Order of Battle (37 page)

He thought fast. He’d made a mistake coming here. But he wasn’t through yet. Not yet. He’d have to reach the jeep at the tunnel entrance. He’d left the hand grenade in it. On the floor. He could blow up the pursuers when they came after him out of the tunnel. With a little luck he could still reach German-held territory. . . .

He stretched his arms toward the black tunnel ceiling.

“
Kamerad,
” he said. He smiled.

Erik watched him closely.

“Cover me,” he said to the two GIs.

The men took up positions on either side of the Werewolf. Erik stepped in front of him.

The two young men stood staring at one another.

Suddenly Willi grimaced in pain. He looked up at his wounded arm. Blood was oozing through his sleeve.

The two GIs instinctively followed his glance. For an instant their attention was diverted, and in that instant Willi acted. He yanked down his hands, grabbed the nearest man and hurled him savagely into Erik. Stepping back, trying to keep his footing, Erik tripped over the rail behind him. Both he and the GI went down.

Willi was already racing away. If he could only get out of the light into the shadows . . .

The GI still on his feet quickly recovered from his shock. At once he raised his carbine.

Erik shouted, “Don’t shoot!”

The GI fired.

“He’s not going anywhere!” Erik’s words skidded on even as the shot rang out, reverberating through the cavern, filling it with the thunder of violent death.

Willi stumbled. He took a couple of faltering steps. He collapsed.

Erik ran to him. He was angry. Disgusted. With himself. He hadn’t wanted this man to die, dammit! He should have known better. This was a Werewolf. A fanatic. He should have known he’d try something.

He was at the fallen man’s side. Still alive. Erik turned him over. The shot had penetrated his lung. The exit wound in his chest gaped gory, ragged. He was choking on his blood. His breath bubbled with pink froth.

Erik raised him up. He took off his jacket and put it under the young Werewolf’s head. He knelt by him.

Don came running out of the darkness. He looked at Erik.

Erik shook his head.

“He’s had it.”

Willi fought the red waves of pain that pummeled at his consciousness.
The mission,
he thought in desperation.
I
must save the mission
—
the mission. . . .

He felt his strength draining from him. He suddenly smelled fresh pine trees. He smiled. He had felt strength drain from him before. With Gerti . . . “
In Ordnung!
” But now . . .

He had to stay strong. For his son. For his and Gerti’s son. To make a great and glorious Germany for his son to live in . . . For—the mission!

His thoughts ebbed and flowed. His misty eyes slid over the harshly lighted mine cavern. It glitters, he thought. It glitters with Jew gold. The silence is raucous with the cries of outraged crows. . . .

He suddenly heard the Werewolf motto boom in his mind. “
Es gibt keine Kameraden!
There is no such thing as a friend! If your mission is at stake, attack him. If need be, kill him!” He had to save the mission. Now. The enemy must not . . . must not . . .

He was suddenly frantic with despair. Panic-stricken. He must make certain they did not destroy the mission. It was up to him. He must give them another target. An important target.
There is no such thing as a friend! Kill him! Kill him! Kill!

He grabbed at Erik.

“I—” he whispered in his agony. “I am a Werewolf! I am—from Werewolf headquarters.” Urgently he tugged at Erik. “I am from—General Krueger!”

He suddenly felt calm. He knew exactly what he had to do. Krueger was a friend . . . a father. . . . There is no such thing as a friend. . . .

“I—will take you there,” he breathed. “I will give you—General Krueger. . . .”

He stared with burning eyes up into the face of Erik.

“Now,” he said. “Now! We must go there—now!”

The black, red, blinding, dark billows washed over him. He felt himself sinking down into a sea of nothingness—then bob to the surface of lucidity.

He glanced around the mine tunnel. Impotent! He felt his whole world crumble. . . .

All of a sudden he desperately needed affirmation. He tried to sit up—but his body would not obey. He looked up into the face of the enemy looming over him. He whispered:

“It—could have worked? . . .”

His eyes pleaded. This was the most important question of his life. His very reason for being. For having been . . .

“It could have worked,” he said once more, sudden strength in his voice. “It was all set.
It could have worked. . . .
”

But the eyes that stared into the shadows of the futile redoubt stronghold no longer saw the shattered dream.

Erik looked down at the young Werewolf.

“It could have worked,” he said quietly.

Berlin

2017 hrs

The destruction was infernal. The city, in flames under heavy artillery bombardment by the Russian forces, was being blown asunder. Far to the northwest an ever-changing crisscross latticework of searching lights reached into the red-black night sky. From time to time, ground-shaking explosions blotted out the constant cacophony of roaring fires, crashing masonry and the distant wails of ambulance and fire engine horns. The death cries of a city.

Through the nearly impassable street outside the Chancellery ruins a small figure scurried through the rubble, skirting the shell craters, cringing in fear at every thunderous blast. It was a Wehrmacht soldier.

He ran across the street. His greatcoat was much too large for him, hanging loose at the shoulders, the sleeves falling over his hands, the skirts flapping at his heels. He was a message runner. Two days before he had turned fourteen.

A shell crashed into the already dead and empty ruins of a building nearby. The boy soldier threw himself behind some broken masonry. He peered toward the Chancellery. His youthful face was grimy and streaked with sweat, or tears. He looked mortally frightened but determined. He clutched the dispatch case slung over his shoulder and ducked down, as another artillery shell burst a little farther away.

He got up and raced for the Chancellery buildings, disappearing into the dark, tortured stone bowels. . . .

The Chancellery garden was a desolate scene of ruin.

The massive steel door of the blockhouse entrance to the Führer Bunker gaped wide open. Next to the abandoned cement mixer squatting just outside, a shallow trench had been dug in the ground. A ravenous fire was burning fiercely in it; greedy flames, devouring a formless mass, spewed greasy black smoke into the fiery sky. Empty gasoline cans lay strewn about in the rubble; a shovel, its handle broken, protruded grotesquely from a shell crater.

In the shadows of the shattered wall Colonel Hans Heinrich Stauffer, his set face grim and hard, stood staring at the fire pit. The stench of burning bacon had lessened considerably, he thought. It was at least bearable.

Three SS officers stood rigidly huddled together at the bunker entrance. He knew them all. Günsche, the Führer’s bodyguard; Kempka, his driver; and Linge, his personal valet.

Stauffer stared at the hellish scene with a cynical twist to his mouth.

Was this the glory of a great leader’s death? he thought. To be watched by a bodyguard, a chauffeur and a valet?

A shell crashed into the crumbling garden wall. The three officers disappeared into the safety of the bunker.

Stauffer remained.

It still didn’t seem real.

None of it . . .

Until only hours ago he had been convinced that Hitler had every intention of going to Berchtesgaden to lead the continued battle from the
Alpenfestung
personally. After all, the Führer had sent most of his household staff down there earlier in the month to prepare for his arrival. And when his own personal pilot, Hanna Reitsch, had flown into the beleaguered city only a few days ago, he’d been certain she’d come to fly the Führer out. Stauffer knew she’d been trying to persuade him to leave at once, but he’d kept on delaying his departure, almost as if he’d been waiting for something to happen. A last-minute reprieve?

And then, only this morning, she left. Without him.

Stauffer wondered what had been going on at the last situation conference held in the bunker at noon. The last conference Hitler would ever attend, he thought. Stauffer hadn’t been present. He knew a courier had brought a dispatch to the bunker immediately afterward, and he knew that after that Kempka, who was in charge of the Chancellery garage, had received orders from the Führer himself to round up two hundred liters of gasoline. Two hundred liters!

He looked toward the blazing fire trench. The leaping flames reflected their obscene feast on his pale, bleak face. He didn’t know he was shivering. He didn’t hear the constant roar of the Russian artillery bombardment. Only the single fateful shot that took the Führer’s life rang out and echoed endlessly through his mind.

He was suddenly aware of a small figure darting into the garden from the Chancellery ruins. A dispatch runner.

“Soldier! Over here!” he called.

The courier, breathless from his run, came smartly to attention before him. His hand shot out.

“Heil Hitler!”

Stauffer stared at him. Hardly more than a child, he thought. A deep, sorrow-filled compassion flooded through him. Compassion for this little boy soldier, for himself, for his ravaged country . . .

“What is it?” he demanded.

“A dispatch, Herr Oberst!” The boy drew himself up proudly. “For the Führer’s eyes only!”

For a moment Stauffer stared at the eager boy, his eyes strange and remote. Then he slowly turned to look toward the hellish fire pit.

“You are too late, my boy,” he said, his voice distant.

The young courier stared at the raging fire. The twisting, tortuous flames washed his horrified face with red. He looked back at Stauffer, questioning, unbelieving. . . .

The officer held out his hand.

“Give it to me,” he said quietly.

As if in a trance of horror, the boy opened his pouch and handed the dispatch to Stauffer. The fire pit irresistibly drew his terrified eyes.

Suddenly a shell crashed into the battered wall close by. The boy started violently. But he stayed.

Stauffer nodded toward the blockhouse.

“Get down into the bunker,” he ordered. “Go on!”

The boy soldier ran for the protection of the stronghold.

Stauffer stared at the dispatch in his hand. Slowly he walked up to the fire pit. He looked out over the fire-ravaged city. His city. The holocaust before him was all-consuming. The funeral pyre of a dying era . . .

He glanced at the dispatch in his hand. He was about to tear it open. He stopped.

Did it matter? he thought bitterly. What difference, whether it reports an imagined victory or the failure of a last desperate effort?

His face was stony, rigid—devoid of motion but for the flames reflected in his bleak eyes. Slowly he crumpled the paper in his hand and flung it into the pit.

It flared up in a brief bright blaze and died in the hell-born fire.

Epilogue

The Schönsee Werewolf Headquarters Unit,
Sonderkampfgruppe Paul,
commanded by Gen. Paul Krüger, was discovered and wiped out on 30 April 1945, its operations terminated. Begun at 0600 hours, the operation was over by early afternoon. Late that same day Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

Three days later, on 3 May 1945, the XII Corps Secret G-2 Periodic Report # 262 contained an annex which described in detail the action and the capture of the Werewolves. It is here reproduced:

SECRET

SECRET

Annex
N
o. 1 to G–2 Periodic Report no. 262,
H
q
XII
Corps.

On 28 April 1945, ZINGEL, Josef, a German soldier in civilian clothes, surrendered in WEIDEN, Germany to special agents WILLIAM G. HOCK, CIC Detachment, XII Corps, and IB J. MELCHIOR, MII Team 425–G, XII Corps. ZINGEL was given a preliminary interrogation during which he stated that he was a member of a Werewolf organization hidden in the wooded area N of SCHONSEE (P4812), having deserted on 24 April 1945. The unit to which he was assigned was commanded by a Col. KRUGER and numbered approximately 250 personnel armed with mortars, machine guns, and small arms and with hidden supplies sufficient to last them for more than four months. The organization was originally a school for partisans and guerillas, but its present mission was to operate as Werewolf bands behind the American lines. All installations were underground and extremely well camouflaged. ZINGEL offered to lead US troops to the location of the Command Company and to assist in the capture of the entire organization.

The report of this interrogation was submitted to the AC of S, G–2, XII Corps, who directed that action be taken immediately. Accordingly, ZINGEL was taken to the 97th Infantry Division Headquarters where further interrogation was conducted and plans were made to conduct a search. On 30 April 1945, two infantry companies from the 97th Inf Div were assigned the task of screening the wooded area in which the Werewolf headquarters was supposed to be located. This screening resulted in the capture of one officer and six enlisted men, three of whom were wearing civilian clothes and posing as foresters. No military installations of any kind were observed. Interrogation of the prisoners was conducted and it was learned that the Werewolf headquarters was still occupying the area as of 0900 hours that morning. One PW was directed to lead the searching party to the exact spot where the headquarters had been bivouaced that morning. A search was made on an area approximately one hundred yards square by twelve men for a period of an hour and a half with negative results.

The searching party was then disbanded, but HOCK and MELCHIOR decided to continue the investigation. The original informant, ZINGEL, was directed to lead the group to some of the hidden supplies of the organization and he took them to a small shack concealed in the forest. The shack was entered and two men and three women were found inside, all dressed in civilian clothes. ZINGEL immediately identified one of the men as Col KRUGER, commanding officer of the Werewolf organization. The other man was a 1st Lt and the women were Wehrmachtshelferinnen (German WAC’s), all members of KRUGER’s staff. KRUGER was informed that the existence of his organization was known to US troops and he agreed to surrender his entire staff. KRUGER was then taken to the 97th Inf Div CP where another searching party was formed and KRUGER was directed to lead the party to his headquarters. KRUGER then took the searching party to exactly the same area that had been searched twice previously. On an order from KRUGER, German soldiers in uniform began appearing from concealed dugouts throughout the area. The final count of prisoners taken was six officers and 25 enlisted personnel. All records of the organization, including sketches showing the location of buried food and arms, maps of future operations, one civilian automobile, one motorcycle, and two small radio sets were also captured at the headquarters.

The above incident is the first known capture of an entire Werewolf headquarters. The following information concerning this particular Werewolf organization was obtained from interrogations of Col KRUGER and ZINGEL, and from the personal experiences and observations of Agents HOCK and MELCHIOR, and should be helpful in locating and destroying other similar enemy organizations.

HISTORY:

On 16 Sep 44, Col KRUGER was commandant of a German Army school at THURENBERG, CZECHOSLOVAKIA which taught various courses including guerilla tactics. In February, 1945, the school received an order from HIMMLER to add a course in “Werewolf” activities. On 1 April 1945, the school was closed and the training staff, numbering between 200-300 men under command of Col. KRUGER, moved to SCHONSEE,
GERMANY (P4812).
It was contemplated that a school would be set up at SCHONSEE but this was not done because of destroyed transit facilities and the approach of US troops.

MISSION:

In the early part of April the training staff received the following orders from 0KH (German High Command):

“To stay behind, evade capture, and then harass and destroy supplies of US troops in the rear. Special emphasis was put on gasoline and oil supplies.”

ORGANIZATION:

Upon receiving the above order, Col KRUGER divided the group into four units - “A”, “B”, “C”, and FUHRUNGSSTAB (headquarters). Units “A”, “B”, and “C” numbered between 60—100 men each with approximately 40—50 in the headquarters unit. Units “A”, “B”, and “C” were located in a triangle around the headquarters unit and each operational unit had radio communication with the headquarters. Col KRUGER’S immediate staff consisted of a Captain and three 1st Lts, and all of them held high ranks in the Nazi party and were determined to fight to the last.

TACTICS:

Operations were to begin three or four weeks after being overrun by US troops. The plan was for each unit to receive designated targets from the headquarters. Bands of from 10 to 20 men were then to be sent out to destroy the target and to return immediately to their unit. No targets were to be located nearer than fifteen kilometers to the unit. Secrecy and camouflage were relied upon for security and all personnel had strict orders to conceal themselves if US troops came into their area and under no circumstances to open fire in the bivouac area. No routes of escape had been planned. Members of the unit usually wore the Wehrmacht uniform, but a few members disguised themselves as foresters and were used as outposts to report any approaching danger.

EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLY:

This unit was equipped with regular Wehrmacht uniforms, camouflage suits, fur jackets, and other items of winter issue. Some members were dressed in civilian clothes for reasons stated above.

Their ordnance supplies consisted of mortars, machine guns, sub-machine guns, rifles, and various types of side arms. Each man was issued a very small pistol which could be very easily concealed on the person. The ammunition supply for each type weapon was ample for four months of ordinary operations. The unit had one civilian type sedan and one Wehrmacht motorcycle which were well hidden in the woods, and 120 horses which were dispersed on farms throughout the vicinity. Food consisting of canned meat, bisquits, crackers, chocolate, and canned vegetables was sufficient for over four months. Additional food supplies such as bread, potatoes, fresh vegetables, and smoked sausages were obtained from local sources. The unit was supplied with water by a brook passing through the area.

CONCEALMENT AND CAMOUFLAGE:

The headquarters and billets of the captured Werewolf unit were concealed underground. The dugouts were constructed in such a manner as not to destroy the live trees around them. The dugouts were located on the slope of a hill which was densely covered with fir trees of the Christmas tree variety. The entrance to the dugout was usually located in the midst of a clump of trees.

The entrance to the dugout was a hole approximately 24 inches in diameter and four to five feet deep. Approximately two feet down, this hole extended horizontally to a length of eight to ten feet. The dugout has a capacity of three men and has a wooden floor and a drainage ditch. Walls and roof are reinforced with lumber. The entrance is covered with a strong lid on which turf is growing and which blends perfectly with the surrounding ground. (see sketch attached).

The area was camouflaged solely with live vegetation. Great care was taken not to form any paths in the area. The dugouts were dispersed without pattern over a large territory. To give an example of the perfection of the camouflage of the dugout entrance, the following instance is mentioned. During the course of the second search of the area, an accidental shot was fired by a member of the searching party. Several members of the searching party threw themselves on the ground less than five feet from some of the dugout entrances without noticing their presence. The German soldiers in the dugout could see the members of the searching party and later remarked on this incident.

An automobile was concealed in a very dense section of the woods by carrying it on logs into a clump of trees. The larger trees were bent low enough to permit the passage of the car over them and it was carried by the men over the bent trees and placed in the selected spot. The trees were then released and the car was camouflaged with additional branches.

In future searches of suspected Werewolf biouvac areas, the following factors should be considered in determining the most probable location of the unit:

1. A very densely wooded area with small trees and shrubbery.
   

2. Presence of a stream as a source of water supply.
   

3. Signs of persons having recently inhabited the area (although the German soldiers were extremely careful to destroy such evidence).
   

4. Signs of German Military boot prints in the area.
   

In case any of the above factors prevail, a minute inspection should be made of areas where the shrubbery is most dense. It is recommended that in the inspections the same method be used as in probing for mines. In as much as each dugout contains metal weapons, it might be practicable to employ mine detectors over the area.

MISCELLANEOUS

The organization used members posing as forest workers to obtain and prepare certain food supplies for distribution at night to the personnel hiding in the woods. These members possessed recent discharge papers signed by the unit commander, Col KRUGER.

These persons also were the outposts and sentinels of the organization and upon capture were able to point out the exact location of the area but not the individual dugouts.

Local civilians were required to furnish bread and fresh foods for the organization and likewise to furnish food and shelter for the 120 horses in the organization’s possession.

One important factor was the use of crippled officer personnel as key members. These officers were to be used as observation personnel to reconnoiter and to locate targets for the tactical bands to destroy. The executive officer, a captain, had one crippled leg in a heavy cast and. one 1st Lt had a crippled leg and arm. They both possessed recent discharge papers signed by Col KRUGER.

Some of the members of the unit spoke English.

CLAYBROOK, G-2

During the period following the discovery and annihilation of the “Kampfgruppe Paul” Werewolves, XII Corps G-2 reported: “Evidence of bona fide Werewolf activities was conspicuously absent during XII Corp’s period of occupation . . . things were remarkably quiet. . . . There were, it seemed, no more Werewolves.”

This G-2 Periodic Report, written in the customary terse military language, detailing the capture of the Werewolf headquarters unit near Schonsee, was drafted by corps personnel who had not been part of the action, and consequently some minor inaccuracies and omissions occur. Although the case on the whole is well presented, some detail of necessity has been left out.

The command dugout, for example, was considerably larger than the individual dugouts described in the report; it could hold six to seven men, and it contained a periscope device that ran up through a tree trunk. This was how some of the Werewolf personnel had been able to see our futile search, as mentioned in the report.

Papers found in the command dugout indicated that Col. Paul Krüger actually had been promoted to general, but the