VE Day: Why They Fought (Part 4)

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Of all the horrors of the place, the smell perhaps was the most startling of all.

It was a smell made up of all kinds of odors: human excreta, foul bodily odors, smoldering trash fires, german tobacco, which is a stink in itself, all mixed together in a heavy, dank atmosphere, in a thick, muddy woods where little breeze could go.

The ground was pulpy throughout the camp, churned to a consistency of warm putty by the milling of thousands of feet, mud mixed with feces and urine.

The smell of guns kirkin nauseated many of the the Americans who went there.

It was a smell I'll never forget, completely different from anything I've ever encountered.

It could almost be seen and hung over the camp like a fog of death.

And that was Captain J.D.

Pletcher of the 71st Division Headquarters.

And welcome to We Have Ways to Make You Talk, Victory in Europe, Victory 45, Episode 4.

And we, now that we're in Germany, and in our last three episodes, we've got across the Rhine, we've bust into Germany, and the Allied armies, British, Canadian, American, and French, of course, as we lent into the last episode, are running rampant and they are discovering the truth about the Third Reich.

I think it's fair to say.

They are.

And I'm afraid it's just unavoidable.

You have to confront it.

But we've got a bit of other stuff to talk about first.

So

let's introduce the 71st Infantry Division because they're not a famous one.

They're not the Rock of the Marn.

They're not the Thunderbirds.

They're not the big red one.

They're not even the Golden Acorns.

I mean,

and they've only arrived in early part of 1945.

And they fought through Alsace.

Anyway,

there was a chap I came across called Staff Sergeant Alan Moskin.

He was an 18-year-old Jewish soldier from

Nojoisey in the 66th Infantry Regiment of the 71st Infantry Division.

And he'd been drafted after high school.

And early 1945.

So he has his training.

His training is pretty rigorous, pretty tough, and all the rest of it.

Makes some buddies.

But he's not aligned to a particular unit at this time.

So in early 1945, he's sent overseas on a conveyor belt of replacements, lands at Liverpool, down on the train, down to the south coast, then on a boat, then over the channel to a REPL depot, which is a replacement depot.

And from there, he's sent to join the 66th Infantry Regiment, part of the 71st Infantry Division, on the 11th of March, near a place called Ratzvilla, which is in Alsace.

And at the time, the 71st Division are just relieving the 100th Infantry Division.

So then on the 28th of March, the 71st infantry division is shifted and that's the point where they join um the third army and they then cross the rhine two days later and it's interesting for for him it is um absolute assault on the senses a total shock to go from the comparative safety and security of training in the us and ships and you know, camps and depots to suddenly finding yourself in action.

He finds himself in action for the first time in Alsace, just this is before the Rhine crossing.

And he finds he experiences War for Real when he's crouching down behind somewhere and suddenly something hurls over and hits him on the helmet.

And he's a bit dazed.

And when he looks around, he realises he's been hit by a human arm.

And it's not just any old arm either.

It's an arm of one of his buddies because he can recognize the tattoo on it.

It's like, I mean...

That as a sort of barometer of horror, that will do, wouldn't it?

I mean, and that's...

And that is like something out of a film,

out of a horror film.

Directly.

That's ghastly.

Not long after they get across the Rhine, he then comes up behind a discernment, a disabled German tank.

And although the tanker's the Panzer's been knocked out, it's still firing, and the Panzer fires several rounds.

But then Moskin and some of his fellows see one of the Germans' tank crew clamber out of the tank, and so he fires and sees the man fall.

And soon after, they kind of overrun the position.

And Moskin goes over to see the prostrate body of the man he's just shot.

And the helmet has come off the soldier and he's young and you know similar age to him he looks over and sees the the helmet sort of nearby scattered in the you know inside the helmet is a photo several photos and one of them is of who are clearly his parents and it says verliebendik muti and vati yeah so and it just he has nightmares about this i mean the interesting thing with these all of the i mean his stories are you could pluck 10 000 people out of the american armies at the point and they'd all have stories like this yes the reason finding the guys' photographs with mum and dad, I mean, these are almost cliches, aren't they?

The reason they're cliches is because they're happening absolutely everywhere to everyone.

This is what it is.

You know, recognizing your buddy's tattoo.

It's really striking how these stories fall into

a paradigm, but that's because that is what is happening to everybody.

That is what is happening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's really grim.

And it's, you know, this stage of the war.

I mean, the war is always violent and always has been, right, from the opening shots, but there is something particularly grim, especially grim about these final stages where it's also pointless.

And all around you, you can just see Armageddon.

I mean, you know, this is post-apocalyptic stuff.

There is carnage, death, burnt out stuff,

rotting corpses, desolation, leaking sewers.

Yeah.

You know, skeletal landscape, mud, you know, even into April.

It's just an utter horror story.

And it's also completely pointless.

There's another time where

his best buddy gets really, really badly wounded.

He's bleeding out and he stops to help him.

The sergeant comes along and orders him to leave him, abandon him, says, come on, you know, I've got to keep it.

And he never ever gets over having to leave his best friend.

Yeah.

So he's got quite a lot of trauma there.

It's bitter stuff.

And he, I mean, he's interesting because he talks about fear as well, doesn't he?

He says people are peeing their pants.

There's nothing to be ashamed of.

Everyone's scared.

There's nothing abnormal about it.

Replacements are coming in in the spring of 1945.

The war is as real in terms of men being killed and injured as it has at any other phase of the war.

It isn't this thing of once you cross the Rhine, it's all kind of a picnic.

No.

It carries on as bitterly as it has before.

And there's lots of terrifying stuff, you know, and this is a time when big forests and people jumping out of pans of fouls and stuff,

which we should get on to, because elsewhere I was always very struck by that essay by Paul Fussell.

You know, brutal fighting and lots of his buddies get killed and, you know, he witnesses all sorts of horrors.

And he reads the great big first account of the Second World War.

And his division isn't even mentioned.

That's right.

So, you know, that's why I'm kind of interested in, you know, mentioning Alan Moskin and the 71st Infantry Division.

But actually, Alan Moskin will come back, will return before the end of this episode.

But meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, yes, British Second Army.

pushing on into northern Germany.

And as we said in the last episode, they are not to go to Berlin.

We're basically on an axis towards

Hamburg and Denmark.

Bremen.

Yeah, and Bremen.

And they're being held up here and there, pockets of resistance.

30 Corps, for example, they turn north from Rees, where they cross the Rhine, and they go into Holland to start with, and then head for Bremen.

And it is this business of every now and again, the set-piece battles are over, but you really don't know what there's violence around the corner everywhere.

People leaping out with Panzerfaust's training schools and all that sort of thing they run into where people, you know, hang on.

Well, I remember following that route.

and you know, you do go through the old maps that they had, you know, we had an old sort of one to 250,000 scale map that the British have been issued with, and it's basically the same.

So on the maps, you can see the big forest.

There's a sort of dead straight Roman road going through the forest, linking, you know, there's a town, the forest ends, then there's a village or a town, then there's another forest, then there's another town.

And you can drive through these same forests, and you can just imagine the kind of the road, you know, the big tree trunk across the road and people jumping out and being the first in the column and and being blasted and stuff and you know no one wanted to be in the in the vanguard no one wanted to be on point no um but they are all making you know incredible significant and rapid progress there's no no getting away from that yeah because the canadians break into uh the netherlands and uh well their job is to sort of scoop round isn't it northward cut back westwards to the to the you know the dutch coast yeah because there's that's still that large part of holland which is sort of cut off yeah but still garrisoned by by the germans

so they're into they get across the the river Easel and they capture Appledon and Zutphen as part of Operation Cannon Shop.

Then on the 12th of April, Operation Anger, which is the 49th Polar Bears Division who are attached to Canadian II Corps.

Four-day battle for the town, which is in Arnhem, which is, of course, empty because it's evacuated after Market Garden.

That fighting goes on to the 16th of April.

Often enough in books about Market Garden, you get the odd photo, which is actually from April.

It's one of some lads with a six-pounder in the shop window.

Yeah.

But it is Brits that liberated not Canadians, even though they're attached to the Canadian II Corps.

Yeah, yeah.

And 79th Armoured Division are also peppered through all this with their specialised armor.

Canadians then

take Groningen, Ottolo, and they sweep west and north.

And what's interesting about this is that you have these pockets of Germans hanging on all over, don't you?

And 2nd SAS are involved in a lot of this, aren't they, as well?

Yes, yes, this would have, of course, this is where Paddy Main gets his disputed, he gets his fourth DSO, which could have been a VC.

VC.

And Operation Amherst, the Canadian Second Corps, they pushed north to liberate the different bits of Holland that are still held by the Nazis.

Because after all, we've had the business of the hunger winter to sort of deal with as well.

Yeah.

30,000 die.

Yeah.

Starvation and illness.

Deliberate starvation.

I mean, what's interesting as well is that resistance to the Germans from

within the Wehrmacht.

On Texel, and I trained to parachute on Texel years and years and years and years ago.

And it really is one of those fingers of land.

It's

right on the Dutch coast.

You go up it, water on either side, sort of place.

You know, it feels very isolated.

And there's an uprising there of the Georgian Legion Ost Truppen.

They rebel on the 5th of April.

Yeah.

Amazing story, this, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely incredible.

But you also think.

Two-week battle.

What are the Germans doing?

I mean, all right, fine.

Go.

Become disappointed.

565 Georgians get killed.

120 civilians get killed, and 800 Germans.

Oh, just so pointlessly.

Yeah.

I also quite like the fact that French Paras are involved.

Yes.

They're dropping into parts of Friesland and Dreenter.

And they capture the Stoker's Valat Bridge, which is a sort of, you know, the door that leads into this whole area.

And then at the very end of April, of course, in Holland, you've got the humanitarian food drops.

You know, Operation Manor by the RAF and Chowhound by the US Army Air Force.

So this 11,000 tons of food are dropped in 10 days between the 29th of April and the 7th of May.

And there's also a ground operation as well, Faust, which sees 200 Allied trucks delivering to a relief column to the town of Gainen, which is behind German lines and which has only been agreed with the authority of Arthur Seiss Inkart, who's also got an eye to the post-war world, but it's not going to do him any good because he gets executed, doesn't he?

Well, Beatlesmith, there's that account, isn't there, where the Beatle says,

Seys Inkfart says, well, that prospect leaves me cold.

And the Beatle says, yeah, it tends to leave people cold.

Meaning, you're going to the gallows, mate.

Yep, yep.

The thing is, that's all like this rolling battle of German capitulation, isn't it?

And what's the point of any of it?

But lots of little sort of stands and blowouts.

I mean, the Paddy main VC action is quite interesting because what happens is, you know, they're beetling along and their Jeeps supporting the Canadians as they're pushing northwards.

They're going actually, it's just on that bit where the Dutch border stops and you get into Schlegwig-Holstein.

Exactly, Schlegwig-Holstein.

So it's that kind of neck of the woods.

And And they're going along

and the Jeeps.

And the first Jeep gets shot up by a little ambush.

There's a little flurry of little farm buildings on the right-hand side.

And then just beyond, there's a small kind of wood.

They're being shot at from the wood, but also from the farm buildings.

And they get shot up, and the survivors jump out and hide in a ditch.

And Paddy Main goes forward and clears the first house with a Brend gun.

Then the second house.

completely clears it.

He's got one person giving you a little bit of cover.

Then he goes back, gets into a Jeep, gets a volunteer who's a lieutenant that's been promoted through the ranks.

And they just main driving.

And the lieutenant whose name I can't remember manning the Vickers guns, they just burn past the woods, just spraying it.

And they do a couple of runs on that.

And that's what he's recommended the VC for.

But I mean, what's the point if you're the Germans?

The Allies are over the Rhine.

There's no point whatsoever.

Okay, so

you've ambushed a couple of, you know, a handful of Jeeps at the top of a column.

I mean, do you think that's it?

Do you think that's all you're going to have to deal with?

You know,

two dozen sort of badly trained Fauschem Jäger in a wood and a farmhouse.

I mean, you know, put your hands up.

Just surrender.

It's just, it's hopeless.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Anyway.

And then on the 11th of April, the US 9th Army reaches the Elba, the River Elba, which is a sizable river which runs from sort of Magdeburg and goes down Wittenberg, you know, as in Martin Luther and the...

Yeah.

You know, that's where Hammers are.

Lovely town, that.

Lovely town.

Yeah, yeah.

You still go to Martin Luther's house.

Anyway, that's the line.

And Tangamunda is the only bridge that's left open.

And that's been destroyed, but there is a walkway across it.

So German troops are trying to flee across from the Russians and get across.

But anyway, they reached the Elba.

Meanwhile, the southern Reich, it's just chaos.

It's absolute chaos.

It's just huge movement of people of retreating German troops, fleeing Nazis, liberated prisoners, displaced persons, you know, refugees.

On the 2nd of May in 1945, in Oberamagau, U.S.

troops from the, I think it's the 3rd Infantry Division, the Rock of the Marn, they capture three figures of the Nazi rocket program.

So this is Dr.

Herbert Wagner, Dr.

Werner von Braun, we've all heard of him.

Yeah.

Behind the rockets behind the ME262 and the V V2s and all the rest of it.

And General Walter Dernberger.

And Walter Dernberger is

the general in charge of the whole project.

And they've come from Peenemunder.

Yeah.

They're fleeing, and they've managed to make their way down into the southern Reich.

They've quickly taken to Paris and this is part of Operation Paperclip.

Yes, Operation Paperclip, we're all about flying saucers and teleportation devices and Germany.

Zero point.

Yeah, zero point and German moon lasers and foo fighters.

Yeah, foo fighters and so on.

I mean, isn't it enough that the Americans got a bloke who could send them to the moon?

Why do we need flying saucers when they've also got they've got these

V2s and they've got all these the heads of the V2s are equipped with tabin nerve gas, you know.

Yes, it's from sarin comes from it.

Yeah.

And they're all getting ready to farm them at Britain and, you know, Antwerp and stuff.

The thing is, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because we talked about Kautenbrunner and Wolf.

There are Nazis who have stuff to offer the Allies.

Yeah.

And there are other Nazis who think they have stuff to offer to the Allies and don't.

You know, if you are von Braun, you probably are pretty sure that you have something to offer.

I'm the guy who built the rockets.

You're going to need my...

You're going to want to pick my brains.

Whereas if you're Wolf, it's like, well,

I've tried to sue for peace.

Does that help?

The Americans are being very materialistic and pragmatic in their decisions.

Well, the truth is that, you know, since Yilta, the Cold War has started, although there's still a hot war going on.

The Cold War, the post-war change of global order

and the ideologies that those two leading orders...

are representing have are starting to come to the fore and it's interesting because i've just been reading you know a few weeks ago i was reading tim bouvery's book yeah um called allies at war and and you know he's he makes the point that

his point is that actually it's already a lot of the stuff that the controversy of Yolta has already been kind of laid out at Tehran the previous previous winter.

Yeah.

I'm not entirely sure about that.

But the point is, is certainly by Yolta, everyone knows where they stand.

You know, Roosevelt is sick as a dog.

He, you know, he's really, really struggling.

And it's clear that the Soviet Union are going to be in possession of a large swathe of Eastern Europe and they're not going to give it up.

Yeah.

You know, they can agree in inverted commas to have free and fair democratic elections after the Warsaw.

But what are they going to do about it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Before they get to Yalta, this is a slight segue.

Churchill is desperate to have a kind of pre-summit talk with Roosevelt and Roosevelt won't speak to him.

No, he won't, will he?

Because he's decided that basically Britain's a busted flash.

Britain's done.

And therefore Churchill's done, you know?

And after all, there's a sizable chunk of American opinion that's quite comfortable with the idea that Britain's done, the British Empire's over.

He is the Arch Machiavelle.

Yeah, he is.

He's brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

But Machiavellian.

And also, I think he also does have his high ideals, and they don't quite align with colonial Britain and all the rest of it.

Anyway, the capture of Operation Paperclip is all about the Cold War.

And actually, to an extent, that has already started because Paperclip has already been instigated the previous autumn.

You know, it's already worked out before.

Cold War or not, you'd still take the rocket bloat, wouldn't you?

You'd say, yeah, you're coming.

You're coming.

Yeah, but why are you going to need that?

You know, who's your future enemies?

You know, you're already kind of starting to work that out, aren't you?

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway.

And the lasers and zero point and the moon, moon

based on the moon and the foo fighters.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now we're well deep into the Reich.

So the heart of Germany's being overrun.

There aren't any armies fighting, but there's, you know, there's towns and it's through a sort of flavor of the local Nazis, isn't it, basically?

Completely, yeah.

You know, five miles to the north you can just run through a town and you know everyone surrenders the white sheets are out and it's job done five miles to the south you know you've got a four-day battle yeah yeah yeah so for example at a shaffenberg uh that's attacked by major general wade d hayslip's 15 corps yep and it's on the river main it's a 30 000 people place it's on an outcrop on the bend of the river but there's a big tank repair shop there and basically the guy in charge there maya emil lambert who's an old fighter basically isn't he yeah he's a first world war veteran a reserve army officer and he's basically totally dedicated nazi yep and he runs a reserve army officer school in one of the barracks there so he's going to fight to the last yeah absolutely determined to do so the um account of the battle for a schaffenberg comes in pca's magnificent tome yes victory in the west 1944 victory in the west yeah brilliant account of a schaffenberg so this is plundered from that so thank you peter but we we thought it was a good idea to have just a little example of one of these to kind of illustrate the bigger picture.

And Lambert's determined to defend a Schaffenberg to the last.

Although, as we shall see, you know.

And he drags together everyone he can get his hands on.

So it's Hitler youth, Fox Grenadiers, Waffen-SS, the police, Hungarian volunteers.

Yes, a volunteer in inverted commas.

Yeah, Lufaffa people as ever.

But there's 5,000 of them.

And Lambert is duly promoted to Festung Commandant.

I bet feels great about me.

What does that mean?

Puff you up kind of title, isn't it?

Make you feel self-important.

And then prepares the town for combat.

He receives a code word Gneisenau, which means people get ready.

The insistence is that the garrison.

There's 3,000 civilians who also have got to resist the enemy on pain of death.

Yes, I mean, it's much reduced.

7,000 of the 10,000 have gone, but there's 3,000 still there.

And they've got to resist on pain of death.

Oh, God.

And he sends that signal.

He goes, Soldiers, men of the Volkssturm, comrades, the fortress of a Schaffenberg will be defended to the last man.

As of today, everyone is to give his last.

I order that no one shall rest more than three hours out of twenty.

I'm sure it's twenty-four.

I forbid anyone sitting around or looking.

Our belief is that our mission is to give the cursed enemy the greatest resistance and to send as many of them as possible to the devil.

You know, and then there's the local Chryslighter, who's a kind of sort of junior gau lighter.

Hein mutt Volgemut.

And he teaches him: whoever remains in this city belongs to a battlegroup which will not know any selfishness, but only unlimited hatred for the cursed opponent of ours.

They will know only complete sacrifice for the Fuhrer and the Reich.

Day and night, we will work, we will commit all our power to do the opposition the greatest possible damage, because we know that Germany will live if we are prepared to give our lives.

I mean, total bollocks, isn't it?

Cobblers, isn't it?

Absolute twaddle.

The highest order.

And, you know, just it's so frustrating, isn't it?

Just give up.

Yeah.

Especially as the last few episodes we've been making kind of clear that the Allied armies are now very, very good at what they do.

Yes.

They've really got it all figured out.

And what they do is if they don't like the cut of your jib, they will shell you into oblivion.

Yes.

And it may surprise you to know.

This is exactly what happens to a Schaffenberg.

So it's attacked by the 157th infantry of the 45th Thunderbirds.

This is Felix Sparks' mob.

They attack on the 28th of March, and of course, it turns into a horror show.

Infantry is initially repulsed.

They're not expecting it to be so heavily defended.

So they pull back and they go, okay, boys, do your worst.

That's what you want.

Artillery.

So they end up no less than 12 artillery battalions and 4.2-inch mortars.

5,000 shells are fired onto a Schaffenberg on the 29th of March alone.

Then, just to kind of really ram the point home, they then bring the longtoms up, which is 155mm,

eight-wheeled big boys.

Napalm is used on the 1st or 2nd of April, dropped by P-47s.

Over 100 tons of bombs, in addition to the shelling, is dropped on a Schaffenberg.

And let's face it, by the end of it, there's not much left.

Town is eventually taken on the 3rd of April.

And surprise, surprise, Lambert doesn't commit suicide.

He's captured.

And then Felix Barks insists he sits on the front of a Jeep telling everyone to surrender.

When the DI2 finally kind of clear the town, they find loads and loads of Germans, troops and civilians, swinging from lampposts with placards around their necks going, Todd Allen Verden, you know, which is death to all traitors.

It's just unbelievable, isn't it?

It's the bitter punchline that these guys don't then kill themselves at the end of all this.

It happens again and again and again.

Yes, it's like Field Marshal Schoen.

Yeah.

Schoener.

Do you remember at the end?

Well, maybe we'll come on to him in subsequent episodes, but

absolute bastard.

And then flees.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in Breslau as well, the Galeiter there.

This is what the military fighting is like inside Germany.

But the other big feature, of course, of the end of the war in Germany, the the end of the war in the West, is discovering the camps inside the Third Reich.

And we'll be looking at these, and particularly one as an example after the break.

So we'll see you in a tick.

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Welcome back to Weird Ways to Make You Talk.

Now, with the kind of fighting that you have around a Schauffenberg, there's also the business of discovering hundreds of camps.

But there's just camps literally everywhere.

Because there's slave workers, there's enforced workers' camps, there's POW camps, there's concentration camps.

There's also just vast numbers of foreign workers just wandering around not knowing where to go, trying to get home, but living off the land.

There's refugees galore in there, hundreds of thousands.

And there's POWs being relocated and also discovered.

So there's death marches and

swirl of people.

And at Falling Bostel, the British Discover...

Peter White with the Jocks writes an excellent description of when they get to Falling Bostel and they discover all these British POWs.

Which is up between Bremen and Hamburg.

Yeah, and it's full of paras from Market Garden, as well as lots of other people.

They're all immaculately turned out.

They come out to salute and all this sort of stuff.

But you've also got Deladier, Reno, Gamelau, Vegon, all those people,

French leaders from 1940 have been in the bag ever since.

And I love this, one Dunkirk POW says, so that's what a Jeep looks like.

I mean.

Yeah, because it's a different century.

1940.

It's such a long time ago.

You know, this is a world without submachine guns.

and sten guns.

It's a world without rocket-firing typhoons.

It's a world with

big tanks and 400 bombers it's it's just a different planet yeah and obviously this is a this is a massive organizational problem especially as there's still fight especially as there's still fighting going on as well so there's this of course peter white's accounts of you know when they take over a farmhouse and he'll put his platoon in it and there'll be there'll be slave labor working for the farmer there'll be all this sort of sullen stuff going on with and then dps coming displaced persons coming through their positions all this stuff it's constant churn the the sort of the term dp is is coined at this time.

Yeah.

Displaced person.

And there's millions of them, literally.

And there's that, the fact, are they, how, where are they from?

How are they going to get home?

Where are they trying to get to?

What state are they in?

It's the greatest single refugee crisis that the world has ever known.

Yeah.

You know, there are millions and millions of DPs, displaced people.

Yeah.

And people just trying to, you know, now and after the war is over.

It's just, it's, it's just a astonishing period.

Yeah.

But beyond this, though, of course, is the discovery of concentration camps.

So Dora Mittelbau, which is...

At Nordhausen.

At Nordhausen, which is where they're building V-weapons in the Gypsum mine.

This is the one in the mountain, yeah.

One tunnel goes in and goes all the way down.

The tunnel comes back out.

Parts come back out on the wearaway carriage, built as a rocket or a V2.

V1, rather.

It's the most extraordinary place.

And very, very few workers come out.

Yeah.

And that thing of you're training people to build rockets and then working them to death.

Yep.

The sort of pure contradiction of it all.

So Dora is discovered discovered on the 11th of April.

Buchenwald is discovered by Third Army troops on the 13th.

Belsen by the British, by the Inns of Court Regiment on the 15th of April 1945.

Flossenberg, which has been evacuated from Death March, is discovered on the 17th of April, though there's 2,000 prisoners there.

On the 19th of April, 25,000 ordered to Dacha.

Many are still in the town on the 26th of April when the SS disappear.

And the Americans, the US Third Army liberates them on the 23rd of April.

It's awful, isn't it?

Of all these people they liberate, only 1,208 survive.

Yep.

Because they're in such a state when they're discovered, own at Belsen, the British have to figure out how to feed people, don't they?

Because

people have been killed by eating too much too quickly and so on.

Yep.

Dachau, the first ever of the concentration camps, is liberated on the 29th of April by the 45th Division, Thunderbirds.

Ravensbrook, so executions are accelerating in the final weeks because there's still 50,000 there in January 1945, even though this is in, you know, this is sort of north, northeast of Berlin.

But less than 3,500 half thousand left by the 30th of April when they're liberated by the Red Army.

So 24,500 of them are sent on a death march in Ardennes if they've survived.

Then the Sachsenhausen, which is mainly Soviet prisoners, only 3,400 inmates left when they're liberated by the Red Army of Rokossovsky's first Belarusian front on the 22nd of April.

So that's the name of you, but

there are many more.

But we thought we'd focus on one.

particular and the and we mentioned it right at the front of the quote at the front and that's gunskirken but we also wanted to tell one story because otherwise, you know, so many people, how do you kind of, how do you kind of illustrate the experience?

How do you stop them being statistics?

How do you stop them being statistics?

Yeah, all of this has been statistics so far.

Yeah, so the person we're going to follow is a chap called Hugo Grin, who anyone who used to wake up and listen to the Radio Force for the Day program back in the day will recognize him because he was a regular on Fall for the Day.

He was a chief rabbi in the UK.

But he was a Jewish boy from Berehovo in Carpathian, Ruthenia.

And he is born into a kind of prosperous, tight, loving family.

Father is a successful timber merchant.

And they're part of this really strong Jewish community, which makes up about 50% of the town population of Berejovo.

It's not a minority at all in that environment.

No, no.

So it's like an absolutely integrated part, and they're living really very happily and it's all fine.

So this is on the cusp of Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

It's right on that kind of disputed beat.

And he has a very nice childhood.

He's got a younger brother.

They're all absolutely fine.

Until things start to sort of turn a little bit in the end of the 1930s, where anti-Semitism starts to become rife.

Berehovo is then annexed by Hungary in 1938.

So they become part of Hungary.

Yes, after Munich.

After Munich, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So then there's anti-Jewish sentiment that intensifies decidedly, particularly once Hungary aligns with Nazi Germany.

Anyway, March 1944, despite this, despite the anti-Semitism, Hungary under Admiral Horty has been resisting Nazi pressure to prosecute the Jews in Hungary and doesn't until March 1944 when Horty is overthrown and Nazi German troops invade Hungary because Hungary's been seeking a peace with the Allies.

And they go, well, you know, forget that.

So they go in and at that point, this is when it's curtains for Hungary's Jews.

It is for this reason that that extra railway line has been created that goes straight into the camp at Birkenau and goes all the way down to the down to the gas chambers.

And I think it's striking that this is all happening at the point of the war where really the Germans should be concentrating on other things if they're thinking strategically.

A hundred percent.

And it underlines that as the destruction of Europe's Jews is a war aim of the Third Reich.

No two ways about it, inasmuch as defending France is, or defending Norway, or defeating the Soviet Union.

Anyway, what then happens is they're forced into the fact in April of 1944, the Grin family is forced into a ghetto at a sawmill, which his father

had owned at one point.

Hugo Grin's father is able to basically parley his skill into keeping them alive, isn't he?

Yes.

The other thing that's awful about this is that his father Gezer has actually, before this has happened, before they've been moved into this enforced ghetto, he's managed to get exit visas and prepared to go to Turkey.

And then he suddenly just thinks, I just can't do it.

I can't run away with my family and not the rest of the family.

God.

So he says, you know, we're all in this together and I've got to stick with the family.

I can't just abandon them.

But he has had four exit visas, you know, and rail travel and passes to get to Turkey.

So they could have escaped, but they don't.

And then in June 1944, then suddenly, you know, the roundups start and they're put on the railway wagons.

They have no idea where they're going to go.

They're given there's one milk churn full of water and there's another one for doing their business in on this thing.

And it's just, it's just surrendered.

And they're deported to Auschwitz.

It takes them several days to get there.

When they do get there, they're immediately separated.

And one, there's a Zonda commando guy.

And as Hugo Grin is getting out, he's holding on to his rucksack.

And the guy takes it from him and says, tell them you're 19.

Tell them you're 19.

And Hugo releases his rucksack, gets down, gets separated.

They see his younger brother immediately sent off on his own, severed from his parents, from his older brother.

And that's it.

And he is taken straight to the gas chambers, the younger brother.

But his mother isn't.

But Hugo realizes what's going on, doesn't he?

He realizes

that the chimneys are for extermination.

The two buildings with the chimneys are for extermination.

He gets it.

And he is, although he's only 14 at this point, he is siphoned off.

He says, I am 19.

And so he's siphoned off.

And yeah, you know, they learn very, very quickly the kind of dehumanization, the shaving, the disinfectant, you know, all their hair is cut off.

You know, well, we talked about this, didn't we, when we were doing the Auschwitz series.

But he learns very quickly to lie, which he finds very difficult because this is one thing that he's always been taught not to do.

And his father says to him, I know I've always told you not to lie, but this is different circumstances.

Now the time you and I have to stick together.

We have to look after one another and we are going to have to lie.

They managed to get some messages to their mother, Hugo's mother.

They learn that Birkenau is referred to as an extermination camp.

But after about three weeks,

they have a roll call and they say, you know, have any of you got any skills?

You know, can you do woodwork and stuff?

And because of the sawmills, Gezer, his father does know about a bit about woodwork and, you know, he sort of nudges Hugo to to put his hand up as well and they put the hands up and so they're they're isolated.

They're then sent out of Birkenau.

His mother is still there but Geyser and his son Hugo, they are then sent to Liberosa.

So they're put on a train again and actually when they're on the train they see

one of the milk churns on the on the trains that has Berehovo written on it in short.

That's his one connection to his hometown.

And they're sent there and they dropped in this forest and Liberosa is kind of it's sort of just on the banks of the, it's really close to the Oder.

So it's kind of, you know, 50 miles, 35 miles east of Berlin, somewhere like that.

Do you know what they're doing?

They're building a holiday camp for beleaguered Wehrmacht officers.

I mean, it's absolutely crazy, isn't it?

Where the war is at, this whole sort of diverted effort is crazy.

They're wearing red triangles, aren't they?

Because his father has come up with a backstory about being political prisoners.

They've managed to finagle the system.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No one's quite checking.

and they're not checking them as they're not labeled as jews they're just prisoners yeah and they learn to conserve energy to avoid the guards so it's really interesting this isn't it so you don't walk fast yeah you do everything slowly you conserve as much energy you never look a guard in the eye you never volunteer for anything the winters are terrible and they have all these greek prisoners there and the greeks can't cope with it because it's too cold yeah They learn when people are about to die because their knees and ankles swell and it's basically their body giving up.

And as soon as they see that, they just know that that person's kind of gone he's gone or about to be about to be gone they're taking some food back there's four of them they're each got a handle corner of a handle it's like a sort of old-fashioned sedan chair or whatever and they're taking a big saucepan of food or whatever and the most sadistic guard they suddenly decide to attack him and they kill him yeah They overwhelm him and kill him, hide the body and then carry on as though nothing's happened and get away with it, which is extremely.

Well, he's discovered a few days later.

Yeah.

And there's roll calls and all the rest of it, but and people get punished, but no one's actually pinned for it.

Later, he's then caught with a spanner.

So he's whipped 25 times.

And then he's saved by a sympathetic camp doctor who's known his school.

The doctor's son was at the same boarding school that Hugo had been at just before they're put into the ghetto.

He begins working in the camp hospital under pretense of being a medical student.

And his role is as an anephysis.

I mean, can you imagine?

You know, he's still only 15.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you are not a medical student.

You are not.

Yeah.

And then suddenly on the 2nd of February, 1945, they're told, right, we're all out.

So 1,200 ill prisoners are all burned to death in the hospital or shot.

And as they're marching out, he can see this huge fire conflagration.

And he knows exactly what's happened.

And they also know that they've got to keep going because those who fall out of line are just shot and left for dead on the on the side.

They reach the outskirts of Berlin and they then trudge through the ruined capital.

I mean, it's just amazing.

Lots of Germans watching them and just looking at them with contempt.

This is one of the things he finds the kind of the hardest.

And eventually they reach Sachsenhausen, which we mentioned earlier on.

And half of them die en route.

Yeah.

But he and his father Geyser are still alive.

They're still together.

And while they're there, they're working on the counterfeit money.

You know, this is Kautenbrunner's mob.

Yeah.

Just amazing.

And they're only there for a month.

It is all amazing.

I suppose that the crowds look at them in contempt.

What are they thinking as those people go by?

Because Because

one of the things that happens as a sort of function of the Holocaust is because Jewish people are starved and kept in rags.

Germans are able to point at them and say, look, see, they are scum.

Yes, but they don't know these are Jews, do they?

No, they don't.

I suppose they don't even know.

No, they don't.

They're just forced workers.

They're just forced workers.

But it's just, what on earth are you thinking in February of 1945 as you see a parade of a forced march?

All right, but if you're a homeless person on Waterloo Bridge and you're sitting there, what would you say that most people look at you at during the day?

Oh, indifference, complete contempt or indifference.

Yeah.

It's the same thing.

It's shame, isn't it?

Yeah.

But indifference and contempt is not really difference and contempt.

It's shame that here's one of your fellow citizens of the country sitting on the bridge with a paper gut going, you know, please help me.

Or they just don't look, as JR, our producers pointed out.

Anyway, by the end of February, they're then sent yet another train to Matthausen.

I mean, all the logistics and organization of sending these people around, they're still being used as slave labor.

So they go to Matthausen where they're working in a quarry, you know, in freezing conditions.

They're housed in tents.

What's really interesting is there's one evening where Hugo suddenly, they're in the corner of a tent and he suddenly feels overwhelmed and he feels completely like he's just got to get away.

So he says to his father, come on, let's just leave this tent.

Can we just go into the woods for a bit?

They step out and go into the woods and an astray allied bomb lands on the tent and kills those of them.

What are they quarrying for?

Another holiday camp?

I mean, this is the other thing.

What on earth's going on?

Don't know.

Because after all, all, one of the things when we looked at the Holocaust, when we looked at Auschwitz in those Auschwitz episodes, there's that whole ratio, isn't there, of how slave labor doesn't work very well because they don't work as hard.

You don't get the productivity out of these people that you'd want.

No.

There is no benefit in having, you know, whereas if you fed them better and looked after them, you get the productivity you need.

So this is sort of the ever-decreasing circles of this.

Yeah.

But they can't feed them better because they don't have food themselves.

Exactly, exactly.

But also, because.

So I go back to the kind of original point we made many moons ago in an earlier episode, which is if you can't afford to do it don't get involved in the first place don't invade poland on the first of september 1939 you know that's the lesson so on the 13th of april they're moves again

this time there are this is a forced march no food people dying en masse on the roadsides conditions absolutely catastrophic his father is increasingly unwell and he doesn't realize it but he's actually got typhus at this point or typhoid i should say yeah they know that liberation is on its way at this point but it's just whether they can hold out or not you know they are both severely weakened at this point.

Anyway, we're going to momentarily pause with Hugo Grin's story and return to the southern Reich and actually the US 3rd Infantry Division because, you know, they are still making huge, great swaves and they are getting, you know, these camps one by one are getting liberated, but also the grip that the Nazis have in the southern Alps is also being loosened.

So the 7th Infantry, the Cotton Bailers, as they're known, this is part of the 3rd Infantry Division, reached Salzburg.

And the 3rd Infantry Division, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for them because this is the infantry infantry division of audi murphy who wrote to hellen back he's the most decorated u.s serviceman of world war ii and if anyone hasn't read to hellen back i cannot recommend it highly enough it's absolutely brilliant and they are by the time the war is finally over they will be the most combat experienced infantry division in the u.s army in world war ii with 531 days of combat having landed in north africa in november 1942 in morocco as we said earlier along with the 45th division being through sicily southern italy anzio Operation Dragoon, the whole shebang.

And in that time, they've suffered more than 25,000 casualties, which when you think an entire division is 15,000 strong, that's a lot.

So they feel they've done their bit and more than done their bit, which is why Major General John Iron Michael Daniel, who has taken over command of the 3rd Infantry

during the Anzio battle at the beginning of 1944, decides to ignore orders not to touch Berkis Garden and sends his 7th Infantry into the town.

And the reason Birkesgarden is so important is because this is where the Ober Salzburg is, and this is where the Berghoff is, which is Hitler's house.

It's his main house.

It's his favorite place on the planet.

And while the Allies are not going to be able to get into Berlin, they can take this other prized headquarters of Nazidom.

You know, Nazis on the hill, Ober Salzburg.

You know, it's where Goering's got a house, it's where Borman's got a house, and it's causes.

And it's a much cheaper win than going to Berlin as well.

Let's pick it.

It's a much cheaper win.

O'Daniel knows that Divas has promised Birkesgarden to the French.

And he thinks, sob that for a laugh.

This has been relayed to Patch, who is a Sempharmy commander.

And Patch has told Mike, whatever happens, do not exceed your remits.

Do not leave Salzburg.

Birkesgarden is to be left to the French.

And he just thinks, no.

What are they going to do about it?

It's the end of the war.

I'm going to take this.

I'm going to have the glory of this.

So he calls up.

Jim, is he saying that in a whatever you do, don't do this way?

In other words, do this.

No, I don't.

I think he's not.

He's actually saying, don't go.

I think he's saying don't.

But I think Daniel is so, they're so peed off about this.

They just think, you know, we've done more fighting than anyone else.

We deserve it.

Why do the French do it?

Because it's not just promised to the French First Army.

It's actually promised to Philippe Leclerc, who's the commander of the Duzième Division Blondie, which is the French Second Army Division.

Which is actually being an outlier because this is one that's come from the UK.

This is free French troops that have come from the UK.

They've been attached to the US Third Army in normandy they've been sent in at the head of you know to the liberation of paris they've already had their glory and since then they've actually been detached from third army and they've been doing coastal festung clearing yeah and then they're transferred and and and leclerc doesn't want to be part of the french first army because he thinks they're dangerous vichyites i mean so it's all this sort of classic internecine battles that the french have french french stuff And Daniel just thinks, why the hell should these guys get it?

So he calls up Colonel John A.

Heinkers.

And Heingers is the commander of the cotton balers and is actually German-born, but emigrated in an early stage to

America.

And Daniel is quite upfront about it.

He says, look, I'll tell you right now, Patch has forbidden us to take Burkesgarden, but I think we should, you know, are you prepared to do this?

And Heint goes, yeah, damn right.

The 101st Airborne, and Maxwell Taylor has also told, he's also told the 101st Airborne to get ahead of the French.

So there's three different groups all converging on Burkesgarden.

But it just so happens that the 7th Infantry, the cotton balers, are closest.

So the leading patrol patrol is commanded by Lieutenant Sherman W.

Pratt of B Company of the Servant, which is obviously the first battalion of the seventh infantry.

And they're leading their way.

And they and he says, we rounded a bend and there before us in a broad opening lay the ruins of what had once been Hitler's house and the SS barracks.

After all the years of struggle and destruction, the killing, pain and suffering, here for sure was the end of it.

And they take it.

They've got there.

They found the Berghoff bombed.

Well, yes, the RAF has got there first, in actual fact.

So 617th Squadron

destroyed it.

And so the symbol of Nazi defeat has been brought about by the Royal Air Force, which is...

Yes, and it's quite interesting, actually, because now below the Berghoff is a golf course, and you can walk across the golf course, and then you get into some woods.

And in the woods, you can still see huge bomb craters and damage.

And you can still see the remnants of the old Nazi perimeter wire, which runs through the woods and is keeping everybody else out.

To put everyone's mind at rest, it wasn't Banda Brothers.

It wasn't the French.

It was the cotton balers.

No, it was the Danbusters.

Danbusters, okay, so

it was a win for Britain, this one, after all that.

I mean, had Hitler taken advice and gone there, as demanded by several of his subordinates in the last month of the war,

he'd have been there when it was bombed, right?

He would have done, but because they're Germans, they built huge amounts of bunkers underneath it.

There's a whole network of bunkers.

There'd have been a very different fight there had he been there, I imagine.

Yeah, then the Americans would have been able to.

Either 617 squadron would claim the death of Hitler, or the Americans would have captured him.

Anyway, anyway.

So that is the end of the Berkhoff.

But meanwhile, that means that you've now got American troops in Austria.

And while you've got the 7th Army creeping around into southern Austria and now into southern Bavaria, and actually the French do arrive that afternoon as well, and the 101st Airborne.

And it's the 101st Airborne that get up to the Kelstein House, which is the eagle's nest.

But it is the cotton balers that take the Berkhoff.

Meanwhile, you've got Patton's third army going around the northern bit of Austria.

And it is in that northern bit of Austria towards Linz that you've got the 71st Infantry Division.

And on the 4th of May, it's they that reach Gunzkirken, which is an outlying camp of Matthausen and a makeshift concentration camp.

So we're back with Alan Moskin.

And we're back with Alan Moskin, where we began.

And they're just horrified by what they discover.

You know, skeletal prisoners, sort of, you know, completely dumbfounded, you know, out of their minds, not knowing what's going on.

There's a typhoid epidemic through the camp.

Everyone's ill.

Alan Moskin goes in.

He's absolutely horrified.

There's a Jewish prisoner who falls at his feet and tries to kiss his boots.

And his boots are covered with excrement and he's utterly revolted by what he sees.

Moskin can't comprehend it.

He just, he breaks down completely.

And the only thing he can mutter is, Ichbin alka ein yuda.

I'm also a Jew.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then income American tanks.

Hugo Grin and his father, they say that Sheshish Jianyu, a blessing.

They've been saved, but they both got typhoid.

Hugo's helping other people onto trucks.

They're taken to a makeshift hospital at Hershing.

And after everything they've been through together to the point of liberation, and they're sharing a bed, his father, Gezer, dies in his arms three days later.

He's still only 45.

Liberation has come too late.

just too late for Hugo and his dad.

I think it's really powerful to talk about one person in this.

Yes, and particularly from a camp that no one knows about and everyone's.

No one has ever heard of.

You know, it's the total humiliation and degradation of human beings.

And just finish this point, when Churchill makes that speech, I think it's on the 18th of June, where he says, you know, if we prevail, you know, we will return to the sunlit uplands.

But if we don't, we'll descend into a new dark age made more sinister by the perversions of modern science.

Yeah.

And of course, there's no such thing as Cyclon B as a means of mass execution at this point.

But how prescient that line was.

And those are the stakes.

You know, he's laid it bare back in June 1940.

These are the stakes that we're talking about here.

And he's absolutely spot on.

Well, in the same way that there were no Jeeps and Sten guns and four-engined bombers in 1940.

No.

But if anyone doubted what Churchill was saying back in June 1940, you know, five years, nearly five years earlier.

Here in the closing stages of the Third Reich, both Red Army troops and Western Allied troops are discovering the true utter horror of what Nazi Germany means and what the Nazi regime means.

And, you know, if they've all been wondering what they've been fighting for at various times, here it is in black and white, what they've been doing it for.

In the new documentary, What They Saw, the Sam Mendis thing, which is interviews with two of the AFPU guys who at the the discovery of Belson, with their interviews over the footage that they shot there.

In amidst the footage, there's a gunnery sergeant, oh, I'm from Chester.

You know, he says, and I've, the things I've seen, I now know, I now know what I was fighting for.

Right.

Well, what I've seen here beggars belief.

And he's holding the microphone, you know, like to one side, clutching the microphone.

And he looks purely angry at this guy, appalled.

And there's a couple of people saying this stuff right then and there.

Not in the interviews, because in the interviews, they sort of, they're reflecting on 20 years later, these interviews that the IWM did.

They're shooting people then and there at Belson saying exactly this.

And I think, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Churchill's prediction, unfortunately, he was right.

Obviously, there's been all those leaks about what's been going on in the deaf camps.

And, you know, certainly at the higher levels of the Allied command, they know about it.

Tommy Atkins doesn't know.

But Tommy Atkins doesn't know.

And, you know, that's why when American troops turn up at Durham Middleburg or British troops turn up at Belson or wherever, they are absolutely horrified.

I mean, they're so shocked at what they're seeing.

They cannot believe that fellow man can do this to fellow man.

And yet here it is.

You know, everyone's just repulsed by it.

And, you know,

you're right.

It's good to have one story because Hugo Grin's story could be anyone else's.

He's the lucky one.

He survives, but I mean, what a tragedy.

I mean, his mother survives, actually.

Mother does survive, but his younger brother, Gabby, and his father, Gaza, don't plenty of his, almost all the rest of his other family don't so so his father was made that incredible decision not to flee and abandon the rest of his family but but it's all to naught because the rest of the family get killed but nobody leaves the camps that's the thing yeah from the end of the Auschwitz series that no one leaves

one way or another

Thanks everyone for listening.

We will be coming on in our next episodes to the business of the surrenders as they are.

The fall of Berlin.

And the fall of Berlin.

Thanks everyone for listening.

If you want to listen to to these all in one go, of course, you know this.

Sign up for Officer Class on our Apple channel or become a Patreon member.

And even better, come and see us at We Have Ways Fest at the beginning of the autumn, 12th to the 14th of September at Blackpit Brewery.

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Thanks everyone for listening.

We'll see you again.

Cheerio.

Cheerio.