Hanke was awarded the Iron Cross in Second and First Class.
He was discharged from the German Army in 1941 with the rank of 1st lieutenant
(Oberleutnant).
Popular with Hitler and Party Secretary Martin Bormann, they
appointed him Gauleiter (Governor and Region Leader) of Lower Silesia in
Poland, where he signed so many execution orders he was known as the
“Hangman of Breslau.” When the Soviets attacked in January 1945,
Hanke organized the toughest defense (Festung (Fortress) Breslau) in the area,
and the city held out until May 7. The defense had no strategic or tactical
value, but it won the respect of Goebbels.
Breslau in January 1945 was a fortress in name only. It had
not been a bulwark for more than a century, since Napoleon tore down the city
walls. “Breslau is no fortress,” Red Cross volunteer Lena Aschner commented.
“It is lost. Everyone knows it. The people, the Wehrmacht and the SS.” A Party
diehard disagreed. “We must sell our lives as dearly as possible,” he
admonished Aschner.
In the third week of January 1945, Karl Hanke and his
fortress commander began summoning what forces they could. The Gauleiter
drafted every male Breslauer aged sixteen to sixty into the Volkssturm.
Johannes Krause went even further, demanding every inhabitant of the city aged
ten and above help “the final preparations for the battle for your home city”.
Those final preparations meant gnawing at the very vitals of Breslau. Trees
were felled, bushes pulled up, rubble, monuments, wrecked vehicles, overturned
trams piled up, barbed wire laid across streets to form makeshift barriers.
“Even the dead have no peace in their graves,” electrician Hermann Nowack noted
as gravestones were uprooted to feed the barricade moloch. “It’s one of those
tragicomedies – these barricades actually hinder our movements more than they
put a stop to the Soviets,” wrote schoolboy Horst Gleiss. On the right bank of
the Oder trams went no further than the Scheitniger Stern. Beyond there,
Breslauers needed special passes – and a good deal of agility – to negotiate
the forest of fallen trees blocking the streets. Tarmac and paving slabs were
ripped up so foxholes five feet deep could be dug for soldiers and Volkssturm
to combat Russian tanks with Panzerfaust. “Russian tank crews will need just
fifteen minutes to get past such a barrier,” one Landser sneered. “Fourteen
minutes to stop their belly laughs, one minute to push the junk away.” All
sixty-four bridges over the Oder and its tributary, the Weide, were prepared
for demolition, their approaches mined. Slogans were daubed on the walls at
every street corner: ‘Every house a fortress’, ‘If you retreat, death will
march towards your home’, ‘Today the front is everywhere – fight against the
cursed spirit in the rear’
Every day new Volkssturm were sworn in – and almost every
day Karl Hanke addressed them, sometimes in a square, sometimes in a courtyard,
sometimes on Schlossplatz, sometimes as many as 2,000 at a time. His watchword?
“Harm the enemy wherever possible!” The enemy was on foreign soil, men in the
Volkssturm knew “every nook and cranny” of Breslau and its suburbs. “Use each
night to creep up on the enemy and harm him!” the Gauleiter urged, invoking the
memory of Erwin Rommel by repeating the late field marshal’s battle cry. “Meine
Herren, there is no shame in dying for Greater Germany. Attack!” The freshly
sworn-in soldiers would shout a few ‘Sieg Heils’ for their Führer, sing the
national anthem, then march off to the front. Among them was Otto Rothkugel.
Having seen his family leave the city, the retired union official reported to
his Volkssturm company. An aged Italian rifle was thrust into his hands, plus
ten rounds of ammunition. There was no instruction, no order. The company,
Rothkugel observed, was “a shapeless mass. Everything looked so disorganised.
And on the opposite bank of the Oder were the Russians.”
Hanke escaped Breslau on May 5 by air. He learned he was to
replace Himmler at Hitler’s orders and to command the SS. It was light by the
time Karl Hanke arrived in the grounds of the Jahrhunderthalle where a young
Leutnant was waiting for him. Helmut Alsleben had wheeled a small Fieseler
Storch reconnaissance aircraft out of one of the hall’s side buildings and
unfolded its wings. The Storch was the only airworthy aircraft in the fortress,
held in storage for Hermann Niehoff to use at his discretion. He never did.
The Storch’s only passenger was the Gauleiter of Breslau,
dressed in the ill-fitting uniform of an ordinary soldier. Karl Hanke had
commandeered Niehoff’s aircraft to reach Hirschberg, sixty miles to the
southwest, before crossing the border to join German forces in Bohemia and
Moravia. Around 5.30am, Alsleben and Hanke took off, flying south, low over the
ruins of Breslau. For the first ten miles, the flight passed without incident.
But then the Storch was struck by machine-gun fire. The engine stuttered on for
another mile before Alsleben set the aircraft down on the slopes of the Zobten
to effect emergency repairs. With the fuel tank patched up, the Storch was
airborne again for a flight of no more than a dozen miles to the airfield at
Schweidnitz, where a panzer officer was waiting for Breslau’s Gauleiter.
Breslauers were waking to a beautiful spring morning. “A
peaceful calm ruled,” recalled chemist Hanns Hoffmann. “No shell fire, no bombs
exploding, and Nature had put on her Sunday best.” Pale figures crawled out of
cellars and filled their lungs with the fresh May air.
In the basement of the Staatsbibliothek, Hermann Niehoff was
feeling harassed. “Have you any idea where the Gauleiter is?” his officers
asked him. Then came the telephone calls, finally a visit from one of Karl
Hanke’s staff. As officers, soldiers and Party officials searched the fortress for
Karl Hanke, a breathless soldier reported to his commander. “Herr General, your
Fieseler Storch has gone.” There was further confirmation in the form of a
terse signal from Hirschberg handed to Niehoff: Gauleiter Hanke, lightly
wounded, has just landed here with faulty machine
Hanke received word of his promotion on 5 May 1945. He flew
to Prague and attached himself to the 18th
SS-Freiwilligen-Panzer-Grenadier-Division “Horst Wessel”. Hanke chose
to wear the uniform of an SS private, to conceal his identity in the event of
capture. The group attempted to fight its way back to Germany but, after a
fierce battle with Czech partisans, surrendered in Neudorf, southwest of
Komotau. His true identity was not discovered by his captors, and Hanke was
thus placed in a Prisoner of War (POW) camp alongside other low-ranking SS
members. There were a total of 65 POWs when the Czechs decided to move them all
by foot in June 1945. When a train passed the march route, Hanke and several
other POWs made a break for it and clung on to the train. The Czechs opened
fire, with Hanke falling first while two other POWs slumped on the track. They
were then beaten to death with rifle butts by the Czechs.
