On the fifth, the 4th Armored Division had definite control of the cities of Gotha, Ohrdruf, and Mühlberg. I was very happy, because General Gay was finally promoted to Major General, and General Williams, Army Artillery Officer, and General Conklin, Army Engineer, also received their first stars.
We had the Corps Commanders in for lunch for the purpose of arranging boundaries. Whenever boundaries are arranged, there is always a bitter fight between all concerned over the question of roads, so I decided to let the three settle this themselves, which they eventually succeeded in doing after a long and acrimonious debate. I felt, and the Corps Commanders, I think, agreed with me, that there was nothing in front of the Third Army which it, or any of its three corps, could not easily overcome. We were, therefore, opposed to stopping, but, in order to occupy the new boundaries as prescribed by higher authority, we practically had to stop, or at least slow down, in order to perform, for the first time in the history of the Third Army, the act of regrouping. Even while doing this, however, we pushed along several miles each day, so as to prevent the enemy from digging in.
On the sixth, I decorated Private Harold A. Garman, of the 5th Infantry Division, with the Medal of Honor. Garman was an attached medico in one of the battalions that forced the crossing over the Sauer River. During the action, a boat with three walking and one prone wounded, paddled by two engineers, started back and was caught by German machine-gun fire in the middle of the river. The engineers, and one of the walking wounded, jumped overboard and swam for shore. The other two wounded jumped overboard, but were too weak to swim and clung to the boat while the litter case lay prone. The boat, still under a hail of bullets, drifted toward the German shore. Private Garman swam out and pushed the boat to our side. I asked him why he did it, and he looked surprised and said, “Well, someone had to.”
After the ceremony I went, via Limburg, to Ehrenbreitstein to be present at the ceremony of re-hoisting the American colors, which we had taken down twenty-six years before, when the 4th Infantry Division started home at the termination of our occupation of the Rhineland. Mr. McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, was present.
The 13th Armored Division started to close as Army Reserve in the rear area of the XX Corps. Late in the evening, Patch telephoned that the 14th Armored Division (commanded by Major General A. C. Smith) had recaptured Hammelburg and that only about seventy American prisoners remained, among whom was Colonel Waters, critically wounded.
Elmer Davis of the OWI and General McClure1 came to dinner. Also Colonel Darby of the Rangers, whom I had twice decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross, once in Tunisia and once in Sicily. He was later killed.
The good news of the day arrived when, at 1705, General Eddy called up to say that the 90th Division of his corps had captured the German gold reserve at Merkers, justifying General Sibert’s guess as to the location of a German Headquarters. I had been burned on so many rumors that I told Eddy not to mention the capture of the gold until we had definitely identified it.
On the seventh, Bradley asked me if I could lend the 13th Armored Division to the First Army for the purpose of cleaning out the pocket between it and the Ninth Army. It was during this operation that General Wogan, the Division Commander, was seriously wounded. In order to replace the 13th Armored Division, I transferred the 4th Armored from the VIII Corps to the XX, leaving the VIII Corps temporarily without an armored division, but this was not too disadvantageous, as the country in its zone of action was not suitable for armor.
A Quartermaster detachment of the Third Army had the signal, and, as far as I know, solitary distinction of capturing a German lieutenant general, General Hahm, commanding the 82nd German Corps, together with a colonel, a major, a lieutenant, and seven privates. They were apparently fed up with fighting and simply waited until American troops passed. The colored soldiers capturing them were the most elated soldiers I have ever seen.
At 1500, Eddy called to say that he had entered the gold reserve vault and found the equivalent of a billion dollars in paper marks, but that the gold, if it existed, was behind a steel door. This I ordered him to blow up. He stated also that he had two members of the Reichsbank in custody.
1Brigadier General R. A. McClure, Chief Psychological Warfare Division, SHAEF.
On this day the four hundred thousandth prisoner captured by the Third Army was processed through the cages and photographed.
Late in the evening, quite a fight developed in the VIII Corps, when some two thousand Germans were caught between the 89th and 87th Divisions. At the same time the XX Corps was attacked on its northern flank, and repulsed the attack by using the 76th Division and one combat command of the 6th Armored.
General Giraud’s Aide came in at suppertime with the Giraud family, which he had found at the town of Friedrichroda. I kept them all night and flew them to Metz in the morning, as it was quicker and safer than sending them by car.
On the eighth, Mr. McCloy, accompanied by General Craig1 of the Air Force, arrived and attended our morning briefing. The Secretary was extremely complimentary. He was anxious to get to the front to see some of the fighting, but owing to the distances involved and the fact that the roads were quite infested with small German groups, who shot up our isolated convoys, I at last dissuaded him. On the seventh, Colonel R. S. Allen, Assistant G-2, Third Army, had been seriously wounded, one man killed, and three others captured out of a total of seven while driving in the vicinity of Gotha. Mr. McCloy and I discussed what, to me, was the seemingly barbaric bombardment of the centers of cities. The Secretary stated that he had talked to Devers and Patch and they both agreed with me that it was a useless and sadistic form of war.
The Chief of Staff of the 90th Division let out the news of the capture of the gold, which, as previously stated, I was trying to conceal. In addition to the paper money previously reported, Eddy had found, on blowing the door, some 4500 gold bricks weighing thirty-five pounds apiece and alleged to be worth $57,600,000. I immediately telephoned General Bradley that, owing to the amount of the seizure and the fact that it had been made public, I believed it was now a political rather than a military question and requested that G-4 from SHAEF be asked to send somebody to take it over.
1Major General H. A. Craig, Assistant Chief Air Staff for Operations, Headquarters, AAF, Washington, D.C.
Mr. McCloy, at his own request, visited Colonel Waters in the hospital, and we also examined a number of wards and the operating rooms. He was extremely complimentary in his remarks concerning the efficiency with which things were run. After the Secretary left, I returned to the hospital and pinned the Silver Star and Oak Leaf Cluster on Waters. He did not know that he had been awarded either decoration, having not lived, in an historical sense, for more than two years, since his capture in Tunisia.1
All three corps which I visited in the afternoon were ready to resume the limited offensive to attain Grid Line 20.2 In the case of the XX Corps, I told them that if, on reaching the grid line, they could get Erfurt, a little to the east, to go ahead, taking it by envelopment from the south in order to dish up any high ranking Germans who attempted to pull out to the so-called “Redoubt”—the existence of which I then personally discounted. The VIII Corps, with the 89th Division on the north and 87th on the south, moved on the same grid line with orders to take Amstadt. The XII Corps was already in advance of the grid line, but I believed it would probably be held up except on its right, where it was directed to take Eisfeld and Coburg.
On the tenth, the objective set the day before had been attained, and we moved the Army Headquarters from Frankfurt to Hersfeld, driving over the autobahn. When we first encountered the autobahns, we looked forward to them as of great military value, but after some experience it was evident that, as immediate routes of attack, the secondary roads were better, owing to the fact that the autobahns overpass the secondary roads and these points are easily destroyed by demolition. In fact, we captured a German colonel who was quite proud of himself because he said th
at through the use of five hundred-kilo aviation bombs he had certainly delayed the Third Army two days; which was probably true. After an autobahn had been in our possession for three days, it was extremely valuable, because by that time the Engineers had repaired the damage. They became very clever at this, as they did at all other military tasks. To show the extent to which the Germans went in demolition, Codman and I once passed fourteen demolitions in twenty kilometers.
1Colonel Waters was captured in February, 1943.
2A limiting line on the map upon which adjacent units were to co-ordinate prior to advancing.
On the way to the new Command Post at Hersfeld, we stopped at Wiesbaden and had lunch with General Bradley. The new Command Post had apparently been an armored training center, or a Quartermaster training center. It was very well situated and had an excellent mess hall and kitchen for the enlisted men’s mess; also a number of sheds, one completely full of spare parts for horse-drawn escort wagons.
During the long drive to Hersfeld, I noticed evidence of great carelessness in leaving gasoline cans along the road, so issued an order that the Assistant Quartermaster General of the Third Army was personally to drive along the road, followed by two trucks, and pick up all the cans he found.
I also found that practically every enlisted member of the Medical Corps had captured a civilian automobile or motorcycle, with the result that we were wasting gasoline at a magnificent rate and also cluttering up the road with transportation which would later be needed by the German civilians to rebuild the country. We therefore issued orders for the sequestration of these vehicles.
Another thing I noticed was the fact that the Army was going to hell on uniform. During the extremely cold weather it had been permissible, and even necessary, to permit certain variations, but with the approach of summer I got out another uniform order.
When we reached the new Command Post at Hersfeld, there was considerable excitement over a rumor that the Germans were going to land a small glider-borne expedition for the purpose of killing me. I never put much faith in this rumor, but did take my carbine to my truck1 every night when I went to bed.
General Eisenhower and General Bradley arrived at our Cub landing field at 0900 on April 12, and we at once set out to see General Eddy and Colonel Bernard D. Bernstein2 at the salt mine in Merkers. They were accompanied by several German officials, whom we took with us in the elevator and descended twenty-one hundred feet. The mine, usually described as a salt mine, does not produce table salt, but some sort of chemical which looks very much like asbestos. It is a tremendous affair, having five hundred and eighty kilometers of tunnels. These are from thirty to fifty feet high and about the same width.
1While in the field and when at home in Army Headquarters, General Patton lived and worked in two truck trailers.
His parlor, bedroom, and bath was a converted Ordnance Trailer, entered from the rear after climbing a steep set of steps. The steps were corrugated iron and were a great hazard to Willie, the General’s dog. After Willie had lost several of his toenails in the corrugations, it became necessary to cover the steps with boards.
Inside, there was a desk with side drawers, electric light, two telephones, and other necessary office fixtures. The General had a small map-board, which he referred to seldom, if ever. He did not keep the situation posted in his living trailer, as it was posted in his office trailer. There was a small closet for clothes, a small washstand and cabinet for toilet articles, and a built-in bed at the far end of the trailer. A radio was installed in an upper panel inside the truck, which the General used frequently in listening to broadcasts. He never used radio in talking to his commanders. Even during the most rapid advances, the Signal Corps usually kept up with wire communications. Once in a while it was necessary to use radio telephone, but this was handled over the regular telephone system installed in the truck. One of the two telephones —incidentally it had a green receiver—was a direct line to General Bradley and General Eisenhower. This particular telephone had a device supposed to scramble the words as they passed over the wire and come out as spoken on the other end. Most of the General’s oaths were used at this device. It seemed he could never get it in phase and complained that it scrambled his own words before he uttered them.
All the electrical devices were run by a mobile generator that furnished electricity for the Headquarters group.
The office trailer was a long, moving-van type of truck, fitted inside with .a desk, map-boards, and telephone. It was located in camp close to the General’s living trailer and was used frequently for conferences.
The General preferred to use the two trailers for living and work, and it was not until the winter set in that he moved inside. When spring came in 1945, while moving through Germany, he favored his truck-house for sleeping and used it even though his office was in a building and his meals served indoors.
2From Finance Section, SHAEF.
In addition to the paper money and gold bricks, there was a great deal of French, American, and British gold currency; also a number of suitcases filled with jewelry, such as silver and gold cigarette cases, wrist-watch cases, spoons, forks, vases, gold-filled teeth, false teeth, etc. These suitcases were in no way labeled, and apparently simply contained valuable metal gleaned by bandit methods. General Eisenhower said jokingly that he was very much chagrined not to find a box full of diamonds. We found no precious stones in this particular hideout. We examined a few of the alleged art treasures. The ones I saw were worth, in my opinion, about $2.50, and were of the type normally seen in bars in America.
From the mine we drove to Eisfeld, Headquarters of the XII Corps, where we were joined by General Weyland. After lunch we flew, accompanied by a mythical air support which did not materialize because it got lost, to the Headquarters of the XX Corps at Gotha, where we met both Middleton and Walker. At Walker’s suggestion, we drove to Ohrdruf and visited the first horror camp any of us had ever seen. It was the most appalling sight imaginable. A man who said he was one of the former inmates acted as impresario and showed us first the gallows, where men were hanged for attempting to escape. The drop board was about two feet from the ground, and the cord used was piano wire which had an adjustment so that when the man dropped, his toes would just reach the ground and it would take about fifteen minutes for him to choke to death, since the fall was not sufficient to break his neck. The next two men to die had to kick the board out from under him. It was stated by some of the Germans present that the generals who were executed after the Hitler bomb incident were hanged in this manner.
Our guide then took us to the whipping table, which was about the height of the average man’s crotch. The feet were placed in stocks on the ground and the man was pulled over the table, which was slightly hollowed, and held by two guards, while he was beaten across the back and loins. The stick which they said had been used, and which had some blood on it, was bigger than the handle of a pick. Our guide claimed that he himself had received twenty-five blows with this tool. It later developed that he was not a prisoner at all, but one of the executioners. General Eisenhower must have suspected it, because he asked the man very pointedly how he could be so fat. He was found dead next morning, killed by some of the inmates.
Just beyond the whipping table there was a pile of forty bodies, more or less naked. All of these had been shot in the back of the head at short range, and the blood was still cooling on the ground.
In a shed near-by was a pile of forty completely naked bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime—not, apparently, for the purpose of destroying them, but to reduce the smell. As a reducer of smell, lime is a very inefficient medium. The total capacity of the shed looked to me to be about two hundred bodies. It was stated that bodies were left until the shed was full and then they were taken out and buried. The inmates said some three thousand people had been buried from this shed since January 1, 1945.
When our troops began to draw near, the Germans though
t it expedient to remove the evidence of their crimes. They therefore used the inmates to exhume the recently buried bodies and to build a sort of mammoth griddle of 60 cm. railway tracks laid on a brick foundation. The bodies were piled on this and they attempted to bum them. The attempt was a bad failure. Actually, one could not help but think of some gigantic cannibalistic barbecue. In the pit itself were arms and legs and portions of bodies sticking out of the green water which partially filled it.
General Walker and General Middleton had wisely decided to have as many soldiers as possible visit the scene. This gave me the idea of having the inhabitants themselves visit the camp. I suggested this to Walker, and found that he had already had the mayor and his wife take a look at it. On going home those two committed suicide. We later used the same system in having the inhabitants of Weimar go through the even larger slave camp (Buchenwald) north of that town.
From here we drove to the 80th Division, where General McBride described the new technique he had devised. It consisted in firing a couple of projectiles containing proclamations to the effect that, unless the town in question surrendered by a certain hour, it would be given a treatment, and that if it intended to surrender, the burgomaster was to come out with a white flag and be responsible that no German troops were in the town. While the proclamation was sinking in, a few flights of the XIX Tactical Air Command fighter-bombers flew overhead and, toward the end of the period, got lower and lower. When the time had elapsed, if no action had been taken by the Germans, the fighter-bombers were informed by the air-support party and dropped their eggs. Synchronized with this, an artillery concentration hit the town. As a result of this method, a great many towns surrendered without difficulty.
War as I Knew It Page 28