I was one of those posted to Czechoslovakia on one of those courses in the autumn of 1942. In Kienschlag near Prague, I came to grips with a weapon which for its time was a small wonder and which the experts had been working on since 1935. Until then, close-combat with tanks had depended on an explosive charge, which upon detonation had produced only splinters in the plating. This new weapon was a magnetised hollow-charge. It had deposits of explosive material and a copper funnel which, in the moment that it had magnetic contact with the surface, released a high-speed detonation, producing holes through the armoured plating, and putting the tank out of action.
The course took place in the SS Panzergrenadier School and for this course we had to practise the usual tactics of tank close-combat used by the infantry, with Molotov/smoke cocktails and explosive charges. The charges were made from five hand-grenades, four without grips and bound around the fifth. To use such weapons one had to be fit, for instance by springing on to fast-moving captured Russian tanks which were used for these exercises. The ‘roll-over’ exercise was also one that we had to master. There was nothing to surpass the superhuman effort one had to make, when cowering in a hole in the ground, knowing that this giant, weighing tons, which was moving towards you with the deafening noise of its screeching track, would roll over your head. There were other exercises that needed not only a lot of pluck, even from the most daring of us, but needed almost acrobatic expertise. For instance, one had to place a T-mine, i.e. a Teller-mine or ‘plate mine’, also an ‘S-mine’ or ‘disc mine’, between turret and hull of a zig-zagging practice-tank. Or we had to push a hand-grenade down the muzzle of an oncoming tank.
Only later did we have a close-combat weapon at our disposal, which meant that we did not have to break our cover. Only with this could we curb the destruct ion caused by Soviet tanks. I mean the Panzerfaust, a highly developed anti-tank rocket launcher, a metre long, weighing only six pounds, and lovingly called ‘Gretchen’ by us. This was a sensation for the troops and the Wehrmacht made good propaganda from it.
Not only the parachute troops but also we of the Waffen SS were expected to operate in single-combat now. We were schooled to assess and to act, and those taking part had not only to be physically fit but mentally too. From tactical experience, soldiers from the Eastern Front were ideal, with their front-line experience of the Russian campaign. For instance they assessed with practised eyes, as soldiers should, an advance into enemy-held woods. They were not only familiar with refined tricks but used them themselves, taught by the reality of war.
Although prepared for everything to be thrown at us, nonetheless we were tense as we advanced through the trainting grounds, jumping with fright as a ‘comrade’, made from cardboard, suddenly jumped out from the door of a reptica blockhouse, followed in quick succession by a volley of blanks. Our hearts raced for a few seconds when a life-size, stuffed puppet sprang unexpectedly from behind a tree and then a practice hand-grenade was aimed at us, by one of the instructors hidden in the bushes. This training programme in Prague’s peaceful surroundings was well designed. It was designed to improve our chances of survival and to beat the enemy, for after all the war was not lost.
At that time there was no anti-German hostility aimed at us, as we wandered through the ‘golden capital’ of Czechoslovakia in our free hours. Despite the war, it held the status of a neutral land. Where war held practically every other land in Europe tightly in its grip, these people lived and worked in an oasis of freedom. Despite having ‘protectorates’, the land enjoyed the freedom of self-government and internal development. The men were not enlisted to fight. With the exception of the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Affairs, administration was fully in the hands of the Czechs.
I can remember that we could shop without the usual ration books and that we could eat normally in restaurants, with normal portions which elsewhere was no longer possible. Even the luxury industry bloomed here, in the region of the Moldau, as always. The Czechs were given lucrative contracts from Germany, from Reinhard Heydrich as the representative of the “Reichs protector”, with the Bishops’ kiss, Pax Domini Sit Semper Vobiscum from the Teutons.
En masse they were the most faithful of Hitler’s collaborators, which even the House of Commons in Britain ascertained. “The Czechs have lost faith in themselves and have not even protested against the occupation of their land”. Heydrich held a great deal of sympathy from the working-class, in particular for his social security plans. The relative peacefulness in the land did not please the western powers. Flying them out in British planes, exiled Czechs were flown into Czechoslovakia with a mission. Heydrich was murdered and in protest 30,000 Czechs assembled on the Wenzels square in Prague in 1942. This provoked ‘disturbance of the peace’ produced unexpected results for the Allies and because of it, the Germans made reprisals in the village of Lidice.
Blood flowed later in Prague, on 5 May 1945, as the Wehrmacht capitulated. Nowhere else in Europe was the revenge so great or so gruesome against helpless prisoners, the women, nursing sisters and children, as in the land of Czechoslovakia. In 1982, in the German magazine Horzu (edition No.45) the Czech Chess Champion Ludeck Pachmann wrote, “When there was hell on earth then it was let loose in Prague on 5 May 1945. I saw it with my own eyes”
Time went by and I found myself on yet another course, this time in Lauenburg for subordinate training. It was there that I learned of the assassination attempt on Hitler, in his HQ in East Prussia on 20 July 1944. For us in Pomerania, it was a quiet day and just like any other. It was hours later that we found ourselves under emergency conditions, and it was forbidden for us to leave the barracks. Details over this attempt were sparse, and even in the next few days the information was vague and inexact.
We soldiers were relaxed, but none the less, at a time when the Russians were gaining ground every day, we were outraged, at the thought that in the middle of total war, our Commander-in-Chief should be eradicated. The civilian population thought so too. As one who was there at the time, I did not meet anyone who regretted this unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life. We were all the more astounded, when weeks later we learnt who the guilty parties were and that they were our own, their names belonging to the most influential and highest ranks of the Army.
It placed a new light upon unexplained ‘incidents’ that had been happening on both the Front line and on the home front. The extent of them ranged from acts of sabotage in the armament industry, to the delayed delivery of the winter clothing which had caused the deaths of so many of our soldiers. There was de liberate misinterpretation of orders, which also cost innumerable soldiers their lives. There was the betrayal of highly secret information from headquarters to the enemy. It was certainly no coincidence that German weapon production reached its highest productivity quotas, in the last years of the war. At about that same time the conspirators were eradicated. There was continual bombardment by the Allies. “It is not good to change horses in mid-stream”, is what the famous American President Abraham Lincoln said.