Hellstorm Page #5

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impossible to describe. Their faces had a confused,

vacant look. Some were beyond speaking to, ran

up and down and moaned the same sentences over

and over again.

Having seen the consequences of these

bestial atrocities, we were terribly

agitated and determined to fight. We knew the

war was past winning; but it was our obligation

and sacred duty to fight

to the very last bullet.

While its men fought furiously in the East,

Germany was also trying to stave off invasion

from the West. Unfortunately, the invaders

on this front often did not behave any better

than their Soviet Allies; battlefield newsmen

to the west simply did not report the crimes.

As tens of thousands of German rape victims

could attest, there was no safety among the

American and British.

Millions massacred, millions raped, millions already enslaved

- but this was only the beginning

of Germanys nightmare.

THE BALTIC MASSACRE

With the German army in headlong retreat,

hordes of Red soldiers swarmed into

Greater Germany during

the last winter of the war.

As word of the Soviet

breakthrough spread,

millions of Germans hastily packed

and fled into the freezing weather.

Most merely packed farm carts, hitched horses

or cows, and set off as fast as their animals

would take them. Already bitterly cold, several

days after the "treks" began the temperature plunged.

As a result, little children and

infants dropped by the thousands.

With the earth hard as rock, tiny holes

dug in the snowbanks served as graves.

A young mother:
It was so terribly cold, and

the wind was like ice the snow was falling

and nothing warm to eat, no milk and nothing.

I tried to give Gabi the breast, behind a

house, but she didnt take it because

everything was so cold. Many women tried that,

and some froze their breasts.

Given the chaotic conditions, and with freezing

refugees clogging the way, many treks were

quickly overhauled by the Russians. Some Soviet

tanks crashed straight through the columns,

squashing all in their path. After heavy traffic, the victims

- men, women, children, animals,

all

- were pressed together as flat as cardboard. Those terrified survivors who had scattered to

the icy countryside fell easy prey.

As always, for females the

living death soon began.

For millions of Germans cut off on the Baltic coast, only one avenue of escape remained

- the sea.

As isolated Wehrmacht units desperately defended

their shrinking Baltic beach-heads, millions

of refugees poured into the coastal enclaves.

With their backs literally to the sea, only

the slow and treacherous evacuation by boat was

an option. Consequently, at Memel, Konigsberg,

Danzig, and other besieged cauldrons,

the situation was appalling.

Juergen Thorwald: Every alley, every street

was packed with their vehicles. People were

waiting in every harbor shed, in every wind

- sheltered corner. Among them stood their beasts, bleating,

snorting, lowing. The pregnant women

giving birth somewhere in a corner, on the

ground, in a barracks. Some of them had

been raped on their flight, and now they

were trembling for fear they would give birth

to a monster. The strangely pale faces of

girls going up and down the streets asking

for a doctor. The wounded and the sick,

in constant fear they would be left behind, concealing

weapons under their blankets to force someone

to take them along, or to end their

own lives if the Russians came.

The orphans who had been saved from their asylum

somewhere at the last moment and tossed onto carts

with nothing around them but a blanket, and who

were now lying on the floors with frozen limbs.

The old people who had lain down in some

doorway at night, and had not awakened.

And the wild-eyed insane ones who rushed

from house to house, from wagon to wagon,

crying for their mothers

or their children.

Over it all the gray sky, snow, frost,

and thaw.. and thaw and frost and snow,

and the chill, killing wet.

When a long-sought vessel finally tied up

and lowered the walkways, pandemonium erupted

on the docks. Because of an order granting

priority to those with children, the latter

became more valuable than gold. Once adults

had boarded, they often tossed infants to

relatives or friends below in hopes they might

also board. Many babies died, of course, either

falling into the freezing water

or smashing onto the docks below.

Nearby, terribly wounded soldiers

quietly awaited their turn to board.

For those who sailed from the besieged

ports, their prayers appeared answered;

for those left standing behind, their doom seemed

sealed. Many men, "in a surge of madness," shot

themselves. Crazed mothers, with starvation

gnawing and the red terror looming, found

cyanide and poisoned their children, then

themselves. Old people merely crawled into

snow banks, fell

asleep, and never awoke.

Unfortunately, for thousands of refugees, there

was no escaping the nightmare, even at sea.

While many refugee ships successfully traversed

the treacherous Baltic, Allied bombers were

often the first to greet them when they docked.

At Swinemunde in northern Germany, the arrival

of a freighter loaded with evacuees coincided

almost exactly with an Allied air raid.

Hardly had the ship docked when a direct hit sent it to

the bottom, taking 2,000 screaming passengers with it.

On January 30, 1945, over 60,000

refugees crowded the docks of Gotenhafen,

desperately trying to board the Wilhelm Gustloff,

a former cruise liner designed to accommodate

two thousand passengers and crew. By the time the

beautiful white ship cast off, she had taken on as many

as six to eight thousand refugees.

As the Gustloff backed away from the port, her

path was blocked by smaller craft all jammed

with passengers begging to come aboard. Nets

were lowered, and an additional two thousand

refugees scrambled up. Strained far beyond

its limits, the tightly-sealed ship filled

with a hot, nauseating stench of urine, excrement,

and vomit. The groans of severely wounded

soldiers and the screams of separated

families added to the ghastly horror.

But the worst was yet to come.

At approximately 9 p.m., three heavy thuds

rocked the Gustloff. Panic-stricken, thousands

below deck stampeded through the narrow

passageways, crushing and clawing in a mad attempt

to reach safety. Most lifeboats were frozen solid

and even those that could be freed were mishandled

in the panic, spilling their screaming occupants

into the icy black sea. Within a few minutes,

those in the water were dead.

While thousands of freezing people pressed

along the decks, loud speakers blared words

of comfort, assuring passengers that the

ship would not sink and help was on the way.

Convinced that the sealed bulkheads had held and

that indeed, the ship would remain afloat, many

refugees fled indoors once more to escape the razor

sharp winds and 20 degree (-29 C) temperature.

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