When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side, and you will not get me on your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to me already.…You will pass on. Your descendants however now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
ADOLF HITLER1
Early in the morning of Wednesday, May 2, 1945, Axmann and his adjunct Weltzin were still stuck in Soviet-occupied Berlin. They had started out their escape with around a thousand of their National Socialist comrades; now it was only the two of them. After taking a quick look at Bormann’s and Dr. Stumpfegger’s dead bodies on Invalidenstrasse, they left these corpses behind. They didn’t have time to waste on the dead, as they still needed to escape from Berlin.
On Invalidenstrasse, near the Sandkrug Bridge,2 Axmann buried the one gun he had left.3 He’d already given away one pistol to a BDM girl who was left behind at the Reich Chancellery. He now hid one of the most famous guns in the world, the pistol Hitler used to kill himself.
If he were caught with a gun, it would astronomically increase his chances of being detained or even executed by the Soviets. And a single pistol would not provide much protection in the case of a firefight. As much sentimental value as it held, it had to go.
He never retrieved the gun from its burial spot by this bridge over the Berlin-Spandau Canal. When the Berlin Wall went up, this location became a tightly controlled border crossing between East and West Berlin.
Next, Axmann and Weltzin walked northwest along the Heidestrasse toward Berlin’s Wedding district.4 After finding some cover on Heidestrasse, Axmann ditched the leather coat that he’d been wearing up to now. After his run-in with the Russians, who had mistaken him for a low-ranking member of the Volkssturm, it occurred to him that he’d been very lucky. His high-quality leather jacket looked like something an officer would wear.
In fact, he’d received it as a gift from an SS general (Josef “Sepp” Dietri).5 Axmann needed civilian clothes as soon as possible, but for now he attempted to appear like a lowly soldier. He had taken off his jacket, his medals, and his insignia. With just a plain uniform, he hoped to resemble a Volkssturm soldier. However, it would be even better to look like a civilian. With his missing right forearm, he could look like someone who had been discharged from the military after he was wounded.
It was around five in the morning by now and no longer safe to be on the streets. The cover that nighttime, even a moonlit and fire-filled one, offered was quickly fading with the sun emerging to cast an eerie glow on the ruined city. They found an uninhabited structure in which to hide out and rest for a bit.6
Despite the daylight, however, they decided that it wasn’t safe to stay where they were. Their best bet was to continue on their journey. After resting for only a short time, they headed out again on foot. Axmann now wore a gray coat and blue sailor cap that he had received after asking Germans walking by for civilian clothes.
As they made their way through the city, they could hear Russians handing out food to German civilians, but managed to avoid them.7 Axmann was trying to get back to Wedding, but the bridge they wanted to use to cross the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal had been destroyed. They stumbled upon a sort of makeshift ferry though that Germans were using to cross this canal. Axmann and Weltzin rode it across the water to Wedding.8
From those buildings that remained standing, white sheets and towels indicating surrender hung from windows. A short while before, roving court-martial teams on the streets of Berlin would have found these to be a capital offense. Any sign of surrender or desertion could result in a quick shot to the head or being hung from the nearest pole. It used to be that all males living in a house with a white flag were to be shot, in accordance with the “Flag Decree” of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Now white flags were the norm.
Meanwhile, in another part of Berlin and unbeknownst to Axmann, at around 5 A.M., General Weidling (who had been in charge of Berlin’s defense) walked escorted across Russian lines to Soviet General Chuikov’s command post. There he wrote a surrender letter, which began:
“On the 30th April the Führer, to whom we had all sworn an oath of allegiance, forsook us by committing suicide. Faithful to the Führer, you German soldiers were prepared to continue the battle for Berlin even though your ammunition was running out and the general situation made further resistance senseless.”9
This surrender of all forces defending Berlin was to take effect by 1 P.M., although sporadic fighting continued until about 5 P.M. that day.10 Like Axmann, many of those who could changed into civilian clothes and hid evidence of their military service.
Russian soldiers were particularly eager to find high-ranking Nazis, anyone who might have knowledge about Hitler’s last days, and members of the SS (regardless of rank). At the time, the Russians did not know that the SS could be recognized by the tattoo of their “blood-group on the inside of their left arm.”11
One SS member later wrote, “It was done as a medical insurance for a quick and life-saving blood-transfusion on the battlefield. However, after the war, it proved to be a stigma for tens of thousands. It was known as ‘the mark of Cain.’…It cost them, in many cases, no less than their lives.”12
When the fighting stopped late that afternoon, the shooting of guns in battle was replaced by the shooting of guns in celebration. Vasily Grossman, a Soviet reporter who was in Berlin that day, wrote that “this overcast, cold and rainy day is undoubtedly the day of Germany’s collapse in the smoke, among the blazing ruins, among hundreds of corpses littering the streets.”13
The triumphant Russian soldiers had a keen sense of irony, many of them gathered to celebrate in the shadow of the Berlin Victory Column (Siegessäule). This giant column with a bronze, winged statue on top of Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, commemorated German war victories. Here, Grossman observed that “The tanks are so covered in flowers and red banners that you can hardly see them. Gun barrels have flowers in them like trees in spring. Everyone is dancing, singing, laughing. Hundreds of coloured signal flares are fired into the air. Everyone salutes the victory with bursts from sub-machine guns, rifles and pistols.”14
Elsewhere in Germany, the fighting continued even though news had spread of Hitler’s death. Around 10 P.M. on Tuesday, May 1, German radio announced Hitler’s death as follows: “Our Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism, fell for Germany this afternoon in his operational headquarters in the Reich Chancellery. On April 30, the Fuehrer appointed Grand Admiral Donitz his successor. The Grand Admiral and successor of the Fuehrer now speaks to the German people.”15 German radio lied about when Hitler had died (it had been the day before) and how he had died (by committing suicide).16
On Wednesday, May 2, the Stars and Stripes (the newspaper of the U.S. Armed Forces) announced in huge letters taking up half the front page: HITLER DEAD.17 On the back page, it ran a photo of Hitler and Mussolini, with the darkly comic headline HITLER JOINS HIS PAL.18
With Hitler’s death, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz became the president of the Third Reich in accordance with Hitler’s political testament. He ruled over what became known as the Flensburg government. Dönitz’s provisional government ruled from that city in the far north of Germany, just below the Danish border.
When Axmann had been in the early stages of his breakout from the bunker, the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, showed up in Dönitz’s office in Flensburg.
As Dönitz remembered it, “At about midnight he arrived, accompanied by six armed SS officers, and was received by my aide-de-camp.…I offered Himmler a chair and I myself sat down behind my writing desk, upon which lay, hidden by some papers, a pistol with the safety catch off. I had never done anything of this sort in my life before, but I did not know what the outcome of this meeting might be. I handed Himmler the telegram containing my appointment. ‘Please read this,’ I said. I watched him closely. As he read, an expression of astonishment, indeed, of consternation spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. ‘Allow me,’ he said, ‘to become the second man in your state.’ I replied that that was out of the question and that there was no way in which I could make any use of his services. Thus advised, he left me at about one o’clock in the morning. The showdown had taken place without force, and I felt relieved.”19
Himmler had been responsible for the systematic murder of six million Jews as well as millions of others (gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, the disabled, and many more). He had personally inspected his handiwork, visiting concentration camps to see the results of his orders, and was considered by the Allies to be a major war criminal. Dönitz wanted nothing to do with him.
Back in early April, before the Battle of Berlin, Axmann had already put into motion his plans for after the fall of the Third Reich.20 He had planned to personally gather together the leaders of the Hitler Youth under his command. But Hitler threw a monkey wrench into his carefully laid plans when he unexpectedly ordered Axmann to remain in Berlin to command his HJ boys fighting there. Even though he followed orders and stayed in Berlin with his Führer, Axmann still commanded certain HJ leaders to gather in Bad Tölz.
Those leaders of the BDM who were with Axmann in Berlin wanted to stay there, but as things looked increasingly hopeless in late April, he ordered them to go to their meeting place in Bad Tölz. The only one to remain behind was the BDM’s Reich physician, Dr. Gertrud Huhn, as they desperately needed her help with caring for the wounded.21
Bad Tölz is in the south of Germany, in an area known as Upper Bavaria (which is part of the German state of Bavaria). The use of “Upper” and “Lower” for regions of Bavaria can be confusing, since the modifier refers to the elevation and not north/south direction. Bad Tölz, for example, is over two thousand feet above sea level, and other parts of Upper Bavaria are much higher.
Bavaria, which includes Munich, is the largest and southernmost of the German states. The Nazi party had been popular in this region—in fact, it started in Munich—and it was here that Hitler famously gave his first political speech at one of their meetings in a beer hall.22
Bad Tölz is a picturesque medieval town famous for its natural springs baths and breathtaking Alpine views. The Isar River runs through the town, and historically it had been used to transport lumber and salt. Natural hot springs were discovered there in the nineteenth century. In a brilliant public relations move, the town changed its name from Tölz to Bad Tölz in 1899, “Bad” meaning “Spa” in German.23 The town’s hot springs contain high levels of iodine, which were promoted as helping people to relax while improving their health at the same time. There was also a medieval old town and an impressive Gothic church, Stadtpfarrkirche, built in 1466.
Munich, a Nazi stronghold, was about an hour’s drive directly north of Bad Tölz, and the Austrian border was nearby to the south.
Axmann had not ordered the leaders of HJ to gather in Bad Tölz to take in its baths and wander its cobblestoned main street though. While tourists went there to go skiing in the winter or hiking in the summer, its mountain location was perfect for hiding out and preparing a resistance to the Allied occupation.
In accordance with Axmann’s plans, by April 28, around 150 adult leaders of the HJ had arrived in Bad Tölz.24 While the HJ was comprised of youths, adults held the higher positions.
With Axmann still in Berlin, Brigadier General (Hauptbannführer) Hans Franke was in charge of these gathering HJ leaders. Franke had worked under Axmann in the Reich Youth Leadership National Office.
In Bad Tölz, the Hitler Youth gathered at the Highlands Camp of the Hitler Youth (Hochland Lager der Hitler Jugend), an impressive structure which could hold up to five thousand people. From here, Franke sent out his men “on reconnaissance in the mountains of Tyrol and Salzburg to find retreats and hideouts for depots. They were to report on their return to Bad Tölz the number of places they had found, their accessibility, whether they could be observed from ground and air, the availability of food and water, the number of persons that could be accommodated, and their opinions as to how freely and how far operations could be conducted from these bases. After the receipt of these reports supplies and clothing were divided according to the estimates and sent to the several sites.”25
Franke endeavored to coordinate his HJ leaders with other Nazi resistance activities. And herein lies the story of Werwolf (German for werewolf). A CIC agent wrote that “the origin of the Werewolf, the Nazi radios screamed, was found in the myths of antiquity where wolves who were half human devoured their enemies and saved the righteous from numerous perils.”26
Besides the reference to the mythical werewolf, which transforms from an ordinary man into a ferocious wolf, the name refers to a well-known book. Der Wehrwolf by Hermann Löns came out in 1910 and “by the end of World War II, the novel had become one of the most widely read books in Germany.”27 It was about German peasants engaged in brutal guerrilla warfare during the Thirty Years War. The title was a play on words, combining Wehr for “defense” with wolf in a way that also resembles “werewolf.” And so this organized resistance was often referred to as Wehrwolf, including in various CIC reports. The spellings were often used interchangeably, with some documents using Werwolf while others used Wehrwolf.
The head of the SS (Reichsführer-SS) Heinrich Himmler had developed Operation Werwolf. As he envisioned it, this would involve specially trained commandos operating behind enemy lines in occupied areas of Germany to commit acts of sabotage and attacks on both Allied forces and any Germans who cooperated with them.
However, adequate preparations were not made for continuing operations in the event that Germany lost the war. As British historian H. R. Trevor-Roper wrote: “The Werewolves were never intended to operate after defeat; since the mention, or suggestion, of defeat was forbidden, that was out of the question. They were intended as a paramilitary formation, an auxiliary arm, to fight behind the Allied lines as diversionary forces, and thereby to assist the German armies. Thus their activity was parallel to that of the regular armies, not in succession to it.”28
Himmler appointed SS Senior Group Leader (Obergruppenführer) Hans-Adolf Prützmann as the head of Operation Werwolf.29
On March 20, Prützmann used a captured U.S. plane to parachute six Werwolves into American-occupied territory in the far west of Germany, near the town of Aachen. Five months before, Aachen had been the first German city captured. On March 25, these SS-trained commandos ambushed the Allied-appointed mayor, Dr. Franz Oppenhoff, outside his home. They shot him in the head after yelling, “Heil Hitler.” This group included Eric Morhenschweiss, a sixteen-year-old HJ member, and Ilse Hirsch, a BDM sergeant (Hauptgruppenführerin). This assassination was the most prominent action taken in the Werwolf name.
Prützmann had some resources in place—he had coordinated with Axmann for selected HJ members to be trained in sabotage and other related skills. However, the term “Werwolf” came to be known for much more than the limited organization that Prützmann had put together.
Joseph Goebbels saw the propaganda value in Werwolf, and so, instead of using it as a top-secret name for Prützmann’s commando-style activities, toward the end he broadcast it publicly in an effort to galvanize the German populace and scare the Allies.
On April 1, Goebbels’s Radio Werwolf began broadcasting with its message that “we will fight on even if we suffer military defeat.”30 It went on to claim “the werewolves will make collaboration with the Allies impossible and finally drive them out of all German territories.”31 Radio Werwolf declared, “Hatred is our prayer and revenge is our war cry.”32
Goebbels’s radio program was independent of Prützmann and his organization.33 Radio Werwolf spread the idea that the Allies needed to watch out for die-hard Nazis who would threaten them in occupied territory even after the war was over.
John Schwarzwalder, a CIC agent who listened to these broadcasts at the time, worried about Werwolf. He later wrote, “All this information we had heard over the German Radio many times and the prospect disturbed us considerably.…A well-administered partisan movement is no joke to any army as the Germans had found out in many countries. If the Werewolf was ready, able, and willing to do its work it looked as though Allied occupation of Germany was going to be a difficult and dangerous task. And until we actually got into Germany there was no real way to find out how seriously to take the matter. It might well be another one of…Goebbels’s red herrings but we could not afford to take that chance.”34
And so, as Agent Schwarzwalder explained, “Among the first things that required the immediate attention of every Counter-Intelligence Corps unit as it entered Germany was the organization known as the Werewolf.…Nazi radio programs had been plugging the organization as intensively as ever the American radio had plugged toothpaste but whether or not it was sold to the German people was not known to us. And we had to find out.”35
When Dönitz became president of Germany, following Hitler’s death, he ordered all Werwolf operations against the Western Allies to end operations.36 Flensburg radio broadcast an order issued by Dönitz stating that “by virtue of the truce which has been put into effect I ask all German men and women to abstain from any illegal fighting in ‘Werewolf’ or any other organisations in the enemy-occupied western territories, because such activity can only be detrimental to our people.”37
Dönitz’s later orders of a cease-fire for all German operations (as part of Germany’s unconditional surrender) were comprehensive. They also included any activities being done in the name of Werwolf.
Prützmann was in Flensburg, where he followed Dönitz’s orders to stop Werwolf activities. He had been acting as Himmler’s liaison officer with the Flensburg government, but it was a meaningless position as Dönitz wanted nothing to do with Himmler.38 Prützmann later committed suicide while in Allied custody after Germany’s surrender.
In late April, Hans Franke sent fifteen of the HJ Axmann had put him in charge of to Gilching, a small town just west of Munich.39 At the time, Gilching was “to be the Wehrwolf Hqs for Southern Germany. Along with this group, one female wireless operator went to Gilching to learn the new [radio] code and return to Bad Tolz, so constant wireless contact could be maintained between Wehrwolf Headquarters and HJ Hqs, regardless of their change of location. The staff of the HJ Message center at Bad Tolz consisted of one Feldwebel [Sergeant] of the Marines, and two BDM operators. The dispersal camps in the mountains were not equipped with…sending apparatus of any kind because the Allies overran the country before planning could be completed.”40
When they came back to Bad Tölz, the group informed Franke that this Werwolf headquarters would soon move from Gilching to the small town of Bergen, southwest of the Bavarian freshwater lake Chiemsee (also known as the Bavarian Sea).
On April 29, Franke moved the Hitler Youth headquarters from Bad Tölz to Bruck, a small town in Austria by Zell am See. Others remained behind to run things in Bad Tölz though. Bruck is where the overall Hitler Youth headquarters remained once the occupying forces moved in. Other HJ headquarters were established in secret throughout Germany, at locations such as Frankfurt, Passau, Weimar, Nuremberg, Erfurt, and Bremen.
Axmann had another plan in motion in Bad Tölz in April, in combination with this gathering of Hitler Youth leaders. In early April, Axmann had given HJ Oberbannführer (Major) Willi Heidemann instructions to take with him Hitler Youth money and build a transportation business near Bad Tölz. Reichsmarks still had some value after the surrender of Germany, otherwise the country would have fallen even deeper into economic ruin. It was not until the summer of 1948 that the old currency was replaced. Heidemann wisely spent some of his funds before Germany fell, stockpiling what he could in anticipation of not only the currency dramatically going down in value, but of certain goods becoming scarce.
Heidemann looked like an older, confident businessman and exuded a sense of gravitas. He had very thin dark hair that he combed over in an attempt to conceal his balding. His hawkish, arched eyebrows were the most noticeable feature on his face, which started off wide and narrowed toward the bottom.
Willi Heidemann’s mission was to create a transportation company so that after the occupation of Germany and Austria, Axmann’s minions could move around to stay in contact with one another, gather information on the occupation forces, provide employment to their followers, and build up funds to further their National Socialist political goals. As the CIC later determined, “Heidemann’s economic capabilities which made him Referent for Economics of the HJ for all Germany, make him the logical person to organize large business concerns to conceal future realization of National Socialistic doctrines.”41
Heidemann had been in charge of financial matters for the HJ, and now he would put that expertise to use building this transportation concern. Before leaving Berlin, Heidemann needed to gather the funds to do this. In addition to the Hitler Youth money given to him by Axmann, Heidemann had access to funds from the National Youth Welfare Bureau (Deutsches Jugend Förderungs Werke), which he’d previously run.42
Heidemann visited Deutsche Bank and tried to empty the National Youth Welfare Bureau’s account. He asked “one of the bank officials if they would withdraw these funds since it was evident at that time that everything was lost anyway.”43 Fortunately for Heidemann, the bank official was a DJFW director and agreed to give him all the cash the bank had left—a total of 408,000 reichsmarks. Eleven million reichsmarks remained in the account.
In Bad Tölz, another refugee from Berlin joined him, Max Lebens—“the SS Unterfuehrer [noncommissioned officer] of the Berlin Wehrwolf, [who] was charged with establishing a reception center for all refugee Wehrwolf personnel arriving in Bad Tolz from Berlin. LEBENS directed Wehrwolf activities in Berlin and Brandenburg.”44
To build this transportation company, Heidemann used the corporate shell of Christian Tessmann & Sons.45 Tessmann had been founded in Lübeck, which is in the north of Germany, on the Baltic Sea. It was an ideal location for a transportation firm as Lübeck was the biggest port on the German side of the Baltic. On the night of a full moon in March 1942, the British Air Force had rained destruction on Lübeck. The bombing and resulting fires destroyed Tessmann’s facilities there.
The company then relocated its headquarters to Dresden, Germany. But the American and British bombings of February 1945 again destroyed Tessmann’s warehouse and trucks. All that remained after the bombings and resulting firestorm in Dresden was the corporation itself.
Max Lebens’s father-in-law (Mr. Tessmann) had donated the corporation for the use of HJ. Heidemann used HJ-related funds to add 154,000 reichsmarks to the firm’s books as its operating capital.46
In mid-April, Heidemann, accompanied by Dr. Wandel (Tessmann’s new business manager) and Lebens, traveled from Bad Tölz to the nearby hamlet of Wackersberg. Heidemann was officially in charge of Christian Tessmann & Sons, while Dr. Wandel ran the day-to-day operations of this business as the assistant manager.
In Wackersberg, they obtained premises for their new business by kicking out the Kinderlandverschickung (“KLV”) from their rented space in the Haus Zeppelin building. The KLV (“sending of children to the land”)47 evacuated children from the cities to the countryside, where they would be safer from enemy bombings. By the end of the war, the KLV had placed more than 2.8 million children into private homes, farms, inns, hotels, and special camps.48 Because the Hitler Youth was in charge of the KLV program, Heidemann could order them to leave their rented accommodations in Wackersberg.
Heidemann arranged with Miss Mayer, Haus Zeppelin’s owner, to pay 2,000 reichsmarks a month to rent the place for their offices. She could live in the unused portion of the house, although visitors to the firm would be housed there as well.
On April 20, while Hitler celebrated his birthday and awarded twenty of Axmann’s HJ boys the Iron Cross in Berlin, Christian Tessmann & Sons officially opened for business in Wackersberg. It had only four vehicles in that office at the time; one of them used to belong to the HJ in Berlin and the other three they had taken from the German Army.
On the evening of April 30, a snowstorm saved Bad Tölz from a bombing run by more than two dozen American planes.49 The next day, the town was spared the ravages of heavy fighting because the commander of the nearby Waffen SS military academy ordered the bulk of his men into the mountains rather than mounting a defense.50
But in the midst of this relative calm, there was still some isolated resistance to the conquering of Bad Tölz. This fighting took place as Axmann was breaking out of the bunker area in Berlin.
Sixteen-year-old Gregor Dorfmeister, a member of Hitler Youth in the Volkssturm, found himself facing the American enemy during the night of May 1. A truck had dropped him and seven other HJ boys to protect a bridge outside of town. As he recounted to a German newspaper in 2005, “If by noon the next day nothing had happened, we would have gone home.”51 They hunkered down in water-filled trenches, guarding the bridge, while rain poured down on them. Suddenly, a few tanks started coming up the road. “We were terrified, especially because we could not see the enemy, but only heard them.”52
Dorfmeister and his fellow boy soldiers shot Panzerfaust at these tanks. An eerie silence filled the air, until the hatch of one of the tanks opened up, and an American soldier exited his vehicle and fell to the ground. There was literally smoke coming off his body. Dorfmeister explained that seeing this injured man was “terrible.…That was the moment when I became a pacifist.”53 His change of heart after this experience didn’t mean the battle stopped, though.
“Seconds later, all hell broke loose.…They hunted us like rabbits. When we arrived in the forest, there were only three of us.”54 He had started in a group of eight Hitler Youth, but they had lost five boys since attacking the tanks.
All Dorfmeister wanted to do was go back home. However, on the walk back into town, they ran into German military police who had a very different idea of what he should be doing. He and his remaining comrades were ordered to defend another bridge, this one in the town itself. Their position had only sandbags to protect it and a single machine gun with which they could attack the Americans crossing this bridge.
Once the military policemen left, Dorfmeister suggested to his comrades that they all leave this bridge over the Isar River. Despite his urging, the other two wanted to stay and fight. It remains a mystery to him why the other boys stayed while he left, but he said that it might have been because he had a family to go home to in Bad Tölz, while the others did not.
The next day, he came back to the bridge, dressed as a civilian, and found his friends’ bodies there. It was a powerful moment that was burned into his memory forever. While an American soldier stood nearby, an old German woman spit upon his friend’s bodies. In this interview, he commented, “I cannot understand to this day. We were just kids. We were used by the Nazis as cannon fodder.”55
He turned his tale into a bestselling novel that he wrote under the pen name Manfred Gregor. A German newspaper that interviewed him wrote, “His version of the horror he experienced is in his literary novel Die Brücke [The Bridge]: seven guys defend a strategically unimportant bridge. Only one survives.…In reality, there were two bridges, one about 20 kilometers away from Bad Tölz in the forest and the Isar Bridge in downtown Bad Tölz. The bridge in the forest Dorfmeister has never seen again. ‘I do not want to even go there. What I experienced there is too horrible.’”56
He wrote this novel because he “wanted to make clear why we had been so stupid.”57 It was adapted into an award-winning film of the same name in 1959.
By the time the sun rose on May 2, the U.S. Army controlled Bad Tölz.58
Before conquering Bad Tölz, the American soldiers experienced an evil that stood in sharp contrast to the postcard-perfect beauty of this health spa town. Just north of Munich, they came across Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp.59
One of these American soldiers wrote: “The 29th of April was a cold, wet and morbid day. This part of Germany was dotted with concentration camps, and road signs contained the names Dachau and Hurlach [a Dachau satellite camp]. The roadsides were littered with bodies, dead and living, of the miserable inmates that had flooded out of the concentration camps as their SS guards fled before American armored columns. Many of us saw Hurlach, but our minds could not comprehend the sights, sounds and stenches we found there. Even minds conditioned and fatigued by months of combat could not evaluate or accept this gruesome sight. We regarded the emaciated political prisoners, wearing the familiar zebra striped suits and peculiar knit caps, with mottled emotions of pity, anger, repulsiveness and awe.”60
That same day, before entering Dachau, another American soldier was tasked with going after snipers outside of the camp. “We did find some snipers—one we did away with that was firing away from a house nearby. After we silenced him, we went up to see who it was. He was eleven or twelve years old, one of the Hitler youth, who were actually worse than the SS. They were just so brainwashed.…We ran into a lot of those kids in their short pants.”61
The American soldiers found “outside of the camp, adjacent to the camp, there were actually forty boxcars of bodies.62…The prisoners were just walking skeletons, and they just dropped where they were and died. There were piles of bodies, of bodies that had been gassed and readied for the ovens. Some of them still lived because those boxcars were brought to Dachau to burn those bodies. It was a total mess. And the smell was not a farm; it was Dachau that we had smelled miles before we got there. And yet, people in the village who were right next to the camps said they didn’t know what was going on. People in Munich, which was actually only nine miles from Dachau, didn’t know what was going on. Now if you want to believe that, the Brooklyn Bridge is still for sale.”63
Some of the soldiers forced the captured HJ to look at the boxcars of dead bodies. A photograph from April 30, 1945, shows this moment with the boys peering into one of these boxcars full of dead bodies and U.S. soldiers standing in a semicircle behind them.
While the U.S. military did not yet know the details of the HJ activity in Bad Tölz, there had been rumors circulating of the Bavarian Alps serving as a mountain retreat for the Nazis. The concept was one of a national redoubt—a defensive position where an invaded nation could gather its remaining forces.
The Nazi leadership had always had a special connection to the Bavarian Alps. Berchtesgaden, a village in southern Germany very close to the Austrian border, was where the Nazi elite went for holidays. The party controlled Obersalzberg, an area a couple miles away from this village. Obersalzberg was fortified, a place exclusively for the Nazi elite, where Hitler had his Bavarian home (the Berghof) and his Eagle’s Nest (Kehlsteinhaus) mountaintop chalet.
As an example of this concern that the Nazis would hole up in the Alps, Time magazine contained the following in its February 12, 1945, issue: “What of the top Nazis who cannot hide? With a compact army of young SS and Hitler Youth fanatics, they will retreat, behind a loyal rearguard cover of Volksgrenadiere and Volksstürmer, to the Alpine massif which reaches from southern Bavaria across western Austria to northern Italy. There immense stores of food and munitions are being laid down in prepared fortifications. If the retreat is a success, such an army might hold out for years.”64
This fear was still present toward the end of the war. A war analyst for the Associated Press wrote in early April 1945: “Faced with the certainty that time and the allied tide won’t wait even for the Fuehrer of the super race, Herr Hitler will have to move fast if he is to carry out to the full his desperate scheme of holing-up in the Bavarian Alps with picked Nazi troops for a final stand against the invaders.”65
In Germany, this concept of using the Alps as a national redoubt was called the Alpine Fortress (Alpenfestung). While Goebbels used the idea of the Alpine Fortress for propaganda and misinformation purposes, the Nazi regime did not make this a reality. They did succeed in spreading the fear that they would do this, while they failed to make adequate plans for the fall of Berlin.
In the end, Hitler was not willing to leave Berlin; he chose to die there instead. For the most part, what was left of the German military after the Soviets captured Berlin tried to make their way to the Americans in the west.
U.S. Army General Omar Bradley wrote in his memoirs, military intelligence “had tipped us off to a fantastic enemy plot for the withdrawal of troops into the Austrian Alps where weapons, stores, and even aircraft plants were reported cached for a last-ditch holdout. There the enemy would presumably attempt to keep alive the Nazi myth until the Allies grew tired of occupying the Reich—or until they fell out among themselves.…Not until after the campaign ended were we to learn that this Redoubt existed largely in the imaginations of a few fanatic Nazis. It grew into so exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished we could have believed it as innocently as we did. But while it persisted, this legend of the Redoubt was too ominous a threat to ignore and in consequence it shaped our tactical thinking during the closing weeks of the war.”66