Hitler's Last Chance: Kolberg: The Propaganda Movie and the Rise and Fall of a German City

By Kevin Prenger

The war in Europe was reaching its cataclysmic final months with Germany surrounded on all sides. Hitler’s forces had been driven from Poland by the Red Army and the Soviets were poised a short distance from Berlin, while the Western allies, having repulsed the Führer’s Ardennes offensive, were preparing to cross the Rhine.

More than ever, Hitler needed his people to stiffen their resolve for the coming onslaught. To demonstrate what will be expected of the German people, and what they could achieve if they refused to acknowledge defeat, a major feature film would be shown, featuring the one place which held out against Napoleon when he invaded Prussia in 1807 – the city of Kolberg.

After crushing the Prussian Army in 1806, French forces swept into the Prussian province of Pomerania. One by one the Prussian fortresses surrendered, mostly without offering any resistance, except for Kolberg. The small and weakly-fortified city held out for four months despite being surrounded by Napoleon’s forces, with Major von Gneisenau organizing a citizen’s militia to aid the Army in its defense. Though much of the city was blasted into ruin, Kolberg remained in Prussian hands until the war with France ended with the signing of the Peace of Tilsit, by which time its defense had become legendary.

Even though the Third Reich was literally entering its death-throes, in attempting to reproduce the siege of Kolberg on film, thousands of experts, extras and horses were taken from the war effort by the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. The film’s emphasis was to show how civilians and the military can work together to save Germany – just as Kolberg had been saved from the French. The result has been stated to be the most expensive feature film ever made in Germany.

This book examines the dramatic conditions under which the film was produced, and the scale of the resources needed to do so, followed by its first showing on 30 January 1945. All Goebbels' efforts, though, were to no avail, as the film never went on general release. A month later, as the author reveals, Kolberg found itself under siege once again, but this time, after bitter house-to-house fighting, it fell to the Soviets in less than four weeks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399072984

Kevin Prenger

Kevin Prenger is a writer of World War II history, living in his native Netherlands. He is the chief editor of the website TracesOfWar.com and also contributes to the Dutch online history magazine Historiek.net. His previous works include War Zone Zoo, the history of the Berlin zoo during World War II and Christmas under Fire, 1944. A Judge in Auschwitz, previously published in Dutch and Polish, is his third book translated in English.

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Introduction

The concrete bunker in La Pallice is 640ft wide, 541ft long and 46ft high, and is hard to miss. This behemoth, located on a basin in the industrial port of La Rochelle, served as a shelter for the submarines of 3. Unterseebootflotille during the German occupation of the French Atlantic coast. It was constructed in 1941 by the German contracting firm, the Organisation Todt, using some 1,800 forced labourers. In its (dry) docks, protected by concrete walls and ceilings, U-boats could be repaired and supplied safely in order to continue hunting down Allied merchantmen and other vessels from the deep. During repeated Allied bombing raids, not a single bomb was able to penetrate the 23ft-thick roof.¹

After having enjoyed supremacy in the Atlantic for three years, from about 1943 onwards the German U-boats were waging a losing battle as the Allies had, among other things, new radar and sonar techniques at their disposal. The hunter became the prey. In August 1944 all German U-boats were recalled to Norway. As late as 3 May 1945, shortly before the end of the war, a U-boat berthed in La Pallice for a short time to deliver fuel and food to the garrison.² The port, barely 124 miles north of Bordeaux, was still in German hands at a time when the best part of France had long since been liberated by the Allies.

Following the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies had slowly advanced towards Nazi Germany. Paris was liberated on 25 August, followed by Antwerp on 4 September. Operation Market Garden – intended to establish a bridgehead between the Lower Rhine and the IJsselmeer – had failed, delaying the Allied advance. Hitler’s armies, however, were unable to stop the Allied offensive in the Ardennes, launched on 16 December. Over the next year the Americans, British, Canadians and their Allies would continue their victorious advance and cross the river Rhine. At the same time the Red Army was advancing from the east towards their prize destination, Berlin. The end of Hitler’s Third Reich was well in sight but the German army would only capitulate as late as 8 May 1945.

Looking at the location of the front at the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, one can easily overlook the fact that at that time not all of France was in Allied hands. Along the French Atlantic coast there were still small tracts of territory under German rule. They were, from north to south: Dunkirk, the Channel Islands, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, Île d’Oléron, Royan and Pointe de Grave. They were part of the Atlantikwall, the defensive line that should have stopped the Allied invasion. With the exception of the Channel Islands, which were not besieged by the Allies, at all these locations German forces still held out against Allied attacks.³ As the German military retreated or surrendered elsewhere, here they remained loyal to Hitler’s orders to hold out. These Atlantikfestungen were to serve as resistance nests and jump-off points for German U-boats. In reality, these small bulwarks of intransigence had more propagandistic than military value. Eventually, they all surrendered in April and May 1945.

After the war the U-boat bunker at La Rochelle would become known as the filming location for the West German mini-series and movie Das Boot from 1981. The script was based on the book by Lothar G. Buchheim, a war correspondent who joined U-96 on a patrol. His experiences made him write the story about this U-boat and her crew. The movie, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, shows in an unequalled manner how the crew of the submarine copes with a claustrophobic world, plagued by boredom, lack of privacy, lack of hygiene and a slowly growing fear of death. The movie had a top German cast and became a classic, still highly appreciated by movie fans.

It is remarkable that the German fortress at La Rochelle also made movie history in another way. This happened during the war and began with a German aircraft dropping a special load over the fortress by parachute on 30 January 1945. Shortly after the beginning of the siege in August 1944, the garrison, numbering 15,000 men, had been supplied not only by small navy vessels and fishing boats but also by Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Transportfliegergruppe 30. These delivered ammunition, medicine, food and other supplies with which the defenders had to hold out in their fortress, besieged by the Allies. In order to keep up the morale of the men, physically isolated from the outside world as they were, mail from Germany was delivered as usual too.⁴ This time, however, it was a film that was dropped from the sky. The sender was Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Kolberg, the title of the movie read. Its subject was the siege in 1807 of the German city of the same name on the Baltic coast by troops of Napoleon. At the time the Prussian army, supported by a civilian militia, had held out for months against the besiegers. In a radio message to Vice Admiral Ernst Schirlitz, commander of La Rochelle, Goebbels called the movie he had sent ‘an artistic ode to bravery and endurance in order to bring the highest sacrifice to the nation and the people’. It was meant to inspire and encourage the men inside the fortress. ‘May this movie be a document of the unwavering steadfastness of a nation for you and your men,’ so the message of the propaganda minister read, ‘that in these days of global combat, is willing to emulate the great example of its glorious history, united with the fighting front.’⁵

The premiere of the movie took place in La Rochelle that very same day. The admiral sent his reaction to Goebbels by radio. He indicated he was ‘deeply impressed’ by ‘the heroic attitude of Kolberg fortress and the artistically unequalled showing’. In addition, he thanked the minister ‘for having sent this movie and I promise to pay honour to the heroically fighting Heimat’.⁶ In reality Schirlitz, who was appointed fortress commander on 20 August 1944, had agreed upon some sort of cease-fire with the Free French of Charles de Gaulle. A French navy officer, Hubert Meyer, had acted as a mediator. Provided the Germans kept all the infrastructure intact, the Allies would leave the fortress alone for the time being.

As a result of this agreement, a proportion of the 60,000 inhabitants left behind in the beleaguered city could be evacuated. Earlier on, an exchange of prisoners had taken place between the Germans and the French. The cease-fire didn’t last, however. In February 1945 the harbour was mined by the Germans anyway and on 30 April the Free French launched an offensive to relieve the city but both the harbour and the medieval centre were saved from total destruction.

The guns fell silent in La Rochelle after new negotiations had been held between the German admiral and the Frenchman Meyer. Shortly before, Karl Dönitz – who had succeeded Hitler as Reichspräsident after the latter’s suicide – had said on radio that further resistance was futile. After the Germans in the fortress had surrendered on 8 May, the French troops discovered the U-766 in its pen. This submarine had arrived in August 1944 after having been damaged in battle.⁷ The vessel, commissioned on 30 July 1943, had neither sunk nor damaged a single enemy ship during her career.⁸

In addition to La Rochelle, Kolberg was released in Berlin on 30 January 1945 as well. Coincidentally, Hitler had come to power twelve years earlier to the day. In the capital there was no question of a festive mood. Large parts of the city had been bombed to rubble by Allied air forces. The Red Army stood on the verge of crossing the river Oder and only had to advance some 37 miles as the crow flies before reaching the suburbs of Berlin. The final battle for Nazi Germany had begun.

Prior to the premiere of the movie, Hitler addressed the nation by radio for the last time. In this way the dictator, seriously weakened both physically and mentally, attempted to incite his nation to a last-ditch effort that should result in a victory almost no one believed in any more. ‘Grave as the crisis may be at this moment,’ he said, ‘we will overcome this eventually by our unwavering will-power, by our willingness to sacrifice and by our capabilities. We will live through this disaster as well.’⁹

The Führer didn’t leave his bunker beneath the Reichskanzlei in Berlin to attend the premiere of Kolberg. In better times he had attended various premieres of great German movie productions, being a great movie fan. The most important location in Germany for premieres was the UFAPalast am Zoo in Berlin. This cinema, however, adjacent to the zoo, was severely damaged during an Allied bombardment in November 1943. Therefore Kolberg was released on 30 January 1945 in the UFA movie theatre Tauentzien-Palast. A meagre buffet, consisting of some tuna fish and sardines in oil, was ready for the guests.¹⁰ Due to rationing, the brochure for the movie was printed on thin paper.¹¹ According to a reporter of the Dutch Algemeen Handelsblad, ‘the director’ was present, along with ‘the major actors’, including Heinrich George and Kristina Söderbaum.¹² The latter later claimed she had been compelled to attend.¹³

The director of the movie was Veit Harlan, a master within the Nazi cinema world. He was known for his melodramatic movies but today he is notorious as the director of the anti-Semitic movie Jud Sü•. During the press conference to announce Kolberg in December 1943, he had explained the ‘goal and benefit’ of the movie to the assembled press. According to the director, people were living – it was ten months after the defeat in Stalingrad – ‘in a time which means life or death for us all’. The history of the city of Kolberg in 1807 was, in his words, ‘a symbol of the heroism of the German people. I want to show today’s viewers the heroism of their forebears, I want to tell them: You were born in this nest and with the power you have inherited from your ancestors you will now achieve victory as well.’ In his view, his work should not just be in honour of the defenders of 1807 but, above all, ‘a monument for the Germans of today’.¹⁴

A Dutch contributor to De Schouw, a magazine of the Dutch Kulturkammer, was enthusiastic in any case. He wrote: ‘Before our admiring eyes, a category of movie creations is developing here which does not derive its power from a grandiose show of beautiful costumes, bombastic decors, monumental architecture and gigantic mass direction, but puts the leading figures of history with their characters and heroic will-power in the centre of the action.’ In his article, published on 15 March 1944, he concluded that ‘one must feel the greatest admiration for a country where in the middle of this war, highly demanding in mental and moral power, a movie industry emerges, purely aimed at the masses and which is growing ever more.’¹⁵

The movie Kolberg was a cinematographic masterpiece for the Nazi cinema. Neither money nor effort were spared to produce it. It was a production on which Joseph Goebbels’ influence was greater than ever. Although he wasn’t mentioned in the trailer, he was in fact the producer and co-scriptwriter. Seeing the movie today, one can imagine it could have had a rousing effect on the viewers of 1945. At the moment it was released, it was far too late, however. According to one viewer, it could only have evoked ‘a mood of desolation and icy coldness’.¹⁶ Whereas Das Boot can be called one of the most successful German movie productions, Kolberg can be considered its greatest failure. During the last months of the war the movie drew hardly any viewers and was unable to help stop the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The border between admiration and bewilderment in this history isn’t sharp. All the effort that was poured into producing a movie at a time when Germany was suffering one defeat after another defies logic. At the moment the film was released, it only took a little over three months before the Third Reich came to an end. During the first showing of the movie the German city with the same name was being overrun by refugees from eastern Prussia, desperate to flee from the revengeful Red Army. Early in March 1945 the city was under siege again, for the first time since 1807, but now by the Soviet armies. The inhabitants and refugees, who hadn’t left earlier, were hastily evacuated by sea in the next two weeks by the German navy. The enemy couldn’t be stopped and the city with its age-old German history came within Polish borders after the war. Today, Kolberg is called Kołobrzeg.

This book combines the history of the movie Kolberg with the story of the rise and fall of the German city of the same name. By dealing with these two subjects together, a better understanding of the effects of propaganda is created, and in particular the failing thereof. What follows is a portrait of a city with a history that is hardly known outside Germany. The movie is sometimes referred to in literature about the Third Reich but the city itself often remains unmentioned. Although the city has been located in Polish territory for decades, its German history is longer and more dynamic. Kolberg as a spa and a provincial town can serve as an example of the territory in the east that Germany lost after 1945. An age-old political, military, social and cultural history was cut off in the spring of 1945.

In the chapters that follow, an attempt is made to bring the Kolberg of yesterday back to life, without any sentiment regarding the fact that the city fell into Polish hands, naturally to the grief of the former German citizens. Borders are variable and their relocation is often a logical or inevitable result of political and military events. Awareness of the history of Kolberg makes us watch the movie from a different perspective. Although it was meant to achieve the opposite, with the knowledge we have now, the movie Kolberg can be considered a symbol of the end of an age-old German history in eastern Europe.

Within the text, the choice was made to retain the geographic names from the historic period described. Kolberg was not the only place to be renamed after the Second World War: Stettin (Szczecin), Königsberg (Kaliningrad), the Persante (Parsęta) and the Bay of Gdańsk can also no longer be found on any map under their original German names.

Chapter 1

Prior history through to 1807

Early Kolberg

For ages, the St Marien-Domkirche in Kolberg served as a beacon for traffic on land and at sea. The striking edifice, built from red bricks and constructed around the turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth century, could hardly be missed in the mostly flat landscape of the Baltic coast. The sturdy tower was built to a design that made it look like a medieval donjon. The thick wooden doors of the main entrance gave access to the gothic building that initially consisted of a nave and two side aisles. Later on, two more aisles were added. The building rose above all the adjacent houses. Farmers and merchants could see the tower from afar as they made their way to the weekly market along narrow country roads, with their harvest and other products in horse-drawn carts. From the sea, in clear visibility, the church was the first thing the crews of merchant ships and fishing vessels saw when they returned to the safe harbour of Kolberg after having spent days or weeks on a rough sea. The house of worship was a symbol of security that the inhabitants of Kolberg had experienced for ages in their Heimat.

If someone in the year 1000 were to stand on the spot where today the church is still located, he wouldn’t see any trace of a town. And yet, at that time the history of one of the oldest cities in the historic region of Pomerania would begin.¹ The region already knew human habitation long before it was given this name. Around the year 0 the Pomeranian coast up to the Bay of Gdańsk was inhabited by the East Germanic Rugians, who migrated to the south around the year 400. Next the Pomeranians settled here and the coastal region would be named after these West Slavic people.

In the ninth century a West Slavic settlement was established on the east bank of the river Persante, 2.5 miles inland from the Baltic coast. It came to be known as Kolberg, or the place on the bank. The settlement was located on the spot that would later be called the Altstadt by the Germans and which is known today as Budzistowo. It is here that the history of Kolberg began.

At the centre of early Kolberg was a castle, built in the form of a fortification, meant to defend the settlement against attacks. The first inhabitants lived in houses built from wood or loam. Their specialty was working with iron and amber and they traded their products with the Vikings. In addition, the population also consisted of boatmen, fishermen, tradesmen and blacksmiths. Above all, the settlement would be known for the salt that was mined in the pits located on the river banks. In the beginning this product was shipped to Greater Poland and Silesia. In the times long before cooling facilities were readily available, it was an important ingredient for the conservation of fish and vegetables.

The inhabitants of early Kolberg worshipped their gods in a temple by bringing sacrifices. Duke Bolesław I, who would become the first Christian king of Poland in 1025, made an attempt to convert the Kolbergians to Christianity at the beginning of the eleventh century. The Polish ruler was an ally of the Roman-German emperor Otto III. In the year 1000 the duke and the emperor had agreed to establish an ecclesiastic province with Gniezno/Gnesen as its capital. Kolberg became a diocese. A German bishop arrived in the town and built a church on the site of the pagan temple. In writings, his seat was called Salsae Cholobergiensis, Salsae referring to the salt mines. The clergyman purified the sea from evil spirits with holy oil and holy water. But the Kolberg population wasn’t at all eager to be converted. They destroyed the church and expelled the bishop, after which they returned to their original beliefs under the rule of the Pomeranian dukes.

It took about a century before Christianity returned to Kolberg. Under Bolesław III the Poles attacked Lower Pomerania – the eastern part of the region. During the battles for Kolberg in 1102 the city was burned to the ground but the attack was repulsed. However, Bolesław III did eventually succeed in bringing Kolberg under Polish rule. In 1120 the Polish king subjugated the Pomeranian duke to his authority and compelled the Pomeranian population to convert. Bishop Otto von Bamberg was dispatched to the region. In 1124 he ordered a chapel to be erected in Kolberg and in 1125 he consecrated a new church here, called the Marienkirche – not to be mistaken for the future episcopal church. During the earlier attempt at conversion the city was still an independent diocese, but from this moment on Kolberg belonged to the Cammin diocese, today known as Kamień Pomorski. Even though the citizens were not eager to convert, they had little choice. Christianity was imposed on them by the new rulers.

Following the death of Bolesław III in 1138, the Polish nation fell apart. In 1181 the Duchy of Pomerania, including Kolberg, placed itself under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire, which at that time was ruled by the legendary emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa. A few miles away from the old Kolberg, also on the eastern bank of the Persante, a German settlement came into being: the new Kolberg. The region had long since been in the German sphere of influence but owing to the settling of German colonists in the late Middle Ages, a gradual Germanisation took place which also occurred elsewhere in Pomerania and further east. Emigrants settling in Kolberg predominantly originated from northern Germany (Greifswald, Lübeck and the Lower Saxony region) and from Westphalia, Brunswick and the Rhine area as well.

The Slavic population gradually left the original city that from then on was reduced to the status of an unimportant village. The German colonists in Kolberg enjoyed good relations with the Slavic nobility but kept their distance from their Slavic fellow-citizens, who lived on a separate street on the edge of town.

On 23 March 1255 Kolberg was granted city rights by the Pomeranian duke Wartisław III and the bishop of Cammin, pursuant to Lübeck law. A city council was appointed that would be chaired by a burgomaster. The circular city was fortified by moats and an earthen escarpment. Kolberg evolved into an important centre of salt mining, trade and fishing. In addition to Danzig and Stettin, the city had the most important Baltic port at its disposal. During the next century sailing ships transported all kinds of goods, like grain, wool, amber, beer, honey and salted herring, to other ports including Amsterdam. Important trade relations were also established with Scotland and Scandinavia. The major export product was and remained salt. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries salt mining was intensified. Traders sold the product to countries as far away as Hungary and the Black Sea region but from then on only members of the salt guild were permitted to do so. Kolberg gained wealth and fame from this trade.

In the town, where in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a growing number of brick houses were built, citizens of the various social classes lived apart from each other. The homes of the rich patricians and tradesmen were to be found on the main streets and the market place. Members of the guilds and their families lived on the side streets. Names of streets such as Fischerstraße, Schmiedestraße and Große and Kleine Schuhstraße referred to the guilds of fishermen, blacksmiths and shoemakers respectively. The most prominent were members of the salt guild, and of the guilds of tradesmen, seamen and brewers. Around 1400 there were also guilds for copper and goldsmiths, glass blowers, ship builders, beer and casket carriers, pie bakers and weapon makers.

Slavic inhabitants were gradually phased out from Kolberg, which was becoming more and more German. They were banned from the guilds from the sixteenth century onwards, and were not allowed to sit on the city council or to have other important functions. Teachers didn’t accept young Slavic men as their pupils. Due to this exclusion and discrimination, a large number of the Slavic citizens left town. Until 1945 only Wendenstraße would be a reminder of their history, ‘Wenden’ being the German name for the West Slavic people.

At the end of the thirteenth century Kolberg joined the Hanze cities, an economic and political union between cities on the North Sea and the Baltic formed for the protection and promotion of their mutual trading. In the fourteenth century the city delivered ships and soldiers for the wars against the Danish and against raiders. In 1461 Kolberg signed a peace treaty with Denmark. Among other things, this allowed Danish ships to seek a safe haven in the port of Kolberg. Along with other Hanze cities and the Danes, Kolberg waged wars against English raiders in the second half of the fifteenth century. Competition from Dutch and English traders and the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) caused the downfall of the Hanze. For