It seems beyond belief now, but like many other leaders of the Hitler Youth, as well as some Wermacht officers, I could see the insanity of ordering children as young as 12 to pick up a bazooka and fire it at the first American tank that came into range. We still clung to the illusion that a murderous resistance might persuade the Americans the invasion of Germany would be too costly. A suicidal effort might still gain an honorable armistice, even if victory was now out of reach.
I never saw what happened to the Volksturm unit I led to the trenches of the Siegfried Line. I was recalled to a Luftwaffe radar station near Frankfurt. One of my last duties was helping to set fire to a row of Messerschmitt ME-262s, the first operational jet fighters in the world. There was no fuel left. On March 5, 1945 the base commander inexplicably ordered me to take five days’ compassionate furlough, because I had lost my home on Christmas Eve. It seemed odd, especially when I pointed out to him that units of the American Third Army were only 15 miles west of my home town. He merely nodded. “You had better hurry, then.” I was dismissed. It didn’t dawn on me that he was trying to save my life.
Two days later, I awoke in the basement of my Aunt’s house to the thunder of American artillery fire. Toward noon the barrage stopped, and moments later a column of Sherman tanks roared into town. I was trapped. When the infantry began searching each house, I finally admitted to myself that I and the Thousand-Year Reich were finished. I buried my pistol hastily in the garden. Dressed in stained civilian overalls and Luftwaffe boots, I stepped out on the street and into American captivity, half expecting to be shot.
But I was neither shot nor sterilized (another Goebbels-inspired fear). Instead, I was put to work as an interpreter, first for the platoon that occupied Wittlich that day, then at an American field hospital. In fact, the only “interrogation” in those days was a rather casual question from the huge lieutenant who put me to work that first day. After giving me a carton of Camels and 13 fresh pork chops (undoubted from a German pig, I thought), he inquired, “Say — you aren’t one of these Nazis, are you?” When I told him I was on furlough from the Luftwaffe, he cursed briefly, then asked, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask me,” I replied — and he burst out laughing.
• • •
For Germans, the first four months after our defeat were more numbing than painful. We were relieved just to be alive. Unlike most of my countrymen, I had plenty to eat, since I was working in the field hospital.
On the morning of July 6th, 1945, the French troops rode into town, some of them on bicycles. Unlike the Americans, they had come to stay. In the French zone of occupation, the authorities had provided themselves with meticulous records of all Nazi Party members, no matter how insignificant. I was arrested, along with all other Hitler Youth members above the rank of Gefolgschaftsführer. About 35 people were rounded up in Wittlich, most of them minor Party functionaries (the local Gestapo chief, the town’s Party leader, and my predecessor as Hitler Youth had all left for Berlin before the end). We were told we would be executed the next morning at six, in retribution for Nazi crimes against the French. It was the worst night of my life, a night of prayers, tears, and resignation. Then a German-speaking sergeant told me we would merely be held as hostages. “I just hope,” he said, “none of your townspeople kills one of us, or you’re all dead.”
After 12 days, I was literally booted out of the prison by a French officer who ordered me to report to him once a week. Three or four months later, I appeared before a de-Nazification board — three French officials and two Germans who had been opponents of the Hitler regime. One was the local shoemaker, a lifelong Communist who had been sent to Dachau. He was the only board member who advocated a prison sentence for me. The board concluded instead that I had been a fanatic, but not a “definable,” or criminal. Their sentence: six months’ expulsion from the Gymnasium, restriction to the town limits, one month’s labor in the French garrison. (In some sense, the sentence was ludicrous: there was no school yet, and everyone in the town needed permission to travel, provided any mode of transportation could be found.)
The following year, as civic life was beginning to assume some normality, I was not only re-admitted to the Gymnasium, but elected student-body president. The French had made me something of a martyr.
• • •