Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (41 page)

25. Dec. 44

Liebe Mutti:

So, how are you this Christmas my darling mother? I had such high hopes of being home by now but it is taking us just a bit longer to win the war than I expected. I am in Belgium now fighting alongside many of our tanks. To me, there looks to be hundreds of those monsters around, both theirs and ours. Besides the tanks, the enemy flies so many planes overhead that we have to stay still and not risk moving in daylight. But still we fight.

Please tell me that Tante Ilse and the kids made it to your house and that all of you are safe and sound sitting around your Tannenbaum. I hope there are gifts that you can give to each other. The only gift I want from all of you is your promise that you will run for the bomb shelter at the very first sound of a warning. I’ve seen what the enemy airplanes can do and I worry about all of you so much. There is an American Christmas song about dreaming of a white, snowy Christmas and that is what I dream of too. Because when it snows, the enemy airplanes cannot fly which means no bombs drop.

So Fröhliche Weihnachten, dear Mutti. Until we meet again, I remain your loving son,

Rudi

In writing to my mother about Christmas gifts, I see that as impossible as it is to believe, the Americans have sent us their General Patton as a Christmas present. He is trying to relieve the enemy at Bastogne and has been attacking our positions to do so. These attacks have intensified during the last week of December as more and more enemy reinforcements appeared. Now as the New Year is being rung in on artillery fire, we’ve been pushed back to where we started. We were told that der Führer committed 28 divisions of infantry and Panzers which came to over 250,000 men and 900 tanks. This was all brought to bear for this brilliantly planned offensive action and I’m sure each one fought with bravery and skill though I have to say that my unit was poorly trained, poorly armed and poorly led. We all tried to rally our flagging spirits but if all the other units were as unenthusiastic as ours, I fear this battle is over.

The enemy continues to attack us and we are no longer capable of launching any attacks of our own. We’re on the defensive which is exactly how der Führer says we are not going to win this war. Deserters are being shot or hung as a deterrent to anyone who thinks this war is all but over so we are compelled to continue our fighting and I have no choice but to carry on.

It was the 2
^nd
SS Panzer Division
Das Reich
, which came closest to reaching its objective when, by Christmas, it pushed to within something like 35 km of the Meuse River. But even Das Reich made no further progress before it too was decimated by enemy counter-attacks. I don’t even know if any other troops got past the Meuse River but I do know that none got to Antwerp so obviously that part of der Führer’s brilliant plan failed, I mean: didn’t succeed because of our lack of fervor and fighting spirit.

By the end of January, even though we all knew the offensive was a shambles, if anyone had bothered to ask us why, we could have told them that we didn’t have enough fuel, ammunition or troops for an offensive of this magnitude to succeed. We had short days and horrible weather. The main goal of taking Antwerp was an objective too far away and we ran into strong American forces on the south and British forces to the north. We didn’t have enough reinforcements and we lost too much of our valuable equipment on the way. The latest offensive imagined by our genius commander was not going to turn the tide of this war and it soon became clear that our Ardennes Offensive did not carry us to victory. With the continued advances made by the enemy, clearly our offensive action accomplished little more than wasting what precious resources we had available to us and while we were weakened by this fight, I see the enemy is as strong as ever. We have not been able to destroy the Americans, we have not been able to reach the ports of Antwerp and I realize now that the war is lost for us.

We were allowed to head back east now and on the march back, we could move only at night when enemy planes weren’t shooting at us from the sky. I saw our tanks being towed by horses and even tractors. The further east we went, I saw whole battalions of guns and artillery just sitting there waiting to be used. I heard someone ask why they hadn’t been brought to the front and the answer was that there wasn’t enough gas to move them out.

Nevertheless as the holidays are now behind us, we are ordered to move towards the Meuse River and attack in the area of Alsace. With nothing but losses around us, we survivors are told we will be fighting an enemy up there who is now off balance and seriously weakened. Our commander has been ordered to smash the Americans and destroy their western front. We looked at him for a sign that he is joking in poor taste with us but he says those are our orders directly from der Führer. There really is no hope now that we see how out of touch with reality our leaders are.

We were moved to Alsace where we were ordered to take the city of Strasbourg in order to link up our forces with those in the area of Colmar. Colmar was one of the last major strongholds we occupied in France and with this link up, we were to drive the enemy out of Alsace-Lorraine. We were hopeful but not expecting that these orders could be carried out. A couple of things weighed in our favor, though. First, the enemy tanks would have a hard time in this terrain as there were canals all over. Also, these people had been German until the whole Alsace-Lorraine area was given to France in 1918 and we were hoping they would befriend us instead of what happened in every other French village, city or town we fought in where the loyalty of the civilians clearly was not given to us but rather to the “Liberators.”

It was General von Rundstedt who was to command this attack after the offensive in the Ardennes brought us no closer to victory. We headed towards Alsace where we fought mightily but after protracted and intense fire fights with U.S. tank and infantry divisions, our unit was pulled out. Alsace fell into enemy hands and I’m more convinced than ever that we don’t have a chance in heaven or hell of winning this war now.

New orders have come in and we are being sent to protect the Rhine River from enemy incursions. Our specific orders are to prevent the enemy troops from crossing the Rhine. Earlier, we had been ordered to keep them out of Germany but since they’ve been in Aachen and Cologne for several weeks now, our orders have been changed accordingly.

We finally reached a working rail line and I was back across the Rhine River by February, 1945. While no enemy troops breached the Rhine River where we were stationed, they’ve crossed it at Remagen and so that is where we have been ordered to report now. Apparently, some officer left the Ludendorff Bridge intact even though der Führer ordered each bridge to be blown if it became apparent it would fall into enemy hands. The counter to that order was that any officer who blew up a bridge prematurely would be court-martialed. While I am not an officer leading troops, this seems to be a very slippery order…one of those “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” type of situations. Well, this bridge was not blown up but you can be sure the officer’s career, if not his life, will be.

It’s now the middle of April, 1945 and we left our position around the Rhine to clean out as many Americans as we could in order to save our homeland. The Ruhr Pocket was encircled and divided and General Model was faced with capture. I heard he took the soldierly way out and shot himself, not waiting for the inevitable heart attack that was sure to ensue once Hitler found out about any surrender. General von Rundstedt has once again been recalled back to Berlin and General Kesselring who was commanding troops in Italy is now in command of our forces. It is hard to take knowing that enemy troops who advanced over the bridge at Remagen are now overrunning us in our own country. I used to think that could never happen but now that it has happened, I find myself wondering who still thinks we have the strength left to beat them back. If the few people I talk to are right and we don’t, I wonder what kind of an ending this war will have and I wonder what kind of a future our Germany will see especially since we’ve been told that der Führer has ordered us to burn and raze whatever we think the enemy will benefit from. This order is leaving all of us with a bitter taste in our mouth. This is our country. Why would we want to destroy it just so the enemy doesn’t get it when we see very clearly now that the war is all but lost and we will have to rebuild our country to survive?

By 27. March, it seemed to me that our commanding officers recognized that there was really no more hope that Germany could win this war. Our front was in tatters and we had no more reserves to call upon, even if we had sufficient troops to eke out another offensive, which we do not. Our artillery was thin and a shadow of its former self and we had no air cover to protect us at anytime. We lost so many tanks that none could be called upon to provide any real support let alone lead an attack. We are defending an important Bavarian town and again we are under strict orders from Hitler to hold it at all costs and fight to the last man. Of course he issued this decree from one of his Supreme Command Headquarters far off from the front, but nevertheless, on 7. April.45, our Commanding Officer ordered a withdrawal which we undertook with very few casualties. I’m not so sure he won’t be a casualty if Hitler finds out about this but I am indebted to this sympathetic realist for keeping me alive at least for another day.

I heard that within a week after crossing the Rhine River and just in the area north of the Ruhr, the enemy had taken 30,000 of us Landsers and tankers prisoners of war. One idea keeps occurring to me over and over. It seems my only hope is to be captured by an American or if that can’t be made to happen, then by an Englishman. I don’t see the point of dying for Germany this close to its defeat yet I know I cannot consider abandoning my country and Fatherland with those kinds of thoughts. I just know I cannot allow myself to be killed. What will Germany be like for all the women with no men at home after the war is over?

7. April. 45

Dear Son:

I fear you will not recognize Germany when you return home. After receiving the terrible news that an attempt was made on the life of our Führer last summer, Germany is a changed place. No longer are we able to attend theater or musical productions as they have all been closed. The call has gone out for more and more men so those who used to be too old or too young or too weak or too dumb to be a soldier are now wearing the uniform of the Third Reich. Women have now been ordered to work to fill the vacancies left by the departing men and mothering is not much regarded anymore. We are to work at least 50 if not 60 hours per week to meet the demands of the war.

Stuttgart remains a favorite target of the enemy planes but from what I’ve heard from the almost endless sea of German women and children moving from their cities to the east of us, Stuttgart is in better shape than most cities in the Reich. I guess all the valleys which you used to play in as a child has made Stuttgart difficult for some enemy bombers to find but not all of them. They seem to have no trouble finding the factories but luckily for the people who live here, we have dug spaces into the sides of the hills and many people have taken shelter in these dugouts. Of course we use our cellars to protect us as well but we never know when the bombs will drop and our shelters in the hills offer us protection that many people in other cities do not have. There have been terrible bombings in many German cities including Hanover and Dresden. The war has come to our cities, Rudi, and life is not as it was before. We must all be careful to remain cheerful and optimistic though, as no one wants the punishments meted out to defeatists or subversives. I remain confident and let no one know I am frightened near to death by all that we are going through. I know there will be happier days ahead, I just don’t know when or if I will live to see them. I live now, only to see you again, my son.

Ich liebe dich.

Mutti

General Eisenhower decided on a plan for a new offensive to break through the Siegfried Line before winter. As he prepared the final plans for crossing into Germany and defeating Hitler’s Third Reich, he mobilized three Armies in the Low Countries of Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg, close to the German border. Montgomery’s British Army was to the north in Belgium, General Hodges’ US First Army was in Belgium along the middle area and General Patton was in France to the south. The plan set for the second week in November, 1944 was to cross the German defensive Line at the Moselle River in order to capture the Saar Industrial Valley.

By December, 1944 the front ran from the strategic port city of Antwerp in Belgium south past Switzerland to southern France and Italy. Along the Belgian front was the 450 square mile Ardennes Forest, an area designated by the Allieds as a “Quiet Area” mainly because the densely wooded area, now covered with winter snow, was thought to be impenetrable. War weary troops were sent to this area primarily to rest after the prolonged fighting they had just gone through and new replacement troops were stationed here to gain some relatively calm experience.