Text taken from the V Kontakte page of GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
It should be noted that a large part of this post on Vk.com was cribbed from the historical text "Scorched Earth" written by Paul Carrell, considered one of the best and best written narratives about WWII on the eastern front.
Carrell was the pen name for the high ranking German Nazi official Paul Schmidt, who was involved in Nazi pogroms in Hungary.
[VK] On January 17, 1943, the 3rd Shock Army of the Kalinin Front liquidated the encircled 7,000-strong enemy garrison in Velikiye Luki and liberated the city. The battles for Velikiye Luki were the most fierce. After all, the capture of this city by the Red Army opened up the opportunity for it to advance on Vitebsk, this was understood on both sides of the front line.
Hitler, as he had promised Paulus in Stalingrad, promised assistance to the commandant of the encircled city, Lieutenant Colonel von Zass, and even promised to name Velikiye Luki after him – Zassenstadt.
The German historian Paul Karel called what was happening here a “miniature Stalingrad”. He wrote: “The Soviet rifle battalions fought with amazing courage. Especially the Komsomol members, fanatical young communists, in the next few weeks glorified themselves with their devotion to duty. Private Aleksandr Matrosov of the 254th Guards Rifle Regiment earned the title Hero of the Soviet Union at the cost of his life."
The Germans really did their best to help the dying garrison in Velikiye Luki. Karel wrote: "The last attempt was made on January 9. The strike group of Major Tribukait, commander of the 5th battalion, went to the fortress: several armored personnel carriers from the 8th tank division, tanks of the 1st battalion of the 15th tank regiment and assault guns of the 118th reinforced tank battalion.
"Move and shoot!" - that was the order. Do not stop.
The crews of the destroyed vehicles were to immediately climb onto the armor of others. With this method of "non-stop movement" Tribukait really managed to break through the enemy ring. Several of his tanks and armored personnel carriers remained on the battlefield, but the group reached the target.
At exactly 15:06, Darnedde's exhausted men saw their tanks from the citadel ramparts. They cried with joy and embraced each other. "They did it!" came from everywhere. "They did it!"
Fifteen combat vehicles clanked into the fortress courtyard, among them the last three tanks of Lieutenant Koske's 1st Battalion of the 15th Tank Regiment. However, the fortunes of war had once again turned against Darnedde's battalion. As soon as the outflanked Russians realized that the Germans had broken through, they concentrated their artillery fire on the fortress.
Tribukait immediately ordered the tanks to get out of the small courtyard among the ruins, to which the only road led. But everything seemed to be against him now. At that very moment, as one of the fifteen tanks was passing through the gate, it was hit by four shells. The tank with torn tracks blocked the exit for the others.
Tribukait's small force was trapped and turned into a target for fierce fire from guns of all calibers. One tank after another fell victim to the Soviet bombardment. The surviving Tribukait tankers joined the defenders as infantry.
On January 15, a parachute battalion tried to break into the fortress, but this attempt also failed."
On January 17, it was all over in Velikiye Luki. The last surviving Germans surrendered. Many of them died after they had already capitulated, as they were severely exhausted and frostbitten. And no one was going to arrange sanatorium conditions for them after the surrender...
The most "irreconcilable" of the Germans decided not to surrender, and tried to reach their own in small groups. Only eight out of several hundred succeeded. The rest were killed by the Red Army or simply froze to death on the way.
In 1946, von Sass was convicted of war crimes and was publicly hanged with a group of accomplices in Velikiye Luki, which never became Sassenstadt.