All Those TDYs

Father was gone so much of the time from 1962 on, that one is forced to consider what it was the government had him up to!  You can look at world events, look backwards in history later on, as well as, note interesting occurrences. In this case, occurrences may have more of a clue than usual and we knew almost instantly what was up once the German State Police raided the village!

I was in training to be a long distance runner, so every morning I was out the door at 5 am for a cross-country training practice at mother's insistance.  Make no mistake, this was not my idea.  But, there was a little shoemaker about half way through my run and I would spend several minutes with him every morning to keep my time average high for mother's records.  He was a very nice man.  Lets call him Hans.

Hans was in this later sixties, sort of a broken man I would call him.  He knew almost nothing of the village history and carefully avoided all wartime discussions.  He made himself more interesting than he should have been.

One Saturday morning, even before the cows were up, I ran past Hans' and noticed the shop in disarray, with no Hans.  I ran for the Police.  Not the friendliest people in town but they were honest and reliable.   The Sargent was ash white when I told him Hans was missing.  Within minutes, before I could even get out the door - there were several calls concerning missing citizens.  The Sargent understood what I could not fathom.  I jogged back past the shop and now the State Police were there and I was instantly detained for being "of interest".

One of the patrolmen sat and told me about how they were hunting Nazi war criminals and Hans had been one of those being sought.  I then repeated how I had reported Hans' absence to the local police and had over heard of missing people all over the Pfaltz....  The officer swore, ran for the door and quickly sped away.

I quietly re-entered Hans' little shop and remembered the humor and fun we had enjoyed.  I have always had the utmost respect for my elders, because they were interesting and I saw value in their knowledge.  I saw Hans had dropped a vest pocket wallet, which I picked up.  I burned the photos and papers inside, to his memory and perhaps protection.  I kept his SS Identification, dated August 1944, issued in Odessa.

Father moved us from the village to military housing following this.  There are no coincidences in life, one did not have to search far to find a similar SS Id Card carefully hidden amongst my father's papers.  This I followed up with also collecting my uncle Fritz's as well.  The three of them I imagine make quite a unique collection.  I have yet to see even one, even in photographs on the internet.  Hmmmmmm.....

However, this post is not about outlawed SS organizations, it is about the SS funding rocket research with the Egyptians in order to hasten the removal of the Jewish State in 1962 through 1967.  Egypt finally went with the Russian Scud missile as its offensive deterrent to the Jewish "aggression".  Nasser was nothing if not a scum bag himself.

As for father?  That is a pretty easy one: he and his fellow team from the V-3 (A-9) were all in on the project.  They all had the backgrounds, were all German and the three also had the nuclear background - because a missile has to deliver something!  Was the US Military Intelligence involved?  Was father and his friends all on contract to the Mossad?  Military to CIA to Mossad?  Certainly, enough of their co-workers met with horrible deaths back in Germany.  Makes you wonder about their absences and whom exactly was fingering German Nationals and European suppliers.....  Someone was feeding the Mossad and father was a Jewish convert after all.  To further add to the discussion, he received his second Bronze Star just after the missiles failed to launch in 1967 War.

Uncle Fritz' Story

Fritz returned from the North Africa POW camp and so was well documented by the British already.  He had been a SS colonel under Field Marshall Rommel.  Somewhere, I have a photo of him with Rommel, standing by a half track vehicle watching a tank battle from the first El Alamein battle.  Fritz actually had two claims to fame from his North African campaign, both involving El Alamein.

First, he had come up with an idea of using trucks at night to shift dead tanks around.  The German Army had run out of diesel so many of the tanks were inoperable.  By shifting the tanks it kept the Allies guessing at actual tank strength and held back the British and American forces long enough for Germany to remove some of their men and supplies.  (Supporting his idea, the Italians had come up with the idea of hauling a wheeled axle around at night so that there would be tracks in the shifting sands to make it look like there was much more activity going on at night!

Second, he had cautioned General Stumme, not to execute Rommel's complete orders - which would have led not only to a slaughter of the Allied advance but harsh reprisals against the Germans in their retreat for the survivors.  Fritz had been planning the retreat and surrender for months and indeed the Germans had been shifting important operations back to their base in Tunisia.

And, why you ask would an SS Colonel be thinking this way?  Seems not all SS were completely evil nor equal in their politics.....

Fritz was from Hamburg.  Under the German confederation, Hamburg was a Free State.  Yes, it was a member of the German community, but it was free from the national politics, interests, etc of the German State.  Once Hitler had seized power, one of his first moves was against the Free States, of which there were many.  Hence, the residents of Hamburg believed themselves to be prisoners of war and unwilling participants to the war.  And so, Fritz, was not only smart enough to know that in a battle, where you are out numbered two to one by your  enemy, your supply lines are hundreds of miles long, and you have NO fuel - you are going to lose.  He also hated the Nazi's.

The first Battle of El Alamein had already proven the Germans had no hope of capturing the fuel fields.  The continued build up of the Allied Forces only shifted the inevitable further into the realm of an Allied victory.

He told me it was his greatest joy to surrender and end his part in supporting Germany's war, as well as, saving as many lives as he could - on both sides.  However, it was his greatest sorrow to hear of the firebombing of Hamburg (an innocent captive city to the Nazi's, per him) and not knowing if his family survived or not.

I had always held a belief in Rommel as being perhaps one of the greatest German leaders, certainly of WWII in any event.  And Fritz agreed to a point.  But, his breaking point came when Rommel's complete orders for the taking of El Alamein included the command to fight to the death for each and every soldier.  Rommel expected the North African Army to commit suicide rather than retreat.  For that, Fritz lost all respect for Rommel and held that Stumme's willingness to stare facts in the face and listen to reason made him by far the greater German.

I remember commenting to Friz that he ought to have been awarded medals by the Americans and Brits for his effort, if he had told them the role he played.  The man actually turned white, broke out in a sweat and commented that he would have been killed, had something like that even have been suggested!  And a year later I was to find why and exactly how powerful the post-war SS organization still was.

In any event, the fact that Fritz was documented - allowed for the release of his wife, her release allowed for my father's, and his release allowed for Monika's.  And this little group of refugees were returned to the cindered remains of Hamburg.