by Alex Gerlis
I am concerned I may be giving you the wrong impression. I am writing this many, many years after the event, and perhaps seem a little detached about it. At the time, although I found the events in Hörde police station shocking and difficult, I felt I was doing my duty. Life was simple then, we were given orders and we obeyed them. I hope you will have realised that I am now utterly horrified at what we did. Let me be honest and clear: we committed war crimes. The fact that we had been ordered to do so was, as we now know, no defence. It was such a clever move: we committed war crimes and they filmed it, giving them a hold over us.
***
We were woken at six the following morning. The Brigadeführer explained this would be our final test. ‘Forty eight hours from now you could be with your units,’ he told us.
Our final test was to make our own way from the barracks in Dortmund to the police station in Essen. We would travel individually, leaving the barracks at fifteen minute intervals, starting at nine that morning. We should arrive at the police station in Essen by four the following afternoon. Essen was around thirty kilometres away.
I do not propose to go into detail here about the journey. It was not without its dangers, not least from the many air-raids I encountered. Suffice to say that I made it to the police station on Jager Strasse by three thirty. By four, eight of us were there. Just Horst had yet to arrive.
Over the next hour, the Obersturmführers kept coming in and out of the room, increasingly flustered. They asked us if anyone had seen Horst. No-one had. At six o’clock the Brigadeführer came in, along with the three Obersturmführers and what I took to be two Gestapo officers. If any of us had seen Horst and out of an understandable but mistaken sense of comradeship had decided to say nothing, we should say so now. Still, none of us had seen him.
They must have gone into a room nearby because we could hear everything. I think the correct phrase is that all hell broke loose. The Brigadeführer’s rage at the disappearance of Horst was directed at the Gestapo who, it appeared, had been responsible for following us from Dortmund to Essen.
We were taken to a barracks in the south of Essen that night. The next morning we were joined by Brigadeführer Reinher who wished us luck, and reminded us that the future of Germany lay in our hands and those of other brave young men like us. If our mission succeeded, which he had no doubt it would, we would see Captain Canterbury again in Britain.
He finished by saying that in a few moments we would each be taken to separate parts of the barracks to meet the commanders from our new units. They had been here all day themselves to be briefed. They understood their orders: to protect us and surrender to the Allies at the earliest possible opportunity. They would be the only people who knew anything about our mission.
And then with a suddenness that came as quite a shock – that was that. In the corridor outside the room we had a few seconds to say to each other ‘good-bye’ and ‘good luck,’ but it was all very rushed. The eight of us were taken off in different directions. In a matter of moments I was being hurried across the parade ground to an office behind the Armoury, where I found myself in the company of SS Sturmbannführer Rottgen. He told me I was now a Sturmmann, or Storm Trooper, in the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division which was currently fighting in France, where we would now go.
There is no point in me telling you here about my career as a Panzergrenadier. For a start, Sturmbannführer Rottgen had clearly been given quite strict instructions about me so, as far as possible, I avoided front line duties. He told me he intended to wait until it was safe for me to be captured, if that makes sense, and only then would he send me to the front line.
Early in January 1945, I was transferred to a small front line unit which was involved in an attack on American forces around the French village of Rimling, in Moselle. One Sunday morning my unit and some others, all under the command of Sturmbannführer Rottgen, moved towards Rimling. We made good progress at first, and just before seven had crossed a main road and were about to enter a wooded area when they hit us from every side.
At first it was artillery, followed by assaults from the air, and finally what seemed like hundreds of American troops attacking us. I was terrified: this was my first experience of being attacked or even of fighting. I had no idea what to do. Despite the chaos, Sturmbannführer Rottgen had managed to find me. He shouted in my ear: I should get into a ditch and surrender when the Americans came, which would be any moment now. He would stay by me, he said. No sooner had he said that than a shell exploded near us. It was not just the noise that was deafening, but the light was unbearable too. I was quite disorientated and wondered if I had been hit. When I came to my senses, I saw Sturmbannführer Rottgen next to me on the ground, smiling at me as if he had no cares in the world. The rest of his body was some way behind us. Realising that I was not hurt, I scrambled across the road and the last thing I remember is colliding with something and then the world going black and very quiet.
I have no idea how long I was unconscious for, but when I came round I was on a stretcher out in the open, in a field alongside the woods. I could see a few American troops nearby and dozens of German soldiers lying on the ground. My ankle was agony, but apart from that and a terrible headache, I was alright. I lay there, realising I had, after all, been captured.
The Americans gave us water, medicine and food, and even cigarettes. A Panzergrenadier from my unit told me that he had seen me being run over by an American jeep. At around noon we were taken to a field hospital. Of course, I could understand what everyone was saying to one another, but decided not to let on. I heard a doctor telling an orderly that the tent I was being put in contained ten men, the ones they did not need to worry about. They were either like me, not badly hurt and about to be moved to a prison camp, or so badly wounded that there was no hope for them.
The two other walking wounded were taken off to the prison camp in the early afternoon, but I pretended to be asleep and moaned a bit, so I heard an orderly telling someone that I would need to stay there overnight. Of the seven mortally wounded men in the tent, three died within an hour of being brought in. As night fell, there was just me and four dying men.
Two of them were SS Panzergrenadiers like me, but the other two were Wehrmacht. One of them was on a stretcher next to me. From what I could tell, which was not easy, he was a similar age, height and build. He lay still and breathed slowly and heavily, moaning occasionally. His head was swathed in thick bandages, with blood seeping through in more than one place.
It was then that an idea began to develop: I would escape. I realised my situation may not, after all, be that hopeless. The one person who knew the purpose of my mission – Sturmbannführer Rottgen – was dead. So I opened the jacket pocket of the Wehrmacht soldier next to me. I found his identity card, some letters, a small amount of money and a photograph of a family of four, dated 1938, along with two or three photographs of a plump girl with thick glasses.
This was my opportunity, and I knew I needed to move fast. With some difficulty I removed my uniform – remember, my ankle was in a bad way – and with even more difficulty removed his. I then dressed in his uniform, which was perhaps just one size too large. Fortunately his boots, though not as good quality as mine, were large enough to take my now very swollen ankle. It was even more difficult dressing him in my SS uniform: he started to moan more loudly and began to move his arms. Unfortunately, I had to be quite rough with him. After about ten minutes the changeover was complete, and I lay back on my stretcher to look at his papers and learn my new name. I paused while an American came in to check on us, and pretended to be asleep while he went from stretcher to stretcher.
I could see my name was now Mathias Bernhard Krause. I had been born in Mainz in 1925, just two years before me, if you see what I mean. My plump girlfriend was called Ulrike. According to a note on the back of one of her photographs, not a minute of any day went past when Ulrike did not think of her Mathias. I was a Gefreiter, or Private First Class, in the 62nd V
olksgrenadier Division, which I had joined in 1943. In the half light of the tent, I read through the letters I had found in Krause’s pocket. Tragically for him, but most conveniently for me, his parents and elder sister had all been killed in an air raid which destroyed their house in Mainz in January 1944. A letter from a colleague of his father’s assured him that they could have known nothing. Every house in the street had been destroyed. The family photograph I’d found showed a mother, father, girl and boy. I therefore felt it was safe to assume that I had no other siblings who may want to search for me. Apart from Ulrike, I was all alone in the world. I contemplated my situation: I had managed to assume the identity of a Wehrmacht soldier. If I continued to be lucky, I might get away with it.
Next to me, Mathias Bernhard Krause began to breathe more noisily, which I recognised as his final moments. I watched over him as his life slipped away.
I was concerned the same orderly might come into the tent and see that the dead man was wearing a different uniform. So, with some considerable difficulty, I got up and hobbled out of the tent. It was sheer agony, as I could not avoid putting weight on my ankle. It was a nightmare walking across the pitted field, until I found a large tent where the walking wounded and uninjured German prisoners were held and I gave them my name. No-one spoke much, everyone avoided eye contact, and we just all sat quietly. My ankle was so painful now that I thought I would pass out, but I knew that I needed to get away from the field hospital and the Panzergrenadiers as fast as possible. Some French soldiers came round taking our names and military details. One of the soldiers took a passing kick at any SS officer, but no-one said anything. An hour later, they came back in and called out a list of names. Everyone who was called up and assembled at the front of the tent was Wehrmacht. The SS prisoners remained where they were. They called out ‘Mathias Krause’ three times before I realised that was me. I remember thinking I had better get used to the name, and on the lorry that drove us through the night to our prison camp I kept repeating it over and over.
***
I was finally released as a prisoner of war in October 1945, and I went to live in Frankfurt am Main. Like most German cities, much of it had been destroyed and thousands of its inhabitants had been killed. Many thousands more had left the city or moved to different parts of it. I know this sounds harsh, but you will understand when I say that this suited me fine. It was very simple for me to arrive there and not stand out as a stranger. Frankfurt in 1945 was a city of strangers.
By the time I arrived there I had dropped the Mathias, so I was now Bernhard Krause.
Otto Schröder had long ago ceased to exist.
I ought to point out that by the time I sought medical treatment I had done permanent damage to my ankle, which meant I would be disabled for the rest of my life. I also had to face the prospect of never being able to see my family again, which was almost too much to bear. At first, I assumed that I would be able to contact them again, after a decent interval. But the more I contemplated my situation, the more I realised this was impossible. If I contacted them it would be as Otto Schröder – but Otto Schröder was a war criminal who’d murdered a prisoner in cold blood in the cellar of the Gestapo headquarters in Dortmund. At least twenty people had witnessed this unforgiveable act, and it had been filmed. I could not risk being linked to him, not even if that meant never contacting my family again. In any case, they would have been informed that I had died of my wounds in January 1945. I had to come to terms with this, but it was very hard. Looking back on it now, I must have gone through a grieving process for my parents and sisters, without being able to share my grief with anyone. You must remember I was still only eighteen. It was a truly terrible time.
If I was going to survive, I would need to keep a low profile. I resolved to lead my life in the half shadows, with the mundane and the unnoticed. My ambition of going to university would have to go unrealised. Getting married and having a family could not be considered. I would trust no-one.
I found a room in a lodging house, and a job as a porter at a hotel near the station. But I had a policy of moving on in those early years, of not putting down roots. My rule was never to stay in a job for longer than a year, and to move place of residence every six months. So I moved from lodging house to bedsit, from one district of Frankfurt to another, from mundane job to mundane job.
It was a miserable life. I allowed myself no friends, just acquaintances. For the first few years I thought it was just a matter of time before I was tapped on the shoulder and someone would say ‘Otto Schröder.’ I couldn’t go to bed without thinking that there was a good chance the door would be broken down during the night, and I would be arrested.
I would not say that there was a moment when I felt safe, but by 1956 I was aware that the war had been over for more than ten years and no-one had ever as much as given me a knowing look, or asked me an awkward question. I found a nice apartment in the Nordend district and it suited me perfectly. I felt safe in the flat, I began to sleep better – sometimes for as many as four hours at a time – and I looked upon this place as home. I lived there for one year, then for two, then three and then I just stayed there.
My biggest regret was having no contact with my family. Although I had resolved that I could not allow myself to contact them, there were many times in my early days in Frankfurt when I found the loneliness too much. At times, I thought it would be worth risking the consequences by going to see them or making some contact. Even if just to let them know that I was alive, and to see how they were – although I didn’t know if they had survived the war. However, my dilemma was solved for me by the Cold War. Rostock, of course, was in the Soviet sector and then in the DDR, which meant contact would have been extremely difficult if not impossible.
In 1958 I began working for a medium-sized law firm, called Schmidt Legal, in the main legal district in Innenstadt, as a messenger and clerk. It was a good place to work. The senior partner was Alois Schmidt, a most decent man – quiet and thoughtful, very well thought of by clients and staff, and what you would call an intellectual. An intelligent and cultured man: a gentleman. For the first time in many, many years I felt almost settled, and even content.
But that all changed after two events in 1968, last year. The first was in February. Herr Schmidt was representing a Frankfurt company that was taking legal action against Deutsche Bahn, German railways. Some other companies were also involved in similar actions against them, so Herr Schmidt organised a conference of the law firms involved, in Frankfurt, and I was set to work arranging the files and the paperwork.
Because there were so many people involved, Herr Schmidt arranged for the meeting to be held in a nearby hotel, which also meant that they could have lunch there. I took all the paperwork to the hotel in time for the meeting, and then went back to the office. At around eleven o’clock, Herr Schmidt called me. There was a specific file he needed and only I would know where it was. I should add that part of my job was to take files to and collect them from a depository we used in Grosse Gallusstrasse. I knew my way round that place like the back of my hand.
I picked up the file and then went straight to the room where the meeting was taking place. As I entered the room, there he was: directly ahead of me. We must have seen each other simultaneously because I became aware that I was staring at him, and he was staring at me. He certainly recognised me and I definitely recognised him. I had no doubt that it was Horst – Horst Weber.
Herr Schmidt must have sensed something was up because I remember him asking me if I was alright. I then had to walk down the room to pass the file to Herr Schmidt, which meant I was even closer to Horst and we could see each other very clearly – we were less than half a metre apart. By now his face was quite flushed, in the way it is when people are embarrassed or angry. I knew that it was more than twenty years since we had last seen each other, but to me he had changed very little. Maybe his face was a bit fuller, but the piercing, dark eyes were the same, the way he held his head was th
e same. He still had a good head of hair and it was the same as I remembered, fair and almost curly. Everything about him was the same. You must remember, Horst was no passing acquaintance. For nine months in 1944 we had been closer than brothers. We shared a room, we spent all day in each other’s company. I have already told you how much I admired Horst, how much I looked up to him. Since the day he disappeared in Essen, I do not think a day had passed when I did not think of him. I had often wondered what had happened to him, whether he’d been killed in the air raid or had escaped and, if escaped, where to?
On the table in front of him was a card with his name on it: Georg Stern. By the time I had passed the file to Herr Schmidt and had taken some papers from him in return, I saw that Horst... or Stern... had opened his attaché case on the table in front of him and had his head bowed in it, as if he was looking for something.
I left the room as quickly as possible and returned to the office. I was in a terrible state – it was only a matter of time, maybe only a couple of hours, before they came for me, arrested me and I would be charged with being a war criminal. They were still arresting Nazi war criminals and putting them on trial, although it has to be said, not with much enthusiasm. The trial would be on television. In fact, I didn’t go straight back to the office, but I went to a bar first, something I never, ever did during work. To be honest, I hardly ever drank: maybe a beer once or twice a week and only then in my apartment. I realised that if I got drunk I could end up saying things that could get me into trouble. But on this day, I had to have a beer just to calm my nerves.
When I got back to the office I expected to see the police waiting outside for me, but it was all quiet. No-one said anything when I entered. There were no phone calls and even though I kept looking out of the front and rear windows of the office, there was no sign of the police. I checked up on the attendance list for the meeting and saw that Georg Stern was one of two lawyers from a Berlin law firm called Rostt Legal.