german_ww2_veteran

About Hitlers suicide he says: "Then we knew that the war was over and that we had lost it. It was more of a feeling relief." He mentions the assassination attempt of Stauffenberg and says: "It was really a shame that it didn't work. If that assassination had worked, then a lot of things would have been better." It was his opinion back then already as well.

Him and the other soldiers believed in the war until the last days. THey believed in the Wunderwaffe, there was not a loss of morale in a way.

"I went through everything. Hunger, thirst, cold, heat. Th worst thing was home sickness, with 17 1/2. Only after two years were we allowed to write our parents. They didn't know where I was for two years. I had to work for what the Germans did to the Russian people. We worked four years for that without receiving the pay that they told us we'd get after we would be released. The Russians told us at least that it would be kept for what the Germans did to the Russian people."

"I didn't talk about it at all afterwards. Only some rare times." (Nowadays he talks about it some more though).

"Many more soldiers would have had to stay in combat and in Russia." He doesn't talk about other things that would or could have happened in Germany.

"I wasted five years of my youth there." He is very negative about it now, obviously.

About the Propaganda he says: " As a 16 year old, you can believe in a lot. I was in the Hitlerjugend, in the Jungvolk. We did excercises on training grounds. Also when we got a new gymnasium, Göring was there for the inauguration and we all had to attend there. Back then we found it great, it gave us hope.".

About the hope of soldiers at the end of the war, he talked about it in another comment. There was a rumour of a secret weapon that would turn around the odds for the Germans in the war again."

About coming back and the drive back from the prisoners camp in Russia he says: "We were brought to Friedland. There was a camp for us where we got registered. From there we could take the train back home. All of it took a couple of days. I traveled with people from other camps as well. We were all very happy to be on the way back."

"We had to work for 8 hours a day in 3 shifts. We couldn't do much in our free time and were just happy to lay down and rest. From time to time i could help out at the theatre in the camp and moved the backgrounds. There were also some real actors.

Especially Paul Streckfuß (Note: who became an actor in the GDR after the war) was a good friend of mine during that time, but he was more of a regisseur director in the camp and he was a true communist. He also was the negotiator for the german prisoners, despite being a prisoner himself. When the actors practiced or had a show, they would get extra food from the kitchen afterwards, which i got too, as i was helping them.

The food was basically the same every day for months. It was mainly white cabbage soup.

We got loose tobaco once a week which was smoked with the "Pravda", the russian newspaper. I always exchanged it for bread though and i didn't smoke a single cigarette in my life"