Meanwhile, the situation around Kustrin and Frankfort are becoming more clear to the Germans, and it is clearly not good. The Soviets are in fact across the Oder, and the fight is on to keep open the corridor to the fortress city of Kustrin:
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/1/08.htm
February 8th, 1945 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Aircraft carrier HMS Pioneer commissioned.
GERMANY: Montgomery opens Operation Veritable, a British 2nd Army and Canadian 1st Army offensive to clear the lower Rhineland.
Allied bombing crews are being kept busy. Tonight RAF Bomber Command attacked targets at Politz, Wanne-Eickel and Krefeld; last night Goch, Cleve and the Dortmund-Ems canal were hit. On 3 February the USAAF attacked Berlin with over 1,200 heavy bombers, escorted by 900 fighters. Five square miles of central Berlin were set on fire; Tempelhof airport was badly damaged. Among 1,000 casualties of the raid was Roland Freisler, the notorious president of the People’s Court, who died when the court was bombed and he was hit by a falling beam.
Vienna has also been bombed by US Liberators, 29 of which were shot down, five during two minutes of intense flak.V2 rocket installations in the Netherlands were hit in daylight raids by RAF fighter-bombers. Other targets included E-boat shelters at Ijmuiden and - to assist the advance of XXX Corps across the German-Dutch border - troop concentrations near Goch, where there were also civilian casualties.
Luftwaffe ace Hans Ulrich Rudel loses his lower right leg to a 4cm shell. (Fox)
U-1406 commissioned.
U-4709 launched.
HUNGARY: In Mészáros utca near Déli railway station László Deseõ, 15 years old at the time of the siege, kept an hourly diary of the destruction that raged around him:
February 8. Numerous wounded. There are Russian snipers positioned in the house opposite and when someone allows themselves be spotted in the window they shoot at them.…Wagner [a forcibly recruited Hungarian SS soldier from Budakeszi] has been seriously wounded. Two hours ago he laughingly admitted that the destruction of the whole house had been his responsibility because he could have led the horses to a neighbouring empty cellar. Heavy fighting all night.
U.S.S.R.: Yalta: Allied commanders take time off from the conference to visit the historic battlefield at Balaklava.
U.S.A.: Destroyer USS Shields commissioned.
Meanwhile, the situation around Kustrin and Frankfort are becoming more clear to the Germans, and it is clearly not good. The Soviets are in fact across the Oder, and the fight is on to keep open the corridor to the fortress city of Kustrin: