Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

German campaigns and battles 1919-1945.

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Stephan H.
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Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

Post by Stephan H. »

I’m going to post the following seven page report of the defense at Kolberg 1945 prepared by its commander Fritz Wilhelm Hermann Fullriede for others who might be interested. I located this in the KTB of H.Gr. Weichsel, but I’ve decided not to focus on the fighting in Pomerania even though it fell under Himmler’s authority.

Hopefully others find it of interest, and perhaps someone might post translated summaries for those non-German reading members.

Cheers,
Stephan
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Stephan H.
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Re: Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

Post by Stephan H. »

Here is the rest.
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Richard Hargreaves
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Re: Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

Post by Richard Hargreaves »

Missed this until Jan-Hendrik pointed it out over at AHF. :shock: Thanks to both. :up: :up: :up: :up:

And here's a little snippet from Oven's diary (Finale Furioso: Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Grabert Verlag, Tübingen, 1974)
Thursday March 22nd 1945

In Pomerania Kolberg has fallen after its encircled, meagre garrison offered heroic resistance for fifteen days. On orders from above, the Wehrmacht communiqué does not report this fact, even though we reported that the city and its defenders were encircled. It makes no sense to a junior Party member. We no longer mention Kolberg and that’s that. How simple it is to deal with things in an authoritarian state! The reason for our embarrassing silence about Kolberg is obvious. We’ve just had the glittering premiere of Veit Harlan’s film Kolberg, we’ve praised it in our propaganda as the epitome of determination, we’ve delivered copies of this film, in some cases with the greatest difficulty, by U-boat and aircraft to our Atlantic bases in the West and our encircled fortresses in the East to inspire courage and the spirit of resistance in those who are fighting in hopeless positions. And now the real Kolberg has shown that all the courage, all the determination is to no avail if you extinguish the light of life with rocket launchers and ground-attack aircraft. No, we simply ignore such facts. That contradicts our idea, so these events simply didn’t happen. We act as if there was never a city named Kolberg.
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tigre
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Re: Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

Post by tigre »

Thanks Stephan, fully appreciated :wink:. Cheers. Raúl M 8).
Serás lo que debas ser o no serás nada. General José de San Martín.
Stephan H.
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Re: Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

Post by Stephan H. »

Gents, you are all welcome. I just couldn’t find a way to fit it into my projects and I didn’t want it languishing on my hard drive.
In addition, I can the following information:

-In general, there isn’t too much about Kolberg in the H.Gr. Weichsel KTB. Once it was surrounded, operations were handled almost exclusively by Fullriede. There was regular radio communication between Fullriede and H.Gr. W. Ia.

-On 14 March Eismann recommended to Himmler (who was still in command of the H.Gr.) that Fullriede receive the Ritterkreuz before it was too late—“. . .damit es nicht zu spät wird.” There was no record I found suggesting that Himmler authorized it before he left command on the 20th.

-In a postwar interview, Heinrici mentioned that when Fullriede made it back to Swinemünde Hitler had wanted to have him shot for evacuating Kolberg, but Manteuffel and his staff treated him to a royal welcome at the port, and he was promptly awarded the Ritterkreuz, thereby “saving” him. Hopefully I’m not confusing this with a statement made by Eismann, but after reading and writing about this period for the last two years, this starts to blend together. If I can dig this incident out of my files, I’ll post a more accurate accounting, however, if someone knows more about the incident please post it here.

Cheers,
Stephan
Stephan H.
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Re: Festung Kolberg 1945: Battle Report

Post by Stephan H. »

As it turns out, I was able to work the fighting for Kolberg into The Oder Front 1945, Volume II. So for those who do not easily read German this report will be translated in its entirety for my second volume and I'll also add some other tid-bits about the battle.

Cheers
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