The Last Battle: When U.S. And German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

by Stephen Harding

  15. Also referred to in some records as “Reserve Division Innsbruck.”

  16. The source of the Inn River is in Switzerland, and it flows northeastward through Tyrol and into Germany.

  17. See note 9 above. If these troops were not from Grossdeutschland, it is likely they were drawn from various Wehrmacht units that had retreated into Austria from Bavaria.

  18. Kampf um die Alpenfestung Nord, 2–3.

  19. Details on the formation, organization, and operations of the Austrian resistance are drawn primarily from Luza, The Resistance in Austria, and the Austrian Federal Press Service’s Resistance and Persecution in Austria, 1938–1945.

  20. In German, Provisorisches Österreichisches Nationalkomitee.

  21. Established by presidential military order on June 13, 1942, the OSS was both an intelligence-collection and analysis agency and a covert-operations organization. Headed by World War I hero William J. Donovan, the OSS saw service in both the European and the Pacific theater.

  22. “O5” was a clever rendering of the first letter of the German word for Austria, Österreich, which when typed without the umlaut is printed as “Oe.” Thus, the capital letter O followed by the number 5 (indicating the fifth letter of the alphabet, e) equals Ö for Austria. The symbol was created by a young Austrian medical student, Jörg Unterreiner. Resistance members would daub the symbol in paint on the sides of buildings, on streetcars, and, if they were particularly brave (or foolhardy), on the sides of German military vehicles.

  23. For two especially engrossing accounts of OSS operations in Austria, see Schwab, OSS Agents in Hitler’s Heartland, and O’Donnell, The Brenner Assignment.

  24. Luza, The Resistance in Austria, 245–246.

  25. Between 1935 and 1937, for example, the German-born socialist Waldemar von Knoeringen (1906–1971) established small anti-Nazi cells in Wörgl and several nearby towns.

  26. The Feb. 22 attack and one the following day were part of the 15th Air Force’s contribution to Operation Clarion, a joint U.S.-British effort to completely paralyze the Third Reich’s already much-degraded rail and communications networks by specifically targeting smaller cities and towns that might not have been heavily attacked thus far. Several thousand aircraft participated, flying from bases in France, England, and Italy. For details, see Craven and Cate, Europe, 731–732.

  27. Personalakten für Gangl, Josef.

  28. Biographical information for Gangl is drawn primarily from his personalakten and from data provided by the Stadtarchiv Ludwigsburg in Germany and the Tiroler Landesarchiv in Innsbruck, Austria.

  29. While details about Sepp Gangl’s siblings are sketchy, it appears that he had at least two brothers and one sister.

  30. I have been unable to determine the name or gender of their second child.

  31. A play on the German term blitzkrieg or “lightning war,” sitzkrieg literally means “sitting war.”

  32. Taus, now Domažlice, is in the Plzen Region of the Czech Republic.

  33. “Combined-arms,” in this context, means a coordinated and integrated operation by mutually supportive armor, infantry, and artillery units backed by tactical aircraft.

  34. Werfer means “thrower,” and nebelwerfer is literally translated as “fog thrower.” The term originally was used to describe single-barrel, cannon-like weapons used to fire smoke or gas shells.

  35. And the numbers were even more impressive with larger werfer units. According to Rocket Projectors in the Eastern Theater, a postwar history written as part of the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Studies series, in ten seconds a werfer regiment could fire 324 rockets, and a brigade 648.

  36. Formally designated 15cm Panzerwerfer 42 auf Selbstfahrlafette Sd.Kfz.4/1, the Opel-built Maultier weighed just over nine tons, carried between twenty and forty werfer rounds, and had a top speed on paved roads of about twenty-five miles per hour.

  37. Organizational and equipment details drawn from Die Nebel-und Werfertruppe (Regimentsbögen), vol. 1, 322, as listed on the excellent German research site Lexikon der Wehrmacht.

  38. The award—an eight-pointed star with a swastika in the center—was given in recognition of the recipient’s bravery and outstanding achievement in combat. Awardees had to have already received both the Iron Cross Second Class and First Class.

  39. Paape had taken command of the brigade in late March. He wrote a fascinating postwar account of the unit’s final days, 7th Werfer Brigade, 24 March–30 April 1945, as part of the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies series.

  40. On March 10, 1945, Hitler had issued a “Führer Order” directing the creation of mobile courts-martial units whose task was to find and punish any member of the Wehrmacht or SS, regardless of rank, who was neglecting his duty. Negotiating with Allied forces or collaborating with local resistance organizations was grounds for immediate execution.

  41. Named after Fritz Todt, the engineer and high-ranking Nazi who founded it, the Organization Todt (OT) was the Third Reich’s primary civil-and military-construction agency. In the prewar years OT constructed Germany’s autobahns and frontier fortifications, and after September 1939 it expanded into military construction throughout the Reich and the occupied territories. The organization used “compulsory” workers almost exclusively; initially these were German citizens unfit for military service, but, as the war progressed, the workforce was predominantly made up of slave laborers: prisoners of war, political prisoners, and concentration-camp inmates.

  42. Details on the meeting are drawn from Resistance and Persecution in Austria, 1938–1945, 594–595.

  43. Though Battle Group Forster was in reserve at Wörgl, the actual defense of the city and its environs had been made part of Giehl’s responsibility.

  44. According to von Hengl’s postwar account, the initial American attack was followed by an intense artillery barrage aimed at the next town to the south, Oberaudorf, which was packed with refugees and from which all German military units had already withdrawn. Von Hengl called a brief truce, crossed the front lines under a white flag, and convinced the Americans not to shell any town in which German forces were not actually visible. His mission accomplished, the general crossed the front lines once again and resumed the fight.

  45. The full text of the message, translated in Headquarters, 103d Infantry Division, Operations in Germany, Austria and Italy, May 1945, 4, read: “At the present juncture of the war, everything depends on a stubborn and inflexible determination to hold on at all costs. The display of white flags, the removal of an antitank barrier, desertion from the Volksturm or similar manifestations are offenses which must be ruthlessly punished. All male persons inhabiting a house showing a white flag will be shot. No hesitation in executing these orders can be permitted any longer. ‘Male persons’ who are to be considered responsible in this respect are those aged 14 years or over.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1. Prison Journal, 292.

  2. Ibid., 294.

  3. Ibid., 296.

  4. Ibid., 283.

  5. A fiery, 80-proof German brandy.

  6. For example, in the summer of 1944 Čučković was able to repair a small electric motor that Wimmer intended to use in the farmhouse he and his wife were renovating (possibly as a postwar hideout) about 1.5 miles northeast of Schloss Itter. The SS-TV officer gave the Croat 30 Reichsmarks and allowed him to spend time with his wife, Ema, and son, Zvonimir, who had traveled down from the outskirts of Munich and were staying with a family in Itter village. For five nights Čučković was allowed to leave the castle by himself after dark but had to be back in each morning by six. See Čučković, “Zwei Jahren auf Schloss Itter,” 40.

  7. All three incidents are described in Čučković, “Zwei Jahren auf Schloss Itter,” 39–41.

  8. Daladier, Prison Journal, 317–318.

  9. Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 653.

  10. Even after the war the area around Schloss Itter continued to be a way station for former Nazis seeking to escape Allie
d justice. Among the most infamous was Adolf Eichmann, one of the primary organizers of the Holocaust. As part of his escape to Argentina in 1950, the former SS-TV officer crossed into Austria at Kufstein and, with the help of local sympathizers, made his way to Innsbruck. From there he crossed into Italy and then traveled on to South America. Abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, he was taken to Israel, tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and executed in 1962.

  11. Daladier, Prison Journal, 336. Among those accompanying Weiter was his adjutant, whom Daladier described as “tall and fat, a real thug.”

  12. Reynaud’s postwar account says May 1, but Weiter killed himself sometime between one AM and six AM on May 2. Nor was Weiter the only senior SS man to commit suicide in the vicinity of Schloss Itter. Just days after the Dachau commandant killed himself, SS-Major Hermann Müller-John, commander and bandmaster of the ninety-six-man orchestra of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler—the führer’s bodyguard regiment—killed his wife, his nineteen-year-old daughter, and himself in a farmhouse within a few miles of Itter. He apparently wished to avoid postwar prosecution for his involvement—and that of the band members he led—in the murder of some fifty Jews on the night of Sept. 18–19, 1939, in Blonie, Poland.

  13. Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 653.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. The bulk of the information used in this volume concerning Schrader’s early life and wartime career is drawn from his ultimately unpublished postwar memoir, “Erinnerungen, Gedanken, Erkenntnisse” (“Memories, Thoughts, Insights”), and from Schrader’s entry in John P. Moore’s excellent Signal Officers of the Waffen-SS.

  17. Schrader, “Erinnerungen, Gedanken, Erkenntnisse,” 5.

  18. Known in German as the Reichsarbeitdienst, or R.A.D., the organization had been created in 1931 as the Freiwilliger Arbeitsdienst (Voluntary Labor Service) as a way to provide work for Germany’s many unemployed people. Structured along military lines, it undertook civic construction projects. Following the Nazis’ assumption of power, service in the renamed R.A.D. was made compulsory for all German males between eighteen and twenty-five. Upon completion of that service young men entered the military for two years.

  19. Schrader’s SS-number was 353 103.

  20. Schrader, “Erinnerungen, Gedanken, Erkenntnisse,” 16.

  21. Ibid., 20.

  22. The date usually observed for the official formation of the Waffen-SS as a distinctly military organization is August 1940.

  23. Ibid., 28–29.

  24. Ibid., 30.

  25. Essentially the German equivalent of the U.S. jeep, the kübelwagen was an inexpensive, four-door convertible-top military utility vehicle designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

  26. Ibid., 31.

  27. Schrader takes pains to point out that it was a regular passenger train, not a military troop train.

  28. Schrader, “Erinnerungen, Gedanken, Erkenntnisse,” 36.

  29. Čučković’s reference to “Mühltal” can be confusing, as there are several small villages by that name within twenty miles of Schloss Itter. The Wimmers’ farmhouse was actually in an area now known as Itter-Mühltal, just east of Niederau.

  30. This exchange and the account of Čučković’s ride to Innsbruck are drawn from Čučković, “Zwei Jahren auf Schloss Itter,” 51–53.

  31. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division when it was encircled by the Germans at Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944, McAuliffe famously responded to a demand for surrender with a one-word reply: “Nuts!”

  32. This man was apparently part of the 103rd Infantry Division’s military-government section; unfortunately, his name is lost to history.

  33. Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 654.

  34. Schrader, “Erinnerungen, Gedanken, Erkenntnisse,” 36.

  35. This incident is recounted in Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 654.

  36. Unfortunately, we have no first names for most of the soldiers who chose to join Sepp Gangl in protecting the people of Wörgl.

  37. While the vast majority of German military personnel who surrendered to U.S. forces in Europe survived the process, it was certainly not unheard of for GIs to summarily execute prisoners—most notably in the days after the June 1944 Normandy landings and in the wake of the December 1944 Waffen-SS murder of eighty-four American POWs in Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge. However, the Allied liberation of the Nazis’ concentration, extermination, and slave-labor camps led to a spike in the number of German prisoners—especially Waffen-SS and SS-TV members—killed while attempting to surrender or following surrender. On April 29, 1945, the day Dachau was liberated by elements of the U.S. 42nd and 45th Infantry divisions, between sixteen and approximately fifty of the camp’s SS-TV guards were killed by American troops, many after surrendering.

  38. Operations in Germany, 1–10 May 1945, 68–70.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1. An 1806 graduate of West Point—and its superintendent from 1814 to 1818—Partridge came to believe that the national military academy system exemplified by his alma mater had created and was perpetuating a closed military elite. He strenuously advocated the establishment of state militias led by officers trained in private, regional military colleges. He established seven such institutions himself, with Norwich being the first and ultimately most successful.

  2. Indeed, because its founder established the principles of what evolved into the Reserve Officer Training Corps program, Norwich University bills itself as the birthplace of ROTC, though there is some disagreement as to where the first ROTC unit was constituted.

  3. Though most Norwich graduates were commissioned into the cavalry branch, such an assignment was not a foregone conclusion. Graduates could request assignment to another branch, or their first branch choice might be turned down by the army if officers were needed in other fields. Of the seventy-nine graduates in Lee’s class of 1942, sixty—including Lee— were assigned to the cavalry, thirteen to the army air forces, and two each to the engineer corps, signal corps, and chemical warfare service.

  4. The U.S. War Department’s 1930 establishment of the mechanized force ensured that the horse’s days in army service were numbered. Mounted cavalry units were converted to mechanized organizations as quickly as funding and vehicles could be provided. While military horsemanship was taught in all four years of Lee’s time at Norwich, he and his fellow students also received instruction in the operation and use of armored cars and other military vehicles during their junior and senior years. As it happened, Lee and the other members of his Class of 1942 were the last Norwich cadets to receive horse-cavalry training. In March 1943 the school’s entire corps of cadets was taken directly into military service, and from then until the end of the war Norwich did not accept students, instead acting as an auxiliary training school for army aviation cadets. By the time regular instruction resumed in 1946, the university had disposed of all its horses and officially discontinued cavalry training. From then on Lee and his classmates were referred to as the Horsemen of ’42.

  5. The woman’s maiden name remains unclear.

  6. Construction had begun in January 1942. The post was renamed Fort Campbell in 1950, and as of this writing remains the home installation of the 101st Airborne Division, the 5th Special Forces Group, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

  7. Organizational details for both the 12th AD and 23rd TB are drawn from Ferguson, Hellcats, and Francis, A History of the 23rd Tank Battalion.

  8. A coaxial machine gun is mounted inside the tank’s turret, alongside and parallel to the main gun. The machine gun fires in the same direction as the main gun and is used against such “soft” targets as unarmored vehicles and troops in the open.

  9. Armored Force Field Manual, 10.

  10. “Capt. Jack Lee, ’42, Rescues Daladier in Castle Battle,” Norwich Record (Northfield, VT), June 22, 1945, 5.

  11. Basse by all accounts was a very nice man. In a 2012 interview with the
author, Calbert Duvall, a driver in Company B’s 2nd Platoon, related an example of Basse’s kindness: while the 23rd was still at Camp Barkley, Duvall’s young wife and infant daughter arrived from upstate New York for a very brief visit. Duvall was supposed to have guard duty, but Basse pulled the eight-hour detail in the young soldier’s place so Duvall could spend the time with his family.

  12. Built between 1913 and 1919 by Germany’s Vulcan AG shipyard and originally intended for service with the Hamburg-Amerika Line, the twenty-two-thousand-ton vessel was transferred in 1920 to Britain as part of the war reparations the Allies awarded themselves at the Paris Peace Conference. The ship passed to Canadian Pacific in 1921 and was initially named Empress of China but became Empress of Australia the following year. It reentered transatlantic passenger service after World War II and was scrapped in 1952.

  13. Francis, History of the 23rd Tank Battalion, 10–12.

  14. Some sources give the name as Besotten Jinny, but the version used in this volume is the one most commonly cited. The actual origin of the name is lost to history, but it may be a reference to the nickname of Lee’s first wife, Virginia.

  15. LST stands for “Landing Ship, Tank.” The large, flat-bottomed vessels carried their cargo of armored vehicles right up onto the beach and offloaded them through large bow doors. The modern U.S. Army uses an even larger variant known as an LSV (Logistics Support Vessel) to move armored vehicles and other cargo.

  16. See Francis, History of the 23rd Tank Battalion, 18, and Ferguson, Hellcats, 57–60.

  17. Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, a 1940 graduate of West Point, was twenty-four when he was killed. The scion of a family with a long military history, Meigs was the son of a naval officer. His own son, the future General Montgomery C. Meigs, was born one month after Lt. Col. Meigs’s death.

  18. Operations in Germany, 1–10 May 1945. For a full account of the Herrlisheim battle, see Edward Monroe-Jones’s excellent Crossing the Zorn.

  19. The “Easy 8” moniker came from the fact that the M4A3(76)W was also referred to as the M4A3E8. Second-generation examples of the Easy 8 were built with the Horizontal Volute Spring Suspension (HVSS) system and had wider tracks and other detail changes.