135 The Capture of Bremen, After the Battle, After the Battle(1)
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//-->THE CAPTUREOF BREMENNumber 1353 59770306154080£3.95NUMBER 135© CopyrightAfter the Battle2007Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyManaging Editor: Gordon 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 byWarners Group Publications PLC.,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.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:Warners Group Publications PLC.,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. Fax: 61 2 9695 7355E-mail: info@renniks.com. Web site: www.renniks.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.comNew 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.nzUnited States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports Inc, 151 Harvard Avenue,Stamford, CT 06902Telephone: 1-203-653-2272Fax: 1-203-965-0047E-mail: info@rzm.com Website: www.rzm.comItalian Distribution:Tuttostoria, PO Box 395, 1-43100 Parma.Telephone: ++390521 29 27 33, Fax: ++390521 29 03 87E-mail: info@tuttostoria.itDutch Language Edition:SI Publicaties/Quo Vadis, Postbus 282, 6800 AG Arnhem.Telephone: 026-4462834E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nlMassive clouds billow up from Bremen after an American daylight raid in 1943. Thepicture was taken from the Altstadt looking north-west. The road bridge in the fore-ground is the Kaiserbrücke with the Adolf-Hitler-Brücke and the railway bridge in thedistance further downstream. The church is the St Stephani. (Husmann)Bremen, Germany’s second biggest portafter Hamburg, lies on both sides of theRiver Weser, some 50 kilometres upstreamfrom the river’s mouth into the North Sea. Acity steeped in history, it traces its roots backto Roman times. A bishop’s seat since 787,Bremen joined the Hanseatic League in1260, building up a vast trade in the laterMiddle Ages, and gained the status of ‘FreeCity’ in 1646. The Altstadt, the old town, lieson the north bank of the Weser, while theNeustadt, the new town begun in the 16thcentury, is on the south bank. In the 19thcentury, the city played a major role in devel-oping Germany’s overseas trade. In 1857Bremen entrepreneurs founded the Nord-deutscher Lloyd Line, making the port aprime departure point for cross-Atlantic voy-ages. As a result of its rich past, Bremen’sinner city possessed many historic buildings,churches and museums, and fine examples ofGothic and Renaissance architecture.Traditionally a centre of internationaltrade, shipping and ship-building, modernBremen was also one of Germany’s mostimportant industrial cities and includedmany plants and factories that were vital tothe war economy of the Third Reich. Primeamong them were the shipyards along theWeser: the Deschimag-Weser AG and Atlasyards in the north-western part of the cityand the Bremer-Vulkan yards at Vegesack, afew kilometres further downstream. Duringthe war more than one-third of Nazi Ger-many’s U-boats was built in Bremen andVegesack. No less vital were the Focke-Wulfaircraft works, which had factories at threesites in the city: at the aerodrome and in theeastern suburbs of Hastedt and Hemelingen.Other important war plants were the Borg-ward automobile factories in Hastedt andSebaldsbrück, producing tanks, lorries, trac-tors and torpedoes for the Wehrmacht; theLloyd-Dynamo electrical engines factory inHemelingen; the Norddeutsche Hütte steelfactories, the Weser Flugzeug-Bau aircraftfactory (another part of the Deschimag con-cern) and the Vacuum Öl and Korff oilrefineries, all in the port area.With such importance as a centre of warproduction, Bremen quickly became a targetfor the Allied bomber fleets. In five years ofwar the city experienced over 1,200 air raidalarms and 173 actual attacks. The first raidalready hit the city on the night of May 17/18,1940, when 24 Whitleys attacked the oilrefineries in the docks, starting six fires,killing 16 people and injuring 55. From thenon, Bremen remained a regular target for theRAF. The first major raid came on the nightof January 1/2, 1941 when some 140 bombershit the Focke-Wulf factory at the airport andthe Borgward and Lloyd-Dynamo works inHemelingen, causing serious damage to fac-tories and housing and killing 11 persons.Over the next 17 months there was a steadyseries of attacks by groups of between 30 and150 bombers, culminating in the raid of June3/4, 1942, when 170 aircraft struck the city,hitting housing areas and warehouses, killing83 and wounding another 258.From mid-1940, the city authoritiesbegan to build air raid shelters to protectthe population against the aerial onslaught.Construction of the first large air raidbunker was begun in November 1940 andby the end of the war, 131 such bomb-proofshelters had been completed: 126 of themwere multi-storied, above-ground bunkers,five were underground shelters built belowinner-city squares. In addition there werenine shelter tunnels, either existing caves orespecially drilled, in the rocky hills liningthe Weser river in northern Bremen; sixhospital bunkers, and numerous sheltersfor industrial and railway personnel. In all,and with full occupation, the bunkers andtunnels provided protection for some200,000 people, nearly half the city’s pre-war population.CONTENTSTHE CAPTURE OF BREMENPRESERVATIONPickett/Hamilton Fort RecoveryIT HAPPENED HEREThe Secret Tunnels ofSouth HeightonPERSONALITYThe Tommy Roberts Story2353850Front Cover:Men of the 52nd (Lowland) Divisionpatrolling the Europahafen docks in Bremen onApril 26, 1945. The north-German port city wascaptured by British troops after a two-fold attackby three infantry divisions along both banks of theWeser river. (IWM) Inset: The same view along theBuffkaie quay today. (Karel Margry)Centre Pages:Extract from GSGS 4416 1:100,000map of the Bremen area showing the Alliedadvance on the city between April 15 and 27. TheBritish 3rd Division launched an attack from thesouth while the 52nd (Lowland) and 43rd (Wessex)Divisions drove in from the east.Back Cover:The remains of the log cabin built byTommy Roberts still stands on a hillside overlook-ing the valley of the Williams Fork river in Colorado.Acknowledgements:For help with the Bremenstory, the Editor would like to thank Robin Brooks,Johan van Doorn, Hans Houterman, Frau MelittaThomas of the Staatsarchiv Bremen and, in par-ticular, Manfred Tegge, webmaster of Relikte inNiedersachsen und Bremen (www.relikte.com),who also made available pictures from his privatecollection.Photo Credits:FHMSF — Friends of HMSForward;IWM — Imperial War Museum, London.2The north-German port of Bremen was one of the last greatcities to be taken by the British army in the European cam-paign, being captured in the last week of April 1945. The cityfell to a two-fold attack by three infantry divisions, supportedby tanks and special armour, and aided by a massive tacticalbombardment by nearly 800 aircraft of RAF Bomber Command.Most of the fighting took place outside the city proper and onthe outskirts, but there remained some strong pockets of resis-tance to be cleared inside the town before the last of the garri-son finally capitulated on the morning of April 27. British Armyphotographer Lieutenant Peter Handford took this panoramaof the bomb-gutted inner city from the south bank of theWeser on April 26. In the foreground the Kaiser Bridge, blownby the Germans the day before. (IWM)THE CAPTURE OF BREMENOn the night of June 25/26, 1942, Bremenbecame the third city after Cologne andEssen to suffer a 1,000-bomber raid, a forceof 1,067 aircraft hitting the city and docks. Atotal of 572 homes were destroyed and 6,108damaged, 85 persons were killed, 497 injuredand 2,378 bombed out, but damage to facto-ries and shipyards was less than hoped for.The RAF lost 48 bombers.There followed two more heavy attacks,by 251 aircraft on September 4/5 and by 446more on September 13/14, but thereafterBremen was given a five-month respite. TheRAF returned on February 21/22, 1943 with143 bombers, and on October 8/9 with 119 —their only two major raids on the city in thewhole of that year. However, by then the USEighth Air Force had joined the air offensive(their first mission to Germany occurring inJanuary 1943) and their daylight attacksadded to the destruction of the city. The firstAmerican attack, by 97 B-17 Fortresses,occurred on March 18 and was directed atthe Bremer-Vulkan shipyards at Vegesack.The second, on April 17 by 115 B-17s,blasted half the Focke-Wulf factories.Bremen’s worst attack of the war in num-ber of casualties was on August 18/19, 1944,when 274 British bombers (out of 288despatched) dropped 68 land mines, 2,323HE bombs, 10,800 phosphor bombs and108,000 incendiaries on the city, a load thatcaused a firestorm. The whole of the centreand north-western parts of Bremen weredevastated. A total of 8,635 dwellings wereburnt out, another 611 damaged, 1,054 peo-ple were killed, and over 49,000 others losttheir homes.There followed one more major RAF raid,by 253 aircraft on the night of October 6/7. Itfinished off Bremen as a Bomber Commandtarget: shipyards and factories were seriouslyhit; 4,859 houses, five churches, one hospital,18 schools and 16 public and historic build-ings were destroyed or damaged; 65 personswere killed, 766 wounded and 37,724bombed out.There was a final series of raids in March1945. On the 22nd, in an RAF daylight oper-ation, 133 Lancasters and six Mosquitoesattacked the Vacuum oil refineries in theBy Karel Margrydock area. The following day, another 117Lancasters attacked the city’s railway bridgeover the Weser. The structure was damagedbut provisionally repaired. A week later, onMarch 30, US Eighth Air Force bombers hitand destroyed both the railway bridge andthe adjoining Adolf-Hitler-Brücke, the city’smain road bridge. Now only two bridgeswere left intact, the Kaiserbrücke and theLüderitzbrücke.Bremen’s riverfront today, pictured in August 2006.3NSDAP-Gauleiter Paul Wegener (right)and Reich Defence Commissioner Hans-Joachim Fischer (left).By April 1945, over half of Bremen’shouses lay in ruins. Some 3,800 inhabitantshad been killed. Of the original pre-war pop-ulation of 424,000, only about 290,000 stillremained in the city. Added to them weresome 42,000 foreigners — forced labourers,prisoners of war (mostly Russians), and con-centrationcampinmates(fromNeuengamme). Housed in some 160 build-ings and hutted camps all over the city, theykept the factories and shipyards running,were put to work building two huge U-boatbunker factories (‘Hornisse’ in the city docksand ‘Valentin’ in Bremen-Farge) andemployed to clear up the street rubble.It was this city, shattered by five years ofwar but nonetheless with large sections of itsindustry still functioning, that the Nazi andWehrmacht authorities began preparing fordefence in early April 1945. The most power-ful man in the Bremen region was theNSDAP-Gauleiter (Nazi Party DistrictLeader) of Gau Weser-Ems, Paul Wegener, a37-year-old fanatic who had joined the partyin 1930 and made a meteoric career since. Hismain assistant was the deputy Reichs-verteidigungskommissar (Reich DefenceCommissioner) of the district, Dr. Hans-Joachim Fischer. In Bremen itself, power wasin the hands of not the Burgomaster butNSDAP-Kreisleiter (Nazi Party LocalLeader) Max Schümann, another fanaticalNational Socialist. It was Schümann who setup the Volkssturm (home guard) units,organised the construction of road-blocks,mining of roads and, if still possible, evacua-tions of parts of the civilian population. Nextto him came the Bremen chief of police andGestapo, Generalmajor der Polizei HansSchroers. By this stage of the war, the ActingBurgomaster, Dr. Richard Duckwitz, and theBremen Senate had been relegated to carry-ing out the Gauleiter’s and Kreisleiter’sinstructions.Military command in Bremen was initiallyin the hands of the local Wehrmachts-kommandant (Garrison Commander), Gen-eralmajor Werner Siber. Although he hadbeen designated Kampfkommandant (Com-bat Commander) of Bremen in February,Siber had little front-line experience and soon April 5, with the Allied armies approach-ing Bremen, Generalleutnant Fritz Becker, aveteran soldier who was then in command ofthe 389. Infanterie-Division in encircledDanzig, was appointed to replace him asKampfkommandant with orders to defendthe city ‘until the last drop of blood and thelast round’. Siber remained in function asgarrison commander but he was now subor-dinate to Becker.Becker set up his command post in theheadquarters bunker of the 8. Flak-Division,4NSDAP-Kreisleiter Max Schümann, thelocal Nazi party leader of Bremen, whoremained fanatical until the very end.a low, brick-clad structure located in theBürgerpark, the large municipal park thatstretches north of the inner city. There weretwo other HQ bunkers nearby in the samepark, both civilian air raid bunkers takenover by the authorities. One, bunker B31opposite the Benquestrasse, was the com-mand post of Generalmajor Siber; the other,bunker 32 opposite Bulthauptstrasse, wasknown as the Regierungsbunker (Govern-ment Bunker) and reserved for use by thecivil and party leaders of the city.The forces available to Becker were ahotchpotch of Wehrmacht, SS, Flak, policeand Volkssturm troops. His main units wereSS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatz- und Ausbil-dungs-Bataillon 18 (a Waffen-SS trainingbattalion), the 4. Alarm-Bataillon Weser-münde (containing soldiers on leave in thearea and convalescent soldiers) and the 5.Granatwerfer-Einheit Dummel (a unit oper-ating Nebelwerfer multi-barrelled mortars),comprising a total of 262 officers and 1,533men. A powerful back-up was formed by thecity’s anti-aircraft defences. Organised underthe 8. Flak-Division, commanded sinceDecember 1944 by General der Flieger MaxSchaller, its batteries formed a ring of steelaround the city. Crewed by some 3,000 gun-ners, the division’s 100 heavy and 50 lightAA guns, ranging from 128mm to 20mm,could be effectively used against ground tar-gets but they were static, immobile defences.In addition to these regular forces there werea few Volkssturm battalions — formed in theautumn of 1944, composed of old men andHitlerjugend boys, and with a strength onpaper of 1,100 — and a unit of 361 municipalpolicemen, mostly elderly men untrained forbattle. The military value of both theseforces was low. Becker had no artillery, tanksor mobile anti-tank guns whatsoever to backup his troops.To help the defence of the city the Ger-mans had made preparations to inundate awide strip of low-lying meadowland justsouth of the city. Planned by a special staffsince October 1944, the inundations were tobe effected by closing downstream locks inthe little Ochtum stream, by holing theOchtum’s southern summer dike and bychannelling water from the Weser into theOchtum basin. On April 2, General Siberordered the inundations to be started (a deci-sion fully endorsed by General Becker afterhis arrival on April 6) and by April 8 a stripof land some 12 kilometres long and twokilometres wide — stretching from the vil-lage of Dreye close to the Weser in the eastto the embankment of the Bremen—Del-menhorst railway in the west — had beenflooded to a height of about one metre. Theinundations were not high enough to blockGeneralleutnant Fritz Becker, appointedKampfkommandant (Combat Commander)of Bremen on April 5, 1945.the roads, which remained passable for vehi-cles, but at least, so the Germans hoped,would funnel an enemy advance to them.Strangely enough, instead of putting theirdefending forces behind the floods, the Ger-man commanders decided to place one oftheir main units in front of them. On April 5,SS-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18, atraining unit commanded by SS-Obersturm-führer Johannes Oblik and consisting of fourcompanies each of between 150 and 200young and fanatical SS recruits, took up posi-tions around Brinkum blocking the roadsleading into it from the south. Volkssturmand Kriegsmarine soldiers occupied eitherflank. The German decision to put their unitsforward of the floods would prove a costlytactical mistake. Had they put them on thefar side, they would have been in a much bet-ter position to repulse the subsequent Britishattack.In the big picture, the overall defence ofnorth-western Germany was the responsibil-ity of Heeresgruppe Nordwest of General-feldmarschall Ernst Busch. Assigned to holdthe army group’s middle sector between theWeser and Elbe rivers, an area that includedBremen and Hamburg, was Armee Blumen-tritt, a special force hastily created on April10 under General der Infanterie GüntherBlumentritt and comprising all units andstaffs of Wehrkreise (Army Home Districts)VI and XI, plus some naval troops. Holdingthe central section of Blumentritt’s army wasKorps Ems, also newly set up and com-manded by General der Infanterie SiegfriedRasp, and it was this corps to whichKampfkommandant Becker and the Bremengarrison were subordinated. Rasp’s corpscomprised three main formations: north-westof Bremen was Division Nr. 480 and east ofBremen were the remnants of the 172.Reserve-Infanterie-Division and the 2.Marine-Infanterie-Division. As the front gotcloser to Bremen, Becker’s force would beinserted into the corps line.Despite the hopelessness of the militarysituation, the top Nazis in Bremen refused tothink of capitulation. Kreisleiter Schümann,in almost daily broadcasts on the local radioand newspaper articles in theBremerZeitung,again and again expressed his beliefin final victory, exhorting the population tohold on and threatening anyone who showedsigns of defeatism. On April 4, he declared ina radio speech: ‘Whoever shows the whiteflag, should expect a death sentence.’On Sunday, April 8, the people of Bremenfor the first time heard the dark rumble ofartillery fire away in the distance to thesouth. On Tuesday, April 10, the first enemyshells fell on the city. The battle for Bremenhad begun.To prevent the enemy having an easy approach to Bremen, theGermans had flooded a wide strip of land to the south, inun-dating the valley of the Ochtum river from Dreye in the east toMittelshuchting in the west. Strangely enough, they then putone of their main forces, SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatz- undBy the second week of April 1945, havingsuccessfully crossed the Rhine on March 23and then the Ems on April 1, British 21stArmy Group was rapidly advancing intonorthern Holland and north-west Germany,with Canadian First Army on the left andBritish Second Army on the right. On April10, Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thearmy group commander, decided that hewould push on to the Elbe river withoutpause. He instructed Lieutenant-GeneralMiles C. Dempsey, the commander of Sec-ond Army, to have his two leading corps —XII and VIII — outflank Bremen, and leaveit to be dealt with by the army’s third forma-tion — XXX Corps.By then, Second Army was alreadyapproaching the next major river line, that ofthe Weser. While XII and VIII Corpscrossed the river and its tributary, the Aller,and swept north and east towards the Elbe,aiming for Hamburg and Lauenburg respec-tively, XXX Corps began preparations forthe attack on Bremen.At that time XXX Corps, led by Lieu-tenant-General Brian Horrocks, was advanc-ing with three divisions abreast: the 51st(Highland) Division on the left, the GuardsArmoured Division in the centre, and the43rd (Wessex) Division on the right. Follow-ing Montgomery’s new orders, there was areshuffling of units within Second Army. Toprovide XXX Corps with four infantry divi-sions for the capture of Bremen, Dempseyordered the 3rd and 52nd (Lowland) Divi-sions to be transferred to it, and the GuardsArmoured Division to move from XXXCorps to XII Corps and join the race toHamburg. The 3rd Division came undercommand of XXX Corps on April 11 and the52nd Division followed on the 19th.Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18, in front of the water obstacle, hold-ing the town of Brinkum. Between April 15 and 20, the British3rd Division fought its way to the southern edge of the floodedland, capturing Brinkum after a stiff fight on the 16th. The mapshows the battlefield.two squadrons of Crocodile flame-throwingtanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment (fromthe 79th Armoured Division) and the power-ful guns of two medium artillery regiments.The plan was for the 2nd Warwicks and 1stNorfolks of the 185th Brigade to drive onBrinkum from the right, while the 1st Suf-folks of the 8th Brigade would attack fromthe crossroads on the left. The enemy,SS-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18,was known to have one company holding thecrossroads, one the village of Leeste, anotherthe hamlet of Erichshof, and the fourthremaining with Battalion HQ in Brinkumitself. The Warwicks would take Leeste andErichshof, and the Suffolks would clear theircrossroads, after which the Norfolks wouldpass through the Warwicks to captureBrinkum.The attack began at midday on the 15th.After a ten-minute preparatory artillery bar-rage, the 2nd Warwicks (Lieutenant-ColonelRonald MacDonald) jumped off at noon. Afeint attack staged from Kirchweyhe furthereast by the 2nd King’s Shropshire LightInfantry (Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Daly)in the morning had put the German defend-ers on a wrong footing and the Warwicks’move from the south took them by surprise.Leeste was quickly taken, C Company taking70 prisoners, as was Erichshof after someoutlying farms had been assaulted and cap-tured by A Company.The 1st Suffolks (Lieutenant-ColonelRichard Goodwin) at their crossroads metstubborn resistance and came under heavyfire from German artillery, small arms andsnipers. The supporting tanks engaged everyenemy-occupied house but were unable tosilence the German fire and the advanceremained slow. Just before dusk, two troops5THE 3rd DIVISION CLOSES UP ONBREMEN FROM THE SOUTHArriving in the area south of Bremen onApril 11, the 3rd Division, commanded byMajor-General Lashmer (‘Bolo’) Whistler,took over territory captured by the 7thArmoured Division of XII Corps earlier thatweek. On the 13th, the division’s 8th Brigade(Brigadier Eddie Goulburn) pushed the linessome ten kilometres closer to Bremen, the1st Suffolks advancing to a crossroads twokilometres south of the town of Brinkum.Although A Company reached the intersec-tion, they were unable to hold it, beingthrown back by fierce resistance fromSS-Ersatz- und Ausbildungs-Bataillon 18during the evening. However, the move putthe 8th Brigade closest to Bremen, theembattled crossroads being only nine kilo-metres from its southern outskirts. The 185thBrigade (Brigadier Francis Matthews) on theright had earlier taken over the twin villagesof Kirchweyhe and Sudweyhe, only threekilometres from the Weser and ten kilome-tres from Bremen. The 9th Brigade(Brigadier Dominic Browne) was holdingthe rear, occupying the towns of Bassum andHarpstedt.On April 14 the 51st (Highland) Divisioncame up on the 3rd Division’s left, takingover the sector around Wildeshausen.Before the big attack on Bremen couldbegin, the 3rd Division had first to clear theterritory remaining between its positions andthe flooded land north of Brinkum. The cap-ture of Brinkum was a necessary prelude tothe capture of Bremen. The attack was setfor Sunday, April 15, and to be carried out by185th and 8th Brigades. Support would beprovided by tanks of the 4th/7th DragoonGuards (from the 8th Armoured Brigade),
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