Battle of Breslau

Street by street, Breslau was falling to Red Army assault teams. After more than a month of siege, the city's factories and vast areas around the central part of the town were tumbled ruins. But stubbornly, house by house, floor by floor, Germany's Lieut. General Hermann Niehoff battled to hold them.

Through the Walls. Soviet War Correspondent V. Poltoratsky saw Breslau and wrote: "The assault detachments never proceed along the streets. That would be quite impossible. They blast corridors through the centers of rows of houses. A shell fired point-blank at a wall makes a doorway for the gun that fired it. The gun is dragged through and the gunners send another shell through the next wall. . . .

"I followed from a regimental command post in a cellar the clearing of a row of houses. Reports were pouring in. Somebody had reached the balcony at Number 6. ... Badanov's platoon had just got level with the tall grey house. . . . Someone else's assault detachment had broken into a cellar. ... Then: 'We have reached the second floor and are fighting in the corridors.' ... By morning the houses had been captured."

By this week more than 50% of the built-up area of the city was in Russian hands. From the houses in Hindenburg Square Red Army men looked down on the moat and ancient Gothic buildings of the inner town.

Firm Backing. Still Niehoff fought on, his resolute face to his foe, his sensitive back to the implacable figure of Ernst Streckenbach, commanding the Nazi 55 Polizei Truppen in Breslau. The Nazis wanted this town held, to tie down the Soviet assault armies yet a few days more, to deny the Russians a good communications hub. They wanted Breslau held to raise the German spirit.

Out of Breslau came the propaganda stories: a 4,000,000 Reichsmark collection for the Nazi Winter Help fund, as if millions mattered now; a ceremony to mark the 132nd anniversary of the founding of the Order of the Iron Cross, as if Breslau's cross was not heavier than iron. But shrilly Joseph Goebbels praised Breslau, and perhaps someone in distracted, fear-filled Germany paid heed.

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