April 14, 1945: Old City, Herdecke Germany

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At the little town of Herdecke Germany, the burgomeister formally declared: “I surrender the town of Herdecke to the Allied Military forces at 1000 April 14, 1945. It is understood that from this time forward, control of Herdecke will be by the Allied forces.”

The surrender was to L-Company of the 289th Infantry Division.

Within several days, First Army units to the south of Herdecke had closed in to the other side of the Ruhr River. The battle was over.

Albert Vögler, a prominent industrialist and Nazi supporter, committed suicide while being led away by American soldiers from his luxurious Hause Ende Ville in north Herdecke. He bit down on a hidden cyanide pill, dying instantly. Despite his death, he was still identified as one of the defendants in the Nuremberg trials of prominent industrialists, which prosecuted the group of businessmen who helped Hitler. The industrialists were tried at Nuremberg, for using slave labor, plundering occupied territories, and aiding the Nazi war machine. Most received prison sentences ranging from 2 to 12 years, though many were released early in the 1950s.

The Nazis initiated a conscious policy of “annihilation through work,” under which certain categories of prisoners were literally worked to death. Camp prisoners were forced to work under conditions that would directly and deliberately lead to illness, injury, and death.

Vögler an important executive in the munitions industry during World War II was an industrialist who financed the Nazis, Vögler was a member of the Circle of Friends of the Economy, which was a of German industrialists whose aim was to strengthen the ties between the Nazi Party and business and industry. As a business man, Vögler feared the rise of communism in Germany. Records of donations from Vögler to the Nazi Party from as early as 1931 exist. Vögler met Adolf Hitler on September 11, 1931. Beginning in 1932, Vögler openly funded the Nazi Party.

Vögler invited Hitler several times to his Haus Ended estate. Hitler did not feel safe at the estate at the beginning of the war, so Vögler spared no expense and effort to develop a huge bunker system and to install extensive security measures for the protection of his villa.

After 1940, Vögler was heavily involved with the manufacture of munitions. The armaments industry used much forced labor as well as slave labor so the costs of manufacturing were minimal. Albert had his fingers in many industrial pies, he was involved with United Steel Works in Düsseldorf as Chairman of the Board,. He was also associated with the German-Luxembourg Mining and Smelting Company and Rhein-Westphalian Coal Syndicate in Essen Germany. In the end his guilt over the blood money he had made resulted in his suicide by cyanide.

April 14, 1945: Herdecke Germany, Ruhr River Viaduct

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The Ruhr River-Viaduct was opened in 1879 as part of the Düsseldorf-Derendorf–Dortmund South Railway, In May 1943, it was damaged by a flood wave following Operation Chastise (Dambusters Raid ). 19 British Lancaster bombers from Royal Air Force 617 Squadron aimed to destroy the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams using “Upkeep” bombs, designed to skip across water and sink against the dam wall. The Möhne and Eder dams were breached, releasing massive floods. The Sorpe dam sustained little damage.

The devastating floodwaters traveled down the Ruhr river, impacting several towns and villages downstream in the Ruhr Valley, including the area surrounding Herdecke Germany, which is situated on the Ruhr between the Sorpe dam and the Rhine. The flood wave swept away a pillar of the viaduct, narrowly missing an approaching train. The destruction caused massive, though temporary, damage to water, power, and industrial infrastructure in the region. Over 1,600 people died in the flooding, a significant portion being allied prisoners of war and forced laborers.

Forced labor was used to reconstruct the arch destroyed in the floodwaters of the Dambusters Raid, but then in 1945, the Wehrmacht demolished two of the Viaduct’s arches to hinder Allied advances.

The three battalions of the 75th Infantry Division continued to press south towards the Ruhr River. Every yard was bitterly contested by the German enemy whose freedom of movement was limited and compressed on all sides. German troops were hopelessly trapped and were being fired upon by artillery from all sides. The American foot troops continued to press forward three abreast. The Germans were attempting to prevent the Americans from capturing a main road that could offer an escape route across the Ruhr River.

The 2nd Battalion found resistance weakening, and they took advantage of this to drive south through to the Ruhr River. E- Company of the 2nd Battalion wrestled their objective from the enemy. My father 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was in the 1st Battalion which found it’s sector crumbling and they reached the Ruhr without major difficulty.

The 3rd Battalion encountered stiff resistance from Germans who had entrenched themselves on the opposite slope of a hill slightly north of the river with the intention of defending that high ground at all cost. As elements of the 3rd Battalion advanced toward the hilltop, F-Company of the 289th Infantry Division, pushed through on the enemy right flank, catching the enemy in a deadly cross fire.

The German positions collapsed and the advance continued to Herdecke with the enemy fighting a delaying action as they retreated. An airstrike was made on the town of Herdecke, and the city was offered an opportunity to surrender by L-Company. The offer was accepted and K and L Companies crossed the Ruhr River on the south side of the town.

The 290th Infantry Division was relieved on April 14, 1945 by elements of the 313th and 314th Infantry in what would prove to be the final battle action in the European Campaign.

Witten Germany: Berger Memorial

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The Ruhr River was the final objective of the 75th Infantry Division. When the 75th reached this objective they had split the surrounded German troops in half and finally crushed the Industrial Ruhr Pocket. The Berger Memorial sits high on a hillside overlooking on a particularly beautiful section of the river Ruhr River between Wetter and Witten Germany. The memorial was built between 1902 and 1904 to honor Louis Constanz Berger, (1829-1891), an industrialist and community co-founder. Its construction occurred during a period of industrialization and modernization of the Ruhr region. I imagined that my father 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken and his C-Company might have come to this overlook to view their final objective. The memorial would have stood at this spot in April of 1945, having been built between 1902 and 1904,

The monument made of Ruhr sandstone commemorates one of the most important Witten entrepreneur and politician of the early industrialization: Louis Berger. In 1854 Berger father founded a cast steel factory in Witten, which, Louis, developed into one of the first large industrial companies in the Ruhr. The quality of Berger’s cast steel was the “basis” of the Prussian needle gun and Krupp’s gun barrels. The needle gun was ahead of its time allowing a trained soldier to fire 12 rounds a minute. Most countries were still using muzzle-loading flintlocks which only allowed a soldier to fire 3 to 4 rounds a minute. Krupp gun barrels, produced by the German industrial giant Friedrich Krupp AG, were known to be of high quality being made of durable steel.

During WWII, the Krupp steel works in Essen, led by Alfried Krupp from 1943, were the cornerstone of the Nazi war machine, producing artillery, tanks, and u-Boats.  Despite massive Allied bombing, the works managed to remain standing until 1945. The firm heavily utilized over 100,000 forced laborers, prisoners of war, and concentration camp inmates in over 80 plants. Alfried Krupp was convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg Germany, sentenced to 12 years, and had his assets confiscated, but he was released in 1951 by the US, and his fortune was restored.

The Berger Memorial seemed like a monument to a corporate entrepreneur and civic minded politician. But the steel he manufactured became the cornerstone to building the German Military war machine in the first and second World Wars. In that sense it is a monument to the senselessness of war.

Witten Germany: Zeche Nachtigal

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After my failed attempt to sketch remnants of a Forced Labor Camp in Witten-Annen Germany, I decided to sketch the Zeche Nachtigal which is now a museum. I figured that the forced laborers who were not working in the Annen Steelworks Factory building weapons, would be at Nachtigal. Nachtigal means nightingale which is a bird known for or its powerful, complex, and beautiful song, which is often heard at night.

I sketched the historic twin engine winding machine. It is roughly the same size as the steam engine used previously in operation starting in 1871. It was used to hoist coal from the Hercules shaft. As the shaft was deepened a stronger winding machine was needed. In 1892 the coal mine shut down due to flooding. The machinery was sold off and soon the site became a brick works. By 1897 the brickwork’s produced up to eleven million bricks annually for the construction of industrial facilities and houses. The history of the brickwork’s jumped from 1897 to 1983. There is no mention of what happened at the brickwork’s during WWII, but it is safe to say the business would have been booming in war time.

Forced laborers were extensively used in German brick factories during WWII, particularly to produce building materials for Nazi construction projects. Concentration camp prisoners and millions of civilians from occupied territories were exploited by German industry to support the war effort, including the production of bricks. With over 200 forced labor camps in Witten it seems very likely that the forced labor would have been used in the Nachtigal brick factory. With the Ruhr area being constantly bombed by the allies there would have been a need of bricks to repair damaged buildings. Young eastern European men were obliged to join the German workforce, but both men and women were forcefully abducted from the streets.

Camp barracks in industrial centers varied in size, but most have been described by former forced laborers as poorly constructed, surrounded with barbed wire, and heavily guarded. The barracks were typically equipped with one small stove, a limited number of washrooms and toilets, mattresses filled with sawdust to make crude beds, and few blankets. Eastern Europeans working in factories, like the brickwork’s, received one cup of coffee or tea, 200-300 grams of bread, and one or two cups of watery cabbage soup per day. These rations, however, largely depended on what food was available, and as the war continued, food rations often decreased.

A sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp was established in Witten on September 16, 1944, utilizing an existing barrack complex built in 1942 near the Dortmund-Witten railway line. The initial transport from Buchenwald Concentration Camp brought 700 male prisoners, primarily political detainees aged 16 to 63 from the Soviet Union, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, with about one-third of a subsequent group of 50 arrivals in February 1945 being Polish Jews. These prisoners, housed in wooden barracks with double bunks and minimal facilities, performed grueling 12-hour shifts in Hall 7 of the Steelworks foundry, operating furnaces and machines to produce steel components for naval armor and aircraft, under constant threat of violence from SS guards and kapos.

A Kapo was a Nazi concentration camp prisoner—often a criminal or political prisoner—assigned by the SS to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks, acting as a collaborator in exchange for privileges. They were hated by fellow inmates for their brutality and held authority over them, often enjoying better food and conditions.

The camp, secured by barbed wire and watchtowers, operated until late March 1945, with prisoner numbers fluctuating to around 600 by evacuation due to deaths, escapes, and returns to the main camp; the SS received four Reichsmarks daily per prisoner from the factory.

Conditions in the sub-camp were dire, marked by undernourishment, exposure to cold, disease, and brutal oversight by SS, leading to frequent accidents and illnesses like pulmonary infections. By late March 1945, at least 16 prisoners had died from exhaustion and related causes, with nine Soviet inmates secretly executed by transfer to Buchenwald’s crematorium and over 60 sick individuals returned to the main camp, of whom at least 14 perished shortly after.

On the night of March 29, 1945, the SS evacuated the remaining approximately 600 prisoners on a death march northeast toward Lippstadt Germany, to the west of Dortmund-Witten, during which an unknown number were killed; the survivors were abandoned on April 1 and liberated by advancing U.S. forces, with some succumbing to their ordeals in the following days. Post-liberation investigations in the 1960s and 1970s examined SS crimes at the site but resulted in no convictions. Most Germans kept silent about the crime of forced labor or completely denied it.

Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss put it this way, “The most dangerous animal on earth is man. A man can turn into animal in no time. All he needs is permission. As soon as permission is given from government, it accelerates. Even a hint of permission that it is OK to attack this group or exclude this group, or shame that group. It’s happening, it never stopped.”

Witten-Annen Germany Forced Labor History Lost

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A satellite camp of Buchenwald was established is Annen–Witten. My late night research found a memorial which had some of the foundations of barracks visible and several plaques to memorialize what had happened on the site. By using Google Street View I actually was able to see the memorial right from where I might be able to park the rental car. It was rare for me to actually see my destination so I was excited.

When I got to the location I walked to the spot I had seen the memorial on Google street view. Everything was different. A new business was being erected and I think the foundation of that building covered the foundations of the old barracks. I decided to walk around the block and approach the memorial from another side road. I had no luck, the chaotic construction site blocked any chance of seeing the plaques if they still existed. I was resigned to the fact that they probably no longer were there. I sat on a mound of excavated dirt and started to draw in the direction where the memorial used to be.

Sketching at this site was hellish since huge trucks kept backing into the construction site. I would have to stop sketching and step up over the dirt mound to safety. I helped one driver by using hand signals to show the distance he had before he scrapped the side of his truck into another vehicle. He finally decided it was too tight a turn and he honked his horn until the other drive came out and moved his vehicle.

Millions of people, from concentration camp inmates to civilian workers from abroad and prisoners of war, were forced to work for Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In 1944, a satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp was even created to accommodate the concentration camp inmates in the Annen Cast Steelworks. Most of the workforce in the town was made up of forced laborers, who were used mainly for the production of weapons. Between 230 and 250 forced labor camps of different sizes were established in the town by 1945. With this memorial bulldozed over, there remains no known traces off the former camps.

On September 17, 1944, the first train for the Annen Cast Steelworks containing 700 prisoners arrived from Buchenwald concentration camp. There is evidence that there were 71 Poles among those camp prisoners whose names are known. The camp was similar to many other satellites of concentration camps with regard to its structure, furnishings and living conditions. It consisted among other things of several barracks to house the prisoners and a muster ground and was surrounded by a double layer of barbed wire to prevent the prisoners from escaping. The furnishings were extremely sparse and were largely limited to two-story bunk beds. In addition, the washroom barracks had not been completed when the first inmates arrived, so that they had to wash in the open air. In Witten-Annen, as elsewhere, forced laborers were subject to violence and harassment from the functionary prisoners and the SS guards and suffered from hunger and disease due to malnutrition, the cold temperatures and inadequate hygiene.

The Annen Cast Steelworks was regarded as the most important industrial operation in Witten-Annen and was one of a total of six factories. It also played a big role in the production of arms during the Second World War. As well as cast steel parts for airplane construction, armor plates for warships and semi-finished products for weapons were produced there. Above all, a large number of low-skilled workers were needed for the armament production operation.

Of the verified fatalities among the forced laborers in Witten, 51 of the victims came from Poland. By the end of the war, approximately 5% of the total number of forced laborers in Witten had died. According to one forced laborer, “it was not the armament production work itself, but the hunger, cold and demeaning repression by overseers, SS men and some of the functionary prisoners that caused the most hardship”. Over 600 people died from their Nazi forced labor.

Locals in 1945 would have known about the forced laborers. “The locals were able to see the camp inmates, many of whom were colleagues, walk the around 600-metre route from the camp (…) to the main entrance of Annen Cast Steelworks. The factory lay in the center of the town district, close to the train station and the market square as well as the Evangelical and Catholic churches, the post office and the local school which were close by. The street where forced laborers were marched to work was lined with restaurants, shops and residential buildings”.

After the end of the Second World War were characterized by a refusal to talk about the Nazi history of the town. During that time, the history of the forced laborers in the town and the satellite concentration camp in Witten-Annen was ignored, and collective amnesia set in. In the 1980s that attitude started to change and the former memorial I was seeking resulted. With Forced Labor barracks foundations paved over, that history was quietly erased once again.

Witten-Düren Germany

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Düren is a quarter in Witten Germany just south of Dortmund. Rather than being a town, it is really just farm land. I parked on the side of a muddy farm road and hiked to a trail. That trail made its way along the edges of farm fields at the edge of the woods. A small stream separated the trail form the fields. I jumped the stream and set up to sketch at the edge of a farmers field. I worked quickly, but as I sketched it started to rain. The drops splattered on the page. A German woman was walking her dog on the trail She waved, but must have thought I was crazy to be sketching in the rain.

In April 1945, the 75th Infantry Division, 3rd Battalion followed the 2nd Battalion and then passed through them to attack and capture Düren Germany. With Düren secured they pressed forward and took Stockum Germany.

In the town of Witten, up to 25,000 people from different countries, including several hundred Poles, were forced to work for Nazi regime during the Second World War. The majority of the workforce in the town was made up of forced laborers, who were used mainly to produce weapons. In 1944, a satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp was even created to accommodate the concentration camp inmates in the Annen Cast Steelworks.

During the WWII, there were a total of around 24,900 forced laborers from all the occupied territories in the area now covered by the town of Witten. On average, they worked for approximately 15 months in the town, and made up the majority of the workforce there. At the beginning of 1945, for example, the forced laborers constituted about 55 % of the total workforce in Witten. The different areas of work that they performed meant that large-scale forced labor camps were needed. As a result, it is thought that between 230 and 250 forced labor camps of different sizes were established in the town during that period.

“It was a beautiful afternoon the day we left Krakow. Our homeland, abused by the occupation, said goodbye to us with a sunny day. The monotonous clatter of the train wheels painfully reminded us that it was taking us away as slaves.”
– Maria Hosajowa, a former Polish forced laborer.

U.S. 75th Infantry Division liberated thousands of forced laborers and Prisoners of War (POWs) from Nazi camps, in the Ruhr Pocket region. Once liberated the infantry had to feed and house the displaced persons and find a way to get them back to their home countries. It was a task they were ill-prepared to carry out. Once liberated, forced laborers looted to began to find the basics for survival and decent clothing, Displaced persons consulted bulletin boards hoping to find out about transportation home. Hitch hiking wasn’t effective in war time. To survive you needed to carry all your belongings.

Witten Germany

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The 75th Infantry Division, 1st Battalion moved south with the other 2 Battalions against heavy last ditch German opposition on April 11th, 12th and 13th. My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken lead C-Company as part of the 1st Battalion was part of this attack. They advanced towards Witten Germany and encountered stiff resistance as they neared the objective. They broke up a large scale counterattack with mortar and artillery fire. They then had to fight a fierce house to house battle through Witten to advance to the Ruhr River.

The 2nd Battalion followed the 1st Battalion for a short time and then it changed its angle of attack to the south, southeast, meeting heavy enemy resistance but reaching the town of Annen. Road blocks and large numbers of riflemen made taking Annen difficult. After entering the town just before it got dark, the Battalion held it’s ground and then continued the attack in the morning.

The 3rd Battalion met equally stiff resistance, with K-Company getting pinned down. Air support helped break up the situation and the Battalion continued it’s attack to the Ruhr River.

The remaining German forces were being backed up against the Ruhr River with no retreat route. Their freedom of movement was curtailed, and they were being pressed in from all sides. The hopelessly trapped units receiving artillery fire from all directions from the Americans and the infantry kept pressing in making their plight hopeless.

Witten, a Ruhr industrial town, was heavily damaged by Allied bombing, particularly in late 1944. Ruhr AG Steelworks was crucial for weapon production, leading to high demand for forced laborers, including a Buchenwald sub-camp. Up to 25,000 people from different countries, including several hundred Poles, were forced to work for the National Socialist regime during the Second World War.

At the beginning of 1945, for example, the forced laborers constituted about 55 % of the total workforce in Witten. The different areas of work that they did meant that a large-scale accommodation was needed. As a result, it is thought that between 230 and 250 forced labor camps of different sizes were established in the town during that period.

The steelworks were not the only place where forced laborers were made to work: they were also used on farms, in various different trades and in other factories producing armaments, or even in private households. The majority of the forced laborers were the so-called “workers from the east”, who made up around 50% of all the prisoners working in Witten. The forced laborers in Witten also included Soviet and Italian prisoners of war. A far smaller number of the forced laborers who were made to work came from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Czechoslovakia.

The Buchenwald sub-camp in Witten-Annen was created in September 1944 to supply prisoner labor to the Ruhr AG Steelworks in support of increased German rearmament efforts in the last year of the war. Like other sub camps attached to the Buchenwald main camp and within the camp system more generally, the supply of prisoner labor to the steel factory, followed from an agreement between the SS-Business Administration and the administration of the factory. Inmates were hired out from the SS by the firm at a cost of 6 Reichsmark (RM) per skilled laborer and 4 RM per unskilled laborer per day.

Dorney Germany: The Woe of the Vanquished

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I went for a walk in the Dorney Wald Nature Preserve. It was raining all day. I parked in a ball park parking lot and waited for the worst of the rain to stop. Then I ventured out in search of a statue of two German soldiers. I walked for miles and could not fin them. I finally gave up and when I got back to the car. I started searching for a place to eat. The place I found was right on the opposite sided of the forest within walking distance. I decided to walk over to get a gyro to eat. On that walk I ended up stumbling upon the statue I ad been searching for.

The memorial was erected in 1935-1935 by the Nazi Party. Though masked as an attempt to honor the losses of WWI, it was instead used to glorify the revenge felt for the loss and was used to recruit new youth for the battle to come. Every war brings unimaginable pain misery, displacement and death. The plaque next to the sculpture reminds any viewer to remember the costs of war.

Too many Germans were dying while trying to defuse unexploded Allied bombs. To remedy the situation, Himmler wrote a memo insisting that POWs and Forced Laborers should defuse the bombs. 40 prisoners from the Cologne-based SS-Baubrigade III were sent to Dortmund- Dorstfeld, Stalag VI-D  to work with the Luftwaffe‘s bomb disposal squad. There is little data, and only a few prisoner names are known, about the Dortmund POW bomb disposal squad. Thousands of tons of unexploded Allied bombs remain in Germany to this day, and 11 German bomb technicians have been killed since 2000. It is unknown if any POWs or forced laborers died defusing bombs. It would be a job that you would have to learn quickly and never do wrong.

“The Nazi regime of forced labor was a crime that made people throughout Europe slaves of the German war and business interests,” emphasized Günter Saathoff. “In contrast to the extermination camps in the east, the German population could not claim that they did not know anything about it because the wrongs were committed before their very eyes. Nevertheless, it was later denied or played down as a concomitant of war and the occupiers’ rule.

Every German man had to decide how to behave towards forced laborers: with the last bit of humanity or with the allegedly imperative coldness and relentlessness of a supposed higher race. There was scope of action and how such was made use of tells us something not only about the individual but also about the influence and attractiveness of National Socialist ideology and practice. While many Germans wanted to sweep the past under the rug, some wanted to learn from the past and build memorials to educate people of the future so that they might not repeat the horrors committed.

On April 12, 1945 Franklin Delano Roosivelt was having his portrait painted by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs Georgia. He suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed after telling the artist that he felt dizzy. The portrait she was working on was a watercolor and she left it unfinished. She ultimately completed the commission by doing a painting from photo reference and memory. The uncompleted portrait became a historical relic.

A eulogy for FDR said that he had “given his life” through intense, unrelenting labor as Commander-in-Chief during World War II. Though not killed in combat, he died “in harness” or “in battle harness,” as described by Winston Churchill, having led the nation to the brink of victory but not living to see the final surrender of the Axis nations.

April 10, 1945: Dorney Germany

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Dorney Germany is a four road town just to the south of Dortmund. The 75th Infantry Division continued it’s attack south throughout April 9th and 10th with the 2nd Battalion capturing Oespel and Dorney then proceeding south to the regimental objective which ultimately would be the Ruhr river.

It was raining all day so my only hope was to sketch from inside the rental car. It was a grey lifeless day. Someone threw recycled bottles in a bin and that glass clattered loudly.

Dortmund had a POW–Forced Labor Camp. When Ninth U.S. Army troops captured Dortmund, Germany, April 14, 1945, they liberated 4,070 prisoners and slave laborers of 13 nationalities–men, women and children. The Americans discovered prisoners-of-war and workers too weak from starvation, malnutrition and disease to move. Dozens were found lying in manure piles, ditches and cellars, dying from neglect and lack of medical treatment. Fifty bodies were found in the yard of the German guard barracks, now used as a hospital, unhurried and decomposing. These people were then cared for at the displaced persons center in Dortmund under command of Captain William T. Drake of Wilmington, Ohio. Two Russian doctors and Russian women assisted medical corpsmen of the 79th Infantry Division of the Ninth Army in caring for them.

In entering one room in the Dortmund Forced Labor Camp, soldiers found 4 dead babies lying on a table covered with sheets. On the floor were naked skeletal men and woman also covered in sheets. Babies were systematically taken from Forced Labor women and then starved to death to satisfy the the German ideal of the final solution. If the woman did not get right back to work, she would be murdered as well. If a woman tried to recover her child from German custody, she would be shot.

The Germans abducted about 12 million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds of whom came from Eastern Europe. Many workers died as a result of their living conditions, mistreatment or were civilian casualties of the war. They received little or no compensation during or after the war … At the peak of the war, one of every five workers in the economy of the Third Reich was a forced labourer. According to Fried, in January 1944 the Third Reich was relying on 10 million forced labourers. Of these, 6.5 million were civilians within German borders, 2.2 million were prisoners of war, and 1.3 million were located at forced labor camps outside Germany’s borders. Homze reported that civilian forced labourers from other countries working within the German borders rose steeply from 300,000 in 1939 to more than 5 million in 1944.

April 9-10, 1945: Dortmund-Oespel Germany

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It started to rain as I sketched. Rain drop blasts littered the surface of the sketch. I could not protect the page. I closed the sketchbook and sat as it rained, thinking it might stop. I was sheltered in a rain jacket. I finally gave up and put the sketchbook away. After walking half way out of the cemetery, the rain stopped. I went back to my spot and sketched again quickly. I managed to cover the page before another wave of rain started. As I was leaving, I noticed a headstone for Fritz and Gerta Torspecken. My last name is Thorspecken and in America that is quite unique. With just one letter missing, I thought these might be long lost relatives. I know that my original ancestor, Dr. Elias Julius Thorspecken emigrated to America in 1830 or so to build a new life. He served his new country as a doctor during the Civil War. Arolsen Germany the city that Augustus left, is just 142 miles due west. This headstone left me thinking that I might have deep roots in this area of Germany.

Oespel is a district in Western Dortmund Germany. The attack by the 75th Infantry Division continued through April 9-10, 1945 with the 2nd Battalion advancing south to capture Oespel and Dorney Germany with light enemy opposition to their regimental objective which was ultimately the Ruhr River.

Searching the Arolen archives online, I found 225 Forced Laborers listed as being in Dortnund-Oespel. The first was named Marta Albert born Butschgau. She was 55 years old in 1945 and was born in Belgium. I was left wondering if she survived the war and returned to Belgium.

The Oespel coal mine was in operation in 1945 and this is possibly where Marta would have been forced to work. The mine had up to one thousand nine hundred and twenty workers in the underground shafts and in the sorting area. The Oespel coal mine was one of four mines in the village of Oespel.

Stalag VI-D POW camp was in Dortmund Germany. Over 70,000 prisoners-of-war were imprisoned here in World War II.  The camp was closed in March of 1945, one month before my father’s unit was fighting to take Dortmund. Prisoners in the camp were primarily from Poland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Italy. The POWs were forced to perform labor in armaments and industrial plants, in mines and in private and municipal enterprises under inhumane conditions. Several thousand of the POWs died from chronic illness, malnutrition and Allied bomb attacks. There were no air raid shelters for the POWs.

From September 1, 1939, Oespel suffered from Allied bombing raids, direct casualties, and soldiers killed in action during World War II.

On June 4, 1941 there was a low-level air raid that claimed ten lives. Residents sought refuge in the air-raid shelter at the Oespel 3 mine. Forced laborers were not granted shelter in the mines although they were forced to work there.

On March 23, 1944, an American B-17 bomber with a crew of ten, was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun stationed at Dorney Germany. The plane crashed on the spoil heap of the Oespel 3 mine and landed in two gardens in Heuerlingsweg Germany, just south or Oespel.

On December 1 and 12, 1944, the Protestant church, parsonage, community center, and the school were severely damaged in air raids.

On April 10, 1945, after a heavy artillery duel, American troops, including the 75th Infantry Division captured Oespel and Kley and looted valuables. My father, 1st Lieutenant Arthur Thorspecken was leading C-Company during the capture of Oespel Germany and the surrounding area.

On April 13, 1945, with the end of World War II close at hand, the Allies began efforts to repatriate foreign forced laborers from the coal mines. Once liberated, forced laborers became known as displaced persons. Rebuilding lives torn apart by war was a task above an beyond what any soldier could accomplish.

On June 7, 1945, the Americans withdraw from Oespel Germany. The British took over the occupation, and Oespel citizens were transferred to Allied prisoner-of-war camps.