A 3rd Armored Division crewman with a .30-caliber machine gun mounted
on an M3 “Stuart” light tank fires on enemy troops in the woods flanking a
highway near Leipzig, April 17, 1945. Although the war was nearly over, some
Germans stubbornly resisted, preferring death to dishonor.
Seemingly being watched by displeased Germanic statues, a 69th Infantry
Division soldier stands amid the rubble inside the Völkerschlachtdenkmal
shortly after Leipzig was taken.
As the V Corps vanguard approached the Saale River, its
northern shoulder came under fire from German antiaircraft weapons, their crews
directed to depress their firing angles to hit the American armored formations.
The 9th Armored Division lost nine tanks to the accurate fire before the guns
were silenced. Apparently, the Germans had concentrated several rings of
antiaircraft weapons in the region—not to defend the cities, but to guard
synthetic oil refineries and numerous industrial facilities in the vicinity.
Reports indicate that 374 heavy flak weapons were in the area, 104 of them
around the city of Leuna and 174 around Leipzig.
Since the spring of 1944, the 14th Flak Division had been
headquartered in Leipzig. Grouped in batteries of 12 to 36 guns, they ranged
from 75mm to heavy 128mm weapons. Early in the war, the German 88mm
antiaircraft gun had proven deadly against ground targets, and the flat terrain
surrounding Leipzig offered excellent fields of fire. The area had been known
to Allied airmen as “Flak Alley” for some time; however, no one had found it
necessary to inform the advancing infantry and armor of the menace that awaited
them.
General Huebner concluded that the flak guns were the outer
band of the defenses of Leipzig. He ordered the 9th Armored Division to move 13
miles southeast, around the city and to the banks of the Mulde River. The 2nd
Infantry Division was to continue directly eastward toward Leipzig, while the
69th was ordered to follow the 9th Armored and then enter the city from the
south and southwest.
Cutting Off Leipzig
General Leonard’s tanks ran into stiff resistance at the
Saale River near the town of Weissenfels and rerouted to cross the waterway on
an intact bridge to the southwest. That same day, April 13, the tanks neared
the town of Zeitz and rolled over the Weisse Elster River. Breaking through the
deadly ring of flak guns, Combat Command Reserve (CCR) of the 9th Armored raced
to the Mulde River, 20 miles southeast of Leipzig, on April 15.
On the 16th, CCR entered Colditz and liberated the 1,800
Allied prisoners of the infamous Oflag IV-C, better known as Colditz Castle,
which held a number of famous and high-ranking officers, some of whom had been
transferred there because of repeated attempts to escape. With the capture of
Halle in the Harz Mountains two days later, Leipzig was effectively cut off.
Meanwhile, the 271st Infantry Regiment, 69th Division
secured Weissenfels during some spirited fighting on April 13-14, killing or
capturing many of the 1,500-man garrison and then crossing the Saale in small
boats. On the 15th, elements of the 2nd Division captured Merseburg and
occupied numerous small towns in the area. As one regiment crossed the Saale
after dark on a railroad bridge that was damaged though still standing, other
infantry units crept close enough to the German antiaircraft guns to radio
coordinates to their own artillery and bring accurate fire on the positions,
finally destroying many of the enemy weapons.
The Allied noose around Leipzig, Germany’s fifth largest
city with 750,000 inhabitants, was tightening. Leipzig had long been revered
for its historical significance and as a center of German culture, higher
education, trade, and industry. Martin Luther had led the congregation of the
St. Thomas Church there; composer Johann Sebastian Bach played the organ in the
same church for more than 25 years and was buried on the grounds. Composer
Richard Wagner was born in the city. And in Leipzig the Völkerschlachtdenkmal
was built to commemorate a great victory. It was inevitable that the monument
would become the scene of Germany’s last stand.
Poncet vs Grolmann: A
Fanatic Against a Realist
Colonel Hans von Poncet commanded the relative handful of
German defenders in Leipzig, which included troops of the 14th Flak Division,
some of whom had lost their antiaircraft weapons and were now serving as
infantry, 750 men of the 107th Motorized Infantry Regiment, a motorized
battalion of about 250 soldiers, some Hitler Youth, and several battalions of
the Volkssturm, mostly old men and boys who had been forced into the Army as a
home guard when the fortunes of war turned decidedly against Germany.
One sizable unit that Poncet did not control was the
3,400-strong Leipzig police force. The policemen, paramilitary in their own
right, were firmly under the command of Brig. Gen. of Police Wilhelm von
Grolmann.
Grolmann decried Poncet’s willingness to employ the
Volkssturm and considered it tantamount to murder. He saw nothing to be gained
in a futile defense of the city. Hoping to spare Leipzig from destruction,
Grolmann was particularly concerned about damage to the city’s electrical and
water supplies if the bridges over the Weisse Elster River were destroyed to
slow the Americans. Poncet couldn’t have cared less; he was determined to fight
and fortified numerous buildings around the city hall and later withdrew into
the Battle of the Nations Monument with about 150 men, some of whom were later
described by the Americans as SS troops.
While Poncet plotted his own Götterdämmerung, Grolmann was
trying his best to surrender the city. Late on the afternoon of April 18,
Grolmann miraculously made telephone contact with General Robertson of the 2nd
Division and offered to capitulate. As the news was passed up the American
chain of command from Huebner to Hodges, Grolmann got Poncet on the telephone
and was told curtly, just prior to the click of a hangup, that Poncet had no
intention of surrendering.
Charles MacDonald
Attempts to Negotiate the Surrender of Leipzig
By this time, Hodges had responded that only the complete,
unconditional surrender of Leipzig was acceptable. Then, an already strange
series of events became even more bizarre. Despite Poncet’s intransigence,
Grolmann sent a junior officer to the closest Americans he could find. In the
gathering darkness, the emissary was shuffled into the command post of Company
G, 23rd Regiment, 2nd Division and the presence of its commander, Captain
Charles B. MacDonald.
At the tender age of 22, MacDonald was a combat veteran of
the Battle of the Bulge, the Hürtgen Forest, and the campaign into the Third
Reich. In later years, he became an acclaimed author and deputy chief historian
for the U.S. Army, writing and supervising the preparation of several volumes
in the official series United States Army in World War II, popularly known as
the Green Book Series. Among his other works are the quintessential
reminiscences of a young officer in combat, Company Commander, and A Time for
Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge. MacDonald authored The
Last Offensive, the volume of the official history containing the story of the
fall of Leipzig and downplayed his role in it. In Company Commander, however,
he remembered a wild night of cat and mouse, cloak and dagger, and outright
comedy.
“Now wait a minute,” MacDonald remembered asking the excited
soldiers who had brought in the German officer. “Does he know I’m just a
captain? Will he surrender to a captain?”
“A captain’s good enough,” another soldier said. “The
Oberleutnant [first lieutenant] here came along so you’d believe us. He’ll tell
you.”
“He [the other American soldier] spoke to the German officer
in German mixed with gestures, mostly gestures, and the Oberleutnant looked at
me and smiled widely, shaking his head up and down,” MacDonald recalled, “and
saying, ‘Jawohl! Jawohl! Ist gut! Ist gut!’”
An American MP escorts three German prisoners of war, who
had changed into civilian clothing in hopes of evading capture, to a temporary
stockade near the main Leipzig railroad station. Note the other prisoners lying
on the ground.
Only the regimental executive officer was available for any
higher direction, and he told MacDonald to give it a try. The young captain
went first to see a German major and several other officers, dressed in clean,
neatly pressed uniforms, inside the city. When MacDonald was not convinced, the
major offered a bottle of cognac. After a drink, MacDonald, another American
officer, the German major, and their chauffeur embarked on a wild nocturnal
ride in a sleek Mercedes Benz—to see Grolmann.
MacDonald was fearful of being shot by German sentries and
by his own men. Finally, he arrived at Grolmann’s headquarters. In contrast to
MacDonald, dressed in a filthy uniform and with a scruffy beard, Grolmann was
“even more immaculately dressed than the others, a long row of military decorations
across his chest. His face was round and red and cleanly shaven. A monocle in
his right eye gave him an appearance that made me want to congratulate
Hollywood on its movie interpretations of high-ranking Nazis.”
Grolmann offered to surrender but acknowledged that he had
no control over Poncet. Still, he pressed MacDonald for a guarantee that the
Americans would not attack. Finally, MacDonald, Grolmann, a staff officer, and
the general’s civilian interpreter were on their way in Grolmann’s open-top car
to the confused American captain’s battalion headquarters. Once they arrived,
the situation was out of MacDonald’s hands. As it turned out, the surrender
effort was noble but fruitless. There was already some fighting in Leipzig.
The Battle of Leipzig
Forward elements of the 2nd and 69th Divisions entered
Leipzig on April 18. The 2nd encountered some resistance along the Weisse
Elster River, but the bridges remained intact. A few Volkssturm and Wehrmacht
soldiers made a stand behind a roadblock of overturned trolley cars filled with
large rocks but were rapidly subdued. Spearheaded by an armored task force of
the 777th Tank Battalion under the command of Lieutenant David Zweibel, troops
of the 69th advanced into Leipzig from the south at 5:30 pm and ran into
determined resistance at Napoleon Platz, where the monument was located.
As Zweibel’s armor neared Napoleon Platz, the tankers were
greeted with a hail of small-arms fire and rounds from panzerfaust antitank
weapons. One Sherman tank was disabled, and the supporting infantry took a
number of casualties. Eager to get out of the line of fire, the tanks picked up
speed and rolled at nearly 30 miles per hour down the streets toward the city
hall; some infantrymen riding atop the armored vehicles were actually thrown
off. Faulty maps caused the attackers to overshoot city hall and placed them in
a precarious position, unable to advance or fire on nearby German positions.
After dark, the tanks were withdrawn.
The following morning, Zweibel again assaulted the center of
Leipzig, firing at city hall and the surrounding buildings from a range of only
150 yards. Just after 9 am, following several frustrating attempts to secure
the area, Zweibel sent Leipzig’s fire chief into city hall with a surrender
demand. The note read that the Germans must surrender if they wanted to avoid a
heavy artillery bombardment followed by an all-out assault with tanks,
flamethrowers, and a division of infantry; the attack would begin in 20
minutes. Nearly 200 Germans walked out of city hall with their hands up.
Inside, the bodies of Mayor Alfred Frieberg and his wife, City Treasurer Kurt
Lisso and his wife and daughter, and several others who had committed suicide
were found.
Standoff at the
Monument For the Battle of the Nations
However, Leipzig was not completely subdued. The drama at
the monument remained to be played out. On the morning of April 19, Poncet was
still defiant. His small force occupied a nearly impregnable position. Heavy
artillery shells did little damage to the sturdy walls of the monument, and the
Germans inside were holding 17 American prisoners. Because there were Americans
inside, General Reinhardt decided against using flamethrowers to burn the
Germans out.
As the standoff wore on, Captain Hans Trefousse, an interrogator
of German prisoners with the 273rd Infantry Regiment, persuaded his commanding
officer, Colonel C.M. Adams, to allow Trefousse to attempt to persuade Poncet
to surrender. Trefousse had been born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1921 and
emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of 13. He graduated
from City College of New York with a Phi Beta Kappa key and joined the U.S.
Army when war broke out.
At 3 pm on the 19th, Trefousse, a German prisoner, and the
executive officer of the 273rd Regiment, Lt. Col. George Knight, approached the
monument under a flag of truce. When Poncet and two other German officers met
them, Trefousse pointed out the hopelessness of the situation but Poncet
responded that he was under a direct order from Hitler not to surrender. He
did, however, agree to a two-hour ceasefire to allow at least a dozen American
casualties to be removed.
Throughout the ceasefire, the two argued in front of the
entrance to the monument’s gift shop. At 5 pm, the heated discussion moved inside.
While celebrations among the American troops were in full swing elsewhere in
Leipzig, the grim exchange at the monument continued past midnight.
“If you were a Bolshevik,” Poncet sneered, “I wouldn’t talk
to you at all. In four years, you and I will meet in Siberia.”
Trefousse retorted, “If that is true, wouldn’t it be a pity
to sacrifice all these German soldiers who could help us against the Russians?”
Terms of Surrender
As it seemed the impasse would never be resolved, Trefousse
extended one last option. If Poncet surrendered and walked out of the monument
alone, his men could follow one at a time. At 2 am on April 20, the diehard
Nazi commander strode out of the main entrance. The pockmarked, damaged
monument was secured, but not before some confusion ensued as to the
disposition of the newly acquired prisoners.
Word reached Trefousse that only Poncet would be allowed out
of the monument and that the rest of the Germans would temporarily remain
inside under guard. When Trefousse tried to persuade the captives to accept the
change in terms, he offered to try to get them 48 hours’ leave in the city in
exchange for a pledge not to escape. One German insisted on the original
bargain and was allowed to leave the monument.
Trefousse went to Lt. Col. Knight for permission to grant
the 48-hour leave. Knight agreed but insisted that the Germans had to be moved
without General Reinhardt getting wind of the compromise. As Knight supervised
the disarming of the enlisted prisoners, Trefousse guided more than a dozen
German officers through the lines to their homes in Leipzig. When it was time
for them to return to captivity, only one failed to appear, although he did
leave behind a note of apology.
Leipzig Handed to the
Soviets
Leipzig was, at long last, completely in American hands. The
infantry of the 2nd and 69th Divisions hurried to catch up with the V Corps
armor that was already near the banks of the Mulde River. Garrison troops began
to file into the city to initiate its military administration.
For most American soldiers, the fighting was over. They were
not going to Berlin. They were simply to wait for the Red Army and extend a
tenuous hand to their allies. On April 25, 1945, 1st Lt. Albert Kotzebue of the
69th’s 273rd Infantry Regiment and three soldiers of an intelligence and
reconnaissance unit crossed the Elbe in a small boat and met soldiers of a Red
Army Guards rifle regiment belonging to the 1st Ukrainian Front. East and West
had met amid the ruins of the Third Reich.
In July, the Americans withdrew from Leipzig, retiring
westward to the line that marked the designated postwar zones of occupation and
the Red Army moved in. For the next half century, Leipzig was one of the
principal cities of the communist German Democratic Republic.
Today, after years of neglect and disrepair and the
reunification of the German nation, the Völkerschlachtdenkmal has undergone
extensive renovation in observance of the 200th anniversary of the first great
Battle of Leipzig. It remains an imposing monument, not only to the victory
over Napoleon, but also to one of the last battles of World War II.
