Sunday, January 17, 2021

Retribution

Bundesarchiv

Major Jürgen von Lüttwitz stood by the side of the road and watched as his men moved past him, they were headed back to Germany. Hitler's great offensive had failed. Out of 527 men, he was bringing back only forty-three. He was sure that some of those men were still alive, somewhere, but of the various components of his former Kampfgruppe, all that was left were the remnants of the 1st Company.

He noted with some satisfaction that the men had gathered a number of carts, the ubiquitous Infanteriekarren, If. 8s which every infantry company in the Wehrmacht was supposed to have seventeen of, normally drawn by horses but designed to be drawn by men if need be. They had found a number of them abandoned along the road back to Losheimergraben. So they appropriated them. That had been Sauer's idea.

When von Lüttwitz had first met Manfred Sauer, the man had been a simple soldier, content to follow orders and do his job, no more, no less. But in the retreat across France the man had proven himself to be a force of nature when he put his mind to it. From grenadier to lieutenant, Sauer had proven his worth over and over. Von Lüttwitz realized that he couldn't have done it without Sauer there to back him up.

"Wool gathering Herr Major?" Sauer had come back down the road looking for his commander.

"Perhaps, I'm thinking of the retreat across France, then again, I'm remembering that first winter in Russia as well. Retreating is never easy, but it's a damned sight harder in winter!"

"Yes it is. I've halted the column, there's something going on farther up the road you need to see."

As the two men started walking towards the head of the column, von Lüttwitz asked Sauer what he had seen. "Roadblock, looks like the Sicherheitsdienst, they seem to be stopping all movement to the rear. No doubt looking for deserters is my guess." Sauer explained.

"SS bastards!" Was all von Lüttwitz had to offer.

When they reached a point where they could see the roadblock, von Lüttwitz noted that there were a number of figures lying in the snow, off to the side of the road. He used his field glasses to study the situation, the arrogant bastards actually had a fire going in a empty oil drum next to the road. There was a halftrack nearby, its machine gun not manned at the moment. There were ten men in the group, one officer that he could see.

"Looks like they've been dispensing some 'field justice' by the looks of those bodies. It's hard to tell, but not all of them are soldiers. I'd swear they've been shooting civilians as well." The disgust and contempt in Sauer's voice was obvious.

After a few moments of watching, von Lüttwitz turned to Sauer and said, "Take Torsten's squad, have the MG 42 set up to cover the road from..." von Lüttwitz paused, "Do you see that small group of pines to the right?"

Sauer swung his glasses in that direction, "Yes Sir, I see it. I'll have Meissner make his move from there. I'll take the rest of the men right down the road..."

"No, I want you with Meissner, if those SD bastards try anything, gun them down, no mercy. Germany already has much to answer for, I'll not be a part of their crimes." von Lüttwitz made it very clear, he wanted to kill these men who followed the fighting troops into action and terrorized those behind the lines. "Cowards, all of them."

As Sauer and Meissner began to move out, the men heard a noise which was unmistakable, a tank coming down the road.

"Hold up Manfred, that sounds like one of ours. What deviltry is afoot, I wonder?"

Von Lüttwitz and his men moved off the road.

Bundesarchiv

"Slow down, Hans, there's something in the road ahead." SS-Scharführer Klaus Winkmann of the 9th SS Panzerdivision 'Hohenstauffen' had his head part way out of his hatch. He didn't wish to be blind, nor over exposed to enemy rifle fire. This uncomfortable position was a compromise.

He watched as his driver, SS-Rottenführer Kurt Zerbst, slowed the big Panther. Winkmann was furious to be ordered back to the division's assembly area. The Amis were attacking and his battalion commander wanted at least one tank back at the regimental depot to defend it. Winkmann had a squad of SS Panzergrenadiers riding on the back and they weren't happy about this mission either, and now this, apparently a roadblock set up by their own people.

"Willi, get on your gun, I'll brook no nonsense from these rear area types." SS-Sturmmann Wilhelm Kleist worked the bolt on his machine gun and looked out of his periscope in the bow of the tank. Whatever Winkmann wanted, Kleist approved of, they'd been fighting together in the same outfit since Normandy.

As the tank slowed, Winkmann noticed a man step into the road, he was signaling them to stop. Winkmann then noticed the bodies off to the side, civilians and military. He also noticed the small diamond on the man in the road's sleeve. Sicherheitsdienst!

"Where do you think you are going Sergeant?" The man asked with a certain degree of arrogance, typical for these swine, Winkmann thought.

"We're under orders, now if you men will move that halftrack out of the way, we'll be on our way."

In his headset Winkmann heard his gunner, SS-Rottenführer Egon Hartz say, "We couldn't be better positioned Klaus, I've got Panzergranate up the spout and the fool in the halftrack is in my sights."

"Stand by Egon." Winkmann murmured into the intercom.

"I'll need to see your papers Sergeant." The SD man insisted.

"I'm with Hohenstauffen, we've been ordered back to our depot. Don't you know there's a war on, man?"

Another man stepped into the light from the fire burning in the oil drum. "Is there a problem here Oberscharführer?" Winkmann saw the insignia of an officer on the man's collar, perhaps an Untersturmführer.

"These men seem sketchy to me, Sir. I think they are retreating without authorization."

Winkmann again murmured into the intercom, "Kill them."

The gun on the tank barked, the concussion from it knocked the two SD men standing in the road to the ground. The round from the cannon hit the halftrack in the engine compartment and then ricocheted through the driver's compartment and into the passenger section. The man who had been manning the machine gun mounted on the roof was torn in half as the antitank round went through him.

The infantry on the back of the Panther opened fire at the SD men standing by the road, not one of them was left alive. Kleist's machine gun finished the men jumping from the burning halftrack.

"Let's roll Hans, I want to be at the depot before daylight."

The big Panther jerked into motion, its tracks taking a second to get a grip on the icy road. Winkmann thought he heard a scream as the tank rolled over the two men in the road.

"SD bastards." Winkmann spat over the side as his vehicle pushed the burning halftrack off the road.


"What did I just see, Herr Major?" Sauer was amazed at what he had just seen, a Panther from seemingly out of nowhere had dealt with the roadblock which they had planned to destroy if their passage had been contested.

"I guess the panzer boys are in a hurry to get somewhere, I wonder where they got the fuel from?" von Lüttwitz didn't really care what the men in and on the Panther had done to the SD men, in fact, he felt a certain satisfaction in having witnessed the incident.

"Wow, I think we need to put some distance between us and this mess, Herr Major." Unteroffizier Torsten Meissner understood the officers' fascination with what they had just witnessed, but if there were more SD or SS men in the area, he didn't like their chances of not being blamed for this. Even if it was obvious that a tank had killed the roadblock.

"Yes, I'm glad you're paying attention, Torsten. Let's get the men moving."


As they passed the burning ruin of the roadblock, Sauer noticed that the two men in the road had been crushed by the tracks of the Panther. He also noticed that there were a number of women and children among the dead beside the road. He spat on the SD officer's corpse.

"Rot in Hell you Nazi bastard."

As each man passed the spot, each spat on one corpse or the other. One man spat on both, and kicked both for good measure.

"I think they're dead, Gregor." One man quipped.

Grenadier Gregor Fittkau, whose fiancé had been arrested, and shot, by the Gestapo for 'defeatism,' simply kicked the dead officer once more and said, "Not dead enough."

As the day grew lighter, the destroyed roadblock was already being covered in fresh snow. Just another atrocity in a world gone mad.




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54 comments:

  1. too bad the German people hadn't treated all Nazis like this from the beginning! It is a LOT easier to put out a small fire at the beginning than waiting until it is a conflagration. But it's hard to know the future when you think (hope) everyone is as reasonable as you are....

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    1. Tom, I think these very thoughts every time I read the news...

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    2. Tom - The problem is that the Germans saw many problems in their society, the Nazis promised solutions. Those solutions seemed to have worked, at first. The Germans had made a Faustian deal and didn't know what the cost would be. They found out.

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    3. STxAR - In the '20s and '30s the Germans were desperate. In these days, Americans are uninformed and greedy.

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    4. Intentionally uninformed, and encouraged to be greedy.

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    5. If you read how the Nazis got to power in 32 you might find some parallels to current day. Except that election was less fraudulent than those of this year.
      Draw from that your own conclusions.
      Boat Guy

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    6. It was January of 1933, their are minor parallels to then and now.

      Totalitarian parties all tend to look alike.

      Thing is, my liberal friends were noting similar parallels to Nazi Germany back in 2016, they were wrong.

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  2. I guess that is the result of confidence in the "purity" of your convictions, and the "holiness" of the cause. The parallels to today are not hard to see. Ideologues can be / are dangerous. Tom's comment reminded me of “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

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    1. Beware the true believers, whether 80 years ago or today. Grim satisfaction reading today's post Sarge.

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    2. STxAR - Solzhenitsyn was writing from a very Russian perspective, not sure how all of these things relate to today. The Russians had no tradition of freedom and very little knowledge of managing their own affairs. The State (whether the Czar or the Communists) managed everything. Apparently that's what some Americans want today, the State to manage everything. They've been indoctrinated, not educated.

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    3. Nylon12 - Fanatics are a threat to society, and always have been, no matter what their cause.

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    4. AIS was opining about something that is being bandied about by legislators and media right now. So, we are on the front side of what he was talking about. Those small corps of believers is stoppable at the early stages, but after the whole government is on board, what then? As an American, it's up to you to figure your limit.

      I don't want to move this to current events, but these types of scenes make me think. That's what makes this a great series. It applies beyond the time frame it's set in. Can I see what has happened in history, see the same patterns today, and just shrug and let it run, or try and poke a stick in the spokes? Or poke an 88 in it and "Panzergranate up!"

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    5. I'm hoping cooler heads will prevail. I also don't believe everything I read on the Internet. Too many competing agendas.

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    6. They've been indoctrinated, not educated.

      Bravo, Sarge! I've been saying this for decades and people called me "nuts".

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  3. Sarge, great and gripping writing as always. Forgive my historical ignorance: how common was the internecine conflict within the German army in the latter days of the war?

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    1. It's important to note that the Waffen SS were not part of the Army, they were a creation of the Nazis and were creatures of the Nazis. The lower ranks in the Army resented the preferential treatment the SS received. While the Army was trying to pull back from the Ardennes, many SS formations had already been withdrawn for rest and refitting. Army formations were allowed to wither and die. Hitler mistrusted the Army and always had. He rose to the rank of corporal in WWI and kept the outlook of a corporal throughout his career. After the assassination attempt on 20 July 1944, his mistrust of the Army grew tenfold.

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    2. Helpful background Sarge, thank you very much.

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    3. No problem. Post-war the SS claimed to be "soldiers like other soldiers," but in reality they weren't. There was a reason the Nuremberg tribunal declared them to be a "criminal organization."

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  4. Those guys were true REMFs, The scourge of every good army.

    This made me think of a passage in the recent book a higher call, as told by Franz Stigler

    A German war widow was shot for “defeatism”

    Her crime?

    Telling a joke about Hitler.

    “Hitler and Goring are at the top of the Berlin radio tower and Hitler asks Goering “what can I do to make the people like me?“

    Goering replied, “Jump”

    For that she was executed. A woman who had already lost her husband.

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  5. Usually the rear area checkpoints were manned by the 'Feldgendarmerie'; also infamously known as 'Kettenhunde' (= chain dogs) after the gorget they wore around their necks on a chain. Universally hated and detested by friend and foe alike, they were a part of the 'Geheime Feldpolizei' (GFP) organisation. The GFP was manned by a mix of Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo), Abwehr (Counter Intelligence), Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), Kriminalpolizei (CID), Transportpolizei (TraPo) and members of the Wehrmacht. The GFP organisation was under command & control by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW = Supreme Command of the Army).
    ------------
    I am amazed at the incredible amount of knowledge you have about that period: the men, the weapons, the tactics, situations and operations, but above all the mood and the sentiments of all participants are always depicted accurately and spot-on.
    Carry on, Sergeant Major ... we are waiting for the book. Impatiently waiting!

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    1. Yes, but the Sicherheitsdienst followed the troops into the Ardennes in December of 1944, a thing I wasn't aware of until recently. They were tracking down deserters, collaborators and the like for summary treatment. They committed a number of atrocities while scouring the rear area for those they considered "traitors." So I had some of them man a roadblock. Normally it would have been the Kettenhunde.

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    2. Yes, of course and I fully agree with you. My contribution was by no means a contradiction (how dare I!). I just wanted to add my 2 cents of smart-ass knowledge. The GFP was responsible for numerous atrocities in the Ardennes and elsewhere. The worse the situation got the harsher their grip became on the population.

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    3. Indeed! Few know of the myriad police and security organizations fielded by the Nazis, glad you mentioned the GFP.

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  6. See? The SS are good for something.

    And you're right. The inter-branch fighting got really nasty after the assassination attempt. Not to mention all of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine personnel that now were shoved into Hier units and their hatred of the treatment of many of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine personnel by the security forces.

    It was, sadly, a foreshadowing of what was to come in East Germany. If they had only known...

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    1. They should have known and probably did, but many Germans were used to living under a totalitarian regime and had learned to "go along to get along." It's not like they had any choice in the matter, the Red Army was a powerful argument for keeping one's mouth shut.

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  7. And, I think, the Forest rejects some offerings...

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    1. Note that I have deleted a number of comments here today, mostly because they tried to compare 2021 USA to 1930s Germany, not even a reasonable facsimile. Oddly enough, I remember liberal friends of mine making the same comparisons four years ago. They were wrong. Everybody needs to take a deep breath and calm the f**k down.

      There are those who want Civil War, knowing that they won't be the ones fighting it, but they can prance and preen and say "I told you so."

      Keep the politics well away from here, unless it's 1940s German politics. This story isn't an allegory.

      I am within days of saying "f**k the Internet." Both sides are out of control.

      /rant

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    2. Please don't abandon the Internet. This story is keeping me partly sane in these "interesting" times.

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    3. Other parts of the Internet, not here.

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    4. Agreed. My InterWeb visits are down to a handful of sites

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    5. People are going insane. Both sides.

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    6. I’ve got a head up the coast for a bit to take a breather. You’re right about the insanity.

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    7. Damn Sarge, I hope my response above doesn't get me deleted or banned. I really have enjoyed this series.
      Boat Guy

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  8. Hey AFSarge;

    I have heard of the "SD" Collection units shooting whole units retreating, this was especially during the Russian campaigns where the units were retreating via "VOCO" or Verbal Orders commanding Officer" and there was no papers to accompany this and certain units of the SD required this for troop movements so they shot whole units. I wonder how much combat strength the Germans lost because of this asinine policies. I thought it was fortuitous happenstance that the gods of war smiled on Von Luttwitz and his motley group and sent them a Panther to handle the SD checkpoint.

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  9. It's interesting how the snow gets packed into the connect plates, rides around the top, and gets thrown off the track, by the drive sprocket, making little tracks ahead of the tank.
    That isn't going to do those train tracks any good, though.

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    1. Snow, funny stuff depending on its consistency and the ambient air temperature.

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    2. I spent awhile thinking about the potential damage to the railroad tracks. They are constructed to handle a great deal of weight, but distributed along custom fitted wheels traveling in the right direction. That heavy tank, crunching across them crosswise does seem to pose some risk of damage.

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    3. Depends on a lot of factors I would think.

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  10. I meant to say earlier that this chapter reminds me of the opening scene of Stalingrad where the commissars are telling these poor underarm soldiers advance and if you retreat we’ll shoot you.

    They’ll shoot you if you advance and we’ll shoot you if you retreat

    Then I think of these hapless grandfathers who were hung by Nazis in the closing days of Berlin

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  11. A relatively unimportant part of a huge, all-consuming war, and one hell of a surprise, Sarge!
    I say, as I often have of your writing of this story, well done!
    We'll never know, of this or almost any war, how many bodies were never even noticed, and just became part of the landscape, until (and unless) some farmer or construction crew turned up some old bones & bits of equipment.
    --Tennessee Budd

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    1. They're still finding bodies (and ordnance) in the Hürtgen and the Ardennes.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...a minor nit. "I've got Panzergranate up the spout". Up the spout is WW2, but I've seem it mainly as British usage - did the Germans use the equivalent? A wonderful piece of writing!...

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    3. According to the field manual (Heeresdienstvorschrift/HDv) the correct report is "Panzergranate -- geladen!". However, in a crew which has been together long enough and functions like a well-oiled gearbox, the loader probably would just say "Panzergranate im Rohr" and the tank commanders response would be "Kanone - Feuer!".
      The ERMEZA fire command or its REHZ substitute in accordance with the respective HDv obviously was not used here as the situation and the target were abundantly clear.

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    4. And I will have the Germans use "British-isms" in my translations. As opposed to American-isms.

      I have used "Panzergranate geladen" in other areas of the story where it was appropriate.

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