The Boy Who Went to War

by Giles Milton

  Their intervention had the desired effect: the French soldiers agreed not to burn people’s homes although they insisted on torching the village offices, because they stood as a symbol of Nazi officialdom.

  They threw hand grenades into the building and it quickly caught fire. The Weber family was extremely fortunate that the wind was blowing a stiff easterly, which carried the flames away from their apartment. A few of the French troops, annoyed by this, threatened the assembled villagers, telling them that they would execute fifty inhabitants for every shot fired at them. ‘A terrible day,’ wrote Max. ‘The worst.’

  The air of uncertainty struck great fear into everyone in Eutingen. With unconfirmed reports of shootings and revenge killings in nearby villages, most people stayed firmly indoors. The Webers, like the Aïcheles, were praying for the arrival of the Americans, who were rumoured to be very close to Pforzheim.

  The sound of the Allied artillery grew louder with every hour that passed. Soon, it was coming from just behind the Rodi house. Young Frithjof could hear four distant booms as each of the battery’s guns were fired, followed by a long ssssccchhh sound as the shells traced through the sky. It was the second week of April and a new wave of Allied forces were approaching Pforzheim from the north.

  They could have taken the town without a fight if the battle-weary German troops on the ground had got their way. Most wanted to lay down their arms or retreat southwards to the Black Forest, but the town’s leader, Hans Knab, refused to countenance any retreat. He wanted what was left of Pforzheim to be defended at all costs.

  The Allies stalled for time, besieging the town for a further ten days but declining to fight their way into the ruins. The French sent in very low-flying aircraft, which flew round and round, all day long. Frithjof watched them circle the town from the vantage point of the family’s vegetable plot. Whenever the pilots saw troops, they would pass on the coordinates to the artillery, with instructions to bombard them.

  On one occasion, the planes began firing on the ground as they circled the hilltop on which stood the Rodi house. Frithjof’s grandmother, who had been sitting outside in the sunshine, was unable to make a quick retreat into the cellar on account of her crippled foot. When young Frithjof walked into the dining room once the all-clear had sounded, he was surprised to see both his grandmother and his aunt huddled under the table. It was a sight to remember: two normally composed and dignified ladies lying on the floor in terror. He knew, at that moment, that the old orderly world had come crashing down.

  After a week of Allied bombardment, Hans Knab realised that further resistance was futile, as well as likely to lead to his capture. Throwing in the towel, he fled Pforzheim, taking with him all of the town’s senior Nazi officials. Shortly before leaving, he ordered the destruction of the electricity generating plant – only recently repaired after the February bombing – as well as all of the town’s surviving gas and water supply lines.

  In giving this order, he was putting into effect Hitler’s Decree on Demolitions on Reich Territory, the so-called Nero Decree, in which the German army was ordered to destroy all surviving infrastructure as it retreated eastwards.

  ‘All military transport and communication facilities, industrial establishments and supply depots, as well as anything else of value within Reich territory, which could in any way be used by the enemy immediately or within the foreseeable future for the prosecution of the war, will be destroyed.’

  Thirty miles away in Stuttgart, Max Rodi had also received this order. He was specifically charged with destroying all the bakery ovens in the city – an act of vandalism that he refused to undertake. Indeed, he was so incensed by the Nero Decree that he summoned the men under his charge, informing them that he was abandoning his post and returning to his home and family in Pforzheim. He added that they were free to do whatever they wanted; he was no longer their commanding officer.

  Pforzheimers were as appalled as Max Rodi when they learned of the Nero Decree and were disgusted to discover that Hans Knab had left orders for it to be carried out to the letter. A small group remonstrated with the staff sergeant in charge of the operation and eventually persuaded him to refrain from such senseless waste. However, it was too late to save the town’s remaining bridges from being blown up. Only the iron railway bridge was saved by quick-thinking inhabitants who pulled the fuses from the explosive devices and threw them into the River Enz.

  The flight of Knab and his cortège left a power vacuum in Pforzheim. For a few hours there was no one in charge. Then, soon after they had fled, the sounds of different weaponry could be heard. Allied tanks could be seen circling around the Rodi family house and moving towards the town.

  Martha Luise panicked when she saw the tanks. Her second daughter, Gisela, had only just gone into Pforzheim in an attempt to find some desperately needed food for the family. Now, fearful for her safety, she ran down the hill to fetch her and bring her home. Having done so, when the two women attempted to get back to the house, they found their path blocked by a German soldier.

  He told them not to go any further because the road ahead had already been seized by French and Moroccan forces. Martha Luise brushed him aside. She and her daughter dashed up the street to the entrance gate and rushed along the long path to the front door, while the French, still hidden from view, kept up a constant barrage of fire. The bullets whistled passed their ears.

  They made it safely inside the house and headed straight for the cellar, from where Frithjof, through an air vent, had been watching their lucky escape.

  After a while the gunfire stopped. Martha Luise went outside again to see a single German soldier holding two guns and running along the garden path. It was the last vestige of German power in Pforzheim.

  Although the German soldiers stationed on the hillside were under orders to defend their positions to the death, their commanding officer had foreseen the inevitability of defeat and decided that enough was enough. Calling at the house belonging to the Rodis’ neighbours, the Elsässers, he asked for some civilian clothes. For the next couple of days, he lay low to avoid being caught and shot as a deserter. In the wake of his desertion, all the men under his command simply melted away.

  The Moroccan troops were by now so close that Frithjof could hear noises coming from their encampment, yet it was a further forty-eight hours before he actually saw them, going from garden to garden stealing hens and rabbits. On the third day, a young French officer knocked at the front door to commandeer the family’s camera. He was deeply disappointed when Martha Luise handed over a cheap box camera, clearly having hoped for a Leica.

  The arrival of the regular French army brought a semblance of order to Pforzheim. By 18 April, the last of the German snipers had been captured or killed and the entire town fell into Allied hands. The French commander, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, made a triumphant entrance through the ruins. Posters went up everywhere, claiming that the glorious French army had not only crossed the Rhine but had also reached the Danube.

  The French were still in the process of establishing their military headquarters when on 28 April an announcement came on the radio that was as dramatic as it was unexpected.

  It was the voice of Admiral Donitz, speaking gravely and slowly.

  ‘Comrades,’ he said, ‘der Führer ist gefallen.’

  Adolf Hitler was dead.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Escape to Freedom

  ‘Is it really true? Can it really be true?’

  Wolfram knew nothing about the capture of Pforzheim by Allied forces. Nor, indeed, was he aware that the town of his childhood lay in ruins. It was not until May 1945, fully three months after the bombing raid (and a week after Hitler’s suicide), that he first learned of the devastation.

  He was glancing through one of the German-language newspapers published in America when his eye lit upon an article about the February bombardment. It contained a graphic description of the destruction, written by a businessman who had been staying
in the suburbs on the night of the raid.

  Wolfram was greatly alarmed by what he read. His father travelled into Pforzheim almost every day in order to work at the School of Decorative Arts. His mother also made regular shopping trips into town. It was quite possible that they, and perhaps his sister, had been caught in the firestorm.

  It was not until October, eight months after the bombing, that he finally received the news that his parents had survived when a card came from an uncle in Switzerland, saying that they were alive and well.

  In his prisoner-of-war camp at Pont d’Ain in France, Peter Rodi was similarly ignorant of the fate of Pforzheim. He never received any news about the war. Indeed, he was lucky to pick up the occasional rumour from newly captured prisoners. The first he knew about the firebombing was when he received a postcard from his mother, telling him that the immediate family had survived.

  By this time, Peter was himself extremely lucky to still be alive. He had given himself just two weeks to live when confined to the camp infirmary. He had been suffering from acute oedema and had lost so much weight that his skeletal frame could be clearly seen through his skin.

  A stroke of luck was to save his life. One morning, the camp’s cook entered the makeshift infirmary and cast his eye over the wan faces of the sick and dying. Alighting on Peter, he peremptorily ordered him out of bed. He needed someone to help out in the kitchen and Peter was in marginally better shape than the other men.

  The job was a godsend. Peter was able to help himself to scraps of fatty meat and the occasional potato when the cook was not looking. He was ravenously hungry and his famished body took advantage of every little morsel. Within a month, his oedema had disappeared and he was declared fit enough to start manual work once again.

  This time, his spell of good fortune was to continue. He and a few others spent several days as volunteer drivers, transporting to the camp’s storeroom the confiscated clothes of newly arrived prisoners. For a brief time they lived like princes. Peter had the opportunity to jettison the old rags he had been wearing for months and replace it with a new set of clothes. He was also able to lay his hands on food and cigarettes.

  When the work came to an end, he was sent as part of a team to a nearby farm. For the first time in months, he found himself on the receiving end of kindness as well as huge quantities of food.

  The farmers ate five big meals a day. In the morning, Peter tucked into fried potatoes, bread, eggs and two different types of meat, and in the evening, he would be given omelettes made with six eggs. The farmers, watching him wolf this down, would say: ‘My, you’ve got a cavernous belly!’

  In the first week of May 1945, the German prisoners at Pont d’Ain, in Oklahoma, and elsewhere in America and Europe began to hear whispered rumours of the impending collapse of the Werhmacht. It was said that armed forces everywhere were about to capitulate to the Allies. These rumours proved correct. On 7 May came the announcement that German soldiers on the western front had surrendered. A day later, troops on the eastern front also laid down their weapons. After five and a half years of conflict, the war in Europe had at long last come to an end.

  Later that day, Wolfram and his fellow prisoners were summoned to a camp meeting. An American officer read out a statement telling them that Germany had surrendered.

  There was no wild celebration on the part of the prisoners, no cheering or jubilation. Most of them were simply relieved that the fighting would finally cease. All hoped and prayed that they might soon get to go home to their families and loved ones.

  For Wolfram it was a day for inward rejoicing. The war was over and it had been his good fortune to survive. The outcome could so easily have been different. Diphtheria had almost cost him his life in the Crimea, yet it had also saved him from certain death in Stalingrad. Almost all his conscripted comrades from the 1942 call-up had died in that epic winter battle. Many of those fighting alongside him in Normandy had also been killed. Among the dead was the soldier who had been sheltering inches away from him in the roadside ditch near Le Vretot.

  Wolfram was surprised to discover that his feeling of quiet elation was not shared by the American soldiers in charge of the prisoners, who told him they regretted the outbreak of peace. He could hardly believe what they were saying and asked them why. They replied that the end of the war meant that they would all soon be unemployed again. The conflict had not only brought them jobs and salaries, but had also enabled many of them to make a fast buck through private profiteering. Now, the good times were coming to an end.

  There were big changes at Camp Gruber within days of the German surrender. The thousands of American troops still based there were told to pack up their possessions in preparation for being sent home. The months of military training had been for nothing; now that all hostilities had ceased, their services were no longer required.

  The day for the soldiers’ departure came soon enough. One morning, Wolfram awoke to the sight of a huge fleet of pick-ups pulling up outside the camp gates. For the next few hours, the entire encampment was alive to the cries of men and the crash and clatter of equipment as the trucks were loaded, driven away then, one by one, with the men on board. The vast camp complex fell eerily silent. The only Americans left behind were those in charge of the German prisoner-of-war camp.

  Its inmates were informed that the whole place was going to be dismantled and the land sold off to local farmers. Before that could happen, however, all the unexploded mines in the woodland areas, which had been used as a training ground, had to be removed or detonated.

  Wolfram and his comrades spent the next month searching for mines in the swampy land that surrounded the camp. It was dangerous work and not just because of the mines. There were bird-eating and black widow spiders, as well as poisonous copperhead snakes. One prisoner focused entirely on trying to catch these snakes so that he could turn them into snakeskin shoes when he returned to Germany.

  Once a week the prisoners were allowed to watch a movie in the camp cinema. These were almost always westerns and, after many months of seeing such films, most of the men were so bored by them that they had stopped attending. An afternoon came when they were assembled together and told that they were obliged to watch that week’s screening. They shuffled their way into the auditorium, wondering what they were going to be shown.

  There was a whirring noise as the projector started to turn. Seconds later, a black-and-white image flickered on to the screen. It immediately became apparent that this was no cowboy film. Rather, it was a horror movie of such intensity and human cruelty that it would be etched into their minds for the rest of their lives.

  On 15 April, the British 11th Armoured Division had entered Bergen-Belsen extermination camp. ‘Here, over an acre of ground, lay dead and dying people,’ reported the BBC broadcaster, Richard Dimbleby, who was accompanying the army. ‘You could not see which was which…The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them.’

  Similar scenes greeted Allied forces that entered the other extermination camps: sickness, death and abject human misery on an unimaginable scale. Now, the German prisoners were to watch a film of the scenes that had greeted these Allied troops.

  Wolfram was shocked to the core by what he saw. He was no less shocked by the scale of the suffering. In Bergen-Belsen alone, Allied soldiers had found 55,000 prisoners in the camp – cadaverous, wan and suffering from typhus, dysentery and malnutrition. There were 13,000 corpses, unburied, in various states of putrefaction. Corpses in piles and cadavers on carts. The living looked little different from the dead. The staring eyes of a bewildered child; the blank expressions of men and women who had been witness to mass killings for months on end.

  The German prisoners watched the film in complete silence. They were left reeling by what they saw. So profound was their stupef
action that when the film finished and the men were back outside, blinking in the sunshine, no one could bring himself to speak. There was nothing to be said.

  Their silence on the subject was to endure for many weeks. Once or twice, a few lone voices dared to venture that it could not be true – that the Allied film was a fake. However, most of the men knew better than to challenge the evidence of the eyewitnesses and the victims. It was a truth that would have to be borne.

  All of the prisoners were hoping that they would be repatriated to Germany as soon as the minefields were cleared. As the weeks passed and turned into months, there was still no talk of their being sent home. Indeed, many of them were taken back to work as labourers on the local farms. Then, the day came when they started seeing returning American soldiers. The nearby towns were soon full of them.

  The troops would call over to the German prisoners as they were being transported to their workplaces. They had letters from girlfriends and sweethearts in Germany but very few men were able to understand them. One of Wolfram’s friends spoke good English and so he translated for them.

  Summer passed in a blaze of heat and then, in the first week of September, the leaves started to colour once again. Wolfram was struck by the realisation that fully five months had now elapsed since the capitulation of the German army and an entire year had passed since he had first arrived in Oklahoma. Yet whenever the prisoners asked when they would be going home, their guards simply shrugged their shoulders. No one seemed to know.

  The first that Peter Rodi knew of the armistice was when it was announced on the camp’s loudspeakers. Shortly afterwards, the French guards went around hanging up photographs of emaciated people in extermination camps.