Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (47 page)

I am so sorry and I weep for her every night still. She saved my life and the life of your baby cousins, Rudi, by taking us in. I am still in your house but will leave if you want me to. I have protected as much as I could of your belongings from people searching for useful things in deserted places. I am so happy and grateful you are alive. Our family has been destroyed but my two babies live and my nephew lives. That is more than others can say, Rudi.

I pray for your continued health and well being and I am hopeful we can see each other soon. Until then, God bless you.

Love,

Tante Ilse

It was too much to think that my mother should have survived when millions of other mothers did not. I am beside myself with grief for her and for them. I see now that there is no difference between my mother and a French or Dutch or Polish or even Jewish mother. I’ve asked myself a thousand times why we all loved Hitler and followed him, even when we should have recognized the evil handwriting on the wall. We all eventually knew the war was lost and that he was destroying our country, our culture, and our people but still we kept following him, looking to him in his brilliant insanity to lead us to victory. How did all of us fall under the spell of the evil genius that was Hitler? How did I? He caused a blot on Germany and German culture which until now, had been one of the pinnacles of the European world. Will we ever escape what we allowed to happen?

It seems so clear to me now that our whole country was deceived with promises of reclaiming glory that probably wasn’t ours to reclaim in the first place. Almost all of us bought into the idea that our race was superior to other races and that non Aryans had very little worth. I really thought that our country was entitled to the land owned by other peoples, and that our leader was a genius, so it is no wonder I felt joy at our victories and fought where I could to be victorious. It’s true that Hitler forced his way to power but I accepted him…almost all of us accepted him… and trusted his worldview. We accepted his destruction of inferior peoples and celebrated when he conquered the countries of the world. I believed in der Führer, and I cheered in each of our victories and rejoiced in each of our enemy’s defeats. Now here I sit and I realize that the only thing he really conquered and destroyed was his own country-- my own country-- as well as the innocent people of Germany and, now I see, the innocent people throughout the rest of the world too. It is only now, with this realization, that I can say that our fanaticism was misplaced and our fight was wrong. I now recognize that we were deceived but now it is too late. We are vanquished and I sit in a POW camp. I am hungry and thirsty, it is cold outside, especially at night, and I am painfully uncomfortable but I could not be happier that we did not win this war. The loss is bitter but I know that a victory would have been worse.

An Allied Division in Europe generally consisted of 10,000- 20,000 men.

An Infantry Battalion had roughly 800 men.

An Armored Battalion had roughly 800 men and about 50 tanks.

A Squad generally had about 10 men and one or two machine guns.

By 1944, German Divisions generally consisted of 12,000-13,000 men.

Elite Panzer Divisions such as the 12
^th
SS “Hitler Jugend” might have over 20,000 highly trained men.

“Static” Divisions were comprised of old or medically unfit men, sometimes reinforced with “Ost” troops who were POWs from overrun countries who “volunteered” to serve in the German Army.

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