Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II

by Nicholas Best

  “I only hope to find my children back at home!” he had just told Swiss relations in a letter.6 Still numb from the death of his wife, Otto Frank had nothing left now except his children. He missed them dreadfully, especially his younger daughter, Anne. It was only the thought of Anne and Margot that had kept him going during the last, bitter months at Auschwitz. Frank was praying to his God and keeping his fingers crossed that they would both be there, waiting for him, when at last he got back to Amsterdam.

  19

  OPERATION CHOWHOUND

  OVER THE NORTH SEA, Operation Chowhound had just begun, the American version of Operation Manna. The sky was full of Flying Fortresses heading for Holland with a cargo of food for the Dutch. After waiting so long for the weather to improve, the Americans were raring to go. Like the RAF, they had had enough of dealing out death and destruction over Europe. Dropping food to starving people was much more to their liking.

  There was still heavy cloud over East Anglia as they took off, but the operation couldn’t be delayed any longer. Assured that the skies were clearer over Holland, the bombers formed up at low altitude and crossed the North Sea a few hundred feet above sea level. Their crews scanned the Dutch coast nervously as they approached, well aware that the Germans were still manning their antiaircraft defenses. As with the RAF, it had been arranged that a couple of bombers should fly ahead of the rest to test the Germans’ reactions before giving the all-clear. German guns tracked the aircraft closely to ensure that the Americans kept to the agreed route, but no shots were fired. Operation Chowhound went ahead as planned.

  Flying from Snetterton Heath in Norfolk, Max Krell of the Ninety-sixth Bomb Group found it an unnerving experience. His aircraft came in so low over the Dutch coast that he could see the German gunners staring up at him as he passed. They could almost have thrown rocks, let alone fired their guns. The aircraft was flying even lower by the time it reached the drop zone at Ypenburg, an airfield near The Hague. It came down to four hundred feet, lowering its wheels and wing flaps at the same time to bring the speed down to a hundred and thirty miles per hour, about as slow as a Flying Fortress could go without stalling. The Dutch were pleased to see it, as Krell recalled:

  Such signs of celebration we had never seen before nor since as the people hurried to retrieve their food from the sky. People waved at the planes, flags were everywhere and we had no doubt that the effort had been appreciated. Because of the unwieldy nature of the load, some packages didn’t drop cleanly and had to be kicked out of the bomb bay by our crew. Each package seemed to have a recipient soon after it hit the ground, no matter where it landed. A few were even observed being recovered from canals.1

  The Americans were dropping ten-in-one rations, boxes of military ration packs containing ten meals each for one man. Claude Hill, a member of the 390th ground crew, had persuaded the pilot of Hotter ’n Hell to take him along as a waist gunner on his first flight over enemy territory. He watched fascinated as the cardboard boxes fell into a canal, closely followed by the Dutch, who dived straight in after them. Others saw the boxes smashing into greenhouses or crashing through tiled roofs, a danger to life and limb. But the Dutch didn’t mind. Waving sheets and tablecloths, anything they could find, they were just happy to see the Americans as the Fortresses roared overhead.

  After flying his share of combat missions, turret gunner Bernie Behrman was happy in turn to see the Dutch. Everyone in his crew felt good about it as they opened the bomb bays over Valkenburg airfield and dropped food instead of high explosives:

  I could see German soldiers walking their station. We dropped the food. Because the food was in burlap bags, some got hung up on the shackles in the bay. This didn’t cause trouble, however, so we closed the bay and returned to base with a good feeling. The crew that was on board was a combat crew and did its share of blowing up things. After all the destructive missions we all felt very good about this mission.2

  Ralph DiSpirito, a waist gunner on the Maiden Prayer, shared their enthusiasm. Holland at low altitude had lived up to his every expectation: all canals, windmills, and tulip fields on the way to Valkenburg. He remembered the tulips best, a wonderful sight from above.

  “THANKS, YANKS.” The Dutch had spelled it out in flowers, clipping the fields of tulips into capital letters to show their appreciation. Some of the most hard-bitten airmen had tears in their eyes as they read the words and saw the waving crowds, so obviously glad to see them. But the most heartfelt response from the Dutch was spotted by a vigilant ball gunner, who immediately got on to his tailman over the intercom. “Close your eyes,” he told him. “You’re much too young to see this.”3 On the ground below, already vanishing into the distance, a young Dutch woman had lifted the front of her dress and was waving it cheerfully at the Americans. She wore nothing underneath.

  * * *

  FOUR HUNDRED MILES AWAY, General George Patton was en route to the newly liberated prison camp at Moosburg, just north of Munich. Flying down from Nuremberg, he had landed at an airstrip behind the front line and was driving the rest of the way in a Jeep. Moosburg was a prison camp for Allied officers and others, perhaps a hundred thousand in all, from a myriad of different nations. Thirty thousand of them were American.

  The nearby town had been taken by the U.S. Army on April 29. The prisoners had watched ecstatically as what looked like U.S. tanks appeared in the distance, checking the camp out before returning to their own lines. The prisoners had known for sure that liberation was at hand when Mustang fighters from the U.S. Air Force flew low overhead, waggling their wings to let the prisoners know they were not forgotten. Cameron Garrett, a B-24 tail gunner before being shot down, had been one of the American prisoners longing for their own people to arrive:

  All through the night we heard the sounds of loaded German trucks leaving the compound. They didn’t get far before there was a single explosion. No one could sleep, there was an unmistakable air of expectancy among every one of the 110,000 prisoners. German SS troops moved under cover outside the city in an effort to set up a defensive perimeter against the American attack.

  Somewhere the German SS opened fire with small arms, the return volley comprised of heavy automatic weapons that dominated the confrontation. Having been ordered to stay in barracks, we needed no encouragement to remain low and keep our helmets on. Approximately one hour later, an eerie silence perforated the explosive air. I held my breath when I felt the vibration in the ground when our army tanks hit the ridge overlooking the camp and headed in our direction. Soon the sounds of the moving Sherman tanks could no longer be heard over the noise of screaming, cheering, crying and yelling in a dozen different languages.

  The Sherman tanks of the Third Army came crashing through the fences of the compound. Every tank was immediately barraged by a ragged, emaciated, filthy multitude of POWs. When the German flag at the top of the Moosburg church was lowered, the men yelled at the top of their voices in jubilation. Just as quickly as they had begun, the entire mass fell silent when “Old Glory” was hoisted in its place. The newly ex-POWs immediately came to attention and saluted the American flag, regardless of their nationality.4

  Food had followed, showering down on the prisoners from the Sherman tanks. The crews pitched K-rations into the crowd like candy at a parade. It was as good as a Thanksgiving feast to Garrett and his friends. The Germans had surrendered, the prisoners were free again, the war was almost over. And now here was General Patton, old Blood and Guts himself, striding around the camp in his famous silver-buckled belt with an ivory-handled six-gun on each hip.

  He had arrived at lunchtime, standing erect in his Jeep as it drove in through the gate. The whole camp cheered and didn’t stop until the old showman lowered his arms for silence. He gave them a short speech, the usual one about whipping the Germans all the way to Berlin. Then he descended from his Jeep and set off on a tour of the camp, meeting the prisoners and seeing the conditions for himself.

  What he found did not please him. Cond
itions at Moosburg were nowhere near as bad as Belsen or Buchenwald, but they weren’t good, either. The camp was horribly overcrowded, and the only food in the past few weeks had come from American Red Cross parcels. Walking from hut to hut, stopping every now and then to talk to the men, Patton was not impressed. “I’m going to kill those sons of bitches for this,” he told one group of prisoners.5 He was sufficiently moved to shake hands with some of them, which he very rarely did.

  Patton stayed half an hour and then went back to the war. The last the prisoners saw of him, he was on his way to Landshut, where one of his staff officers had been a prisoner during the First World War. From there, he was planning to push forward into Austria and Czechoslovakia, if Eisenhower would let him, seeing how far he could take his conquering army before the final whistle blew and the greatest days of his military career and perhaps also of his life came to a triumphant end.

  * * *

  TWENTY MILES to the south, Lee Miller and Dave Scherman had arrived from Dachau to find that Munich had already surrendered to the Americans and the troops were busy settling in. There was no fighting to photograph, so they found their way instead to Prinzregentenplatz 16, a big old apartment building near the river. It was where Hitler had lived since the 1920s, whenever he was in Munich.

  As Eisenhower had just said in a message of congratulation to the army, Prinzregentenplatz 16 was “the lair of the beast,” the place from which Hitler had built up the Nazi Party before coming to power. It was also where his niece Geli Raubal had killed herself rather than go on living with a monster. Overlooking a cobbled square, the building was comfortable, but nothing out of the ordinary. Hitler had occupied a single room at first, but later acquired the entire building. He had established himself in a nine-room apartment on the second floor, with his SS guards on the ground floor, next to the entrance. The basement had been turned into kitchens for the staff, with a bombproof air raid shelter beneath.

  Miller and Scherman arrived to discover that the whole place had been taken over by the 45th Division. The 179th Regiment had put a sentry on the door and was using the building as a command post. There was plenty of room to spare, so the two of them were invited to stay the night.

  They needed no urging. Where better in Munich? Scarcely believing their luck, they dumped their kit in Hitler’s apartment and wandered from room to room, looking through his possessions, examining everything they found, searching for a glimpse of the real man behind the public mask. The library was full of leather-bound books, presentation volumes given to Hitler by admirers, but there were few books of his own, few signs of his personality at all, beyond some mediocre paintings on the wall and a large globe of the world that had doubtless played its part in his deliberations.

  Hitler’s bedroom was scarcely more informative. It was hung with department store chintz and had a large, cream-colored safe in the corner. The maid, valet, and guard could all be summoned by pressing a button on the bedside table. The adjoining bathroom connected to a small room with a single bed, where Eva Braun had slept when she stayed overnight.

  At the other end of the apartment, there was a separate flat with a state-of-the-art switchboard on the wall. Hitler had been able to dial straight through to Berlin, Berchtesgarden, and similar places. Since Berchtesgaden had yet to fall to the Allies, Lieutenant-Colonel William Grace of the 179th had tried to telephone the Berghof when he arrived, on the off chance that Hitler might pick up the phone. An obliging German operator put him through, but no one had answered. Berchtesgaden had still not recovered from the RAF bombing of a few days earlier.

  Going downstairs again after they had looked around, Miller and Scherman found a German woman living in an apartment on the ground floor. Married to an Englishman named Gardner, she had British nationality and spoke excellent English. She told them about Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, and showed them a jug shaped like King George VI’s head, which played the British national anthem when lifted. A gift to Hitler from Neville Chamberlain when he visited Prinzregentenplatz, it had been passed on to her for safekeeping.

  Outside, Miller and Scherman went to see the Hofbräuhaus, Munich’s famous old beer hall where Hitler had outlined the Nazis’ twenty-five-point manifesto at the beginning of his career. The roof had been blown in, but there was still beer in the cellar. The Hofbräuhaus was where Munich’s university students celebrated May Day in happier times, but there were no celebrations that day, although a few drab civilians were drinking in the ground-floor hall, which hadn’t been destroyed. Miller had a beer, too, just to say that she had drunk there.

  Later, she and Scherman visited Eva Braun’s house on Wasserburgerstrasse. It had already been looted when they arrived, given a thorough going-over by refugees searching for something to eat. Curious to learn that Hitler had kept a mistress, Miller looked through Eva’s scattered possessions with more than usual interest. The house was dull and nondescript, but she found some photographs of Hitler, affectionately inscribed to Eva and her sister Gretl. Most of Eva’s clothes had gone, but the remaining accessories and scent bottles suggested a woman of considerable femininity. Among other things, there was a douche bag, lipstick from Milan, and a supply of Elizabeth Arden cosmetics. From the array of products in the medicine cupboard, it was evident that the woman in Hitler’s life had been a martyr to menstrual pain.

  Back in Hitler’s apartment, Miller had a bath that night, the first proper bath she had had in weeks. Stripping off her clothes, she propped up a photograph of Hitler on the edge of the tub and soaped herself in the Führer’s own bath while Scherman took photographs. He also photographed her at Hitler’s desk and took a picture of Sergeant Arthur Peters lounging on Hitler’s bed reading a copy of Mein Kampf. Colonel Grace was photographed, too, standing by the switchboard and holding the telephone to Berchtesgaden to his ear. If the Führer was in, he still wasn’t answering.

  * * *

  SOUTH OF MUNICH, the Thirty-sixth Texas Division had reached Bad Tölz, a spa town on the river Isar. Learning from a prisoner that Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was waiting for them at a local sanatorium, Second Lieutenant Joe Burke of the 141st Infantry took a ten-man patrol from Company A and went to arrest him.

  Von Rundstedt was no longer a serving soldier. Recalled to active service in 1939, he had led German armies into Poland, France, and Russia, but had frequently clashed with Hitler about the conduct of the war. He had recognized the inevitable after D-day, urging his superiors in Berlin to negotiate with the Allies rather than go on fighting a losing battle. “Make peace, you idiots!” he had yelled at one point. His advice had been ignored, and von Rundstedt had been quietly relieved of his command in March 1945.

  Plagued with heart trouble and an arthritic leg, he had gone to Bad Tölz to take a cure. He was sitting by the fire with his wife and son when Burke arrived. Von Rundstedt was shocked, because he hadn’t expected the Americans until next morning. Surrendering at once, he couldn’t conceal his bitterness at the ignominious way in which his career had ended. “It is a most disgraceful situation for a soldier to give himself up without resistance,” he told Burke, as he was led into captivity.6 But he had been right about the Germans’ conduct of the war. They should have made peace long ago.

  * * *

  FIFTY MILES to the west, Major Wernher von Braun of the SS was still waiting for the Americans to arrive, longing to be arrested as soon as they showed up. As Germany’s leading rocket scientist, the man behind the attacks on London and Antwerp, von Braun had no qualms about surrendering to the Americans. Rather than fall into the wrong hands, he wanted to give himself up to the Yanks and make his expertise available to them before anyone else could take him prisoner and hold him to ransom.

  The last few weeks had been very difficult for von Braun and his team. They had been at Peenemünde, the rocket base on the north German coast, until forced to retreat by the Russians. Fleeing south, von Braun had been involved in a car crash that had left him with a broken shoulder and an arm
still in a cast. Along with several hundred other rocket scientists and technicians, he had ended up in a Wehrmacht camp near Oberammergau, in the foothills of the Alps. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire, and the scientists were prisoners, being held by their own people as bargaining chips for the peace negotiations with the Allies.

  The man holding them hostage was Hans Kammler, an engineer turned SS general who had constructed Auschwitz and several other camps with the ruthless use of slave labor. Fearing that the Allies would hang him for war crimes, Kammler intended to trade the scientists for his own life. Failing that, he planned to kill them all to prevent their expertise from being acquired by the enemy.

  As if that weren’t enough, the camp was also under constant threat from Allied aircraft, bombing and strafing at will. Worried that his entire team could be wiped out in a single air raid, von Braun had persuaded a junior SS officer to limit the danger by dispersing the more important scientists among the surrounding villages. The young major had been very reluctant, but von Braun had managed to convince him that he would be held responsible if all the scientists were killed in a single attack.

  Von Braun himself had been taken under escort to a skiing hotel at Oberjoch, a few miles west of Oberammergau. He was waiting there now with his brother and a few colleagues, hoping that the Americans would appear before the SS changed their minds and massacred the lot of them. There was a unit of the French army not far away, but von Braun didn’t want to surrender to the French if it meant being separated from the rest of his team. And he certainly didn’t want to surrender to the British. They would never accept his protestations that his rockets had been designed for space travel, rather than the destruction of London—particularly if they learned that his team had celebrated the first successful attack on London with champagne.