When Americans Arrived In Munich I Realized We Had No Chance (Ep.9)

(Memoirs of a German King Tiger Panzer Commander, Part 9, Last Part ) Watch our video” When Americans Arrived In Munich I Realized We Had No Chance (Ep.9), Last Episode” and Dive deep into the epic saga of World War Two with ‘WW2 Tales,’ where we explore the journey of a legendary panzer commander. Experience the raw intensity of Operation Barbarossa, the grueling confrontations in Normandy, and the strategic standoffs in Hungary through the lens of a master of armored warfare. Follow the evolution from the front lines in a Pz.Mk.III to commanding the fearsome Tiger and King Tiger tanks, the zenith of heavy armor in the conflict. With only four hundred eighty nine King Tigers ever built, their preservation was paramount, leading to extraordinary recovery missions under fire. This series brings to life the strategies, trials, and human spirit within the mechanized heart of the war. Discover the intricate details of tank operations, the challenges of battlefield tactics, and the undying resilience of soldiers fighting on the front lines.
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On 26 April the patients were given the choice of remaining at the hospital until the Americans arrived or being released at once to the location of one’s choice. I elected for the latter. I thought that Tegernsee would be a bit more lively than along the Inn and requested transfer

To a hospital there since the wound still required attention. I didn’t know then that my Aunt Britta was at Rottach on Tegernsee but I was aware that the Boschhof with my cousin Brittchen Erlacher must be somewhere near. Iwas given my documents, medical records and rations for the journey and after hanging

My pack on my belt I left. Public transport had been suspended, no trains or buses, so I had to hitch-hike. There were many Wehrmacht vehicles about, however, and so I had no problem getting a ride but lacking a map I landed up at Brannenburg on the Austrian border towards midday, not

What I had hoped for. While awaiting another lift I met some Frenchmen from the French Legion who had volunteered to fight for the Germans who were not sure where they should be. Poor lads, they really had backed the wrong horse. That evening I got to Tegernsee, a glorious spot.

Nature undisturbed, unwrecked!I reported to the main military hospital and was directed to a former boarding house, the ‘Bayernheim’, now an auxiliary hospital. Half the patients were officers and I shared a triple room with two junior lieutenants. I took two days’ leave and hitch-hiked to my cousin Erlacher on the Boschof at Beuerberg.

There I also found my Aunt Lilly from Karlsruhe and through her I received the first recent news about my parents at Rastatt. Next morning I was awoken by my relatives at 0600hrs and informed with excitement that a certain Hauptmann Gerngross had carried out a putsch in Munich with the intention

Of surrendering the city to the Americans without a fight. The putsch had been quickly put down but then, on the Boschhof at any rate, there was great anxiety about the future consequences. As a member of the Wehrmacht I had to make myself scarce as quickly as possible and so

I hitchhiked back to Tegernsee. On the Boschhof I had been told that Aunt Britta was in Rottach and Uncle Kurt at Schloss Tegernsee which had been converted into an overspill hospital. I visited him that same afternoon. The wound he had received at the Front in 1915 broke out again occasionally and now

He lay with nine other men in a large, fairly miserable ward and was surprised and pleased to see me, cordial and kinsmanlike. We exchanged news and before I left he telephoned Aunt Britta at Rohrach: ‘Do you know who is here with me? Richard!’

Aunt Britta’s own son Richard was a medical officer with the troops in Kurland and she had not heard from him for a long time. As can be imagined, the correction of this dreadful misunderstanding was awkward. Next day, a Sunday, I accompanied Uncle Kurt to visit her.

It wasa glorious spring day with many people like ourselves taking a promenade on the shores of the lake. Everybody was expecting peace and the faces, at least in this peaceful setting, were hopeful. It was very pleasant to have re-established contact with the family.

Aunt Britta was just the same as always and seemed to have got over yesterday’s upset. Then the war overtook us again, and on 30 April the Americans arrived in Munich and were expected at Tegernsee any day. They advised their presence with some mortar fire which landed in St Quirin, therefore close by.

From our balcony we saw Sherman tanks advancing very slowly and cautiously along the lakeside road towards Wiessee although there was no German opposition. We had binoculars and gave a running commentary on this show. That morning I wrapped my pistol in oily rags and dug a hole for it below an imposing tree

So that I could retrieve it later. Probably it is still there today. Towards evening it was rumoured that the Americans werealready in Tegernsee. Next morning we were all ordered to our rooms and an American doctor went with our senior surgeon from room to room and had the individual cases explained to him.

An American soldier was posted at the ground-floor entrance to the hospital and we were prohibited from leaving, and no more visits by relatives were possible. A German soldier from Alsace was taken off and appeared two days later wearing French uniform.

I gave him a letter for my parents in the hope he could deliver it in the French-occupied zone, but it never arrived. On 8 May 1945 the military capitulation came into force. It had been expected for days since it was inevitable.

No more war, though not yet quite peace, but no air raids, no shooting, no deaths and no new mutilations. Now we had the prospect of life without fighting, without danger, and perhaps one day peace would really come.

Tegernsee was lit up again in the evening and it was bright around us after the years of blackout to which we had grown accustomed. But there was mourning for the many who would not experience this day, and worries about one’s comrades-in-arms also increased. Which of them had come through it?

Were they all now in Russian captivity? Would one ever see them again?I now spent much time with Major Hannibal von Lüttichau and an Oberleutnant von Linden from the Foreign Office. The days confined in the hospital were long, and we often played skat or poker. The three of us discussed things a lot.

I found it heavy going having to condemn what was past day after day. Suddenly everything here was no longer German but ‘Bavarian’. I did not like that at all. Linden, who had contacts and wanted to enter the Bavarian administration, called me the ‘bronze rock’.

The nurses were no longer from the German, but the Bavarian Red Cross. There were still no newspapers and the radio was in the hands of the American military. Much of what we heard was considered to be propaganda. We still knew next to nothing of the dreadful things which had accompanied the war.

Of the Holocaust and the extent of the concentration camps we, at least, had no knowledge and when we discovered the facts found them at first so unbelievable that it needed time before we could open our eyes to these horrific scenes.

Our time was fully taken up by what lay ahead, what plans had to be made and taken in hand for the future. Before, the military had done one’s thinking for one to a certain extent, but now one had to think for oneself and was responsible for oneself.

In mid-June everybody was interrogated by American officers, most of whom were German Jews. Family, occupation, membership of Party organizations, time as a soldier, etc. were asked. The interrogators knew the German circumstances exceedingly well, and so their questions were precise and one had to answer exactly.

I was required to take off the big bandage from my left arm to prove that I did not have my blood group tattooed under my armpit as was done in the SS. It was all finished on 25 June and, so far as medically possible, everybody was discharged.

In the morning at 0800hrs we had to fall in in front of the main hospital at Tegernsee in order of rank, then the names were read out quickly and each individual had to step forward to receive his certificate of discharge. It gave him his freedom and he could go home.

The ceremony ended and five men were still standing there, myself amongst them. We had no idea why we had not received our discharge papers and were very disappointed. Then two jeeps drew up and we were told to get in. We were taken to a giant prison camp at Bad Aibling.

It consisted of some administrative barrack huts, otherwise only large pens to hold 200 to 300 prisoners each, without any protection against the weather and surrounded by barbed wire. There was no grass, the ground was trampled underfoot, soft and muddy.

Once in the camp we were ordered to remove the national insignia, shoulder straps and collar patches from caps and jackets. Now one was just prisoner ‘XY’. The food was a miserable offering of very watery cabbage soup with specks of fat.

For the night one sought somewhere dry: there was no blanket, only the clothes one stood up in. The days were not summery June and warm, the weather was unseasonal and it rained a lot. I met Unteroffizier Gramlich from my company. He had been here several days and knew the drill.

He could not tell me anything about the company, which he had left some time before, for he had been scooped up in the campaign known as Heldenklau (clawing-up heroes – selecting men off the street as fit for the front) and was to have become an infantryman.

How he finished up at Aibling I cannot remember. Now came the same interrogation as I had already gone through at Tegernsee. This one was more impersonal and unpleasant, but I got my discharge certificate. Meanwhile those who lived in the zone of French occupation were separated out and next day,

My 23rd birthday, loaded on a Dodge lorry and taken off. Our driver wanted to talk and asked who spoke English. I joined him in the cab to show him the way to Tuttlingen in the French zone. On the way we passed through Munich. The destruction was indescribable.

Some burnt-out ruins were still standing but then we came to blocks of streets where everything had been razed to the ground left and right of us and great mountains of rubble stood either side of the thoroughfare. Where were the people who had once lived here? We saw few of them on the street.

It would be generations before it could all be rebuilt. Then we came to districts where the trams were still running: the destruction on the outskirts of the city was less, but it still looked appalling. Our route went through the countryside, past neat undamaged villages and small towns in

Which life seemed to be normal. About 1700hrs we arrived at Tuttlingen. I enquired the way to the camp. ‘Make sure they don’t keep you there! Every day transports leave here for France.’ That was all we needed, to stay prisoners, and prisoners of the French, to boot.

It seemed to us laughable that the French considered themselves one of the victorious nations: after all they had declared war on us and we had overwhelmed them totally in less than two months. This and similar thoughts ran through my mind as we came to the French prison camp.

Our driver accompanied us to the barrack hut where our papers were examined and the French endorsement stamped on them. This served at the same time as an authority to proceed to one’s hometown, without it one could not leave for one’s home address.

When we had all been processed and returned to the lorry, our kind driver said that next day he would be driving back via Stuttgart: if anyone wanted to go there with him they were welcome aboard. Departure was at 0900hrs. That was wonderful for me, for connections from Tuttlingen into the Rhine Valley were

Very troublesome and I hoped that from Stuttgart I would be able to take a train. We looked for somewhere tospend the night, Caritas or the camp of a similar charity. It was my first night of freedom, my first night as a civilian, for now I was no longer a prisoner of war.

We were also warned here if possible not to show ourselves in the city: the French couldn’t be trusted, they just kidnapped people off the street at will. What I saw of their military at Tuttlingen did not inspire much confidence either.

Next morning, a Sunday, our lorry arrived at 0900hrs on the dot and took us to Stuttgart. We were set down at the last tram stop and we took our leave of our driver, who had been so helpful and friendly to us, with much thanks.

I had the impression that he had sympathy for us. I can’t remember in which suburb of Stuttgart we found ourselves. We stood around rather lost in a church forecourt, the bells rang and the people left mass. They were all dressed in their Sunday best and in holiday mood.

We discharged soldiers must have made a pitiful impression. People came up to us, spoke and invited us to their houses. In a few minutes we were all amongst friendly people sharing their Sunday lunch with us. They gave us good advice: ‘Don’t take the tram through Stuttgart.

At the Schlossplatz junction they take off anyone who looks like a former soldier. They do just what they like and we have no rights. Take the train the long way around the city to Zuffenhausen. The railway stations are still in American hands and the French can’t touch you there.’

I followed this advice, got to Zuffenhausen without a problem and had to wait on the station platform for several hours until a goods train left for Karlsruhe. We arrived there at midnight, not at the main station but at Karlsruhe-West. There was curfew from 2200hrs, therefore we had to stay at the station.

I curled up and slept with many others in a goods yard. Tomorrow I would definitely be home!As early as allowed I walked across the city to the main station to ask about trains. The next train for Rastatt would not be leaving until the afternoon.

I strolled around the streets: even here there was much destruction but Munich looked a lot worse. The Americans were in Karlsruhe, so one could move about without fear. The border between the US and French zones of occupation ran through Durmersheim between Karlsruhe and Rastatt.

It was a proper border with barriers across the street and checkpoints. The passenger train left for Rastatt at 1700hrs. When Iwent through the ticket barrier there I asked the railway official how things were in Sibyllen-Strasse. ‘Everything is still standing,’ was the comforting answer.

I crossed the rail installations, the Ludwig Wilhelm-Strasse and then turned into our Sibyllen-Strasse. It was an indescribable feeling, this return home, after everything that lay behind me. I recognized my Mama from afar, shopping for the evening meal at the Kolonialwaren store and she came towards me. How tired she looked.

Then she recognized me and we hurried to meet: ‘Son, I can’t believe you’re back home!’I cannot describe how moving this moment was. Mama took me by the hand, we went through the house and garden to the rear gate. ‘Erich, Richard is home!’

She called out as we went up to the veranda and Papa– I can still see this clearly – jumped up and unable to speak came down to me. His face lit up, a rare occurence after years of worry, difficulties and humiliation.

How thankful I was to be back home with my parents, knowing at last that they had also survived. Listening these lines, the listener can perhaps empathise with my feelings of happiness. That beautiful July evening we sat for hours on the veranda, looking out over our blossoming garden.

I could hardly believe that I was home again, no longer having to go back to the Front, seeing my parents alive, if visibly older and careworn. How many were denied this pleasure. Even my parents had come to life again.

Their greatest worry, how and whether I would get through the last months of the war and the capitulation, had been shed. I was back home, if with a mutilated arm, but otherwise hale and hearty, determined to let nothing get me down.

There was so much to tell, for so much had happened in the time in which we were out of touch. The last letter my parents had received was sent shortly before the operation at the river Gran in mid-February 1945, therefore a few days before my last wound.

None of my letters written during my time in military hospital, given to various messengers, had arrived. There had been no proper postal service for months. My first question was about my brother and sisters. At the Russian advance, Wuller had fled from Dresden to Oberbärenburg and married Ruth von Quast there.

That he had survived the horrific bombing raids on Dresden I had found out while in Hungary. Aja was in Sweden: there was no news from her but we believed she would be safe in a neutral country. At that time we did not know that she had been interned and deported.

Elisabeth was working as a nursing assistant in a military hospital at Baden-Baden and was happy to be of service in this way. She had finished her schooling at Spetzgart. This wasall good news. But on the other hand my mother’s brother, Uncle Willy Seidlitz, had been killed at Eisernach

On 31 March 1945 in a fighter-bomber attack, and my mother’s elder sister Aunt Mary Schöne, after losing Bernhard, had also lost Konrad and Gottfried in the last months of the war. Three sons fallen, how could one bear that? Oskar von Löwies had also fallen, my brother-in-law to whom I owed so many thanks.

It had been in September 1944 that I had last spent a day at home. Up to that time Rastatt had still been spared air raids, but soon afterwards in the autumn of 1944 the Allies’ Western Front moved up rapidly.

Strasbourg fell in November and heavy fighting raged along the western banks of the Rhine in Alsace from December. The Front ran along the Rhine and was thus only about 10km from Rastatt which became a front-line town. The first air raid did severe damage to the area around the railway station and the town

Came frequently under enemy artillery fire. My parents had left the house in Sibyllen-Strasse unattended and found shelter at Schloss Rotenfels. They took all they could carry on bicycles, leaving everything else behind. Nobody could predict that this situation would last into the spring of 1945.

At first my parents could cycle to and from home to collect valuable items from the cellar and return with a rucksack-full. Papa compared himself to a man on an island whose wrecked ship lay offshore but could be reached on the ebb tide.

Later German soldiers were billeted in the house and then in March came the French occupation. Initially my parents dared not venture to Rastatt to look after things. Besides plundering troops with loose trigger fingers, whole gangs of displaced persons released from camps, mostly Poles and Russians, roamed the district making everybody uneasy.

The great Rastatt hospital had to be cleared out for them; they set up in it and made it the base for their criminal operations. When my parents returned to Sibyllen-Strasse for the first time they found the house still standing but all ground-floor windows broken.

Inside it looked as though a hurricane had hit it. Instead of using the toilets these vandals defecated in the rooms or the drawers of the furniture. There were some art connoisseurs amongst them, however, for several of the valuable Impressionist

Paintings, the fine bronze statuettes by Meunier, porcelain from Reval and the old family silver not locked in the two house safes hadbeen stolen or destroyed. Papa told me that he had thought the house could not be made habitable again but Mama

Got to work on it and gradually every room was cleaned and cleared out. Missing items of furniture such as the sofa and chairs had found their way into other neighbourhood houses, carried there by soldiers. Gradually life began to get back to normal.

There were no longer any German authorities, the rule of law was in the hands of the occupying troops. The French had installed a mayor, an old Communist, who had survived the Nazi period and had now set up a kind of town council with others of like mind.

Lord of the town was a French colonel given the title of Military Governor. The real lord of the manor was a small lieutenant from Alsace by the name of Schaefer, head of the Sûreté Nationale. He exercised police powers and his German informers supplied him at his HQ, the Villa

Mayer, with persons to be interrogated and often tortured. Rastatt was in the hands of French and German Communists and many personal scores were settled. There was no German jurisdiction and not until December 1945 was the establishment of an Inferior Court permitted. Until then my Papa was unemployed.

Just as well that it was summer and one could live on the veranda or in the garden, needed no heating and had the produce from the garden. In the French-occupied zone, food rationing was particularly harsh, only 800 calories per day being allotted.

Food production and trade in the Rastatt area had collapsed totally and long queues waited outside shops. There was no bread or potatoes. In summer it could be tolerated but what when winter came? Papa once wrote to an acquaintance: Healthwise we are not badly off, but we have in prospect

An evil winter since we can only heat one room and as regards food we are staring famine in the face. I am in the same situation as yourself and others, and my memory fails me. My eyes are suffering from the poor rations lacking any fats.

I cannot see anywhere any prospect, no matter how remote, that we old people will know better times. On the contrary, it will get worse. An incapable government at the head, and the prevalent will to crush us underfoot on the part of the occupation forces, of whom the most hated are the French.

At first I was just happy to have my own bed in my own room. I still had no thoughts about the future and how I could make a new life for myself as a civilian not under military compulsion, in a civilian occupation.

I washappy that I had the last five years behind me with good conduct, but the fate that might have befallen my comrades caused me great unease. On the first morning home I awoke early. The sun shone into my room, I went to the window and drank in the old familiar surroundings.

Here there was no destruction, here everything seemed peaceful, everything was unchanged and remained just as I remembered it. My first problem was what to wear. The old clothes I still had no longer fitted. Until my call-up I had worn short trousers.

Then I found something or other: shirt and trousers sufficed, it was still summer after all. I had no shoes, though. I went with Papa to Bernhard the glazier. Each of us carried a leaf of casement window: they were very heavy.

Window glass was unobtainable, but a substitute was so-called wire glass, thin glass on a wire fabric which could be rolled but was not very stable. Even this was scarce so that there was little point in making window frames, and the existing frames we boarded over with plywood.

For the immediate future I would have enough to do keeping the house wind-proof, but I at least could relieve Papa of the heavy physical work. I still carried my wounded left arm in a sling: the wound had not healed and was still suppurating small bone splinters.

Every day I went to have it re-bandaged at our old fortress prison, converted into a civilian outpatients’ department after the hospital would no longer treat Germans. I met some old acquaintances from school and the Jungvolk. It was appalling to learn how many had fallen in the last months of the war.

Many of my good friends would never be coming home. When I came across their parents I almost had a bad conscience that I had come though it almost unscathed. On the first day a French officer stopped me in the street to check my discharge certificate.

As a former active officer I had had to register at the office of the local commandant and report every Saturday morning. I was forbidden to leave Rastatt. There were numerous minor irritants. For example, you had to step down from the pavement into the road if a French officer

Came towards you, and doff your cap in salute. Or: before the town halls of the smaller communities, flagpoles were set up with the French tricolour, likewise as you went past one you had to doff your cap as a salute to the flag.

One day Papa cycled through one of these Rhine villages inorder to collect something from a fisherman and he failed to salute the tricolour in front of the town hall. A French sentry stopped him, he had to dismount, go back and walk past the flagpole cap in hand.

The French were a laughing stock, but it was humiliating all the same. The French had loudspeaker vans drive through the streets of the town to announce the latest regulations instigated by the Military Governor. Yesterday all sewing machines had to be placed on the doorstep at 0800hrs, a couple of days

Previously all thigh- or riding boots had to be handed in. All radios had been confiscated in the first days of the occupation. Ours had been taken, but it was no great loss. It only broadcast the French occupation news which nobody believed anyway.

We still had no newspapers: it would be still some time before the occupation force issued the necessary licences. Thus we remained without news as in other occupied zones of Germany and fixated on our intimate circle. Naturally the aversion to the French occupying force grew constantly.

Drunk with the arrogance of their ‘victory’ and hate-filled intention to humiliate us, every sensation of liberation was suffocated. But now the by-word came to be: caught together, be hanged together. We learned constantly and at every turn that the will of the French ‘victors’ was not

Pacification but collective punishment, the repression and dismantling of Germany. From the very beginning what we experienced was not liberation but defeat, total and our own fault. We had had no illusions but whoever dreamt of ethics, morality and a reformed way of living was soon disappointed.

Destruction, hunger, hopelessness, four million dead, ten million prisoners and missing: all laws, lawful claims and contracts without validity. Nobody was spared it, we all had to bear the consequences. But there had been much more destroyed: the desertion of so many who had been ‘Volksgenossen

Und Volksgenossinnen’ – a National Socialist term for all male and female members of the Volk and Blood. One now experienced denunciations, originating from a desire for revenge against colleagues, neighbours, supervisors and ‘the rich’ – an indescribable degeneration of the spirit. It was all the foreplay for the denazification process which followed it.

In the French Zone it was mostly the Communists who settled old scores against ‘the class enemy’ going back to 1919 and on through theNazi years. The French occupation force was also thoroughly infiltrated by Communists. The troops here were mostly newly formed units made up of former Resistance fighters into

Whose ranks the French Communist Party had placed a large number of its adherents. Thus it was not surprising that the German Communists, and all who now claimed to be so, received special treatment. All this bore down heavily on the people in such a small town as Rastatt.

Nevertheless the revival began: gallows humour, plans and a wish for culture. A good book, good music after long deprivation, a good sermon – one longed for them. Life then consisted of barter and improvisation. Black markets developed in which mainly displaced persons offered food and other luxuries not to be found in the shops.

Gradually one felt that this immediate post-war period was almost passably tolerable so long as one kept hoping for improvement. The hand of the French occupation authoritylay on all our everyday affairs, and soon we saw that their uniforms and vehicles merely replaced the ‘golden pheasants’[TN: slang term

For the brown-uniformed Party officials] of the Nazis. I had been home three weeks when one morning the loudspeaker vans drove through the streets. Interspersed between French marches the following order was broadcast: All former soldiers had to report the day after tomorrow for registration at Camp Malschbach near Baden-Baden bringing

Their release certificate, rations for two days and a blanket. This set the alarm bells ringing as far as I was concerned. We had often seen how the French kidnapped released prisoners of war from the streets and deported them to France. Here there were no rights and no law.

The purpose of this new French registration was not clear but some underhand business was suspected. I had a short talk with my parents and we were all agreed that I should disappear as soon as possible. The same day I crossed the green frontier into Karlsruhe in the US Zone.

From there I rode goods trains for thirty-six hours to Tegernsee. The US Zone was run more correctly, and I felt more secure here with my US release papers. Aunt Britta arranged a room for me at Rottach at the Thomahof with Frau von Liebermann in the neighbourhood, where I spent the next three weeks.

My wounded arm was still in a sling and I was not up to looking for work. I went wandering in the mountains, bathed in the lake and recovered from the strains of the preceding years. At the town hall I received ration coupons enabling me to have a cheap basic dish at

A restaurant every day. In between I spent three days at Kreuth in the clinic with my cousins Heinz and Richard May who carried out a minor operation on my grossly swollen left arm and extracted the remaining splinters of bone. Then I felt I should return home.

I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there, but it was clear to me that I had to make my mind up soon about which trade or profession I should follow. Many opportunities were not available to me as a former active officer, but in the various

Zones of occupation the regulations tended to be widely different. After all my experiences so far I saw that the British Zone looked the best. First I hitch-hiked to the address in Nuremberg of my former orderly room sergeant Grohmann.

From him I heard how at the end of the war thecompany had found itself in the northern part of Czechoslovakia. Always retreating and under heavy pressure, at the time of the ceasefire PzAbt 503 lay between the American and Russian lines.

Because the Americans declined to accept the surrender of troops on the far side of the demarcation line, the Abteilung’s commander Hauptmann von Diest-Koerber released all the men from their obligations and recommended that they attempt to cross the American lines in small groups and head for Reich territory.

To that end every man received his military pass, pay and rations. Grohmann had succeeded in getting back with a few men of the Abteilung, how the others had fared he did not know. In fact a third had got home, but the remainder were caught by the Americans and handed over

To the Russians where they spent many years in captivity. Leutnant Koppe, who commanded 3 Company after I was wounded, was not released until Christmas 1955.Back at Rastatt I was happy to learn that during my absence nobody had enquired about me and therefore I seemed to have a clean slate.

My Rastatt comrades-in-arms had all been hauled off to Malschbach camp but all came back home. Papa told me how he had also been obliged to surrender himself for Malschbach although he was 65 and had not been in military service for thirty years. He had been an officer, however, and apparently that was enough.

This time I spent only a few days at home: I wanted to get to the British Zone and seek its better opportunities. Therefore I set off via Düsseldorf to Essen, where I met my former company leader Walter Scherf. Other stops I made were at Hanover, Bremen and Hamburg.

I spent the nights in station bunkers, ate in communal kitchens, hitch-hiked on ramshackle lorries or atop the coal on goods trains. A curiosity: even on goods trains tickets were inspected, the conductor climbing over the loads, wagon to wagon.

My ticket was my release certificate for my story was always that I was on my way home from captivity. I spent some time with Aunt Ebba at Closter Lune near Lüneburg, bringing her news from home and helping out with her chores.

There was still no postal service at that time, and so receiving any news about relatives was always a happy event. I made enquiries at the universities of Gottingen and Hamburg but no possibility existed for a former active officer to become an undergraduate.

If I could have got accepted anywhere I would probably have studied Lawwhich I thought would offer me the best prospects of employment once qualified. At many stations on my list I had an address to go to: if not I could request the address for a given surname at the residents’ registration offices.

In this way I met many men from my former Abteilung on my trip. Each would know two or three other addresses so that soon I had compiled the first list of Abteilung members. That was the beginning of an association which we expanded and was to last to the present times.

At the beginning of October 1945 I returned home to find the situation unchanged. As for my own future, I was no better off than when I started. My sister Elisabeth had finished her nursing duties at Baden-Baden and applied to the Agricultural Technical College at Stuttgart-Hohenheim for a training position as an agricultural assistant.

In those days this is the type of thing one could expect to happen: Elisabeth had taken my bicycle to scout around locally for food from farms and had been quite successful. On the way home some Poles blocked her way, threw her off the bicycle and made off with both bicycle and vegetables.

The return of Elisabeth was so overdue that we began to be anxious for her, finally she turned up on foot, shocked and outraged. She had actually got off lightly, for rape was common then, not only by Poles and Russians, but also by French colonial troops.

One night some shadowy figures visited our garden again and stole the last of the fruit on the trees. Papa went to the Russian bureau at the former hospital and complained in Russian. He was actually successful, and a sign was nailed on our front door in Cyrillic script:

‘Entering this property is forbidden, a Russian family lives here.’ After that we were left in peace. Meanwhile my other sister Aja had also come home. The Swedes had interned her as an undesirable alien of the ‘German Academy’ (Goethe Institute) and then deported her to Lübeck.

Now she was home, and had plans to work as a secretary in Bremen. In mid-October five Frenchmen made a sudden appearance in order to conduct a house search. While the family was locked in the dining room, they ransacked the house and left everything in chaos.

We were unable to imagine what it was all about and only much later discovered that my father had been denounced. They were searching – in vain – for incriminating material. When they came to my room on the upper floor, the Frenchmen found a photograph with the

Panzers of my company on the Champs Élysées which apparently upset them. They also discovered my paperweight, a defused French mortar bomb and confiscated it. They made a very close inspection of my books before they left. Half an hour later they re-appeared to arrest me.

I was taken away and locked in a cell at the jail on Engel-Strasse. I can still hear the rattle of its keys in the lock. A stool, a table, a folding bed, a toilet. Milky glass in the small, barred window blocked the view outside although I could just see

The sky through a small slit. A naked bulb provided dim lighting. I sat on the stool, considering the situation. Besides the French controllers at this jail were some German prison staff who provided a support service. The door opened and a German official entered, asking my name and the reason for my arrest.

‘What, you are the son of the Inferior Court Magistrate von Rosen?’ He shook his head, left the cell and returned with two bedsheets and a blanket. ‘In the morning when you wake up, leave these under the mattress at once so that the French don’t see them.’

It did me good to have met this friendly man. In the evening I received my washing kit and some underclothes leftat the prison gate by my parents. I spent three days in that cell without the French taking any interest in me, no interrogation, no questions, nothing. I was left alone.

I thought about what books they might have confiscated from my bedroom. As I saw it, there had been nothing compromising in my bookcase. When I had been the prisoner of war of the Americans my mother had taken out anything which she thought might be considered National Socialist.

They fetched me on the fourth day. Escorted by an armed soldier I was walked through the town to the former fortress prison. I knew it well, for in earlier times it had been our Jungvolk hostel. The French had now set up in this large building what they called a ‘camp de concentration’

With 100 inmates, all minor Party functionaries from the Rastatt area and a couple of harmless people who had been denounced. Herr Kappler, a former engineer at Mercedes Benz in Gaggenau, and Herr von Blanquet from Rotenfels, a friend of my parents, were also there.

I was shown to a bed in a dormitory of twenty men. The camp was guarded by Spahis (Algerian-Moroccan cavalry). They were friendly to us since they had the same feeling of being repressed by the French as we did.

At night we were locked in our large communal cell with a bucket, which by morning was filled to the brim. All prisoners had to work, and were led in small squads each morning to the various workplaces. Because I still had my left arm in a sling, I did not do manual labour.

Visiting hours were from 1500hrs to 1700hrs on Saturdays. One’s relations came to the camp gate, then the prisoner was called and could talk for five minutes through the barbed wire fence. Visitors were allowed to bring underwear, food and reading material. Mama always had something tasty for me from the butcher or baker.

I asked for English-language school books for the periods when I sat alone in the cell. This annoyed the French, who though I should be learning French. I read Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga which I had started at home. Mama brought me the second volume.

A Spahi looked them over at the camp gate and asked her what type of book it was. When she said it was by an English author, it was confiscated. ‘England many Jews. Jews no good.’ No comment. Meanwhile the French had set up a military tribunal at Rastatt.

The presiding judge, Colonel Braman, visited our camp and asked to bepresented to each inmate. ‘Voici, mon Colonel, c’est le fils du Baron von Rosen.’(And here, Colonel, this is the son of the Baron von Rosen.)‘Oh, mais pourquoi vous êtes ici?’(Oh, but why

Are you here?)He had a long conversation with me about my service during the war, my period as a PoW and the reason for my present remand. He showed me the scars on his head which he had received in a German concentration camp,

Which I replied by showing him the wounds on both my arms. His escort said, ‘Laissez-le, il est et il reste un Nazi.’(Let him be, he is and will always be a Nazi.)To hear this from a French mouth made me grin. I was not going to let them grind me down.

A few days later I received orders to pack my things accompanied by the explanation, ‘Vous n’êtes pas un prisonnier politique, vous êtes un criminel.’(You are not a political prisoner, you are a criminal.)Therefore I was returned to the jail on Engel-Strasse where I was offered work in the kitchen.

In order to avoid the monotony of the single cell I accepted willingly. With two much older prisoners on remand, I had to get up before breakfast each morning to heat the large kitchen range, peel the root vegetables and assist in the preparation of the thin soup served at midday.

One of my two companions was awaiting judgment for illegal slaughtering, the other had killed his wife with a letter opener at Gernsbach. She had been having an affair with a Frenchman. He made a point of saying that he had stabbed her thirty-five times which was proof that

It had been a crime of passion and he wanted me to put in a good word with my father. Such cases did not fall within my father’s jurisdiction, however. Once we had cleaned the kitchen in the afternoon we did not return to our cells, under the

Pretext of having to do more work later, but stayed in the kitchen playing skat. Should a Frenchman appear unexpectedly, the cards would vanish like greased lightning and we would get busy. One Sunday afternoon this happened quite suddenly, and Colonel Braman appeared in the kitchen showing his wife and daughter the jail.

Our shout of ‘Attention’ rang out particularly loudly and we stood at attention. Braman told his wife who I was and after an astonished ‘Are you?’ I received the sympathetic looks and encouraging smiles of both women. I felt like an animal at the zoo.

Nextevening Braman visited me in my cell to inform me that I was to be brought before the military tribunal on 22 December and wanted to know which books had been found in my room during the house search.

I gave him a few harmless titles, but at that time even military literature was as illegal as that of the Nazis. Next day I received my writ of summons and the indictment: ‘Possession of military literature and ammunition.’ Papa let me know that he had got me a lawyer. That was comforting.

After our last conversation I had the impression that Colonel Braman was well disposed towards me. The military tribunal was held in the Rastatt château in the rooms where the Inferior Court used to sit. An armed sentry made sure I didn’t escape and delivered me to the court.

In the waiting room I found my papa and to my great surprise my brother Wuller. He had come the day before from Dresden across the green demarcation line in company with his wife Ruth. The trial was public. There were eight other cases, most of them breaches of the pass regulations, being out

After curfew and similar crimes. Then came my case. I had only a brief talk with my advocate and was surprised by his lack of interest. My name was called and I stood before the judge’s desk. An interrogation was begun using an incompetent interpreter.

Several times I had to object when my denial of this or that was turned by him into an admission. Then it was the turn of my advocate who mentioned in his pleading Conrad Rosen, Maréchal de France. Then I was led out and the next case called.

I waited outside until the verdict was ready. As a mitigating circumstance Colonel Braman mentioned that I had become a soldier at the age of 18 and had fought bravely for my country, been wounded five times and was a descendant of a Maréchal de France.

The sentence: four weeks’ imprisonment, my period on remand to be counted so that I was free at once. ‘Vous êtes libre,’ were the last words and I left the courtroom very relived. I thought I would be able to go home immediately but the French overseer explained that I had

To serve the present day out and would have to wait until the morning for my discharge. The cell door slammed behind me once more. More fun and games? In the middle of my darkest thoughts I was called into the court office where to my surprise I found ColonelBraman completing my discharge papers.

While I stood waiting he snapped to my guard, ‘Apportez donc une chaise pour le Baron de Rosen!’(Bring a chair for Baron von Rosen then!). The man had to obey – what satisfaction!– for this was one of the most hated of the French and had kicked the seat of my pants the day before.

Colonel Braman then accompanied me home and on the way told me how unpleasant he had found it to have me before his tribunal, but the High Command at Baden-Baden had ordered him to make an example of me. Originally they wanted to prove that I had been active as one of Himmler’s ‘werewolves’

But this had been going too far. ‘I hope I find you in agreement with the solution I found,’ he said. Therefore there were decent Frenchmen. This experience was the beginning of a less emotional and more just assessment of our neighbouring country for me.

We arrived home, and when my father opened the front door Colonel Braman said to him simply, ‘Herr Baron, here is your son.’ Without any further explanation he offered us both his hand and disappeared into the darkness of the still unlit street. At this point I must digress.

In 1964 I was General Staff Officer to the C-in-C Allied Troops in Central Europe based at Fontainebleau. By chance I discovered that ex-Colonel Braman lived nearby. It was a joyful reunion under quite normal circumstances, and a friendship evolved which lasted until his death.

He was a great man and contributed much to my better understanding of the French people. In my post-war career I worked, with some intervals, a total of twelve years in France attached to Allied Staffs, in the École Supérieure de Guerre and finally as Military Attaché at the West German Embassy in Paris.

Over the years my family and I got to know and love the country, gained French friends and thus became protagonists for Franco-German cooperation and friendship. To return to my tale. The day after my discharge was Christmas Eve. We had a tree lit with a few burnt-down candle stubs.

We needed no presents, for the greatest present was to be all together, having all survived the war. Aja was also there. We sang together the carol ‘Silent Night’ and never before had I sung with so much gratitude and confidence the last lines of the song, ‘Christ the Saviour is here.

I was 17 years old when the harsh facts of life entered into my carefree and happy youth. The war arrived, pitiless for us all. It left its mark on me. When it ended I was 23, and had spent four and a half years either at the Front or in military hospitals.

As a young man I was not hard, but I had to learn to be, at first with myself and later, as an NCO and officer, towards others. I had to give orders which sent many of my men to their deaths. That was not easy to come to terms with.

So why did we fight? It was our obligation by law and the Fatherland was in danger. For my generation the term ‘Fatherland’ still meant a lot. In France, Great Britain, the United States and many other countries that is probably still the case.

One felt called to do one’s duty no matter what the circumstances might be that had brought it about it, or provoked it. Our conscience then was not the conscience of today. That was only a part of my motivation, however. The other part was the urge to prove myself.

For that reason I never did anything then of which I am ashamed today. My education and predisposition helped me find the right way. I have to make it clear though, that at no time was I called upon to make a decision against my conscience.

I had a lot of luck in those years, above all in outstanding superiors who led and impressed me, and perhaps protected me too. I fought alongside eighteen million German soldiers. Four million of them failed to survive the war, amongst them many of the companions of my youth.

At the end of the war the balance looked like this: most of the large cities had been razed to the ground by British and US bombing. This resulted in the deaths of eight hundred thousand people, women, children, pensioners. Almost every family had members to mourn, soldiers and civilians.

The provinces in the East were removed from the Reich territory and theirpopulations, and about twelve million people were forced to flee, or were driven out. What made the defeat unbearable, however, was the knowledge that the victims were killed for an unjust and highly criminal cause.

How much bitterness was there in this depressing vision? If the first months after the end of the war were dedicated to preserving those who had come through it, to the struggle against hunger and cold and also to inner seething against the humiliations inflicted by the occupying Powers, then came something additional.

Slowly we awoke from a trance-like state to become conscious of an infernal hatred for those who had forced us into this misery. From the end of November nineteen forty-five the major German war criminals were arraigned at Nuremberg before the International Military Tribunals.

Now the twelve Hitler years came back chapter by chapter, all the guilt and horror. From the prosecuting advocates we learned the cruel truths. It was a bitter and nasty awakening. I understand if my listeners cannot see that only a fraction of the population knew the

Details of the Nazi plans to persecute and exterminate. I refer specifically to the Holocaust. Daniel Goldhagen’s assertion that the German nation consisted of ‘willing executioners’ shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation. Certainly the discrimination against the Jews was generally known, as were the deportations, and there was no revolt against it.

It was always explained that these were resettlement measures. The systematic extermination was a state secret and only those immediately involved were informed. The broad mass of the population knew nothing of ‘the Final Solution’. The leadership had kept quiet about it, knowing well that such cruelty would find no understanding,

Not to mention no support. Today I know that the systematically programmed crimes committed by the regime and its supporters are unparalleled in our history. I also had believed in Germany’s ‘just, clean war’ against the background of my own experiences at the Front, until my eyes were opened.

I am convinced that it was the same for most young Germans blindly drawn into war. Shame, regret and a certain fatalism were the consequences for those who fought for it and suffered for it, and that was almost everybody.