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.