jackson. I emailed a number of guiding services and since they all referred me to Nick, it soon became obvious that he was the guy to have for such escapades. I then opened it up to the Thunderbird alumni group and I rented a mini van and drove Nick and a few others. Another couple tagged along in their own car. We spent the day driving around the countryside east of Berlin as Nick discussed the order of the battle in what became a super fascinating tour of a little-known chapter of WWII history.

We met at the parking lot of the Berlin Philharmonic near Potsdamer Platz. Everyone introduced themselves. When it was Nick's turn he quickly admitted that he was part of a sad cadre of losers who are mostly unmarried men in their 50's who happen to be fascinated by military history. A Brit turned German-ophile after living in Berlin for a couple decades, he runs tours of old bunkers and Berlin landmarks for the local Unterwelten ("Underworlds") tour firm. He's been featured on the BBC and in a number of local magazine and newspaper articles. He wrote the text for the interpretive sign that stands at the location of Hitler's Bunker in Berlin. So after everyone generally agreed we all have a very un-attractive and decidedly weird hobby, we decided to get on our way.

The first thing we did was drive to Poland (60 km, not far on the highways) and the town of Kustryn. This was a former Prussian “fort town” on the Oder River that served to protect Berlin in the 1700’s from incursions from adversaries from the East. The town was laid out like many other orderly Prussian towns with flagstone sidewalks, cobbled streets, and wide plazas for markets and recreation. A church sat in a central location and a castle for the Prussian king occupied the East part of town. The “fort” designation is due to the fact that the entire town is surrounding by huge battlements and thick walls, much of which can still be seen today.

During the war, the Germans named Kustryn a “Festung” which meant that it was designed to be a strategic support point in the line against the oncoming Red Army. It also meant that everyone there was supposed to fight to last. A few other places earned this designation as the Germans retreated and the concept usually meant the sacrifice of troops who were bottled up inside while the fluid battle moved past them. They were then blasted into bits by huge Russian artillery guns when the Soviets were good and ready. In Kustryn’s case, after the Germans surrendered the town, the Russians systematically dismantled what hadn’t been flattened by the battle, shipping every brick, window frame and roof tile East to rebuild the city of Warsaw. Kustryn is now known as the “Pompeii of Poland” since the only thing left is the foundations.

Previously a main street. The Russians generously left the cobbles.

The town and remaining fort walls lie along the Oder river outside the modern town of Kustryn. The place is eerie: the street signs advertise where thoroughfares used to run, but the only structure of any size in the whole town is the ruins of the church. The wide, flat flagstones that Prussian townspeople used to stroll down are still there, but the buildings are obviously not. Just the foundations. Old coal shoots are still in evidence, as are some caved-in basements. 

Entrance to the basement of the town "castle." This was the command bunker for the Germans during the battle.

The dismantling of Prussian property and shipping it back to Russia was a widespread practice as the Soviets advanced further into German-controlled areas at the ending stages of the war. In Kustryn’s case it was the entire town that went, but individual Russian soldiers each could also send a certain weight amount of “items” back home. As they broke through on the Vistula and entered Poland, which was historically the Prussian homeland, they noted the prosperity of the farms and businesses there in contrast to the poverty and bleakness of life in Russia. 

Many Russian soldiers came from Russia’s eastern provinces of Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Siberia, and had little exposure to such modern amenities and comparative wealth. So they did things like ripping water faucets out of kitchen walls and sent them home with instructions to simply put the fixture into a wall and turn the knob to produce water. Others carefully wrapped up light bulbs with similar instructions and sent them back home to farms that were hundreds of miles from an electrical grid. 

Kustryn's Church Ruins

After Kustryn, we headed back across the Oder into Germany and turned south to drive along a series of dikes that line the river. More resembling bike paths than roads, Nick insisted it was fine so we drove off into the sticks on these paved pathways, only occasionally surprising a cyclist or hiker. The point of this aspect of the tour was to see one of the main bridgeheads used by the Soviets when they crossed into Germany. At length we reached a wide, flat area of thin forest and low grasses. The road extended down into the river and we could see it pick up on the far side. Apparently this was one of the first bridgeheads the Russians were able to establish. These were in the form of pontoons and logs. 

The "main road" from the former bridgehead on the Oder. This is the border with Poland. Communist-era guard tower in distance on the left.

Building these bridges was super hazardous of course, since the Germans were trying desperately to keep the invaders on the far side of the river. As with many other things at this point in the war, the Germans had little resources to commit to any singular effort. But one of the things they did manage was a form of “airplane bomb.” They took old airframes from destroyed or unusable airplanes, filled them with explosives, then connected them to still-flyable aircraft. The old airframe was then used as a bomb, released over the Soviet bridgeheads in an attempt to plaster the bridge with the huge amount of explosives.

These efforts probably killed many, but ultimately could not stem the Soviet momentum. Nick pointed out the craters left by these airplane bombs near the bridgeheads, which now resemble small lakes in the scrub forest.

Bomb crater near the Soviet bridgehead on the Oder.

The tour then continued South to a terrain feature called the Reitwein Spur, a ridge standing above the Oder floodplain. Germans were pushed off of it right after the Oder crossing and Chuikov, the Russian general, established his HQ there. The entire hill, which is now covered in forest, was denuded and thousands of Russian soldiers dug bunkers, tank pits and trenches along it to ward off any German counterattacks. We left the cars in a mossy forest and walked a km up the hill on a little trail, passing the still obvious signs of the defence pits all around us. At the top of the hill we came to Chuikov’s actual bunker location and lookout. The bunker itself caved in long ago but you can see where it was. From this spot Chuikov ran the battle for the Seelow Heights, which is the next bit on the itinerary.

At this point in the battle the Russians were across the main obstacle of the Oder River in force and now planning the attack on Berlin. Chuikov commanded around a million troops against Busse, the German commander, who had around 110,000 soldiers in the area. The Russian forces were split into two “fronts”, one commanded by Chuikov and the other by Marshall Konev. Stalin was actively setting his generals against each other to see who could capture Berlin first, so each had tremendous motivation to move as quickly as possible. Konev came up from the South while Chuikov came from the East of the city. Konev had an easier route, especially since the Germans had no time to fortify that approach. 

However they did have time to set up a sizeable defensive line at Seelow, where the land suddenly rises about 45 meters and offers a commanding view of the largely flat-as-pancake Oderbruch plain. Chuikov did not count on having to stop to fight anyone here, and the sudden appearance of stiff resistance at Seelow came as a nasty surprise. Additionally, there are few roads through the area, which is mostly low and soggy and cut here and there by dikes. Very bad for attacking.

As the Russians massed just over the river, the Germans were now desperately building up the defense on the Heights. Lack of air cover meant they had to do this mostly at night. During the day Russian aviation bombed anything that moved on the road. So every night convoys snuck out from Berlin and, headlights masked down to slits, raced across the open corridor between the city and the Heights to get people and supplies to the front. Eventually they could not even move at night since they were running out of trucks and the road was so chopped up. But by this time they had managed to build up a strong position at Seelow. The Russians attacked on 16 April, 1945.

A key aspect of this were the batteries of German 88’s, the most effective artillery gun of the war. The Germans had zeroed in the sights on the road dikes and the as Russians drove across the dikes they drove into a maelstrom of fire. Russian vehicles were picked off at long range easily, creating huge traffic jams that made even bigger targets. Chuikov, desperate to out manoeuvre his Russian rival general Konev, forced his army into this shooting gallery and sacrificed thousands of soldiers and machinery. The hundreds of burnt hulks of tanks and trucks sat on the floodplain for years before they were cleaned up, slowly and methodically, by the later GDR government. The Russians lost 700 tanks and around 30,000 people over the next two days in this action. Once again, the scale of the ferocity and losses witnessed on WWII's Eastern front battles boggles the mind.

Looking East from Seelow. German artillery was arrayed just below this bluff.

Yet the Soviet pressure from the South and the North began to tell on the Seelow position after a couple days, and the various German defensive lines began to be breached. By this point in the war, the Germans were throwing young boys, older men and Army mail clerks at the Russian onslaught since they were the only people left. These groups were not effective against sustained Russian artillery barrages and frontal attacks. By the end of the third day, the Russians had broken through to the north of the Heights and the rest of the German position broke and scattered. A large portion of the surviving German Army went South and were encircled, which created another drama of crazy tragic proportions, in a place called the Halbe Pocket. We won’t go into that here.

Katyusha Rockets, a mainstay of Soviet short range artillery. (Seelow Heights Museum)

As we drove down the main road to the rear of the German positions, Nick directed us to look at the berm on either side of the two-lane highway. The road goes through a pine forest and is the same route the Russians had to take. Since it was a bottleneck, the Germans filled the area closely bordering the road with slit trenches and anyone who could hold a Panzerfaust (“Tank Fist” rocket launcher). When the tank came up, the guys in the trench fired at point blank range, hoping to disable it. They were then usually cut down by machine guns. Driving along this road you can still see the mild depressions in the dirt, mostly within a few meters of the pavement, where these slit trenches were. 

At this point, nothing was left of the German defences between Seelow and Berlin. Nick pointed out certain spots where the fighting was to the death on the back side of the Seelow Heights, but it was hard to align the peaceful forest and rolling hills with such material destruction. Within two weeks Hitler would be dead and the war in Europe over.

Monument to the Russian soldier at Seelow Museum.

The final part of the trip took us to Jahnsfeld, a small town directly between Seelow and the capital. Here the Germans established a large field hospital to treat their wounded from the grinding battles of the Oder bridgeheads. It was a field hospital in the purest sense, in that the wounded were laid out on the ground under the open sky since no buildings were available to house this many people. With Red Cross flags in prime view, the Germans attempted to deal with the steady stream of casualties that the battle created. 

But as the battle progressed and the front was breaking, Russian fighters flew unobstructed over the countryside looking for targets. Predictably, they happened upon the massive field hospital at Jahnsfeld, and immediately strafed it with machine guns, killing hundreds as they lay there on their stretchers.

We went to this field, which is now a large expanse next to a church and bordered by trees. There are a few picnic tables under the trees. There are no interpretive signs as to what happened here.

Site of the German field hospital at Jahnsfeld.

This opens up an interesting point that was raised during our tour: Should you feel sorry for the Germans in any of this. Historically, the answer is no. The crimes of the Nazi's prevent this. It is why there are no German WWII memorials. However untold thousands of Germans died who were not Party members and who in fact hated Hitler. A year earlier, key elements of the German high command tried to assassinate him for what he was doing. Elements up and down the German Army command were both actively and passively against Hitler and what his actions were doing to Germany, yet the fear of imminent death at the hands of the SS or Gestapo kept many in check.

Bringing it down to the individual level, at this late stage of the war, more and more people doing the fighting were the “Volksturm” or the people’s army, which was made up of teenagers and older men.

The Nazi's deprived millions of people of a choice. They gave the Jews no choice, they gave entire Russian villages no choice, millions of Russian POWs no choice, and now they gave their own people no choice. The world's largest and nastiest army was now on the verge of steamrollering their country. 

The conversation at this point easily devolves into the impossibility of telling what percentage of the Army (Wehrmacht) was happily carrying out Nazi orders and what percentage was doing it only because there was a gun to their head. It is easier to just call every German soldier a murderous bastard and that every German civilian supported Jewish genocide. 

But the point raised, and it is one that no one really ever goes near, is the notion that there were Hitler-hating German soldiers who were now in a situation of defending their country and families against the onslaught of a crushing foreign army. Many countries have the experience of facing an overwhelming foreign army. And they all have memorials dedicated to it. Memorials help national healing and moving on. Germany cannot do this.

The closest thing will be an oblique reference on an existing WWI memorial, which usually just will be the addition of the dates “1939-45” below the existing “1914-18.” Germans were of course blamed for starting WWI, but on the whole their perception in that conflict was not hugely different from how European powers generally regarded wartime adversaries. WWII put things on a whole new plane.

Why is this important? Who cares about a few non-Nazi Germans who never got a plaque? The startling thing is that historically no one could possibly ever ask such a question. Germany has become the economic and political leader of Europe, yet unlike other regional leaders it is completely hamstrung by its history. Emerging from its post-war abyss of shame and shadows, it still largely refrains from committing troops on NATO missions due to the message that might send. Germans themselves rarely fly the country's flag from their house unless the national soccer team is playing. People are super sensitive of being seen by anyone as being “too” excited about Germany. 

There seems to be a collective fear about success - “if we’re successful, people will think we are trying to be so, and probably have other things in mind.” As a result, many Germans tend to look at themselves as “Europeans” instead of Germans because everyone has been weaned on this idea that shame goes hand in hand with nationalism. Being American, this is a completely bizarre concept.

Russian bikers help illustrate this complexity. Every year the first week of May a couple hundred Russian guys on motorcycles come roaring into town. They come all the way from Moscow. They come to mark the anniversary of the Soviet triumph over Hitler when the Red Army took the city. 

They drove by our office on Warschauer Strasse and we all lined up to watch the spectacle. Alexander, my manager, is from Hamburg and was not familiar with this display. He asked why they are here and I said it was for them to celebrate the fall of the city in 1945 and the defeat of the Nazis. He immediately said, as Germans must, "oh well that is a good thing then." 

The "ride" is controversial since they are essentially rubbing the Soviet victory in the faces of everyone. What complicates the issue is that after the Russian’s victory, they ransacked the city. They dismantled and shipped home entire industries as war booty. They engaged in the mass rape of thousands of Berlin’s women. Then they tried to starve the Western sectors of the city into submission. Finally they built the Wall and shot anyone who tried to dare escape. The Russians really took it to East Berlin and East Germany.

Historically speaking, subjugating the locals is what occupying armies do. What is unique is that modern day Germans still have to act thankful to Russians and their actions, since the Nazis were the bigger evil. There’s no grey area around Nazis. The Russians may have gone Medieval in their punishment of the city, but Germans have to swallow it and smile. It is probably the only example in world history when an occupying force that did such things is supported in this way by the conquered. 

The Russians built three gigantic war memorials to themselves in Berlin when the fighting had barely finished. These vast Stalinist monuments that have two goals: show the suffering of the Russians at the hands of the Germans and underline Stalin’s genius at defeating Hitler. The scale of these monuments is huge and all but erases the individual as you get lost wandering among them. The one at Treptow Park has a series of stelae that depict the various stages of the war. They are full of chiselled relief work showing German planes bombing Russian women and children and brave Russian soldiers sacrificing themselves against Nazi tanks. At the end of a long sunken garden the size of a football field is a towering statue of a Russian soldier holding a German infant in his arms. Message: We saved you. 

Russian Memorial at Treptower Park.

Russian Memorial in the Tiergarten.

Ehrenmal at Schönholzer Heide

Schönholzer Heide relief detail. Heroic Russians.

Russia does not pay for these memorials to be cleaned, policed and maintained. Germany does. Again, the complexity explodes in your face. The only option for modern Germans is try to forget that the Russians did anything bad after the war. And then also try to forget that Nazism was forged by Germans. In general, just try to forget everything. 

So this is the complex relationship that Germans have with the recent past. This maybe is why they would rather just "be European" than sort out all the baggage.

A WWI Memorial in a quiet corner of Schöneberg. The WWII dates were added later.