War Stories III (41 page)
Authors: Oliver L. North
As Hitler prepared for the end, American and British troops were discovering the deepest horrors of the Reichâthe Führer's death campsâand evidence of the Holocaust that had been his “Final Solution.” In late April, 1945, Lt. Alvin Ungerleider from Carbondale, Pennsylvania, received a call with new orders from his battalion commander.
LIEUTENANT ALVIN UNGERLEIDER
Company I, 115th Infantry Regiment,
29th Infantry Division
Nordhausen, Germany
27 April 1945
29th Infantry Division
Nordhausen, Germany
27 April 1945
My battalion commander said, “Take I Company and two tank destroyers and move down to the vicinity of Nordhausen. See if you can find an area large enough to contain the whole regiment.”
Well, I did as ordered. It was about 110 kilometers awayâand though there was some minor enemy opposition, we arrived in the vicinity of Hanover, a central city that lies between the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and a place called Nordhausen.
As we got near Nordhausen, I saw these two towersâmaybe twelve or fifteen feet high. Suddenly, we started getting some machine gun fire from them. I brought the tank destroyers up and said, “See if you can knock out those two towers and go forward. When you get there, swing in and see what they're protecting.”
The tank destroyers had 105 mm guns on 'em to destroy German tanks and they promptly knocked out the towers. We then broke through the barbed wire surrounding this place and the sight I then witnessed was so appalling i still have nightmares about it. People were walking around in prison garbâragged, torn, and dirtyâemaciated as you could imagine. They cheered when I came inside the compound and then some of them started falling over, they were so weak.
I got my whole company in there and said, “Go around and see what you find.” After checking it out they captured forty-four SS troopers, some pretty tough guys. But they all surrendered. Billy Millhander, one of my soldiers, and I entered a large building in the center of the camp and discovered ten huge ovensâcrematoriumsâbut I didn't know that at the time.
The ovens were cold and the doors were closed. I looked at Millhander and said, “Billy, have your M-1 rifle ready. I'm going to open each door
of these things and see if anyone's hiding inside.” Well, the first four doors I opened, I saw only ashes. But when I got to the fifth oven, I pulled that door open and threw it back. All of a sudden,
bang, bang, bang
âBilly fired eight rounds as fast as he could.
of these things and see if anyone's hiding inside.” Well, the first four doors I opened, I saw only ashes. But when I got to the fifth oven, I pulled that door open and threw it back. All of a sudden,
bang, bang, bang
âBilly fired eight rounds as fast as he could.
There had been a German SS guard hiding in there with a Luger pistol. He just toppled forward, dead, and Billy got himself a nice Luger pistol out of the deal. Then, we checked the other five ovens. But it turned out that he was the only one hiding inside.
When we went back outside into the yard, more people had come out of the barracks. We told them who we were and that we were there to free them. When they heard that they cheered and clapped. Then they saw the body of the guy Billy had shot, and they got even more excited because the dead German was apparently the meanest SOB in the whole camp. He had been beating, kicking, and abusing everybody.
I started talking in a mixture of Yiddish, French, a little German, English, and I asked them, “What are you doing here? What is this place? And how many are here?”
A prisoner spoke up and said, “Somewhere between 250 and 300 of us are left.”
I asked, “How many did you start out with when they opened up this camp?”
The prisoner replied, “At least a thousand. This is one camp among twenty-three that are just outside of Nordhausen. The camps house slave laborers for the factories.”
As he talked I realized there's something bad going on here, and I asked, “What were you making in this factory?”
He said, “V-2 missilesâthe missiles they're firing against England.”
And that's when the enormity of the evil that the Germans were doing to these people hit me. And this was a slave labor camp, not a death camp. They were making a product for the war effort. The first thought that came into my mind is how the Germans could take 1,000 peopleâbut it was really
many thousands
when multiplied by the twenty-three different
slave labor campsâand put them to work. How could they not feed them, take care of their medical needs, not clothe them?
many thousands
when multiplied by the twenty-three different
slave labor campsâand put them to work. How could they not feed them, take care of their medical needs, not clothe them?
I got on the tank destroyer radio and called my battalion commander. After I told him what I had found there, he said, “I'll send a military government team in there. They're trained on how to take care of seriously sick people, feeding them, clothing them, the whole works. So wait there until they come. Then rejoin us back north of Hanover.” And he gave me the coordinates of where to meet him.
It took us two days to get back to the rest of the unit. On 25 April we got to the Elbe and met the Russians. They were on the other side of the river. Ironically, the Germans were streaming across the river as fast as they couldâ
toward us.
They surrendered to us, rather than be taken by the Russians.
toward us.
They surrendered to us, rather than be taken by the Russians.
Richard Marowitz was a talented trumpet player. Rich had set aside his horn and joined the Army to fulfill his draft obligation. He was a green soldier at the Battle of the Bulge at the end of 1944, but after a few months of intense combat he was an experienced part of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon in the 42nd Infantry “Rainbow” Division. During a routine mission on 29 April he thought that he had just walked through the gates of hell.
PRIVATE RICHARD MAROWITZ
222nd Infantry, 42nd Infantry Division HQ
Dachau, Germany
29 April 1945
Dachau, Germany
29 April 1945
When we crossed into Germanyâthat was when we started to feel like we were really winning the war. But I remember the biggest thing was constantly being on the road. I had transferred to the intelligence and reconnaissance platoon and the trouble is, you're on combat duty all the time.
When we got into Würzburg, the city had been so effectively bombed that there was hardly a roof on any house. Despite that, the people seemed glad we were there. Nobody liked Hitler. And the civilians were scared when we came, because they assumed that they were going to raped or killed. You could tell that they were relieved and surprised, because we weren't doing what the Russians did.
Schweinfurt was one of the big German industrial cities we took. As we rode into town, there were dead guys hanging from lampposts. We wondered why they were hanging Germans. Somebody thought maybe the SS decided that these guys were going to surrender and they put them up there to teach the others a lesson.
We didn't spend much time in Schweinfurt. But then, we didn't spend a heck of a lot of time anywhere. We were given maps, and told to go to Dachau, then Munich. We took Dachau on 29 April, and Munich on the thirtieth. It was a mission I'll never forget.
On the way we went right straight through the middle of a German army convoy crossing the road we were on. We crossed in a hurry, firing as we went. And they just went off the road into the woods. They clearly didn't expect any Americans to be where we were at the time.
Going through one village, a German Panzer crossed behind us and fired. The round went over our heads but the concussion blew us out of the jeep. No one got seriously hurt, but getting back to the jeep, I felt something sticking through my trousers and into my leg and I pulled out a piece of shrapnel. It wasn't enough to slow us down.
As we were coming around the bend out of the woods, there was a village directly in front of us and somebody fired on us. So we piled out of the jeep for cover. But as we got out, I remembered we had a lot of stuff kicking around at the bottom of the jeep that we had liberatedâlike grease guns, bazookas, and 60 mm mortarsâlots of little things to make a noise with. So we dragged some of the stuff up on the hill and we made a lot of noise. The people in that village must've thought they were being hit by a whole division.
Lieutenant Short sent three men from our platoon of twenty-eight to assault the town. The three guys were Pvt. Heard and myself, with
Howie Hughes the BAR manâthe three of us went in and cleared the first few houses and waved the rest of the guys in.
Howie Hughes the BAR manâthe three of us went in and cleared the first few houses and waved the rest of the guys in.
We quickly accumulated over 150 prisoners. We lined them up, broke up their weapons and told them to put their hands on their hands and walk up the road. But then we wonderedâwhat're we gonna do with them? While they were marching off with their hands on their heads we got back in the jeep and took off the other way toward Dachau.
Before our platoon got to Dachau, we started to get this awful smellâlike cows, farm animals, horsesâthat've been killed and left to rot in the fields. It was a terrible stench.
We finally got to Dachau. But there was an SS camp attached to the concentration camp. A tank came out of Dachau and the gun aimed down on us. We were pinned down. Fortunately, a U.S. tank destroyer came up behind us and took the tank apart.
A lieutenant colonel was riding on top of the tank destroyer and it escorted us as we went into Dachau. Our INR platoon didn't know that a concentration camp was there. We went inside and there's
thousands and thousands of bodies.
There were 30,000 in the camp. And on a railway siding alongside the camp, there were
forty boxcars of bodies.
All were dead exceptâgoing through the boxcars they found one man still alive. He couldn't stand upâhe was such a skeleton. Our medics took him out and put him in the jeep and brought him to the aid station to try and save him. I don't know if he survived or not.
thousands and thousands of bodies.
There were 30,000 in the camp. And on a railway siding alongside the camp, there were
forty boxcars of bodies.
All were dead exceptâgoing through the boxcars they found one man still alive. He couldn't stand upâhe was such a skeleton. Our medics took him out and put him in the jeep and brought him to the aid station to try and save him. I don't know if he survived or not.
So many in the camp were already deadâand many others were dying. Large numbers had recently been shot in the head, others had simply died of starvation or some disease. It was an impossible scene. Human skeletons walking down the street dropped dead in front of you. And there were piles of bodiesâjust piles and piles of bodies.
The prisoners pointed out SS troops who had taken off their uniforms and put on prison garb to hide among the condemned. But the prisoners knew who they were and pointed out the guards to the Americans.
Before we could stop it, two extremely brutal SS guards were grabbed by prisoners, taken to the ovens, and shoved in. Then a hand grenade was tossed in and the door slammed shut.
That camp was a grisly scene that nobody should ever have to see and it changed the attitude that our troops had toward the Germans we were fighting. Our view of them definitely got worse. These were not human beings, because human beings don't do what they did. These were maniacs. I mean, can you think of a bigger crime?
On 26 April (1300 hours Eastern War Time in Washington) President Harry Truman advised the American Legation in Stockholm, Sweden, to reply to Himmler's conditional surrender overture of 20 April. Truman's response was blunt: a German surrender would only be accepted if it were
unconditional.
unconditional.
President Roosevelt's death had catapulted Hitler's psychosis to new heights of fantasy. He discussed with Speer, Himmler, Goering, and some of his aides the possibility that Truman might be more amenable than Roosevelt had been to forming a pact between Germany and the United States for attacking the Soviet Union. Yet when Hitler learned about Himmler's secret talks with the Swiss on 28 April, he dismissed his longtime Nazi collaborator from his post as the number two Nazi in the Third Reich, head of the SS and Gestapo. And several times each day the Führer issued new orders and instructions to an army in its death throes. In those last few days, many of those directives were carried by sixteen-year-old Hitler Youth courier Armin Lehmann.
CORPORAL ARMIN LEHMANN
Hitler Youthâ
Jungsturm Adolf Hitler
Berlin, Germany
29 April 1945
Jungsturm Adolf Hitler
Berlin, Germany
29 April 1945
As a courier, I was sent all over Berlin delivering dispatchesâoften while being fired upon by Soviet artillery, mortars, tanks, and foot patrols. Once, three of us were being sent with dispatches across Berlinstrasse. The other two were Catholics, and they stopped to cross themselves just before they
went. But I went by instinct. Somehow I could tell by the air pressure, even before the detonation, that a mortar or artillery round was coming in and could time it for when to run across the street. I was the only one who made itâmy two buddies were blown apart.
went. But I went by instinct. Somehow I could tell by the air pressure, even before the detonation, that a mortar or artillery round was coming in and could time it for when to run across the street. I was the only one who made itâmy two buddies were blown apart.
Arthur Axman used me, and a couple of others, as couriers for Hitler. Initially, I had my own car and driver and it was very exciting, being a sixteen-year-old courier without rank or anything, carrying orders from the chief. Axman issued us all the appropriate papers. Otherwise we could have been executed for desertion.
When it got too difficult for a car to get through, Axman asked me if I knew how to ride a motorbike. I told him that I couldâand that I was a very good driver.
Arthur Axman, the head of the Hitler Youth from 1940 to 1945, was a veteran who had lost an arm. It seemed to some that he was making every effort to save the Hitler Youth. But I thought he was determined to please Hitler and to prove that the Hitler Youth would be loyal enough to die for the Führerâand because of that, he didn't spare anyone.
In the last days, Axman had at least twenty Hitler Youth units surrounding the bunker in Berlin, defending Hitler. He sacrificed the youth instead of saving them, just to please the Führer who was moved by their self-sacrifice. Axman would tell them, “Keep fighting to the endâthe Führer is with us.”
I had the feeling that Axman would make it, and that if I were close to Axman, that I would somehow be spared. I tried not to think of my lieutenant friend who led my unit. He was at the front line with 150 boys and some other units. Those were their ordersâstop the Russians.
In those last days of April 1945, my actions were dictated more or less by Axman's responsibilities, which were first, to get Hitler out of the bunker to safety. We were supposed to move Hitler with by covering him on every side with our bodies, and take him to the subway to get him out of Berlin, and to safety.
Hitler apparently never considered that. Instead, he and Eva Braun were married in a German civil ceremony performed by an official from
the Berlin city government that Goebbels arranged to have come to the bunker.
the Berlin city government that Goebbels arranged to have come to the bunker.
The bunker became a very strange place. Hitler was there, of courseâas was Eva Braun. Herr and Frau Goebbels were there with their six children. Eva Braun looked like a movie star. The last time I saw her, she was with Frau Goebbels and a third womanâthat I think was one of Hitler's secretaries.
It was very sad that Goebbels' six children were there. Two of the little girls looked just like two of my sisters. I think the oldest was fifteen and the youngest was six. One was a boy, the others were girls. The night of 30 Aprilâ1 May, Axman offered to have one of his special units get the Goebbels' children out of Berlin and west to the American lines but Goebbels said no. The day after Hitler killed himself, the Goebbels killed their own children and then themselves. This is after Hitler was dead.
Axman made plans to break through the Red Army lines from several positions. When we left, we got as far as the river. And then a tank exploded and hell broke loose. Axman ordered me to tell all the members of our group to assemble at a certain bridge. I made it to three units, but when a Red Army artillery shell exploded very close by, I was wounded and must have collapsed.
My next memory is being on a stretcher, in front of a Russian army doctor who told me I had shrapnel in my back at my spine and was paralyzed from there down. They decided they couldn't treat me there, and they gave me whatever additional papers to clear Russian checkpoints, and I was transported in Russian trucks to the farm of my uncle.
It took me many weeks to recover but the paralysis was temporary. When the contusion on my spine healed, the sensation and movement returned to my legs.
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