Epilogue - Hitler's Home Front: Memoirs of a Hitler Youth - Don A. Gregory, Wilhelm R. Gehlen

Hitler's Home Front: Memoirs of a Hitler Youth - Don A. Gregory, Wilhelm R. Gehlen (2016)

Chapter 13. Epilogue

Germany was then, and still is, a socialist country with more useless bureaucracy and laws than any other, including the former Soviet Union. Most laws that existed before the Second World War made good sense to the German people, but after 1940 the Gauleiters wrote their own rules, submitted them to Göring and with Hitler’s blessing and approval, they became law. These laws were no joke although no one could figure out where they came from. Houses were built by the thousands when Hitler became Chancellor and loans were made interest-free. Any bank that charged interest on a house loan was breaking the law and subject to being closed down. No one knew how banks stayed in business, but the Nazis made sure they did. It’s hard to imagine why the installation of central heating was forbidden by law in 1938, but it was. Radiators and even furnaces themselves were soon banned, so most houses installed the old-fashioned ceramic tile stoves. The small stoves were most often in the hallway, surrounded by ceramic tiles built up from floor to ceiling with a door to get to the fireplace. It would heat the whole house and many houses in modern Germany still use them. Another law required that six-inch pipes for drainage had to be used. Cast-iron pipes disappeared into the smelters and ceramic piping was introduced as a replacement.

Germany has never been a country that could sustain itself in food production and times got hard during the war for people at home. In the beginning (1939-40), things weren’t so bad. Rations were adequate, but with most able-bodied men in uniform, labour was scarce. Farmers’ sons, who were at first exempt from service, were called up and in their places came POWs. They worked for their food, not for their freedom, and their work, for obvious reasons, was never satisfactory. As an example, I had a friend here in the States from Westford, Massachusetts who was captured at Salerno in 1943 and spent his POW years on a farm in Pomerania. He told me that the German farm overseer gave him the name ‘Schweinhund’ because he wouldn’t work any harder than he absolutely had to. Another friend of mine from London was captured on Crete in May 1941. He spent his POW years in the Alkette factory in Berlin, a place where half-tracks were built, and he said he was very well treated. The food was good and he had the same meals in the mess hall as the German workers, but of course when his shift was over, he was escorted back to the POW camp. Bob, my friend from Westford, was in the group of former prisoners led by American Colonel Hurley Fuller that made its way to the west at the end to the war. Sadly, both Bob and Maurice, my friend from London, are gone now.

‘Papers please’ is heard a lot more today in Germany than it ever was during the Third Reich. Identification cards are mandatory and you will pay a fine if you don’t produce yours when asked by an official. Every inhabitant, whether a year old or 101, has to be registered with their name, address, religion and occupation at their local government registration office. These records are kept and if you move twenty-five yards up the road or 250 miles away, you must go to the registrar’s office and fill out several forms. The German government keeps an eye on its citizens. The people in the registration office are even called Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) which is the same title used during the Nazi period and they regulate everything from the size of a gravestone to the colour of your roof tiles. During the war, this type of regulation was taken for granted because the people realised there was a war on that had to be won, but the mindset never changed after the war was over; it was just in hibernation. Today some people in Germany are asking themselves if they still live in the democracy that was created with such fanfare in 1949. I wonder how an American farmer would react if some government official told him that his seed potatoes had to be at least three inches in diameter.

* * *

Queuing for hours to get a little food was dangerous business if it was good flying weather. Only long after the war did I realise clearly that civilians, as much as the soldiers, were in the front line. Bombing cities from the air was regarded as ‘Terror Strikes’ by the Party, meant only to kill innocent civilians. This was total war and - make no mistake - civilians might not have done the fighting but they made it possible for the soldier to do his job and civilians were targeted by both sides. Whether it was a thousand-bomber raid on Hamburg or a 150-bomber raid on Coventry, or even an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it made no difference; civilians died. Ten-year-old kids from the Hitler Youth working at flak positions were the hunters one minute, helping shoot down enemy planes, and the next minute they were the hunted as they stood in line for food. Farmers in fields who grew food for the soldiers and women in factories that made ammunition were targets as well. In a few years, when the last Second World War veteran is gone, the revisionists will have a field day with their theories, but I lived through that time. I know what total war is like. The objective of the German total war effort was to involve every citizen of the Reich in killing the enemy and everyone who supported the enemy, and to destroy everything that supported the enemy until there was no more enemy. That’s not the way wars are fought today and it might just be that more people are killed because of it, and the reason that few things are settled by it.

Since everyone in our village had a garden or rented a vegetable patch, we were spared the very worst of the famine that lasted for two years after the war. Everyone did have to be careful when digging in their gardens however, to avoid being blown up by an unexploded mine or bomb. Many gardeners and farmers were maimed or even killed by those hidden leftovers from the war. On one of my recent walks across our old battlefields in the Hürtgen Forest, I found two horses grazing peacefully next to a stack of 150mm rockets from a German Nebelwerfer. I saw a farmer’s cart that was standing rusted in the fields and noticed that its two wheels were from a 37mm anti-tank gun. Just outside Wiltz, overgrown by thorn bushes, I found an American howitzer in a roadside ditch, totally rusted but complete. The house where we lived was demolished in the late 1960s to make room for a block of condos. I’ve often wondered if they found our earthen air-raid shelter during the excavation, and what happened to the ammunition, pieces of shrapnel and air rifles Len and I hid there.

The war did teach us children of the Reich one essential thing: never take it for granted that you will not go hungry someday. I still have a garden and I make it the same way my granddad taught me. The vegetables we grew then would today be called ‘organically grown’ because all our fertilizer came from the compost heap. Today, those words don’t mean too much except maybe in the price paid. We grew healthy food then without chemical fertilizer, although we would have used it if it was available and if it would have made our plants produce more food. Commercial growers today really don’t have a choice but to use chemical fertilizer. Hobby gardeners like myself do. There were no such gardeners when I was a boy and no one grew flowers. You can’t live on tulips, but we did discover that Nasturtium (Tropaeolum) leaves do make a nice salad. I remember one GI after the war saying that you could take a German and drop him in the Sahara Desert and give him two buckets of water a day, a spade of camel manure and a handful of seeds and he will have a garden in a few months. That’s not much of an exaggeration.

I still preserve and store enough food to last me for several months and my mother’s recipes are still being used to prepare it for the table. The Americans I have talked with who lived through the Great Depression are not so very different from the Germans who lived through the Second World War and survived the peace that came afterward.

* * *

München-Gladbach, as it was called then (the name was changed in 1960 to Mönchengladbach), was the city nearest to us with a fighter base just to the east. Hugo Junkers, the aircraft designer was born there, and Goebbels was born in the M-G suburb of Rheydt. Several thousand Jews lived in the city in 1938, but they were all deported to the East within a few years. The city could also rightly claim that it was the first town to have an air raid not aimed at industrial targets but at the population itself. In May 1940, forty RAF Wellington bombers attacked the city and killed scores of people. The British excuse at the time was that the main railway station was in the centre of the city, with a huge flak tower next door, and that the railway station had been the real target. We didn’t believe it and we wouldn’t have believed it even without our propaganda that called it a terror raid.

The Burgomeister of M-G was Werner Keyßner and he was a high-ranking NSDAP member from the early years of the Party. The city was bombed several times toward the end of the war, but the most destructive raids were in the autumn of 1944 and on 1 February 1945. It must be said however, that Keyßner saved the city from total destruction in 1945. On Hitler’s orders, cities in the front line were to be turned into fortified positions, but Keyßner refused to sacrifice the city in the face of overwhelming forces. He was imprisoned after the war until 1948 and later became a representative of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in M-G. Aachen had declared itself a fortress in October 1944 and had paid the price. It was substantially destroyed by US artillery. M-G was forty miles north-east of Aachen, and fifteen miles from the Rhine, and much larger than ‘Fortress Aachen’. Keyßner was no ‘Nettelbeck’, and the US Army occupied the city in March 1945 without much ado. Joachim Nettelbeck had successfully defended ‘Fortress Kolberg’ against Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807 and his name was often brought up by the Party toward the end of the war. Dr. Goebbels was not amused when he heard the news of his home town’s capture without a fight and he supposedly ordered Werewolves to assassinate Keyßner, but nothing came of it. About 65 per cent of M-G was destroyed during the war, but it was rebuilt from the ashes and is today once again a prosperous metropolis. The city’s cathedral still stands proudly on a high hill and there are two major railway stations, an American football team and a hundred-year-old championship soccer team, Borussia.

The area west of M-G could be a gold mine today for tourists in search of unexplored Second World War locations. The city itself only has the high bunker as a memento, but just outside the city are many wartime fortifications; the Westwall was only a few miles away. There are still numerous bunkers around and the line of ‘Dragon’s Teeth’ can be followed for many miles. Deep in the forest the foxholes and trenches are still visible and a track from a Sherman tank is still embedded in a footpath. Most bunkers have been closed, or are too dangerous to go in. One, just outside the village of Bergstein, has been explored by many visitors even though a sign is posted warning of the dangers involved. Another bunker, on top of Hill 400 is closed altogether. Any GI who fought in the area in 1944-5 remembers Hill 400, known as the ‘eye’ of the German artillery. It was eventually taken by a US Ranger outfit in February 1945 after five months of wrangling with the German defenders. Ernest Hemingway named it ‘Dead Man’s Hill’ after that infamous French Hill ‘Mort Homme’. Not too far away is the large Second World War open-air museum at Overloon; a must-see for any historian. The ex-fighter base is still there and proudly displays one of the very few Junkers 52s still in operation.

* * *

When I left school in 1950, I wanted to be an electrician or a heating engineer. The cold winters of the past few years probably had something to do with that, but heating was still primarily done with fireplaces and there wasn’t much of a future there. Electricity and plumbing technology, however, was always progressing. I got a job in Cologne with a starting salary of twenty-five Deutschmarks a month, about $15 at the time. On weekends, Brother Len and I scoured the countryside for scrap metal and there was plenty to be found. Good prices were paid by scrap-metal dealers who didn’t have trucks to collect the stuff themselves. In one week, I could make more than my job paid in a month. Our ‘truck’ was one of the wooden carts made in our town with wheels that were to have been submarine steering wheels. First we pulled up the thick copper cables at our old flak positions, and then later we searched the forests for abandoned and destroyed weapons, always in fear of stepping on a mine. We left ammunition where we found it, but burned out Wehrmacht trucks, iron girders, and old lead batteries were salvaged. Our ex-Gunnery Sergeant had a wood-burning truck and would take our scrap to the smelter for a share of the profit.

The Monschau area, Losheimer Graben and Elsenborn, from which the Battle of the Bulge was launched, is only an hour away from where we lived. The whole path of the advance can be followed. The Elsenborn highway displays a sign which reads, ‘Highway to Hell’ in English. A Panther tank is proudly mounted on a concrete plinth in Houfalize, and a monstrous King Tiger tank in La Gleize, the village where Jochen Peiper’s battlegroup met its end in December 1944. Then there are the cemeteries - American just over the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg, German along the Westwall. The one near Vossenack in the Hürtgen forest is the burial place of General Walter Model. American General George Patton is buried in Ham, just outside Luxembourg City. Vossenack has a military museum that is well worth a visit and a short walk downhill leads to the Kall Trail, which is a narrow path that rang the death knell for many US Sherman tanks. The Mestrenger Mill house, known by many US wounded, was rebuilt and is now a restaurant, accessible only by a narrow trail.

A reunion of ex-Wehrmacht and GIs who had fought over the area was held in 2004 on the 60th anniversary of the battle and a memorial, dedicated to both sides, was unveiled and now stands on the parapet of the Kall Bridge. I attended the dedication service. Seventeen American and forty or so German veterans were there. After the service, we all proceeded to the Mill Restaurant and had a splendid time. Some of the men strolled around the area to find the foxhole they had dug during that wet and cold November in 1944. An 86-year-old US veteran, who was a young lieutenant commanding a tank platoon in 1944, told of the misery and complications involved in getting his platoon down that narrow path. In one spot, American engineers had to blow a rock from a sharp turn so his Sherman could get around. The exact spot is still a dangerous curve for cars. The Germans avoided sending tanks into the forest. They had six years to explore the area before the battle and kept their armour on the few available roads. They also had plenty of mobile anti-tank guns concealed in bunkers and minefields to make life hell for the Americans. It truly was ‘Hell in the Hürtgen Forest’ as the GIs described it.

The American soldiers who occupied our area from the 102nd Infantry, nicknamed the Ozarks, didn’t know that in March they would soon come across one of the most horrendous Nazi crimes committed outside a concentration camp. Although this didn’t happen in our area, it was discovered by the same 102nd that occupied M-G. The Ozarks had only arrived in Europe in December 1944 and had fought their way across the Rur River. They had seen their fair share of fighting and in mid-April the division approached the town of Gardelegen. Inside the city were over a thousand inmates from Dora-Mittelbau. They were in the process of being moved to Neuengamme. The guards, on hearing that the US Army was only a few miles away, drove the prisoners into a huge barn and set fire to it. Only a handful escaped the inferno. The 102nd found the charred bodies a few days later, and the American Regimental Colonel ordered all able-bodied civilians of the area to give the dead a decent burial. The town is probably the only one in Germany where an American military order is still in effect. The order is posted at the cemetery and reads:

Here lie the bodies of 1016 men who were murdered by their captors. They were buried by the citizens of Gardelegen, who are hereby charged with the responsibility of maintaining their graves. The memory of these unfortunates will be kept in the hearts of freedom loving men everywhere.

This order is given by the commander of the 102nd Infantry Division, United States Army. Vandalism will be punished with the maximum penalties allowed by the military government.

Frank A. Keating, Major General
USA, Commanding

So, what did we, the so-called ‘Children of the Third Reich’, learn from the war? I can only speak for myself and say that I learned a great deal, and I’m sure others did as well. Some apparently didn’t learn much, however, and continued believing the Nazi propaganda they had heard for years. We learned how to survive in depressing and dangerous circumstances. The war itself, the early Wehrmacht victories, our armaments rolling to the fronts, and even the enemy bombers dropping their loads, were all part of a great adventure to us youngsters. We shouted ‘Sieg Heil’ and ‘Hurrah’ when an enemy plane came down in flames. When bombs missed their targets and exploded somewhere in a field, we danced and pointed fingers at the bombers. We stood to attention at funerals when one of our comrades died during a raid. Above all, we tried our very best to get on with life. I still hoard things that are essential for survival. We never run out of food. We grow our own and preserve it and we hole up when the weather is bad. We watch while others invade grocery shops and buy emergency food that will be thrown away in a few days.

The veterans of the Second World War on both sides are rapidly disappearing and it is left to those remaining to write down the things they can still remember. First-hand accounts may not be perfect but they can contribute to the full story when it’s finally told. The war claimed lives long after the shooting stopped. Hospitals were understaffed or in ruins and doctors who had served in the Wehrmacht were either in POW camps or dead. It was a long time before the Allies sorted out who had been Party members or collaborators and they were not in much of a hurry. Our large local hospital in Krefeld had been bombed despite the huge red cross on the roof. The top two stories were demolished and open to the whims of the weather. The St. Theresa Children’s Hospital was in ruins. It had taken a direct hit in mid-February 1945, killing seven nurses and eighteen children. It was never rebuilt and the site is now a parking lot which surely covers the remains of many innocent dead.

To end the story told here, I should say more about an important character who followed along with no concern for bombs or wars, but who became a victim nevertheless. Little Fred, being only three-and-a-half years old at the end of the war, knew nothing but bombs and hunger his entire life. He was even born during an air raid and grew accustomed to the alarms and the explosions. As young as he was, he walked around the village on his own at times and everyone knew him. It was a full-time job keeping him under control. He talked to everyone and everything he met, including horses and cows. We couldn’t understand half of what he said, but I suppose the animals could; they looked at him, standing by the fence, with their big animal eyes. Bringing up babies in those years, it was a never-ending job searching for something to feed them.

Fred was brought up on watery milk and soaked oats, and by the time he was ready for normal food, he got the same as the rest of us, only mashed up and mixed with cod liver oil. Life did not get any better for babies until well after 1948 and many died as a result of undernourishment and other ailments that young children got during that time. Baby Fred was one of them; he died in 1947 after becoming so weak he simply quit eating altogether. He was only six years old. I didn’t realise there was anything wrong with him. He looked and acted like anyone else his age, but Mum knew he was getting weaker by the day. My parents took him to the partially bombed-out St. Theresa Children’s Hospital in Krefeld, but there was not much they could do for him; it was too late. There were hundreds of children in the same condition and the ones who survived were older and stronger than Fred. We older kids somehow scraped through all this with minor problems, although none of us were what you could call healthy. And whatever happened to Brother Len? He died in Germany in 1986, long after his anti-tank ditches were gone, filled in after the war with rubble from our destroyed town.

An entire generation of German children’s growth was stunted and I bet that one could find records proving it. Fred was buried in the children’s section of Krefeld’s main cemetery. Under German law, all graves were (and still are) removed after thirty years unless someone pays for the ground and only rich people could afford it after the war. It was a simple funeral; that’s the only kind of funeral anyone had at the time. There were many of them every day, so they were not marked as special events and it was rare for anyone but the immediate family to attend. I still think of him now and then and wonder what he would have become if he had survived. My mother, Agnes Zander Gehlen, was buried in the same cemetery after she was killed by a drunk driver in 1968. The cemetery doesn’t exist today and I’ve not been back there for over thirty years. The only thing left in remembrance of any of my relatives is a memorial plot for victims of the air raids of February 1945.

Recent nightmares like the attack of 11 September 2001 have replaced the imagery from world wars, but those who fought in and lived through them will never forget what total war really is. The ghosts of the Second World War are still around, but you have to look for them. They are not in front of your eyes every day as they were for us when the war ended. The bunkers and the trenches are not all gone and remain as visible legacies of battles fought more than seventy years ago.

Finally, we have the cemeteries, Allied and German, and most are well cared for by those who have loved ones there and by those who will someday join their comrades in that hallowed ground. Graves of known and unknown soldiers are added every year as remains are found in battlefields across Europe.

A small plaque placed on one of the graves in the Hürtgen Forest says it all:

To my beloved son; since your eyes closed, mine have not ceased crying.

Your loving mother