Hitler's Girls: Doves Amongst Eagles

by Heath, Tim

  ‘Where have you been? What has happened to you?’ were the words tumbling from his heart. He pulled back to look at me and said, ‘Look at you, you are so thin, and your face is hurt, and what have you done to your head, did they [the Russians] do that to you?’

  I nodded, and then told him they had hit me on the head with a rifle and one of their women had slapped me, and that I had got my own back on her by spitting in her face. He again threw his arms around me and said something that changed my life and my attitude about him forever.

  He told me that he had searched for weeks to try to find where I was. He was unsure if I was dead or alive, but had not given up hope of finding me. After the fighting had stopped, he talked with the British and American Red Cross authorities that had come into Germany with the Allies. He gave my name to them and a photograph on the chance that the Russians might have taken me prisoner or something. Though I was one of thousands of missing girls in the city at that time, my name was noted and later cross-checked with Russian documentation concerning civilians, combatants and injured, etc. A name Moelle was listed as being held in Camp Three. My father had to give information that proved I had not been recruited into the SS and that I had been an auxiliary, which of course was the truth. Many phone calls were made and the documentation was cleared, and we were allowed to return home along with many others in the same boat, so to speak, providing my father agreed to collect me and be responsible for me afterwards. My adoptive father hugged me continuously and then told me that he knew we had immense difficulties in the past, but I was his daughter and he loved me like the others. I then said to him, ‘Father, take me home.’

  We then left to go back to our home to see what remained of it. When we arrived, the old farm and surrounding buildings, including our home, was still intact, like nothing had happened. The doors and windows had been broken and some of the belongings removed, including some furniture, which my father later discovered in an American office. Though he let them keep it for being so kind and helpful.

  The soldiers had defecated and pissed in some of the rooms and there was all kinds of discarded rubbish, but this was soon cleared over the weeks that followed. An old lady, who remained behind at the farm when everyone else evacuated, looked after the place. Most of the animals had been killed, the horses lay rotting in the fields and the old lady said that American planes dived down and shot anything that moved, including the farm animals. What happened to the horses had made me cry. Why did they kill our animals? The old lady thrilled us with her story of how the Americans swept through as the Soviets began to encircle Berlin.

  It was still early days and there were many problems, but we were trying to get back to normal, even though we had never really lived in normality, me especially having been adopted with no real family and then schooled under National Socialism. It was not a good start in life really, but I was determined that I would make good use of what life I had left.

  Life had to begin again for many Germans. The nightmare world created by the twelve years of National Socialist rule under Hitler had created all manner of problems, which German society would have to overcome. Three quarters of its 1,500,000 residential units had been destroyed, while the Soviets dismantled and removed some sixty-seven per cent of Berlin’s industrial capacity. Other cities in Germany had also suffered some seventy per cent ruin, indicating that most of these were not habitable and were in a dangerous state. The population had to be crammed into what buildings were still intact and safe to live in. In these conditions, up to four families had to live together in a single apartment. The situation was exacerbated by the Russian ethnic cleansing taking place in the eastern territories.

  The collapse of both the state and the economy had been total, and though there was plenty of money in Germany at that time, there were hardly any goods to buy. Children often went out into the streets amongst the ruins searching for small pieces of coal or any other useful items they could find. Many families sold what few possessions they had in order to buy such luxury items as a few potatoes to eat. Many German people were so hungry that they often ate the potatoes raw.

  After first entering Berlin, US soldiers were at first briefed by their superiors not to fraternize with, or be friendly to the people of Berlin and Germany in general. To aid this issue, a film was shown to the troops in which a section of its narrative contained the quote, ‘The German people are not your friends!’

  As time passed by though, the atmosphere became more relaxed and US soldiers often gave German children their chocolate and sweets. Chocolate was supplied freely to the US troops in Germany along with cartons of cigarettes. Cigarettes soon became a valuable form of currency on the thriving black market.

  As a direct result of six years of war, the German population consisted mainly of boys, girls, women and the elderly people. As a consequence, adults between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five were in very short supply. Many were dead, missing or crippled in the fighting. The many tasks of rebuilding Germany would, ironically, fall upon the shoulders of the German women. All over Germany, gangs of girls, boys and women were organized into clearing-up groups and helped to clear away the detritus of war. The scars left by war, however, would remain for many years, and for some, for a lifetime.

  The winters of 1945–47 were some of the worst recorded in Germany, and as many homes were still in a state of disrepair and without adequate fuel for even the most basic of heating facilities, hundreds froze to death. The US Red Cross made valiant efforts to prevent the misery by distributing blankets, clothing and care parcels. The British also chipped in to help, and the Germans gradually came to view the American and British forces as liberators rather than an occupying force. Even so Germans still had to work for the food given to them.

  Perhaps the most important task faced by the Western Allies was that of the complete denazification of Germany. This had come too late for many adult Germans. As the youth are the future of any country, it was they who had to undergo re-education to rid them of the evils of Nazi philosophy.

  As the political and social reconstitution of Berlin and Germany began, a scheme was implemented by the Allied powers to address the process. The authorities directed that any German male or female wishing to hold political offices, or to work as public servants such as teachers, judges or police officers, were required to produce the necessary documentation stating that they had not been active Nazis, nor were sympathetic to the National Socialist cause. A document was drafted for the introduction of German re-education, referred to as the Persilschein after a well-known brand of detergent. To possess a ‘Persil ticket’ meant the owner had been given ‘a clean bill of health’ to pursue a business or activity without fear of arousing suspicion.

  Research on this subject was very enlightening. Many of those given the task of re-educating boys and girls in post-war Germany, including some who had been expelled by the Nazis after 1933, were impressed by how enthusiastic boys and girls were. They wished to learn of the outside world and its many differing races and cultures, all of which had been denied them during the six years of the Hitler regime. Once Germany’s youth became fully aware that things could operate on other levels, without affecting one’s own culture or cultural beliefs, and that other races and religions could live with one another in a state of relative social and political harmony, the foundations of recovery could be set in place for Germany. After being introduced and exposed to genuine education formulae, many German girls and boys expressed a wish to achieve academic status. When questioned, many said that they now wanted to become teachers, doctors, writers or scientists. Great emphasis was placed upon the thorough understanding of subjects of racial tolerance and how other cultures differed very little from that of many German citizens. The boys and girls were shown detailed films of the death camps such as those as Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz, along with film and photographs of Nazi atrocities. In fact, many German citizens had been made to visit these places and to see for themselves the thous
ands of corpses of Jewish men, women and children – there could be no room for denial in the new Germany.

  As rebuilding and re-education continued at a steady pace in Germany, the fraternization between Allied soldiers and German girls was becoming embarrassingly apparent to many of the commanding officers of the occupying forces. Allied soldiers, unable to resist the charms of the German girls and women, had taken a German girlfriend. Many relationships would eventually lead to marriage. There were, however, also a huge number of unwanted pregnancies that resulted from the illicit relationships between soldiers of the occupying forces and German women. This, under the circumstances, was inevitable.

  Heidi Koch remembers how handsome the British and Americans looked in their uniforms as they went about their business in the city:

  There were a few very good-looking boys, but I felt that I was still too young for that kind of thing. I did think that they were very nice, and they understood those that genuinely had nothing to do with the Nazi attitude to Jews, gypsies and Slavs and the killing that had taken place. They did not blame us all or hold it against us and we co-operated with each other on a mutual basis. We liked the Brits and Yanks, but feared, distrusted and despised the Soviets in Berlin. Those bastards would not even let us visit friends or relatives in the eastern part of the city.

  Anita Von Schoener praises the American and British forces that gave her much-needed support after her ordeal at the hands of the Russians during the fall of the city:

  I was offered much medical advice, and the American and British girl nurses were really nice people and helped me overcome my problems caused by the rape. The American and British soldiers were also very good to little Anton and they gave him their sweets and chocolate, even though he was a little too young for some of them, he liked the chocolate very much. I remained in touch with one American who had expressed interest in me, his name was Henry, and he wrote to me frequently and I had to get an English-speaking friend to read the letters to me. My family had helped me through the trial of being pregnant with a rapist’s child, and when I gave birth, I gave it up straight away, as explained to you earlier.

  The war is no easier to discuss with people now than it was back then when my husband was listed as missing and I never learned the truth of what happened to him. I later married my American friend and I moved to the USA, where I gave birth to my second child. The nightmares persist, but I can face them with the counselling that is available today, which we did not have years ago. You have to be brave and face your demons in order to overcome them. Talking about my ordeal in full here for the first time was the final step in getting rid of my demons. They are now gone, like I shall also be gone at some point when God determines it is my turn.

  Anita revealed that, during several discussions and tests held with physicians in the USA, they all concluded that she was still suffering from what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition frequently suffered by soldiers who have been in battle.

  Theresa Moelle and her adoptive family desperately tried to return to a degree of normality in the months and years that followed after the war. She explains:

  It must have been two weeks after returning home when the nightmares started. It was usually a mixture of things: a woman carrying the dead body of her child in her arms beckoning me to help her; the child was dead and had no eyes. The other haunting vision was that of the Russian tank that I had destroyed, and Anneliese being raped. I had this reoccurring nightmare that the tank would not stop even when I had destroyed it; it kept coming, and it began to roll over my legs, I vividly remember feeling the weight of it and the air slowly being squeezed out of my whole body. At that point, I would be thrashing around wildly and shouting. Walter and Greta would come running into my room to find the windows wide open. I could never even remember opening them, it was terrifying. When they came rushing in I would be awake, trembling, sweating heavily and crying. I would be given a glass of water and Greta would fetch some water and towels to bathe my body that would be wet with sweat.

  Things continued like that for several more weeks, and Greta was forced to sleep in my bed with me. They called a doctor to see me, but he could only offer tranquillizers, which Walter strictly disagreed with. He told the doctor, ‘I do not want any daughter of mine becoming a drug addict.’

  Walter later took us all away for two weeks holiday in Switzerland. The change of scenery and the fresh, clean air worked wonders and I felt so much better. When we returned home, the nightmares returned but not so bad, and they gradually faded away. The problem was that the things that I had seen and done were not things to have been proud of, and as a result you tried to avoid talking about them, and bottled them up inside your head, which often led to psychiatric problems later on in life. I was lucky as I was fairly strong-willed and was able to overcome the difficulties, and after some years, was able to settle down, find my direction in life and make my adoptive family proud of me.

  When I learned of the atrocities committed by our forces, it disgusted me. I had nothing personal against Jews, other than the fact that we as Hitler Youth under Nazi rule were forbidden to have anything to do with them. We would have faced severe punishment, even death, if we had dared to try and integrate socially with Jewish people. And we did not question when they began to disappear from the streets in Germany. Living on the outskirts of Berlin, the only information came via propaganda and radio sets anyway. The propaganda told us that Jews had been deported – not murdered in their millions. We heard rumours, but saw nothing to confirm them. Only during and after Berlin had fallen did we really know what had been going on for sure. People stopped lying to us for once, maybe out of guilt, I don’t know, but the lying stopped. The Russians told us, but we did not trust them, and thought they were lying too. I found out from the Americans when I asked them, ‘Was it true about what I had heard about the Jews of Germany and Europe?’

  A nod of the head confirmed that it was true, and I later saw photographs and film, and spoke with Germans who witnessed the death camps themselves. But don’t forget, that many Germans died in Nazi death camps too, and the Nazis murdered many ordinary Germans, if only people today could see that side of it. This fact is all too often sadly overlooked by society when remembering the Holocaust. I hope that our world never sees anything like that again. Germany is different now; it is a unified country again and at peace with itself at last. Many of the ghosts are finally being laid to rest. Maybe they will only go forever once our generation has died and lives no more. No one can blame the modern generation for things that happened during our time.

  The political and social tensions between Britain, America and the USSR reached their inevitable conclusion in 1961 when Communist East Germany began to erect what would become known as the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was a grey and hideous monstrosity that would serve as the dividing line between East and West Berlin and Germany for over twenty-eight long years of what would become known as the Cold War.

  By the early 1980s, the winds of change had started to blow, and few would have ever believed how much things could change for the divided German people over the next ten years.

  The changes came with the Soviet government under President Mikhail Gorbachev. During the night of 9 November 1989, thousands of East Berliners approached the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Customs officials manning their station at the gate had not been issued with any clear instructions on how to deal with the rapidly unfolding situation. The numbers of people swelled over the two hours that followed. When the border was suddenly opened, thousands of cheering East Berliners poured into West Berlin, many for the first time in their lives.

  Theresa Moelle watched the events taking place in Berlin on her television and recalls the event:

  It was a very beautiful thing to see. All those people uniting against that wall and everything that it stood for. I watched as people met for the first time, kissing and hugging each other and celebrating. I never thought that I would live
to see this happen, this was the beginning of a newly reunited Germany. My children phoned me and said that they had just seen what was happening on the news and were going to Berlin straight away to see it happening.

  I said to them ‘What are you going to see?’

  And they all said at the same time, ‘Mother, we are going to see the Berlin Wall come down.’

  A week later, one of my grandchildren brought me a piece of the wall for a souvenir. It is hard to think that so many died trying to cross that thing into the West. We should not forget those people. I only wish that Walter and Greta Moelle could have been around to see it all happening, God bless them both. It finally felt that our war was over seeing that wall being torn down, it was strange to watch it all happening on the TV.

  The only Western opponents to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany, were British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and French president Francois Mitterrand. Though the two were prevented from airing their views in public, the opinions of people like these counted for nothing amongst the majority, who wanted to see the end of Communism and its oppressive history in the region. Finally, on 3 October 1990, East and West Germany celebrated unification.

  After the unification, it became obvious that many, if not all of those in the former East Berlin and East Germany holding such offices as judges, administrators, professors and schoolteachers, would all have to be retrained or ‘cleansed’ of their Communist ideologies, much like the Hitler Youth generation of boys and girls after 1945.