130 The Battle For Leipzig, After the Battle, After the Battle(1)
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//-->battleafter theTHE BATTLEFOR LEIPZIG3 09770306154080£3.95Number 130NUMBER 130© CopyrightAfter the Battle2005Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyEditor: Karel MargryPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite: www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byTrafford Print Colour Ltd.,Shaw Wood Way, Doncaster DN2 5TB.After the Battleis published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for theAfter the Battlerange:Motorbooks, 33 St Martin’s Court, St Martin’s Lane,London WC2N 4ANTelephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Lakeside Publishing Services Ltd, Unit 2,Rich Industrial Estate, Devon Street, London SE15 1JRUnited States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 151 Harvard Avenue,Stamford, CT 06902Telephone: 1-203-264-0774Toll Free: 1-800-562-7308Website: www.rzm.comCanadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd., PO Box 2131,1 Northrup Crescent,St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 7S2.Telephone: (905) 937 3100 Fax: (905) 937 1760Toll Free: 1-800-661-6136E-mail: sales@vanwell.comAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Technical Book and Magazine Company, Pty, Ltd.,323-331 LaTrobe Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000Telephone: + 61 3 9600 0922 Fax: + 61 3 9640 0055E-mail: info@techbooks.com.auNew Zealand Distribution:Dal McGuirk’s “MILITARY ARCHIVE”, P.O. Box 24486,Royal Oak, Auckland 1030 New Zealand.Telephone: 021 627 870 Fax: 9-6252817E-mail: milrchiv@mist.co.nzItalian Distribution:Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 Parma.Telephone: ++390521 29 27 33, Fax: ++390521 29 03 87E-mail: tuttostoria@libero.itDutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 282, 6800 AG Arnhem.Telephone: 026-4462834E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nlRIVER ELBELEIPZIGAlthough it had been established as far back as September 1944 that Leipzig wouldfall within the future Soviet Zone of Occupation, this did not have any effect on theAmerican effort to capture the city. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Com-mander, never let his strategy against Germany be influenced by the proposed Zonesof Occupation. In fact, the idea was always to advance as far east as Berlin and it wasonly in early April 1945 that Eisenhower decided to halt his armies at the Elbe.CONTENTSTHE BATTLE FOR LEIPZIGREMEMBRANCESpindle CommemoratedFROM THE EDITOR24042Front Cover:Epitomising the battle for Leipzig 1945:the Battle of the Nations Monument. (Karel Margry)Centre Pages:Above left:A crowd of curious civil-ians keeps a respectful distance from a Sherman ofthe 741st Tank Battalion knocked out by a Panzer-faust on the corner of Zschochersche Strasse andKarl-Heine-Strasse in western Leipzig. (USNA)Belowleft:The same corner 60 years later. (Karel Margry)Above right:A Jeep and a Sherman of the 777thTank Battalion knocked out at the crossroads ofPreussenstrasse and Ludolf-Colditz-Strasse near theBattle of the Nations Monument. (Lee MillerArchives)Below right:Looking towards the city cen-tre on what is today Prager Strasse. (Karel Margry)Back Cover:Sunday, May 22, 2005 saw the unveilingof a memorial at the former airfield at Hunsdon inHertfordshire. This was the base from where Opera-tion ‘Jericho’ was launched in February 1944 by No.140 Wing to breach the walls of Amiens prison (seeissue 28) and which led to the death of its leader,Wing Commander Charles Pickard.Acknowledgements:For their help with the Leipzigstory the Editor would like to thank Joe Lipsius, JosephK. Richardson and Amy Joyce Rose, who together runthe 69th Division websitewww.69th-infantry-division.com;George W. Shultz; Jr; Jim Parker; LindaPlonski; Arabella Hayes of the Lee Miller Archives;Roger Bell; Michael Foedrowitz; Birgit Horn of theStadtarchiv Leipzig; Katharina Menzel; and Uwe Nie-mann of Uni-Versal press agency, Leipzig.Photo Credits:IWM — Imperial War Museum, Lon-don; NIOD — Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdoc-umentatie, Amsterdam; USNA — US NationalArchives.Leipzig was known throughout Germany as the location of the Völkerschlacht-denkmal (Battle of the Nations Monument) commemorating the victory overNapoleon in the Battle of Leipzig of October 1813. Located on the south-eastern out-skirts of the city, the massive granite tower could be seen for many miles away.2Leipzig, 85 miles south-west of Berlin, was one of the last bigGerman cities to be captured by the American army in WorldWar II. The battle for Leipzig lasted for two days — April 18-20, 1945 — and involved two American infantry divisionswhich captured the city after a concentric attack from threedirections. Signal Corps photographer Tech/4 W. D. MacDon-ald pictured Leipzig, much of it ravaged by two years of Alliedbombing raids, from an L-4 Piper Cub light plane on April 19,1945 — the day most of the city fell in Allied hands. Two ofthe buildings that formed strong points in the Germandefence of the inner city are visible in this shot taken lookingnorth-east: the Neues Rathaus (New City Hall) in theforeground and the Hauptbahnhof (main railway station) inmid-distance just right of centre. (USNA)THE BATTLE FOR LEIPZIGBy mid-April 1945, Leipzig, the capital ofSaxony in eastern Germany, was one of thelast big cities which had not yet fallen to theAllied armies invading Hitler’s Germanyfrom East and West.With a population of 750,000, Leipzig in1945 was Germany’s fifth largest city.Founded in 1160 at the confluence of theWeisse Elster and Pleisse rivers, the city hadgrown to become a centre of traffic, tradeand culture. It was here that Martin Lutherpreached his first sermon in the impressive StThomas Church, where Bach had played theorgan, Goethe had studied and RichardWagner was born. It was the site of one ofEurope’s oldest universities and the seat ofGermany’s Supreme Court, the Reichs-gericht. The inner city included many historicbuildings, churches and museums, and fineexamples of Renaissance and Baroque archi-tecture.Leipzig’s name was also connected to alandmark event in the history of the Germannation itself. In October 1813, in the Battleof Leipzig, the united armies of Prussia, Rus-sia, Austria and Sweden had defeated thearmy of Napoleon, forcing the Frenchemperor to retreat from German soil andcausing the Grand Empire to collapse. Half amillion soldiers fought in the battle and over110,000 had died in what had been the largestconflict in European history to date. Germanpatriots saw the battle not just as the end ofNapoleon but also as a crucial event on theroad to the formation of a unified Germanstate under Bismarck in 1870.To commemorate this milestone battle, theGermans later erected the so-called Völker-schlachtdenkmal (Battle of the Nations Mon-ument) on the former battlefield in the south-eastern outskirts of the city. Sponsored by theDeutsche Patriotenbund (League of GermanPatriots), architect Bruno Schmitz designed astone tower, 91 metres high, flanked on foursides with enormous statues representingTeutonic knights guarding the liberty of Ger-many, and topped with a large viewing plat-form. Inside the tower’s broad base was ahuge crypt with more giant figures honouringthe soldiers who had died. Construction of thehuge edifice was started in 1898. Built fromreinforced concrete with an outer cladding oflarge granite blocks, it took 15 years to com-plete. The resulting monument was a massiveaffair which could be seen for miles around.Dedicated in October 1913, the centenary ofNapoleon’s defeat, the monument quicklybecame one of Germany’s prime nationalmemorials, its fantastic symbolism making it arallying point for patriotic ceremonies andmass events. In 1945, the monument wouldprove an ideal citadel in another, more mod-ern war.Traditionally a working-class city, andbirthplace of the German labour movement,Leipzig did not overly support the NationalSocialists. At the last free elections in March1933, the Nazi party failed to gain a majorityin the city. Its Mayor since 1930, Oberbürger-meister Carl Goerdeler, belonged to the Ger-man National Party and objected to theNazis’ rearmament and anti-Semitism. NotBy Karel Margryuntil 1937, after he had stepped down out ofprotest against the Nazis removing a bust ofthe Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn fromin front of the city hall, were the Nazis able toappoint reliable Party members as Mayor —first Walter Dönicke, replaced in August1938 by Alfred Freyberg. (Goerdeler wouldbecome a key figure in the anti-Hitler move-ment, and be executed after the July 1944plot to kill Hitler.)Leipzig was also one of Germany’s mostimportant industrial and commercial cities.Traditionally a centre of printing, bookbind-ing and the textile industry, it was famous allover Europe for its trade and industries fair.The Nazis labelled it their ‘Reichs-messestadt’ (Reich Fair City) and modernLeipzig included many factories and plantsthat were vital to the war economy of theThird Reich. Prime among them was thehuge Hugo Schneider AG (HASAG) armsand ammunitions plant at Paunsdorf on theeastern outskirts of the city, but no lessimportant were three aircraft-producing fac-tories in the northern suburbs — the Junkersworks at Mockau (next to the city aero-drome), the Erla works at Abtnaundorf andthe Mitteldeutsche Motorenwerke enginefactory in Portitz. Other important warplants were the Büssing NAG motor worksat Möckern and the Allgemeine Transport-gesellschaft (ATG) arms factory atKleinzschocher.3The Battle of the Nations Monument was the venue for manynationalistic ceremonies and mass events, and the Nazis alsoused it as a setting for many of their gatherings. Here a giantBy 1943, Leipzig had a total of 221 arma-ments-related factories employing 154,119workers. No less than 43,950 of them wereforeign workers (either on a regular labourcontract or rounded up for forced labour),prisoners of war, and concentration campinmates, who were housed in some 400 build-ings and hutted camps in and around the city.The concentration camp inmates, whichincluded both men and women, were in satel-lite camps of Buchenwald, Flossenbürg andRavensbrück.Although Leipzig had its first air raidwarning on the night of August 16/17, 1940(in all there would be 590 during the war)and was high on the list of Allied targets, forthe first three years of the war the Alliedbomber fleets did not strike at this distantoak-leaf wreath adorns the steps of the monument at the cere-mony mourning the death of Reich President Paul von Hinden-burg in August 1934.victims were planned. The university’s price-less book collection was protectively storedin the sturdy vaults of the Battle of theNations Monument. However, by 1943, onlyten air raid bunkers (out of 18 planned) hadbeen completed, with a combined capacity of7,500 persons. This offered protection to justone per cent of the population — togetherwith Dresden the worst percentage of any ofthe big German cities. To make up for it, thecellars of 26,000 homes had been prepared asmakeshift shelters. Although it was not anofficial shelter, many would also seek protec-tion inside the Battle of Nations Monument.(In May 1944 miners began work on four airraid shelter tunnels underneath the monu-ment, capable of protecting several thou-sands.)city in force, and it suffered only minor dam-age from individual intruding aircraft orstrays from attacks on Berlin. The first firedamage and injuries only occurred on March27/28, 1943; the first fatal casualties on thenight of August 31/September 1 of that year,when four people were killed. The popula-tion lived in fear but for many the mostnoticeable effect of the air war was the influxof evacuees from bomb-devastated citieselsewhere in Germany, mainly Berlin.Anticipating the aerial onslaught that wassure to come, the city authorities had madeextensive preparations to protect the popula-tion and minimise the damage, but with littlesuccess. City officials were sent to bombedcities in the west to study what was needed.Reception centres to cater for 20,000 bombAll quiet on the steps today — almost symbolic of new times. Today’s directoratetries to foster a less political and more objective view of the monument. (Niemann)4Hitler at the Nazi rallies for Saxony onJuly 16, 1933.Above:Leipzig was also the seat of the Reichsgericht (ReichSupreme Court) established by the Kaiser and maintained bythe Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. The neo-Renaissancecourthouse was built in 1888-95, the square being named theReichsgerichtsplatz. On May 17, 1936, the building served as animpressive backdrop to another Nazi mass meeting, the ‘Dayof German Lawyers’. The banner says ‘Through NationalSocialism German justice to the German people’. (NIOD)The first major raid came on October20/21, 1943, when 271 RAF Lancasters, outof 358 despatched, attacked the city. Bomb-ing was very scattered and mostly hit the sub-urbs of Stötteritz and Paunsdorf, killing 40and wounding 200.The heaviest raid of the war was onDecember 3/4. A total of 307 Lancasters and220 Halifaxes dropped tons of high-explosiveand incendiaries on Leipzig, creating over5,000 fires and even some local firestormswhich left the inner city in ruins. About13,500 buildings, many of them old and his-toric, were destroyed or damaged. At least1,800 people were killed, 4,000 wounded, andBelow:After the war, in GDR times, the square was renamedDimitroff-Platz (after the communist Georgi Dimitroff, whowas tried by the Nazis at the Reichsgericht during the Reichs-tag Fire trial of 1933) and the former Reichsgericht buildingbecame the Museum of Visual Arts. Today, after the reunifica-tion of East and West Germany, the square is Simsonplatz andthe building accommodates the Bundesverwaltungsgericht(Federal Administrative Court).attacks on the city’s factories and railwayyards. One of these, on July 4, 1944 by over400 bombers, seriously damaged the plat-form hall of the Hauptbahnhof, the mainrailway station. The Americans returned inforce on February 27, 1945, when over 700B-17s attacked, and again on April 4, with320 aircraft.In all, between August 1942 and April 1945,Leipzig received 24 air raids which togetherkilled over 5,000 people, over 3,600 of themforeign and slave workers, and reduced largeparts of the once-proud city to rubble. TheAllied armies closing in on Leipzig would findmuch of it shattered by the war.an estimated 131,000 — one-fifth of the pop-ulation — lost their homes. The number offatal casualties was relatively low becausemany people, in order to combat the fires,had left the air raid shelters before the AllClear signal and thus inadvertently escapedsuffocation in the shelters.The third and last heavy RAF raid on thecity, by 823 bombers on the night of Febru-ary 19/20, 1944, did slight material damagebut killed 972 people (and cost BomberCommand 78 aircraft). The following daybrought the first daylight raid on Leipzig byAmerican bombers of the US Eighth AirForce, the start of a sustained series ofHitler’s rostrum today: the platform infront of the monument. (Niemann)5
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