CHAPTER 31
It is unfortunate that Götterdämmerung has become the standard cliché for the end of the Nazi regime because in Norse mythology it describes a war of the gods that brings about the end of the world. That was certainly the view of Hitler and the hard core of true believers who went down with him, but the term dignifies them by attributing too much importance to their deaths. On land and by sea and air the Germans fought to the bitter end and while one may feel considerable sympathy for the miserable civilians cowering under a rain of bombs, and professional respect for the courage and tenacity of the fighting men, the fact remains that every minute the war was prolonged by the efforts of such as Albert Speer, or by resolute field commanders like Kesselring in Italy or Model in western Germany, meant the death of yet more Jews in the Nazi death factories. All the contradictions in American political and military policy were also brought to the surface in the final months but one cannot fault Eisenhower's logic in not making a dash for 'Berlin when it was already agreed that it would fall well within the Soviet area of occupation. The interviews conducted for the programme Nemesis: Germany February–May 1945 were some of the best in the series, reflecting the makers' fascination with the last moments of this evil regime. Particularly striking are Speer's vivid recollection of the final days in Berlin and Traudl Junge's chilling moment of realisation that Hitler was a hollow man as she took the dictation of his 'Last Will'. The rather gruesome concern with the identification of Hitler's body reflects the fact that in June 1945 the Soviets declared that his remains had not been found, which gave birth to a wave of speculation that he had survived and was being concealed by Nazi sympathisers in the West. It served its propaganda purpose at the time, but as such things do it acquired a life of its own and has predictably kept conspiracy theorists busy ever since.
LIEUTENANT DENIS BEATSON-HIRD
51st Highland Division
As soon as the Rhine crossing had taken place we felt the war was coming to an end and obviously nobody wanted to get badly hurt and certainly nobody wanted to get killed at that stage. We were all desperately keen to get home fairly soon. There was a feeling of optimism and success – we just felt that this was the end, the Germans were going to pack up and there was nothing really to worry about.
MAJOR GENERAL KENNETH STRONG
General Eisenhower's Chief of Intelligence
Eisenhower still had his main objective, which was to penetrate Germany and to destroy the enemy armed forces. He didn't think that Berlin was a very important objective. What he decided to do was to go straight through to the centre of Germany to the Elbe, go eastwards, join up with the Russians and then to clear the northern flank, north sea ports and to clear his southern flank where there was possible talk about resistance in the Alps. He told Stalin his plan and he got into a lot of trouble for this because the British said he'd had no right to do this, this was a matter of politics or policy and not a military matter. But he always said, 'Here I am advancing, I'm going to come into contact with the Russians, I really must tell them what I am trying to do.' So the British pressed very strongly to him to go to Berlin and he said simply, 'If I'm ordered to go to Berlin, I'll do it, but these orders must come from my bosses who are the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington.' His orders were never changed because the Americans were convinced that after the war they could get on well with the Russians. They looked on Russians as being their allies in the future.
PRIVATE JOHN SENEY
US paratrooper
We were told there were some soldiers in a farmhouse wanted to surrender and we walked up in a loose group, not a military type of action, we were just going in informal, and several rounds were fired at us. Then we lobbed a bazooka shell into the house and several soldiers ran out. This one person was running away from me and didn't halt when I fired a round. It went down and when I approached I realised I had shot a girl about eighteen or nineteen years old dressed in something like the Women's Land Army uniform. And we ran into those sorts of situations quite often and we had to shoot some of the German children. It's still hard to say it now, but at that time whenever we captured an SS soldier, if he made it back to a POW camp alive he was lucky. In fact I can say that probably ninety per cent of the ones we came in contact with are buried over there some place.
MAJOR GENERAL FRANCIS DE GUINGAND
Field Marshal Montgomery's Chief of Staff
The Twelfth Army Group were going great guns and things moved so quickly then. The Ruhr was surrounded in no time and that was the beginning of the end and the Red Army were attacking strongly and so we had no fears, it was just a question of time, the Germans would have to capitulate – if it hadn't been for Hitler, it would have capitulated far sooner.
GUARDSMAN BROWN
Scots Guards
Casualties were bad enough at any time but particularly, perhaps, in the last two months of the war. There were men there, you'd been with them for five years, they were not just colleagues but close friends, you knew their families, you knew all about them. And you saw them getting knocked off in the last few days of the war, particularly sad at that time.
GUARDSMAN DUFFIN
Scots Guards
It was a very nasty shock indeed to meet any determined resistance because you felt that the end of the war was so close, and you had almost moved into a dreamlike and unreal situation, you know, towns and villages flew past with no resistance at all, normal countryside with no damage at all. Every day you said to yourself that surely this can't go on, and certainly I think the thought of one's own survival after all this gradually became uppermost in everybody's mind – it certainly did in mine, I don't mind confessing. Then when you did run into any sort of determined resistance, then to me it was a matter of hard anger. What are these – how dare these people prolong the agony any more? The other half was jolly nearly blue funk.
PRIVATE SENEY
We overran a German camp which appeared to have a large number of Jews in it and they were stacked probably four feet high for several hundred feet long in rows. There was evidence that they had tried to bury some of them and some had apparently been cremated in a couple of ovens. There was a village near by with German civilians in sight of the camp. Most of us were quite angry at the time so we had the villagers, from the age of six to sixty, anybody who could walk, digging trenches and burying these dead people laying there. The burgomeister was usually the first one you'd meet, he'd have his sash on, his badge of office, and he would inform us that he was not a Nazi and the town council was not, and then he'd proceed to name all the other dignitaries and we would round them all up and ship them out because then we knew we had all the Nazis.
ALBERT SPEER
Hitler's Armaments Minister
It was my duty to tell Hitler that from the point of view of armament the war was lost and I did it in several memorandums and the harshest one was 19th March 1945, in which I told him very bluntly the war will be finished within four or six weeks, which was the right estimate it turned out later. And that it is now necessary, at the last minute, to do everything to help the German people for this situation which is now upon the Germans. He obviously knew what was in the memorandum. He said then not to think about the future of the German people, those who were brave they are dead, and those who survive are just cowards.
GENERAL HASSO-ECCARD FREIHERR VON MANTEUFFEL
Commander Third Panzer Army
In March it was very difficult to go through Berlin because all cars and electric trams had built up other objects for barriers in the streets. I needed two or three hours for this fifty kilometres and I came in the bunker under the earth and there was full of crowded officers and Party members, SS men and civilians. I was ordered into a small room and Hitler ordered me to defend east Berlin, the autobahn, and to give him more supplies of food and I answered to have no possibility to give him this because we had stood on the front to defend the Oder against the Russians and they were very strong. I could see this when I go by helicopter over my positions, Russia assembled mass of artillery and Hitler [made no argument].*81 In the circle of Berlin west of the autobahn, I think fifteen or twenty kilometres, there were troops but not enough equipment. But the west side there is a green park, that was not possible to destroy but they cut all the trees. But the east side, I came from the east side of Berlin, it was all destroyed. I took command of the Third Panzer Army one hundred kilometres east of Berlin and we stood there until 25th or 26th April. But the behaviour of the soldiers at this front line, they're not quite the same as my troops because daily thousands of refugees from East Prussia went over to the border and they were assembled by our troops and it was important they are defended all the way from East Prussia.
GENERAL ALEXEI ANTONOV
Red Army Chief of Staff
The 18th Division of the SS attacked but we managed to hold them down and went further ahead. In the region of Bukov, also a very difficult battle, we took the town. Ever so many nationalities – Italian, French, English, Americans prisoners – were to be found in camps there and we freed them.
PRIVATE SENEY
We had several of our Airborne men return to our outfit from where the Russians had overrun a German camp. They told me they got worse treatment at the hands of the Russians than the Germans. They were subjected to questioning, they were mistreated, they were handled very roughly. Some of them went all through the German camp with their wristwatch but when the Russians freed them they lost them.
ALBERT SPEER
When I came back from the Ruhr valley I gave orders to contradict Hitler's strict general order to destroy everything. I entered Hitler's office and he told me Bormann reported me and 'If you wouldn't be my architect, I would fulfil the consequences which are used in such a case because it is high treason.' This moment I had the feeling that he saved my life and I felt some gratitude to him at this moment and remembered the times in which we both were quite happy about his plans. It was one of his sentimental strokes which Hitler had now and then, even in desperate situations, and I was saved by such. Then the discussion went on and he said, 'I ask you to go on a long vacation, you are obviously overworked and your ministry will be taken over by a deputy.' But I knew that the deputy would do the things I wanted not to have done and I said, 'No, I am quite all right and I don't go on vacation.' Then a strange thing happened, he said you should go, and I said I shall only resign as minister and he told me, 'That's just what I can't afford because for reasons of domestic politics and exterior politics I can't, unless you insist at the moment.' And there I thought the point was one to me. But the discussion continued, now he was giving in a bit. He said, 'Well, if you think the war isn't lost, as you told the gauleiters, then I think you can continue with the work.' But I said, 'No, I can't be convinced,' and he said, 'But do you have some hope that the war isn't lost?' Here was a point where I couldn't say no, if I would have said no I think then he really would have fulfilled what he said to me in the beginning, because it would have meant I am no more his follower, I am against him. So I didn't say anything and he thought that I didn't want to answer this question to avoid difficulties and he gave me an ultimatum, 'In twenty-four hours I expect to have your answer.' Then I turned again to the Reichschancellery twenty-four hours later and really didn't know what to answer him because there was no answer to it. He was standing there – I just got in my mind to see him standing behind you. The situation was won too because his eyes went moist and he shook emphatically my hand and said then everything is all right.
MAJOR GENERAL STRONG
Eisenhower didn't believe that it was worth risking a large number of casualties in order to capture Berlin, which sooner or later he'd have to leave and give back. It would have been very difficult indeed to explain to people why you did this, and then to soldiers why you did this and eventually left the town. If he had been given instructions and orders to take Berlin he would have done it. But those orders had to come from the Combined Chiefs of Staff. At the time when this controversy was going on the British were urging him to go to Berlin, Roosevelt was nearing the end of his life, wasn't really capable of malting any decisions and no others came his way except those and he, Eisenhower, carried them out. Suppose he had gone to Berlin, he'd have got entangled with the Russians. I don't believe that our relationship with the Russians would have been any better than we think. People say if we'd gone to Berlin we'd have none of this post-war trouble with the Russians, but I don't think so; I think it's the exact opposite. We'd have had more trouble I think with the Russians if we'd gone there and at the same time the Americans had got another war to fight in the Far East. They were not anxious to get more entangled in Europe than they needed to be. To go and capture an objective which was not a military objective was completely against Eisenhower's best convictions.
ALBERT SPEER
Goebbels behaved first quite reasonably when I told him that it's no use to fight in the streets of Berlin, what is left of the German armies should have a battle outside Berlin, because I told him if Berlin will be destroyed then your whole reputation as a good gauleiter of Berlin will be extinguished, because you too are now responsible for what is happening to Berlin. He approached Hitler with this idea but Hitler then decided that the battle will be in Berlin and all the bridges will be destroyed and that the Berlin population has no value to him, the fight must be to the bitter end. The bridges were not destroyed because I had a meeting with the general in charge of this Army Group and we took the charges out of the bridges before, so they couldn't be destroyed any more. Also people now were reasonable enough not to fulfil all the orders which were given from Hitler's place.
GENERAL WALTHER WARLIMONT
Wehrmacht Deputy Chief of Operations
You may ask how it was possible for a man like me, being as close to Hitler in my position as Chief of Staff, could go through all these years of war and keeping a conviction? Field Marshal Keitel said in Nuremberg relating to this time of March 1945: 'After all our endeavours to change the situation had no effects, we had to go on only for the reason that we were soldiers and had to follow our obligations.'
ALBERT SPEER
Berlin was, in April 1945, more ruins than a town, one could find almost no building which was still intact. And in the middle of it was the old Philharmonic building, well-represented building before the war, which had quite a history of musical events, and this was destroyed too. It was my wish to help the Philharmonic having a concert, I knew it would be my last concert for a long time, perhaps for ever. I invited friends and as much people as possible to go in; we were sitting there in our coats, because there was no heating, it was cold, it was shivering and in this atmosphere of destruction and misery the concert started. I made the programme and we started. Afterwards there were some other pieces of Beethoven, but when I came back from this concert to the Chancellery, very great news, now everything shall turn to the better. I didn't know what it was, Hitler was almost out of his mind and Goebbels was already there, and Hitler showed us the death of Roosevelt and Goebbels was jumping up and saying, 'That's it, that's it.' I was realistic enough, as I proved with my memoirs, that I thought the situation properly, at least in the last month of the war. But those groups around Hitler was unbelievable: they had that was no more rational thinking and they were just convinced that everything will go in the right way and each one was convincing the other one if they went low in spirit. And Hitler was the same, but also sometimes changing his mind from one second to the other.
GENERAL WARLIMONT
I did not stay in Berlin at the time, I flew down to Munich on an aeroplane so I had no impression of the conditions of Berlin itself. I couldn't have overlooked the destruction but I don't think it made any deeper impression on me because I was so sick at that time, I had a concussion of the brains after the 20th July plot. The strongest impression on the German people at that time was still growing demands of the war on almost everybody, so the oldest men were called to go and the youngest ones at the age of fifteen or sixteen years to the Hitler Youth, so it was clear to everybody that there was nothing to be gained any more. The same with the lack of everything from the daily life and those insane orders of Hitler to destroy the water and electricity on which even the plain life of the people had to be sustained. I had only one desire, that the Western Powers might come in earlier than the Russians, because the behaviour of the Russian troops was beyond any imagination in East Prussia.
GENERAL ANTONOV
On 20th April we reached the outer ring road of Berlin and then we fought in Berlin. 301st Division was there. In the evening we stormed the town of Altlandsberg on the outskirts of Berlin, everyone now knew that the Byelorussian troops, including the Fifth Army had reached Berlin. On 23rd morning, members of the Military Council came to me, gave me the task of taking Karlshorst, and to force the Spree. We prepared the artillery and the tanks, we didn't know that Karlshorst would be an historical place where the declaration for capitulation would be signed, we paid more attention to the forcing of Spree. At 1700 our division forced the reach of the Spree by a race on boats. 24th – a very serious counter-attack on the centre of Berlin, the Germans prepared themselves between the Spree and the Landwehr canal, bombed the bridges. 1 have photos of those bridges, of the Germans in counter-attack, of our people in Treptow Park, how they stormed buildings and barricades across the roads. 27th – we occupied Allianz Square and station and turned towards Gestapo and Ministry of Aviation buildings and the Chancellery; along Wilhelmstrasse and Saarland Strasse there were troops to our left and right. The ring was closing in on the outskirts of Berlin and in the very centre we were getting nearer and nearer to the centre of Hitler's HQ – the Chancellery.
ALBERT SPEER
The situation in the bunker was a fantastic one, an unrealistic one, one can't really describe how the moods went on and off like waves. Sometimes they were all exhilarating, and were thinking well now, with the Western troops coming for the release of Berlin. Goebbels was exclaiming one of the biggest decisions Hitler just made, he is now determined no more to fight against the West, only to the East in Berlin and this will mean the Western powers will join us in our fight against Russia. And then a few minutes afterwards everybody was speaking about suicide and how they are preparing it. Goebbels in some detail of course, saying how he will let his children killed, which were already in the bunker, so one didn't really get a picture which is one sided. It was really a troubled picture I got from this visit. One of the odd things in this last period was those who were in power were still fighting for their power and mainly Bormann was seeing a chance for himself. When Goring was teletyping a message to Hitler and said if he was not contradicting him, he takes over power because obviously Hitler, now encircled in Berlin by the Russian troops, and is no more able at act properly, Bormann made a double meaning to this message. It was quite harmless, it was not such a treachery as Bormann was telling Hitler, but Hitler immediately went in rage and he stripped Goring of all his power and Bormann was triumphant. He was now, it was the peak of his whole career – Himmler was out of the game, now Goring was out of the game, Bormann was the second.
GERTRUD 'TRAUDL' JUNGE
Member of Hitler's stenographer pool
He stood at the table with motionless, expressionless face and his hands on the table board and then he began, 'My Last Will'. Then he dictated me at first his private will and then his political testimony. I must confess that I was at first in a very excited mood because I expected that I would be the first and only one who knows, who is going to know the explanation and declaration why the war had come to this end and why Hitler couldn't stop and why the developments and why the catastrophe. I thought now will come the moment of truth and I was heart thumping when I wrote down what Hitler said. He used nothing new, he came out with old phrases. He repeated his accusations, his revenge swearing to the enemy and to the Jewish capitalist system, and then he announced – in the second part of the political testament – he announced a new government. And then I was like banged on the head because an hour before he had said, 'All is gone, there will be no National Socialist idea any more. Germany is totally destroyed, the people are totally exhausted, there will be no further life in German – in German in the old sense.' And so it was a total contradiction to his own words. Then I finished and I went out and he urged me, 'Please hurry up, to write it in typewriting. Bring it to my room and then join us, I have married Eva Braun meanwhile.' It was another news for me which me very much surprised. I was not prepared for that because I could not think what would be the use of this act, only to die as a wife.
ALBERT SPEER
A few weeks earlier I tried to persuade Eva Braun to go back to Munich but she said, 'No, I stay, I want to go to the end with Hitler,' and when I saw her again in the bunker, the 23rd April, I was together with her, she was the best behaving of the whole entourage, leaving all the men far behind her concerning superiority above the situation. She was not mocking the situation, but she had worked out that she will now go to die with Hitler and possibly this was in some way the peak of her life, to die with the man she loved.
TRAUDL JUNGE
An orderly said, 'Come to Hitler, come to the Führer, he wants to say farewell,' He came towards me and his face was already dead, it was like a mask. He looked at me but I had the feeling that he looked through me and he gave me a shake of my hand and he murmured something but I didn't understand, I had not understand what he said at the last. But Eva Braun who stood beside him and who shook hands to all the others embraced me very heartily and looked at me with a sad little smile and said, 'Please try to get out of here, please try to come to Munich again and give my regards to my beloved Bavaria.' And then she and Hitler shut the door and retired. I had an absolute need for fleeing and I fled these stairs upside the next level and there I found the children of Goebbels. They were totally forgotten, nobody had cared for them and I tried to hold them back, that they wouldn't go down in the other part and be witness to what was happening there. And so I took a book and read them a fairy tale and gave them some fruit. We had a conversation and I was with one ear always hearing for what happened. And suddenly there was a bang, there was a shot and it was obviously within the bunker. The little boy of Goebbels, he noticed, and he noticed there was another sound. He said, 'Oh, that was a bullseye, that was a bullseye.' And I thought, Yes, you are right, that was really a bullseye, and I knew that was the shot that made an end with Hitler and with the National Socialist era and probably with us all.
ALBERT SPEER
Now I was in the middle of the Chancellery, which I had built in 1938. I wanted to see the whole building for the last time, and I went through the Chancellery, through the courtyard, and it was a dark night, but knowing my building so well I could, with my imagination, glimpse every detail of it. This was a farewell to maybe my life's work and the plane was already awaiting me in the big avenue leading to it. It was small, one engine and it was early in the morning. We started, just the pilot and me, the start was a difficult one because this avenue on both sides with high trees and we had to get very quick up in the air to avoid the column of victory standing in the middle of the avenue, and we just passed it. Being a little higher we were conscious the plane was only for daylight action and was always lighted up by the explosions of the engine. We feel very uncomfortable with it, mainly because what we were seeing was all buildings being in fire and shells exploding and gunfire, and only there was one spot in the west where there was absolute darkness. It was a very small spot and we knew that the Russians didn't close their circle yet, and this was our direction.
GRAND ADMIRAL KARL DÖNITZ
Head of State May 1945
When I got the telegram from the headquarters of Hitler, I knew that now I was Chief of the German State. But I knew too that Himmler had opinion that he had the biggest chance to be the successor of Hitler and that's why I thought to be necessary that I spoke to Himmler at once because this man was still powerful, and in the country I had no power at all because the Navy was swimming on the water and he got my demands that he at once had to come to me, but he answered the telephone that it was not possible for him to come. And then I let him see that it was necessary that he had to come and then he came. I didn't know what would be the end of this discussion, it was a question and that's why I put under a piece of paper my revolver on the table. He was sitting down and I gave him the telegram which I have got and which it was said that I am the Chief of State. When he had read the telegram, he got pale and he stood up and bowed and told me please let me be the second man in your state. Then I told him that I have no position at all for him in my state, then he was not content. He spoke against that but he had no success, I didn't change my opinion from that time of discussion. Then I stood up and he had to go, and he went home and I was very glad that the end of the discussion with Himmler was like that because I had the feeling that he wouldn't do anything against me.
GENERAL ANTONOV
The soldiers and officers fought in the Chancellery, Captain Shipavalov's battalion heroic fight with the SS. The heroic woman Major Nikulina [a political worker] together with some officers managed to get on to the roof and ordered the Fascist coat of arms that was there to be taken. Also they took out Hitler's own standard and showed it to me. Marshal Zhukov came and asked where is Hitler? I answered that he had not been found yet, but Goebbels had been found. In the evening the soldiers found two bodies near the bunker, since it was dark I ordered that they should be guarded and strict patrol kept. In the morning representatives of the Commission of the Command came, including an interpreter Elena Rzhevskaya. They took the bodies and examined them and within two weeks they established that they really were Hitler and Eva Braun. That's how the war in Berlin finished for us.
DR FAUST SHKAVRAVSKI
Soviet pathologist
The bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned very much, especially Eva Braun's body. Hitler was less burned but nevertheless one could not say who he was by his looks. His hands and lower legs were totally burned off, the body was very dark, like coal. Part of the cranium just was not there, only some small bits of bone were visible. We looked for other things such as metal inserts or pathological changes – for instance in Goebbel's case, one leg was shorter than the other. In Hitler's case the teeth were important; the thing about Hitler's mouth was that it was filled with what looked like more than a hundred grams of gold. Quite extraordinary. In front of his teeth was a gold band about as thick as a pencil. Hitler had – can't remember exactly, but I think – five of his own teeth, three artificial silicate teeth, which were attached to small pins on a golden base. The rest were all gold teeth. They were very unusual teeth and were therefore very important in the identification of the body.
CHRISTA RONKE
Berlin schoolgirl
We hoped the US Army would come earlier to Berlin than the Russians, but then we heard the Russian artillery coming nearer and nearer and suddenly we saw the first Russian soldiers. They knocked at our door, came in and said if there were German soldiers in the house and asked for weapons. And then they left, but the next Russians were quite different. One of them raped me and other inhabitants of the house. After this my mother and I thought over how to change. My mother changed into an old, ugly woman and I changed into an ugly, sick child. I cut my hair and had a tooth lost here – I looked very ugly. And I was lying in bed when the next Russians came and my mother always said this word, that should be in Polish or in Russian 'sick child', when the Russians returned. Even one Russian soldier felt pity and gave me a piece of bread.
FRIEDRICH LUFT
Berlin civilian
It sounds quite blasphemous but we were lucky having two dead bodies of two women who were living next door. They were killed when we were shelled during the last days of the war and we brought them down and we weren't able to bury them because the shelling was still going on so we put them on the grass here and covered them up with two big carpets. Then we went back into our house again and when the Russians came along and they asked us where are your women, we want to have your women, 'Frau, Frau' they said in German or what they called German, I found the trick to take them to these two dead bodies. I opened the carpet and said, 'This is my Frau here, I can't supply you with any women, these are the only women here.' And the Russians kneeled down, some of them, and made the cross and said little prayers, which was astounding, and got up again and kissed me because they thought I was a widower and gave me presents, gave me cigarettes, gave me bread, clapped me on the shoulder and went off again and got what they wanted probably the next house or on the next street. These were things which happened in those days.
GRAND ADMIRAL DÖNITZ
Now I was Chief of State the programme which I had was clear. I was to end the war as soon as possible and still in this time to save as many people as possible. I wished to help the population of the German eastern provinces who were escaping on land and on the Baltic Sea to the western part of Germany with all means which I could. All warships of the Germany Navy and all German merchant ships which I had were sent to the eastern German ports to fetch these poor fleeing people. I did not want to be obliged to sign a general capitulation including Russia at once, but intended to try to get the first capitulation only with the British and the Americans to win time for the retreat of the German soldiers and population from east to west. The British enemy under the command of Field Marshal Montgomery we got a partial capitulation on 5 May 1945, but General Eisenhower did not agree to my demand for capitulation only with the Americans and he required that Germany capitulate at once to Russia. Eisenhower at least agreed that we got a further period of forty-eight hours before the capitulation was enforced. We did everything to use these forty-eight hours to get the soldiers and the fleeing population to the west. In the Baltic Sea all ships were running without delay, saving wounded soldiers and other soldiers and fleeing civilians. We could bring over the Baltic Sea in the last months of the war two to three million men, the number of fleeing people who saved themselves on land amounted to millions too, and from the military front in the east we could bring 1,850,000 soldiers into the west of Germany. But still 1,490,000 soldiers became Russian prisoners.
CHRISTA RONKE
We went westward some miles and there was shooting and bombing and then suddenly we saw a German soldier coming down from a tree. He didn't know what had happened and we told him to get off his uniform and another minute we saw three German soldiers hanging on a tree – I think they had deserted. And then we stopped at a big villa where some people had done suicides and we lived in the cellar there.
LIEUTENANT J GLENN GRAY
US Army Intelligence
Being a conqueror seems very dubious to me but at the time it seemed quite right, we were convinced of our virtue and of German vice and it was very pleasing. Unfortunately the innocent were in the same position as the guilty. I didn't feel unhappy at all about having to interrogate and arrest Gestapo or even some worse characters, the so-called Security Service people. But totally innocent people were also humiliated in the same way as the guilty. I feel today that this kind of total victory, unconditional surrender, was probably a huge mistake, and we learned the wrong lessons from it, as our recent experience in Vietnam seems to prove. After the war when I became a civilian I began to feel that being a conqueror, a total victor, is quite bad for both and perhaps worst for the victor because he feels unduly virtuous, and I think that conviction has steadily grown since World War Two. We haven't won a war, we haven't lost a war either. If we have to have wars I would sooner see them inconclusive than end with total victory or defeat. It's a harder lesson to learn but perhaps better for the character of both nations.
LIEUTENANT FELIX PUTTERMAN
US Army Civilian Affairs
I would immediately identify myself to all the Germans, to indicate that I was Jewish and that I was not interested in their personal problems, that I was only interested in the services they could provide to keep our troops living at as high a standard of living as possible in a bombed-out community. Most of the troops at first were rather cold but then they began to warm up to the Germans. They found they had much in common with the Germans; the German standard of living was most akin to that of the American troops back home. As a consequence, because they seemed to be cleaner than the other people on the Continent, and for that matter even in the UK, the American troops began to feel that these were really people who lived the same way Americans did and that we had some philosophical differences during the war but in close day-to-day living it was certainly nothing that was dwelt upon in any seriousness.
URSULA GRAY
Refugee from Dresden who later married author J Glenn Gray
We got away by pretending we were French and they didn't touch anybody but German girls. Once I almost made a mistake because the Russians were just like children, they would go into a farmhouse, take everything the farmer possessed and then go out and throw it to other people, all the silver and all the linen. They saw my sister and me with a French tricolour on our bicycles and they threw silver spoons to us. I said danke in German instead of merci beaucoup and my sister was frightened because she thought now they knew we were not French and they're going to rape us. But they were so happy, so drunk, so child-like they didn't pay attention. So we were not raped, we were not attacked but it's just by sheer accident. I know many of my friends were raped and were pretty badly damaged to their souls and bodies.
LIEUTENANT GRAY
Very close to the end of the war I had a requisition, a very lovely home in the centre of Germany because I knew German. I was always given the unpleasant task of throwing out civilians for our troops and of course I promised them that they would get their own home back. These were not battle-hardened soldiers or officers whom I would have been sympathetic with, these were fresh troops. They drank themselves pretty senseless and began to shoot up the house, I had a great temptation to hold them up with my gun but they were so drunk that I feared they would shoot me. They made a total shambles of the house. I had to break my promise to the German civilians, who were probably no more Nazis than I was. This kind of thing was particularly disillusioning because a lot of our soldiers were wounded, our President was dead, and these colonels were pretending to be playing at war when they hadn't any justification, any real need for a holiday. A kind of corruption of military life which soured me. I still remember it with great anger.
LIEUTENANT PUTTERMAN
Some woman came to me to try to offer me her own services, although she was trying to paint it was something else. I looked at her and I was feeling particularly mean that day – my father was sick and the Red Cross had just told me that my younger brother-in-law had been killed in Germany – and I was about ready to tear anyone apart anyway with my own two hands. I said, in desperation, 'Look, don't bother me – you know you're dealing with a Jew, you don't want to have anything to do with me.' And she looked at me and she said, 'But you are a white Jew.'