My cousin Ingo was one such unfortunate who underwent several more years in the hands of the British. But I was luckier. After just a couple of weeks spent in the damp and unhealthy conditions of Bolbeque, where we slept on blankets on the bare ground, I was sent to Marburg for release.
And it was here, on 27 June 1946, that I spent the last of the 2,388 days of my military career.
Reports in the American papers had prepared me to some extent for the changed conditions I would find in Germany. But it was not until I experienced them for myself that I realized just how totally different the country had become. The town of Marburg had suffered very little bomb damage during the war. But even here, during the few hours between my release from camp and the departure of my train for Rosenheim, I was struck by the almost empty shop windows, the shabby appearance of the people in the streets, who were mostly either elderly or the very young, and–of course–the bored-looking GIs lounging about on the street corners chewing gum.
It was a total shock how everything that I had simply taken for granted during my last home leave in 1943–everything that had made Germany what it was–had gone to such rack and ruin.
At Marburg railway station I had to push and shove my way through a dense and milling throng of people of every kind to get to the Rosenheim train, which was standing at the platform already packed with passengers but with yet more fighting and struggling to get on board. The journey must have taken a good ten hours and I had to stand the whole way. Whenever we stopped at a station I had literally to fight to keep my place as even more people tried to climb on to the train. At one of the larger stations a young woman did exactly that–she ‘climbed’ on board.
After throwing her bundle of belongings in through the open window, she clambered up the side of the carriage. Rough hands pushed her from the outside and pulled her from the inside. To a barrage of coarse remarks she managed to wriggle her way in through the window. She had almost made it, with only her feet still sticking out, when someone on the crowded platform snatched off her shoes and disappeared into the mass of people.
It might all sound terribly funny today. But for the distraught young woman back then it was a catastrophe. In those post-war months items such as shoes were well nigh irreplaceable. Even if she did have enough coupons, and the cash, to buy a new pair–which was most unlikely–there were none to be had in the shops. Her only other option would be to pay the horrendous prices being asked on the black market.
As we were drawing in to Munich’s main station I had already spotted the smashed dome of the ministry of transport building in Arnulfstrasse off to my left. But I wasn’t prepared for the scene of utter desolation that then confronted me. The Munich whose intact and immaculate streets, squares and ornamental gardens I remembered so well was no more. In its place there stretched a desolate waste of ruins and rubble. I couldn’t wait for the train to pull out again and put it all behind me.
From mother’s letters I knew that Rosenheim had suffered hardly at all from the allied bombing. Our house had been hit by a single incendiary that had smashed through the canopy roof without causing any serious damage. So it was with an understandable feeling of joy mixed with excitement that I clambered off the train at Rosenheim and set off along the familiar streets to our family home.
After three long years’ absence I was finally back, almost choking with emotion as I took my mother, grandmother and sister in my arms. Thank God they had all come through those intervening years fit, well and almost unharmed. The only casualty was my sister, who had a relatively minor wound in her shin, the result of being shot at by a low-flying American fighter while out skiing.
In order to re-establish my identity and be able simply to exist in post-war Germany, I had to become a registered individual. So the next thing to do was to make my way to the local authority offices at Westerndorf-Sankt Peter. Here, upon production of my official discharge papers, I was issued with ration and clothing coupons and suchlike. The old Reichsmark was still the country’s sole legal tender, but it could only be used for shop purchases in conjunction with the necessary coupons.
Without these, people had to resort to the flourishing black market with its hugely inflated prices. The fixed unit of currency for most illegal transactions (apart from the US Dollar, of course) were ‘Ami-cigarettes’, which had a street value of five Reichsmarks each. Whenever I saw a single Camel or Lucky Strike changing hands, my mind automatically went back to the R.J. Reynolds factory in Winston-Salem where I had been working just a year earlier. If only I had kept a few of those packs of cigarettes that the delivery drivers had so casually tossed my way!
In an effort to save on clothing coupons, mother ‘converted’ my old Luftwaffe uniform, which the Staffel had sent back to her after I had been shot down. The end result was an outfit combining military and civilian items in one fetching ensemble. Such apparel–a sports jacket with breeches and knee boots, for example–was commonly known as ‘Räuberzivil’, literally ‘robber civvies’. It was the height of fashion in Germany in the immediate post-war period and was what nearly every well dressed young man was wearing that season.
The next important step was a visit to the so-called ‘Spruchkammer’, or ‘judgement chamber’, to find out if, by any chance, I could be officially ‘denazified’. For this purpose I was handed a questionnaire about a metre long, which I was in structed to complete in full. Thanks to my uncomplicated and non-political background, this posed few problems. After long deliberation and rigorous checking, I was duly informed that I could consider myself herewith denazified as part of the general youth amnesty. I felt like pointing out that a glance at my date of birth could have saved us all a whole lot of time and trouble.
The first page of the lengthy questionnaire that officially ‘denazified’ one Fischer, Wolfgang, and readmitted him to polite society.
Slowly life returned to what passed for normal in those days. And once again I found myself drawn to the banks of the Inn. It was early summer and the river, swollen by the snowmelt high in the Alps, was still in almost full spate; its roaring and tumbling progress music to my ears. I would sit there for hours, watching the sandy-coloured mass of water rushing past just below my feet, carrying with it twigs, branches, sometimes even whole tree trunks.
After my 10,000-kilometre odyssey to the mighty Mississippi and back, I was at long last home again. Home to my family and to my beloved River Inn–timeless and untouched by the pettiness, the politics and the wars of man.
APPENDIX 1
AIRCRAFT TYPES FLOWN BY THE AUTHOR
APPENDIX 2
UNITS IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SERVED
APPENDIX 3
UNIT NOTES AND HISTORIES
1: Fliegerausbildungsregiment 33 (Initial Training Regiment 33)
When the Luftwaffe was created in the mid-’thirties the basic training of new recruits was carried out by the so-called Fliegerersatzabteilungen (literally ‘air personnel replacement departments’). There were six such establishments; one located in each of the six Luftkreise, or air territorial regions, into which Germany was divided.
By 1 April 1939, when the original Fliegerersatzabteilungen (FEAs) were redesignated as Fliegerausbildungsregimenter (FARs = initial [air] training regiments), their numbers had grown to twenty-six. One of these was Fliegerausbildungsregiment 33, whose numerical designation indicated that it was the third such regiment to be activated within the area of Luftflotte (Air Fleet) 3.
By this time too the FARs had each been organized into two component battalions: the first (the original FEA) providing basic training and the second being an initial flying training school. It was customary for a new recruit, having successfully completed his basic military training with the first battalion, then to progress to the same unit’s second to commence flying training.
The original intention had been to activate FAR 33 at Darmstadt. But when it was decided that this field lacked the necessary facilities, the regiment was set up instead at Ingolst
adt, north of Munich, with a satellite station at Dornstadt near Ulm. Commanded by Oberst Heinrich Geerkens, FAR 33 was transferred in November 1939 to Königsberg in East Prussia, with flying training being carried out at nearby Elbing.
In 1941 came the parting of the ways for FAR 33’s two battalions. The basic training battalion moved to Detmold, SE of Osnabrück. Here, in the winter of 1942/43, it was redesignated Jäger-Regiment (L) 33–Luftwaffe Rifle Regiment 33–to become part of the newly forming 17. Luftwaffen-Feld-Division. This unit, one of twenty-two such infantry divisions made up of Luftwaffe personnel, was transferred to Le Havre on the French channel coast in February 1943.
Commanded since November 1943 by the army’s Generalleutnant Erich Höcker, the division was virtually annihilated in August 1944 during the fighting in northern France following the D-Day invasion. The surviving remnants were subsequently incorporated into the 167. Volksgrenadier-Division.
Meanwhile, back in March 1941, the second battalion–i.e. the initial flying training school (Sch./FAR 33)–had itself been redesignated to become Flugzeugführerschule A/B 123 (FFS A/B 123 = pilots’ school [single-engined] 123), moving two months later to Agram (now Zagreb) in Croatia.
A new FFS A/B 33 was immediately formed by redesignating the existing FFS A/B 5. This flying school, commanded by Oberstleutnant (later Oberst) Walter Milz, was first based at Quakenbrück, north of Osnabrück, with satellite stations at Plantlünne, Hopsten and Diepholz. The latter field was used for night-flying training, which began to play an ever more important role in the school’s curriculum after its transfer to Altenburg in Thuringia in the summer of 1942.
Finally, early in May 1943, FFS A/B 33 was redesignated as a specialized night and blind-flying school: Blindflugschule 10 (BFS 10). For further details see JG 110 below.
2: Aufklärungsgruppe (F)/Ob.d.L. (Strategic Reconnaissance Group of the Luftwaffe High Command)
Although not officially designated as such until 1939, the Aufklärungsgruppe (F)/Ob.d.L. could trace its origins back to the earliest days of the then still secret Luftwaffe. Formed from part of the Fliegerstaffel zbV (special-purposes air squadron) first activated on 1 January 1935, the High Command’s special reconnaissance unit came into being at Berlin-Staaken under the covert title of the Flugbereitschaft Abteilung B (Duty Flight Department B).
Initially equipped with just two single-engined Junkers aircraft (a Ju W 34fue and a Ju F 13), the unit was soon given a slightly more transparent cover designation. Operating as the Versuchsstelle für Höhenflüge (test centre for high-altitude flight), it received examples of some of the latest twin-engined machines entering Luftwaffe service in the latter half of the ’thirties, including the Dornier Do 17, Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 86.
More commonly referred to as the Kommando Rowehl (after its long-standing CO, the later Oberstleutnant Theodor Rowehl), the unit undertook many top-secret photo-reconnaissance missions in the months leading up to World War II.
Comprising just two Staffeln upon the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939, the Gruppe was doubled in strength the following month when two existing long-range reconnaissance units, 8.(F)/LG 2 and 2.(F)/121, were redesignated to become its 3. and 4. Staffeln respectively. Still headquartered in Berlin, but with its component units operating from a succession of outlying bases, including Brüsterort, Fritzlar and Norkitten, the Aufkl. Gr (F)/Ob.d.L. continued its clandestine activities during the early years of the war, flying high-altitude photographic reconnaissance missions over areas of future conflict such as France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The aerial photographs its aircraft brought back often provided the basis for the target maps later issued to the Luftwaffe’s bomber crews.
By the beginning of 1942, however, with the need for such operations declining, the Gruppenstab of the Aufkl. Gr (F)/Ob.d.L. was disbanded and its four component Staffeln were redeployed to serve as standard long-range reconnaissance units on the eastern front. In January 1943 1., 2. and 3.(F)/Ob.d.L. were then redesignated to form a new strategic reconnaissance Gruppe: Aufkl. Gr (F)/100. And two months after that 4.(F)/Ob.d.L. was incorporated into the High Command’s Versuchsverband (test and experimental unit).
3: Wetterzentrale XII (mot.) (Meteorological Centre XII [mob.])
Despite the ‘mot.’ in its title (indicating ‘motorisiert’ or ‘mobile’), Wetterzentrale XII was one of a number of semi-permanent Luftwaffe stations set up to receive and decipher meteorological reports. For in addition to its own dedicated Wettererkun dungsstaffeln (meteorological squadrons), the Luftwaffe also relied on reports from various other sources, including long-range reconnaissance aircraft (primarily the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime reconnaissance bomber), ships at sea, both Axis and neutral, and land-based weather stations such as those the Germans had been able to establish above the Arctic Circle on Greenland and Spitsbergen.
These provided vital information to the planners of the various air commands. In Wetterzentrale XII’s case this command was Luftflotte 3, headquartered in Paris and one of the two major air fleets involved in the Battle of Britain and the subsequent night Blitz on Great Britain.
4: Fliegerhorstkompanie Villacoublay (Villacoublay Airfield Permanent Base Company)
The Luftwaffe’s operational bases were staffed on three separate levels. The ground personnel of the resident flying unit (s) were responsible for the maintenance and servicing of their aircraft and all matters relating thereto. Each airfield also had its own Flughafenbetriebskompanie (airfield servicing company), normally comprising three-four platoons, whose task was the upkeep and repair of the runway, buildings and all other facilities on the base (in RAF parlance: ‘works’n bricks’). Then came the permanent staff under the Fliegerhorstkommandant (station commander), whose responsibility was the day-to-day running of the base, including administration, discipline, stores, security and the like.
An Armée de l’Air fighter base at the beginning of the war, Villacoublay was taken over by the Luftwaffe immediately after the French surrender of June 1940; initially housing all 100-plus Heinkel He 111 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 55 during the opening phase of the Battle of Britain. The next four years saw a miscellany of flying units occupying the base. By the summer of 1944 and the invasion of Normandy, the aircraft operating out of the extended Villacoublay complex were the Me 109 fighters of III./JG 26 and the Fw 190s of III./JG 54. Their withdrawal in mid-August 1944 in the face of the advancing allies marked the end of the Luftwaffe’s tenure of the base and its return to French hands.
5: Unteroffizierslehrkurs Neukuhren (NCOs’ training course, Neukuhren)
The two-month instructional courses for NCOs, such as those conducted at Neukuhren in East Prussia and elsewhere in the Reich, were a regular and integral part of the promotion process for other ranks and officer aspirants in the Luftwaffe.
6: Luftkriegsschule 4 (Air Warfare School 4)
Opened on 1 October 1937 as the Luftkriegsschule Fürstenfeldbruck under the command of Generalmajor Ritter und Edler Hermann von Mann, this school remained in situ for just over two years before, in November 1939, the exigencies of war necessitated its temporary transfer to Königsberg in East Prussia. In its absence Fürstenfeldbruck was used first to house the Heinkel He 111 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 51, and then as a test centre by the Dornier aircraft company.
In January 1940, while the unit was still based at Königsberg (with outstations at Eichwalde, Gutenfeld and Schippenbeil), the seven air warfare schools–hitherto identified solely by their place of origin–were given numerical designations. The unit thus returned to Fürstenfeldbruck in mid-August 1940 as Luftkriegsschule 4. Here it would continue to operate until early 1945. During this time, commanded in turn by Generalmajors Herbert Sonnenburg (1940-43) and Otto Höhne (1943-45), it utilized a large number of satellite fields, including Munich Oberwiesenfeld, Bad Wörishofen, Kempten-Durach, Puchhof, Schongau, Leipheim, Neu-Ulm and Landsberg/Lech (the last named for glider training).
At the beginning of 1945
training was terminated due to the then chronic shortage of aviation fuel. The members of the final officer candidates’ course were initially earmarked to serve as infantry in the defence of Berlin, but were instead amalgamated into the 29. and 30. Fallschirmjäger-Regiment currently based at Graz in Austria. These two parachute regiments were part of Generalleutnant Gustav Wilke’s newly forming 10. Fallschirmjäger-Division.
Although the Luftwaffe’s parachute forces had not been employed as such in any strength since the disastrous Cretan campaign of May 1941, Göring had refused to have them disbanded and they had since acquired a formidable reputation as ground troops. In the closing days of the war the two regiments were thrown into the hopeless battle trying to stop the Red Army’s advance into Austria: 29. being deployed in the Vienna area and 30. to the southeast of Graz.
7: Jagdgeschwader 107 (Fighter [Training] Wing 107)
In October 1942 Major Georg Meyer’s Zerstörervorschule 1 (Zerstörer Preliminary School 1), which had been activated at Nancy-Essay three months earlier, was there redesignated to become Jagdfliegerschule 7 (Fighter Pilots’ School 7). Late in January 1943 the school then underwent another change of designation to emerge as Jagdgeschwader 107.
The Luftwaffe’s seventeen three-digit Jagdgeschwader (JGs 101-117) were all training, and not operational units. But although termed a Geschwader, JG 107 in fact consisted of just one single Gruppe made up of three Staffeln. Major Meyer was nonetheless appointed to the post of Geschwaderkommodore, with Hauptmann Franz Hörnig, who had hitherto served as Meyer’s deputy, becoming the Gruppenkommandeur of I./JG 107.
With the exception of 2. Staffel, which was deployed to Toul, the unit remained at Nancy-Essay throughout the whole of 1943 and into 1944. By the spring of 1944, however, marauding allied fighter-bombers were beginning to make their presence felt in JG 107’s training areas around Nancy. But it was the bombing raid by B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 8th USAF on the airfield itself on 25 April 1944 that finally forced the school to vacate Nancy-Essay. The Me 109 component retired to Fürth on 2 May. Five days later the remainder of the school was transferred, via Markersdorf, to Börgönd and Tapolca in Hungary, where it was redesignated as II./JG 108. As such it was disbanded in Austria early in 1945 and its personnel remustered as infantry.
Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot Page 19