by Heath, Tim
At first light, thick smoke hung over the city and this failed to disperse throughout the whole day. We heard more British planes had been shot down and another one had crash-landed six miles away. I was told that three of the crew had escaped and had later surrendered to soldiers from a nearby flak unit. At that time I didn’t care. I was angry about the bombing and felt that maybe we should kill all of them if we capture them?
During the following days, we often saw bands of people trailing out into the countryside, carrying bags and small carts filled with their few possessions. I found that most were women who had lost their husbands either in Russia or in the recent bombing attacks, and I got talking to one of them. She had two small children with her, a boy and a girl. I asked her where she was going and she replied, ‘We are going away from Berlin, as we have nothing anymore, and maybe I will be able to find work somewhere on a farm so as my children can eat, I just don’t know.’ She gazed back towards the direction of Berlin and said, ‘The terror from the skies will be back, with an even greater harvest of corpses.’
Before she went on her way, I quickly ran inside the house and took some eggs, a large piece of bread and some milk out from the kitchen and gave this to her. She looked at me and said, ‘Bless you child, but what of you? What are you going to do?’
I said to her, ‘What do you mean?’
And she replied. ‘Have you not heard that our armies are being defeated everywhere and they are having to fall back and surrender?’
‘Is that really true, are you sure?’ I asked.
She nodded her head, looked back again in the direction of Berlin before wishing me farewell and walking on her way.
Only a couple of days later, three enemy aircraft came across our fields, very low and very fast. They roared overhead and seconds later, there was the sound of gunfire. They had passed over the fields and had fired at the livestock again, killing some cows. Some children playing nearby beneath some trees were nearly also hit. This became a regular game and they seemed to enjoy flying low over our fields and killing our animals.
One afternoon a group of young Hitler Youth soldiers pulled up at the farm with a truck with a gun on the back. I soon learned that they were flak gunners and had this gun with four barrels that was designed to shoot down fast-flying enemy planes. The gun crew set the gun up beside a tall hedge and covered it with some straw to help camouflage it. Sure enough the planes came again around two days later only this time the flak guns were waiting for them and once the enemy planes came into view the camouflage was pulled off and the crew began firing. One of the enemy planes was hit and rapidly lost height – trailing flames behind it. It dived into a field and exploded in flames and the crew perished inside. The others did not return to see their comrades’ fate and we all cheered. When the people from the Luftwaffe had finished inspecting the wreck, it was left there in the field and the kids used to go and play with what was left of it. The flak gunners, being only young men from the Hitler Youth, often gave us the empty cartridge cases from their gun that we would then keep for souvenirs. Though they should not have given them away as metal was desperately needed for recycling in the factories, I put my cartridges cases under the mattress with the piece of Wellington bomber I had.
Berlin was attacked again with an ever-increasing ferocity and tonnage of bombs. On 31 August, 1,000 tons were dropped on the city, and between 18 November and 16 December 1943, a total of 18,000 tons of high-explosive bombs had been dropped on Berlin. While the Luftwaffe were successful in intercepting the bomber formations by both day and night, and inflicting heavy casualties on the attackers, the sheer weight of responsibility placed upon its weary shoulders since the outbreak of war back in 1939 was now beginning to take its toll. The terror that had come from the sky was one that was seemingly unstoppable. For many these were omens of the destruction to come.
Anna Dann concludes:
The saddest thing of all was the sight of mothers being taken to the makeshift town hall mortuary to see if the bodies of their children were amongst the dead. Several bombs had struck a school and there were few survivors. It was a horrifying sight to see all of the bodies lay out and these wretched women having to look at each one of the dead children to see which one was her child. Most were just too hysterical with grief and it was often left to the grandparents to make the identification. The bombing was no longer against the military or industrial targets, the bombers were trying to kill the civilian population now, and that’s how we looked at it.
Each time they came in ever greater numbers, as thick as swarms of flies.
Schweinfurt also became a popular target for the Allied bomber offensive. The main concentration of flak guns set up to defend Schweinfurt were situated across the river to the south. There were over thirty 88mm medium-calibre anti-aircraft guns in this particular flak zone, making it a fairly formidable defensive feature.
There was a large air-raid shelter near the Schillerplatz that was mainly for the workers at the VKF ball-bearing plant and their families. Martina Schepel, who lived in one of the many factory residential houses on the Schrammstrasse, which was just across the street from the VKF plants, recalls the terror of the Allied bombing attacks.
I was only a little girl at that time in 1943, but could never forget the terror that we lived with every day. My father worked at the VKF Werke [works] as a machinist, making ball bearings for aero-engines and other equipment. The worst of the bombing attacks on our city were those of October 1943. They were particularly bad and many of the residential buildings where the workers lived with their families were bombed. It became so bad that people began to queue outside the Goethe air-raid bunker, though there was another on the Ernst Sachs Strasse, though this was mainly for the factory workers and their families.
I lost many of my little friends during those air raids, they were so cruel, and I am still so angry about it all. When the siren would sound, we ran for our lives. We often remained petrified for hours on end as the bombs rained down around us. You could feel the shockwaves from the bombs as they exploded outside the shelter, and when one landed close by, the air was often sucked out from the shelter by the force.
When it was over, there were the usual scenes of carnage day after day; the bodies of cats and dogs which had been blown apart, families weeping outside of their bombed homes, while others went to hospital with their injured wives, children and husbands. Often the gas, water pipes and sewer drains would be blown open, and as the gas pipes spouted bright orange flames, water and sewerage would pour down the streets. The smoke would hang over Schweinfurt for days and it seemed that on some days it never really fully got light. There was not one part of that city that escaped the bombs, everywhere was hit and it was quite indiscriminate, with no regard for civilian safety.
Out in the streets there was shrapnel everywhere, even lodged in the guttering pipes of the houses. Our father had to climb up with a borrowed ladder and remove the metal from the pipes. Often there were holes in the roof caused by shrapnel and these holes were blocked with anything that Father could find. Father was later killed during one of the air raids in 1943, and the whole of the residential area had been badly bombed, so Mother made arrangements for me, and my older sister and brother to move away and stay with relatives. She still needed income with which to support herself and help provide for our upkeep, and so Mother went to work in the VKF Werke. We saw little of her and I was convinced that we would lose her too, and I begged her to come to us in the very few letters I was able to send her. She kept working, doing the same work as a man would have done, right up until the end.
We survived the war, but will never forget how the bombing robbed us of our father and my mother of her husband.
Chapter Eleven
The Volkssturm and the Werewolf
Although not officially instituted until February 1945, preparations to create what became known as the ‘Werewolf Project’ began somewhat earlier. Contrary to popular belief, females were to f
orm as much a part of the project as the males. The idea behind the Werewolf Project was to train the youth and young children of Germany in the use of firearms and the principles of sabotage and sniping, so that they too could join the fight against the Allies should they enter German territory.
The exact date that the militarization of female youth began in wartime Germany is not clear, but there is much evidence to suggest that it began before the Werewolf Project came into existence in any official capacity. As the war dictated change, young women from the age of eighteen were accepted into the German military as auxiliaries. As a result, many ended the war attached to the Luftwaffe as ground controllers, drivers and flak-gun crews.
Prior to the implementation of the Werewolf Project on 25 September 1944, Hitler created the Volkssturm, or ‘Peoples Storm’. Hitler announced the creation of the Volkssturm concept via a radio broadcast to the German people on 18 October 1944. The man given overall control of the Volkssturm organization was, unsurprisingly, Martin Bormann. Bormann was also head of recruitment and political leadership of the Volkssturm units.
The idea of the Volkssturm was to create a national militia made up of all able-bodied civilian men, from sixteen to sixty. There is, however, ample evidence to suggest that much older males were drafted, threatened or frightened into joining the Volkssturm. The objective of the Volkssturm was to fight to the death, if necessary, and defend Germany at all costs and with whatever means available. While the Volkssturm was intended as primarily a male national militia, females did join the Volkssturm fighters, defending towns and cities of the Third Reich.
The Werewolf Project was only a slightly different concept, utilizing members of the four main Nazi child and youth organizations: the Jung Volk, Jung Madel, Hitler Youth and BDM. German children legible for service under the Werewolf Project started as young as eight years old.
German female guerrilla units and battalions were also being specially formed at about the same time as the Volkssturm mobilization began. Jung Madel and BDM girls, aged between ten and eighteen years old were called up for service in remarkable all-female guerrilla units.
As already mentioned, one of the most notable female Nazi leaders given the task of overseeing the militarization of young girls and women under both the Volkssturm and Werewolf Project, was Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. Some of these female combat units organized by Scholtz-Klink would later see action in the fighting near Warsaw and during the fall of Berlin.
Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann fully supported the use of children in the war effort. It was apparent to many that the likes of Axmann and Bormann would be nowhere near the fighting, choosing to remain with Hitler in a bunker deep beneath the Reich Chancellery, plus, neither could consider themselves as soldiers.
In the German cities at that time, there was no exact shortage of weaponry. Most families possessed a shotgun or firearm of one type or another, some of it originating from the First World War. Those who could not, for whatever reason, obtain firearms or grenades, were taught how to make improvised materiel such as Molotov cocktails, which were simply glass bottles filled with petrol or other flammable liquids and fitted with a piece of rag in the top. All the user had to do then was light the rag and then throw the bottle at the target area. On impact, the bottle would smash and the whole thing would ignite. Such improvised weapons were lethal against unprotected soldiers, but were useless against armoured vehicles such as tanks, unless they could be dropped through the open crew hatch.
It appears most likely that it was during this phase of civilian military mobilization that many of Germany’s young girls were first introduced to weaponry they had only previously seen being either used or carried by their soldiers. The Jung Madel and BDM organizations openly encouraged their members under the Werewolf Project to handle firearms and learn how to make booby-trap devices and explosives.
Hitler was conscious of the military catastrophe facing Germany, yet the Werewolf Project was, in reality, just another one of Hitler’s contingency plans for the last line of defence of his crumbling Reich. Many German Wehrmacht officers expressed grave concern, especially at the prospect of young girls and women becoming involved in the fighting in and around German villages, towns and cities.
Former SS soldier Theobald Hortinger spoke exclusively with me during a brief meeting in the winter of 2000, when we discussed the militarization of the female youth in Germany. Theobald explained that once during a conference in Berlin, he had overheard senior officers talking with Hitler about the subject of females being involved in armed conflict. One of the Wehrmacht generals present at the meeting – possibly General Heinz Guderian – argued with Hitler that he was not convinced that girls, owing to their limited training and lack of military knowledge and experience of battlefield situations, would be able to operate either cohesively or tactically alongside regular Wehrmacht soldiers.
Hitler was said to have cut him short, barking, ‘Rubbish, are you trying to tell me that our womenfolk should be exempt from the honour of dying for their Führer?’
Theobald had explained that such statements were very typical of those made by Hitler at that time. In another one of his incoherent rages, Hitler said of the German youth, ‘If it has to be, then the enemies of Germany will drown in the blood of Germany’s youth.’
Theobald also mentioned that a directive had definitely been issued on paper authorizing the militarization of all young girls, though no significant documentation has been found to confirm the subject. As a result, the existence of such a directive is still largely confined to myth. There is little actual archive material available today, due mainly to the fact that the militarization of Germany’s female youth began so late, that Russian, British and American military intelligence departments had little time in which to gather sufficient data. It has to be said, however, that the Soviets did make a concerted effort to compile detailed reports on child combatants.
Heidi Koch, however, during an interview with the author, confirmed that a directive of sorts had in fact been issued:
We were told by the BDM and in directives issued to youth leader Artur Axmann, that if we failed to defend Germany, our people, our cities, we would be a worthless race once more, and that the Jews and Communists would return in their masses and we would face worse misery than those after the year 1918. We were informed that we as a people must not lose this fight; as if we lose then none of us will have deserved to live.
That was the message given to us which had apparently been dictated by Adolf Hitler himself and then issued to all of the Hitler Youth groups and their leaders all over Germany. We were also told that we must not abandon Berlin, regardless of the dangers we faced, but must dig in if necessary. We were told that if we attempted to leave it could be viewed as cowardice or even desertion. Desertion was a crime punishable by execution.
The military training and instruction given to girls of the Jung Madel and the BDM varied according to the strengths of the individual female involved. The small and slightly built girls were given instructions on how to use stick grenades and how to make Molotov cocktails, known more commonly today as petrol bombs.
To enable the girls to put their instruction into practice, they were taken to old firing ranges usually reserved for the Hitler Youth boys. Dummies were then assembled at which the girls could practice throwing inert grenades – usually constructed of solid wood but made to look exactly like the real thing – at the dummies. Once the instructors felt that the pupil was competent enough at the task, they were given a limited supply of real grenades to throw.
Molotov cocktails were potentially dangerous to use, as the thrower had to ensure that the device was thrown in a manner that did not put either herself or a comrade at risk. Molotov cocktails were usually dropped onto enemy soldiers or soft-skinned vehicles from buildings. The girls were therefore taught to climb up ladders, climbing frames or other objects, light the rag, and then drop the device down onto a designated point on the ground. This is perfectly
illustrated by an incident that occurred in Berlin, when two 15-year-old BDMs dropped a Molotov cocktail onto Russian soldiers advancing through an alleyway.
The girls were also shown how to make booby-trap devices from captured grenades, using empty meat tins and cord or wire. The grenade pin would be removed, and the safety lever held tight as the grenade is pushed down into the restricting confines of the tin, thereby retaining the spring-loaded striker in place. A length of cord or piano wire was then threaded through a hole in the top of the grenade and tied in a small knot. A trip-wire was then connected and camouflaged with whatever foliage or debris was available. An unwary soldier would snag the wire with his leg, pulling the grenade out of the tin, the safety lever would fly off and the grenade would explode. It was a very simple yet effective device.
Such devices were also rigged up at potential crossing points on rivers and deep streams where their effect was even more lethal to the victim from the shock wave generated by the underwater blast.
Girls were also shown how to make what later became known as ‘toe poppers’. This was nothing more elaborate than a standard rifle cartridge inserted into a piece of hollowed-out wooden cane or any other suitable material, roughly the same length as the rifle cartridge. Either a pin or nail was placed with the point positioned against the primer at the base of the cartridge. The cartridge was then placed in the ground with only a small area of the bullet head protruding from the surface of the ground. When stepped on by a soldier, the force of his weight would cause the pin or nail to strike the primer, causing the cartridge to fire. The result was quite effective for such a small booby trap, as the victim often lost half of their foot or their toes, hence the nickname toe popper. It was mainly used to incapacitate rather than kill, thus adding to the commitment of the enemy’s resources.