From a Time magazine Article in 1945. Its very interesting to read what back then was considered first hand information. I found the statement "Germans too afraid of peace to submit." to be interesting. Bitter End Monday, May. 21, 1945 The war in Europe drained off slowly into peace. Until five days after the official surrender there was still skirmishing by Germans too afraid of peace to submit. Then the Russians closed in, and the bitter-end Germans burrowed into forest and mountain hideouts. The fight had at last gone from the Wehrmacht. Finesse & Secrets. Britons and Americans had little trouble. Some surrendering Germans indulged in last small gestures of arrogance, then were docile enough. In the Aegean Islands 17,000 Axis troops were handed over to a British brigadier. At the French ports of Dunkirk, Lorient, La Rochelle and Saint-Nazaire (see RADIO), hundreds of miles behind the last fighting fronts, some 75,000 Germans downed arms. In one area north of Hamburg where 300 SS marines stubbornly holed up in a forest to fight on, the British with exquisite finesse declared the area out of bounds for Britons, and ordered Wehrmacht troops to deal with their countrymen. Norway, where the Germans could have made it hard, was easy. German officers bearing suitcases full of maps flew to Scotland, spread their deployment secrets before the British and arranged to surrender 300,000 troops. But Germans of the Middle Army Group in Czechoslovakia and northern Austria ignored surrender orders. Under command of Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner (wanted by the Russians as a war criminal) and Colonel General Otto Woehler, the Wehrmacht stumbled blindly on, fought, then despairingly submitted or fled. By week's end the Russians had rounded up 1,230,000. Still at liberty were Schörner and Woehler. Fire & Water. In Berlin there were flare-ups of resistance against the conquerors. Russians reported new fires started by German underground fanatics, and announced that the subways had been flooded by the Germans, drowning hundreds hiding out. Ten days after the Nazi capital's surrender, bodies were still rotting in the streets. The northern pockets which had been holding out behind Russian lines were quickly swabbed out. On the Courland peninsula in Latvia some 190,000 Germans were taken. Around Danzig, Gdynia and on Bornholm Island some 75,000 more gave up. For the Russians the mop-up was routine, and the prisoner problem settled. Eastern Europe's roads were already covered with German columns trudging toward Russia and an assured future of redemption through hard work. Bitter End - TIME
That is one picture that I personally could not fathom. Heading towards Russia on foot assured that I would be worked until death. I would have been one of those who fought literally till the last bullet hoping for death. I could not take my own life. Just one of those things that we really don't know
I agree. Not being there and living at that time. Im not sure anyone can say what they would do. Hindsight is always better then the what people thought and experienced at that time.
By all accounts, in Berlin toward the end of the war there was a common, cynical saying ; - 'Enjoy the War - the peace will be terrible !'
I bet LOL. I thought this humorous. Blessed ignorance of the Aliies thought of what was going to happen to the Germans. But then again its with the knowing of hindsight too. "Eastern Europe's roads were already covered with German columns trudging toward Russia and an assured future of redemption through hard work."
For quite a few that "assured future of redemption" through hard work would be eitrher a short one or a long one.
I bet it was not just the enemy soldiers the Germans were afraid of. In several countries where the German terror ruled horribly surrendering to anyone was not safe option. I recall reading for instance in the Czech area that the Germans paid for their crimes by the local partisans, and I believe this happened in several other places,too. Just read the memoirs of an Estonian volunteer pilot to Luftwaffe, who said that it was a miracle he survived in the Czech and it did not matter what country he was from, it was the tunic colour that mattered. Several originally Estonian pilots were shot dead for the German crimes, but then again in war life is always like standing on the edge of a knife.
True. After the war in Europe the Germans were the most hated country at that time. There were people and countries everywhere that wanted to take some kind of revenge or retribution for what happened before and during the war.
Im sure that the Germans knew even without hindsight that being a enemy prisoner in the Great Patriotic War was just a long period of suffering before death. If I could either fight to the death or surrender to USSR I really hope I would choose to fight.
While their fate at the hands of the Soviets was nasty it was not an automatic death sentence. Of the 2.3 million Germans captured about 450,000 died (according to Russian historians). The Soviets were brutal but not dumb. A dead German was one less pair of hands to rebuild the Motherland. Like the Soviet citizens in the Gulag they needed to be kept alive to meet production quoatas imposed by the commissars. Most of the German civilians rounded up just after the fighting ended and set East were soon sent back when it was realised they were not an efficient workforce and would be better employed building a socialist paradise in East Germany.
I have little sympathy for the Wehrmacht and its allies. The German national state committed crimes universally agreed to be the most horrendous in human history.
I remember reading over the years a number of articles by US officers and troops about their time in the Soviet sector right at the end of the war. The Soviets were looting everything in sight. Officially, the Soviet military / government was stripping factories in Eastern Europe and sending their equipment to Russia. But, the US observers noted this was done in a most haphazard way. The machinery was typically uprooted and brought to the nearest railhead where it then sat often for weeks out in the weather and became nothing more than junk. Frequently, bits and pieces came up missing in the move like handwheels, the odd proturding handle, etc. All this rendered the machinery useless. Yet, the Soviets duly shipped it back to Russia where most of it never got used again.
From the German POW stories that I have read the Germans themselves in several occasions used to sabotage the sending of the factory parts, by numbering the boxes differently so that if somebody ever tried to build the factory again it was not really possible.
